The Tobacconist Read online

  ‘No information without an application,’ said the doorman.

  Franz looked up at the ceiling, from which hung a huge chandelier decorated with countless little fragments of glass. For a moment it seemed as if the chandelier had started to move and was slowly rotating on its own axis. He lowered his eyes. ‘Then I’ll come back again,’ he said.

  ‘Meaning what?’ asked the doorman.

  ‘Then I’ll come back again. Tomorrow. The day after tomorrow. The day after that. And so on. Every day at the same time — midday. For as long as it takes until someone tells me where Otto Trsnyek is, how he is, and when I can take him home again.’

  And that was what he did. Every day, at twelve o’clock on the dot, he locked the shop, took a little detour along Berggasse (where he secretly hoped to spot the professor’s stooping silhouette behind one of the curtains on the first floor), then walked along the Franz-Josef Embankment and over to the former Hotel Metropol, marched up to the doorman through the high-ceilinged entrance hall, and said, ‘Good day, I would like some information as to the whereabouts of the tobacconist Otto Trsnyek!’

  For the first few days the doorman continued to make an effort. Summoning all his official capacities for patience, he attempted to answer, talking about all manner of authorized submissions, administrative applications, pre-printed forms and regular channels. To all of this the impertinent boy always nodded affably but seemed otherwise quite unmoved, and after standing there, stubborn as a mule, for about a quarter of an hour he would politely take his leave, only to reappear punctually at a quarter past twelve the following day asking after this tobacconist. The doorman’s professional equanimity, laboriously cultivated over many years of service, began to crumble, until at last it collapsed altogether. One shimmering Monday midday, when Franz stood before him once more and said, ‘Good day, I would like some information as to the whereabouts of the tobacconist Otto Trsnyek!’, the doorman replied with a barely perceptible shrug. Then he reached for the receiver of the black telephone on the wall behind him, dialled a two-figure number and murmured a few unintelligible words into the receiver. About ten silent seconds later, a hidden door flew open in the wall beside the telephone, and a man in a beige linen suit came out. He seemed to be smiling as he walked towards Franz, but on closer inspection it was just a shadow under his little pale blond, almost white moustache. A shadow smile, Franz was thinking; and then the man was beside him. He yanked his head back by the hair, twisted his arm onto his back in a single swift movement, and dragged him through the entrance hall out into the open.

  Franz felt the pavement beneath his heels and the man’s hand gripping his lower arm like a log clamp. He saw the slightly overcast sky above him and the three swastika standards. Then there was a jolt, his arm was suddenly free, and a moment later he hit the ground face first. He fell into a black hole and was aware of a peculiar sound. Like a damp twig in the fire, he thought, just before he went under. When he resurfaced into the light a few seconds later, he was staring straight at the blond man’s shoes. They were shiny, polished loafers, made of soft leather and expensively sewn. Not a crack, not a mark, not a speck of dust, only fine, smooth, immaculate leather. Franz lifted his head and looked the man in the face. Seen from this perspective, with the bright midday sky behind him, the little moustache looked as if it were made of quivering raffia. The doorman’s blue-capped head loomed up alongside it.

  ‘Perhaps it would be better if the young gentleman didn’t come here any more. Otherwise he might find . . .’ He left a long pause, in which he made a performance of clearing his throat and blinking invisible irritants from his eyes. ‘Otherwise he might find himself staying as a guest of the Hotel Metropol for rather longer than he would like. Has the young gentleman understood?’ Franz nodded. The doorman took a snow-white handkerchief from his breast pocket, carefully unfolded it and held it up against the light like an awning, touching the finely embroidered hem and the neatly ironed folds with the tip of his ring finger. Then he bent down, pressed it into Franz’s hand and said, ‘Wipe the blood off your face, sonny boy. And go home.’

  Only when they had both disappeared back inside the building did Franz press the handkerchief to his mouth. The material was immediately soaked in bright blood. His tongue was swollen and felt hot and alien in his mouth. One of his front teeth was wobbly. Gingerly, Franz took it between the tips of his fingers and pulled. It yielded with a little tug. It was a beautiful, straight tooth. Only the root was broken, jagged and bloody. He would put it in the drawer of his bedside table, thought Franz, right beside the postcards and the letter from his mother and the little body of the moth that fell out of the night.

