Wonderful, Wonderful Times (23 page)

Hans gnaws at his lower lip with his upper teeth. There will be a hole there shortly, though that is still better than having an Abyss of Principle yawning before you. He and Sophie understand each other on principle, though. Sophie is sucking lemonade through a straw. This morning her mother threw another screaming fit before driving off to her bank to do something or other. As always, Hans is flexing his muscles, quite openly, he slides to and fro on his chair as if he'd shat himself, he gives Sophie a confiding wink and in his turn describes a terrific booze-up where one or two friends of his were

hilariously abusive and went on a rampage, a few things were smashed up in the process. He is talking too loud and everyone can hear him, nobody understands him, but they tolerate what they do not understand, and if the tolerance is lacking it is through discussion.

Even if occasionally one has to part from the other here, there is still a sparkle in his eye on account of the reunion that is doubtless soon to follow, adieu, a grey VW beetle crawls round the bend and is gone, but a great deal remains behind: friendship, and a human quality. To the accompaniment of good-humoured jokes cracked by her family, who are just eating lunch, a girl suddenly leaps to her feet as if a tarantula had bitten her and welcomes her boyfriend, whom she has been awaiting for so long and who is now returning from a climbing trip. Afterwards the whole family does something together. This sense of sharing, which pervades the place like a thick fog, leaves Hans enraged. He pulps the last fragments of ice cream in the metal dish with his spoon, taking out his anger on innocent foodstuffs.

Accounts of hikes across glaciers, farewell to the family. Dearest sister Christine, who is in on the joke. Off to the post office, a one-and-a-half-hour walk, peaceful hours in Uncle Sepp's Olde Bar. A young lad climbing down the mountain to her after first climbing up it. An altogether unique feeling flowing from me to you and from you to me. Grannie, giving her friendly nod. Walking, talking, eating lunch. Taking strolls to the clearing amid the larches. Someone who loves nothing quite so much as the sight of grass and sky.

Hans tests the currents that are flowing here, all about him, from one to the other and from the other to one. What is it that's flowing? The people in question have no name for it, or at least not as such, though their language offers them ways of addressing each other that creates an instant unity. Heading off towards the Semmering hospital, viaducts, tunnels. Going up to the

Jockelhof, fixing the rooms, eating and taking siestas and being too lazy to write during the holidays, a band of mist and a blue sky, beaming, the sky's a fine one to go beaming. Plenty of things to talk about. Mutual understanding.

Hans cannot suppress a cough and splutters half of the coffee Sophie ordered for him too into the saucer, mixed with saliva it comes spraying out of him. In his brain there is a huge hole, which might also be labelled Nothingness in general. When grammar school kids talk, they are simply together, with each other, and the very simplicity of that apparent fact is what expresses the 'immeasurable profundity of what is said', they say in two-part harmony. It is often interesting to watch other people, you sit on a tree-trunk for the purpose. The goal is on the tips of our tongues and its name is Love.

The inexhaustible reserve the youngsters around Hans are drawing upon now affords a brief meeting of glances and a brief attainment of peace in each other. If you are sitting on a felled tree in a pine forest enjoying the sunshine you can easily forget what time it is. Not that you could forget your gold watch, just the time of day.

In spite of himself, Hans glances at his old wristwatch to see if he hasn't left it somewhere. It is still there.

Sophie is silent, and so is everything inside her. Her silence does not imply that she lacks anything here any more than elsewhere. From time to time she says hello to an acquaintance. If she exchanges a few words with one of them, a curious common ground is established. Hans believes that what is between her and him is Love. It leaves him shaken because it generally does leave lovers shaken, but it leaves Hans all the more shaken because he knows nothing he can compare it with. He is at the mercy of Love, helpless.

Another schoolkid is now comparing two people who get on well with two hemispheres that fit exactly,

making a perfect sphere. They talk in a relaxed way, with mutual confidence, about that perfect geometrical solid.

Saying farewell, and wondering if you shouldn't feel just as you did saying hello, but all the richer for having received a gift.

