The Tobacconist Read online

  One card a week, no more and no less, that was the agreement. ‘Franzl,’ his mother had said the night before his departure, gently stroking his cheek with the back of her forefinger, ‘send me a postcard every week, won’t you, because a mother needs to know how her child is doing!’

  ‘All right,’ Franz had said.

  ‘But they have to be proper picture postcards. The kind with the pretty photos on them. I’ll use them to paper over the patch of mould above the bed, and whenever I look at them I’ll always be able to imagine where you are!’

  In a corner next to the window display there was a small rack with a colourful selection of greetings cards and picture postcards stacked one above the other. Every Friday afternoon Franz would stand in front of it and select one. Most of them showed one of the famous sights of Vienna: St Stephen’s Cathedral in the rosy morning light, the Giant Ferris Wheel under the stars, the opera house, splendidly illuminated, and so on. He almost always opted for a card with a picture that included a park or flowerbed, or at the very least flowerboxes outside the windows of houses. Perhaps the greenery and colours might cheer his mother up a bit in hours of rainy solitude, he thought. Besides, they went better with the patch of mould. He wrote a few lines, and his mother wrote a few lines, and each of them would actually have preferred to speak to the other, or at least to sit quietly beside them listening to the reeds. My dear Franzl, how are you, dear Mother, well, thank you, the weather’s good here, the weather’s good here too actually, there’s lots to see in the city, there isn’t in Nussdorf but that’s all right, I’m enjoying the work, the moss needs scraping off the cottage again, with love from your Mama, love from me too, your Franz. They were calls from home to foreign parts and back again, like the brief touch of a hand, fleeting and warm. Franz put his mother’s cards in the drawer of his nightstand and watched the pile grow week by week, lots of little shining Attersees. Sometimes, on quiet evenings, just before he fell asleep, he would hear the lake gurgling softly in the drawer. But that may have been his imagination.

  At the beginning of October the first autumn wind blew the heat from the streets and the hats off the heads of passers-by. From time to time Franz would see a hat roll past the shop, immediately followed by its owner, stumbling along after it. The weather had turned cool, Otto Trsnyek had already indicated that he might light the coal stove again soon, and Franz had started wearing a slightly misshapen brown woollen waistcoat that his mother had knitted for him years ago during long winter hours, snowed in, by the light of the fire in the oven. Despite the confusing developments, and the even more confusing political outlook, business was good. ‘People are mad about this Hitler, and about bad news — which is basically one and the same thing,’ said Otto Trsnyek. ‘It’s good for selling papers, anyway — and whatever happens people will always smoke!’

  One grey, overcast Monday morning, the chimes rang tentatively and an old man entered the shop. He was not especially tall, and quite slight, even spindly. Although his hat and suit both sat impeccably, they looked like relics from some bygone age. His right hand, crisscrossed by a network of bluish veins, was clenched around the knob of a walking stick, while the left was briefly raised in cursory greeting before vanishing again into one of his jacket pockets. His back was slightly bent; his head craned forward. His white beard was neatly trimmed, and he wore round, black-framed spectacles; behind the lenses his shining brown eyes darted about, perpetually vigilant. But the really unusual thing about the old man’s appearance was the effect it had on Otto Trsnyek. As soon as he entered the shop the tobacconist stood up and attempted to hold himself as erect as possible, without crutches, propping one hand on the counter. A single, brief, sideways glance had prompted Franz to leap to his feet as well, so now they were both standing stiffly, like a formal reception committee for this spindly old man.

  ‘Good morning, Professor!’ said Otto Trsnyek, discreetly dragging his leg into position. ‘Virginias, as usual?’

  In the course of his apprenticeship to date, if there was one thing Franz had internalized it was that in Vienna there were as many so-called professors as there were pebbles on the banks of the Danube. In some neighbourhoods even the horsemeat butcher and the brewer’s drayman addressed each other as ‘Professor’. This time, though, something was different. The tobacconist’s way of greeting this man immediately made it clear to Franz that this was a real professor, a proper, genuine one, one who didn’t need to swing his title before him like a cowbell to receive the professorial recognition that was his due.

