The Loser (15 page)

loser
immediately, unlike me, who came up with the notion of dead-end types only after observing him and living with him for years. We always have to deal with losers and dead-end types like him, I said to myself and lowered my head into the wind. We have the greatest trouble saving ourselves from these losers and these dead-end types, for these losers and these dead-end types risk everything on terrorizing the people around them, killing off their fellow human beings, I said to myself. Despite their weakness and precisely because of their weak constitution they have the capacity to devastate the people around them, I thought. They are more ruthless with the people around them and with their fellow human beings, I said to myself, than we can initially imagine, and when we discover what makes them tick, discover this deep-rooted loser mechanism and dead-end-type mechanism, it’s usually too late to escape, they drag you down with all their might, wherever they can, I said to myself, for them any victim will do, even their own sister, I thought. They get the most profit out of their unhappiness, their loser mechanism, I said to myself on the way to Traich, even though this profit is naturally of no use to them in the final analysis. Wertheimer always set about his life with false assumptions, I said to myself, unlike Glenn who always set about his existence with the right assumptions. Wertheimer even envied Glenn Gould his death, I said to myself, couldn’t even put up with Glenn Gould’s death and killed himself a short while thereafter and in truth the crucial factor for his suicide wasn’t his sister’s departure for Switzerland but the unbearableness of Glenn Gould, as I must say, suffering a fatal stroke at the height of his artistic powers. At first Wertheimer couldn’t bear the fact that Glenn Gould played the piano better than he, that he was suddenly the genius Glenn Gould, I thought, world famous to boot, and then finally that he suffered a fatal stroke at the height of his genius and his world fame, I thought. Against all this Wertheimer had only his own death, death by his own hand, I thought. In an excess of megalomania he got into the train for Chur, I said to myself now, and went to Zizers and hanged himself in front of Frau Duttweiler’s house, shamelessly. What could I possibly have talked about with the Duttweilers? I asked myself and answered myself immediately with a word I actually said out loud:
nothing
. Should I have told his sister what in truth I thought and still think of Wertheimer, her brother? I thought. It would have been the greatest foolishness, I said to myself. I would have only annoyed the Duttweiler woman with my chatter and it wouldn’t have got me further. But I should have refused the Duttweilers’ invitation to lunch more politely, I thought now, I actually refused their invitation not only impolitely but in an inadmissible tone of voice, brusquely, offended them, which I couldn’t accept now. We behave unjustly, offend people simply to avoid a more difficult moment, an unpleasant confrontation, I thought, for the confrontation with the Duttweilers after Wertheimer’s funeral would have certainly been everything but pleasant, I would have again mentioned things that were better left unmentioned, things concerning Wertheimer, and with all the injustice and exaggeration that have become my fate, in a word with the subjectivity I myself have always detested but from which I have never been immune. And the Duttweilers would have pieced together Wertheimerian connections in their own way, which would have produced an equally false and unjust picture of Wertheimer, I said to myself. We constantly portray and judge people only in false terms, we judge them unjustly and portray them meanly, I said to myself, in every instance, no matter how we portray, no matter how we judge them. Such a lunch in Chur with the Duttweilers would have produced nothing but misunderstandings and in the end brought both sides to despair, I thought. So I was right in refusing their invitation and returning to Austria immediately, I thought, even if I shouldn’t have gotten out in Attnang-Puchheim, I should have returned to Vienna immediately, gone to my apartment, spent the night and left for Madrid, I thought. The sentimental aspect of interrupting my trip in Attnang-Puchheim for this disgusting but necessary night in the inn at Wankham in order to visit Wertheimer’s hunting lodge in Traich was inexcusable. At least I could have asked the Duttweilers who was now living in Traich, for on my way to Traich I didn’t have the slightest idea who could be in Traich now, I couldn’t rely on the innkeeper’s information, she always talks a lot of nonsense, I thought, like all innkeepers, a lot of beside-the-point gibberish. And it’s even possible that Frau Duttweiler herself is already in Traich, I thought, that would be the most natural thing in the world, that is that she left Chur for Traich early, unlike my evening departure, perhaps in the afternoon or even at noon. Who else but his sister should take over Traich now, I thought, who, now that Wertheimer is dead and buried in Chur, has no reason to fear him anymore. Her tormentor is dead, I thought, her destroyer has reached the end of his life, is no