The Tobacconist Read online

  Robert Seethaler

  The Tobacconist

  Translated by Charlotte Collins

  PICADOR

  Content

  The Tobacconist

  One Sunday, in the late summer of 1937, an unusually violent thunderstorm swept over the mountains of the Salzkammergut. Until then, Franz Huchel’s life had trickled along fairly uneventfully, but this thunderstorm was to give it a sudden turn that had far-reaching consequences. As soon as he heard the first distant rumble of thunder, Franz ran inside the little fisherman’s cottage where he lived with his mother in the village of Nussdorf am Attersee and crawled into bed to listen to the unearthly racket from the safety of his warm and downy cave. The weather shook the hut on every side. The beams groaned, the shutters banged outside, and the wooden roof shingles, thickly overgrown with moss, flapped in the storm. Rain pelted against the windowpanes, driven by gusts of wind, and on the sills a few decapitated geraniums drowned in their tubs. The iron Jesus on the wall above the old clothes box wobbled as if at any moment he might tear himself from his nails and leap down from the cross and from the shore of the nearby lake came the crash of fishing boats slammed against their moorings by the pounding waves.

  When the storm finally died down and a first tentative ray of sun quivered towards his bed across soot-blackened floorboards trodden by generations of heavy fishermen’s boots, Franz felt a sudden small rush of contentment. He curled up in a ball, then stuck his head out from under the quilt and looked around. The hut was still standing, Jesus still hung on the cross, and through the window, which was sprinkled with drops of water, a single geranium petal shone like a pale red ray of hope.

  Franz crawled out of bed and went to the kitchen alcove to boil up a saucepan of coffee and creamy milk. The firewood under the stove had stayed dry, and it flared up like straw. For a while he sat staring into the bright, flickering flames, until the door flew open with a sudden crash. In the low doorframe stood his mother. Frau Huchel was a slender woman in her forties, still quite good-looking, though somewhat gaunt, like most of the local people: work in the surrounding salt mines or cattle sheds or the kitchens of the guesthouses for summer visitors took its toll. She just stood there, panting, one hand resting on the doorpost, head slightly bowed. Her apron stuck to her body; tangled strands of hair hung down over her forehead, and drops of water were forming and falling one by one from the tip of her nose. Behind her the peak of the Schafberg reared up ominously against the grey, cloud-covered sky, in which blue flecks were already reappearing here and there. Franz was reminded of the lopsided, oddly carved Madonna that someone in the olden days had nailed to the doorframe of the Nussdorf chapel, and which was now weathered almost beyond all recognition.

  ‘Did you get wet, Mama?’ he asked, poking about in the fire with a green twig. His mother raised her head, and then he saw that she was crying. The tears mingled with rainwater, and her shoulders were heaving.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he asked in alarm, shoving the twig into the smoking fire. His mother didn’t answer; instead, she pushed herself off the doorframe and took a few unsteady steps towards him, only to stop again in the middle of the room. For a moment she seemed to look around, as if searching for something; then she raised her hands in a gesture of helplessness and fell forward onto her knees.

  Franz stepped forward hesitantly, placed his hand on her head, and started awkwardly stroking her hair.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he repeated hoarsely. He felt suddenly strange, and stupid. Until now it had been the other way round: he had cried, and his mother had stroked him. Her head felt delicate and fragile under his palm; he could feel the warm pulse beneath her scalp.

  ‘He’s drowned,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Preininger.’

  Franz paused. He rested his hand on her head for a few moments longer, then withdrew it. His mother brushed the strands of hair off her forehead. She stood up, took a corner of her apron and wiped her face with it.

  ‘You’re filling the whole cottage with smoke!’ she said, pulling the green twig out of the stove and stoking the fire.

  Alois Preininger was by his own account the richest man in the Salzkammergut. In fact he was only the third richest; this annoyed him intensely, but it had made him the man he was, notoriously ambitious and pig-headed. He owned a few hectares of forest and pasture, a sawmill, a paper factory, the last four fisheries in the area, an unknown number of plots of land, large and small, around the lake, with the buildings upon them, as well as two ferries, a pleasure steamer, and the only automobile in a radius of more than four kilometres: a magnificent, claret-coloured Steyr-Daimler-Puch. The latter, however, whiled away its time in a rusty tin hut on account of the roads, which were constantly streaming with the incessant rain typical of the Salzkammergut.