  ‘Yes,’ said the old man, with a brief nod, taking off his hat and placing it deliberately in front of him on the counter. ‘Twenty. And the Neue Freie Presse, please.’

  He spoke slowly and so quietly it was hard to understand him. In doing so, he barely opened his mouth. It was as if he managed only by dint of considerable effort to squeeze each individual word out through his teeth.

  ‘Of course, Professor!’ said Otto Trsnyek, nodding to his apprentice. Franz took a packet of twenty Virginias and the newspaper from the shelves and placed them on the counter in order to wrap them in brown paper. He felt the old man’s gaze upon him; he seemed to be following his every movement with close attention.

  ‘This, by the way, is Franzl,’ explained Otto Trsnyek. ‘He’s from the Salzkammergut and still has a lot to learn.’

  The old man craned his neck a little further forward. Out of the corner of his eye Franz could see the folds of skin, thin as crepe paper, spilling over the edge of his shirt collar.

  ‘The Salzkammergut,’ he said, with a peculiar contortion of the mouth probably meant to indicate a smile. ‘Very nice.’

  ‘From the Attersee!’ nodded Franz. And for some reason, for the first time in his life, he was proud of that funny, soggy little part of the world he called home.

  ‘Very nice,’ the professor repeated. Then he put a few coins on the counter, tucked the packaged items under his arm and turned to leave. In a single bound Franz was there to open the door. The old man nodded to him and stepped out onto the street, where the wind immediately plucked his beard in all directions. He smells strange, this old man, thought Franz: of soap, onions, cigars, and somehow also, interestingly, of sawdust.

  ‘Who was that, then?’ he asked, when he had pushed the door shut. He almost had to force himself to straighten up and relinquish the slightly stooping posture he had adopted without realizing.

  ‘That was Professor Sigmund Freud,’ said Otto Trsnyek, allowing himself to fall back into his armchair.

  ‘The idiot doctor?’ Franz blurted out, his voice betraying mild alarm. Of course he had already heard of Sigmund Freud. By now the professor’s reputation extended not only to the farthest corners of the earth but had even reached the Salzkammergut, where it had stimulated the locals’ usually rather dull imaginations. There was talk of all manner of sinister urges, of crude jokes, female patients howling like wolves, and private consultations in which revelations got out of hand.

  ‘That’s the one,’ answered Otto Trsnyek. ‘But he can do a lot more than fix rich idiots’ heads.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Apparently he can teach people how to live a decent life. Not everyone, of course; only those who can afford his fees. They say an hour in his consulting room costs as much as half an allotment. But that might be a slight exaggeration. At any rate, he treats people without touching them the way other doctors do. Although . . . he does touch them in a way. Just not with his hands.’

  ‘What else would he touch them with?’

  ‘How should I know!’ Otto Trsnyek was starting to get impatient. ‘With thoughts or the mind or some such nonsense. It seems to work, anyway, and that’s the main thing. So — read your newspapers now and leave me in peace.’

  He bent low over a pile of paper he had pulled out of the drawer and, using his fountain pen and a long wooden ruler, began to score it with straight lines.

  Franz leaned his forehead against the shop window
and peered out through a narrow chink of light. The professor was over there, walking down Währingerstrasse with his parcel under his arm. He was walking slowly, head slightly bowed, taking small, careful steps.

  ‘He actually seems very agreeable, the professor,’ said Franz thoughtfully. Otto Trsnyek sighed and raised his eyes again from the depths of his line-drawing.

  ‘He may seem agreeable at first glance, but if you ask me he’s a pretty dry old stick in spite of all that brain doctoring. He also has a not inconsiderable problem.’

  ‘What kind of problem?’

  ‘He’s a Jew.’

  ‘Aha,’ said Franz. ‘And why’s that a problem?’

  ‘That remains to be seen,’ replied Otto Trsnyek. ‘We’ll find out soon enough!’

  For a while his gaze wandered absent-mindedly around the shop as if looking for a safe place to linger. Then he paused and smiled briefly to himself. Finally he bent over his work again. With the corner of a little sponge he carefully tried to dab away an ink blot that had spread between the lines.