longer here, will never again have anything to say about how she leads her life. As always I was exaggerating now too, and to my own mind it was disturbing to suddenly hear myself call Wertheimer the tormentor and destroyer of his sister, I thought, I always behave this way with others, unjustly, indeed criminally. I have always suffered from being unjust, I thought. Herr Duttweiler, who had struck me as so repulsive at our first meeting and perhaps is not at all that repulsive, as I now thought, surely has no interest in Traich, in general hasn’t the slightest interest in Wertheimer interests, I said to myself, it looks as if what Wertheimer left behind in Traich and Vienna didn’t interest him at all, I thought, at most, Duttweiler is interested in the money Wertheimer left behind, not at all in the rest of the Wertheimer property, but the sister must be deeply interested in it for I can’t imagine, I thought, that in marrying Duttweiler she has separated herself so radically and definitively from her brother that her brother’s estate would be a matter of complete indifference to her, quite the contrary, I now suspected that now of all times, liberated by her brother through his so to speak demonstrative suicide, she will suddenly take an interest in all Wertheimer matters with the intensity with which she was previously not interested in them and that perhaps now she is even interested in her brother’s so-called
human-science estate
. In my mind, as they say, I pictured her now in Traich, sitting over thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of her brother’s notes and studying them. Then I thought again that Wertheimer hadn’t left a single note behind, which would be more characteristic of him than a so-called literary estate, which he personally never held in high regard, as I always heard him say in any case, even though I can’t say he said it seriously, I thought. For very often people who work with products of the intellect say they don’t hold something in high regard and on the contrary hold it in very high regard indeed, just won’t admit it because they’re ashamed of such inferior work, as they call it, bad-mouth their work so as not to have to be publicly ashamed of it at least, Wertheimer could have been operating with smoke-screen tactics like that when talking about his so-called human sciences, I thought, that would be just like him. In that case I would actually have the opportunity to look into this intellectual work of his, I thought. It suddenly had got so cold that I had to turn up the collar of my coat. Again and again we look for the cause of something and little by little go from one possibility to the other, I thought, that Glenn’s death is the actual cause for Wertheimer’s death, I thought again and again, not that Wertheimer’s sister moved to Zizers to be with Duttweiler. The cause, and we not only say this, always lies much deeper and it lies in the Goldberg Variations that Glenn played in Salzburg during Horowitz’s course,
the Well-Tempered Clavier is the cause
, I thought, it doesn’t lie in the fact that Wertheimer’s sister cut herself off from her brother at the age of forty-six. Wertheimer’s sister is actually innocent in Wertheimer’s death, I thought, Wertheimer wanted, I thought, to shift the blame for his suicide to his sister, to deflect attention from the fact that nothing but Glenn’s interpretation of the
Goldberg Variations
as well as his
Well-Tempered Clavier
was to blame for his suicide, as indeed for his disastrous life. But Wertheimer’s disaster had already started the moment Glenn called Wertheimer
the loser
, what Wertheimer had always known Glenn said out loud, abruptly and without bias, as I have to say, in his Canadian-American way, Glenn mortally wounded Wertheimer
with his loser
, I thought, not because Wertheimer heard this concept for the first time but because Wertheimer, without
knowing this word loser
, had long been familiar
with the concept
of loser
, but Glenn Gould
said the word loser out loud in a crucial moment
, I thought. We say a word and destroy a person, although the person we’ve destroyed, at the moment we say out loud the word that destroys him, doesn’t take notice of this deadly fact, I thought. A person confronted with such a deadly word and deadly concept still has no idea of the deadly effect of this word and its concept, I thought. Even before Horowitz’s course had begun Glenn said the word
loser
to Wertheimer, I thought, I could even specify the precise hour in which Glenn said the word
loser
to Wertheimer. We say a deadly word to a person and at that moment are naturally unaware that we have actually said a deadly word to him, I thought. Twenty-eight years after Glenn said to Wertheimer at the Mozarteum that he was a
loser
and twelve years after he said it to him in America, Wertheimer killed himself. Suicides are ridiculous, Wertheimer often said, the ones who hang themselves are the most disgusting, he also said, I thought, now of course it’s striking that he often spoke about suicide, and in doing so always more or less made fun of suicide victims, as I have to say, always talked about suicide and suicide victims as if neither one nor the other had anything to do with him, as if one like the other was out of the question for him.
