The Tobacconist Read online

  Franz and the professor passed the Burgtheater on their left and went into the Volksgarten. Here too the lilac was blooming all around. The tall hedges and trees muffled the noise from the road, and the earth, thickly overgrown with grass, exuded a cool dankness. Franz had never been here before. He would have liked to walk a bit and look around, and he would have liked even more to creep secretly under one of the bushes with the professor and discuss all manner of things in the leafy green twilight, undisturbed. Freud, however, headed purposefully for the other end of the park, where they found an empty bench in an alcove in the hedge beneath an old chestnut tree, and sat down. Franz reached carefully into his breast pocket and took out a beautiful Hoyo de Monterrey. Freud accepted the cigar, holding it up in front of his face and contemplating its silhouette for a while before sticking it in his mouth and lighting it. During their walk neither of them had said a word, and now too they sat beside each other in silence. The professor puffed little clouds of smoke into the air, his jaw creaking. Someone a long way off yelled, ‘Heil Hitler!’ There was a cheer. High-pitched laughter. Then the muffled sound of traffic again.

  Suppressing a groan, the professor leaned back and squinted up for a while at the flurry of leaves pierced by flashes of sunlight. Finally he said, ‘Our meetings must be costing you quite a bit.’

  ‘Excuse me, Herr Professor?’

  ‘A cigar of this quality is not exactly inexpensive.’

  ‘But it’s harvested by brave men on the fertile banks of the San Juan y Martínez River and tenderly hand-rolled by beautiful women,’ said Franz, nodding earnestly.

  ‘Although it is not entirely clear to me in this context why bravery, of all things, should be such an outstanding characteristic of the Cuban tobacco farmer,’ Freud replied. ‘But that’s just by the by. If, on the other hand, we’re talking about beautiful women, I hope your endeavours with regard to the female sex have met with success. Whatever form this success may have taken.’

  ‘That’s exactly why I wanted to speak with you,’ said Franz bitterly. ‘My endeavours have met with nothing whatsoever. Although, on the other hand, I’m not at all sure about that. I just don’t know. Basically, I don’t know anything at all.’

  ‘That realization is, at least, the first step up the steep stairs towards wisdom,’ Freud replied. ‘But first let’s try to shine a little light into the obscurity. Did you look for her?’

  ‘Yes, Herr Professor.’

  ‘Did you find her?’

  ‘Yes, Herr Professor.’

  ‘Did you ask her what she was called?’

  ‘Yes, Herr Professor.’

  ‘Am I supposed to squeeze the words from your cerebral cortex one by one?’

  ‘No, Herr Professor. She’s called Anezka.’

  ‘Bohemian?’

  ‘Yes. From a beautiful village called Dobrovice, curled up to the hill Viničný as if to a dark lover, in the district of Mladá Boleslav.’

  ‘A hill like a dark lover?’

  Franz nodded sadly. Freud fished a match out of its box, lit it, and held it carefully to the glowing surface, which was threatening to become a little uneven.

  ‘Bohemian cuisine is really quite wonderful,’ he said, dreamily contemplating his Hoyo, which now burned steadily again.

  ‘Yes, wonderful,’ murmured Franz. Across from them, on the other side of a still bare and wintry rose bed, two weather beaten ladies walked past giving pointed looks at the two men so casually occupying the bench that was in fact, by right of custom, theirs. A park attendant came sauntering up from the opposite direction. He greeted them by briefly raising a hand to the peak of his cap, and began to poke about with a thin stick in the rubbish bin beside the bench.

  The gentlemen must please excuse him, he said as he did so; it’s because of the bombs. And of course, he added, because of all the other items the municipality found unacceptable.

  What items would those be, exactly, Freud wanted to know.

  The park attendant shrugged. Impossible to say, he replied; you’d probably only find out if you found such an item.

  Why did people think they might find suspicious items and bombs in the rubbish bins in the Volksgarten, of all places, Freud asked.

