Memoirs of an Anti-Semite (9 page)

In his freshly ventilated good mood, Uncle Hubert was immune to this jibe too. Modest by nature, he never put himself forward in conversation even if he had something to say; on the contrary, he had to be prodded by Aunt Sophie with a “Well, Hubi, why don't you tell us what you think!” But once he began to talk, he did so with a dry humor that testified to his acute powers of observation and was far more effective than Stiassny's curling, abstract arabesques. And this time too, Uncle Hubert's sense of humor had its effect.

In a few terse sentences, he evoked the celebration that had taken place in the village in 1893, on the occasion of the forty-fifth anniversary of Kaiser Franz Josef's accession to the throne; he described the comical events that were bound to occur in a popular festival officially arranged in an East European Gotham: the confusion during the parade of the volunteer firemen, with the token Jew, his helmet sliding down over his crooked nose and his trousers over his knees; the dreadfully off key band; the mindless speech given by the sweaty mayor in a borderland German that distorted everything; the Alliance of Maidens dressed in white, eliciting ribald remarks from the boys; and so on and so forth. Uncle Hubi's father, being, as it were, the local deputy of His Apostolic Majesty, was showered with tributes, and, imbued with the responsible dignity of this vicariate, he likewise doled out honors. Having just accomplished the chore of bestowing a medal, he was about to betake himself to the town hall, followed by the clergy and the notabilities, past school classes and associations—when old Goldmann blocked his path. I pictured the scene in which Wolf Goldmann had blocked my path the day I had ventured out on my abortive excursion in fraternity gear: I imagined the same fiery ram-face and the same unimpeachable self-confidence. He was no longer brand-new in the village, old Goldmann. His bepennoned red-brick castello had been adorning the townscape for some time now. He himself, however, because of his eccentric
Weltanschauung
, had not even made contact with the Jewish community, much less any of the other religious, ethnic, or social grouplets. Now, he felt, the moment had come for him to break out of this isolation. After all, they
were
celebrating the forty-five-year reign of a patriarch of nations, under whose broad-minded fatherliness any race, nation, and religion, of any spirit and character, had found protection.

Uncle Hubi could not stifle a titter when recollecting this historic encounter. “Well, I can still see Papa peering at the Jew with his fat woman behind him, and the Jew sticking out his hand and saying, ‘Excuse me, Herr Baron, but may I introduce myself on this solemn occasion: Goldmann's the name, Saul Goldmann. The Herr Baron may perhaps not have overlooked the fact that I settled here some years ago, and here in this community, to which I desire to belong in every way, I have erected my house….' Now he yiddled a bit—not a lot, mind you, but just enough, something you can't get rid of altogether if you come from darkest Galicia. And when he said ‘house,' it sounded like ‘trousers,' and Papa, well, he turned around to the mayor and asked him, ‘What did he erect in his trousers?' And then on he went, leaving the Jew standing there with his woman and his dumb face and his hat on his chest and his crooked legs and the pointed, turned-up clodhoppers …”

As usual, Aunt Sophie confirmed this tableau: “Well, that's very true, he was no beauty, really, old Goldmann, with his carroty hair, even if he'd made millions like Rothschild. Yes, Hubi's quite right. His wife wasn't much better either, and at least twice as fat.”

So far, I had formed no notion whatsoever of the women in the Goldmann home. Mention of old Goldmann's wife, my friend Wolf's grandmother, was the first time I realized that females must indeed have existed there. I vaguely recalled seeing a photograph among the scores heaped on the Goldmanns' piano; but it had not occurred to me that this could be Wolf's mother. A few days later, when Aunt Sophie extracted a letter to Stiassny from the morning mail and asked me to bring it up to his room, I saw the same portrait in a silver frame on Stiassny's desk. It was a regular face, almost too long, framed by a severe pageboy bob, with the expressive lips and soulful gaze that were typical in the era of the waning
Jugendstil
. Before it dawned on me that this was the same face I had seen on the piano at the Goldmanns', I had assumed it was an actress admired by Stiassny. Now, she began to interest me. “Who's that?” I asked Wolf about the photograph in his home at the next opportunity. “My birth-giver,” he said without the least sign of emotion.

I was not sure I had correctly understood him. “You mean your mother?”

