Out of the Line of Fire (4 page)

Wittgenstein’s father was one of Austria’s wealthiest industrialists and when he died in 1913 Wittgenstein inherited a large fortune. He then proceeded to give most of it away. To his friends, however, he was a difficult companion. He was irritable, nervously sensitive and often depressed. For a long time he contemplated suicide, fearing that he shared the prominent strain of insanity that ran in his family (two of his brothers killed themselves). Before the war, to remove himself from all distraction and to enable him to carry on his philosophical work, he spent a number of years on a farm at Skjolden in Norway. Here he later built a hut in which he lived in complete isolation.

In 1926, having returned to Austria, he inquired at a monastery on the outskirts of Vienna about the possibility of entering upon monastic life, but was discouraged by the Father Superior. It is not difficult to imagine this scenario unfolding.

Wolfi’s room is no different from mine except that it looks out over the courtyard formed by the rest of the house and the wall of the building opposite. The furniture is rudimentary. It reflects Frau Bartsch’s meanness. Against the left wall is a narrow bed and in the remaining space there is a large old-fashioned wardrobe. Housed in the upper panels of each of the wardrobe doors are two badly tarnished mirrors, one of which is cracked along its upper edge. On the wall opposite the door, to the left of the window, is a wash basin. Under the window and extending to the other wall is a wide wooden shelf which serves as a desk. To the right of the window is a notice board. Pinned to it are a number of photographs and some postcards. Against the right-hand wall is a bookshelf. There are surprisingly few books on it. Instead, arranged in neat piles are a number of thick folders. There is a chair at the desk and an old couch behind the door. Apart from a coat that has been thrown onto the bed and an odd boot that lies on its side at the base of the wardrobe, the room is quite uninteresting, quite anonymous. It is as though Wolfi doesn’t really live here, or hasn’t yet fully moved in. Except for the notice-board, there is nothing in the room that reveals anything about him. On the other hand, perhaps it reveals things about him that don’t seem to fit what one might have expected from talking to him or just from looking at him.

I stand looking at the photograph Wolfi has handed me from the shoe-box on his bed. It has been cut down the middle. At least, I assume it has, since the left-hand part of it is missing. Along the top, bottom and right-hand edge the original, decoratively scalloped white border is still visible. The cropping has spoilt the balance of the picture so that now the young woman who stands smiling back at the camera seems unnaturally close to the left-hand edge. Originally her right arm must have been linked through the arm of the person standing beside her. Part of a dark coat-sleeve is outlined against the white of her blouse. She has remarkably penetrating eyes and because her chin is slightly raised there is something challenging about the way she looks back at you. If it weren’t for her smile she would appear almost arrogant. But instead, the impression she gives is one of unselfconscious confidence about her own appearance. Wolfi had not exaggerated: she is extraordinarily beautiful.

He tells me that the photograph was taken shortly before his mother’s wedding. On the back is written: ‘Heidelberg, 1957’. The picture seems older, or rather, not like a fifties’ photograph at all. Instead of showing the influence of American fashion on clothes and hairstyles that swept through Germany during the period of the Economic Miracle, his mother is dressed as a young peasant girl. Her blouse does little to conceal the fullness of her figure and its whiteness against the sombre background and the darker tones of her skirt emphasizes the slimness of her waist. Despite this palpability, there is still something old-fashioned about it, something that distances and subverts the immediacy of the impression of sensuality which surrounds her.

I ask Wolfi why she is dressed the way she is. He explains that before his mother’s family moved to Heidelberg they had lived on the land. They were wine-growers, but eventually her father had decided to sell his vineyards in order to establish a business in the town. While he had been more than successful he had never lost his love for the land and from time to time liked to have his daughters dress as though they were still living in the country [er war sentimental, weisst du].

I ran my finger down the cut edge of the photograph. After what Wolfi had told me about his relationship with his father and the relationship that existed, or rather had ceased to exist, between his parents, I guessed what the fate of the other part of the picture had been. As though reading my mind, Wolfi stood up and took the photograph from me.

