The Eternal Philistine (17 page)

And so they met up at Sendlingertor Square. He bought two box seats, but none of the boxes were completely empty because it was a wet and cold Sunday. This put him in a bad mood. He said that if he had known, he would’ve bought seats in the second orchestra section because he was, you see, really nearsighted. He grew rather melancholy and said who knew when they’d see each other again. He was from Augsburg, you see, and had to drive back to Augsburg right after the showing. Actually, he didn’t like the theater at all, and the box seats were insanely expensive.

Afterward Anna accompanied him to the train station. He got her a platform ticket and almost cried when they parted ways. He said, “Fräulein, I’m cursed. I married at twenty, now I’m forty. My three sons are twenty, nineteen, and eighteen and my wife is fifty-six. I had always been an
idealist. Fräulein, please don’t forget me. I’m a businessman. I would make a great sculptor.”

BUT DESTINY DID NOT WANT HER TO MODEL today. It had something else in store for her. That is, the Buddhist had an unexpected visitor. He belonged to those better circles to which Kastner had drawn her attention with the following words: “I’m by no means asking you to prostitute yourself!”

She was only half naked behind the dressing screen when the young gentleman bounced into the atelier. His name was Harry Priegler and he was a well-conditioned sportsman.

As the only son of a rich pig butcher and thanks to the doting love of his mother (a class-conscious daughter of a civil servant who, even during her silver wedding, could not completely forgive herself for having married a pig butcher), Harry was able to attend to his healthy muscles, nerves, and intestines with such abandon that at sixteen he was already regarded as the hope for German ice hockey. And he did not disappoint these hopeful people. Admired across the board, he soon became the most famous winger and achieved international fame with his stunning shots on goal, especially those graceful and unstoppable long-range shots that he blasted from the rear. And he always fought absolutely fairly no matter who he was covering. He never let himself commit a foul because, thanks to his subtle technique and formidable swiftness, he did not have to.

He had almost no appreciation for art. Sure, he had his
dictionary ostentatiously bound, because it was more beautiful than the most beautiful wallpaper or weapons on the wall. He also loved to read titles and chapter headings, but most of all he loved to engross his mind with quotes from sheet calendars. In spite of this the Buddhist did not find him disagreeable because, among other things, he often let him ride in his car, this being a racy sports car.

The two gentlemen were now conversing very quietly because the Buddhist, seeing as how he thought something of himself, would have been embarrassed if Anna had found out that he owed Harry forty Reichsmarks.

“Of course she’ll come along!” he said, emphasizing this “of course” with such confidence that Anna could not help overhearing it, even though she was not listening.

But now she was curious, because she loved the word “maybe.” While flipping through Van Gogh’s letters with feigned interest, she heard Harry talking about two gentlemen who wanted to personally congratulate him on account of his magnificent match in Switzerland, but while paying their courtesy visit, they stole the “One kreuzer black” and “Saxony three pfennig piece” from his stamp collection. Later on one of these gentlemen had an affair with a vivacious baroness. But the baron came home unexpectedly. He merely said, “Pardon!” That same night he shot and killed himself on his mother’s grave. And Harry said that he couldn’t understand how somebody could kill himself out of love. This also astonished Anna. That really would be eccentric of her, she thought, if she went and shot herself on her mother’s grave. Sure, she had once entertained the idea, at the time of her one true love, back when she was going out with Brunner. But nowadays such a notion seemed hilarious
to her. After all, nowadays only children kill themselves out of love!

It was only now that she understood her Brunner. He said that when two people liked each other, those two people basically got together. But all that nonsense about the soul’s role in love was just an invention of those gentlemen who had nothing better to do than to gaze at their bare navels. And in this sense it would be merely a brutish lack of sensitivity if some Anna were to demand from him not just his love but also his soul. Such a deeper form of love always ended, as you well know, in pain. And why should he make his life any more painful than it already was? After all, he didn’t want to start any family. For that he’d definitely need to muster up a special feeling, because living with the same person forever—that really did call for something special. But he didn’t want any children anyways. There were already too many of them running around as it was, what with us losing our colonies.

When Harry was introduced to Anna, he said: “Pleasure!” And to the Buddhist he said: “Forgive me if I’m interrupting something again!”

“Oh, by no means!” he politely cut in. “We’re done for the day! Fräulein, you can go ahead and put your clothes back on!”

Anna was already starting to worry that Harry would not ask her out and so she almost said “yes” too quickly, all the while astonished to find herself attracted to his tie. You see, Harry had asked her: “Fräulein, you’re going to come with me, aren’t you? Just to the Starnberger See—”

Out front was his sports car, and it was truly magnificent. And so off they went …

HERR KASTNER WALKED INTO THE ATELIER scarcely an hour later, just as he had planned to do the day before. But because the Buddhist owed Harry Priegler, among other things, forty Reichsmarks, it would have been unforgivably foolish of him to not accommodate his debtor in regards to some Anna merely for the sake of being able to keep his promise to some Kastner.

Kastner was a thorough businessman and so immediately assessed the situation. He understood everything and merely said: “Once again you’ve broken your word of honor.” But this was intended to be merely an observation, by no means an accusation, for Kastner could be generous, on some days especially so.

On such days he would awake with a peculiar feeling behind his forehead. It did not exactly hurt. It really was not all that horrible. Actually it was nothing at all.

The only unpleasant thing about it was a certain draft of air, like a fan was above him. Those were the blades of stupefaction.

“I went out of my way to bring a bottle of sloe gin,” he said, and gave a resigned smile. “It would’ve all been so easy with your gramophone. After all, she was really taken aback by the fact that I had organized this for her. She had nice skin.” And so he sat there, staring vacantly at the grease stain on the dressing screen.

