The Tobacconist Read online

  ‘Otto Trsnyek, I am arresting you for the possession and distribution of pornographic material!’ the mournful man cried. There was a brief silence. Although the tobacconist was kneeling on the floor with his head bowed, Franz thought he could make out a dark patch on his forehead.

  ‘So where’ve you hidden the wank mags?’ asked the mournful man. Otto Trsnyek bowed his head lower still. One of the men kicked him hard in the ribs. He fell sideways with a grunt, put his hands protectively in front of his face and pulled his leg in as close to his body as possible. At a nod from his boss, the third man walked behind the counter, yanked the drawer open, took out the flimsy pile of erotic magazines and held them aloft with a triumphant grin.

  ‘You sell this kind of trash to the Jews?’

  Otto Trsnyek jerked his head and opened his mouth in a barely audible ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long’s this been going on?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  The mournful man nodded, and his colleague landed a kick. A hard kick, with his toecap, in the region of the kidneys. Otto Trsnyek groaned feebly and curled up tighter still. Franz closed his eyes. The rushing in his ear had subsided; the pain was almost gone. He suddenly found himself thinking of the worms that, as a boy, he used to pull out of the lush ground after persistent rain, which had always writhed so blindly and pointlessly on his palm. They felt strange, these worms: slippery, taut and cool, and if you pricked them with a sewing needle they curled up very small, and a dark drop welled out of the spot where the needle had gone in.

  ‘Let’s try again. How long have you been selling your filthy magazines to the Jews?’

  ‘Always . . .’ the tobacconist whispered.

  ‘My dear Mr. Newsagent, one doesn’t do such things,’ said the mournful man, shaking his head reproachfully. He bent down, seized Otto Trsnyek’s head by the hair and slowly raised him up off the floor.

  ‘But it isn’t true!’ Franz, in the corner, had picked himself up and was standing, on shaky legs. ‘The magazines belong to me! I bought them, for myself! All of them! Because I sometimes like to look at things like that.’

  ‘Shut your mouth, Franz!’ hissed the tobacconist. ‘You’ve no idea what you’re talking about!’

  ‘With all due respect, I know perfectly well. And besides: the truth is the truth and that’s all there is to it. And if someone’s done something stupid, he must be able to take responsibility for it. Surely you have to admit I’m right there, Mr. Policeman?’

  The mournful man dropped Otto Trsnyek’s head like a rotten apple. He straightened up and stared at Franz.

  ‘So the best thing is for you to take me with you right now to the police station or the cells or wherever. Because the magazines are my magazines. I bought them and read them, I looked at the pictures, and I hid them in the drawer. And if all that’s a crime, I want to answer for it, please.’

  ‘Shut your stupid mouth, you fool!’ said the tobacconist, through gritted teeth.

  ‘Why should he?’ said the mournful man, affably. ‘Let sonny boy have his say. What’s his name, anyway?’

  ‘With all due respect, I’m not a sonny boy, and my name is Franz Huchel!’

  The mournful man folded his hands behind his back and slunk two or three steps towards Franz. ‘Is that so? Well then, say what you have to say, Herr Huchel!’

  ‘Franzl . . .’ The tobacconist had raised his head again. His face was contorted with pain, and his gaze wandered among the cigar boxes on the shelves for a few seconds before locating Franz. ‘You’re my apprentice . . . and you’re a fool, as well. Which is why you’re going to do exactly what I tell you. Sit back down, and keep your stupid mouth shut!’

  Only now did Franz see the thin trail of blood running down his chin, a delicate rivulet, scarcely bigger than a thread. And suddenly he saw the despair in his eyes as well. Like a veil, Franz thought; like a dark, gauzy veil. And at that moment everything became clear. For a fraction of a second a window opened onto the future, and through it white fear blew towards him — him, this small, stupid, powerless boy from the Salzkammergut. With a stifled sob he fell to his knees, put both arms around the tobacconist’s neck and pressed his body against him.

  ‘Let me go, Franzl!’ Otto Trsnyek whispered hoarsely into Franz’s hair. ‘Please, let me go!’

  When the men had bundled the tobacconist into the back seat, and the car, after repeatedly failing to start, had driven up Währingerstrasse, and turned into Boltzmanngasse, backfiring noisily, Franz remained standing outside the shop. It had started to drizzle lightly, and the smell of wet paving stones rose up beneath the sprinkle of warm spring rain. Somewhere, far away over the rooftops, there was sure to be a rainbow. The tobacconist hadn’t shouted or spoken again: he had let them take him away without resistance, hopping to the car supported by the grey men. Franz had run in again to fetch the crutches, but when he brought them back out the men had already driven away. Now the crutches were propped up beside the entrance like two old sticks, lopsided and useless.

