Old Masters (2 page)

Herr Reger
is a clever, educated man,
Irrsigler said. Yes, I had said to Irrsigler, Herr Reger is not only a clever and educated man, but also a famous man, after all he had studied music in Leipzig and Vienna and written music reviews for
The Times
and was writing for
The Times
to this day, I said. Not an ordinary scribbler, I said, not a chatterbox, but a musical scholar in the truest sense of the word and with the full seriousness of a great personality. Reger was not to be compared with all those garrulous musical columnists who poured out their garrulous refuse in the daily papers day after day. Reger was in fact a philosopher, I said to Irrsigler, a philosopher in the full clear meaning of the term. For over thirty years Reger has written his reviews for
The Times,
those little musical-philosophical essays which would no doubt one day be brought together and appear in book form. This sojourn in the Kunsthistorisches Museum is undoubtedly one of the prerequisites of Reger's being able to write for
The Times in just the way
he does write for
The Times,
I
said to Irrsigler, regardless of whether or not Irrsigler understood me, probably Irrsigler did not understand me at all, I thought and still think. That Reger writes his musical criticism for
The Times
is
not known to anyone in Austria, or at most a few people know about it, I said to Irrsigler. I might also say
Reger
is a private philosopher, I
said to Irrsigler, regardless of the fact that it was a rather stupid thing to say to Irrsigler. At the Kunsthistorisches Museum Reger finds what he does not find anywhere else, I said to Irrsigler, everything that is important, everything that is useful to his thinking and to his work. People may regard Reger's behaviour as mad, which it is not, I said to Irrsigler, here in Vienna and in Austria Reger is not taken note of, I said to Irrsigler, but in London and England, and even in the United States, people know who Reger is and what an outstanding expert Reger is, I said to Irrsigler. And do not forget the ideal temperature of eighteen degrees Celsius, which is maintained here all the year round at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, I also said to Irrsigler. Irrsigler only nodded his head. Reger is a figure highly thought of throughout the world of musical scholarship, I said to Irrsigler yesterday, only here, in his native country, no one wants to know about him, on the contrary, here in his native country, Reger, who has left all the others in his field far behind him, that whole revolting provincial incompetence, is being hated, yes, nothing less than hated in his native Austria, I said to Irrsigler. A genius like Reger is hated here, I said to Irrsigler, regardless of the fact that Irrsigler had not understood at all what I meant by saying to him that a genius like Reger was hated here, and regardless of whether it is actually correct to speak of Reger as of a genius,
a scholarly genius, and indeed a human genius,
I
reflected, that Reger was certainly. Genius and Austria do not go together, I said. In Austria one has to be mediocre in order to be listened to and taken seriously, one has to be a person of incompetence and of provincial mendacity, a person with an absolute small-country mentality. A genius or even an exceptional mind is sooner or later
finished off
here in a humiliating manner, I said to Irrsigler. Only people like Reger, whom one can count on the fingers of one hand in this dreadful country, survive this state of degradation and hatred, of oppression and disregard, of that universal anti-intellectual meanness which reigns everywhere in Austria, only people with a magnificent character and a truly acute incorruptible intelligence. Although Herr Reger has a far from unhappy relationship with the directress of this museum and although he knows this directress well, I said to Irrsigler, he would never have dreamt of asking this directress for anything concerning himself and this museum. Just as Herr Reger had decided he would inform the management, and that means the directress, of the shabby state of the settee covers in the rooms and possibly induce her to