Vertigo (18 page)

of his bleak house, the gruesome Franz with his deformed shoulder, the return of the prodigal son from the forests of Bohemia, or that curious slight movement of the body, never failing to excite me, with which the deathly pale Amalia said:
Hark, hark! Did I not hear the gate?
And there, before her, is Moor the robber, and she speaks of how her love made the burning sand green and the thorn bushes blossom, without ever knowing that the man from whom she still supposed herself to be separated by mountains, oceans and horizons had come home and was standing beside her. Always then I would wish to intervene in the proceedings and in a single word tell Amalia that she had only to reach out her hand in order to move from her dusty prison to that paradise of love she so desired. But since I could not bring myself to call out in this way, the turn that the events might otherwise have taken was never revealed to me. Towards the end of the play's run, in early February, it was given an open-air performance, in the paddock next to the postmaster's house, mainly, I suppose, so that a series of photographs could be taken. The winter's tale that resulted was notable not only on account of the snow which covered the ground in this open-air production even in the scenes set indoors, but mainly because Moor the robber now entered the action on horseback, which had of course not
been possible in the function room. I believe it was on this occasion that I first noticed that horses often have a

somewhat crazed look in their eyes. At all events, that performance on the postmaster's paddock was the last of
The Robbers,
and indeed the last theatre performance of any kind in W. Only during carnival time did the actors don their costumes once more, to join the carnival procession and take their places in a group photograph together with the fire brigade and the clowns.

Behind the reception desk in the Engelwirt, after I had rung the bell several times to no avail, a tight-lipped woman eventually materialised. I had not heard a door open anywhere, not seen her come in, and yet there she suddenly was. She scrutinised me with open disapproval, perhaps on account of my outward appearance, which was none the better for my long walk, or because I betrayed an absent-mindedness that must have been unaccountable to her. I asked for a room on the first floor facing on to the street, initially for an indefinite period. Although it must have been possible to comply readily with my request, since November, in the hotel trade too, is the month of the dead, during which time the reduced service staff in the now vacant houses mourn the departed guests as if they had taken leave for ever - although a room on the first floor facing on to the street must without doubt have been available, the receptionist endlessly leafed back and forth in her register before handing the keys to me. She held her cardigan together with her left hand, as if she were cold, awkwardly and clumsily performing her tasks using only her other hand, so that it seemed to me as if she were marking time in order to make up her mind about this odd November guest. She studied the completed registration form, on which I had given "foreign correspondent" as my occupation and written my complicated English address, with raised eyebrows, for when and for what purpose had an English foreign correspondent ever come to W., on foot, in November, and unshaven to boot, and taken a room in the Engelwirt inn for an indefinite period! This woman, who was doubtless most efficient at all other times, seemed positively disturbed when, in reply to her enquiry after my luggage, I told her that it would be brought along that evening by an officer from the Oberjoch customs post.

Insofar as I could tell with any certainty, given the structural changes that had been made in the Engelwirt, the room allocated to me was approximately where our living room had once been, the room which was furnished with all the pieces my parents had bought in 1936 when, after two or three years of continuous upturn in the country's fortunes, it seemed assured that my father, who at the calamitous close of the Weimar era had enlisted in the so-called army of the One Hundred Thousand and was now about to be promoted to quartermaster, could not only look forward to a secure future in the new Reich but could even be said to have attained a certain social position. For my parents, both of whom came from provincial backwaters, my mother from W. and my father from the Bavarian Forest, the acquisition of living room furniture befitting their station, which, as the unwritten rule required, had to conform in every detail with the tastes of the average couple representative of the emerging classless society, probably marked the moment when, in the wake of their in some respects rather difficult early lives, it must have seemed to them as if there were, after all, something like a higher justice. This living room, then, boasted a ponderously ornate armoire, in which were kept the tablecloths, napkins, silver cutlery, Christmas decorations and, behind the glass doors of the upper half, the bone china tea service which, as far as I can remember, was never brought out on a single occasion; a sideboard on which an earthenware punchbowl glazed in peculiar hues and two so-called lead crystal flower vases were placed symmetrically on crocheted doilies; the draw-leaf dining table with a set of six chairs; a sofa with an assortment of embroidered cushions; on the wall behind it two small Alpine landscapes in black varnished frames, the one hung a little higher than the other; a smokers' table with gaudily coloured ceramic cigar and cigarette containers and matching candlestick, an ashtray made of horn and brass, and an electric smoke absorber in the shape of an owl. In addition, apart from the drapes and net curtains, ceiling lights and standard lamp, there was a flower
étagère
made of bamboo cane, on the various levels of which an Araucaria, an asparagus fern, a Christmas cactus and a passion flower led their strictly regulated plant lives. It should also be mentioned that on the top of the armoire stood the living room clock which counted out the hours with its cold and loveless chimes, and that in the upper half of the armoire, next to the bone china tea service, was a row of clothbound dramatic works by Shakespeare, Schiller, Hebbel and Sudermann. These were inexpensive editions published by the Volksbühnenverband, which my father, who would probably never have taken it into his head to go to the theatre, and less still to read a play, had bought one day, in a passing moment of aspiration to higher ideals, from a travelling salesman. The guest room through the window of which I now looked down into the street was a world away from all of that; I myself, though, was no more than a breath away, and if the living room clock had started chiming in my sleep, I would not have been in the least surprised.

