The Piano Teacher: A Novel (19 page)

Now, Fräulein Kohut sidesteps an impudently groping Yugoslav, who tries to force a defective coffee maker on her, as well as his further accompaniment. He only has to pack up. Pointedly turning her head, Erika climbs over some invisible hurdle and strikes off toward the Prater meadows, where a person can quickly get lost. But Erika has no intention of losing herself, she intends to win. And, assuming she did get lost, her mother, whose assets Erika has been increasing since birth, would instantly get into gear. The whole country would hunt for her, with press, radio, and TV. Something is sucking Erika into this landscape, and this isn’t the first time. She’s come here several times before, she knows her way. The people thin out. The throng unravels at its edges, individual members scurry apart like ants, each of whom has taken on a specific task in their state. One hour later, the ant will proudly present a smidgen of fruit or carrion.

Clusters, groups, islands form at the trolley stops in order to charge somewhere in unison. Darkness has fallen quickly, just as Erika calculated, and the lights of human presence are also going out. On the other hand, more and more figures are clogging around the artificial lights. The only people here, on the periphery, are here for professional reasons. Or else they pursue their hobby, fucking, or perhaps fucking over the people
they’ve fucked with, mugging and killing them. Some people just watch calmly. A tiny number pointedly expose themselves near the entrance to the Tunnel of Fun.

A final straggling child, bristling with belated ski equipment, stumbles toward a final light in a trolley shelter. The child is harried by parental voices, inwardly audible, warning him not to be alone in the Prater at night. And they list cases of skis that were bought at a winter close-out and could only be used next season—but violently changed hands. The child struggled far too long for these skis to lose them now. Arduously handicapped, he hobbles past Fräulein Kohut, almost grazing her, surprised at this lonesome lady who provides a living contrast to everything his parents tell him.

Erika, drawn by the darkness, strides into the meadows, which calmly spread out here, interrupted by bushes, woods, and streamlets. The meadows simply loll about, and they have names. Erika’s goal is Jesuits’ Meadow. That’s still quite a ways off. First, the amusement park. Distant lights flash off and dash away. Shots ring out, voices roar victoriously. Adolescents scream with their battle implements in the video arcades, or else they shake machines, which rattle all the more noisily, chattering, clattering, hurling bolts of lightning. Erika resolutely turns her back on this commotion even before she lets it get to her. The lights grope toward her, find nothing to hold on to, run their fidgety fingers over her kerchief, slide off, draw a regretful trail of color down her coat, and then fall on the ground behind her, to die in the dirt. Tiny explosions tug away at Erika, but they too have to let Erika by without banging a hole into her. They repel her rather than attract her. The gigantic Ferris wheel made up of sparse lights dominates everything else. But it has its rival in the far more harshly lit roller coaster, where tiny, screechy cars zoom by, carrying shrill daredevils who, terrified by the power of technology, cling desperately
to one another. The men have flimsy excuses to cling to the women. This is nothing for Erika. If there’s one thing she doesn’t want, it’s being clung to. At the peak of the Haunted Ride, an illuminated ghost greets the world. He won’t catch any fish with his bait, at most some fourteen-year-old girl with her first boyfriend, the two of them, like kittens, playing with the horror of the world before they themselves become part of that horror.

Row houses, one-family houses, the final rear guard of the day; the people who live there have to listen to the distant rumpus all day long and deep into the night. Truck drivers from Eastern Bloc countries, tanking up with a final spurt of the big world. A pair of sandals for the wife at home; the sandals emerge from a plastic bag, and the customer has to check whether they are up to Free World standards. Barking of dogs. Amorous flickers from a TV screen. Outside a porno movie, a man shouts that you’ve never seen anything like what you can see here, just walk right in. No sooner has darkness broken in than the world seems to consist largely of male participants. The appropriate female portion waits patiently beyond the final cone of light, hoping to earn something from whatever the porno flick has left of the man. The man goes into the movie alone; after the movie, he needs a woman, who beckons eternally both out here and in there. He can’t do everything alone. Unfortunately, he has to pay twice: once for the flick, once for the fuck.

