The Edit Page 15

  He begins to speak of the auspicious day we are experiencing. But he says this with bitter irony. I do not reply one way or the other; I do not want to disagree with this man of the world, but I nonetheless feel drawn by the bond of shared youth to those followers of Hitler in the streets. They have passed by, but traffic is still backed up behind them. I smile at the thought that ones so young could have the power to bring the staid old grown-up world of breadwinners and bureaucrats to a halt.

  Haberloch talks of today as the “death of law”—I remember that phrase exactly. How the Führer principle would soon be established and we would be back to the old feudal days of the law as the consensus not of the people or of tradition, but of one man powerful enough and tricky enough to have gained power over the rest. There is a great sadness in his eyes as he speaks, and I notice for the first time that he is not drinking coffee but brandy. He does not ask me where I stand on this issue, and for that I am thankful. Instead he lectures on about the rule of man being replaced by the rule of one man; of how the kaiser principle has ruined the German-speaking peoples with too much paternalism. He says that those young street toughs are right: Austria will be next. We will embrace the National Socialists like a whore her richest customer. His voice raised with this statement.

  I feel he must be a bit tipsy to talk so in public. The men at Freud’s table turn for a moment to see who is creating the stir. This embarrasses me. I want suddenly to be elsewhere. Haberloch drains his glass and apologizes. He calls the waiter to pay his bill. I am about to say that I must be on my way to class. We get up to leave, and as we stand, I am about a head taller than the great man. From the stage or podium, he has always taken on the proportions of a giant. His hair, so white and thick when seen from a distance, is, at closer inspection, tinged with yellow. He is suddenly, in my eyes, an old and embittered man out of step with the times and using solipsism and casuistry to defend his outmoded position.

  Once outside, he apologizes again for his outburst and calls me his young friend. Regaining his composure, he also wins back some of my respect. He breathes deeply of the chill air, and it seems to brace him better than the brandy. Squaring his shoulders, he looks once again the influential and thoughtful man he is. I repent my traitorous thoughts of only moments before. We stand for a moment there in front of Café Landtmann: I feel it is my part to await dismissal. But Haberloch continues to take in deep breaths and look into the brilliant blue sky, a sky that only extreme cold can create: that blue which is as hard and pure as a mountain lake.

  He tells me suddenly that he would appreciate some company today. He has had bad news and would be most happy if I could see my way to stay with him a little longer. It is such a straightforward and honest request that I can hardly refuse. He looks at the satchel of books I am carrying and says that he will make it good with my professors. I need only tell him who they are and he will have a little word with them. We begin walking into the Inner City from the Ring. I have no idea of our destination, but it is a pleasant day for a walk. It is by now early afternoon and the shops are reopening after the long lunch hour. We stop occasionally in front of a men’s clothing shop or an antique dealer and Haberloch investigates the contents of the display window minutely. At more than one shop, the proprietor recognizes Haberloch and comes out in the street to see if there is anything he can help the great man with. His aura of importance is completely reinstated in my eyes.

  Finally we enter a fine (“noble” is the way the Viennese describe it), large apartment on Habsburgergasse. There is an oak and plush elevator in the stairwell that we take up to the third floor. Haberloch, who has a villa in Hietzing, tells me he keeps a pied-à-terre in the city for those late nights working when he just does not want to return home. Here, he keeps his files, and now it seems he needs to fetch one before a late-afternoon court appearance. His simple pied-à-terre turns out to be an elegant flat much larger than the one that I share with my sister, Maria, and my mother. I have noticed this about influential and wealthy people: Understatement forms the very core of their self-deception.

  We go into one of the grand rooms off the entrance hall. It is set up as a study with a leather armchair by a ceramic stove and rosewood desk in the projecting bay window. It is cold in the flat, for Haberloch has not used it for some time. He pours out two brandies from a crystal decanter—to ward off the cold, he says—and I sip at mine. I am no fan of the fiery taste, but do not want to appear the callow youth, so I continue to sip as he picks through a wooden file cabinet by the desk. His back turned toward me, he apologizes once again—needlessly, I think—for his outburst at the café. But it is true, he says. We in Austria shall surely be next. He turns, and his face has a strange, rather pleading expression. He says (and I remember his exact words) that such thinking is defeatist. He wishes it were not so, but he can see that all he has so stubbornly and painfully fought for is soon going to be swept away. He wonders why any individual then should cling to outmoded codes of honor if, as he sees, the state itself is about to forgo such a code. It is the ultimate breakdown of mores, he says, and he feels he should no longer play the little boy with his finger in the dike. He laughs strangely at this turn of phrase and then approaches me, coming right up close to my face. I can smell the brandy on him.

  “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” he says.

  I am uncomfortable, that is all I know at the moment, and make no reply. We stand thus for a full minute. He looks up into my face with real force and with gray eyes that single one out, isolate one and penetrate. I have never looked so closely into a man’s eyes before and I feel somehow locked to him, under his power, and I know something new and rather terrifying is about to happen. I notice his breathing now as he stands so close to me, and it comes raspy like that of Frau Wotruba at those certain times we had together.

