The Loser (8 page)

actual
wealth that was suddenly theirs but that they considered a cumbersome burden. Except for the Kohlmarkt apartment and the hunting lodge in Traich they had everything sold and had the money deposited in banks throughout the world by a lawyer who belonged to the family, as Wertheimer put it, for once breaking his habit of never speaking about his financial situation. Three fourths of the parents’ property went to Wertheimer, a fourth to his sister, she too had her inheritance deposited in various banking establishments in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, I thought. The Wertheimer children were financially secure, I thought, as I also am by the way, although my own financial situation could not be compared with that of Wertheimer and his sister. Wertheimer’s great-grandparents had been dirt poor, I thought, farmers who twisted goose necks in the villages outside Lvov. But like me he came from a family of merchants, I thought. For one of his birthdays his father had the idea of giving him a castle in the Marchfeld that once belonged to the Harrachs, but his son wasn’t even willing to take a look at the castle that he already owned, at which point his father, naturally enraged by his son’s indifference, sold it, I thought. Basically the Wertheimer children led a modest life, unpretentious, unostentatious, more or less in the background, although everyone else in their circle was always putting on airs. At the Mozarteum people didn’t notice Wertheimer’s wealth either. Nor did they notice Glenn’s wealth by the way, and Glenn was wealthy. Retrospectively it was clear that the wealthy had found each other, I thought, they had a sixth sense for their mutual background. Glenn’s genius was then so to speak just a welcome extra, I thought. Friendships, I thought, as experience shows, are finally only possible when they are based on mutual backgrounds, I thought, all other conclusions are false. I was suddenly astonished by the cold-bloodedness with which I got off the train in Attnang-Puchheim to go to Wankham and then Traich, to Wertheimer’s hunting lodge, without even thinking of visiting my own house in Desselbrunn, which for five years has been standing empty and which I assume, since I pay the appropriate people, gets aired out every four or five days; astonished by my cold-blooded wish to spend the night here in Wankham in the most disgusting inn I know, when not twelve kilometers away I have my own house, but which I won’t visit under any circumstances, as I immediately thought, for I vowed to myself five years ago not to go to Desselbrunn for at least ten years, and until now I hadn’t had any difficulty in keeping this vow, that is in controlling myself. Through constant self-sacrifice I had thoroughly ruined life in Desselbrunn for myself, one day it suddenly became completely unbearable, I thought. The beginning of this self-sacrifice had been the rejection of my Steinway, the triggering moment so to speak for my subsequent inability to tolerate life in Desselbrunn. All at once I could no longer breathe the Desselbrunn air and the walls in Desselbrunn made me sick and the rooms threatened to choke me, one has to remember how cavernous the rooms are there, nine-by-six-meter or eight-by-eight-meter rooms, I thought. I hated those rooms and I hated what was in those rooms and when I left my house I hated the people outside my house, all at once I was being unjust to all those people, who only wanted
the best for me
, but precisely that drove me crazy after a while, their constant
willingness to be helpful
, which I suddenly found profoundly revolting. I barricaded myself in my study and stared out the window, without seeing anything but my own unhappiness. I ran outdoors and cursed at everybody. I ran into the woods and huddled beneath a tree, exhausted. To avoid actually going insane, I turned my back on Desselbrunn,
for at least ten years, for at least ten years, for at least ten years
, I repeated to myself without interruption as I left the house and went to Vienna to go to Portugal, where I had relatives in Sintra, in the most beautiful region of Portugal, where the eucalyptus trees grow thirty meters high and you can breathe the best air. In Sintra I’ll find my way back to music, which in Desselbrunn I had driven out of myself thoroughly and so to speak for all time, I thought then, I thought, and I will regenerate myself by breathing the Atlantic air at mathematically calculated intervals. At that time I had also thought I could resume playing my Sintra uncle’s Steinway where I’d left off in Desselbrunn, but that was a ridiculous thought, I thought, in Sintra I ran six kilometers down the Atlantic coast every day and for eight months didn’t think about touching a piano, while my uncle and all the others in his house kept saying I should play something for them, in Sintra I never even touched a key, of course in Sintra during this admittedly wonderful inactivity in the fresh air and, as I have to say, in one of the most beautiful areas