  Three weeks later, on the morning of the seventeenth of May 1938, summer declared itself. A pleasantly balmy breeze swept the chill of the night from the streets and across the Danube, far out onto the Schwechat plain. All across the city windows were opened, and blankets and pillows were shaken out, down feathers hovering in the air like white blossom. Early in the morning shift workers and housewives were queuing up outside the bakeries, and the streets smelled of fresh bread rolls and coffee. The first trams squeaked lethargically out of their sheds, and here and there droppings from the horses on the milk carts steamed on the cobbles. The stallholders at the Naschmarkt had set out their wares hours ago, and at the aged stall of the even more aged Herr Podgacék the first pensioners were arguing over the biggest heads of cauliflower and the mealiest potatoes. On the Prater’s main boulevard the weightlifters from the tram workers’ sports association were meeting for their final open-air training session before the big competition against SV Germania. Listlessly extending and stretching their limbs, they gazed up, yawning, over the chestnut trees to where the Ferris wheel cabins shone in the morning sun. In the basement of the Gestapo office, in the former laundry room of the Hotel Metropol, fifteen Jewish businessmen were made to strip and wait with their hands above their heads to be fetched for individual interrogation. Their clothes lay in a heap in the middle of the room, topped by a checked, crumpled cap like that of an American silent film comedian. On Platform II at Vienna West Station, four hundred and fifty-two political prisoners sat crammed together in the rear carriages of a specially chartered train, awaiting departure for Dachau. On the opposite platform, an old woman and a small boy sat beside each other on a bench, taking alternate bites from a large slice of bread and butter. High above them, under the station roof, a few swallows tumbled from a shadowy corner, hurtled off into the open and disappeared in the direction of Hütteldorf. When the whistle shrilled to signal its departure and the train began to move, the boy hopped off the bench and ran along the platform, waving and laughing. At that moment, something curious happened: all the prisoners at the windows waved back. The boy ran to the end of the platform, then stood still and shielded his eyes with his hand. Even at a distance, as the train gradually dissolved in the morning sunlight, it looked like a huge caterpillar with countless waving legs, crawling away.

  At around this time the postman Heribert Pfründner was panting up Berggasse with his postbag, which weighed a ton. He was sweating heavily, his stomach ached, and he still had the taste of his wife’s breakfast coffee in his mouth: stale, insipid, and slightly bitter. Much like a postman’s life in general, thought Heribert Pfründner morosely; before nine in the morning, anyway. Ever since the Nazis had ensconced themselves in the central post office, the people of Vienna had been receiving their letters at the crack of dawn, which meant that Heribert Pfründner, like his colleagues, had to crawl out of bed an hour earlier, and the coffee seemed to slop about in his stomach even more stalely, insipidly and bitterly than it already had over his past thirty-three years of service. One could be sitting beside a lake or a pool, he thought, or at least some pond in the Wienerwald not too infested with mosquitoes, dipping one’s swollen feet in the water and thinking of nothing, or lying on the banks of the Danube, anyway, drinking a third glass of beer and watching time sluggishly pass one by.


