Memoirs of an Anti-Semite (11 page)

Wolf himself eventually explained it to me. Not only was Uncle Hubert suspected of homosexuality, but people had ideas about him and his friends, the rough hunting buddies who moved into the tower during the winter, those “last heroes and warriors” of a free, virile, wind- and-weather-beaten world of peril and daring. It was generally accepted that his friendships were relationships of homoerotic love, and my friendly, good-natured, apple-cheeked kinsman was the laughingstock of the town, which viewed his well-rounded behind as the very symbol of sexual deviance. What about his model marriage with Aunt Sophie? Was I really so naïve as I seemed? exclaimed Wolf; didn't I know what to make of Stiassny's presence in the house for all these decades? What else was Aunt Sophie's spiteful refusal to have anything to do with his father, Dr. Goldmann, but an act of revenge? There was an ever-festering memory that the doctor's wife, my friend Wolf's mother, had had an affair with Stiassny. “You goyim always try to act like you ain't got no
potz
and your women ain't got no cunt between their legs,” said Wolf.

I cannot describe the profound repugnance I felt during the next few weeks, not only toward Wolf Goldmann but toward just about everyone. Not even Haller, the blacksmith, was excluded, ever since Wolf had told me that Dr. Goldmann had once sewn up a serious injury on Haller's penis, a wound obviously made by human teeth and hardly by a woman inept in such amorous practices but, rather, in a passionate action by a man upon the member of the disciple of Hephaestus and the German descendant of Wieland. I almost threw up the next time I went into the smithy to cast lead pellets for my slingshot. Holding out his callused palm with the pellets he had found in the garage, Haller winked and asked, “What do I get for keeping my mouth shut the other day?” Wolf Goldmann had explained that sexual perverts regard boys our age as downright tidbits.

I was homesick. I missed my mother. Her sickly, high-strung sentimentality might be disquieting; but her feelings were probably deeper and steadier than those of her older and more robust cousin, who, however, was obviously no less rapturous, no less susceptible. Although repelled by the thought, I told myself that an encounter between my mother and Stiassny would have led to an incomparably more passionate and more poetic relationship than—if I were willing to believe Wolf Goldmann—the one between Stiassny and Aunt Sophie. Nonetheless, everything in me rebelled against the idea that my mother could lie in Stiassny's arms and that I could speak about her and her lover as unabashedly as Wolf did. Now my hotheaded father's somber passion for hunting became the escapism of an absolutely pure and noble man who preferred the loneliness of the raw universe of mountains to the filth of the lowlands. I myself wanted to withdraw from the world's dubious hustle and bustle. I spent a lot of time in the tower, working on the syllabus for my makeup examination.

For the sake of old friendship, which was going to end anyhow the day we went to different schools, I once more followed Wolf Goldmann to his home. His father was out for the day, making calls in nearby villages, so we had all the time we wanted to look at his office undisturbed. Finally I had a chance to have a good look at the famous skeleton: it struck me as sinister because its bones were so shiny I couldn't believe they had ever been hidden in a human body. But even more I was fascinated by an electrostatic machine, which was meant for nervous ailments. As Wolf explained, the patient was made to hold two metal rods in his hands. They were connected with the electric current, which could be regulated from low to very high voltage, giving him either a gentle tingling and prickling or a powerful shock.

Wolf wanted me to try it, but I was too cowardly to grasp the rods. “What's wrong?” he asked derisively. “The goyish hero isn't big enough for a little tickling?” He took the two metal rods into his hands and nodded at me to switch on the machine. “Push the little button forward—but slow!”

Later on, I was unable to tell what had driven me to push the switch not slowly but with a brutal thrust up to the highest degree. But at the moment, in any case, the effect was comical: Wolf reared up, twisted convulsively, kicked his legs without really managing to move them, and his red hair stood on end like a scarecrow's. What delighted me most of all was his pleading look when he held out his hands with the metal rods, trying to get me to liberate them. All his smug self-confidence was gone and his ram-face was now the face of a sacrificial lamb—the face of the slaughterhouse cattle his grandfather had grown rich on.

Despite later accusations, I do not believe I hesitated long before pushing the switch back so that he could drop the rods. In any event, when I released him, he was on his knees, holding out the hands from which the metal grips had fallen, and piteously crying, “My hands! My hands!”

