Telegrams of the Soul (5 page)

The meadows wafted sweetly and the forest stood black and motionlessly melancholic beneath the still light of the evening sky.

In Vienna I said goodbye.

Seated in the Café Ritz I spotted that young woman whom I have long found pleasing to look at. Brown hair, blue straw hat, upturned nose. I wanted to bring the day to a festive conclusion. So I sent her three wonderfully dark roses and an egg punch, the favorite drink of most women of her kind. She graciously accepted, exceptionally.

Then she came over to my table and said:

“Does it really give you such a great pleasure to pay your respects to me?”

“Yes, indeed, or else I wouldn't do it!”

“Well, then, I don't even have to thank you for it—!?”

“No, not at all, the pleasure is all mine!”

That was my day of affluence.

There's one dirt cheap pleasure I know that's altogether free of disappointments, to study the train schedule from mid-May on and pick out the very train with which you would, if only . . . So, for instance, at 8:45, you're already up and about and even shaved (to travel unshaven is only half a pleasure, better, if need be, to go without washing); so at 8:45 with the southbound express to Payerbach, and from there by one-horse carriage (my favorite driven by Michael Ruppert, Jr.) to the heavenly idyllic Thalhof Hotel. Once there you do nothing at all for the moment, seeing as you're actually still seated in your room in Vienna poring over your travel plans. Enough, everything's fine as it is, facing the forest, the cowshed, the horse stable, the bubbling trout brook, the laundry yard, the woodshed, where once, thirty years ago, with Anna Kaldermann—you gathered wood, and in the distance the hills near the Payerbachgräben where my father wanted to acquire a plot of land planted with sour cherry trees to flee to the holy refuge of nature, while my mother said: “Not until our two daughters are wed, my dear!” So there you sit before your travel plans, 8:45 departure time, dreaming sweet dreams free of the burdens of reality, and you just saved, conservatively speaking, at least twenty Crowns. For every change of place taxes the cost of your stay!

“I'd like to have a blue balloon! A blue balloon is what I'd like!”

“Here's a blue balloon for you, Rosamunde!”

It was explained to her then that there was a gas inside that was lighter than the air in the atmosphere, as a consequence of which, etc. etc.

“I'd like to let it go—,” she said, just like that.

“Wouldn't you rather give it to that poor little girl over there?”

“No, I want to let it go—!”

She lets the balloon go, keeps looking after it, till it disappears in the blue sky.

“Aren't you sorry now you didn't give it to the poor little girl?”

“Yes, I should've given it to the poor little girl.”

“Here's another blue balloon, give her this one!”

“No, I want to let this one go too up into the blue sky!”—

She does so.

She is given a third blue balloon.

She goes over to the poor little girl on her own, gives this one to her, saying: “You let it go!”

“No,” says the poor little girl, peering enraptured at the balloon.

In her room it flew up to the ceiling, stayed there for three days, got darker, shriveled up and fell down dead, a little black sack.

Then the poor little girl thought to herself: “I should have let it go outside in the park, up into the blue sky, I'd've kept on looking after it, kept on looking—!”

In the meantime, the rich little girl gets another ten balloons, and one time Uncle Karl even buys her all thirty balloons in one batch. Twenty of them she lets fly up into the sky and gives ten to poor children. From then on she had absolutely no more interest in balloons.

“The stupid balloons—,” she said.

Whereupon Aunt Ida observed that she was rather advanced for her age!

The poor little girl dreamed: “I should have let it go up into the blue sky, I'd've kept on looking and looking—!”

The old man came home from the puppet theater with his granddaughter Rosita.

He was crab-red. With his white hair on top of his head, it was really spring in winter.

“What a shame not to have seen that—!” he said and gave a side- long glance at Rosita.

“Of course I would've loved to have come along,” said the pale young mother, preparing potato salad with vinegar, holding up the two little yellow bottles to the light so as to tell them apart. Nobody in the world can tell oil and vinegar apart. Someone always says: “Well, what do you think, this must be vinegar.”—“That one?! No way,” one replies.

“I'd've loved to have come along. Honestly I would. But you and Rosie, you're like two love birds! And such exaltation! Incidentally, Rosie, how was it?”

“I was at a theater—.”

“Yes, and—?!”

“And I was at a theater!”

“What a little ninny—!”

Whereupon Peter A. replied to the lady: “I was at a theater! That says it all. Need anything more be said?! She expressed herself like a genius. My sweet! My precious! My gentle one! No more need be said: I was at a theater!”

“Go to your Peter, he understands you,” said the lady, happy and proud, and let the child down from her lap. Then she cut the meat into little pieces for Rosita. “Do you want potato salad or green peas?”

“First salad—.”

“Didn't she need to go?!” asked the lady.

“No,” replied the old man, “we took care of everything beforehand.”

The lady sat there, both her arms hanging limp at her sides. She thought: “I saw him again this afternoon, the bane of my existence, Edgar! Oh, what a cad he is. That's how absinthe must affect
you. It shatters the nervous system. It's like an obsession of the soul. A symptom of derangement. Instead of being free, to be bound! That's it. He creeps up on my life and binds it! I should have gone along with my child—.”

The grandfather sat there, crab-red: “You should've seen Rosie today—! You're such a fool, Hanny. Always worries, errands—.”

The old man was beaming with love, drunk with love, the gift of youth, and nameless bliss, forgetting. He was like a minstrel playing the lute to the beautiful wonderful world full of many curling destinies liable to unravel at a gust of spring wind. He felt: “My daughter's stuck in a mediocre marriage, always preoccupied, critical of everything. So what?! Rosita came out of it!”