Erika forges ahead. Deserted meadows open their sucking maws. It’s a long, long way into the landscape and, beyond the landscape, to foreign lands. To the Danube, to the Lobau petroleum harbor, the Freudenau harbor. The Albern grain harbor. The meadow forests around Albern harbor. Then Potter’s Field and the Commercial Wharf. Prater Quai, where the ships dock and then sail on. And beyond the Danube, the gigantic
floodplain, which ecology-minded youth is fighting for; sandy shoreland, meadows, alders, undergrowth. Licking waves. But Erika doesn’t have to walk that far, the distance is too great. Only the well-equipped hiker can make it, and only if he rests and has a snack. Now Erika has soft meadowland underfoot, and she strides ahead. She walks and walks. Small, frozen islands, lace doilies of snow, yellow and brown grass still frozen from the winter. Erika places foot after foot, as steady as a metronome. If one foot steps into a pile of dog turds, the other foot instantly realizes it and avoids the long-lasting stench. The first foot is then wiped off in the grass. The lights slowly retreat behind Erika. The darkness opens its gates: Come right in! Fräulein Kohut knows from experience that around here prostitutes let themselves be seen taking on and carrying out their assignments. Erika’s handbag contains a roll stuffed with minced pork sausage. Her favorite food, even though condemned as unhealthy by her mother. A tiny flashlight in case of emergency, a blank-cartridge pistol in case of extreme emergency (as small as a finger joint!), a pint of chocolate milk to quench her thirst after the minced pork sausage, lots of tissues just in case, not much money but certainly enough for a cab, no ID card, not even in case of emergency. And the binoculars. Inherited from Father, who, when still possessed of a lucid mind, used them to spot birds and mountains even at night.

Mother, who believes that Erika has gone to a private chamber-music recital, has loudly boasted to her daughter that she allows her to go so that Erika can have a private life rather than constantly berating her mother for not letting her out of her clutches. Within one hour at the very latest, Mother will start ringing up Erika’s home-recital colleague, and the colleague will serve up an intricate excuse. Erika’s colleague believes that Erika is involved in some kind of romance and that she, the colleague, is in on it.

The soil is black. The sky is only a tad brighter, just barely bright enough to reveal where earth is and where sky is. Frail silhouettes of trees loom on the horizon. Erika practices caution. She moves silently, as light as a feather. She is soft and weightless. She is very nearly invisible. She almost vanishes into thin air. She is all eyes and ears. The binoculars are the extensions of her eyes. She avoids the paths taken by other wanderers. She seeks the spots where other wanderers take their pleasures-—always in twosomes. After all, she’s done nothing wrong, nothing that would make others shrink away from her. Using the binoculars, she scours the area for couples, from whom others shrink. She cannot investigate the ground under her shoes; she switches into blind. She relies entirely on her ears—a professional habit. Sometimes she trips, almost stumbles, but on she forges in the correct direction. She walks and walks and walks. Garbage nestles into the profiles of her shoes, smoothing them out. But she keeps walking across the meadow.

