The Loser (11 page)

prime
witness to our situation in life, I thought, and throughout the trip through Buchs and across the Liechtenstein border my thoughts circled obsessively around Wertheimer. That he was actually born into a giant fortune, all his life hadn’t had any use for this giant fortune, had always been unhappy with this giant fortune, I thought. That his parents had been unable, as they say, to open his eyes, that they were the ones who depressed the child, I thought.
I had a depressing childhood
, Wertheimer always said,
I had a depressing adolescence
, he said,
I had a depressing period in college, I had a father who depressed me, a mother who depressed me, depressing teachers, an environment that constantly depressed me
. That they (his parents and teachers) always wounded his feelings and equally neglected his mind, I thought. That he never had a home, I thought, still standing in the restaurant, because his parents didn’t give him a home, because they weren’t able to give him a home. That he had spoken of his family like no other because his kin hadn’t been a family. That finally he hadn’t hated anything more than his parents, whom he always characterized as his undoers and destroyers. That after the death of his parents, who had driven off a cliff in the area near Bressanone, he ultimately had no one but his sister because he had offended everybody else including me and had completely taken possession of his sister, I thought, in unscrupulous fashion. That he always asked for everything, never gave anything, I thought. That he went to the Floridsdorf bridge again and again to throw himself off without actually ever throwing himself off, that he studied music to become a piano virtuoso without becoming a piano virtuoso, that finally, as he himself always said, he fled into the human sciences without knowing what these human sciences were, I thought. That on the one hand he overestimated, on the other hand underestimated his possibilities, I thought. That he kept asking me for more than he gave me, I thought. That his demands on me, as on others, were always too high and that these demands of his could never be met and as a result he had to become unhappy, I thought. Wertheimer was born an unhappy person, he knew that, but like all unhappy people he didn’t want to admit that he
had
to be unhappy, as he believed but others didn’t, that depressed him, kept him locked up in his despair.
Glenn is a happy person, I’m an unhappy one
, he often said, to which I responded that one couldn’t say Glenn was a happy person whereas he, Wertheimer, actually was an unhappy person. It’s always correct to say that this or that person is an unhappy person, I said to Wertheimer, I thought, whereas it’s never correct to say that this or that person is a happy one. But from Wertheimer’s perspective Glenn Gould was always a happy person, as I was, as I know because he told me so often enough, I thought, reproached me for being happy or at least happier than he was, for most of the time he judged himself the unhappiest person on earth. That Wertheimer also did everything to be unhappy, to be that unhappy person he was always talking about, I thought, for without a doubt his parents had tried to make their son happy, again and again, but Wertheimer had always rejected them, as he also always rejected his sister when she tried to make him happy. Like anybody else, Wertheimer couldn’t be an unhappy person every second, one who, as he thought, is completely possessed by his unhappiness. I remember that he was happy during our Horowitz course, took walks with me (and with Glenn) that made him happy, that he also managed to transform his solitude in Leopoldskron into a happy condition, as my observations show, I thought, but actually that was all over when he first heard Glenn play the Goldberg Variations, which at that time Wertheimer, as I know, never dared to play. I myself had attempted to play the Goldberg Variations at an early age and long before Glenn Gould, I was never afraid of them, unlike Wertheimer who always put off the Goldberg Variations for a rainy day so to speak, I thought, I never experienced this cowardice toward such a monumental work as the Goldberg Variations, never suffered from such cowardice, never racked my brains over such impudence, indeed never even worried about it, so that quite simply I began to practice them, and indeed years before the Horowitz course
dared
to play them, naturally by heart and not worse than many of our famous concert artists, but naturally not as well as I would have liked. Wertheimer was always an anxious type, for this serious reason fully unsuited for a virtuoso career, especially at the piano, for which one needs above all a radically fearless nature toward everything and anything, I thought. The virtuoso, especially the world virtuoso, must not fear anything, I thought, no matter what kind of virtuoso he is. Wertheimer’s fear was always plain to see, he never was able to disguise it even lightly. One day his career plan has to fall apart, I thought, as indeed it did fall apart, and not even this falling apart of his plan to be an artist was his own, it was precipitated by my decision to part definitively with my Steinway and with my career as a virtuoso, I thought. That he took everything or almost everything from me, I thought, even everything that suited me but not him, much that was useful for me but had to hamper him, I thought. The emulator emulated me in everything, even when it quite apparently went against his own interests, I thought. I always only hampered Wertheimer, I thought, and as long as I live I won’t be able to clear my head of this self-reproach, I thought. Wertheimer wasn’t independent, I thought. In many respects more refined than me but, and this was his biggest mistake, ultimately endowed only