  Franz was still looking out of the shop window. He’d never really understood this business with the Jews. The newspapers didn’t have a good word to say about them, and in the photographs and cartoons they looked either funny or crafty, usually both at once. At least there were some in the city, thought Franz, real flesh-and-blood Jews, with Jewish names, Jewish hats and Jewish noses. Back home in Nussdorf there wasn’t a single one. There, they were, at the very most, terrible or nasty or brainless figures of legend — definitely bad, anyway — that haunted people’s imaginations. Down the road the professor was just turning onto Berggasse. A gust of wind caught his hair and puffed it into a feather-light crest that floated above his head for a few seconds.

  ‘The hat! What’s he done with his hat?’ cried Franz, startled. His eyes fell on the sales counter, where the professor’s grey hat was still lying. He leaped forward, picked up the hat and ran out with it onto the street.

  ‘Stop, sir, wait, if I may!’ he shouted. Arms flailing, he skidded round the corner onto Berggasse, where in just a few steps he caught up with the professor and breathlessly held the hat out towards him. Sigmund Freud contemplated his somewhat battered headgear for a moment before taking it and drawing his wallet from his jacket pocket in response.

  ‘No, please, Professor, of course — it was nothing!’ Franz assured him, with a dismissive sweep of the hand that, even as he was making it, felt slightly too expansive.

  ‘Nothing is a matter of course these days,’ said Freud, making a deep dent in the brim of the hat with his thumb. As before, he barely moved his jaw when he spoke; his voice was quiet and strained. Franz had to bend forward a little to be sure to understand absolutely everything. Under no circumstances did he want to miss so much as a single word of the famous man’s utterances.

  ‘May I be of assistance?’ he asked, and although Freud did his best, he couldn’t pull away fast enough to stop Franz from sliding the parcel and the newspaper out from under his arm and pressing them decisively to his chest.

  ‘If you wish,’ he murmured. He put his hat on his head and walked off. At first, as he walked with the professor down the steep Berggasse, Franz had a rather odd sensation in his stomach, as if some heavy weight were trying to remind him of the significance of this moment. But after just a few steps the odd, heavy feeling in his stomach disappeared, and as they passed Frau Grindlberger’s fragrant Anker bakery he saw himself mirrored in the floury shop window, marching tall and erect with the parcel under his arm and the warm, reflected glow of the professor’s fame shining upon him, and suddenly felt very proud and buoyant.

  ‘May I ask you a question, Professor?’

  ‘It depends on the question.’

  ‘Is it true that you can fix people’s heads? And afterwards teach them how to live a decent life?’

  Freud took off his hat again, carefully pushed a thin, snowwhite strand of hair behind his ear, put the hat back on and gave Franz a sideways look.

  ‘Is that what they say in the tobacconist’s, or back home in the Salzkammergut?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Franz, shrugging.

  ‘We don’t fix anything. But at least we don’t break anything, either, which is not at all to be taken for granted in doctors’ surgeries these days. We can explain certain aberrations, and in some inspired moments we can even influence the thing we’ve just explained. That is all,’ said Freud through gritted teeth, and it sounded as if every single word was causing him pain. ‘But we can’t even be certain of that,’ he added, with a little sigh.

  ‘And how do you go about it all?’

  ‘People lie down on my couch and start talking.’

  ‘That sounds comfortable.’

  ‘The truth is seldom comfortable,’ Freud contradicted him, coughing slightly into the dark blue cloth handkerchief he had pulled from his trouser pocket.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Franz. ‘I have to think about that.’ He stopped, glanced up to one side and tried to collect his thoughts, which were leaping about madly somewhere high above the roofs of the town and well beyond the powers of his own imagination.

  ‘Well?’ asked the professor, once the peculiar, rather importunate tobacconist’s boy had caught up with him again. ‘What conclusion did you reach?’

  ‘None at all for the moment. But that doesn’t matter. I’ll take time to think about it some more. And I’ll buy your books and read them — all of them, from cover to cover.’

  Freud sighed again. In fact, he really could not recall ever having sighed so often in such a short space of time.

  ‘Don’t you have anything better to do than read old men’s dusty tomes?’ he asked.