  Alois Preininger’s sixty years didn’t show. He was still in the prime of life. He loved himself, his home region, good food, strong drink, and beautiful women — though beauty was subjective, and therefore relative. Essentially, he loved all women, because he found all women beautiful. He had met Franz’s mother years earlier at the big lake festival. She was standing beneath the old linden tree wearing a sky-blue dress, and her calves were as light brown, smooth and flawless as the wooden steering wheel of the claret-coloured Steyr-Daimler-Puch. He ordered fresh grilled fish, a jug of cider and a bottle of kirsch, and as they ate and drank they didn’t even try not to look at each other. Shortly afterwards they danced the polka, later even waltzes, and whispered little secrets in each other’s ears. They walked arm in arm around a lake dotted with stars, found themselves unexpectedly in the tin hut, and then in the back of the Steyr-Daimler-Puch. The back seat was sufficiently broad, the leather soft, the shock absorbers well oiled: all in all, the night was a success. From then on they met frequently in the hut. Their meetings were brief, explosive, and free of all demands or expectations. For Frau Huchel, however, these pleasantly sweaty encounters on the back seat had an additional side effect that was perhaps even slightly more pleasant: punctually at the end of each month a cheque for a not inconsiderable sum of money fluttered into the Nussdorf savings bank. This regular windfall enabled her to move into the former fisherman’s cottage right by the lake, to eat a hot meal once a day, and to take the bus to Bad Ischl twice a year and treat herself to a hot chocolate in Café Esplanade and a couple of metres of linen for a new dress from the draper’s next door. For her son Franz, on the other hand, the advantage of Alois Preininger’s affectionate generosity was that, unlike all the other young lads, he didn’t have to spend the whole day crawling around a salt mine or a dung heap somewhere, earning a meagre living. Instead, he could stroll about the forest from dawn till dusk, bare his belly to the sun on one of the wooden jetties, or simply lie in bed when the weather was bad and lose himself in thoughts and dreams. All that was over now, though.

  As had been his habit for almost forty years — interrupted only by a very few adverse events, such as the First World War or the big fire at the sawmill — Alois Preininger had spent this Sunday morning at the regulars’ table at the Goldener Leopold inn, where he had partaken of roast venison with red cabbage and sliced bread dumplings, as well as eight pints of beer and four glasses of double-distilled schnapps. He had held forth in his deep vibrato bass, making all sorts of important comments about maintaining Upper Austrian customs and traditions, about the Bolshevism that was spreading through Europe like scabies, about the idiotic Jews, the even more idiotic French, and the almost limitless opportunities for development in the tourist industry. At about midday, as he was finally staggering home, rather sleepy, along the path beside the shore, all around him was oddly silent. There were no birds to be seen, no insects to be hear
d, and even the bluebottles that had buzzed about his sweaty, gleaming neck back at the inn had disappeared. The sky hung heavy over the lake; the surface of the water was completely smooth. Not even the reeds were moving. It was as if the air had congealed and encased the whole landscape in motionless silence. Alois was reminded of the jellied pork at the Goldener Leopold: he should have ordered that, not the roast venison, which was sitting in his stomach like a brick, despite the schnapps. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his shirtsleeve and gazed out over the expanse of water that extended before him, blue-black and soft as silk. Then he took off his clothes.

  The water was pleasantly cool. Alois swam with calm strokes, exhaling into the dark, mysterious depths below him. He had more or less reached the middle of the lake when the first drops fell, and after another fifty metres it was already bucketing down. A steady pattering lay on the surface of the water: hammering drops, thick cords of rain connecting the blackness of the sky to the blackness of the lake. The wind picked up and quickly turned into a storm, whipping the waves into foamy crests. A first flash of lightning momentarily bathed the lake in unreal, silvery light. The thunder was deafening, crashes that seemed to tear the world apart. Alois laughed out loud and thrashed his arms and legs wildly. He shouted with delight. Never had he felt so alive. The water around him was bubbling, the sky above him collapsing, but he was alive. He was alive! He thrust his torso out of the water and crowed up at the clouds. At precisely that moment a bolt of lightning struck his head. An incandescent brightness filled the inside of his skull, and for a fraction of a second he had something like a premonition of eternity. Then his heart stopped, and with an expression of astonishment, and wrapped in a shroud of delicately glistening bubbles, he sank to the bottom of the lake.

