Old Masters (21 page)

Man
and said: forty years after the end of the war conditions in Austria have again reached their darkest moral low, that is what is so depressing. Such a beautiful country and such an utterly brutal and vile and self-destructive society. What is so appalling about it is that one can only be a perplexed spectator of the catastrophe and is unable to do anything about it, Reger said. Reger gazed at the
White-Bearded
Man
and said: every other day I visit my wife's grave and I stand there by her grave for half an hour and I feel nothing. That is the strange thing, that I think of nothing but my wife more or less the whole time and when I stand there by her grave I feel nothing relating to her. I stand there and actually do not feel anything relating to her. Only when I walk away from the grave again do I once more experience the horror of her having left me. I always think I visit her grave in order to be particularly close to her, but when I am standing there by her grave I do not even feel anything relating to her. But I have made it a habit to visit my wife's grave every other day, the grave which one day will also be my own, Reger said. When I recall the ghastly circumstances connected with her funeral I still feel sick today. Time and again the printer printed the In Memoriam sheet, which I had ordered, wrongly, first too boldly, then too faintly, first with too many commas, then with too few, he said, each time I got him to show me the proof everything was wrong, it was enough to drive me to despair. At the peak of my despair I said to the printer that surely I had given him a very precise copy, except that the proofs never followed my copy and that everything was always wrong in the proofs. Whereupon the printer said to me that
he
knew how such an In Memoriam notice should be printed,
not I,
he knew how the text should be set,
not I, he
knew where the commas belonged,
not I.
But I did not give in and eventually I held in my hands the In Memoriam notice I wanted; but I had to go to the printing shop five times, Reger said, in order to get an In Memoriam notice the way I wanted it. Printers are conceited people who claim to be right even when they have long realized that they are not right. You must not tangle with printers, Reger said, they get bolshie at once and threaten to chuck everything unless you bow to their blinkered ideas. But I have never bowed to printers, Reger said. There was only a single sentence on the In Memoriam, Reger said, only the place and date of my wife's death, yet I had to go to the print shop five times and actually had to argue with the printer. My wife did not really want to have an In Memoriam notice, we had agreed on that, but nevertheless I had an In Memoriam printed, Reger said; however, I never posted off a single In Memoriam because suddenly, just as I was about to post them, it seemed nonsense to me to post the In Memoriam notices. I merely put a single brief sentence into the papers, simply that my wife had died, Reger said. People are terribly extravagant when someone dies, I kept everything as simple as humanly possible, Reger said, although of course I am not sure today that I did the right thing, I have continual doubts in that respect, these doubts have been assailing me every day since my wife's death, not one day without these doubts, that wears you down in the long run, Reger said. As for the estate, there was not the slightest problem, as she had appointed me in her will as, so to speak, her
sole heir,
just as in turn I appointed her my
sole heir
in my will. Such a death, no matter how painful, even if one believes it would choke one, also has its ridiculous side. The terrible, after all; is always ridiculous, Reger said. Basically my wife's funeral was not only a simple funeral but also a depressing one, Reger said. We hope for a simple funeral, with as few people as possible, Reger said, and find we have merely arranged a depressing one. We say: no music, we say: no speeches, and we think that will be the simplest and the easiest way for us to survive, and yet it depresses us, profoundly, Reger said. Only seven or eight people, really only the very closest, if possible no relatives and only the very closest, that is what we think, and then what we get is just these very closest only, whom moreover we have told,
no flowers, nothing,
and then everything turns out very depressing. We walk behind the coffin and everything is depressing. Everything happens very quickly, it hardly takes three-quarters of an hour and it depresses us and we believe that it took an eternity, Reger said. I visit my wife's grave and I feel absolutely nothing. At home to this day I still feel like howling at least once every day, he said, believe it or not, but by my wife's grave I feel nothing at all. I stand there, tearing up blades of grass, making those nervous ridiculous tearing movements which I know are only a pathological gratification of the nerves and look about at the other tasteless graves everywhere, each grave is more tasteless than the next, Reger said. It is in the cemeteries that we see, quite brutally, the extreme tastelessness of humanity. Only grass grows on our grave and there is no name on our grave, Reger said, we agreed on that, my wife and I. No sentence, nothing. The stonemasons disfigure the cemeteries and the so-called sculptors put the crown of kitsch on them everywhere, Reger said. But you do get a marvelous view of Grinzing from my wife's grave, and of the Kahlenberg beyond. And of the Danube below. The grave is situated so high you can look down on Vienna from it. It certainly makes no difference where a person is buried, but if he happens to own a grave
for the lifetime of the cemetery,
as I and my wife do, then he should let himself be buried in his grave. I would rather be buried
anywhere except the Central Cemetery,
my wife often said, Reger said, and I myself would not like to be buried in the Central Cemetery either, even though, when all is said and done, it makes no difference where a person is buried. My nephew in Leoben, the only relative I still have, Reger said, knows that I do not wish to be buried in the Central Cemetery but
in my own grave, which is my property for the lifetime of the cemetery,
Reger said, but of course if I should die more than three hundred kilometres from Vienna, then
on the spot; within a
three-hundred-kilometre
radius of Vienna, otherwise on the spot,
I said to my Leoben nephew; he will stand by what I have told him because he is my heir, Reger said. Reger looked at the
White-Bearded
Man
and said: only a year ago, shortly before my wife's death, I was quite fond of spending a couple of hours walking round Vienna, now I do not feel like it any longer. My wife's death has certainly weakened me a lot, I am not the man I was before her death. And besides, Vienna has become so ugly, he said. In winter I think spring will be my salvation, and in spring I think summer will be my salvation, and in summer I think autumn, and in autumn winter, it is always the same, I hope from one season to the next. But that of course is an unfortunate characteristic, this characteristic is congenital in me, I do not say,
how nice, it is now winter, winter is just what you need, any more than I say spring is just what you need, or autumn is just what you need, or summer and so on.
