Authors: Jenny Erpenbeck
INTERMEZZO
But if, for example, the child’s mother or father had thrust open the
window in the middle of the night, had scooped a handful of snow from the sill, and put it
under the baby’s shirt, perhaps the child would suddenly have started breathing again,
possibly cried again as well, in any case its heart might have gone back to beating, its
skin would have grown warm and the snow melted on its chest. Possibly something like divine
inspiration was required, although where such inspiration might come from was something
neither mother nor father knew. One glance out the night-dark window at the shimmering snow,
or even just the creaking of the window frame contracting in the cold, a sound made by the
cold window at precisely the moment the child fell silent, might have sufficed for
inspiration, instead of the same sound occurring just half an hour afterward when it was too
late. In secondary school, the child’s mother had learned that the Pythia had answered the
question posed by Croesus, king of Lydia, with
If you cross the Halys, you will destroy
a great empire.
But what the Pythia did with all the answers no one requested is
something the infant’s mother wouldn’t have been able to say, nor the father either.
Probably the eternal oracle sat eternally above the
pneuma
rising from the earth’s
interior and watched as her own silence grew in size, attaining inhuman proportions. If an
inspiration had come to these parents, the child’s survival would have become just that. The
weave of life in its entirety — containing all knowledge of snow, all glances
out the window, all listening to sounds made by the cold or damp wood — would have
severed one truth from the other for all time. Only the blue tinge of the girl’s skin
— above all around her mouth and chin — would have stayed with the parents, an
uncomfortable memory. A memory that would have returned to them uninvited now and then, and
neither would have mentioned it to the other, for fear of tempting fate. And so fate would
have kept quiet, and this first moment when the child might have died would have passed
without further ado.
The little girl would have learned to walk holding her mother’s
hand, her first steps taking her from the wardrobe to the chest; her great-grandmother would
have braided her hair, singing a little song about a man who makes a coat out of an old
piece of cloth, then when it’s gotten tattered he makes a vest out of the coat, then makes a
scarf from the tattered vest, a cap from the tattered scarf, a button from the tattered cap,
a nothing at all from the button, and in the end he makes this song out of the nothing at
all, but by then the braids would have been finished; and the girl’s grandmother would have
brought her store-bought sweets or homemade challah. Four years later, her little sister
would have been born, but her father would still have remained in the eleventh pay-grade, by
now he would have known every last one of the larger trees along his section of rail that
had ever dropped a branch on the tracks, and her mother, since they were unable to afford a
maid or laundress, would have run the household all on her own, washing their laundry
herself in a big pot in her kitchen so that no one would see. In the evenings, she would
have fallen asleep over a book she was trying to read, still holding it in her hand. The
girl’s grandmother, seeing her daughter struggle, would sometimes have slipped her a little
money, and on the occasion of her daughter’s seventh wedding anniversary in 1908, she’d have
given the young family a trip to Vienna for the Corpus Christi procession, where, with a
little luck, one might catch a glimpse of the old Kaiser walking as an ordinary sinner
behind his canopy Heaven. Her daughter would have hesitated to accept the gift, but in the
end, the father would have applied for a certificate of domicile for himself, his wife, and
his two girls. Proudly they would have traveled together for the first time over the rails
for which the father was responsible, passing all the large trees that had dropped branches
during storms over the last several years, this leg of the journey took an hour and twenty
minutes, but the trip as a whole was seventeen hours.
In Vienna then, in the middle of the crowd lining the streets all
the way from St. Stephen’s to the Hofburg, the child’s father would have run into a former
classmate, who was meanwhile employed at the Viennese Imperial and Royal Central Institution
for Meteorology; the men would have embraced and launched into tales of how their lives had
unfolded since they last parted; her father would have said all sorts of things, but not
this one: Just imagine, my wife took a handful of snow and saved our daughter’s life. He
would have kept silent on this score, not wanting to challenge fate. The two men would have
reminisced about what a wonderful time they’d had studying in Vienna, how they’d been “bed
lodgers” for a while, actually sharing the bed of a shift worker who was never there at
night: one of them would sleep in the bed for four hours, from ten at night until two in the
morning, then the other one would sleep from two until six, and when one of them fell asleep
during the morning lecture, the other would prop a few books under his head to keep him
comfortable. They would have also remembered how on winter weekends they often went for
walks along the snowy trails of the Vienna Woods and on one occasion they noticed the
difference in the prints they were leaving behind. Deep in conversation, they stopped
walking and happened to turn around, and there was the serpentine track left by his
companion, while his own prints formed a perfectly straight line. At the time they’d been
surprised and asked themselves what this could mean. Even today they don’t know the answer.