of the world
, I came upon the idea of writing something about Glenn,
something
, I couldn’t know what,
something about him and his art
. With this thought I walked up and down in Sintra and the surroundings and finally spent a whole year there without getting beyond this
something about Glenn
. To start to write is the hardest thing of all and for months and even years I ran around with this thought of writing something without being able to begin, something about Glenn who, as I thought then, had to be described, described of course by a competent witness of his existence, not just of his piano playing, by a competent witness of his thoroughly extraordinary intellect. One day I dared to begin this work, in the
Inglaterra
where I had wanted to stay only two days but where I spent six weeks in uninterrupted writing about Glenn. In the end however, when I moved to Madrid, I had only sketches for this work in my pocket and I destroyed these sketches because they suddenly became an obstacle to my work rather than a help, I had made too many sketches, this tendency has already ruined many of my works; we have to make sketches for a work, but if we make too many sketches we ruin everything, I thought, and so it was then in the
Inglaterra
, I sat in my room without interruption and made so many sketches that I thought I’d gone crazy and recognized that these Glenn-sketches were the cause of my insanity and I had the strength to destroy these Glenn-sketches. I simply put them in the wastepaper basket and watched the maid pick up the wastepaper basket and take it out of the room and make them disappear with the garbage. That was a pleasant sight, I thought, to see the maid pick up my Glenn-sketches, not only hundreds but thousands of them, and make them disappear. What a relief, I thought. I sat at my chair in front of the window for the entire afternoon, at dusk I was finally able to leave the
Inglaterra
and walk down the
Liberdade
in Lisbon and go to the Rua Garrett to my favorite bar. I had eight such false starts behind me, all of which ended by my destroying the sketches, before I finally realized in Madrid
how
I had to begin the work
About Glenn
, which I then finished in the Calle del Prado, I thought. But already I doubted whether this work was truly worth something and was thinking of destroying it upon my return, everything we write down, if we leave it for a while and start reading it from the beginning, naturally becomes unbearable and we won’t rest until we’ve destroyed it again, I thought. Next week I’ll be in Madrid again and the first thing I’ll do is destroy my
Glenn Essay
in order to start a new one, I thought, an even more intense, even more authentic one, I thought. For we always think we are authentic and in truth are not, we think we’re intense and in truth are not. But of course this insight has always resulted in none of my works ever being published, I thought, not a single one in the twenty-eight years I’ve been writing, just the work about Glenn has kept me busy for nine years, I thought. How good it is that none of these imperfect, incomplete works has ever appeared, I thought, had I published them, which would have posed no difficulty whatsoever, today I would be the unhappiest person imaginable, confronted daily with disastrous works crying out with errors, imprecision, carelessness, amateurishness. I
avoided
this punishment
by destroying them
, I thought, and suddenly I took great pleasure in the word
destroying
. Several times I said it to myself out loud.
Arrival in Madrid, immediately destroy my Glenn Essay
, I thought, I must get rid of it as quickly as possible to make room for a new one. Now I know
how
to set about this work, I never knew how, I always began too soon, I thought, like an amateur. All our lives we run away from amateurishness and it always catches up with us, I thought, we want nothing with greater passion than to escape our lifelong amateurishness and it always catches up with us.
Glenn and ruthlessness, Glenn and solitude, Glenn and Bach, Glenn and the Goldberg Variations
, I thought.
Glenn in his studio in the woods, his hatred of people, his hatred of music, his music-people hatred
, I thought.