  Why not, argued the park attendant, why not there, of all places, or even especially: in the Volksgarten rubbish bins? After all, you couldn’t read a bomber’s mind. But they’d have to excuse him; the Volksgarten wasn’t small, after all, and rubbish bins in Vienna were like grains of sand on the shore. Have a nice day, gentlemen, goodbye.

  ‘Right,’ said Freud, once the attendant had disappeared behind the hedge. ‘So what exactly happened with you and this Anezka?’

  ‘I touched her,’ said Franz. ‘And it was the most beautiful experience I’ve ever had in my life.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. I hope she touched you, as well?’

  ‘Of course! And how! Everywhere! And every spot where she touched me is still burning. My whole body is burning like a match!’

  Freud tapped his cigar thoughtfully with his middle finger. ‘Love is a wildfire that no one wants to or is able to extinguish,’ he said, observing the flakes of ash spinning slowly down towards the gravel.

  ‘I do!’ cried Franz, leaping up impetuously from the bench. ‘I’m able to and I want to extinguish it! I don’t want to end up a little pile of ashes in the back room of a tobacconist’s shop!’

  ‘Sit down and stop shouting in public,’ Freud commanded, with sudden sharpness. Franz obeyed. ‘Now then: once more, slowly and calmly. So you’ve seen her again. You know what she’s called. You know where she’s from. You touched each other. What else?’

  ‘Then she disappeared.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘That’s the point: she was just gone! Not even the women in the yellow house could tell me where she was.’

  ‘The women in the yellow house?’

  ‘All Bohemians. Except the old woman with her pig.’

  The professor raised his eyes to the heavens as if anticipating some form of practical encouragement to descend from that radiant blue. But nothing came. He took off his hat with a weary gesture and placed it on one of his knees.

  ‘If the pig has no appreciable significance for the ongoing development of the story, I would ask that you carry on and finish it before the world comes to an end, which, as we know, could happen at any moment!’

  ‘Sorry, Herr Professor,’ said Franz contritely. ‘So she disappeared. But after a couple of weeks I found her again. I sat down behind a rubbish heap in front of the yellow house and lay in wait for her. Then I followed her. To the Prater. Into the grotto. The grotto is a cabaret. Or a dance club. Or both. In any case: green outside, red inside, smoky, stuffy, lots of candles and so forth. I ordered something to drink, and first of all Monsieur de Caballé came on.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘His real name is Heinzi. He tells jokes and makes Hitler into a dog. The waitress led him away on a lead, and the music started.’

  ‘What sort of music?’

  ‘Don’t know. Quite rhythmical; sort of sad, as well. Anyway, then Anezka came on.’

  ‘Finally.’

  ‘Yes. But it wasn’t actually Anezka at all, it was an Indian girl called N’Djina. Or rather, it was Anezka, of course, but in an Indian costume, with a wig and feathers and all the bits and bobs. And she danced. It wasn’t a normal dance, though. It was quite an . . . exciting dance.’

  ‘Could you perhaps express yourself more precisely?’

  ‘She took off her clothes. She bared her stomach, her bosom and her bottom to the spotlight.’

  ‘And I’m guessing that this was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen in your life?’

  ‘Yes, it was. Although I’d seen it all already. Only the terrible thing about it was that this time a load of other men were there, too! Anyway, I left, and sat down on a dustbin outside the entrance. Later on she came out as well. Not on her own, though. Monsieur de Caballé was with her.’r />
  ‘Heinzi?’

  ‘Yes. He pulled a knife from his trousers, but then he calmed down again and left me alone. We talked, Anezka and I, and while we were talking she looked at me so coldly. I hated her for it. At the same time, I felt sorry for her. Because she has to bare her bottom to the light in front of these men. I felt much sorrier for myself, though. And so I kicked the dustbin and insulted Anezka, and she gave me a kiss and walked off, and a moth fell out of the sky and it was all, all, all over.’

