The Eternal Philistine (18 page)

“It’s just not what I’m looking for,” he went on loudly. “Sure, the ladies say I know how to mesmerize. But do I ever find love? Is there really such a thing as love? Do you understand what I’m saying when I say ‘love’?”

It was not yet dark, dusk was just approaching, and so
he had to keep the conversation going for another fifteen minutes.

“For instance, that lady over there on the third table to the left,” he related, “I’ve done her too. Her name is Frau Schneider; she lives in Mauerkircherstrasse eight. The guy she’s sitting with over there is her ongoing boyfriend. Her husband, you see, is frequently in Berlin because he’s got a girlfriend there who he furnished a seven-room apartment for. Only after transferring the apartment to her name did he discover that she was married and her husband was a business acquaintance of his. I’ve also done this girlfriend, because I used to play ice hockey in the Berlin Sportpalast. Her name is Lotte Böhmer; she lives in Meineckestrasse fourteen.

“And the lady to the right with the borzoi—that’s the sister of the woman whose mother fell in love with me. The old lady’s a real hag. Her name is Weber; she lives in the Franz-Joseph-Strasse, I forget which street number. She would always say to me: ‘Harry, you’re no connoisseur of women—you’re just too young. Otherwise you’d act quite differently. You’re chasing me away. I’ve already been through so much with my husband—you’re just no psychologist.’ But I am one indeed. I was, after all, trying to chase her away.

“And behind you—don’t turn around!—there’s a tall blondie, a striking figure. I had to chase her away, too, because she was getting in the way of my training. Her name is Else Hartmann; she lives in the Fürstenstrasse twelve. Her husband was once an ordnance captain. I’m very good friends with another former ordnance captain who once came to me and said: ‘My dear Harry, be honest! Is it true that you’re sleeping with my wife behind my back?’ I said: ‘To be honest, yes, it’s true!’ I thought that he wanted to
challenge me to a duel, but instead he just said: ‘Thanks, my dear Harry!’ And then he explained to me that it wasn’t my fault after all because men, as he knew full well, were ostensibly the active parties, but were actually the passive ones, whereas women were ostensibly the passive parties, but were actually the active ones. That’s always been the case, he said, at all times and among all peoples. He’s a great psychologist and is working on a novel right now. He’s also got a knack for writing. His name is Albert von Reisinger; he lives in Amalienstrasse next to the Gabelsbergerstrasse.

“Check, please!” yelled Harry. It was now dark.

HARRY PULLED INTO A BYPATH IN FORSTENRIEDER Park, slammed on the brakes and then stared motionlessly into space as though he were searching for a great thought that he had lost.

Anna knew what was coming, but even so she asked what was the matter. But he remained silent for a while. Then he slowly turned to her and said that she had beautiful legs.

But he was not aroused at all; now he had to blow his nose. She took the opportunity to tell him that she needed to be back in Schellingstrasse by nine at the latest, whereupon he asked her if she could sense that he wanted her.

“No,” she said, “I can’t sense that at all.”

“Well, isn’t that sad!” he said, and gave a charming smile.

The September evening was moody. Harry really felt obliged to possess Anna because otherwise he would feel outsmarted. Here she was sitting in his sports car, he had
bought her a Wiener schnitzel and cucumber salad, and all after realizing back in Feldafing that she could never really turn him on.

So everything happened as it was meant to happen. Anna looked around anxiously.

Did she hear something, he asked.

“Yes,” she said, “but it was nothing.”

And so he drew closer to her, and in a rough way too. Only he was not to arrive too quickly at his destination. Anna heard the gentleman in the coattail once again: “Please, be more practical already!” the gentleman entreated her, stroking her like an older brother would.

“It doesn’t work like that,” she said suddenly. Her voice sounded different to her, as though it belonged to a new Anna.

“Then how?” asked Harry.

“Ten,” said the new Anna. Now it got terribly quiet …

“Five,” said Harry suddenly, and sprung up. “There’s a bench over there!” They went to the bench. On the bench’s backrest read:
ONLY FOR ADULTS
.