Each of them would have assured the other how extraordinary it was that they still felt so
close, even though more than eight years had passed since they’d last seen each other and
they hadn’t even kept in touch by letter, indeed they’d practically forgotten one another,
if truth be told. A friendship sealed up like a jar of preserves, her father would have
said, and his former classmate would have laughed and, when he was done laughing, he would
have remarked how long it had been since he had laughed like that. Then they would have
spoken of their jobs, of the envious colleagues, the resentments, the vagaries of the
Confidential Qualification, and his friend would have said how different things used to be
— as a student, he would never have believed how closely one had to watch what one
said, making it almost impossible to find true friends later in life. Her father would have
nodded, saying that he, too, had been lonely these past eight years, excepting of course his
relationship with his wife — and here he would have tightened his grip on his wife’s
arm, without mentioning, to be sure, her religious affiliation. His university friend would
now have looked at the woman more closely and then remarked that the joys of family life had
unfortunately not yet been granted him, but, well, at least he was lucky at cards, by which
he meant to say: in his career, of course, well, you can’t have it all, then he said “well”
again, not following it with any further observation. The father would have been unsure what
to say next, but his former classmate would have gone on to inform him that at the moment
the Institution for Meteorology was looking for someone who could perform various writing
tasks, and probably it wasn’t any better a job than the one he already had, as it was also
an eleventh pay-grade position, but there were bonuses, and at least it was in Vienna
— Vienna! — and he could certainly try to be of service to his friend, assuming
of course that he really did want to live in Vienna — Vienna! — though to be
sure the city did not come cheap, especially for a family, there would have to be some
tightening of belts, alas: Vienna! So think it over . . . my goodness, I’d be truly . . .
don’t mention it . . . if you could, I don’t know how I, etc. The younger daughter would
have been showing signs of impatience all this time, finally tugging more firmly on her
father’s hand, asking him to lift her up on his shoulders. He would have lifted her up and
then several times warmly thanked his rediscovered friend, who wouldn’t have wanted to
accept the thanks, after all he had no idea whether he could really, but he’d make an
effort, and possibly. . . . Right after this, the Kaiser would have appeared, walking behind
his heavenly canopy, an ordinary sinner, and the family from the provinces would have
cheered like all the rest, and already no one would have been able to distinguish them from
actual Viennese. As soon as they arrived back at the rooming house where they were staying,
her father would have written an official letter of application and mailed it off that very
evening.
His colleagues in Brody — above all his immediate
superior, Chief Inspector First Class of the Eighth Rank Vinzenz Knorr — would have
been quite astonished to hear of his transfer several weeks later. The grandmother would
have accompanied the family to the station for their second and now final departure for
Vienna, and waving goodbye, she would have been fully conscious of the fact that, along with
her daughter, all her questions about her missing father were now traveling away, and that
this was no doubt for the best.
BOOK II
1
In January 1919, the gold buttons on the father’s coat still
display the double-headed eagle and the Kaiser’s crown, but the Kaiser has been dead
two years now, and the eagle’s Hungarian half has long since flown away. But the
coat still keeps him warm, so he remains wrapped in Imperial and Royal finery,
sitting day after day in his underheated, now-democratic office in the
Meteorological Institution in Vienna; and after work he goes from there to the
under-heated coffeehouse
Vindobona
for two games of chess with his friend
and colleague, sitting in his coat there as well. Even at home in the evenings he
doesn’t take off this coat, for the wood that mother and daughter gather in the
Vienna Woods twice a week is damp, and when it’s stuffed into the kitchen stove it
hisses more than it burns. The heating stoves in the parlor, the bedroom and the
room shared by the two girls have remained cold for a long time. The father sits
down at the table in his coat with the gold buttons, there are boiled potatoes for
dinner, one each, for father, mother, and the younger daughter.
Where’s the big one?
She’s not home.
Do you remember when you were her age? That’s when things started
between us.
That’s enough now.
2
You look like a whore, the mother had said to her older daughter
the previous summer when she shortened her skirt to above the knee and wanted to
leave the house like that.
What do you know about whores? her daughter had shouted and
slammed the door so hard on her way out, the panes of glass in the upper half
rattled. After her daughter left, the mother sat there weeping for half an hour, but
then she hiked her own skirt up to above her knees and looked at her legs in the
mirror. After four years of war, Vienna had gone to seed, and so had she. She’d been
so filled with hope when she had traveled here all alone. Once her husband’s
transfer was certain, she’d come to look for an apartment. She still remembers the
first time she walked into this building smelling of limestone and dust, a limestone
and dust smell that only the buildings of a metropolis can have. It was shadowy and
cool in the building’s entryway, while outside, the heat was so thick you could cut
it with a knife. If her husband had come with her, he would have quickly slipped his
hand into her armpit when no one was looking, and she would have said, cut it out,
and laughed. Before she climbed the two flights of stairs to inspect the apartment,
she had run her hand over the head of the eagle at the bottom of the banister,
perhaps it would bring her luck. Two bedrooms with a view of the public baths across
the way, the kitchen and one bedroom facing the courtyard — the girls could
play down there — a shared water tap and a separate toilet in the stairwell.