The photograph belongs to the time when my father was courting my mother, he said. They were standing together under the trees but just as it was taken my father sneezed.

He says this matter-of-factly, without smiling.

I have the other half here somewhere.

He handed the photograph back to me and began searching through the box again.

Here’s one of them together. This was taken on the same day.

Nothing in the image of his father, who is tall and quite handsome, suggests the tyrant who ruled over Wolfi’s life as a boy. He appears to be in his mid thirties, is smartly dressed and is smiling broadly. Because of his slightly receding hairline and his oval-shaped, wire-rimmed glasses he looks like the young Mahler might have looked just after someone had told him a joke. The expression on his mother’s face in this photograph, however, is more serious. Her confident serenity has disappeared and the aura of sensuality which surrounded her in the earlier photograph seems more subdued.

No, I can’t find it. It doesn’t matter anyway. You can see what my father looked like from that one. But this one of my mother, he said getting up off the bed again, this one captures something that is really wonderful about her, something beyond words, don’t you think? [etwas das über Wörter hinausgeht].

Yes, I said, she really is very beautiful.

On Wolfi’s notice-board are a number of other photographs including one of a young woman in tights who looks remarkably like the photo of his mother.

Who’s this then? I ask.

Elena, my sister. That was taken a couple of years ago when she was auditioning for one of the local dance companies.

So there’s just the two of you then, besides your mother and father that is?

No, there’s also Anya…But she’s just a baby really. I have photographs of her here too somewhere.

I step closer to the notice-board to get a better look at the photograph of Elena.

They could be sisters, I say.

Yes. At sixteen my sister was a beautiful woman and at thirty-five my mother was, paradoxically, an equally beautiful young girl. People often mistook them for sisters. The three of us used to go out walking together and my mother’s friends would always tease me about having two such attractive girlfriends. I never really knew how to react. My mother used to say that they were just jealous, that they were actually flirting with me. Now that I look back on it, perhaps she was right. These slim, elegantly dressed women with nothing better to do with their time were probably bored with husbands who no longer paid attention to them. But at the time it must have also been obvious to them from the way I behaved when we ran into them that I was still totally inexperienced with women. I’m sure that it was this that made them tease me. I used to hate the way they would look at me, half mocking, half serious. It used to drive me crazy.

Wolfi has obsessions. He is obsessed about going bald. [Ich werde kahl, davon bin ich überzeugt.] He asks me to check the back of his head. He refuses to kneel down for some reason and suggests I stand on a chair to get a better look. Reluctantly I agree. He pulls the hair at the back of his head apart to try to reveal his scalp. His hair is very thick and I can barely see the strange white skin beneath. I tell him this but he remains unconvinced. He is not only worried about going bald, he is worried about his obsession about going bald. I ask him if his father is bald. He tells me he is not, nor is his mother. I’m glad to hear this, I say.

When I was fourteen I decided I would defeat my father. The school vacations were like an inquisition [wie eine Verfolgung]. He was not interested in what I did but only that I should be able to justify everything I said. He no longer asked how I knew that the sky was blue. Now it was: ‘How do you know that your senses aren’t deceiving you, Wolfgang? How do you know that anything outside you exists?’ This from a logical positivist, can you imagine that? Always, how do you know? how do you know? By this time, my father had become a caricature—an impeccably dressed, cold and pedantic parrot [ein makellos bekleideter, zurückhaltender, sich wiederholender Pedant].

So I began to read like a madman. I read everything—all the classics: Klopstock, Lessing, Goethe, Schiller…Hölderlin! I read entire histories of philosophy from Hippias to Heidegger, Aristotle to Aquinas. I devoured everything I could get my hands on, and not just philosophy. I mean, I read about music, art, history…everything! I lived my life through books. I had no friends. My friends were Kleist, Kafka, Dostoyevsky, God knows who else. In winter, to keep myself awake at night so that I could study, I used to put my bare feet in a bowl of water with ice in it or stick pins into my hands.