have new settee covers made, the settees were re-covered; and very tastefully too, I said to Irrsigler. I do not believe, I said to Irrsigler, that the management of the Kunsthistorisches Museum is aware that Herr Reger has been coming to the museum every other day for more than thirty years in order to sit on the settee in the Bordone Room, that I do not believe. Because that would surely have cropped up in conversation at a meeting between Reger and the directress, as far as I know, the directress is unaware of it because Herr Reger never mentioned it and because you, Herr Irrsigler, have always kept quiet about it because it has been Herr Reger's wish that you would keep quiet about the fact that for over thirty years Herr Reger has been visiting the Kunsthistorisches Museum every other day except Mondays. Discretion, that is your very strong suit, I said to Irrsigler, I reflected, while regarding Reger who was in turn regarding Tintoretto's
White-Bearded
Man
and who, for his part, was being regarded by Irrsigler. Reger was an exceptional person and exceptional persons had to be handled carefully, I said to Irrsigler yesterday. That we, that is Reger and I, should visit the museum on two successive days is unthinkable, I said to Irrsigler yesterday, and yet I have come back today, of all days, because Reger had expressly wished me to do so, but for what reason Reger is here today I do not know, I reflected, but I should soon know it. Irrsigler, too, had been rather astonished when he saw me today, because only yesterday I had told him that it was quite out of the question that I should go to the Kunsthistorisches Museum two days running, just as until now it had been out of the question for Reger. And now we are both, Reger and myself, back today at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, where we were only yesterday. This must have confused Irrsigler, I thought. It was possible, I thought, to make a mistake for once and therefore go to the Kunsthistorisches Museum again the next day, but surely, I reflected, only for
Reger
alone
to make such a mistake or for
me alone
to make such a mistake, but surely not for
both of us,
Reger
and me,
to make a mistake on this point. Reger had expressly said to me yesterday,
Come here tomorrow
, I
can still hear Reger saying it. But Irrsigler, of course, had not heard anything about it and did not know anything about it and was, quite naturally, astonished to see Reger and me back at the museum today. If Reger had not said to me yesterday: Come here tomorrow, I should not have come to the Kunsthistorisches Museum today, possibly not until next week, for unlike Reger, who in fact goes to the Kunsthistorisches Museum every other day, and has moreover done so for decades, I do not go to the Kunsthistorisches Museum every other day but only when I feel like it and when I am in the mood for it. And if I wish to see Reger I do not necessarily have to go to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, I only have to go to the
Ambassador
Hotel, where he always goes after leaving the Kunsthistorisches Museum. At the Ambassador I can see Reger every day if I am so disposed. At the Ambassador he has his corner by the window, that is the table next to the so-called
Jewish table,
which stands in front of the
Hungarian table,
which stands behind the
Arab table
when you look from Reger's table towards the door to the foyer. Of course I much prefer going to the Ambassador rather than to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, but when I cannot wait for Reger to come to the Ambassador I go to the Kunsthistorisches Museum a little before eleven in order to meet him, my imaginary father. Until noon he finds the eighteen-degree temperature at the Kunsthistorisches Museum agreeable, in the afternoon he is happier at the warm Ambassador, which always keeps a temperature of twenty-three degrees. In the afternoon I am no longer so fond of thinking nor do I think so intensively, Reger says, so I can afford the Ambassador. The Kunsthistorisches Museum is his
mental production shop,
he says, while the Ambassador is, in a manner of speaking, his
ideas-processing
machine.