Like most of the houses in W., the Engelwirt was separated lengthwise into two sections by a broad passageway on both floors. On the ground floor, the function room was on one side, on the other the public bar, the kitchen, the ice store, and the
pissoir.
On the upper floor, the one-legged landlord Sallaba, who had turned up in W. after the war to take over the tenancy together with his beautiful wife, who regarded the village always as an odious place, had set up his household. Sallaba possessed a large number of stylish suits and ties with tie-pins; but it was not so much his wardrobe, which was indeed exceptional for W., as his one-leggedness and the astonishing speed and virtuosity with which he moved about on his crutches that gave him the air of a man of the world in my eyes. Sallaba was said to be a Rhinelander, a term which remained a mystery to me for a long time and which I supposed to be a character trait. Apart from the Sallabas and ourselves, the erstwhile landlady of the Engelwirt, Rosina Zobel, also lived on the first floor; she had given up running the inn several years ago and ever since had spent the entire day in her partially darkened parlour. She either sat in her wing chair, or walked back and forth, or lay on the sofa. No one knew whether it was red wine that had made her melancholy or whether it was because of her melancholy that she had turned to red wine. She was never seen doing any work; she did not shop, or cook, nor was she to be seen laundering clothes or tidying the room. Only once did I see her in the garden with a knife in her hand and a bunch of chives, looking up into the pear tree which had recently come into leaf. The door to the Engelwirt landlady's room was usually left slightly ajar, and I frequently went in to her and would spend hours looking at the collection of postcards she kept in three large folio volumes. The landlady, wine glass in hand, sometimes sat next to me at the table as I browsed, but only ever spoke to tell me the name of the town I happened to be pointing to. As the minutes passed by this resulted in a long topographical litany of place names such as Chur, Bregenz, Innsbruck, Altaussee, Hallstatt, Salzburg, Vienna, Pilsen, Marienbad, Bad Kissingen, Würzburg, Bad Homburg and Frankfurt am Main. There were also numerous Italian cards from Merano, Bolzano, Riva, Verona, Milan, Ferrara, Rome and Naples. One of these postcards, showing the smoking peak of Vesuvius, somehow or other got into an album belonging to my parents, and so has come into my

possession. The third volume contained pictures from overseas, particularly from the Far East, from Dutch South East Asia, and from China and Japan. This collection of postcards, which ran to several hundred in all, had been put together by Rosina Zobel's husband, old Engelwirt, who before marrying Rosina had travelled far and wide, spending the greater part of a considerable inheritance, and who had now been bedridden for a number of years. People said that he lay in the room adjoining Rosina's and had a large wound in his hip which would not heal. They said that as a youngster he had tried to hide a cigar, which he had been secretly smoking, from his father, and had put it in his trouser pocket. The burn he had sustained had soon mended, but later, when he was nearly fifty, it opened up again and now refused to close at all, indeed it became larger every year, and he might well, so they said, end up dying of gangrene. I considered this statement, which I could not understand, to be some sort of judgement, and I envisioned the Engelwirt's martyrdom in all the colours of hellfire. I never saw him in person, though, and, as far as I can remember, the landlady, who in any case spoke very little, never once mentioned him. On a couple of occasions, however, I thought I heard him wheezing in the other room. Later on, as time went by, it seemed to me less and less likely that the Engelwirt landlord had existed at all, and I wondered if I had not simply imagined him. However, further enquiries in W. left no room for doubt in the matter. It also transpired that the children of the Engelwirt couple, Johannes and Magdalena, who were not much older than I, had been brought up elsewhere by an aunt, as the Engelwirt landlady had started drinking heavily after the birth of Magdalena and had no longer been capable of looking after the children. Towards me, perhaps because I was otherwise not in her charge, the landlady showed endless patience. Not infrequently I sat in bed with her, she at the head and I at the foot, and recited everything to her that I knew by heart, including of course the Lord's Prayer, the Angelus and other orisons which had not passed her lips for a very long time. I can still see her as she listened to me, head inclined against the bedstead, eyes closed, the glass and bottle of Kalterer wine on the marble top of the table beside her, expressions of pain and relief crossing her face in turn. It was also from her that I learned how to tie a bow; and whenever I left the room she laid her hand upon me. To this day I can sometimes feel her thumb against my forehead.