  The two plainclothes policemen were hanging around in front of Berggasse 19, as they had done for the past few weeks, shifty characters with shadowed eyes and nicotine-yellow faces. ‘Heilhitler!’ murmured the postman, his sweaty hands fumbling with the bunch of keys in order to unlock the door and get to the letterboxes. This time, too, they stopped him. They always stopped him. They always wanted to know what was in his postbag. They always made him show them the letters, particularly those addressed to Professor Sigmund Freud; they held the envelopes up to the light, deciphered the sender and tried, feeling with their nicotine-yellow fingers, to determine the contents. They always kept one or more for themselves. Today it was two: a big, heavy envelope addressed in flowing handwriting, written with a fountain pen, to ‘The most esteemed Herr Professor Dr. Freud’, and a little pale blue letter with slightly battered corners. Probably from England, thought Heribert Pfründner, or Sweden, perhaps; from some country, anyway, that had a king on its stamps with a serious yet somehow kindly expression. He unlocked the door, hastily put the post in the letterboxes, and left with a wordless nod. The suspicious letters had long since vanished into the plain-clothes policemen’s baggy pockets. And who knew, thought Heribert Pfründner, they might even be right: after all, this Freud was a professor, firstly, and secondly a Jew, and as everyone knew, you never could tell with either. What was certain, though, was that he was the post office’s best customer in this sector. Accordingly, the bag lost much of its weight after the delivery to Berggasse 19; today, too, making the remainder of his round far more agreeable and easy to cope with. When the postman Heribert Pfründner finally turned into Währingerstrasse and saw before him the skinny figure of the young tobacconist Franz Huchel stepping outside into the clear early morning light, he could already feel in his calves that refreshingly cool, buoyant sensation that heralded the imminent end of his shift.

  Franz had been tossing and turning all night in a tumult of dreams, a rushing confusion of words, sounds and images. Waking was deliverance, and although the memory began to dissolve with his first sleepy blinks like shreds of fog at daybreak, he had struggled to get at least a few words of this chaos down on paper. Shortly afterwards, still a little bleary-eyed, he stepped out of the tobacconist’s and stuck the note on the window. A sudden, sharp pain briefly shot through his mouth. The swelling in his tongue and jaw had gone down just a few days after his last visit to the Gestapo, and he had grown more or less accustomed to the new gap in his mouth. Secretly, he even liked his missing tooth, and as he played with it with the tip of his tongue, feeling the smooth sides of the adjacent teeth and the soft, warm floor of the gum as it slowly healed, he thought of Anezka: her teeth, her gap, her rosy tongue.

  ‘Heilitler! May I?’ The postman, who had come up behind him on soft-soled shoes, leaned in close to the window, expertly feigning interest, and read:

  May 17, 1938

  A tram is ringing through the wood, the rabbits’ eyes are dark drops, cabins are hanging in the trees, and white fear crouches above the clouds, something is gnawing at my roots, perhaps we should have extinguished the embers?

  ‘Aha,’ said the postman, who had frozen slightly. He tried to recover himself. ‘Interesting. Especially the bit with the rabbit!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Franz. ‘Do you have any post for me?’

  ‘Oh, right — of course,’ nodded the postman, and took out of his agreeably limp bag the last parcel of his daily round: a longish box, wrapped in brown packing paper and neatly taped. ‘Here you are: an official package today, if you please!’

  Franz took the parcel and thanked him. With a brief grunt, probably intended to signify benevolent friendliness, the postman touched his cap and set off, light of foot, on the final hundred metres of his path, chasing happy thoughts of the first beer of the afternoon.

  Franz took the parcel inside, put it on the sales counter and looked at it in the light of the little lamp. The consignment was addressed to him personally. To Herr Franz Huchel, Management of Trsnyek’s Tobacconist’s, Vienna 9, Währingerstrasse. An official blue stamp announced the sender: The Inspector of the Security Police, Vienna 1, Morzinplatz 4. For a moment Franz was aware that the word ‘Management’ made his chest to expand with a pleasantly warm feeling of pride; then he ripped at the parcel and opened the box. The covering letter lay right on top: typed, it too bore the official blue stamp, and an indecipherable signature.

  The Head of the Security Police Vienna I, the ....16th May 1938.....

  ............L VII — 75 / 39g.............

  Please quote date and reference above when replying.

  To:

  Herr Franz Huchel

  Manager of

  Trsnyek’s Tobacconist’s

  Währingerstrasse

  Vienna 9

  Re: Return of personal items/valuables

  Enclosure: 1

  We would like to take this opportunity to inform you herewith of the decease of your acquaintance, the tobacconist Herr Otto Trsnyek. Herr T. succumbed to his unspecifiable heart condition on the night of 13th/14th May on the premises of Gestapo Headquarters, Vienna 1, Morzinplatz 4. Interment by the City of Vienna took place on 15th May 1938 at the Vienna Central Cemetery, Group 40, Row IV/2. In April of this year a criminal file was opened on Herr T. He was arrested and charged

  on suspicion of subversive activities,

  with crimes against public order and breach of the peace,

  with crimes according to the Treachery Act,

  with the illegal possession of official party stamps.