  Suddenly, he tosses back his head and laughs. It is ironic laughter, but not cruel, and then he slaps me on the back, telling me what a capital fellow I am and to pay no attention to an old man’s mental wanderings. “I shall need a keeper before it is all over,” he says.

  We finish our drinks and he tucks the file into his briefcase—a quite smart one out of the softest calfskin, not rough and horny like the old pigskin one I carry. Before we leave, he claps me on the back again and says he could use a bright young student like me for legal research. His last assistant has done the unforgivable of becoming a high-class lawyer in Klagenfurt—would I be interested in the position? “Take your time,” he tells me. “Let me know next week.”

  I am ecstatic at the suggestion: to team up with this famous man at the very beginning of my studies! It will mean instant success for me. Just imagine the connections one could accrue through such a man. Yet there is also the inexplicable discomfort I feel in his presence. I thank him for the offer and promise to let him know my decision by next week. We leave, taking the stairs as the elevator only carries passengers upward. Outside the house door, he indicates that he is going to the Federal Court. I must catch a late lecture at the university. He makes a comic Heil Hitler salute at me; I blush and merely nod.

  As I walk down Habsburgergasse in a daze, a fellow student catches me up. It is Hofnagel, whose patrician family also has a flat in this street. Normally, when we meet at the uni, he manages to cut me, but today he is suddenly solicitous. He is out of breath as he comes alongside me. I am surprised by his sudden interest in me, even that he knows my name, until I realize he must have seen me and Haberloch together and this has raised my stock in his eyes. He mentions, as subtly as he can, that he was not aware that I have such important friends. He says it in a way that I take to be condescending. Hofnagel is tall and stoop shouldered and wears a faint finely trimmed mustache. He brushes at it continually while talking to me. His statement is a challenge, as if to say that I probably accosted the old man in a grasping petit bourgeois attempt at securing some pull with the powerful. This constellation of priggish patr
ician assumptions angers me and I blurt out to Hofnagel that I have been offered the position as the great man’s research assistant.

  “Oh, that is rich,” he says. “That is just fine. I didn’t realize you were one of those,” he says.

  But I do not understand him. Perhaps Haberloch is a Jew? I have not thought of this possibility. I try to decide whether to bluff it out or not, but Hofnagel sees that he has me at a disadvantage.

  “But you have no idea what I mean, do you?” he says. “Impossible. I had no idea there were any pure naïfs left.”

  And then he takes great pleasure in explaining to me just what it is that half of Vienna knows about Haberloch: Namely, that he is a homosexual, and that the sinecure of his research assistant carries with it rather more responsibilities than can be accomplished in a law library.

  “I am sure you understand me, old man,” he finishes.

  And as we approach the university, he manages to pull ahead of me so that his other fancy friends will not see him talking to such a lowly and naive person as I.

  Needless to say, I did not take the proffered appointment, though I was greatly amused to learn that the snob Hofnagel himself accepted it later that year. The families were somehow connected; young Hofnagel must have capitulated under pressure from his parents, regardless of what others would say. What an object lesson for me: The absolute disregard for self-respect that the upper classes display when advancement is in the balance. Of course, I am not saying that Haberloch and Hofnagel committed any indecencies, but still …

  At any rate, Hofnagel’s unsolicited information explained the extreme discomfort I experienced in Haberloch’s presence. Now I knew the type and was duly on my guard against them. A small incident, one might say, but if I had even the slightest inclination toward a life of sodomy, I should surely have availed myself of this opportunity, for the reward of it would have been high indeed. In the end, I did not need Haberloch’s help, and, as events turned out, would have been hurt by association with him. We shall have occasion to meet up with Herr Haberloch again in these pages. …

  “You don’t look well.”

  “I feel the shits.”

  “You didn’t eat your supper last night.”

  “—”

  “You’ve got to eat.”

  “You aren’t listening. I feel the shits. I can’t eat. I think I’ve got a fever.”

  “You’re just imagining things. A form of hypochondria. Many prisoners experience it. Too much turning inward.”

  “I forgot. You’re the fucking expert on prisoners, aren’t you? You’ve made it a lifetime hobby.”

  “I didn’t come to exchange evil words. Eat your breakfast or you will become ill.”

  “Screw you. I already am ill.”

  “And your time is up. About the next letter to your agent, I mean.”

  “But I haven’t finished reading. You haven’t given me the rest.”

  “It’s right here, along with your eggs. Now I’ve kept my part of the bargain.”

  “I can’t eat. I’m sick.”

  “We’ll see.”

  The Irish goes out for a short time today, and admittedly, I notice she is unsure on her feet. Perhaps she really is ill?

  But it is a lovely day. The sun is still high in the sky and very warm. Usually, I rather like watching her in the compound during her exercise period. Yet, today, she mopes about listlessly, then sits on a rock holding her freckled face into the sun.