No one has ever given Hans a present except for Sophie (trousers and a pullover), Mother has occasionally bought him something useful. Sophie asks Hans what he thinks of crime. Rainer wants to commit crimes, and she thinks that at last she wants to too. These kids here really get up my nose, don't they yours? You're used to things quite other than schoolkid small-talk.

Hans, who has no greater wish than to be a schoolkid, says he has broken open vending machines in the past, but now he means to lead a decent life in order to win the woman he loves. He doesn't say who that is, oh no. No, he daren't say that.

Is it Anna, asks Sophie. No, says Hans, no, it's not Anna, but I'm not letting on who it really is, and he gives Sophie a calfish look so that she will suspect it's she herself. Sophie can't make any sense of this stupid facial expression and asks if he thinks doing something illegal can break down your inhibitions. Hans is unfamiliar with the word. The word illegal, that is.

If I drank another cognac now I'd start yodelling, I'd give one or two of these schoolkids a thrashing, I wouldn't care who I hit.

No but seriously, I really wouldn't mind getting my fingers into something alive. Hans has only ever jabbed his fingers into wet plaster or Anna. Hans says this alcohol is making him warm, though he's used to drink, once he drank three litres of beer in one go, man, I was really pissed that time, know what I mean.

Sophie sizes up Hans as if she were seeing him for the first time. With a man and a woman this always happens at some point before the sequel can ensue. Her gaze deliberately includes his face and his body,

in order to arrive at an overall impression. The season is over, the balls are no longer about to start, as is often the case. She opened the opera ball wearing a paste coronet on her head, which was ridiculous but Mama insisted. Now she has time off and can assess Hans's face. So this is a human face as well. Isn't Nature wonderful, so varied, thinks Sophie. There is an extreme Left and an extreme Right, which come very close to meeting, and there is even this kind of Hans. Apparently the fact doesn't disturb or inconvenience anyone. In Nature the species and forms are many and various, and there are two completely different sexes. Sophie's is an ancient aristocratic family.

Some months ago, in her dancing partner's arms, Sophie forgot everything, in particular the world about her, and now she wants to forget everything once again, in a transaction of a wholly different sort. She actually has what others merely wish they had, and she is forever wanting to forget it. You can't do it, in your family people don't do that kind of thing, Hans tells her. What counts is that
I
do it, says Sophie, who would like to knock a lot of things down. Which Anna and Rainer would like to do too. What they all want to knock down, however, are quite different things, because they possess quite different things.

Rainer, who wasn't invited along but figured it out by means of skilful questioning, enters the cafe, gives a casual wave to all four points of the compass (but receives no response), and promptly starts talking about crime too. This may be contagious. He doesn't want to talk about his love for Sophie as long as this Hans is present. The experience of crime makes you mature, he declares. In Camus's
The Outsider,
which he is currently reading together with Sophie and with her alone, the hero ends up in prison too. Under sentence of death, he hears soft sounds outside, sounds originating in Nature, and becomes sensitive to nuances. That is

important. Because everyday life more often tends to destroy sensitivities than create them. Vienna Actionist artists (you can see it coming) will shortly be destroying their own bodies, we intend to destroy other people's bodies, which affords the greater satisfaction. Whoever would destroy his own body of his own accord, you only get one, demands Hans. An artist. An artist may mutilate himself. Which is fine. I too often feel like tearing myself limb from limb and throwing away the pieces.

I want to lay my whole body down on Sophie and get inside her, thinks Hans. He will do it just the way he does it with Anna, only much better because love will be involved as well.

Sophie scrutinises Hans closely. Rainer wants Sophie to scrutinise him rather than Hans and knocks an ice cream sundae that he is just being served onto the floor. Before he can trample on the colourful scoops of ice cream (because he doesn't like the flavour, and money is unimportant when you're beside yourself), Sophie says: Have you gone crazy.'' If you want, Sophie, I'll tell Hans to spoon it up again. You're behaving absolutely childishly again today (Sophie). I'll show you who's going to spoon what up (Hans).