It was in a clearing that she accepted money for the first time. The stars were up above and the forest surrounded them, cavernous and black. She took the money like she had never thought about the fact that it was wrong. But she really did think about it, only thinking about it does not make the injustice of it any different—it just hurts.

It was a five-mark piece. Now she no longer had any feelings; it was like she was already dead.

SOME WEEKS HAD PASSED SINCE THIS NIGHT and now it was the beginning of November. The nation’s weather station reported that a high-pressure system over Ireland would give way to a low-pressure system over the Bay of Biscay. Snow was said already to have fallen in America, and also things were not quite right with the Gulf Stream, so it was said in Munich.

But over here the fall was still mild and pleasant. And it was supposed to stay that way for another few days, officially. As of the day before yesterday, Anna was no longer living with her aunt in Schellingstrasse, but rather near Goetheplatz. And this is how that happened:

A criminal investigator showed up at the aunt’s place on Monday. He had gone to school with her. He disclosed confidentially to her that her niece had been occasionally sighted accepting money for it. This was beyond any doubt. The criminal investigator only mentioned this in passing because he was a friend and after all, he had actually come to the aunt in order to arrest Herr Kastner for the distribution of obscene writings for commercial gain and for negligent perjury. But at the time Kastner was sitting in a café, so the criminal investigator took the opportunity to alert his old
school friend that the police authority was keeping a file on a certain Anna Pollinger, according to which the lady was suspected of roaming the streets and turning tricks.

The aunt went completely nuts. The criminal investigator was afraid that she might have a stroke, which is why he attempted to reassure her. Women of the night, he said, can’t just be condemned wholesale. He once had an acquaintance who had nothing but frivolous things for tenants, but they were so painstakingly punctual with the rent and took it easy on the furniture, were clean and meticulous. They furnished their rooms with love and never said a vulgar word.

But these arguments ricocheted off the aunt’s catholic worldview. She was terribly desperate, kicked Anna out of the house and then cut all family ties to her.

Anna likewise never talked to Herr Kobler again. Only once did she see him standing across the street on the corner with the Count Blanquez. She had wanted to go over to them, but Kobler turned his back on her in such an overt manner that she stopped asking about him.

“I can’t see her any more,” he said to his count. “I’ve pretty much outgrown the circumstances here and I don’t want to lower my standards.”

“You’re surely right about that,” nodded the count, “because I’m afraid she’s utterly debauched.”

“Since when?” inquired Kobler.

“For a while now,” said the count. “The other day our friend Harry told me she wanted five marks for it.”

“Not possible!” yelled Kobler.

“It’s just these terrible times. Europe has got to come to an understanding or we’re all going to perish!”

That evening Anna almost wound up in the police station for making a big fuss in Augustenstrasse. A man from the student corps spat in her face for approaching him in spite of his uniform. She was seething with rage and hate for a long time afterward. She took a holy oath never to get involved with men again, but she could not keep this vow because nature exacted its toll. That is to say, she had nothing to eat.

Nature is a hideous mistress and gave her no quarter. And so she started to believe that there was only evil in this world. But now she was to witness an instance of the contrary, this being admittedly only a small instance, but nonetheless an indication of the possibility of human culture and civilization.

DUSK WAS ALREADY FALLING WHEN ANNA MET her Herr Reithofer next to Thalkirchener Strasse, in front of the city’s employment office. You see, Herr Reithofer was also out of work, and this is what he drew on when he approached her. After all, you still could not tell by looking at her how she made her living, because having only recently started doing it, she was still the same old Anna on the outside. But on the inside—there loomed the new Anna, slowly burrowing her way up to the surface.

Herr Reithofer said that he had been out of work for ages now and that he was actually not a Bavarian, but rather an Austrian. She said that she, too, had been out of work for the last two months now and that she was not actually from
Munich, but rather had been born in Upper Palatinate. He said that he had never been to the Upper Palatinate; she said that she had never been to Austria. Hereupon he said that Vienna was quite a lovely city and that she actually looked like she was from Vienna. She laughed deliberately; he smiled. He was happy to have met her, otherwise he might have forgotten how to speak. But she cut him off, saying that you don’t just forget how to speak.