“Who else? A second father?”

“Is she dead?” I asked, a bit unsteadily.

“God forbid! Why should she be dead?”

“I've never seen her here.”

“Divorced, of course. She lives in Vienna. Head ceramicist of the Wiener Werkstätten there.”

“Stiassny must have admired her. He has her picture on his desk.”

“Yes,” said Wolf casually. “I think he was one of her lovers. The most famous was Peter Altenberg.”

I did not know who Peter Altenberg was; in any case, I was shocked by the way my friend spoke about his mother.

“Do you ever see her?” I asked.

“When I'm in Vienna,” he said imperturbably, then turning fidgety in his way. “Anyway, you have to go now. I've got to work.”

This was not the first time that he abruptly terminated our time together with the same explanation—usually, so it appeared to me, when some naïveté on my part enervated him. I could hardly ignore these moments—and this was why I did not ask what work he had to do. It could hardly be homework now, during vacation; nor, I felt, was it likely that he had a makeup examination ahead of him, as I did. What little he let on about his school in Vienna suggested that it was a thoroughly modern institution with a curriculum far too intimidating for me to ask about, but easy for him to keep up with. Anyway, I knew it was useless to hold him back when he claimed he had to work. I had quickly given up trying, and I ultimately profited from his firmness by going back to the tower out of sheer boredom and sitting down to my schoolwork, with my dachshund Max, highly satisfied, at my feet.

Sometimes, of course, I did not much care to spend any more time with Wolf Goldmann. His smug self-assurance hurt my feelings; and he was so relentlessly prosaic that he often seemed trivial. For example, that someone could talk so scornfully about his own mother as the mistress of a man who was not his father (and not just one but several such men!) repelled me—like Stiassny's ashen smile, which normally prefaced a remark that destroyed an illusion I had unthinkingly cherished. And although at the same time I was fascinated, this kind of attitude went against my grain, compelling me to question everything I had believed in. Now I resolved to do nothing to abolish the gap placed between me and young Goldmann by the fact that he had never been allowed into my uncle's home. Nonetheless, this situation changed quite unexpectedly, and of its own accord.

One of the few things with which I might have impressed my blasé friend was Uncle Hubi's Daimler—a car that was bound to quicken the pulse of any boy. Its paint-and-shining-chrome perfection, the clarity of its angles and proportions, its momentous solidity on the heavy, elephant-colored rubber tires, were undeniably erotic, something quite missing from today's assembly-line products. But Wolf Goldmann, seemingly unmoved, said, “What's so great about a car? My father could buy one too, if he felt like it. But that would be pretty crazy with the roads we've got here.” He was not so wrong; the car usually stood in the locked section of the coach house, and we used the carriages far more often. Seldom did Uncle Hubert and Aunt Sophie drive the car to Czernowitz, much less to Bucharest. Still, Wolf could not deny that he too felt the sensual pull of the vehicle; it was a symbol of distinction and wealth, and, like a winged steed or flying carpet in a fairy tale, it granted power over space and time.

Geib, the butler, who functioned as the chauffeur for drives to the city, did not like us climbing around the Daimler, turning the wheel, and beeping the balloon horn, which in those days was attached to the outside; and he was reluctant to hand us the key to the locked part of the carriage house. He and Haller, the blacksmith, tinkered incessantly with the engine and the body of the car, which sparkled like new and functioned as though it had rolled out from the factory only yesterday on its maiden trip: Uncle Hubi insisted on its being kept in this condition. But I had discovered that the wall separating the garage from the coach house gave on to the hayloft, and from a skylight up there you could at least peer into the garage. Thus, if we did not feel like asking Geib for the key, we would clamber up to the hayloft over the stalls, creep along until we got to the skylight, stretch out in front of it, and have a good view down at the Daimler, whose technical features and merits we discussed at length. The horn on the car door bothered Wolf; he found it antiquated. And so for fun I took my slingshot and aimed at the rubber balloon; the sharp impact of the lead pellet made the copper horn beep short and loud. Geib, who happened to be nearby, quickly unlocked the garage door, came in, and carefully examined the entire automobile, more and more perplexed and puzzled as to who had honked.