  The rainwater was running in thin streams down the windowpanes of the Rosshuber butcher’s. Behind the glass the butcher’s silhouette was sawing at a knuckle of pork. He had stood in his doorway watching with his arms crossed over his bloody apron, lips curled in a smile, watching the tobacconist being carted off. When the car had finally disappeared he had given a brief laugh, shaken his head and gone back inside.

  Franz went on standing there, immobile. Maybe that’s it, he thought: just stop and stand here like this and never move again. Then time will drift past you, you won’t have to swim with it or struggle against it. Pedestrians hurried by without looking at him. Somewhere a child was bawling. Blackbirds were warbling in the flowerbeds around the Votive Church. Two pigeons fluttered up for a moment from a window ledge above Veithammer Installations before huddling back again into their corner by the window. A gust of wind blew a veil of drizzle in Franz’s face. Quite pleasant, really, he thought. He closed his eyes and wished never to open them again. Then he heard someone clear their throat behind him and a thin voice say, ‘Is anyone here still interested in the customers, or do we have to serve ourselves?’

  It was Herr Kollerer, the justice department official. Franz could see a double reflection of himself in Kollerer’s thick glasses, with the twin spires of the Votive Church in the background, blurred by a fine mist of rain.

  ‘The shop is open, sir, of course!’ said Franz. ‘Will it be your usual — the Wienerwald-Bote, the Bauernbündler, and a Long Heinrich?’

  Franz ordered new windowpanes from Staufinger, the master glazier, who delivered them promptly and installed them so that they fitted perfectly. For the first time in many years the tobacconist’s was bathed in more than just dim twilight. The brightness from the street penetrated every corner, making the colours on the lids of the cigar boxes glow with new freshness and unaccustomed intensity. However, now the cobwebs and the brownish damp stains on the ceiling were also visible. Franz bought a bucket of white paint, borrowed a ladder, a painting apron and a big horsehair brush from Frau Veithammer, the plumber’s wife, and started painting the ceiling. When he had finished doing that he painted the walls and the slats of the chairs, then the shelves, the stationery display case, the box of small goods, the little cupboard for the pipe accessories, the legs of the sales counter, and finally the door and window frames. With the last dollops of paint he retouched the little chips in the varnish on the drawer handles; finally, he dabbed a tiny white dot on the front doorknob, just like that, because it amused him and looked sort of pretty and friendly and artistic. Behind a pile of love-story magazines for the cultivated lady he found Otto Trsnyek’s delicately framed, but rather dusty reading glasses. He gave them a spit and polish with his shirtsleeve, wrapped them in newspaper and stored them carefully under the counter. He filled the inkwell, dipped the nib of the fountain pen in a bath of water, sharpened the pencils and smoothed out the dog-ears in the bookkeeping file. He stood on tiptoe by the front door
and cleaned and rubbed and polished the little bells until they shone like Christmas tree decorations. On a piece of cardboard, in thick red letters, he painted the words DEAR CUSTOMERS, TRSNYEK’S TOBACCONIST’S IS STILL OPEN — STEP INSIDE, YOU WILL BE SERVED! and stuck the sign on the inside of the door at eye level. He went over to Frau Veithammer’s to return the ladder, the brush and the apron, along with a bright yellow flower hastily plucked from the flowerbeds of the Votive Church; he washed the paint off his hands and the dust out of his hair and finally, tired and fragrant with curd soap, he sank into Otto Trsnyek’s armchair. He sat there for a few moments listening to the leather creak under his bottom, then took a nice big sheet of squared paper out of the drawer and began to write.

