Tubutsch (3 page)

It may be asked why I don't forget these shallow diversions and indulge myself in something more entertaining? While there is a lot to be said for being a dog
-owner, given the great number f
f time-filling chores one must attend to, how much more are the simple and harmless pleasures occasioned by the tending of a piteous animal outshone by the company of a woman. To which I might add: when even a Homeric hero can have too much of "sleep and love, song and merry-making," what depths of emotion and exhaustion would the likes of me start to register? My ears are still resounding with the cries of the Viennese ladies, gasping in the moment of rapture: "Ah!" "Oh!" "Christ!" and "Do you really love me as well!" If they were poetesses they would presumably say: "Tandaradei!" ... and I can still hear the "Hoo," "Hah," "Hob" of the Hungarians when I hold my ears. The girl from Berlin says "Hmmm, tasty!" The only ones who didn't say a word were the Gypsy girls; but take my advice, leave your watch at home when making amorous advances to them
.
. . and call yourself lucky if Trantire and Chnarpe-diches don't name you as the father of their children, who by right should resemble the whole of the officer corps from the local garrison . . . Yes, another one was sensible to hold her tongue . . . Marischa, the wife of the village judge of Popudjin. She made love the same way she would cut herself a slice of bread. Every one of her movements had a machine like assurance. Truly, I shall never forget how we chanced on one another that first time. It was the morning after her wedding, which I was unaware of. She, a stranger to me, was mowing the meadow which glistened with morning dew, he
r hips swaying as she moved for
wards. . . her short skirts forever swinging round and revealing her calves
.
.
.
I sauntered past and could not resist leaning over to stroke the blossoming chin and cheeks of such a lovely, fresh woman. She blushed but didn't rebuff me: death stood behind me, the farmer with his scythe. And I just had enough presence of mind to say: "So, my woman, I can come by your vineyard this afternoon and pick up the mulberries." The farmer stared like an ox. She, bending down even further, as if she wanted to help me find something which had fallen on the ground, said yes, and that afternoon there were not just mulberries to be had in the vineyard . . . And later on she informed me that her husband and mother had gone on a pilgrimage to Sassin, and I crept into her room where she lay waiting with her scent of stables, then returned home in the dark — taking care not to step into the dung heap to the right of
the yard or fall into the cess
pit on the left — to sing the joys of the perilous love between Jehangir Mirza and Maasumeh Sultan Begum.
.
. But my enthu
siasm was soon to become paralyz
ed by the oppressive conflict between such petty fortunes and the monstrous feelings and imaginings which accompanied them; indeed, in the long run it is an economic impossibility to manufacture ambrosia while having to eat filth oneself . . Apart from which the unfortunate gift of being able to see the skeleton inside even the most beloved woman, which can sometimes make an embrace all the more heart-rending, but in the end I was bound to be cut off from woma
nkind by an immeasurable horror
.
.
. enough of all that love business! I'd much rather have a dog. The housekeeper's childless wife has got one which I think very highly of. A young toy bulldog, it holds court before the children in the yard; if they bring it turnips, calf's liver or sausages, it will answer to Fido, Bonzo, Fill or even worse. But the little devil ignores any name under the sun if you only want to be nice to him, and should one become more insistent, perhaps like an old widow who once wanted to tie a pink bow around its neck, it growls a warning and then snaps. Its limitless power of reaction, its fresh and youthful bull-like charges at any scrap of paper or handkerchief held in front of it, and last but not least its exemplary self-sufficiency, have made it my ideal. It is able to lie
about for hours on end hypnotizi
ng the selfsame bone without a trace of boredom, and doesn't see any need for change. It doesn't need any teacher to tell it ironically: "That's going to get you a long way!" — it knows that so
deep in its bones that it is no l
