The Tobacconist Read online

  ‘Perhaps he’s got nothing more to say.’ Franz stepped right up to the butcher and looked him straight in the eyes. The marble cheeks were suffused with pink spots, and a glittering bubble of spit clung to the corner of his mouth. Franz raised his hands and contemplated the smooth skin on the back. ‘My mother always said I had very delicate hands. Delicate, white and soft, like a girl’s. I never wanted to hear that, but now I think she was right.’ He let them fall again. Then he drew back his right hand and gave the butcher a resounding slap in the face.

  Rosshuber didn’t move. He didn’t move and he didn’t make a sound. He just stood there, heavy, silent and immobile, and stared straight through Franz. The little bubble in the corner of his mouth had burst. His cheek had reddened slightly, and two slim marks were visible below the cheekbone.

  ‘Eduard!’ said his wife, her face contorted with horror, breaking the chilly silence in the room.

  But the butcher did nothing. Only long after Franz had tucked Otto Trsnyek’s trousers under his arm and left the shop did he move again. Very slowly he raised both hands and, with a long-drawn-out, muffled groan, lowered his face into his palms.

  Dear Mama,

  I would have liked to send you another postcard (a few new ones have arrived, particularly impressive ones, with St. Charles’ Church, geraniums, the Gloriette and so on). But some words can’t take pictures; they need an envelope. I can’t say it any better, so I’ll just say it like it is. Otto Trsnyek died yesterday. His heart just stopped beating. Perhaps it didn’t want to carry on, with this life, with the times, and with everything else. He probably didn’t notice a thing. He went to sleep quite peacefully. In Burgenland, where he’s from. Please, dear Mama, don’t be sad. Or please do be sad. Otto Trsnyek deserves that. But you know that better than I do, anyway. I’m staying here for the time being. Because what else am I to do? Besides, someone has to run the tobacconist’s. Things have to keep going. And there really is plenty to do. Everything all around is in some kind of upheaval, it seems to me. I just hope it doesn’t all fall apart. What doesn’t change is the lake. The mountains and the clouds will reflect in it longer than those few skinny swastika flagpoles, believe me! Dear Mama, I’ll end this sad letter here, with a warm hug.

  Your Franz

  The silence and vast expanse, thought Franz, as he sat on a lightning-blackened tree trunk near the Stefaniewarte observation point on top of the Kahlenberg, looking down on Vienna: the silence and vast expanse, the clarity and depths, the mistiness and mysteriousness, the sun, the rain, the city, the lake, the mountain. Although of course this Kahlenberg isn’t a mountain, he thought, at least not a mountain you can take seriously, like the Schafberg, for example, or the Hochleckenkogel, or even the Höllengebirge range. In the Salzkammergut the Kahlenberg would be considered a hill, if that. An insignificant elevation, rather, or a rise, or just a great pile of earth with pretty sparse forest cover. But the Viennese think otherwise, he thought. For the Viennese, the Kahlenberg is not only a real mountain, it’s also the highest and most beautiful mountain in the whole region — and, on Sundays and holidays in particular, the most overrun by the nature-hungry population.

  Now, though, in the early evening of a perfectly ordinary weekday, there wasn’t a soul to be seen. No one stumbling about in the undergrowth in search of peace and quiet or chanterelle mushrooms; no one trying to summon his dachshund, his children and his own good humour; and no one spreading out a woollen blanket to enjoy a late-afternoon snack accompanied by the traditional bottles of warm beer. Franz was alone. And even if the Kahlenberg was just God’s botched copy of a real mountain, it was still kind of nice up here. You could sit quietly and let your thoughts wander; it smelled of sun and forest, and only the faintest hint of the otherwise ever-present roar of the city made its way up here. After his brief visit to the butcher’s he had returned to the tobacconist’s, written his second ever letter to his mother, then packed the tobacconist’s effects nice and neatly — apart from the trousers — in a large cigarette box, stuck a piece of paper on it labelled HERR OTTO TRSNYEK’S LAST THINGS, and stowed it under the sales counter. He had served the customers, taken receipt of a delivery of schoolbooks (forty pages, twenty pages, plain, lined, squared, with and without margins), and turned the high-quality cigars in their boxes to protect them from the damp. Above all, though, he had read the newspapers again for the first time in ages; if not all, then at least most of them, and if not from cover to cover, then at least in greater part. Finally, punctually at six o’clock, he had started to do the day’s bookkeeping. But even as he was unscrewing the cap of Otto Trsnyek’s fountain pen he felt somehow strange; then, as he was scribbling the first figures into the accounts, he was overwhelmed by an unfamiliar, painful yearning and his hand started to shake so hard that three fat drops of ink fell from the pen nib one after another, making three spiky, blue-black blots right in the middle of the balance column. Franz wanted to get out, outside, into the open air, into the forest, up the mountain, even if the mountain was just a mound of earth on the outskirts of Vienna. He screwed the fountain pen shut again, not even troubling to dab up the ink blots with his little sponge, locked the shop and hurried out towards the Kahlenberg, walking into the spicy wind.