At the Kunsthistorisches Museum I feel exposed, at the Ambassador I feel sheltered, he says. This contrast of Kunsthistorisches Museum and Ambassador is what my thinking needs more than anything else, exposure on the one side and shelter on the other, the atmosphere at the Kunsthistorisches Museum on the one side and the atmosphere at the Ambassador on the other, exposure on the one side and shelter on the other, my dear Atzbacher; the secret of my thinking is based on my spending the morning at the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the afternoon at the Ambassador. And what greater opposites could there be than the Kunsthistorisches Museum, that is the picture gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and the Ambassador. I have made the Kunsthistorisches Museum a mental habit for myself just as the Ambassador, he said. The quality of my reviews for
The Times,
to which, incidentally, I have been a contributor for thirty-four years, he said, in fact depends on my visiting the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Ambassador, the Kunsthistorisches Museum
every other
morning, the Ambassador
every
afternoon. This routine alone saved me after the death of my wife. My dear Atzbacher, without this routine I should have died too, Reger said yesterday. Everybody needs such a routine for survival, he said. It may be the craziest of all routines but he needs it. Reger's condition seems to have improved, his way of speaking is once more the same as before the death of his wife. Although he says he has now got over the
dead point,
he will nevertheless suffer all his life from having been left on his own by his wife. Time and again he says that he had been trapped in the lifelong mistaken belief that
he
would leave his wife, that
he
would die before her, and because her death came so suddenly he had been firmly convinced, even a few days before her death, that
she
was going to survive him;
she
was the healthy one,
I
was the invalid, yes, it was in this belief and in this conviction that we always lived, he said. Nobody has ever been so healthy as my wife,
she lived a whole life in health, whereas I have always led an existence in sickness, indeed an existence in mortal sickness,
he said. She was the healthy one, she was the future, I was always the invalid, I was the past, he said. That he would ever have to live without his wife and actually on his own had never occurred to him, that was no thought for me, he said. And if she should die before me I would follow her into death, as quickly as possible, he had always thought. Now he had come to grips, on the one hand, with the error that she would die after him and, on the other, with the fact that he had not killed himself after her death, that he had not therefore, as he had intended, followed her into death. As I always knew that she was everything to me I was naturally unable to think of continued existence after her, my dear Atzbacher, he said. Out of this human weakness, though in fact it is unworthy of a human being, out of this cowardice, I did not follow her into death, but on the contrary, as it seems to me now (as he said yesterday), I have grown stronger, at times I have recently felt that I am stronger than ever. I now cling to life even more than in the past, whether you believe it or not, I am in fact holding on to life with the wildest fervour. I do not want to admit it, but I live with an even greater intensity than before her death. True, it took me over a year even to be able to think this thought, but now I am thinking this thought without embarrassment, he said. What depresses me so excessively is the fact that such a receptive person as my wife was should die
with all that enormous knowledge which I conveyed to her,
that she should have taken that enormous knowledge into death with her, that is the worst enormity, an enormity far worse than the fact that she is dead, he said. We force and we stuff everything within us into such a person, and then that person leaves us, dies on us, forever, he said. Added to it is
the suddenness
of it, the fact that we did not foresee the death of that person, not for one moment did I foresee the death of my wife, I looked upon her just as if she had eternal life, never thought of her death, he said, just as if she really lived
with my knowledge right into infinity as an infinity,
he said. Really a precipitate death, he said. We take such a person for eternity, that is the mistake. Had I known she was going to die on me I should have acted entirely differently, as it was I did not know she was going to die on me and before me and so I acted utterly senselessly, just as though she existed infinitely into infinity, whereas she was not made for infinity at all but for finiteness, like all of us. Only if we love a person with such unbridled love as I loved my wife do we in fact believe that person will live forever and into infinity. Never before, when sitting on the settee in that Bordone Room, had he kept his hat on, and just as the fact that he had ordered me to the museum for today disquieted me, because this was really the most unusual fact imaginable, as I thought, the fact that he had kept his hat on while sitting on the settee in the Bordone Room was most unusual, quite apart from a whole string of other unusual circumstances in this connection. Irrsigler had stepped into the Bordone Room and, having walked over to him, whispered something into Reger's ear, only to leave the Bordone Room immediately afterwards. Irrsigler's communication, however, at least viewed from the outside, produced no effect on Reger, after Irrsigler's communication Reger remained sitting on the settee just as before Irrsigler's communication. Nevertheless I was reflecting on what Irrsigler might have said to Reger. But I immediately gave up my reflections on what Irrsigler might have said to Reger and instead observed Reger and simultaneously heard him saying to me: People go to the Kunsthistorisches Museum because it is the done thing, they even travel to Vienna from Spain and Portugal and go to the Kunsthistorisches Museum so that back home in Spain and Portugal they can say that they have been to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, which is surely ridiculous as the Kunsthistorisches Museum is not the Prado, nor the Lisbon Museum, the Kunsthistorisches Museum is a long way from being that. The Kunsthistorisches Museum does not even have a Goya and it does not even have an El Greco. I saw Reger and observed him and simultaneously heard what he had said to me the day before.