  A decision regarding the seizure and confiscation of property and financial assets (if extant) will be made in the coming weeks. Until then, all rights and claims of third parties on these property and financial assets are unlawful. For this period Herr Franz Huchel, b. 7th August 1920 in Nussdorf am Attersee, is authorized by interim order to make the necessary provisions for the maintenance of the business and to take over the temporary management of Trsnyek’s Tobacconist’s. In discharge of our obligation, we are returning to you Herr Trsnyek’s personal effects, namely:

  1 bunch of keys

  1 wallet (empty)

  1 photograph (person unknown)

  1 woollen cardigan

  1 shoe

  1 pair trousers (damaged)

  CC

  Signed .......................................

  B/MA/G

  Admin. Dir. Dr. Kernsteiner

  Franz placed the letter on top of a pile of magazines for the modern woman and spread out the items on the sales counter: the shoe in the middle, the bundled cardigan to the left of it, the bunch of keys at the top on the edge of the blotting pad, the wallet beside the inkwell, and the photo right in the cone of light from the desk lamp. The picture showed Otto Trsnyek as a young man in uniform, standing and leaning against a brick wall. His left leg was bent and propped against the wall. His cap hung next to his shoulder, on a nail, perhaps, or a shoddily laid brick. He looked tired. He seemed to want to surrender the weight of his whole body to the wall. He was looking past the camera, somewhere off into the distance. The things looked nice laid out on the counter. He should get someone to paint them, thought Franz; or hire the photographer from the pony carousel — he could take a photo of them. A little tobacconist still-life. He took the neatly-folded trousers, shook them out in front of his chest, held them up to the shop window and let the truncated leg dangle against the light. The fabric was thin and threadbare. If the tobacconist had worn the trousers a little longer his knee would soon have been able to see out, as if through a small, daintily barred window. Franz put them back on the sales counter, locked up, and went to his little room. He closed the door behind him and stared into the darkness for a while. Suddenly his legs gave way beneath him, and he sank to the floor beside the bed, where he lay and cried until he had no tears left.

  Shortly before closing time he got up and went back into the shop. He folded up Otto Trsnyek’s trousers and took them with him to Ross
huber’s butcher’s. The butcher and his wife were standing behind the counter pressing heavy chunks of meat and fat through a grinder. Frau Rosshuber was stuffing the dark red, yellow, and bluish lumps in on one side, while on the other her husband received the sluggish torrent of rosy worms, moulded them into heaps, wrapped them in grease-proof paper and slapped the fist-sized packages down beside one another on a tin tray. When the door opened and the tobacconist’s boy from next door came in they didn’t even raise their heads; they just bent even more diligently over the machine. But when Franz pushed open the little swing door next to the refrigerator and approached them behind the counter — just like that, without a greeting, without asking, without saying anything at all — they stopped short, straightened up, stepped back, and crossed their bloodstained arms over their bloodstained aprons.

  ‘What d’you want?’ asked the butcher, staring at the floor tiles, where blood and melted ice converged in peculiar streaks.

  Franz placed the trousers next to the greasy packets on the tray and said, ‘These belonged to Otto Trsnyek. Now he’s dead.’

  Rosshuber turned pale. Like marble, thought Franz, like one of those marble saints that stand around in churches staring at people with their cold stone eyes: big, stiff and pale. The butcher opened his small child’s mouth. His teeth were narrow and yellow, the gums as rosy as the meat worms still crawling out of the machine behind him. ‘And what have we got to do with it?’ he asked.

  ‘You defaced his shop,’ said Franz. ‘You insulted him. You betrayed him. And you killed him!’

  The butcher raised his heavy head and stared dumbly at Franz’s brow.

  ‘Go on, say something!’ said his wife, nervously wiping some morsels of mince off her arms. Rosshuber raised his shoulders, dropped them again, snorted, tweaked his apron, stared into space, snorted again, was silent.