  She makes the situation more difficult and uncomfortable than it need be by not simply accepting it. It is as I said before: Giving up and giving in are the two things women cannot do well. With the proper mind-set, she could take this entire affair as an opportunity rather than a punishment. She is finally free to write all day long just as she chooses. I am sure this is what writers yearn for: such an opportunity to hole up and write that novel that they have been promising themselves for so long. In a way, as I said to Cordoba, I am acting as her patron. But she just cannot see it like that.

  She sits so placidly in the sun. Here is the cat in her once again: so feline and sun warmed. She barely bestirs herself for minutes on end. I think today would be a good laundry day with the sun so warm. I must get the Irish to change her clothes. The khakis she is wearing look as if they’ve been slept in. I shall talk to her after the—

  I must explain the abrupt ending in my previous diary entry. As I was musing to myself about the Irish and her hygiene, she simply fell over. She fainted.

  Three days have since passed. It has been awful.

  I was skeptical of the Irish’s faint. I let myself into the compound warily, armed with my syringe, and went over to her. She was breathing strangely, like a dog panting on a hot day. I felt her pulse: It was racing, and her skin was hot to the touch. It was a fever and not sun induced. I put my syringe away and lifted her eyelid and saw that her eye was cloudy and dilated. She truly was unconscious. I did not panic, knowing immediately what must be done. It was the same fever I’d had upon first coming here. Most Europeans, in fact, suffer from it initially. Many die. It is the rite of passage to this colony.

  Miss O’Brien is a tall, sturdily built woman. I tried lifting her, but to no avail. Dead weight in my arms, she was also too ungainly for me to hold. Gripping her under the arms, I dragged her indoors to her room and laid her on the bed. As I did so, she emitted a loud liquid sound from below, followed by the most repellent odor. It was already in her bowels, then, and from that, most die. Perhaps it would be a blessing, I thought. Nature making the decision. But I could not just leave her like that; I was compelled to do as much for her as I could while she still lived. I knew what the course of the disease would be: a fever high enough to split her head and simultaneous diarrhea that could kill her with dehydration.

  The odor was horrid. I breathed through my mouth and pulled her down from the bed and dragged her upstairs to the bath. There I stripped her clothes off and wiped her like an overgrown baby as she lay on the bath mat. Then I filled the bath with cold water and lowered her in. I propped her head up so that she would not slide under and fetched a squeeze bottle I once used to force-feed a pup whose bitch had died. As she lay in the cold water, I forced the nozzle into her mouth and made her drink. She choked at first, coughing and spitting, but did not regain consciousness. Then finally she began drinking the water, emptying the bottle. Just as soon, she voided herself in the tub. I drained the water, cleaned her off once more, and filled the tub again. This process I must have repeated ten times that first afternoon, and finally, at sunset, I began to notice a drop in her temperature—from 104 to 103. But she was far from being out of danger and was even beginning to eliminate blood.

  For me, these hours were spent in a blurry nonreflective haze. I was exhausted and dreaded the long night. Light from the sunset poured into the bathroom, turning the tile and tub a fiery red. It threw shadows of the window sash across Miss O’Brien, making the sign of the cross on her breasts. Her face was not contorted or twisted in pain, but looked very peaceful and far away. Her breasts half floated in the water, two misplaced fishing bobs rosy in the sunset. It had been many years since I had the chance to simply appreciate looking at a woman’s body. Don’t get me wrong: I was not being a cheap voyeur at this point. I felt a true intimate of the woman, as much as if we’d slept together. And then, once more, she voided herself and her eyes opened momentarily, consciousness flooding her at this most private moment, and she looked at me pleadingly, her face full of shame.

  I kept her wrapped in cool wet sheets all that night up in my own room, handy to the bathroom, and rigged up huge diapers out of bath towels and pillow slips. I forced water into her at intervals, but the swallowing also activated her sphincter and the water was passed out of her almost as fast as it entered. I fell into a fitful sleep at one point toward morning and had the dream I have not had in years: the Eichmann trial in Jerusa
lem is running in full Technicolor in my head, but I am Eichmann and I must listen to all the lies of those supposed survivors of Nazi persecution. It is a terrible dream, not because I feel any guilt, but because no one believes me when I rationally and logically tell them that I had little knowledge of such events. That I was, at first, a simple transport officer responsible for getting people and things from point A to point B. After all, if I were guilty of the horrendous crimes they say I am, would I not dream about the victims? Would I not see newsreel footage of bodies stacked like so much cordwood just as the Allied propaganda machine served up after the war? And if I were such a beast, then why would I be degrading myself so by helping the Irish, a woman who directly endangers my life? But the prosecution says this line of evidence is inadmissible.

  I awake sweating and crying out, “But it’s true I tell you!” Then I see the gray pellucid light that comes just before sunrise and I recognize the Irish’s form on my bed, and I know things are all right. I have only been dreaming and I go to her, thinking I will need to change her diaper once again, yet there is no vile odor coming from her. She is bathed in sweat just as I am. A good sign. I insert the rectal thermometer: even better. Her temperature has dropped to 101. The fever is breaking. I replace the diaper and wrap her now in dry sheets and a warm blanket. She seems to be aware of my ministrations, for as I gently wipe her forehead with a damp towel, she sighs and then falls into a sound and contented sleep until midday.