A Reichswehr company was passing by, and with music playing too.

When Herr Reithofer saw the Reichswehr, he said that in life sometimes even the best intentions do you no good. Sadly, there were many forces out there that were stronger than man, but you couldn’t think like that because then you’d basically have to hang yourself.

He shouldn’t babble about such gloomy stuff, she interrupted him again, but instead he should look up at the sky. There was a wispy biplane flying up there. But he hardly looked up. You see, he already knew about that and said that the world kept getting smaller and smaller. Pretty soon people would be able to fly from here to Australia in two hours, albeit only the financial tycoons and their secretaries and secret secretaries. That stuff about this Herr von Löwenstein was really strange. He wanted to use the lavatory midair between England and France, but took the wrong door and wound up in heaven. Technology in general was progressing tremendously. Just the other day an American invented an artificial human being, it’s really fantastic that the human mind can ascend to such heights. And if things kept up like this, she would even live to see the day when all genuine human beings would perish. And the machines wouldn’t be to blame for it, but rather the anarchic modes of production.
Yesterday he had read that the economy’s sphinx face was slowing turning towards socialism because the capitalists were starting to organize themselves. And he concluded by saying that there were even artificial human beings in Munich, but for now he had said enough.

And as Herr Reithofer was speaking like this, it became clear as daylight to Anna that he had mistaken her for somebody else. She wondered why she hadn’t broached the topic yet, but suddenly now she no longer had the courage to bring it up, which was very strange. She gave him a furtive look. He had a soothing air about him and remarkably well-groomed hands. She wondered what his profession was. “Waiter,” he said. And if there hadn’t been a World War, he would definitely be working right now in a Grand Hotel abroad, probably in Africa, in the Biskra oasis. Right now he’d be strolling beneath palm trees. He would also have seen the pyramids, had that mess in Sarajevo never happened, you know, where the Serbs assassinated the Czech Archduke, the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne. And Anna answered that she didn’t know what sort of city this Sarajevo was and sure, her father had died in battle and as far as she knew he was buried outside Paris, but she could only faintly remember this whole World War because she had only been four years old back when it broke out. She could only remember the inflation, when even she had been a trillionaire. But she’d prefer not to think about it because they had buried her dear mother back then. Granted, she had never truly loved her mother, this being a gaunt woman with a stern-looking pallor around her mouth. Back then she often had the feeling that her mother had wondered: Why’s this girl alive?

And here is where Herr Reithofer said that every person
had relatives, some more and others fewer, and that every relative would leave you something, either money or a bunch of crap. But even traits were hereditary, making one guy a genius, the next a civil servant and the next a total chump, only most people became nothing but numbers that’d put up with everything. There were only a few people who wouldn’t put up with everything, and this was very sad.

They were walking across Sendlingertor Square.

“And what sort of occupation does the young lady have?” he asked. She gave him a searching look, wondering if he had already guessed it. She was surprised that it would’ve been embarrassing for her.

“I was actually trained to sew,” she said. Now she was getting upset about feeling anxious. Men were subtle rascals, and being unemployed didn’t change that at all. Maybe this subtle unemployed man had three marks, she thought, and then put him to the test: “I’d like to see a movie in that theater over there,” she said.

Herr Reithofer was quite startled by this suggestion because he only had a ten-mark bill left. And he was also aware that as an Austrian citizen he was not legally eligible for German unemployment benefits. And he also remembered watching a Calmuck die in Volhynia in 1915, who had died just like any Austrian citizen or German.

“I’d like to see a movie,” Anna repeated, and purposefully looked at him with really dreamy eyes.

And in order to drive away the dead Calmuck, he thought that at this point two marks really wouldn’t make much of a difference. And being the good person that he was, he was happy to make her happy.