with false feelings
, actually a
loser
, I thought. Because he didn’t have the courage to take from Glenn what was important for him, he took everything from me, which however didn’t help him since he took nothing useful from me, only useless things, although I repeatedly reminded him of this fact, I thought. If he’d become a businessman and thus an able administrator of his parents’ empire, I thought, he would have been happy, happy in his sense of the word, but he lacked the courage for such a decision, was incapable of performing
the small about-face
that I had often spoken of in his presence but that he never attempted. He wanted to be an artist,
an artist of
life
wasn’t enough for him, although precisely this concept provides everything we need to be happy if we think about it, I thought. Ultimately he was enamored of failure, if not even a little smitten, I thought, had clung to this failure of his until the end. I could actually say he was unhappy in his unhappiness but he would have been even more unhappy had he lost his unhappiness overnight, had it been taken away from him from one moment to the next, which is again proof that basically he wasn’t unhappy at all but happy, and by virtue of and with his unhappiness, I thought. Many people are basically happy because they’re up to their necks in unhappiness, I thought, and I told myself that Wertheimer actually was happy because he was continually aware of his unhappiness, could take pleasure in his unhappiness. All at once this thought struck me as not at all absurd, that is to think that he was afraid of losing his unhappiness for a reason I couldn’t know and for that reason went to Chur and to Zizers and killed himself. It’s possible we have to assume that the so-called unhappy person doesn’t exist, I thought, for we first make most of them unhappy by taking
their unhappiness
away from them. Wertheimer was afraid of losing
his unhappiness
and killed himself for this and no other reason, I thought, with a subtle sleight of hand he withdrew from the world, kept a promise so to speak in which no one believed anymore, I thought, withdrew from a world that actually always wanted only to make him and his millions of other suffering companions happy, a condition he however always knew how to prevent with the greatest ruthlessness toward himself and everybody else, because like these others, in deadly fashion, he’d grown more accustomed to his unhappiness than to anything else. After finishing his studies Wertheimer could have given several concerts but he refused, I thought, didn’t accept because of Glenn, he was suddenly incapable of playing in public,
just the thought of having to walk on stage makes me ill
, he said, I thought. He received numerous invitations, I thought, and refused all these invitations, he could have gone to Italy, to Hungary, to Czechoslovakia, to Germany, for he had made his mark as they say with the booking agents merely by his evening recitals at the Mozarteum. But everything about him was pure cowardice toward Glenn’s triumph with the Goldberg Variations. How can I perform in public now that I’ve heard Glenn, he often said, while again and again I tried to make him understand that he played better than all the others,
although not as well as Glenn
, which I didn’t say to him but which he could intuit in everything I said. The
piano artist
, I said to Wertheimer, and I very often used this notion of the piano artist when speaking to Wertheimer about the art of the piano in order to avoid the repulsive
pianist
, the piano artist then mustn’t let himself be so impressed by a genius that he becomes paralyzed, but the fact is you’ve let yourself be so dazzled by Glenn that you’re paralyzed, you, the most extraordinary talent that ever went to the Mozarteum, I said, and I spoke the truth in saying so, for Wertheimer actually was such an extraordinary talent and the Mozarteum has never since seen such an extraordinary talent, even if Wertheimer, as stated, wasn’t a genius like Glenn. Don’t let yourself be blown over by this Canadian-American whirlwind, I had told Wertheimer, I thought. Those who weren’t as extraordinary as Wertheimer didn’t let themselves be irritated by Glenn in this lethal fashion, I thought, on the other hand they hadn’t recognized the genius Glenn Gould either. Wertheimer had recognized the genius Glenn Gould and was mortally wounded, I thought. And if we wait and refuse the invitations too long, one day we suddenly lack the courage and thus the strength to perform in public, I thought, and Wertheimer, after refusing all invitations for two years after graduating, finally lacked all courage to perform in public, lacked even the strength to answer a booking agency, I thought. What Glenn could manage, that is to decide from one moment to the next never to perform in public again and still continue perfecting himself to the utmost limit of his and basically all piano-instrumental capacities and by isolating himself become the most extraordinary of extraordinary piano artists and finally even the most famous piano artist in the world, naturally wasn’t possible for Wertheimer. By avoiding public performances he gradually lost not only his ties with the
