The Tobacconist Read online

  About three quarters of an hour later he was standing on the platform where the crowd was thickest, right at the back of the station hall, watching the professor board the train. The distance was too great for him to be able to see his eyes, but he could see him grinding his jaw as his daughter pushed him up the iron steps. His left hand clutched the grab rail; the right held his hat firmly on his head. At that moment he seemed so slim and light that Franz would not have been surprised if Anna had picked him up in her arms and carried him like a child.

  Punctually at 15:25, in accordance with the timetable, the train set off, quickly gathered speed and left the station, heading west. Franz closed his eyes. How many farewells can a person bear, he thought. Perhaps more than we think. Perhaps not even one. Nothing but farewells wherever we stay, wherever we go: we ought to be told this. For a moment he felt the urge just to let himself fall forward and lie there with his face on the platform. A piece of luggage, left behind, lost, forgotten, nothing but curious pigeons pattering round it. That’s utter nonsense, he thought angrily. He shook his head and opened his eyes again. He gazed down the tracks one last time as they flashed in the sunshine. Then he turned around and walked back through the arrivals hall and out into the brightness of the Viennese afternoon. The sky was brilliant blue, the rain had washed the asphalt clean, and blackbirds were singing in the bushes. Outside the station entrance was the gas lamp Franz had clung to after his arrival in Vienna. How long ago was that? A year? Half a life? A lifetime? He had to laugh at himself, at the funny boy hanging on to the street lamp here that day, with the resinous smell of the forest in his hair, clumps of mud on his shoes and a few crazy hopes in his head. And suddenly he realised that this boy no longer existed. He was gone. Swept away, perished somewhere in the stream of time. Although it had all happened incredibly fast, he thought; perhaps even a bit too fast, overall. It felt as if he had outgrown himself before his time, or had simply stepped out of his own self, if you could put it like that. All that was left was the memory of a thin shadow underneath a gas lamp. He took a deep breath. The city smelled of summer, horses, diesel and tar. A tram came clanging up the ring road, a little swastika flag fluttering from one of the side windows. He thought of his mother, who perhaps right now was sitting on a jetty warmed by the sun, crying down into the glittering water as it splashed upon the shore. He thought of Otto Trsnyek, his crutches leaning uselessly against the wall in the corner of the shop. And he thought of the professor, who must have left the city boundary far behind him by now and was probably already somewhere over the Lower Austrian potato fields, speeding towards London. Perhaps it was possible to make a mark here or there, to indicate the way, the professor had said. A little flicker of light in the darkness; you couldn’t expect more than that. But no less, either, thought Franz, and almost laughed out loud. The tram clanged past and turned into Mariahilferstrasse. The little flag in the window looked as if it were dancing.