The apartment was affordable, one month’s rent in advance. Then she went home again
to pack for the move. The last thing she packed was the footstool her grandmother
had given her for her household; the first thing she would do when she arrived would
be to place this footstool in the vestibule of the new apartment, and from then on
Vienna would be her home. When her mother wrote her two or three years later that
for the maneuvers taking place on the border they were now using live ammunition,
perhaps a war was coming, she hadn’t worried. They had fled from the provinces to
Vienna as if taking refuge on an enormous ship, but it would never have occurred to
them to suspect that this ship was already beginning to sink.
Fire, locusts,
leeches, plague
,
bears, foxes, snakes, insects,
lice
were names that had often been given to Jews here in Vienna, but she
hadn’t known that.
God our Father whom we love, you gave us teeth, now give us
food
. Perhaps the eagle at the bottom of the banister was really a vulture
that had been waiting all these years for her demise; in any case she’s been
fighting back for years now, refusing to let her family be turned into fodder, but
this requires all her strength — strength she has, and also strength she
hasn’t had for a long time now. She’s stopped plucking the hairs on her legs, her
toenails are hard, her calves full of blue veins. In the parks of Vienna, the grass
grows knee-high in summer, open squares are used to grow carrots, potatoes, and
turnips, the countryside is sweeping its way across Vienna, wiping away the city,
and no one much cares as long as he himself survives, there isn’t enough life left
to spend correcting and clipping away at life.
And try your arm, as a boy
beheads thistles, against oak-trees and mountain heights
. In summer,
Arenberg Park is barely distinguishable from the meadows surrounding Brody near the
Russian border, but now she’s grown up and has other things to do than breaking off
a hazel switch and scything the grass with it as she crosses a field (as she used to
so as not to overlook the edge of the
palatschinke
). They didn’t escape to
Vienna to starve there. But no one can predict when it will be revealed that a wish
is going to be left unfulfilled.
I’ve got just a few more things to copy out, he tells his
wife.
That’s all right, she says, and leaves the kitchen.
As the following chronicle documents, the Styrian ground shook
for thirty days. The most extensive of these shocks were recorded on days when
disturbances that originated in the area around Laibach were felt in our region
as well.
The little one — she’s still called this by her parents even
though she’s over thirteen now and nearly five foot seven — is out in the
vestibule preparing for her nighttime shift standing in line; she clamps a blanket
under her arm, and her mother straps the folding chair to her back. A
lange
loksh
. After she leaves, her mother goes to sleep for a few hours before
midnight when it’s her turn to take her daughter’s place in line. With any luck,
after standing in line all night long, they’ll be given cow udder at seven in the
morning. Udder is edible if you boil it in milk.
The big one’s bed is empty.
3
Most definitely she was not a whore. Already the year before last
she’d have been able to sell herself for two pairs of shoes, and recently also for
one liter of cream, fifteen potatoes, or a half pound of fat. Again and again she’d
had her price whispered in her ear by one or the other black marketeer, a price that
— like all prices — was constantly in flux according to the prevailing
rates of exchange, a flux that invariably maintained a downward trend. She could
have sold herself long ago to keep her family from freezing at home, or for her
sister, who was growing faster than she should. Perhaps in the end her mother was
angry with her for doing exactly the opposite of what she reproached her daughter
for: still trying to be young without selling herself. On the banks of the Danube
one night the previous summer, she’d let someone unbutton her blouse for the first
time, a younger schoolmate had slipped his hand under the fabric and touched her
breasts, but that’s all she’d permitted, after all, he was practically a child.
Another night the previous summer, her father’s friend had met her once in secret
and said he found her red hair more alluring than anything he’d seen in all his
life, and then he’d kissed her hair and finally her shoulder, but that’s all she’d
permitted, after all, he was too old. Possibly the man destined for her was just
falling in battle on the banks of the Marne or the Soca, bleeding to death in the
barbed wire outside Verdun, or losing his legs. This war was shooting her youth to
pieces as she was still marching through it. Her best friend had gotten engaged to a
university student who had been called up; for two years he had fought battle after
battle and now he lay in a field hospital with gas poisoning. Someone should declare
war on war, but how that was supposed to work, she didn’t know, and neither did her
friend. In the food lines she’d seen mothers hold up their starving children in
front of the soldiers on duty, threatening to hang them from the window frame and
themselves as well, or to take care of the entire family at once by drowning
everyone in the Danube; one of them had even laid her infant down in the street,
refusing to pick the baby up again because she didn’t know how she could go on
feeding it. Once, when the daughter was to return home empty-handed after hours of
waiting, she felt such fury that she called on the other women to march on the
Rathaus
with her to complain, she’d waved her handkerchief in the air
above her head like a flag, and sure enough, hundreds of desperate women fell into
step behind her — a girl of only fourteen. But for several hours, no one came
out of the
Rathaus
to negotiate with them, and the women — who still
had to find something to feed their families that day — gradually scattered
and dispersed. She, on the other hand, had sat down right where she was and wept,
using the handkerchief that had served as her flag to blow her nose and dry her
tears. She hadn’t told her mother of this defeat, but instead had resolved that very
day to make herself independent of hunger, to stop letting her own body blackmail
her into failure, and the less she ate — this is something she’d already
noticed — the clearer her thoughts became. In the end her perceptions were so
heightened that during the nights of that last summer, lying with her best friend on
the banks of the Danube pretending to be young, she heard not only the river’s
current but even the fish and snakes gliding beneath the water’s surface,
clairvoyant with hunger she knew how the creatures in the river’s depths coiled
around each other, snapping and hissing.