At seventeen, I had a nervous breakdown.

Robert Musil (1880–1940), author of
Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften
[
The man without qualities
], describes in his book
Die Verwirrungen des Z
ö
glings T
ö
rless
[
The confusions of young T
ö
rless
] the school he actually went to himself as a young boy. It is, in fact, the Militär-Unterrealschule in Eisenstadt. Photographs of it show a long narrow four-storeyed building: cold, formidable, prison-like, with rows of small, mean windows and bare, untreed grounds. It is a military school. Discipline is strict, life is regimented. Musil gives a moving account of his misery there—the bullying, the victimization, the sadism, the futility and the loneliness. Wolfi went to the same school. In the interim, nothing much had changed.

I think that at this time I got so far into my own head that I became lost. The gap between fiction, between abstract speculation and so-called reality became blurred for me. I felt myself lose contact with the outside world. It was as though my self had become concentrated into a tiny nucleus inside my head, except that I was still fully myself, if you know what I mean. Instead of walking around outside I was walking around inside. My eyes seemed like windows away from which I had turned. I watched them become mere specks of light as I moved further back into this inner gloom. At first it was totally dark, but as my eyes became accustomed to their new surroundings I gradually began to perceive vague shapes and contours, until eventually this imaginary world became as real and tangible as the world outside. When finally I found my way back to the windows to look out again at the external world, I felt that this was exactly what I was doing—looking out a window at a world from which I was in fact permanently disconnected, as if I were sitting in a darkened picture theatre and the world was being projected onto the screen, the only difference being that at any given moment I was free to get up and leave the picture theatre for an alternative world outside, that is, the world inside my head, but I was never free to join the action of the
real
world on the screen. For a long time now I have had the impression that I observe life but don’t participate in it, that somehow life flows straight through me as if I were transparent [als ob ich transparent sei].

I stand looking out my window. Although the rain has cleared, it is still cold and windy. A blackbird is sitting unsteadily on the television antenna of the house opposite, buffeted by the wind. At the end of the street, I watch as a man in a dark overcoat stops to light a cigarette. He is having difficulty and turns his back to the wind. He cups his hands to his face. Then—success. Two puffs of white smoke instantly disappear above his head. Needlessly he shakes his hand, as though he has something stuck to his fingers, before flicking the extinguished match into the gutter.

I am about to turn away from the window when I see Wolfi emerge through the gate below. He is wearing his usual lumber jacket and a scarf around his neck. As he passes beneath my window I yell down to him: Hey Du, Du Glatze. Wie geht’s? [Hey baldy, how are things?]. He gestures obscenely back at me and then continues on his way.

I am sitting in the university dining room with a friend. Her name is Andrea Staiger. She is turning the pages of a book while she is eating. I am feeling uncomfortable but she is unaware of this. The dining room is very crowded and noisy. I have known Andrea for only a week but already we have slept together.

This is not quite correct. I have met her twice. The first time, a week ago, was in the market place. I was introduced to her. I told her she looked like Lauren Bacall, and in fact the resemblance is quite marked. She didn’t know who Lauren Bacall was.

You know, Humphrey Bogart…Noch einmal, Sam!

She shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t even know who Humphrey Bogart was. Incredible!

Across the room I see Wolfi join the queue. He seems unable to decide what to get. The plumpish girl serving food behind the counter is wearing a tight blue uniform and a white cap. She seems prepared to wait. I see Wolfi’s mouth move and then return to its characteristic half-smile. Some food is dished onto the plate on his tray and he moves along to another decision.

Andrea’s invitation to stay was so entirely unexpected it took me completely by surprise: Why go when you could spend the night with me? she says. She is the first German girl I have slept with.

She is very calm, as though making love with someone she hardly knows is quite normal. When she lifts her jumper over her head I am surprised by how lightly framed she is, although her breasts are quite prominent and she has unusually dark nipples. She has a small pale scar just above her pubic hair.