  ‘You know, it’s a funny thing: the longer the days get, the shorter life feels. It’s a contradiction, but that’s the way it is. So I ask you: what do people do to make their lives longer and their days shorter? They talk. They talk, chatter, gossip, tell stories, and they do it practically non-stop. And even if you sometimes think you’ve finally found a bit of peace and quiet — in church, say, or better still, in the graveyard — what do you know: another person starts up, yattering on! It’s probably the same up in Heaven, or under the earth: always somebody mouthing off. But I tell you what: most of what comes out of people’s faces all day long you can just chuck straight in the bin. Everybody’s talking, you see, but nobody knows anything. Nobody knows what they’re talking about. Nobody’s in the picture. Nobody has a clue. Although these days that’s probably better, anyway, not having too much of a clue. Cluelessness is practically the order of the day. Not knowing’s the guiding principle. That way you can sometimes look and not have seen anything. Or listen and still not understand. The truth is the truth and that’s that is what they usually say. But I say that’s not how it is! Here, anyway, in our beloved Vienna, there are as many truths as there are windows with people sitting behind them who reckon they’ve seen or heard or smelled or always knew some thing or another. And what person thinks is the right thing is the biggest piece of foolishness on God’s earth to another, and vice versa. Give me a litre of milk, please — or two, actually, always better to stock up! Anyway, the only thing everyone pretty much agrees on is that it must have been last night. Between about three and four. That’s the hour of the rats. By then the politicos have finished their shouting, the drunks have found their way home and the milkmen haven’t started their rounds yet. Any decent person is in bed at that time of night. Or sitting by the window staring out into the dark. But of course opinions do vary a bit. Some are saying it was more like three, while others are saying it must have been nearly four, because apparently the sky was already turning silver above the roofs. I say, silver my foot! It was pitch dark, there wasn’t even a sliver of a moon, the streets were empty, meaning that the scene was all set for the kind of ruffians who like to avoid the light. Although ruffian is relative nowadays. Who can see what goes on inside people’s heads? The intentions and inpulses of the human brain are always unfathomable. And a person who yesterday was a ruffian puts on a different hat today and suddenly they’re eminently respectable. But don’t mind me, I didn’t say anything. Give me two hundred grammes of butter and three kilos of potatoes as well, please, but only the little floury ones, for a good dumpling dough. So anyway: it happened between three and four. And there was only one. One person, on his own. A man, of course; because, let’s face it, a woman wouldn’t waste so much as a second on such a crazy idea. Some say he was most likely middle-aged. Others swear blind that he must have been young because he could run so fast. They say that when it was all over he shot down from Morzinplatz and up Berggasse like a streak of lightning. A daring lad. But a bit of an idiot, too, if you ask me. When you’ve got daring, stupidity’s never far behind. It was pure luck they didn’t catch him straight away — idiot’s luck, basically. Well, I mean, think about it: secret police lurking everywhere, on every corner, in front of every shop, in the park, in the restaurants, even in church, everywhere you look there’s one of them sitting or standing about — but then they go and forget about their own headquarters! Although actually they didn’t completely forget. A couple of them did come running up eventually. But only when it was far too late: morning had broken and the flag had been raised, as it were. Talking of forgetting: do you have a good curd cheese? A Quargel? No, that one’s no good, it doesn’t smell. Quargel has to smell or it isn’t Quargel. Put it back, add a couple of beers and make up the bill for me, please. So as I was saying — pitch black, no stars, no moon, and no streak of silver above the city. Which is why, when all’s said and done, none of the curtain-twitchers can know exactly what happened. People only keep watch out of spite. But because spite is inquisitive on the one hand and blinds you on the other, people only see what they want to see! Anyway, what’s indisputable is that he was able to get at one of the three big flagpoles right in front of the Hotel Metropol unbothered by either the Gestapo or his own conscience. You know the ones: the three big swastika banners that cast a shadow over half the square and always rattle so insistently in the wind. He set about working on the middle one. Simply cut the cord, pulled the pretty swastika down from its lofty height and let it fall on the dusty ground. They found it later, lying there all runkled up and dirty. Shame about the pretty fabric. Then he apparently pulled out a parcel from under his shirt. Others are saying, though, that there was no such parcel and he was carrying the corpus delicti around with him just like that, not wrapped up at all. If you ask me, details like these make no difference in the end. All that counts are the facts, which are: he cut the cord, he threw the Hitler cross in the dirt, and he fastened that thing — whether taken from a parcel or not — in its place, ran it up and hoisted it like the holy flag of Jerusalem. Then h
e was gone. Like lightning. They say he saluted up at the night sky but I reckon that’s a rumour, or sheer exaggeration, just some of the curtain-twitchers bragging. In any case, the sun was well up by the time the Gestapo came running, meaning half of Vienna had already had a chance to spread mischievous gossip. So now, of course, imagine the agents’ faces! What an unbelievable blunder! Because hanging there on the middle flagpole, right at the top, with the first rays of the morning sun upon it, was a pair of trousers. A pair of brown men’s trousers with a pleated waistband, as far as you could see from the ground. They just hung there: a bit crumpled, a bit baggy, but otherwise immaculate; nondescript, really. But as is well known, it’s often precisely the nondescript that hides something truly scandalous. Which is why there was immediately a tremendous fuss on the ground. Everyone was arguing with everyone else, all shouting at one another, and what with all the excitement it was quite a while before anyone thought of getting the trousers down. Then, just when it finally occurred to someone to pull on the cord, something quite remarkable happened. Because at that moment the wind picked up. A sudden gust of wind, a flurry, a breeze, whatever you want to call it. Anyway, all of a sudden this wind started blowing, and it caught in the trousers and sort of lifted them up. And now of course you can really imagine those secret service faces twisting into a whole range of expressions of stupid astonishment or astonished stupidity. Because it wasn’t a normal pair of trousers. It was basically only half a one. A one-legged trouser, it was. The other trouser leg was sewn up at about knee height. So the wind blew into this pair of one-legged trousers just as they were trying to get it down. And then right in front of everyone’s eyes something truly strange happened. For a while the trousers just flapped about a bit but then all of a sudden they stood still, they basically lay horizontal in the air. And just for a moment this brown, crumpled, rather baggy trouser leg up there in the sky looked like a pointing finger. Like an enormous pointing finger, showing people the way. Where exactly it was pointing, of course, is speculation at best. Away, I reckon, at any rate: far, far away. So — now would you be so kind and give me a bar of chocolate, too. With nuts. And I’d like to pay next time, if there’s no rush. Thank you very much indeed, have a good day, goodbye!’