  Dear Mama,

  This is my first letter to you. Not just to you, in fact; it’s my first letter ever. The things I want to write to you won’t all fit on a single postcard, you see. Although I don’t really know any more what exactly it was I wanted to say. And that’s typical at the moment. My mind hasn’t been working like it should lately. It feels as if someone’s taken my head in their great big hands and given it a violent shake. So — first things first, one after another, nice and slow, from the beginning. It’s very pretty here in Vienna. After the long winter the spring is creeping out of every nook and cranny. Everywhere you look something is blooming. The parks look almost like they do on the postcards, and every horse dropping left on the road is bound to produce a daffodil. People are quite mad: they’re running about like headless chickens and don’t know what they’re doing. If you ask me, that’s not just because it’s spring; it’s politics, mainly. These are strange times right now. Or perhaps the times were always strange and I just didn’t notice. After all, until recently I was still a child. And I’m not yet a man. And that’s the whole problem. Which brings us straight to the next topic: nothing came of it with the girl (the one I wrote to you about!), for now, or for good. Don’t ask me why, that’s just how it is. Perhaps love isn’t meant for me. Perhaps I’m not for love. I don’t know. Do you know? Do you know if I’m cut out for love? Do you know what love is? Do you know anything about love? To be honest, it feels pretty strange to ask your own mother such things. Sort of embarrassing. But at this distance it’s all right. Anyway, I’m curious to see what you say. By the way, on the subject of distance, you really must write to me about the lake. The postcards are pretty, but pictures are only pictures and can be deceptive. Just like the over-made-up cover-girl faces in the shop. They look at you in a way that makes you think they mean you personally when actually all they’re doing is looking into a camera and thinking about a nice juicy beef stew and getting lots of money for it. There, you see: I wasn’t exaggerating about my head being badly shaken up. If there’d been a thread running through this letter it would certainly be lost by now, or frayed to pieces, at any rate. So I’d better move on quickly to the next topic. The professor and I are friends now. (That’s the truth!) Although we both work almost constantly, we spend as much time together as possible. We sit on the bench, go to the park, and talk about all sorts of things. He smokes. I don’t. I ask him about this and that. And he asks me about this or that. Often, neither of us has any answers, but that doesn’t matter. Friends are allowed not to have answers sometimes. The age difference doesn’t matter to us, incidentally. People can stare and wag their tongues as much as they like — we don’t care. Although of course on the other hand the professor really is very old. Sometimes when I look at him I think he’s somehow come down to us from ancient times. Like the old plum tree that leans down to the shore behind the cottage, all gnarled and crooked. It doesn’t bother me at all that he’s a Jew. If Otto Trsnyek hadn’t told me, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed. In any case, I don’t know why everybody is so hard on the Jews. They seem perfectly respectable to me. The truth is, I’m actually a bit worried. About the professor, and generally. Like I said — strange times. Which brings me to another matter, unfortunately quite an unpleasant one. Otto Trsnyek has fallen ill. Not seriously, but still. His liver maybe, or kidneys, or something internal. If you ask me, it’s because of the unhealthy food. The food in Vienna is probably even fattier than ours. And you can’t do a lot of leaping about with only one leg, in terms of exercise, I mean. Anyway, he’s staying at home for a few days for the time being, and we’ll have to wait and see. I’ll send him your best wishes for a speedy recovery, if that’s all right?

  Dear Mama, often I’m sad and I know why. Often, though, I’m sad and I don’t know why, and that’s almost worse. Sometimes I wish I was back at the lake. Of course I know it’s not as simple as that any more. I’ve already seen and smelled and tasted too much. Life will go on, I just don’t know where to yet. And so I’ll stop moaning now. Otto Trsnyek’s absence means I’m temporarily responsible for managing the shop, so I have to keep looking forward. You can be proud of me, dearest Mama, if you like!

  Your Franz

  Business didn’t completely grind to a halt, but it was bad. The Jewish customers had almost all disappeared. Perhaps, as Franz thought, they had switched to another tobacconist’s because of the recent events, or they were sitting in their apartments, keeping quiet, and had temporarily given up reading and smoking. Only old Herr Löwenstein came, as always, to fetch himself a packet or two of Gloriettes. His poor hearing, even worse eyesight, and the general decrepitude that was slowly taking over his body rendered him, as he once said, insusceptible to the events taking over the city; which were not, on the whole, much fun for the people of Moses, he added as he doddered out of the door, chuckling quietly.

  But the non-Jewish customers made themselves scarce, too. Presumably because they were waiting to see what would happen with the situation in general and the tobacconist’s in particular, which was said to have sold ‘erotic magazines’ to Jews and was now being run by some funny lad from the sticks. For it was well known that waiting and seeing was always the best, perhaps even the only way to let the various troubles of the times flow past leaving you unscathed.

  The few people who did still come had changed. Many now wore brown shirts, some had swastika armbands or at least little swastika pins on their collars, and the majority seemed to go to the barber more frequently than before. They also had a strange light in their eyes. The light was sort of optimistic or hopeful or inspired, but essentially also rather dim-witted; Franz couldn’t really make the distinction. In any case, they had this light in their eyes and spoke in loud, clear voices. The muted conversational tone for placing orders or making a purchase that had always suited the shop’s gloomy interior so well had been replaced by a brisk, sonorous, rattling inflection. It sounded as if it was only now that the customers really knew what they wanted, or had always been seeking. More and more people greeted each other with ‘Heil Hitler!’, stretching their arm out as they did so. Franz, to whom this seemed a trifle excessive, got into the habit of replying with a non-committal ‘Thank you, same to you!’

