It even forgot to dance, gave up the ghost just like that.
“Oh—,” said the old lady.
And yet, in the face of the cruel child with the dirty blond hair you could discern a deepening beauty and the traces of a soul in the making—.
But the face of the noble lady was languid and pale—.
She will no longer give anyone joy, light and warmth—.
That’s why she sympathizes with the little fish.
Why should it die when it still has life left in it—?
And yet it lunges up and drops dread—a simple placid death.
The child keeps on fishing with the great unflinching solemnity of the fisherman. Beautiful beyond description with big, determined eyes, dirty blond hair and gazelle-like legs.
Perhaps one day the child too will pity a little fish and say: “Je ne permettrais jamais, que ma fille s’adonnât à une occupation si cruelle.” I’d never let my girl give herself over to such a cruel activity—!”
But such tender stirrings of the soul only burst into bloom at the last resting place of all dashed dreams, all blighted hopes—.
So fish on, lovely little girl!
As, oblivious to all, you still bear your beautiful birthright buried in your breast—!
Kill the little fish and fish on!
I once went to the foremost hairdresser in the capital.
Everything smelled of Eau de Cologne, of fresh washed linen and fragrant cigarette smoke—Sultan Flor, Cigarettes des Princesses égyptiennes.
A young girl with light blond silken hair sat at the cash register.
“Dear God,” I thought, “a count will surely sweep you off your feet, you lovely thing—!”
She peered back at me with a look that said: “Whoever you may be, one among thousands, I declare to you that life lies before me, life—! Don’t you know it?!”
I knew it.
“Ah well,” I thought, “it might also be a prince—!”
She married the proprietor of a café who went bust a year later.
She was built like a gazelle. Silk and velvet hardly enhanced her beauty—she was probably most beautiful in the buff.
The café proprietor went bust.
I ran into her on the street with a child.
She peered back at me with a look that said: “I still have life before me, life, don’t you know it—?!”
I knew it.
A friend of mine had typhus. He was a well-to-do bachelor and lived in a lakefront villa.
When I visited him, a young woman with light blond silken hair prepared his ice packs. Her delicate hands were red and raw from the ice water. She peered back at me: “This is life—! I love it—! Because it’s life—!”
When he got well he passed the woman on to another rich young man—.
He dumped her, just like that—.
It was summer.
Later he was overcome by longing—it was fall.
She had looked after him, nestled close with her sweet gazelle limbs—.
He wrote to her: “Come back to me—!
One evening in October I spotted her with him entering the wondrous vestibule in which eight red marble columns shimmered.
I greeted her.
She peered back at me: “Life lies behind me, life—! Don’t you know it?!”
I knew it.
I went to the foremost hairdresser in the capital.
It still smelled of Eau de Cologne, of fresh washed linen and fragrant cigarette smoke—Sultan Flor, Cigarettes des princesses égyptiennes.
Another girl sat at the cash register, this one with brown wavy hair.
She peered back at me with the grand triumphant look of youth—profectio Divae Augustae Victricis: “Whoever you may be, one among thousands, I declare to you that life lies before me, life—! Don’t you know it?!”
I knew it.
“Dear God,” I thought, “a count will surely sweep you off your feet—but it might also be a prince!”
Above my bed hangs a carbon print of the painting by Gustav Klimt: Schubert. Schubert is singing songs for piano by candlelight with three little Viennese Misses. Beneath it I scribbled: “One of my gods! People created the gods so as, despite all, to somehow rouse otherwise unfulfilled ideals hidden in their hearts into a more vital form!”
I often read from Niggli’s Schubert biography. Its intent, you see, is to present Schubert’s life, not Niggli’s thoughts about it. But I have returned a hundred times to the passage on page 37. He was a music teacher on the estate of Count Esterhazy in Zelesz, an instructor to the very young Countesses Marie and Karoline. To Karoline he lost his heart. Thus emerged his creations for four-handed piano. The young countess never learned of his profound affection. Only once when she teased him that he had never dedicated a single one of his compositions to her, he replied: “What for?! As it is, it’s all for you!”
As if a heart about to burst revealed its grief and then closed up again for eternity—. That’s why I often turn to page 37 in Niggli’s biography of Schubert.
(Deutsche Grammaphonaktiengesellschaft.)
C2-42531. The Trout by Schubert.
Mountain stream water burbling crystal clear between cliff and pine tree permutated into music. The trout, a ravishing predator, light gray with red speckles, lurking, standing, flowing, shooting forward, downward, upward, disappearing. Beautiful blood-thirstiness!
The piano accompaniment is sweet, soft, monotone of gurgling torrent, deep and dark green. Real life is no longer needed. We feel the fairy tale of nature!
Every day in Gmunden in the afternoon hours, a lady in a watch-maker’s shop had them play the gramophone record C2-42531 two to three times. She sat on a tabouret, I stood close to the device.
We never said a word to each other.
Henceforth she would always hold off on the concert till I appeared.
One day she paid to have it played three times, whereupon she was about to leave. I paid to have it played a fourth time. She waited at the door, listened along to the end.
Gramophone record C2-42531, Schubert, The Trout.
One day she didn’t come any more.
The song survived like a present from her.
Autumn came, and the esplanade was lightly paved with scattered yellow leaves.
And then they shelved the gramophone in the watchmaker’s shop since it no longer paid to keep it.
She sat by the immense ground floor window that almost reached down to the ground of the dusty, gray, miserable country lane, and sewed blouses on a lovely, glittering sewing machine from morning to night. Her eyes wore an expression of despair. But she herself was not aware of it. She sewed, sewed and sewed.
She was very slender, not made for the storm of life that shakes and sweeps away souls and bodies. In the evening she ate the cold vegetables from her midday meal. All this I saw through the immense ground floor window and she saw that I saw it all.
One evening she stood leaning against the front door of the house. And she said to me: “I’ve taken a job in a blouse factory in Mariahilf, so I won’t have to work on my own any longer in this lonely room.”
And I thought: “Country lane, country lane, you’ve lost your sparkle, you’ve lost your riches.
“A person’s got to get ahead in life, isn’t that so?” she said, “and by the way, I’ve always watched you walk by my window, three times a day.
1 comment