  All night Frau Huchel had lain awake staring up into the deep darkness between the roof beams. In the course of the previous evening she had increasingly felt a strange unease, a malaise, like a mild fever. Perhaps it’s the womanly flushes already, she thought. Perhaps I’m at that stage now. She had gone to bed early, but sleep refused to come, so she lay there staring up into the dark and listening out into the silence. The silence in a fisherman’s cottage, she thought, sounded different from the silence in the forest, for example. Or the winter silence below the summit of the Schafberg. Or the silence a person sometimes carried in her heart. The thing with the good-looking tourist guide had soon turned out to be a mistake, just a short-lived fantasy, and a few days ago the innkeeper had made a pass at her again. He had put his hand on the back of her neck in the restaurant kitchen and asked for more. This time, too, she had threatened him with the fictional Obersturmbannführer Graleitner, but the innkeeper had remained unimpressed. Why had this Herr Graleitner never shown his face around here, he had asked, slowly sliding his hand down her back. Instead of answering, she had taken the large bone cleaver out of the drawer and, with a single calm incision, slit open the front of his apron. The innkeeper had stood there, suddenly paralyzed, as the apron fell open like a grubby curtain, exposing his broad loins. Afterwards she had rammed the knife into the wooden worktop and walked out. So now she was unemployed, but not that unhappy about it. The air was hot, her body was hot, and the hours stole through the cottage like listless shadows. When the moon appeared in the flue vent above the stove, filling the room with its pallid light, she placed her right hand over her heart and wept. For a few minutes she felt at peace, but then the unease spread inside her again and banished the last of the tears. Outside a bird flapped out of the reeds, beat its wings hard against the water and laughed like a hoarse child. She could make out the first light of dawn in the little window facing the lake. She rose and went outside. Barefoot, she walked down to the lake. The grass was damp and cool. Grey streaks of mist drifted across the surface of the water, and behind them, just visible, were the contours of the opposite bank. She stood there like that for a long time, letting the water lap around her feet and watching the lake slowly fill with light. A shoal of young char flitted about her ankles, cormorants sailed past high above her head, and a little way off the three big swastikas materialized out of the mist. Franz’s mother heard her heart beating. A little shudder ran down her back, and she shivered, although it was warm. ‘My boy,’ she said, closing her eyes. ‘Where are you, my boy?’