  He had almost entirely stopped reading the newspapers; in any case, they were nearly all filled with the same, constantly recurring content. If you’d read the Wienerwald-Bote you also knew what was in the Bauernbündler, had finished the Reichspost, didn’t need to bother with the Volksblatt, and so on. It was as if, every day, the editorial departments gathered for one great big conference in order to maintain at least apparent objectivity by co-ordinating their headlines and incorporating a few differences in the texts of articles that were otherwise wholly identical. They were usually about Adolf Hitler. In no time at all the little man from Upper Austria had occupied the minds of his compatriots, and he certainly wouldn’t be leaving again any time soon. They were all completely, idiotically infatuated with the dynamic man with the wiry moustache. Yet Heinzi was definitely the better Hitler, thought Franz; on first impression. He made a much more striking Chancellor of the Reich anyway, one with far more dynamism and far greater charisma. Franz often thought of Monsieur de Caballé with the knife in his trousers. Ev
en more often, though, he thought of Anezka. Sometime he wrote her name on a piece of paper, just like that, in capital letters and Otto Trsnyek’s most expensive ink. Or, if he didn’t happen to have any paper on hand, in tiny script along the edge of an old newspaper. In a quiet hour after closing time he started writing her name on the palm of his left hand: once, twice, a third time, over and over again. He wrote it on every single finger, on his fingertips, knuckles and the sides of his hands, scrawled it in tiny letters on the folds of the joints, and smaller still under the edges of his nails. When there was no space left on his hand at all he rolled up his sleeve and carried on writing on his arm: Anezka on his wrist, Anezka between the veins and the little hairs on his forearm, Anezka on his elbow, on his upper arm, and in big, wildly looping letters around his shoulder.

  One radiant Monday morning in April Heribert Pfründner, the very overweight and so also rather broken-winded postman who had delivered the mail in the Alsergrund/Rossau district for the past thirty-four years, entered the tobacconist’s, waited (as he always did) for the little bells to stop ringing, mumbled a slightly grumpy ‘Heilitler!’ and, along with a couple of leaflets, the local monthly newsletter and an invitation to the official opening of the clubhouse of the First Ottakring Gymnastics Association, tossed an eggshell-yellow envelope onto the sales counter, touched two fingers to his sweating temple in farewell, and panted out again. Franz locked the shop door, retreated to his little room, sat on the edge of his bed and contemplated the envelope, which bore a stamp in the top right corner in honour of the proud Austrian military leader Radetzky and, to the left of it, his mother’s delicate signature. Fingers trembling with impatience, he opened it and began to read.

  My dear Franzl,

  Thank you so much for your letter. You wrote so beautifully, and I was really pleased. The weather is warm here. The Schafberg has a friendly look and the lake is silvery or blue or green, according to its mood. They’ve planted big swastika flags on the bank. They reflect in the water and look very correct. In fact everyone is very correct all of a sudden, running around with important faces. Just imagine, Hitler hangs on the wall even in the restaurant and the school now. Right next to Jesus. Although we have no idea what they think of each other. Preininger’s lovely car has been confiscated, unfortunately. That’s what they call it these days when things disappear and reappear again somewhere else. The car didn’t go very far, though. The mayor drives around in it now. Since the mayor became a Nazi, he’s finding a lot of things easier to do. Everyone wants to be a Nazi all of a sudden. Even the forest ranger is running around in the forest with a bright red armband and wondering why he’s not shooting anything any more. Talking of which: do you remember Hannes, our pleasure steamer? They’ve given it a new coat of paint and rechristened it. Now it glistens like a freshly boiled sweet and is called ‘Homecoming’. On its first outing with its new name, though, the diesel engine exploded and they had to use the old rowing boats to bring people back to the shore. Oh, Franzl, my darling boy, what will become of us all? Preininger is dead, and you’re so far away. Sometimes I lie in bed and cry into the pillows because there’s nobody left for me to look after any more. And nobody to look after me. But nice things happen, too. Guess what: I’ve found a job! The Goldener Leopold has started letting out a few rooms to guests, and I clean there three times a week. It’s not that well-paid, but I sometimes get a tip. Once the innkeeper lay in wait for me and threw me onto one of the guest beds. I told him I was friendly with SS Obersturmbannführer Graleitner from Linz and that he certainly wouldn’t be happy about a thing like this. That gave the innkeeper a shock, and he stammered something about a silly misunderstanding. Since then he’s left me alone. If he only knew that SS Obersturmbannführer Graleitner was an invention!