  The funeral took place in the Nussdorf parish cemetery and was well attended. Many people from the area had come to bid farewell to Alois Preininger. Above all, a conspicuous number of black-veiled women gathered around the grave. There was a great deal of weeping and sobbing, and Horst Zeitlmaier, the longest-serving foreman at the sawmill, placed the three finger stumps of his right hand on his breast and wrung out a few words in a trembling voice. ‘Preininger was a good man,’ he said. ‘As far as we know, he never stole from or cheated anyone. And he loved his home like no other. Even as a small boy he always liked to jump into the lake. Last Sunday it was for the very last time. Now he’s with God, and we wish him well. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, amen!’

  ‘Amen!’ replied the others. ‘And he still had such an appetite!’ someone whispered, and those standing around nodded sorrowfully. A choked sob was heard from beneath one of the black veils, a few words were exchanged here and there; then the crowd dispersed.

  On the way home, Franz’s mother lifted her veil and blinked, red-eyed, at the sunshine. The lake lay quiet, shimmering dully. In the shallow water a heron stood motionless, waiting for the next fish. On the far shore one of the ferries hooted to announce its departure. The Schafberg stood behind it like a painting, and swallows darted through the clear air.

  ‘Preininger’s gone,’ she said, placing her hand on Franz’s arm, ‘and the times aren’t getting any better. Something’s in the air.’ Franz instinctively looked up at the sky, but there was nothing there. His mother sighed. ‘You’re seventeen already,’ she said. ‘But you still have such delicate hands. Delicate and soft and white, like a girl’s. A boy like you can’t work in the forest. Certainly not on the lake. And the summer visitors wouldn’t know what to make of you, either.’ They had stopped walking; her hand lay light and warm on his arm. The ferry had cast off and began to pound slowly across the lake.

  ‘I’ve been having a bit of a think, Franzl,’ said his mother. ‘There’s this old friend of mine. He spent a summer splashing around in the lake with us once, many years ago. Otto Trsnyek’s his name. And this Otto Trsnyek owns a tobacconist’s, right in the heart of Vienna. A proper tobacconist’s, with newspapers, cigarettes and all the trimmings. That’s already something, and what makes it even better is that he owes me a favour.’

  ‘What for?’

  His mother shrugged and plucked at a fold in her veil with her fingertips. ‘It was a hot summer that year, and we were young and foolish . . .’

  On the shore the heron suddenly lifted its head, stabbed the air twice with its beak, spread its wings and took off. They watched it fly for a while until eventually it descended and vanished behind the line of reeds.

  ‘Don’t worry, Franz, this was long before you fell into my lap,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I wrote to him. Otto Trsnyek. To see if he had any work for you.’

  ‘And?’

  Instead of answering, his mother reached into her black knitted jacket and took out an official-looking slip of paper. It was a telegram in neat blue capitals: THE BOY CAN COME STOP BUT DONT EXPECT TOO MUCH STOP THANKS STOP OTTO STOP

  ‘And what does that mean?’ asked Franz.

  ‘It means you’re off to Vienna tomorrow!’

  ‘Tomorrow? But I can’t . . .’ he stammered, aghast. A moment later his mother wordlessly slapped his face. The blow caught him so suddenly he staggered sideways.

  The next day Franz was sitting in the early train to Vienna. To save money he and his mother had walked the thirteen kilometres to Timelkam station. The train was on time, their leave-taking brief; everything was already said and done, after all. She kissed him on the forehead; he acted a bit grumpy, nodded to her and boarded the train. As the old diesel locomotive picked up speed, Franz craned his head out of the window and saw his waving mother on the platform grow smaller and smaller until she finally disappeared altogether, a faint speck in the summer morning light. He fell back in his seat, closed his eyes and exhaled until he grew slightly dizzy. He had left the Salzkammergut only twice in his life. Once they had gone to Linz to buy a suit for his first day of elementary school, and another time there’d been a class trip to Salzburg where the students had listened to a dreary brass concert and spent the rest of the day stumbling around the ancient walls. But those were merely excursions. ‘This is something different,’ he said quietly to himself. ‘Something completely and utterly different!’ In his mind’s eye the future appeared like the line of a far distant shore materializing out of the morning fog: still a little blurred and unclear, but promising and beautiful, too. And all of a sudden everything felt somehow light and agreeable. It was as if much of his body weight had remained behind with the hazy figure of his mother on Timelkam Station platform. Now Franz was sitting in the train compartment, almost weightless, feeling the rhythmic juddering of the sleepers beneath his seat and hurtling towards Vienna at the unimaginable speed of eighty kilometres an hour.