Glenn
and simplicity
, I thought while contemplating the restaurant. We have to know what we want right from the start, I thought, already as children we have to be clear in our minds what it is we want, want to have, have to have, I thought. The time I spent in Desselbrunn, and Wertheimer in Traich, I thought, was deadly. Our mutual visits and mutual criticism, I thought, which destroyed us. I only visited Wertheimer in Traich to destroy him, to disturb and destroy him, just as vice versa Wertheimer visited me for no other reason; to go to Traich merely signified a distraction from my horrible mental misery and the chance to disturb Wertheimer, our exchange of childhood memories, I thought, over a cup of tea, and always Glenn Gould at the center, not Glenn but Glenn Gould, who destroyed us both, I thought. Wertheimer came to Desselbrunn to disturb me, to ruin a work I’d started at the very moment he announced himself. He kept repeating,
if only we hadn’t met Glenn
, but also,
if Glenn had died early, before he became a world celebrity
, I thought. We meet a person like Glenn and are destroyed, I thought, or rescued, in our case Glenn destroyed us, I thought. I would never have played on a Bösendorfer, said Glenn, I thought, I would never have gotten anywhere on a Bösendorfer. The Bösendorfer players against the Steinway players, I thought, the Steinway enthusiasts against the Bösendorfer enthusiasts. At first they brought a Bösendorfer to his room, he had it removed immediately, exchanged for a Steinway, I thought, I wouldn’t have dared to be so demanding, I thought, back then in Salzburg at the very start of our Horowitz course; even then Glenn was already completely self-assured, for him a Bösendorfer was simply out of the question, would have ruined his plan. And without protest they had exchanged the Bösendorfer for the Steinway, I thought, although Glenn wasn’t yet Glenn Gould. I can still see the movers who carried out the Bösendorfer and carried in the Steinway, I thought. But Salzburg is no place for a piano player to develop, Glenn often said, the air is too damp, it ruins the instrument and at the same time it ruins the piano player, ruins a player’s hands and head in the shortest time. But I wanted to study with Horowitz, Glenn said, that was the decisive thing. In Wertheimer’s room the curtains were always drawn and the shutters closed, Glenn played with the curtains and shutters open, I always played with the windows open. Luckily there were no adjacent houses and as a result no one was up in arms against us, for that would have ruined our work. For the duration of our Horowitz course we had rented the house of a recently deceased Nazi sculptor, the
creations of the master
, as he was called in the area, still stood all over the house, in rooms that were five to six meters high. It was the height of these rooms that had convinced us to rent the house
on the spot
, the sculptures standing about didn’t disturb us, they improved the acoustics, these marble eyesores along the walls that had been created by a
world-famous artist
, as we were told, who had worked for years in the service of Hitler. These giant marble protuberances, which the owners actually pushed against the walls for us, were acoustically ideal, I thought. At first we were shocked by the sight of the sculptures, by this cretinous marble and granite monumentality, Wertheimer especially cowered before them, but Glenn immediately claimed the rooms to be
ideal
, and because of the monuments
even more ideal for our purpose
. The sculptures were so heavy that our attempt to move even the smallest of them failed, our combined forces weren’t enough, and we were no weaklings, piano virtuosos are strong people with amazing endurance, quite contrary to common opinion. Glenn, whom even today people assume to have had the weakest constitution, was an athletic type. Hunched over his Steinway, he looked like a cripple, that’s how the entire musical world knows him, but this entire musical world is prey to a total misconception, I thought. Glenn is portrayed everywhere as a cripple and a weakling, as the
transcendent artist
his fans can accept only with his infirmity and the hypersensitivity that goes along with this infirmity, but actually he was an athletic type, much stronger than Wertheimer and me put together, we realized that at once when he went out to chop down an ash tree with his own hands, an ash tree in front of his window, which, as he put it, obstructed his playing. He cut down the ash, which had a diameter of at least a half meter, all by himself, didn’t even let us get near the ash, chopped the ash into smaller pieces at once and stacked them against the house, the typical American, I had thought then, I thought. Glenn had barely cut down the ash that supposedly obstructed his playing when he had the idea of simply drawing the curtains in his room, closing the shutters. I could have spared myself the work of cutting down the ash, he said, I thought. We often cut down such an ash, a whole forest of such mental ashes, he said, and we could have spared ourselves the work with a simple sleight of hand, he said, I thought. The ash in front of his window disturbed him the minute he sat down at his Steinway in Leopoldskron. Without even asking the owners he went to the toolshed, grabbed an ax and a saw and chopped down the ash. If I have to spend time asking, he said, I just lose time and energy, I’m going to chop down the ash at once, he said, and chopped it down, I thought. The ash was barely on the ground when he realized that he had only needed to draw the curtains, close the shutters. He cut the felled ash into pieces without our help, I thought, created the perfect order he needed where the ash had once stood. If something is in our way we have to get rid of it, Glenn said, even if it’s only an ash. And we don’t even have the right to ask first if we are allowed to chop down the ash, we weaken ourselves that way. If we ask first we’re already so weakened that it’s bad for us, may even destroy us, he said, I thought. Not one of his fans, his worshipers, as I immediately thought again, would ever think that Glenn Gould, who is known and famous in the whole world so to speak as the absolute weakling of artists, could cut down a strong, healthy, half-meter-thick ash by himself and in the shortest time and stack the pieces of this ash against the house, in dreadful atmospheric conditions to boot, I thought. His worshipers worship a phantom, I thought, they worship a Glenn Gould that never existed. But