concert industry
, as one can rightly call it, but also his musical ability, for Wertheimer was unlike Glenn precisely in the sense that by isolating himself Glenn could advance his art further and to the furthest limit, whereas Wertheimer was more or less ruined by isolating himself. As for me, I played a few times in Graz and Linz, once also in Koblenz am Rhein at the invitation of a student friend, and gave it all up. I no longer took any pleasure in playing, I didn’t intend to prove myself endlessly before a public, toward which I’d grown totally indifferent in the meantime and, as it seemed to me, overnight. Wertheimer however wasn’t at all indifferent toward this public, he suffered from an uninterrupted compulsion, as I have to call it, to prove himself, as Glenn did by the way and Glenn perhaps to a much greater degree than Wertheimer, but Glenn succeeded in doing what Wertheimer only dreamed about, I thought. Glenn Gould was the born virtuoso in every respect, I thought, Wertheimer the failure from the very beginning who couldn’t admit his own failure and all his life couldn’t understand it, even though he was one of our very best piano players, as I can say without reservation, he was also the typical failure who failed, who had to fail, at his very first actual confrontation, that is with Glenn. Glenn was the genius, Wertheimer nothing but pride, I thought. Later Wertheimer actually tried to pick up the pieces, as they say, but he couldn’t find the pieces anymore. Suddenly he was
cut off
from the art of the piano, I thought. And went, as he himself repeatedly said, into the so-called human sciences, without knowing what these human sciences were, I thought. Came across the science of aphorisms, that pseudophilosophy, as one might maliciously call it, I thought. Played for years by himself and did nothing but work himself into a state of musical irritability, I thought. Suddenly tried to make his mark as Schopenhauer II, so to speak, or Kant II, Novalis II, filling in this embarrassing pseudophilosophy with Brahms and Handel, with Chopin and Rachmaninoff. And henceforth considered himself repulsive, at least that’s the impression I had when I saw him again years later. His Bösendorfer was thenceforth only a source of musical
background
for his work in the human sciences, here’s the place for that ugly word, I thought. In two years he lost practically everything; what he’d acquired in twelve years of study, I thought, was no longer audible in his playing, I recall visiting him in Traich twelve or thirteen years ago and being shocked by his
chopstick clinking
, for that’s how he played for me in a bout of artistic sentimentality. It struck me as unlikely that by offering to play something for me he had consciously hoped to demonstrate the total decline of his art, I thought rather he hoped I would encourage him, even and especially then, to pursue a career that he’d stopped believing in for nearly a decade, but there was no chance I would encourage him, I told him right out he was washed up, he should keep his hands off the piano, it was embarrassing, nothing else, to have to listen to him, his playing had made me tremendously confused and sad. He snapped the Bösendorfer shut, stood up, went outside, didn’t come back for two hours, brooded the whole evening, I thought. The piano had become a dead end for him, the so-called human sciences were no substitute, I thought. Having set out to be great virtuosos, they spend the remaining decades of their existences as piano teachers, I thought, our fellow students in the conservatory now call themselves musical pedagogues and lead a disgusting pedagogical existence, are dependent on talentless students and their megalomaniacal, art-obsessed parents while they dream of music-teacher pension plans inside their petit-bourgeois apartments. Ninety-eight percent of all music conservatory students enroll in our academies with the highest expectations and after graduating spend decades of their lives as so-called music professors in the most absurd fashion, I thought. I, like Wertheimer, was spared that existence, I thought, but also that other lifestyle that I always hated with an equal passion and that leads our well-known and famous piano players from one city to the next and finally from one spa to the next and finally from one provincial hole to the next until their fingers grow lame and their virtuoso senility has taken complete possession of them. When we arrive in such a provincial hole we’re sure to see a poster nailed to a tree advertising one of our former fellow students who is playing Mozart, Beethoven and Bartók in the only hall in town, usually it’s a shabby hall in an inn somewhere, I thought, and it turns our stomach. We were spared such an ignoble fate, I thought. Out of a thousand piano players only one or two don’t go this pitiful, repulsive route, I thought. Today not a single person knows I once studied piano, as one can say, that I attended and graduated from a music conservatory and was actually one of the best piano players in Austria, if not Europe, like Wertheimer, I thought, today I write down this nonsense which I dare tell myself is