This grease stain reminded him of another grease stain. One day this other grease stain was taking a walk in the
Schellingstrasse when he ran into a third grease stain that he had not seen for a long, long time. So much so that these once so chummy grease stains almost walked right past each other like strangers. That is, if a fourth grease stain with an excellent memory for faces had not suddenly shown up. “Hello!” the fourth grease stain called out. “You guys know each other! Let’s go and drink some sloe gin together, only not here. You see, there’s a draught here, as though there were a fan above us!”

Today Kastner’s speech was not literary. He was not proud of his dialect either. “I was really sloppy again today,” he muttered to himself. The sun continued to set.

It was very silent in the atelier when suddenly the Buddhist said:

“Those are Bulgarian cigarettes,” answered Kastner, and gave his grease stain an intimate look. “Bulgaria is a fertile
country, a kingdom. This stuff here isn’t genuine tobacco—the taxes are too high. Frankly we’ve lost the campaign. It was all for nothing. We lost for nothing.”

And so he drank his sloe gin. It was not long before he was in agreement. An almost pious humility suffused his soul. He did not even notice that he was content. He felt like the friendly ghost that has never been upset about his own harmlessness.

He didn’t even get angry with himself when the sloe gin ran out.

WHILE KASTNER WAS GREETING THE GREASE stain, Anna was catching sight of Starnberger See.

The city with its gray houses was gone. It was like she had never even lived there. Mansions with roses and large dogs popped up to the right, to the left, and everywhere.

The afternoon was gorgeous. Anna was driving through an excitingly foreign world. There is a big difference between riding pillion and riding in a gorgeous sports car. She had her feet placed side by side like a good little girl and her head tilted slightly backward because the wind, too, was gorgeous. And she seemed to shrink in the face of so much gorgeousness.

Harry was a dazzling gentleman driver.

He simply passed everybody and took the curves as they came. He was not talking about ice hockey for a change, but rather illuminating traffic problems. And so he explained to her that a pedestrian was surely behind every motor
vehicle accident, which is why you couldn’t blame a gentleman driver for just dimming the lights if and when he ran over such a pedestrian. Along these lines he had a friend in Berlin. And this friend once ran over a pedestrian with his fabulous car because she was jaywalking. But despite the fact that it was a case of jaywalking, an inquiry was launched. Indeed, it even went to trial, probably because that pedestrian had been the widow of a counselor for the regional court. The state’s attorney, however, failed to sentence his friend to paying damages. “After all, what do I care about a few thousand marks,” said the friend, “but as a matter of principle I want to know that things have been resolved.” He had to be acquitted, even though the chairman had asked him whether he felt sorry for this pedestrian, the jaywalking notwithstanding. “No,” he had said, “as a matter of principle—no!” He was just asserting his rights.

Revolutionary animus was set ablaze in Harry every time he saw a gasoline engine collide with the engine of the state. At such times he hated this state, which maternally protected pedestrians from every fender and reduced motor vehicle drivers to second-class citizens.

The whole German state, he said, ought to see to it that people work more so that we can finally get back on our feet! Pedestrians were going to get run over anyway, and now more than ever! Our former enemies were really right to defame Germany in this regard! He could only append his signature to these defamations because, although he was quite nationalistically minded, they were the truth. He knew exactly how the world abroad thought because, for the purpose of recovering from an exhausting ice hockey season, he would take a cruise every spring, summer, and fall through a little piece of the world.

Now they were driving through Possenhofen.

An Empress of Austria was born here. And over there, on the other shore, a King of Bavaria drowned in the lake. Both majesties were related to each other and when they were younger, they used to have romantic and hapless rendezvouses on the Rose Island between Possenhofen and the Castle of Berg.

It was a posh area.

“We’ll do the eating in Feldafing,” decided Harry. “Feldafing has an acceptable clientele since the golf course is outside. You can hardly eat anymore in the city—there are lowlifes everywhere.” And then he also mentioned that he used to drive frequently to Tutzing, this being situated only six kilometers to the south, but nowadays no decent person could go there because, you see, there’s a factory there now and you run into workers wherever you go.

YOU CAN SIT BEAUTIFULLY ON THE LAKE IN Feldafing.

Especially on such a mild autumn evening. At such times the lake is calm, and you can see the Alps from Kufstein all the way to Zugspitze, and you can hardly tell where the cliffs end and the clouds begin. Only the Benediktenwand clearly dominates the horizon and has a soothing effect.

There were nothing but classy people seated at the lakeside restaurant in Feldafing. All the gentlemen resembled Harry, even though every one of them took great pains to
look different. The ladies were quite sleek, which is why they looked really new. They moved gracefully and talked nonsense. They looked disgruntled whenever they had to go to the bathroom, whereas their respective gentlemen, sighing with relief, would then quickly pick their noses on the sly or do some other naughty thing.

The menu was long and wide, but Anna could not make anything out, even though the dishes did not have any French names, just uncommonly elegant ones.

“Empress’ soup?” she heard the waiter’s voice say. Her belly rumbled. The waiter heard it rumbling and gazed at her cheap hat, full of contempt. The rumbling bothered him because he had a bad disposition: that is, truly classy folks eat, as you well know, as though they did not have to, as though they were already totally sublimated while in fact they are just plain full.

Harry ordered two Wiener schnitzels with a side of cucumber salad, but then left it because it was too fattening for him. Then he demanded two deviled eggs and said: “Fräulein, you know what I can’t quite figure out: how come I’m so lucky with the ladies? That is, I’m very lucky. Do you have any idea how many women I could have? I could have any woman I want, but that’s just not what I’m looking for.”

While dreamily looking at the Benediktenwand he thought: “The best thing to do would be to wait till it gets dark, I’ll drive back and then pull into some bypath. And if she doesn’t want it, then out she goes.”