  The tree trunk he was sitting on was still warm from the sun and smelled pleasantly of mould. In one spot red beetles crawled over one another, crept under a piece of rotten bark, re-emerged, disappeared again. Those who knew nothing had no worries, thought Franz, but if it was hard enough painstakingly to acquire knowledge, it was even harder, if not practically impossible, to forget what you had once known. He let one of the beetles crawl onto his forefinger. It immediately started running madly round his fingertip. Carefully he set it down again on the piece of bark and watched it disappear in the seething mass. The beetles’ backs looked like little heraldic shields, their legs like tiny, twitching letters continually forming new words, sentences, stories, as they scrabbled over the moist earth of the Kahlenberg. He was reminded of the newspapers, the headlines. Such a commotion, such a lot of shouting in print. And yet they seemed to be saying that everything was just fine: basically, everything was going splendidly, wonderfully, excellently, in fact it was truly fantastic! Of course, history was being made right now — but when was it not? There were big changes taking place — but they were necessary, weren’t they? Communists’ and unconventional thinkers’ subversive assets were being seized — but wasn’t that only fair? Jewish people’s property was being confiscated, their shops closed and managed by good, upright citizens — but weren’t these just long overdue measures to maintain public security and order in our lovely city of Vienna? In our tolerant state of Austria, so beloved of God? Things are moving forward! Things are happening! Everywhere there’s something going on! Opening of the Degenerate Art exhibition in the Künstlerhaus! Shocking! The Führer in Italy! The Führer in Munich! The Führer in Salzburg! The Führer everywhere! Incredible! Mussolini gives a speech! Goebbels speaks in Düsseldorf! Excellent! Jewish insurgents challenge Britain! The Reich Railways Shooting Club tournament is taking place in Vienna’s Kagran district! A Communist kills himself! And another! And another! But didn’t they deserve it, dear readers, just a little? Big flower show today in Favoriten district! Free entry for children and veterans! Where else would you find such a thing! The authorities are going to purge the Prater of foreign riffraff! Free beer for everyone today! Big aeronautical show tomorrow! Everybody come! Come and watch! Bring your family! Have you already laughed today? Our photograph shows the Führer viewing the impregnable bunker! The weather in the Ostmark: windy with scattered cloud! At the theatre tonight: Behave Yourself, Lisa! (comedy)! At the cinema tomorrow: The Clever Stepmother (comedy)! The world is turning! Everything’s fine! A child was born in the cinema yesterday! Three cheers! The Gestapo is celebrating its anniversary! Soon it’ll be Mother’s Day! Soon it’ll be Christmas! ‘Heaven, Vienna mine, / I’m in the spell of your charms divine!’

 
Franz looked out over the city. The sun was low, the roofs were shining, here and there a stray sunbeam flashed up at him, and the Danube wound its silvery way between the houses before disappearing in the wide, dark meadows. The tobacconist’s shop must be over there somewhere. Next to it the Votive Church. Morzinplatz. The Opera. The Prater with the Giant Ferris Wheel. The Ferris wheel, in whose shadow the show was about to begin. Any moment now the lizard man would close the doors. The girl with the scar would run her cloth once more over the tables damp with beer and schnapps and then switch on the spotlights. Monsieur de Caballé would come on stage. The jokes. Hitler. The dog. The wonderful gramophone. N’Djina, the shy girl from the land of the Indians. Everything as it always was; everything was as before. He closed his eyes. What was one supposed to think, on a day like this, in times like these, alone on top of a mountain that wasn’t a mountain at all, with a few red beetles at one’s feet and a city gone mad? Anything was conceivable. Anything was possible. Those who sweep the riff-raff off the streets and blast the Jewish rats out of their holes, who plant swastikas on the shore of the lake and give a steamer the name ‘Homecoming’, who kill tobacconists and throw mothers onto unmade beds, who by day point legions of hands at the sky above Heldenplatz by day and by night run braying down the alleyways — such people would lift the Giant Ferris Wheel off its hinges, too, or stamp the little green grotto into the ground.