onger conscious of it: one cannot get further in than to one's own self. I, on the other hand, when I find it too dull just being "me," am forced to become someone else. Usually I am Marius and sit among the ruins of Carthage; but sometimes I am Prince Echsenklumm, entertain relations with an opera singer, gladly grant the chief editor Armand Schigut an interview on the trade deal with Monaco, forbid my valet, Dominic — played by my boot¬jack Philipp — to allow anyone to see me except Baroness Toothscale ... And no sooner has this eternal yes your highness, no your highness got on my nerves, than I turn into a celebrated diva, give my miserable director the slap around the chops I had been longing to give him for ages, or set about him with a chair. I was just about to transform myself into the poet Konrad Rare- hammer and silently smoke a cigarette in the Cafe "Symbol" in order to restore myself from these unaccustomed exe
rtions, when my boot-jack inter
rupted me. He was fed up with always playing the servants, directors, Carthaginian ruins, and cigarettes, and longed just once to be a prince, a heroine, or a playwright. "Boot! ..." I said to him, "Boot! Pride comes before a fall." "Master," came the answer, "Master, I'm no ordinary boot-jack." "That's perfectly obvious. Any boot-jack in my service is eo ipso no longer a normal boot-jack." "I didn't mean it that way." "Is there divine blood in your fibres? Are you an enchanted princess or perhaps even the boot-jack with which Zeus ingratiated himself with Hera?" "No, no, but all the same, from an old family. Listen: I am descended in a direct line from the boot-jack which Mithridates swallowed in order to immunise his stomach against all poison."
"He must have plagued his master as much as you to end up being used like that." Philipp forbade any such allusions to the fates of personal ancestors who were no less illustrious than meritorious. "Or else I shall be ruthless and hand in my notice. Not for nothing am I being considered for the presidency of the forthcoming First International Boot-jack Congress in America. Roosevelt will personally . . ." "Roosevelt?" "I mean Roosevelt's boot-jack. We call him Roosevelt for short . . . has invited me to preside . . . and just because of my position as the descendant of a famous
.
. . or do you think that Mr. Tubutsch's boot-jack . ?" "Yes, well, how are you going to get to America, oh boot-jack of my soul?" "My body, my mean form, will remain here, while my spirit soars up, flies off, crawls into a power line and is ove
r there in a jiffy. In the old
days it was a lot more bother. You couldn't always find a bolt of lightning and there was no relying on that vagabond of a wind, it would always set us down just where we didn't want to be . . . on Lake Tanganyika or the Fiji Islands . . . where there was not a fellow soul to be found far and wide . . ." I felt flattered to be in contact with an entity which in a way put me in very close contact with the President of the United States, so we made a pact whereby from now on we alternated the lead roles. He was the grocer who said: "Today we've gotta luvverly cheese from Prims!" I was the customer who tries a taste with a shrug of the shoulders. Then again I was the elephant baby
. . . running around in circles
. .
. and he the child shouting: "Oh! How sweet!" Finally he was the tree trunk with a hat on one branch, coursing down the Danube to the Black Sea, and I was the oarsman who had fallen into the water and was cursing him, the water rat which resided between his roots or the otter checking the validity of the tree trunk's ticket. Until my fun was spoilt by the impossibility, even with the greatest exertions of my will, of transforming myself into Prince Echsenklumm or the water rat sufficiently so as to be externally visible to myself and others. "Philipp!" I said, "come here." Philipp came, if somewhat reluctantly, as if he sensed the worst. I wrapped him up carefully in brown wrapping paper and went for a walk. But none of the passers-by wanted to ask me what was inside my little brown packet. And I had already prepared a short speech; "Ladies and Gentlemen! Here you are looking at something quite out of the ordinary! A talking boot-jack! He is descended from the boot-jack to his Asiatic Majesty, King Mithridates of Pontus . . . he will preside shortly at the First International Boot-jack Congress. Roosevelt himself . . ." Nobody showed the slightest curiosity and I didn't want to be pushy . . . That I remained unquestioned might still have been tolerable . . . but Philipp went into a huff because I had been so faithless, had sought to profane his secrets . . . his soul had emigrated to America for good . . . I was alone again
. .
.