The waitress in black and white scuttles about amid the tables and is addressed as an equal by the adolescent higher classes, black and white fade to grey in the process, which is subtler, you need an eye for the differences. Some address her as an equal though they live in twenty-room villas in Hietzing. They come to her with their unimportant problems, school worries in the main, which she then tries to solve or dispel. Every job has its satisfactions if you do it with care, and this one is particularly satisfying because you have contact with people. And you get a good class of people here.

Just bear in mind, Hans, that what matters is the how and not the what.

Rainer says: Murder and assault are not lunacy, they are the logical conclusion if you live a life without an assured financial foundation.

Hans says it's insane, you can't hurt your fellow human beings on purpose.

Sophie answers that if she has understood correctly you should only do it for the sake of violence itself.

Well, the money is of secondary importance, of course. Murder is merely matter that's got in a bit of a mess (Rainer).

Sophie makes some response, and Hans seconds it. He shares her opinion. He says: I agree with Sophie.

Rainer says he should shut his trap because he is unfamiliar with the polarities of Thought involved, neither its perfect autonomy nor its strict dependence. To provoke Rainer, Sophie tells him he should go and do his homework, and then he can think about the lovely things he'll buy with the money they grab. Rainer yells that he doesn't give a damn about the money any more than Sophie gives a damn about money, he is just like Sophie and feels just the same. Sophie goes on: Perhaps a bicycle, some educational books, a building kit. . . and now it's high time he vanished, she's seeing Hans today, not him, he shouldn't go snooping after her.

Hans says he agrees with Sophie.

Rainer establishes a definition: The person who is in charge is never snooping, after all, he is the one who holds the reins. Also, he has written a new poem, specially for Sophie, in which he disposes of Christian thought, which no longer counts any more, once and for all.

Sophie says that Rainer will still be writing poems when he's a respectable civil servant. Hans says that's what he thinks too, Sophie! Sophie can sense Rainer coming very clearly, it is like masturbating before the orgasm. Hans says he shares her opinion. He subscribes to that absolutely.

You illiterate ignoramus, roars Rainer, seeing red. What he also sees (alas) is Hans and Sophie still wrapped in a species of mutual understanding that operates at a deep level that is not his own.

It is shallow. He and Sophie, on the other hand, have depth. Depth does not go down below, it goes within. He says he doesn't give a toss about either God or his parents, whom he hates, right, he hates God too, and because of that I'm freer than you two! He has decided that nothing is of any importance. But they have yet to find out what that Nothingness is that is nothing.

I really do agree entirely with Sophie, says Hans, and now at last I'm going to smash your gob in, Rainer. But Sophie restrains him. Rainer notes that Hans is a strange, disruptive factor in Sophie's life. Not to be confused with a stranger who acquires subjective significance. Because in point of fact Hans is no more than an object as far as Sophie is concerned.

Shit, now I've forgotten my purse, observes Sophie. Hey, will you lend me the money till tomorrow, I offered to pay for Hans. Rainer knows he must not be petty if he is not to appear petty, so he pays up on the spot, not without plainly letting Hans know that
he
is the one who is paying for him.

Sophie gazes out of the window and down a peaceful avenue of villas.

I agree with Sophie, entirely, says Hans.

N
OWADAYS
THE
NIGHT-TIME
cries
of
ow
can
be
heard
more frequently than ever by the sensitive distinctly pricked-up ears of the adolescent son and adolescent daughter. And in addition they often hear of Papa's intention to shoot Mother because she has transgressed her marriage vows. But Rainer can see that the only transgression involved is that of a meaningless life. Hers. She has never transgressed. Who would she have transgressed with anyway, the shape she's in these days? Mother's life is one long chain of meaningless years, just as the lower classes are chains of people, none of whom ever stands out as an individual. Generally they remain stuck where they are and never reach the next level. Rarely, but only rarely, one of them makes it up to where there is more room to manoeuvre and develop his abilities. But in the jazz clubs these second class citizens with poor prospects are always the only ones who listen when Rainer delivers a lengthy lecture, on God, say, or on contemporary jazz of the cool school and its structure. Schoolmates invariably skedaddle when they clock Rainer because they know: Here comes another boring speech and I won't get a word in edgeways. The guy's deadly. Beat it. True, you yourself know more than he does, but he never lets you show your knowledge off.