This turned into a game, which entertained us as much as the slapstick scenes from Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd comedies, which were all the rage then. If we knew that Geib or Haller was in the vicinity, I would shoot at the balloon, the honk inevitably summoned one or the other, and he would unlock the garage and comb every nook and cranny for the mysterious force that made the horn beep. Meanwhile, we lay well concealed behind the skylight, trying to choke back our mirth. When the fruitless investigation was abandoned and the garage locked up again, I would take another shot and the mystification would begin anew.

Once, though, Haller found one of my lead pellets, which he was familiar with because I cast them in his smithy. He put it in his pocket, and for a while we held back on our joke, waiting rather anxiously for the sequel. But nothing happened, and we resumed our mischief. I became so audacious, especially with old Geib, that I would shoot at the horn a second time the instant he turned away from the car, so that the blare at his back made him whirl around, as though the car were about to start by itself, honking at him to get out of the way.

Old Geib's naïveté was an inexhaustible source of amusement for us. Haller had probably forgotten to tell him about his discovery, or else he was waiting a bit maliciously to see whether Geib could figure out the weird goings-on. But Geib kept on being misled by us, as though he were hanging puppetlike on the strings of our despotism. It was incomprehensible that he did not notice the pellets bouncing around—whether because of the resounding shriek of the horn or an excessive zeal to expose the mystery I cannot say. He tried to outwit the self-activating horn, deliberately turning his back on it to wait, listening paralyzed, with rolling eyes, until the next shriek, then whirling around half triumphantly, and again seeing nothing but the empty Daimler. Slowly he brought his ear to the radiator hood and the upholstery, auscultating them with bated breath, finally crawling under the chassis, only to come writhing out as though stung by a tarantula, because, needless to say, I had shot at the horn again. Eventually, I felt almost sorry for the poor man. Lost in thought, he stood with dangling arms and then stormed out of the garage cursing, locking the door whether or not the horn tooted again.

Naturally, this game could not go on forever. One day, as Geib stood brooding, half turned away from the car, I shook my head wordlessly, refusing to take aim even though Wolf Goldmann poked me in the ribs, egging me on. I must admit that I made little effort to stop him when he finally took the slingshot from my hand, picked up one of the pellets which I had placed in front of me, inserted it into the loop, drew the powerful elastic taut, and shot.

I assumed he would not hit the target. But he was so wide of the mark that the pellet struck the middle of the windshield. The glass shattered in a narrow cobweb of cracks around a core of gravelly splinters.

Now, it was almost impossible for Geib not to discover us at our skylight. Even though we tried to scramble away behind the barn wall, he quickly spotted us and shouted and it was useless to hide. Shamefaced, we climbed down the ladder he had put up to get to us. “I'd like to tell Uncle Hubert myself that it was me,” I said to him—less out of generosity than because I knew it would make our iniquity more forgivable if I were the wrongdoer rather than the Jewish boy from the village. “I'm sorry,” I said to Geib. “I didn't mean to break anything.”

But I had reckoned without Wolf. “What are you?” he snapped. “My guardian? Are you totally
meshuggeh?
” His ram-face was as red and twisted as if he were holding it very close to a strong fire. “Get a load of the goyish heroism! What's the big deal, a piece of glass! My father'll pay for it.”

“You just explain that to his lordship!” said Geib, and took his arm.

“Hands off or I'll scream till the whole village comes running!” said Wolf Goldmann. “You think I won't go on my own? I'm scared maybe?
Oy gevalt!
” He swiftly took the lead, heading straight for my relatives' house.

In the salon, where Geib had us wait, Wolf broke into giggles again: “The horns!” He pointed at the hunting trophies on the wall. “If I were you people, I wouldn't hang them up so publicly.”

I did not understand what he meant. I did not know the figurative meaning of horns or what he was alluding to. But I felt as if I were seeing them all for the first time: the menacingly lowered horns and antlers of doe and stag and chamois all around us, the stuffed wood grouse with fanned-out tails, and the shiny razors of wild boar. Never before had I sensed the barbarity that dragged such Stone Age flaunting of power and ability into the twentieth century. At the time, of course, this was more a feeling than a thought I could verbalize. Nor did I have any chance to reflect upon it, for my friend Wolf had discovered Aunt Sophie's grand piano, and he emitted an appreciative whistle through his teeth. “A genuine Bösendorfer! What's it doing here?”