I Confess (24 page)

"Number 46," she said. "In front of the Bellaria. Do you know how to get there?"

"I certainly do."

I got there. I took a taxi and told him where to go. But I had him put me off one car stop earUer and walked the rest of the way. I didn't want Wilma to think I was a capitalist!

She was already there, and she waved. It was a beautiful day, the sky was a cloudless blue. The sun was warm and the wind came in gusts from the east. Wilma was wearing a brown suit. This time she had left her kerchief at home, but her bag was slung over her shoulder as usual and full to bursting. She had brought along sandwich rolls for us, she explained on the streetcar that was taking us through the suburbs west of Vienna to the Wienerwald.

"What kind of roUs?"

"Salami, Emmenthaler cheese and extrawurst. Which do you like best?"

"Salami."

"Oh dear." She bit her lip.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"Come on, Wilma. Tell me.'*

"I like salami best too," she admitted sadly.

"I was only joking," I said. "Actually I hate salami.**

"You do not!"

"I do. Really."

"You're just saying that so that m eat the salami.*'

"Wihna! What do you take me for?"

"AUar."

"I swear!"

"That isn't enough. Cross your heart and hope to die in ayear if you lied."

That was an easy one. "Yes," I said, and she was satisfied. "But for that you can have the peppers," she went on. "Green peppers. Mother gave me three. Do you like peppers?"

"I love peppers."

"And I've brought tomatoes,** she said proudly. She seemed to have brought alone a whole vegetable store. That was the way she always did it, she explained to me later. When she went off into the woods to study, her mother packed her a lunch. "It costs such a lot to eat out."

"But you don't have to carry that much,'* I said with a glance at her laden bag.

"We'll take turns," she said. So that was where that got me!

At the last trolley stop, a residential area of villas rose steeply toward the woods. Here the wind was steady and stronger. It soughed in the trees that lined the highway and whirfed dust and leaves before it. Wilma's hair flew around her head. The sky was brilliantly clear. I got very warm walking and took off my coat. You could smell autumn in the air. In a garden we passed, two men had lighted a fire and were burning twigs and dry leaves. The smoke blew out into the street. Wihna wrinkled her little nose. "Smells good, doesn't it?"

"Yes. You like it too?"

"Yes. And the smell of a fire when you're baking potatoes in it'*

"And the smell of tar when they're pavmg a street•*

"Yes. Tar, too."

It was a perfect love. We were totally compatible. Just before we reached the woods we passed a newspaper stand. "Wait a minute," said Wilma. She walked over to the stand and came back with a paper. "I've got to see if I'm in it."

"In what?"

She told me, as she leafed hurriedly through the paper, that it had a column that reviewed radio broadcasts. Wilma had participated in a play on the air the Thursday before. Now she let out a cry. "Here I am! Look!"

I looked. There it was, at the end of a paragraph, at the bottom. "Wilma Parisini was pleasing in a minor role." But she was looking at it with such a blissful expression, as if she had been presented with an Academy Award.

"Ha!" she said. "This time they couldn't ignore me. TU get there yet, you'll see." She read the line again, still all admiration, then she stuffed the paper into her bulging bag. "Even if it's slow going. Of course Madame Sykora was marvelous," she added, with a note of sarcasm. "No wonder, with all the publicity she gets." Madame Sykora was a colleague whom the columnist had reviewed laudably and in greater detail. "You won't believe it but I know for a fact that she writes herself fan letters."

"You don't mean it!"

"After every performance in which she takes part, the station gets several enthusiastic letters. 'Eva Sykora was wonderful! Why isn't this remarkable artist heard more often? We can't wait for the next broadcast with Eva Sykora!'" Wilma snorted with indignation. "Isn't that something?"

"Unbelievable!"

"But the crazy thing is that those idiots at the station take it seriously. They'll believe anything. They really think it's the voice of the people."

•"But that's impossible," I said. "It's an obvious swindle. Anonymous letters...."

"But they're not anonymous. That's what's so unfair! She gets all her friends to write them, so of course they're signed. Wouldn't you say that's about as low as an artist can sink?"

"I don't know," I replied thoughtfully. "In a way I can't help being impressed. People want to be fooled. They ask for it."