I keep blaming my misfortunes on the season I
have to
live in,
that
is
my misfortune. I am not one of those people who enjoy the present, that's what it is, I am one of those unfortunate ones who enjoy the past, that is the truth, those who always feel the present to be just an insult, that Is the truth, Reger said, I feel the present to be an insult and an imposition, that is my misfortune. But of course it is not quite like that, Reger said, because time and again I am able to see the present as it is and, naturally, it is not always unhappy, or causing unhappiness, I know that, just as the past, if one thinks back to it, does not always ake one happy, I know that. One great misfortune, of course, is the fact that I have no doctor in whom I have any confidence, I have had so many doctors in my life, but ultimately I had no confidence in any of those doctors, all of them ultimately let me down, Reger said. I feel utterly vulnerable and I feel that I might collapse at any moment. When I say,
strike me
down
,
I
really believe that I might be struck down by a stroke, eve though I have said those words a thousand times, Reger said, i even gets on my own nerves now, every other moment I say,
str
ike
me down
but I have not been struck down, Reger said. In your presence, too, I have often said
strike me down
but I ha e not been struck down, I do not say so just from habit but
bec
ause
I really feel that I might be struck down.
As for my body nothing is functioning properly any longer, Reger said. If only I had a good doctor, but I do not have a good doctor. Of course I have four general practitioners and two specialist physicians in the Singerstrasse, but none of these doctors is any good. My eyes are so bad I soon will not be able to see anything any more, but I have no good eye man. And of course I avoid seeing a doctor because I am afraid the doctor might
confirm what I suspect, that I am mortally ill
. I
have been mortally ill for years, I always said so to my wife, Reger said, and I assumed as a matter of certainty that
I would die first, not she,
but then it was
she
who, because of all those frightful circumstances, died
before me
after all; I have had a great fear of doctors all my life. A good doctor is the best thing we can have, Reger said, but hardly anyone has a good doctor, we are forever dealing with medical bunglers and charlatans, he said, and if, exceptionally, we believe we find a good doctor, hé is either too old or too young, he either knows something about the latest medicine and lacks experience or else he has experience and does not know anything about the latest medicine, that's how it is, Reger said. A person urgently needs a body healer and a soul healer and he does not find either, all his life he searches for a good body healer and a good soul healer and he finds neither, that is the truth. Do you know what the doctors at the Merciful Brethren said to me when I confronted them with the fact that they were responsible for my wife's death and therefore should have her on their conscience? They said,
her clock had run down,
they said this banal sentence to me and not just the one who bungled the operation on my wife said this sentence to me, all the doctors at the Merciful Brethren Hospital said this banal sentence,
her clock had run down, her clock had run down, her clock had run down,
they kept saying, as though this sentence were their standard sentence, Reger said. If we have a doctor in whom we can have confidence and under whose care we feel safe, Reger said, then we have the most important thing in old age, but we do not have such a doctor. I do not even look for such a doctor any longer because it is a matter of supreme indifference to me when I die, any time would suit me, but like most people I want to have as quick and as painless a death as possible. My wife only suffered for a few days, Reger said,
suffered for a few days then for a few days in a coma,
he said. The people asked for a shroud but I had her wrapped simply in a clean sheet, Reger said. The man at the municipal office who handled the procedure of the funeral did his job quite superbly. It is a good idea to do everything connected with the funeral
ourselves,
then we do not have the time to sit at home and wait until we choke with despair. For eight days I chased about Vienna in connection with the funeral, one way and another, from one authority to another, and once again experienced the state in its entire bureaucratic brutality, Reger said. The authorities we have to seek out in Vienna in the event of a death are situated a long way away from one another and we need at least a whole week before we have completed all the business necessary for a funeral. Always and everywhere I said that I wanted
only the simplest funeral
for my wife, which they failed to understand, because everybody else, as I well know, always wants an extravagant one. The effort it cost me to
insist on the simplest funeral
in the end, Reger said. Only the man at the Währing municipal office understood me, he was the only one who understood that when I said
a simple funeral
I did not, as all the others believed, mean a cheap funeral but a
simple one,
they all thought I wanted
a cheap one when l said a simple one,
only the man at the Währing municipal office instantly understood me when I said
a simple one, meaning a simple one and not a cheap one.
You
would not believe how stupid the people whom you have to deal with at the authorities can be, Reger said. I did not think I would live to see this winter, let alone survive it, he now said. The fact is that I just existed throughout the past year with a total lack of interest in anything, apart from my concert engagements, and apart from my little works of art for
The Times
nothing in fact interested me any more after my wife's death; not a single person, that is the truth, including yourself, Reger said, for months I was not interested even in you. I read virtually nothing and did not leave the house except to go to concerts, but for this past year none of those concerts was worth going to and, naturally, my little works of art for
The Times
were accordingly. Sometimes I ask myself why I keep reporting
for The Times from Vienna,
seeing that in this confused Vienna things have gone into an alarming decline also in the musical sphere, because nothing out of the ordinary is being offered here in Vienna either at the Konzerthaus or at the Musikverein, Viennese concerts have long lost their unique quality, the same works which you hear in Vienna you could have heard much earlier in Hamburg or in Zurich or in Dinkelsbühl, Reger said. My eagerness to write is at its peak, but what Viennese concerts have to offer is worth less and less. I have long ceased to be the concert fanatic I once was, he said,