  All at once Franz felt a pain in his left hand, a slight stinging in his fingers, on the tips, sides and knuckles. Tiny points of flame that swiftly multiplied and branched off into fine, glowing lines: over his wrist, his forearm, his upper arm, his shoulder. Hundreds of delicate, fountain-pen-nib-like, brightly burning signatures. Anezka, thought Franz, Anezka. He started running. Desperately he hurled himself down the slope. The ground beneath his feet was soft and damp; the rocks were overgrown with dark moss and the treetops rustled above him. He ran as fast as he could, hearing his own breath like the panting of a stranger. And for a moment he no longer knew whether the twigs that hit him in the face, chest and arms were real, or whether he was trapped in his own dream; whether he was wide awake or dreaming as he flew down the steep slopes of the Kahlenberg.

  When Franz entered the grotto an hour later, breathless, his shoes covered with mud, the show was already coming to an end. The lizard stretched his head forward, gave him a fifty percent discount and opened the hidden door. Apparently N’Djina had already finished her dance and left the stage. The men’s beer-dulled eyes still glowed with the spark she had lit in them. A pudgy, balding man stood in the spotlight. He was wearing a lemon-yellow suit, waving his arms in the air and addressing the audience in a hoarse falsetto. The girl with the scar stood behind the counter. Her face flickered in the candlelight; the scar on her cheek, sharp and dark, looked as if it had been drawn on. She greeted Franz with a brief nod. At a table in the background sat three men in black uniforms. One of them, a young man with bland features and pasty skin, wore a dagger on his hip attached to a chain of little silver skulls. On stage, the master of ceremonies told a joke. What could one expect of a Jewess’s housekeeping these days? he wanted to know. Someone bawled out the answer, everyone laughed and clapped, and the lemon-yellow man looked astonished. Franz circled around the stage and disappeared through the door behind it. At the end of a dark corridor was another door. A strip of light shimmered out from underneath, and the hinges creaked slightly when he opened it. The room was tiny and brightly lit; there was a smell of sweat and makeup. Anezka was sitting at a table against the wall, facing a mirror surrounded by little brightly coloured lights. She was still wearing her costume, and the feather in her hair quivered as Franz came in. ‘Ah, sonny boy!’ she said with a smile, wiping the warpaint off her cheeks with a little sponge.

  ‘Anezka,’ said Franz, and the name felt strangely foreign, as if he had never said it out loud before. ‘Where’s Heinzi?’

  She shrugged. ‘Gone. Taken by Gestapo.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of jokes. And other things.’

  Franz stared at her reflection. In one place the mirror was broken and a piece of glass was missing. It looked as if she had a dark dent in her forehead.

  ‘Have you had a parcel already?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘What sort parcel?’

  He swallowed. ‘Don’t know. Nothing. It’s probably just nonsense . . .’ She had wiped off all the colour now, and she started spreading a dab of white cream over her forehead and cheeks with the tip of her finger. The white made her face look a bit like a mask. Franz was reminded of the death mask that hung behind the altar of the chapel in Nussdorf. It depicted some village saint whose name and origins, as well as the reasons for his supposed beatification, had been forgotten over the years. Its expression as it stared out into the body of the church was either friendly or crafty, depending on the angle and the fall of the light, and it frightened the children during Sunday mass. In fact, everyone disliked it, but so far no priest had dared to take it down and put it with the moth-eaten old prayer books in the box in the cellar of the church: after all, you never really knew, and it was better to be safe than sorry, because God moves in mysterious ways.

  Anezka had rubbed in the cream. She loosened a couple of hairpins, pulled the wig off her head in one swift movement and hung it on a hook beside the mirror. She brushed the hair back from her forehead and looked at Franz, her face rosy and shining.

  ‘Where did tooth go?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Franz, probing the smooth gum with the tip of his tongue. Anezka put down the brush, stood up and came very close to him. He could smell her makeup, her skin, her sweat, her breath.