"You don't mean that!"

"But I do, Wilma. As soon as I get home Fm going to sit down and compose a letter about the incomparable actress, Wilma Parisini."

Her expression changed abruptly. She glowed! "You're really going to do that?" she cried, having forgotten completely how she had condemned such dishonest methods a moment ago.

"I certainly am, Wilma. Today!"

"Oh, but that would be marvelous! Eva Sykora will be furious. You know what—don't send the letter to the station; send it to Mr. Jakobovitch."

"And who is Mr. Jakobovitch?" I asked and felt a totally ridiculous wave of jealousy.

"He's the director with whom I always work. Goose him a bit too."

"What?"

She blushed furiously. *Tm sorry. I mean, butter him up a bit."

"You can count on it," I said. "As far as I'm concerned, Mr. Jakobovitch is the greatest radio director in Europe!"

The day grew warmer. We walked through the woods on a narrow path, between high trees through which the wind howled. It sounded like a storm, a wild, magnificent autumn storm that roared over our heads so that we had to scream to be heard. We didn't speak much. We walked Indian file, she in front of me. Our feet sank until they disappeared in a thick carpet of faUen leaves. Where we

walked, it wasn't windy. The course of the storm ran over and among the crowns of the trees. This resulted in an unreal atmosphere, and I began to feel faint. I could hear the storm, it was deafening, but I couldn't feel it. And with it—^blinding sunlight, slanting through the tree trunks. In half an hour I had the sensation one gets in a too high altitude. I was walking behind Wilma. Every now and then she turned and smiled at me. Now / was carrying the shoulder bag.

Around noon, both of us were so tired, we were thankful to come upon a small inn right in the heart of the forest. On the windstill side of the house stood a few empty tables and chairs. We were the only guests. The innkeeper greeted us warmly and at once recommended his best wine. I ordered a bottle. Wilma hurt his feelings by insisting on mixing hers with soda water. Otherwise, she declared, she might get tipsy. But I pleased the man, who evidently considered himself a connoisseur of wines, by inviting him to have a glass with us, and when he finally left, Wilma unpacked her picnic. The wine in our glasses glittered in the sunlight, the wind continued to roar in the treetops and Wilma concentrated on dividing our rations. She actually did eat all the salami rolls; I ate the green peppers and most of the cheese. Wilma had even brought along salt and pepper in two smaU wax paper bags. On the one she had printed "salt;" on the other "pepper." So we wouldn't get them mixed up, said Wilma.

Then we began to work. She took out her script and I heard her lines. It was a fairytale. Wilma played a wicked fairy. It was a quite important part and the play was pretty awful, but on that morning I felt I was listening to the immortal verses of Shakespeare. I cued her; she closed her eyes and spoke her lines, and as she did she moved her head rhythmically back and forth and, with her left hand closed to a fist, pounded out the rhythm on the table. When the script demanded that she scream, she screamed. It was marvelous to hear her scream because

you couldn't hear a word she was saying from where I was sitting, the wind was so loud.

I drank a few more glasses of wine and grew increasingly groggy and increasingly happy. The sun made Wilma's hair gUtter Uke gold, and the little green spots in her grey eyes grew darker and looked hke velvet. It was around two o'clock when I felt my head begin to ache. I tried to ignore it. When I couldn't ignore it any longer, I began to breathe deeper and spoke as Uttle as possible. Up to now this had helped. This time it didn't. Finally I could endure it no longer and took two Myracid tablets. Wilma was startled.

"Don't you feel weU?"

*1 have a headache," I said. "It wiH pass."

"It's the wine," she said. "You should have drunk it with soda water, like me."

"Yes," I said.

She moved over and sat beside me. "Lie down,** she said.

"Lie down?"

"Yes. Stretch out and put your head on my lap and m lay my hand on your forehead."

"And that will help?"

"It usually does," she said. **My father often has headaches. Then I lay my hand on his forehead and they go away. Tve tried it ever so often. On other people too."