Then she reaches it. Blazing like a huge campfire, the shrieks of an amorous couple flare up from the bottom of the meadow. At last: the homeland of the peepers. The sight is so close that Erika doesn’t need her binoculars. The special night glass. Like a house looming up from a homeland, the couple is fucking itself out of the beautiful meadow ground and into Erika’s eyeballs. A man emitting foreign yelps screws his way into a woman. The woman doesn’t yowl, she issues almost morose, sotto-voce directions and commands, which the man may not comprehend. Jubilating in Turkish or some other rare language, he ignores the woman’s shrieks. The woman growls deep in her throat like a dog ready to leap; she’s trying to tell her john to shut up. But the Turk soughs and sighs like the spring wind, only louder. He emits long-drawn-out yelps, offering Erika a good orientation point, so she can sneak up closer, even though she is already quite close. The same bushes that provide refuge
for the loving couple supply sufficient camouflage for Erika. The Turk or Turklike foreigner seems to be having a good time. So is the woman, as we hear. Except that she’s applying the brakes. She’s telling him where to go. It’s hard to say whether he’s obeying; he wants to follow his own orders, and so there’s a good chance that he may occasionally collide with the woman’s wishes. Erika is a witness. The man doesn’t do what the woman says, he does what he wants. The woman seems to be gradually losing her cool because the man won’t give her the right of way, as is appropriate. If she says, “Slow down,” he steps on the gas; and vice versa. Maybe she’s no professional, just your standard drunken woman getting laid. Maybe she won’t get anything for her trouble. Erika hunkers down. She makes herself comfortable. Even if she were stamping around in nailed shoes, the couple wouldn’t hear her; they’re yelling much too loud, or at least one of them is. Erika isn’t always this lucky with her peeping. Now the woman says something to the man. She tells him to hold it for a moment. Erika can’t tell whether the man pays any attention. He emits a relatively short sentence in his language. The woman berates him, but her ranting is incomprehensible. Just wait, understand? Wait! Me no wait. Erika makes out what’s happening. He smashes into the woman as if he wanted to break the world’s record for soling a pair of shoes or welding a car body. The woman is shaken by the thrusts—down to her foundation walls. Shriller than the occasion warrants, she spews spite: Slower! Not so hard, please! Evidently, she’s switched to pleading. Bottom line: zero again. The Turk has unbelievable energy and is in a frightful hurry. He increases his gear ratio in order to make as many thrusts as possible within the time unit and perhaps even the monetary unit. The woman resigns: She will never come to a good end. She vituperates: Isn’t he done yet, or is he gonna keep on till next Tuesday? The man expels breathless
Turkish fanfares from his innermost depths. He fires on both sides. Language and emotion seem to be drawing together in him. He screeches in German:
Frau! Frau!
The Frau tries one last time: Slower! Erika, in her hiding place, puts two and two together: This is no Prater hooker; a prostitute would rev him up rather than slam on his brakes. She’d have to collect as many Johns as possible in as short a time as possible, in contrast to the man, who feels the exact opposite. He wants to get as much as possible for as long as possible. Someday he may not be able to do anything anymore, and then he’ll only have his memories.

The opposite sex always wants the exact opposite.

Erika is but a puff, she scarcely breathes, but her eyes gape. These eyes sniff, the way a deer sniffs with its nose. These are highly sensitive organs, they turn as nimbly as weathervanes. Erika does what she does so she won’t be left out. She goes first here, then there. She’s in control of where she wants to be, and where not. She doesn’t want to take part, but nothing should take place without her. When it comes to music, Erika sometimes performs; at other times, she looks and listens. That’s how her time passes. Erika jumps aboard and then jumps off, as if time were an old-fashioned trolley without pneumatic doors. In modern streetcars, once you’re aboard, you have to stay inside. Until the next stop.

The man drives nails into an endless board. Sweating like a pig, he holds the woman in an iron grip so she won’t get away. He covers her with spit as if he wanted to eat up his prey. The woman has stopped talking, she only moans, infected by the man’s eagerness. She whimpers a series of meaningless falsetto words. She whistles like an Alpine marmot when it smells an enemy. She anchors her hands deep in her partner’s back, so he won’t get away. So she can’t be shaken off so easily, and, once the duty’s done, she can be remembered with affection or
a quip. The man works: piecework. He raises his limit high. This is his first chance with a native Austrian in a long time, and he’s taking advantage of his chance with hectic activity. Above the couple, the treetops get the creeps. The nocturnal sky seems to be alive under the wind. The Turk obviously can’t hold back as long as he thought he could. His throat disgorges something that doesn’t even sound like Turkish anymore. This is the homestretch, and the woman spurs him on: Giddyap!

The effect on the spectator is devastating. Her hands itch to take an active part; but if she’s not allowed, she’ll hold back. She waits for a resolute prohibition. She needs to act within a solid framework, she needs to be stretched on it. The twosome, without realizing it, is turned into a threesome. Suddenly, certain organs labor in the spectator, and she can’t control them: they work double-time or even faster. Strong pressure on her bladder, an irksome disturbance that overcomes her whenever she gets excited. Always at the most inappropriate moment, even though there are miles of terrain here, waiting to wipe away every last trace of this natural urge and its bottom line. The lady and the Turk are acting out an activity for her. Erika involuntarily reacts, making the twigs rustle. Did she desire the rustling or didn’t she? The urge, squeezing out from inside, gets worse and worse. The spectator has to ease her squatting position in order to propitiate this itching, twitching urge. It’s truly urgent. Who knows how long it can be contained? She mustn’t give in to it now, no matter what. A loud swishing and rustling. Erika herself doesn’t know whether she deliberately helped the branch along, which would be rather silly. She bumped into the branch, and the branch wreaks nasty, noisy vengeance.