  ‘Like what, Professor?’

  ‘You’re asking me? You’re young. Get out in the fresh air. Go on a trip. Enjoy yourself. Find yourself a girl.’

  Franz stared at him, wide-eyed. A shudder ran all the way through his body. Yes, he thought, yes, yes, yes! A moment later it burst out of him: ‘A girl!’ he cried, so piercingly that the three old ladies who had huddled together on the other side of the street for a quick gossip turned their artfully marcelled heads towards them in alarm. ‘Yes, if only it were that simple.’

  At last he had voiced the thing that had been agitating both his brain and his heart for some time now, basically since the day his first pubic hairs tentatively began to sprout.

  ‘The vast majority of people have managed it up till now,’ said Freud, using his cane with great precision to nudge a pebble off the pavement.

  ‘But that doesn’t mean I’ll manage!’

  ‘And why wouldn’t you, of all people?’

  ‘Where I come from, people might understand a bit about the timber industry and how to get summer visitors to part with their money. They don’t understand the first thing about love.’

  ‘That’s not unusual. Nobody understands anything about love.’

  ‘Not even you?’

  ‘Especially not me!’

  ‘But why is everybody always falling in love all over the place, then?’

  Freud stopped. ‘Young man,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to understand water in order to jump in head first.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Franz, for want of more suitable words capable of expressing the fathomless depth of his unhappiness. And again, immediately afterwards: ‘Oh!’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ said Freud, ‘we’ve arrived. May I have my cigars and my newspaper back?’

  ‘But of course, Professor!’ said Franz, hanging his head. He handed him the parcel. The little plaque above the entrance to the building read BERGGASSE No. 19. Freud fumbled for and extracted a bunch of keys, unlocked the heavy wooden door and leaned his slight body against it.

  ‘May I . . .’

  ‘No, you may not,’ growled the professor, hurriedly squeezing through the crack in the door. ‘And remember,’ he added, sticking his head out again. ‘With women, it’s like with cigars: if you pull at them too hard, they won�
�t give you any pleasure. I wish you a good day!’

  With that he disappeared into the darkness of the hallway. The door closed with a gentle creak, and Franz stood alone in the wind.

  Postcard of the city park full of spring blossom, in the foreground a horse-drawn carriage festooned with lilac.

  Dear Mother,

  Guess who I met yesterday — Herr Professor Dr. Sigmund Freud! Did you know he’s a Jew? And lives right around the corner from the tobacconist’s? I walked with him, and we talked for a bit. Very interesting! I think we’ll see each other quite often now. How are you? I am well.

  Your Franz

  Postcard of the Attersee with swans, bathed in golden morning light.

  My dear Franzl,

  That story about Professor Freud was nonsense, wasn’t it? If it isn’t nonsense, though, please ask him whether all the things we hear are true. About the urges and all the other stuff. Actually no, it’s better you don’t ask, who knows what sort of impression that would make. I didn’t know he was a Jew. That might not be pleasant, but we’ll just have to wait and see. We’ve had snow here already. Today I’m going into the forest to cut myself a basket of wood. With love,

  Your Mama

  The professor’s words had burned themselves deep into Franz’s soul. Especially the ones about girls. The majority of people have managed it up till now, he had said. And, contrary to all Franz’s doubts in this regard, this hadn’t sounded bad at all, but somehow optimistic and irrefutable. Overall, the professorial presence had a rocklike steadfastness about it, despite the brittle frailty of old age. All right, thought Franz, if that’s how it is, I’ll just have to do something about it.

  And so the following Saturday, shortly before the tobacconist’s released him for the weekend with a final, encouraging jingle of the bells, he donned his Sunday suit, washed his face, neck and hands with an expensive bar of curd soap bought especially for the occasion, greased his hair with a lump of lard and rubbed his armpits with the petals of a few magnificent roses, plucked in a nocturnal foray to the meticulously planted flowerbeds around the Votive Church. Then, shining and scented, he stepped out onto the street, where the mild autumn light had warmed the cobbles, and took the tram to the Viennese Prater to seek his fortune in the shape of a suitable girl.