4
He wasn’t the only human being in the world who had an inkling of
how everything was connected to everything else, otherwise, he’d have chosen dying
over freezing and watching his family freeze, starving and watching his family
starve.
A remarkable phenomenon of the cycle of tremors beginning with the 1895
Easter earthquake in Laibach is that some of the aftershocks continued for quite
some time afterward, taking a significant toll in certain areas, and displaying
phenomena similar to those of the main tremor. The earthquake of April 5, 1897,
though not particularly strong, was distinguished by the motion of the ground
being less pronounced than the shock’s acoustic effects.
In any case, he
would have to remain alive until at least the first of the next month, because then
his wife would receive his salary. One month’s salary, if she stretched it
skillfully, would last a week. What would happen during the remaining three weeks of
that month and the weeks of the following one, and what in the world would happen
after that — this he did not know.
The tremor consisted of two shocks from
below, the first of which was stronger; each lasted for approximately 2 sec.
with a 1 sec. interval between; according to observations, the shaking appeared
to be directed from north to south and was accompanied by a sound like that of a
cart being driven into a building’s entryway; this preceded the tremor by
several seconds and was longer in duration. Clocks and lamps vibrated.
He cuts the tips off his gloves so he can hold the pen better. When the
ink begins to solidify in the cold, he breathes on the nib.
5
In November, the war was declared over, and in December her
friend’s fiancé finally returned home. One afternoon he was suddenly standing there
at the door, and at first the girls didn’t even realize that they knew him, that’s
how much he’d changed. Even weeks after his return they saw how it pained him when
someone scattered crumbs for the pigeons in the park. When they asked him about the
war, he refused to answer, he’d just take one of the cigarette stubs he’d collected
somewhere out of his jacket pocket and start smoking. When they told him they wanted
to go out, he didn’t mind, he just stayed home. And when in January the curfew was
changed from ten p.m. to eight, they would often simply remain in her friend’s
apartment to save the twenty heller coin they’d have to slip the concierge to be let
in after curfew. They would drink and talk, sometimes she even stayed the night,
sleeping on a mattress in the vestibule. On those few evenings when she went out
without her friend, she refused to let anyone touch, much less kiss her.
6
At night, the younger daughter sits in the street, waiting for
midnight to come. Indeed, she’s been sitting like this for years, sometimes with her
mother, sometimes with her sister, and often alone. This waiting began soon after
the start of the war — first for bread, meat, and fat, and later also for
sugar, milk, potatoes, eggs, and coal. The war is over, and still she’s sitting
here, just the same as before, in this dark forest of bodies that has been growing
up all around her for the past five years, stretching its limbs further with each
passing night into alleyways and streets, around corners, up steps, and across the
squares of Vienna, while she herself has grown within it, grown to five foot seven
now, shooting up like a beanpole despite the starvation, and for years spending
night after night waiting amid thousands of others who, by waiting, were fighting
for survival: in front of market halls, Ankerbrot bakeries, butcher shops, and flour
distribution centers, waiting in front of the various points of sale maintained by
the milk industry, and also in front of shops offering carbide, candles, shoes,
coffee, or soap; they stood, lay, and sat everywhere: either in silence or
murmuring, the blood of Vienna beginning to stir as morning approached, to push and
shove, to kick and curse, to elbow its way forward, to complain, persevere, bite, or
scratch until the obstacle fell away flailing, then was pushed aside, pushing
others, screeching, crying, mocking, and falling into despair. Five foot seven,
while others had become weak or old during these same nights, while some had gone
insane or fallen into a stupor — a few had even died while they were waiting.
She sits here on her folding chair, enjoying the fact that the cobblestones are so
uneven that she can rock back and forth on the chair, she sits wrapped in a blanket,
waiting for midnight when her mother will relieve her.