  ‘Have pretty gap in teeth!’ she said, and laughed. ‘Look like me now!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Franz, and gulped. Suddenly he felt overcome by a slight giddiness. Perhaps it was the stuffy air in the grotto. Perhaps he had run too fast. He took a step forward, then two to the right, and stared for a moment at the wall. Strange, he thought, that it was possible to get lost in such a small room. The wall was roughly plastered and covered in stains. In one place there was a hook with a frayed thread hanging from it, moving slightly. Franz could feel his heart, a big, warm throbbing in his breast. He must have outrun it somewhere coming down the Kahlenberg or in the streets on the outskirts of town, and it had only just caught up with him. The thread stopped moving. The giddiness had passed. Franz turned, took two steps back towards Anezka, put a hand on her cheek and began to speak without thinking, the words pouring out of him: ‘Anezka, I don’t understand it myself, everyone’s gone mad, people are throwing themselves off roofs, they’ve killed Otto Trsnyek, and who knows what’s happening to Heinzi right now, the Jews are kneeling on the pavement cleaning the paving stones, it’ll be the Hungarians next or the Burgenlanders or the Bohemians or, I don’t know, anyone who hasn’t got the swastika branded on their brain is in for it, anyone who won’t point their arm at the sky might as well book in to the Hotel Metropol right away, a room with a one-way ticket; the dancing’s over in Vienna and the Black Death is going round the Prater, haven’t you seen, they’re sitting out front already, drinking their beer and just waiting to hurl the next tobacconist or Jew or joke-teller onto the bonfire, Anezka, I don’t know if you still want me, and I don’t know if I still want you, it doesn’t matter any more, the SS are sitting out there jingling their spurs, but perhaps we can go away, the two of us, I mean, somewhere where it’s quiet, to Bohemia if you like, behind the dark hill, or to the Salzkammergut, I’m sure Mama wouldn’t mind, I could open a tobacconist’s, and we could get married, just like that, because it’s all the same to God, anyway, and then you’d be a . . .’

  At that moment the door opened and the pasty young man entered the room. He had his cap clamped under his arm and was looking around with interest. The little skulls clicked on the chain of his dagger. Franz felt the muscles tense up at the back of his neck. Right, he thought: any minute now the door will open again and more bl
ack uniforms will come crashing in. Or creep in silently like big black birds. He would have liked just to run out of the dressing room and out of the grotto, all the way back, up the Kahlenberg, straight down the other side and on and on, along the Danube, back to its source and beyond. But that was no longer possible. Here he stood. Here stood Anezka. And that was all. He breathed out, deeply, and in, deeply, then stepped forward, crossed his arms over his chest and said, ‘My dear sir, I would like to inform you, in all politeness, that it honestly doesn’t matter to me whether you’re wearing a black uniform or a blue or a yellow one, or whether you have skulls or pebbles or sneaky thoughts dangling round your belly. This Bohemian girl here, on the other hand, matters to me very much. She’s an artist, you see, and she hasn’t done anything to anyone. Other than kissing, or rather, awakening me, which means she is under my personal protection. So I would like to implore you most sincerely, dear sir, to please just leave us alone. And if there’s absolutely no way round it and you simply have to bring back something for your Sturmführer or Bannführer or Sturmbannführer or some other Führer, then in God’s name, take me!’

  The young man blinked. His eyelashes were long and softly curved, his forehead high, smooth and white. He glanced at Anezka. She sighed, appeared to consider for a moment, blew a stray lock of hair off her forehead and sighed again. Then she walked over to him, put both arms around him, snuggled up and laid her cheek on his shoulder where two thick white cords dangled from the epaulettes.

  ‘Oh, so that’s how it is,’ said Franz, after a while.

  Anezka blinked languidly. ‘Yes, that’s how it is,’ she replied.

  Franz looked up at the ceiling. A thought briefly crept into his mind, as filthy and squalid as the matted bits of fluff peeping out between the cracks in the boards, but he chased it away again. Instead, he would have liked to tear a hole in the wall with his bare hands; he would simply have walked out through it and on just a few alleys further over, as far as the Giant Ferris Wheel. He would have liked to get into one of the cabins and let himself be carried round and round in a circle until the pain had gone. Anezka’s rosy forefinger played with the cords at her cheek. The young man had put his hand on the back of her neck and began to stroke her hairline.