I put my legs up on another chair and leaned as far back as I could. I blinked up into the crowns of the trees through which the sun was shining. "Close your eyes," she said, and laid her dry, cool hand on my forehead. The roaring of the storm, my horizontal position and my headache, together with Wilma's proximity, made me terribly dizzy. I felt as if I were on a swing. Red circles and spirals rotated in front of my closed eyes. Wilma's hand stroked my forehead gently. I felt warm, happy and sleepy. Ten minutes later the headache was gone.

"What did I tell you?" Wilma said with quiet satisfaction.

On the far side of the terrace sat a brown squirrel, watching us earnestly. In its paws it held a nut

12

The opening night, on Monday, turned out to be one of great excitement for me. The cause of this excitement was a certain Joseph Hermann, a fifty-year-old man, an actor on the skids. Today, bitter and hopeless, he was nearing the end of a hopeless and bitter life. Nobody had any idea what he was living on, and, above all, nobody knew where he got his Uquor. Because he got it and drank, uninterruptedly and immoderately. He drank for good reason—one might have said justly so—but for those deaUng with him it was not always pleasant. Joseph Hermann was the only actor in the group over twenty-five. Felix had engaged him because he felt sorry for the rundown entertainer who sat around the Cafe Schubert all day, silent, sodden, a reproach by his very existence. And there was a part in the play for a beggar which none of the young actors could very well carry off. In accordance with the plot, the beggar had to have a white beard.

During the rehearsals everything had gone off more or less all right. Hermann was an unwashed loner and didn't really like any of us. As long as he got his money and his gin, he was satisfied. We soon discovered that even when already quite drunk, he could still speak his lines. And all he had to do was play a beggar who sprawled on the floor. He didn't even have to stand!

On Monday evening I was at the theatre by five and so

nervous I was chain smoking. I couldn't sit still but paced up and down, sweating profusely. Everybody tried to calm me, but nobody could. Yolanda arrived at seven. She looked beautiful. She was wearing a black evening gown under her fur cape, and everybody greeted her with great respect. She also tried to help me out of the funk I was in with humor and understanding. We sat down in the tiny dressing room which was divided into two parts by a tablecloth suspended from a cord. On one side the ladies dressed, on the other, the men. On each side there was a make-up table and a mirror and a coat rack from the cafe.

I sat on an orange crate and drank cognac. I had counted on Yolanda being at least annoyed with my behavior during the last few days, but she seemed perfectly serene and sympathetic. I came from the world in which I suddenly found myself again and felt at home in it—all perfectly natural. That was how she' expressed it when I apologized one evening for coming home exceptionally late. She was a wise woman, albeit, in the end, not wise enough.

The performance began at eight. At seven-thirty the little theatre was almost full. We had sent out complimentary tickets for every seat in the house, and all the leading drama critics were present. Vienna was interested in the activities of its various "cellar theatres," and the critics were usually generous in their appraisals. I got up every two minutes to peer out into the auditorium through the hole in the old curtain which Susy had painted magnificently after which I helped myself to another cognac.

I wasn't sober anymore when Felix came to me to report the catastrophe. When, by seven-thirty, Joseph Hermann hadn't put in an appearance, Felix had set out to find him. It hadn't taken long. Joseph Hermann was stretched out in the coal cellar which could be reached via an iron door in the ladies room. The boUer for the central heating was installed in the coal cellar. It hadn't been turned on yet, therefore nobody had been hired to service

it. The man who had done so the winter before had fixed up an army cot for himself beside it with a table on one side. Pictures of pin-up girls were pasted on the wall. Above this pseudo-encampment, a bare electric Ught bulb dangled from the ceiling. On this evening its mercilessly harsh light fell on our alcohoHc Joseph Hermann. He was lying on the cot, snoring loudly. I think I have already mentioned that Hermann's role didn't require that he stand, that he had only to sit. However, in his present condition, even that was out of the question. He was so incredibly drunk that all he could do was lie prone and that not prettily. He stank to high heaven.

We stood around the cot, speechless and dismayed. What were we to do? Curtain time was in ten minutes. Hermann's scene was in Act One. Where on earth could we find an actor at such short notice who could play even this minimal part? Nowhere. We were sunk. In a fit of senseless rage, I fell upon the immobilized sot and began to beat him up. The others held me back. "You pig!" I screamed. "You goddamed pig! Let me go! I'll murder the guy!"