  The professor closed his eyes and drew deeply on the Hoyo. With his other hand he grasped his chin and cautiously shifted his lower jaw from side to side against the pressure of his fingers. Suddenly he dropped the hand into his lap and turned his head towards Franz.

  ‘Do you love her?’

  ‘Excuse me, Herr Professor?’

  ‘Do you love this Bohemian Prater girl?’

  ‘Ha!’ Franz gave a high-pitched laugh and slapped his thigh with his hand. And again, immediately afterwards: ‘Ha!’ Of course I do! he wanted to say. That goes without saying! he wanted to shout in the professor’s face, to yell it out into the Volksgarten, into the whole world, with all the sudden, almost disturbing hilarity welling up inside him. What sort of question was that? What sort of unnecessary, idiotic, farfetched, utterly damn fool question was that meant to be? Of course he loved her! It went without saying that he loved her! He loved, loved, loved her! More than anything else in the world! More even than his own heart and his own blood and his own life! Something like that, and much more, was what Franz wanted to shout at the professor. But, curiously, none of this came out. Not a word. Not a syllable. Instead, he remained silent. And another laugh, which had been tickling in his throat just a moment ago, had simply got stuck and was now slowly dissolving, like one of those yellow sherbet sweets that old Frau Seidlmeier in the tiny grocery shop in Nussdorf would sometimes slip to the children: they fizzed so agreeably in the mouth at first, but soon left nothing but sticky lumps on the teeth and a bitter aftertaste. Franz bowed his head.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said quietly. ‘I was quite certain, actually. But now I don’t know any more.’

  Freud nodded slowly. Again Franz noticed how frail he was. A small, angular skull that seemed to balance on the thin neck only by a miracle. A few flecks of ash had got caught in his beard. Franz would have liked to bend forward and pluck them out, one after another.

  ‘All right, then,’ said Freud. ‘I suggest that, to begin with, we clarify the terminology. I suspect that when we talk about your love, what we really mean is your libido.’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Your libido. This is the force that drives people after a certain age. It causes as much joy as it does pain, and to put it in simple terms, with men, it is located in their trousers.’

  ‘With you, too?’

  ‘My libido was conquered long ago,’ sighed the professor.

  There was a sudden rustle beside the bench. A moment later a little bird came fluttering out of the hedge and landed on the gravel right in front of the men’s feet. It had a body like a sparrow’s but its plumage looked as if it had been bleached, with just a few pale, yellowish flecks on the side. Its eyes were red. The bird sat there for a while without moving; then it spread its wings, dipped down and began to wallow in the gravel, waggling its tail and shaking its feathers as it did so. Just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped again. It hopped twice towards the bench, froze for a moment, then finally flew up in a wide arc and away towards the ring road.

  ‘Now even the sparrows have gone mad,’ said Franz, raking his foot over the gravel.

  ‘That was the plague bird,’ murmured Freud. ‘They say it only ever appears before the outbreak of disease, war and other disasters.’ The cigar crackled in his hand. A slight wind had risen and was whispering in the treetops.

  ‘Is there going to be a disaster, then, Herr Professor?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Freud, staring after the plague bird, which had long since vanished behind the Burgtheater.

  ‘Herr Professor, I think I’m a colossal idiot,’ said Franz, after a few moments of intent and thoughtful silence. ‘A sheepbrained Upper Austrian imbecile from top to toe.’

  ‘Congratulations. Insight is the midwife of recovery.’

  ‘I just asked myself, you see, what justification there is for my stupid little worries, with all the crazy events happening in the world.’

  ‘I think I can reassure you there. Firstly, where women are concerned, worries are usually stupid, but seldom little. Secondly, we could turn the question on its head: what justification is there for all these crazy world events, when you have your worries?’

  ‘You’re laughing at me, Herr Professor.’

  ‘No, I am not,’ Freud contradicted him, raising his cigar instead of a forefinger for emphasis. ‘Current world events are nothing but a tumour, an ulcer, a suppurating, stinking bubo that will soon burst and spill its disgusting contents over the whole of Western civilization. Admittedly that’s a rather drastic and graphic formulation, but it is nonetheless the truth, my young friend.’