I used to dream of fame. It was never
allotted
to me. And what remained were sarcastic remarks directed at the more fortunate. I had always shown a talent for this. When I had eaten myself to the core, I would start on others. But now I have become weaker, milder. As I said, I write in pencil. My food is as delicate as an invalid's. Recently I spent a whole morning watching a general who stopped in front of every shop window on Mariahilfe Street, regardless of whether it was a lingerie shop or a hairdress
er's. It was just after the man
euvers
. I experienced neither malicious joy nor commiseration; I simply stood and watched until I myself was the general and felt ready to take over the role he had to continue playing. The way in which he lifted his sabre so that it wouldn't drag along the pavement, normally a reflex, was unspeakably sad. .
.
The next day I meditated just as long on a jackdaw which was hopping back and forth, restlessly back and forth in front of a florists in Weihburg Lane. Broken, its clipped wings dragged along the dirt of the cobblestones. And just a few days before it had circled round the spire of St. Stephen's cathedral or been in command of a brigade
.
. . I would have dearly loved to have arranged a meeting between the general and the jackdaw. But I no longer dare to carry out such great undertakings, since my last venture went so awry
. . .

On my travels I often passed an inn whose landlord's first name was Dominik. Now the Christian name Dom
inik is not uncommon among land
lords. But why? This is an unfathomable mystery; but because of the regularity with which I have to walk past the sign outside the wine tavern, a relationship had gradually established itself between myself and the proprietor. Not that I had ever seen the landlord. Heaven forbid! Such realistic prerequisites are quite unnecessary where I'm concerned . . . But looking at the calendar one day, I saw that it was his S
aint's day. "To
day you must at last go in and visit him," I said to myself, and put on my red kid gloves. I entered. None of my expectations came into being. I was served by a man in a blue apron, the porter, a duster over one shoulder. I keep waiting and waiting so as to catch sight of the esteemed gentleman. He doesn't arrive. Nothing of the kind. I get impatient and want to leave soon, so I ask the porter where his master has got to. The lad hesitates, I tell him to his face that the landlord has presumably got to pay the brewer that day and has done a bolt. And so it all came out: the host had treacherously gone off to the vintners' inns to taste the new wine, had gone away on his name-day to booze with another landlord, in his own company, as it were. There can be no doubt, the idea is as funny as can be and would make a fine subject for a Dutch painter: a landlord who goes for a drink at another landlord's, but I had sacrificed both time and money and not found the
fulfillment
I had longed for. As if a mocking fate, which dearly loves to take everything from the little man in order to heap even more on the greater, wanted to rob me of this
meager
event of mine,
the staggering sight of a land
lord celebrating his saint's day! Odd, but typical, for tricks o
f this sort are for
ever being played on me. Perhaps in order to put me out of the running, unviable creature that I am, by checkmating my every move. I won't even mention how, as I still had acquaintances, I would often not see them for months, only to see them all during the one day on which they had presumably agreed to congregate, with the aim of giving me — at the very least — a paraly
z
ed arm by continually waving at me. There are better examples.

Years ago, when I was somewhat more full of the joys of life, the shattering death of the two Pollack flies having not yet occurred and thus not warned me to maintain a calmer relationship with fate, in those days I bucked myself up, overcame any misgivings and bought myself a cane. In order to set out on adventures. That's not on without a cane. Just as a knight could not have battled with giants, dwarves and dragons for the sake of a virgin without his targe or with an undubbed saddle.

One Sunday I knotted my tie for the first and last time with a care which can only be compared, if at all, with that which the prophets must have spent girding their loins, and took the tram to Sievring. No small pleasure to whizz past the stops while others had to wait stiffly at them. Unfortunately a distant cousin boarded at Billroth Street, a snob of the first water with a volume of Balzac jutting ostentatiously out of his pocket. I jokingly admonished him for lugging bound books into the open countryside, particularly those which would soon be in everyone's pockets, pointing out that it was only truly worth his while to hawk books which weren't yet modern. He, however, misunderstood me completely and drew me into a lengthy discussion. About Balzac's end, how Friederike had supposedly betrayed Goethe like Sand betrayed Musset and Oh, the idyll at Sesenheim! As a vicar's daughter she would have brought the theologist's child into the world as a matter of course — which is to say, when one leaves Lenz and a few French
immigration
officers to one side . . . truth and poetry! We talked about woman and how every being, male or female, which bears the weight of reason or imagination,
is more or less bound to be jealous and moreover cannot avoid suffering under the jealousy it has inherited from its animal forebears . . . and one subject led to another and only when it was too late — the forest had already swallowed us up — did the pitiable wretch open his mouth to tell me that I had missed the most important thing! An attractive young miss had been sitting in the tram,
listening to my witticisms and resting her gaze
on me all the while, and after
wards had even followed us a good way, but in the end, since it was difficult for her to speak with me, had dropped behind. I had been talking about woman until life, laughing, swaying and skipping and blossoming in all its glory just two ste
ps away, had gone and left me!
.
. As if that wasn't enough, as we tried to make way for a unit of lovers to pass by on a narrow path, the female part of it stepped onto the cane I was elegiacally dragging be
hind me
: the cane broke — a clear sign from Providence that I should at once leave the path I had scarcely set foot on . . . On a nearby meadow a slender sixteen year old girl in the company of her mummy could find nothing better to do than pluck the autumn cr
ocuses. I followed her example. . .