The summer was waning, while I was virtually suspended in my relatives' home—or, in the parlance of the dueling fraternities, I was “under beer blackball.” That is to say: I lived in a generally shared awareness of having committed a transgression of which I most likely could not exonerate myself, no matter how hard I dueled. True, Uncle Hubi resolutely took my side, treating my delinquency as a bagatelle—which it was, when all was said and done, for after a few weeks Wolf Goldmann's precious pianist-hands were as agile as ever. But Wolf's insinuations about my uncle's secret motives for his friendliness toward me made me suspicious, no matter how hard I tried not to think of them. Involuntarily I withdrew from Uncle Hubi, too. Aunt Sophie treated me with an even, cool matter-of-factness. She did not mourn her dream; she let everyone know that it had simply been a dream and she had awoken from it. For, needless to say, Wolf Goldmann no longer came to the house. His father treated his hands very carefully with special massages and baths, and then sent him back to his mother earlier than scheduled. Nor did Wolf come to say good-bye to Aunt Sophie, much less to me.

I would have liked to ask Stiassny for news of the Goldmann house. He was presumably the only one still in contact with the doctor. But I made a point of not bringing up this delicate topic. I feared lest my parents might learn about my failures here too, among my loving and tolerant kinfolk; and oddly enough, I imagined that Stiassny was merely waiting for the right moment to tell them. I no longer saw him as baiting me with those ironically exaggerated courtesies, those repulsive homages full of dark allusions to my penitent's role. Instead of responding to them sedulously and in confusion, as in the past, I was as matter-of-fact and cool to him as I could learn from Aunt Sophie's example. Stiassny commented on my altered conduct, whispering into my ear, “Bravo! Now one is even developing character. Keep up the good work! Personality, after all, is nearly always the result of seizing the bull by the horns.”

Naturally, I also avoided the smithy. My slingshot hung in the tower from a hook on the rifle stand; I did no more shooting with it, or with a bow and arrow. I resumed my protracted scouting in the countryside, accompanied by Max, who agreed with me about everything; we were reunited as a twosome. I did not resent him for his disloyal love for Wolf Goldmann, who, after all, had been my friend. It did smart a bit, to be sure, that Max's love had been so tempestuous; but I forgave him because he was young.

I was, however, resolved to make Max really tough and fierce. Character was the result of seizing the bull by the horns. I was convinced that a reckless dog would have to develop the virtue of unconditional loyalty to his master.

In a corner of the yard, under huge dark acacias, an old and now almost unused bowling green was decaying. A small kiosk of aged, rotting wood, the so-called gazebo, contained equipment for all sorts of lawn games: baskets and quoits, croquet mallets and badminton nets. The place was a paradise for countless stray cats, who had their kittens there, played with each other, and dozed in the shade. As they did in the mangy groves outside Dr. Goldmann's villa, the cats had multiplied here into a true plague; they stank to high heaven and sang all night long. I would always sic Max on them when I passed, and he stormed, intrepid, into their midst; they would climb up to the gazebo roof or into the acacias or over the fence and away to the village. Now I devised an installation to train Max for more earnest encounters. Taking a long, narrow crate which had once housed mallets, I buried it in such a way that it led into the earth like a slanting adit—an artificial foxhole, only with a pipe ending in a cul-de-sac. I removed the one wall of the narrow side to form the entrance hole. It was not all that difficult to capture one of the felines and put her in—then I added my dachshund Max.

The result was lamentable. There was a very brief and blustery racket under the earth; then Max shot yowling out of the hole, whimpering as he licked his scratched-up nose; and neither imperious commands nor friendly coaxing could get him to go back inside. Furiously, I stuck my arm all the way in to pull out the cat and have her continue fighting with Max in the open. I clutched something moving, hairy, and warm, but simultaneously I felt a violent pain in my hand. The cat had sunk her teeth between my thumb and forefinger. Unable to fling her off, I closed my hand as tight as I could and dragged her out of the foxhole. Her teeth were too deep in my hand for me to shake her away, so I just closed my hand all the more tightly; now she was kicking all four legs against my lower arm, baring her sharp claws. My shirt was shredded as quickly as my flesh.