  An hour and a half later, when the train emerged from the Alpine foothills and the broad, bright, hilly landscape of Lower Austria opened up before him, Franz had already consumed the entire contents of the pack of maternal provisions and felt, once again, as heavy as he always did.

  The journey passed without notable incident; in fact, it was rather boring. The train had to make only one unscheduled stop, on the stretch between Amstetten and Böheimkirchen. A violent jolt passed through the carriages and they rapidly lost speed. Items of luggage tumbled down from the nets, there was an ear-splitting screech, cursing and shouting all around, then another jolt, even more violent than the first — and the train came to a halt. The train driver had had to hang his entire body weight from the cast iron brake lever as a large, dark, heaped-up sort of object — a suspicious one, at any rate — had suddenly appeared on the tracks a short way ahead. ‘Probably the Socialists again,’ growled the ticket inspector as he hurried through the carriages to the front of the train, ticket pad flapping. ‘Or the National Socialists! Or whatever — they’re all the same riffraff!’

  It soon became clear, however, that the suspicious object was just an old cow that had chosen to die on the tracks of the western railway, of all places, and now lay heavy and stinking on the
sleepers. With the help of some of the passengers (and closely observed by Franz, who stood at a safe distance with his soft girl’s hands clasped behind his back), they managed to drag the cadaver off the tracks. The cow’s dark eyes shimmered beneath a mad crawl of flies. Franz was reminded of the glistening stones he had so often collected from the shore of the lake as a boy and carried home in the bulging pockets of his trousers. Every time he shook the trousers out over the cottage floor he had been surprised by a twinge of disappointment as the stones rolled dull and dry across the floorboards, their enigmatic lustre gone.

  When the train finally pulled into Vienna West Station, only two hours late, and Franz stepped out of the station concourse into the bright midday light, his little moment of melancholy had long since passed. Instead, he suddenly felt slightly sick and had to hang on to the post of the nearest gas lamp. How embarrassing if the first thing you do is pass out in front of everyone, he thought crossly. Just like the pasty-faced summer visitors: year after year, scores of them would collapse on the grass, stricken with heatstroke, soon after arriving at the lake and would have to be revived by good-humoured locals with a bucket of water or a slap or two. He clung even tighter to the lamppost, closed his eyes and didn’t move until he could feel the pavement safe beneath his feet again, and the reddish spots slowly pulsing across his field of vision had dissolved. When he opened his eyes again, he gave a short, startled laugh. It was overwhelming. The city seethed like the vegetable stew on Mother’s stove. Everything was in constant motion; even the walls and streets seemed alive, breathing, bulging. It was as if one could hear the groaning of cobblestones and the grinding of bricks. The noise — there was an incessant roaring in the air, an incomprehensible jumble of sounds, tones and rhythms that peeled away, flowed into each other, drowned each other out, shouted, bellowed over each other. And the light. Everywhere a flickering, a sparkling, flashing and shining: windows, mirrors, advertising signs, flagpoles, belt buckles, spectacle lenses. Cars rattled past. A truck. A dragonfly-green motorcycle. Another truck. A tram rounded the corner with a piercing ring of the bell. A shop door was wrenched open, car doors slammed. Someone trilled the first few bars of a popular melody but broke off halfway through the chorus. Someone cursed hoarsely. A woman screeched like a hen being slaughtered. Yes, thought Franz, in a daze: this is something different. Something completely and utterly different. And at that moment he became aware of the stench. Something seemed to be fermenting beneath the pavement, and all sorts of vapours hovered above it. It smelled of sewage, of urine, of cheap perfume, old fat, burned rubber, diesel, horseshit, cigarette smoke, road tar.