I
was a suicide type, he often said, I recalled on the way to Traich,
I
was the one in danger, not he. And he had also thought his sister capable of suicide, probably because he best knew her actual situation, was familiar with the absolute hopelessness of her situation, like no other, because he, as he often said, thought he could see through his creation. But his sister, instead of killing herself, fled to Duttweiler in Switzerland, got herself married to Herr Duttweiler, I thought. Wertheimer finally killed himself in a way he always termed repulsive and disgusting, and of all places in Switzerland, his sister went to Switzerland to marry this wealthy chemical Duttweiler instead of killing herself, he went there however to hang himself from a tree in Zizers, I thought. He wanted to study with Horowitz, I thought, and was destroyed by Glenn Gould. Glenn died at the
ideal moment
, Wertheimer however didn’t kill himself at the ideal moment, I thought. If I really have another go at my description of Glenn Gould, I thought, I will have to incorporate
his
description of Wertheimer in it and it’s questionable who will be the focus of this account, Glenn Gould or Wertheimer, I thought. I’ll start with Glenn Gould, with the
Goldberg Variations
and with the
Well-Tempered Clavier
, but Wertheimer will play a crucial role in this account as far as I’m concerned, since from my point of view Glenn Gould was always linked to Wertheimer, no matter in what respect, and vice versa Wertheimer with Glenn Gould and perhaps all in all Glenn Gould does play a greater role in Wertheimer’s life than the other way around. The actual starting point has to be Horowitz’s course, I thought, the sculptor’s house in Leopoldskron, the fact that we came together completely by chance twenty-eight years ago was crucial for our lives, I thought. Wertheimer’s Bösendorfer against Glenn Gould’s Steinway, I thought,
Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations against Wertheimer’s Art of the Fugue
, I thought. Glenn Gould surely doesn’t owe Horowitz his genius, I thought, but Wertheimer is perfectly entitled to blame
Horowitz
for his downfall and destruction, I thought, for Wertheimer, attracted by the name Horowitz, had gone to Salzburg, without the name Horowitz he would never have gone to Salzburg, at least not in that fateful year. Whereas the
Goldberg Variations
were composed for the sole purpose of helping an insomniac put up with the insomnia he had suffered from all his life, I thought, they killed Wertheimer. They were originally composed
to delight the soul
and almost two hundred and fifty years later they have killed a hopeless person, i.e., Wertheimer, I thought on my way to Traich. If Wertheimer hadn’t walked past room thirty-three on the second floor of the Mozarteum twenty-eight years ago, precisely at four in the afternoon, he wouldn’t have hanged himself twenty-eight years later in Zizers bei Chur, I thought. Wertheimer’s fate was to have walked past room thirty-three in the Mozarteum at the precise moment when Glenn Gould was playing the so-called
aria
in that room. Regarding this event Wertheimer reported to me that he stopped at the door of room thirty-three, listening to Glenn play until the end of the
aria
. Then I understood what shock is, I thought now. The so-called Wunderkind Glenn Gould had meant nothing to us, Wertheimer and me, and we wouldn’t have given it a second thought if we had known something about him, I thought. Glenn Gould was no Wunderkind, from the very beginning he was a keyboard genius, I thought, even as a child simple mastery wasn’t enough for him. We, Wertheimer and myself, had our so-called isolation houses in the country and were running away from them. Glenn Gould built himself an isolation cage, as he called his studio, in America, close to New York. If
he