  When Franz awoke, he laughed. It was just an abrupt sound thrown at the ceiling of his room, but it seemed to him as if, up there, this laugh burst open, streaming across the old wallpaper in all directions. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. The night had been a short one. Almost too short to dream. A few scraps of dreams had wandered in nonetheless, and were now still shimmering faintly somewhere deep inside him. Quickly he picked up pencil and paper and scribbled down a few words. He got out of bed, dressed, and went out onto the street with the paper and a roll of sticky tape. A radiant new day had dawned; Währingerstrasse lay bathed in the soft brightness of the morning sun, and the first passers-by were heading for the centre of town, chasing long shadows before them. Franz stood on tiptoe, stretched his arms up in the air and yawned. As always, he had woken precisely at shop-opening time. A real tobacconist doesn’t need an alarm clock, Otto Trsnyek had once said, and he was right. Franz set about sticking the paper onto the shop window. A new dream, a new day, he thought, and the panes could do with a wash again. Behind him he heard the burble of a diesel engine, getting louder. A dark, old-fashioned car approached from the direction of the Votive Church and stopped directly in front of the tobacconist’s. Three men got out, among them the official with the mournful face.

  ‘We’ve already had the pleasure,’ he said. ‘Shall we introduce ourselves anyway?’

  Franz shook his head. The mournful man took a cigarette case out of his coat pocket, extracted a thin cigarillo, lit it, and observed Franz as he tore off strips of sticky tape with his teeth and carefully stuck the paper on the window. A metallic crackling sound came from the engine compartment of the car. ‘Well,’ said one of the men sadly, running his hand over the bonnet. ‘Time’s getting on.’

  The mournful man gave him a dirty look and he fell silent. Behind him a woman bumped over the cobbles on a heavy bicycle, whistling softly through her teeth with every tread on the pedals. A window opened on the other side of the street; a hand appeared holding a pair of scissors, and cut off the head of a geranium. It plopped onto the window ledge, fell onto the pavement and lay there, glowing brightly. The mournful man sighed, dropped his cigarillo on the ground and trod it out.

  ‘Why do the days have to be so long now, even at the crack of dawn,’ he said, with a tired shake of his head. ‘Shall we?’

  ‘Just a moment,’ said Franz. He bent a little closer to the paper and, concentrating hard, stuck another strip over it.

  ‘There’s no point to that any more, sonny boy,’ said the mournful man.

  ‘What has a point and what doesn’t remains to be seen,’ said Franz. ‘Also, my name is Franz. Franz Huchel from Nussdorf am Attersee!’

  ‘You can be Franz from the Tyrolean mountains as far as I’m concerned,’ said the mournful man amicably, ‘or Hans from Unterfladnitz, or anyone from anywhere. We don’t make distinctions. All our guests are treated equally at the Hotel Metropol. So shall we go, or do I have to get cranky first?’

  Franz tore two last strips from the roll and stuck them diagonally across the whole piece of paper. He placed his hand flat upon it and closed his eyes. The paper felt warm, and it was as if the window underneath were breathing, a scarcely discernible rising
and falling beneath his palm. When he opened his eyes again, he saw that his fingers were trembling.

  ‘I have to lock up,’ he said. ‘Because who knows what will happen.’ He closed the door and turned the key three times. As he walked between the men to the car, he thought he could still hear the little bells tinkling quietly behind him. But that’s nonsense, he thought, and got in.

  Almost seven years later, on the morning of the twelfth of March 1945, a strange silence lay over the city. The night had dissipated like smoke, giving way to a murky half-light. Thunderstorms were forecast on the radio, and the wind was whipping up dust in the streets and blowing loose sheets of newspaper before it. In the past few days there had been more rumours of fresh bombing raids; everyone was talking about it, but no one knew any details. Anyone who didn’t absolutely have to go out on the street stayed at home or spent their time in bunkers and cellars. At night, here and there in the unlit streets, there were glimmers behind cellar windows, and if you bent down and looked through the murky glass you would see the flickering faces of people sitting around a few candles, silently playing cards. Währingerstrasse was almost empty. An old woman sat on a bench scattering crumbs among the pigeons that pattered excitedly at her feet. Pigeons were the only birds still to be seen in the parks and on the streets. All the others had vanished the previous autumn. Early one morning, as if responding to a secret call, they had gathered together in great flocks and left the city, heading west. The old lady let out a cry of alarm as one of the creatures almost fluttered into her lap. She slipped the little bag with the remaining crumbs into the pocket of her coat, heaved herself to her feet and, grumbling quietly, limped inside the nearest building.