Rosie sat on Mr. Peter's lap. He softly kissed her golden hair.

“Eljén!” she said and raised her glass to him.

“Who always does that?!” said the lady.

“That one over there!” said Rosita and pointed to the old man.

“Dear, sweet, most gentle one—,” said Mr. Peter and pressed her softly to him.

“Did you already thank your Grandpa?” the lady asked, annoyed, “probably not!”

“Yes, I did—. No, I didn't yet.”

Mr. Peter kissed her silken hair. He felt: “Who does she need to thank?! We need to cover her little hands with kisses, because she gives and gives and gives us so much. The old man is crab-red all over with gratitude for her gifts and I myself am warm in my heart.”

The old man felt: “Thank me?! Oh God.”

“Go on, thank him,” said the lady who was obsessed with the bane of her existence as with the devil and couldn't get things straight. “A young love,” the unconcerned call it, “a fling of the past.” But for the concerned parties, it eats its way under your skin like a bark-beetle, tunnels its way through the marrow, undermines, causes collapse. The victim is by no means free. Pressed by himself.

“Say thank you, won't you?!”

These words “say thank you, say thank you, say thank you—” were like shots fired in peacetime. The Hell with “say thank you.”

Like a ghost it reared up. It had no substance. Only bones. Always this lie “say thank you.” It makes everyone ill at ease.

“Hush now!” said Mr. Peter to himself, “better keep your mouth shut!”

To Rosita he said: “Whisper it quietly into his ear.”

“Grandpa, I have to whisper something in your ear.”

The old man heard nothing but “ps ps ps ps ps—.”

He was all embarrassed. On top of which it tickled him. Not a single word of thanks.

The mother said: “That's a fancy little miss. I don't know what's to become of her. Always taking and taking and taking. Who's going to tolerate that?!”

“The old man and the poet!” replied Mr. Peter and pressed the dear little one softly against himself. Then he said, hard and outright aggressively: “The rich ones! Those who no longer need to beg on the road of life, the full ones who have stored up the warmth and can radiate it like the sun, those with independent souls who no longer need to whine for love like little children whining for milk and quiet, the grownup rich ones able to do without pitiful taking, the kings, yes, the kings who live on giving! You see, we're crab-red with love!”

The young woman thought: “You've got to be old or mad. But we stayed too young. Is it any fault of ours? We still soak up the juices like a sapling. We rob nature just to exist. Oh and by the way, the earth still has a molten middle, and its chimneys sometimes spew forth and bury places blossoming with life. Isn't that so? Bane of my existence, fire of my soul, Edgar, my beloved, you keep me young, don't let me grow old!”

Everyone sat in silence.

“Rosie, don't be rude. You're going to get too heavy for Mr. Peter. Better go to bed. I'd say you've had yourself a lovely day.”

“Where were you today?!” asked Mr. Peter.

“I was at a theater!”

“Where were you?!” he said, because he wanted to hear it a hundred thousand times.

“At a theater!”

“Good night, my dear life,” said the crab-red man with the white hair and got all ga ga.

Rosie undressed with the door wide open, stood there all naked, pulled on her nightgown, lay down in her little bed and immediately fell fast asleep.

Everybody sat there in silence. The arms of the young woman hung limp at her sides.

Peter A. felt: “Life, I bow to you! Endowed with two eyes, two ears, Emperor that I am!”

The old man sat there crab-red. He said: “No, anybody who didn't see that child today—”

The lady felt: “Bane of my existence, Edgar! Rosita should have been your child! Yours, do you understand?! Yours and mine!”

She said: “What would become of Rosita in your company, the both of you?! It's a good thing we're going away soon. All these changes. Passing her from hand to hand. It's no good for children. Debauchery.”

The two old men were embarrassed like schoolboys.

Mr. Peter eyed the young woman: “Restless one! What are you missing? Always stern and measured in your manner. Never a whimsy.” Then he took the little silver spoon that had had the honor of being in Rosie's mouth and pressed it to his lips.

The grandfather got all flustered. People only understand their own poetry. The young woman smiled with glee: “You really are a madman. I'd like to be like you, Mr. Peter, a free-wheeling soul!”

Rosie dreamed in the room next door: “Ohohoho! I was at a theater!”

The old nanny thought: “How restlessly she sleeps. All these frivolities. Imagine, dragging her along to a theater, food for the heart. Children need order. Madame is sensible, not such a lunatic. But who bears the brunt of it all? Me.”

When she turned 18, she was once asked why she remained so cool and distant to all her charming gentleman callers?

Whereupon the ravishing beauty replied: “I was ten years old. And I went with my beloved Papa and the poet one evening to see Buffalo Bill.
*
Papa and the poet were very kind to me, and I found myself in an extraordinary state of mind. The whole place was drowned in the shimmer of spotlights and a cloud of pistol smoke, and the American buglers blared through the speedy charges. Everything was out of this world. It lasted for almost three hours, and Papa wanted to take me home with him already before the final number. Then the poet said: ‘Elizabeth must not miss the three Circassian riders—.' And so we stayed. Like a storm wind they came sweeping in, astride in their shortened stirrups, their arms spread wide, no reins in sight, unbelievably free and proud, as if hovering on flying horses. I leapt up from my seat, and shivering, grasped Papa's hand. Since then, no one really appeals to me—.”

__________________

*
In 1890, Buffalo Bill (Colonel William Cody) brought his Wild West Show to Vienna

When the doctor gave her the news, that she stood balanced before the dark gates of Tuberculosis, she said: “No way, not at 18 years old, for cryin' out loud!”