  Franz felt a peculiar pride well up in him, burst like a bubble somewhere behind his forehead and trickle down inside his head like a warm shower. He was now the professor’s ‘young friend’.

  ‘The truth . . .’ he repeated, nodding his head thoughtfully. ‘Do people lie on your couch to hear truths like this?’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Freud, staring moodily at the remains of his Hoyo. ‘If one only ever spoke the truth, the consultations would be as dry and empty as little deserts. Truth has a smaller part to play than people think. That’s the case in life as well as analysis. Patients talk about whatever comes to mind, and I listen. Or sometimes it’s the other way round: I talk about whatever comes to mind, and the patients listen. We talk and are silent and are silent and talk and, quite incidentally, explore the dark side of the soul together.’

  ‘And how do you go about that?’

  ‘We painstakingly grope through the darkness so that at least here and there we may bump into something useful.’

  ‘And people have to lie down for that?’

  ‘You could do it standing up as well, but it’s more comfortable lying down.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Franz. ‘That sort of reminds me of when I was younger. Sometimes, in summer, I used to creep out of the cottage in the middle of the night and go into the forest with a couple of friends. Each of us had a candle, and the trees would flicker like giant ghosts. We’d stumble around like that for a while in the dark; but we never actually came across anything really interesting. Sometimes one of us would tread on a slug. But that was about it, and then we’d go home again . . . Yes, that’s what it was like,’ he added, after a brief pause. ‘It was a different time. Back then, it was just trees we were frightened of. So what do you and your patients encounter in the dark, Herr Professor?’

  ‘Dreams, ideally,’ said Freud. He laid the stump of the cigar beside him on the arm of the bench and watched it glow one last time before it went out for good. Carefully he picked up the little carcass and threw it into the rubbish bin where the park attendant had been poking about.

  ‘But what about me?’ cried Franz. ‘I can’t spend the rest of my life stumbling about in some sort of darkness, treading on slugs or dreams. It’s easy for you to talk — you conquered the libido long ago. I still have to wrestle with it! My trousers are about to burst, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I should see Anezka again. I don’t know if I want to see her again. I don’t even know if I can see her again. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know!’

  He had jumped to his feet again and covered the distance between the rosebed and the bench several times. ‘Hang it all, what on earth am I supposed to do?’ he asked finally, in a weary voice, and dropped back onto the bench again. ‘Help me, Herr Professor!’

  Freud held up his hands, regarded them for a moment in the sunlight, and let fall them into his la
p.

  ‘I don’t believe I can help you there,’ he said. ‘Finding the right woman is one of the most difficult tasks we face in our civilization. And each of us has to deal with it entirely alone. We come alone into the world, and we die alone. But birth and death seem almost like great social events compared to the loneliness we feel when first we stand before a beautiful woman. In the things that matter, we have to fend for ourselves from the very beginning. We must keep asking ourselves what we want and where we want to go. To put it another way: you have to rack your own brains. And if you don’t get an answer from them, ask your heart.’

  ‘I can’t expect much from my brains,’ murmured Franz. ‘And my heart is lying in pieces in a house in Rotensterngasse.’

  ‘You’ll find you have no alternative. If you keep asking old men for advice, you’ll keep getting unsatisfactory answers. And if you ask the contents of your trousers, the answer will be unequivocal, but it will lead to nothing but confusion.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Franz. He put one hand to his brow to try to contain the wild turmoil of his thoughts. ‘Might it be, perhaps, that what your couch method does is force people to abandon their worn-out but comfortable paths and send them off across a completely unfamiliar field full of stones, where they have to struggle to find their path without the faintest idea what it looks like, how long it is, and whether it leads to any sort of destination?’

  Freud raised his eyebrows and slowly opened his mouth.

  ‘Might that be?’ repeated Franz. Freud swallowed. ‘Why are you looking at me so oddly, Herr Professor?’