To my misfortune, Florica, the Rumanian chambermaid, happened along at that moment. Catching sight of me smeared with blood and with the cat on my hand, she began to shriek at the top of her lungs. Now my bad conscience made me panic. I did not want everyone in the house to see this misdeed as well. The cook was already dashing into the courtyard; Katharina, the housekeeper, came running up; and Haller, alarmed by Florica's yells, raced over from the smithy. I did the stupidest thing I could. With the cat on my hand, I ran through the gates into the village. There, on the road, by the camomile-covered edge of the ditch, I knelt down on the cat's chest. Now she had to let go. I felt her ribs cracking; her fangs opened wide; I pulled out my hand. But when I got to my feet, I was surrounded by a swarm of yowling street urchins.

My arm was in a bad state. The cat had not exactly been clean, and an infection was very likely; I certainly had to get a tetanus shot without delay. That, at least, was Aunt Sophie's opinion, uttered authoritatively against the prattle of all the people around me—the Jewish urchins, nearly all the house servants and farm workers, and the tenants of the houses near the courtyard gates. They stood around me, full of hostility.

I was dragged off to Dr. Goldmann.

Dr. Goldmann may have already been told of the circumstances of my injury by the incredibly swift system of information typical of a small provincial town; sternly he declared he would not treat me. In stating this to Aunt Sophie, who confronted him for the first time, he was so gruff and insulting that later on, even those witnesses who fundamentally approved of his conduct had to admit that his vehemence had been excessive and unprofessional.

Alas, the affair was not without repercussions, although they were not grave so far as I was concerned. First, I was taken to the apothecary, who cleansed, disinfected, and bandaged my mangled arm as best he could. Next, I had the satisfaction of seeing Geib get the Daimler out of the garage just for me and drive me off in a kind of somber triumphal procession, followed by my old enemies the street urchins, as well as the not exactly friendly or sympathetic gazes of the adult inhabitants of the village. Upon reaching Czernowitz, I received medical care plus much tenderness from my mother. Instead of going back to my kinfolk, I stayed in the city until it was time for me to return to Vienna for the makeup examination, which, incidentally, I passed with flying colors thanks to my studying during my “beer blackball” period. I took all these things for granted, like the passing of my childhood in the scarcely perceived course of days.

For Aunt Sophie and Uncle Hubi, however, certainly for Dr. Goldmann, and presumably also for my friend Wolf, indeed even for Stiassny, the incident caused far-reaching changes. It may well have been Stiassny who brought up the absurd idea that Uncle Hubi ought to challenge Dr. Goldmann to a duel because of his unconscionable behavior toward Aunt Sophie; in fact, my uncle was supposedly obliged to do so both as a member of a dueling fraternity and as a former officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army. But whether Stiassny suggested it or not made no difference. Uncle Hubi refused; and his refusal was supported by my father, who claimed it was a downright impertinence, expecting someone to duel with a Jew. In the end, my father drove out with a specially chosen dog whip in order to “catch the filthy Jewboy in the middle of the street and teach him what'll happen to him if it crosses his mind to get cheeky.” Luckily things did not go that far.

It seems out of the question that Uncle Hubi's refusal was due to a certain shyness regarding Dr. Goldmann's fencing ability, since the insult was serious enough to challenge Dr. Goldmann to pistols, which my uncle could certainly handle more effectively. Still, the rumors about his backing down circulated so stubbornly that the case was brought before a court of honor in Uncle Hubi's fraternity at Tübingen. The court would not accept the argument that as a Jew, Dr. Goldmann was not worthy to duel with. Although an intellectual, he was indubitably an academic as well, and consequently had some claim to defend his honor with a weapon. Uncle Hubi, until then a highly honored alumnus, was declared guilty of cowardice by the court of honor and “expelled,” and in the most humiliating form to boot: namely “c.i.”—
cum infamia
. It nearly broke his heart. Most of his old hunting buddies deserted him.

Aunt Sophie changed. Her blunt, crusty, warmhearted realism became sharp, occasionally gross. Instead of endorsing every statement of Uncle Hubi's, as she had done all her life, she now frequently contradicted him; and her “Well, Hubi's perfectly right again” was gradually transformed into an equivalent stereotype: “Well, naturally, that's one of Hubi's typical idiocies again.”