The Tobacconist Read online

  ‘That’s often the way with sentences. People who talk a lot usually don’t have much to say,’ Freud answered, rather morosely. ‘Besides, what exactly have I got to do with all this?’

  ‘It’s your fault!’ cried Franz. ‘You told me to enjoy myself and find myself a girl!’

  ‘So now the doctor is the pathogen from which the disease arises?’

  ‘Oh, really!’ Franz leaped to his feet and began to stride up and down in front of the bench. ‘I don’t understand anything about doctors or pathogens. All I know is that I’m aroused! Permanently and all the time. I can hardly work. I can hardly sleep. I dream stupid things. I run around town until the sun comes up. I’m hot. I’m cold. I’m sick. I’ve got a stomach ache, headache, heartache. All at once. Not long ago I was still sitting on the shore of the lake watching the ducks. Then I arrive in town and immediately everything goes haywire. And it’s not just in me: it’s everywhere else as well. You can read about it in the papers. One day everyone’s shouting for this Schuschnigg, the next day everyone’s shouting for this Hitler. And I’m sitting in the tobacconist’s asking myself: who are these two, anyway? I clean pig’s blood off the shop window and sit bawling in the grotto train. I dance with the most beautiful girl in the world, and the next minute she’s gone. Vanished. Was never there. So I’m asking you: have I gone mad? Or has the whole world gone mad?’

  Professor Freud flicked the ash off his Hoyo with his forefinger and blew delicately on the embers. ‘First of all, sit back down,’ he said calmly. ‘Secondly, yes, the world has gone mad. And thirdly, have no illusions, it’s going to get a lot madder than this.’

  Franz dropped back onto the bench and stared ominously into space. ‘Basically, I don’t care whether or not the world tears itself off its hinges. The only thing that interests me is this girl.’

  ‘What’s her name, anyway?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t even know her name?’

  ‘I don’t really know anything about her at all. Except that she’s Bohemian. And her teeth have the most beautiful gap in the world.’

  ‘The most beautiful gap? It sounds as if you’ve really got it bad.’

  ‘Told you.’

  ‘So what do you expect from me?’

  ‘You’re a doctor! And a professor, too.’

  ‘Yes, and?’

  ‘You’ve written books. Lots of books! Isn’t there anything at all in there that can help me?’

  ‘To be honest, I don’t think there is.’

  ‘What’s the point of all the books, then?’

  ‘I sometimes ask myself the same question.’ Freud drew in his feet, pushed his hat a little lower on his forehead and turned up his collar with one hand. They sat beside each other without speaking as he took a few more puffs on the cigar. The sun had disappeared behind the roofs and it had got colder on the bench. Franz saw that the professor’s hand trembled slightly when he raised the cigar to his lips. His skin was mottled and stretched as thin as tissue paper over the sinews. Only now did it occur to Franz how old and frail Freud was. He unwound his scarf from his neck and handed it to the professor.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with it?’ the old man growled.

  ‘It’s winter — you mustn’t play with your health!’

  ‘Ha!’ barked Freud, his voice tinged with bitter merriment. ‘I’m too old to stop playing!’

  ‘No one is too old for my mother’s hand-knitted woollen scarf,’ Franz countered sternly, and with an elegant movement he wrapped it round the Professor’s skinny neck. After a moment of frozen incredulity, Freud stretched his chin up out of the thick wool and busied himself again with the cigar, which had shrunk to almost half its length.

  ‘So this young lady stood you up,’ he murmured to himself. ‘That’s the fact of the matter. In my view you now have precisely two options. Option number one: go and get her back! Option number two: forget her!’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Please excuse me, Herr Professor, but if all your advice is like this, I don’t understand why people pay so much money to be allowed to lie on your couch.’

  Freud sighed. For a fraction of a second he considered yielding to the sense of anger that was welling up deep inside, and stubbing out his Hoyo on the brow of this impertinent country lad. He decided against it, and puffed smoke rings into the air instead.

  ‘People pay so much money precisely because they don’t get to hear any advice from me. And perhaps I should remind you that you are the one who’s been loitering outside my front door for three hours on the Lord’s day to seek my advice and bribe me with an admittedly excellent cigar.’

  ‘Because I’m desperate!’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ sighed Freud, ‘even the best of us are dashed to pieces on the rocks of the Feminine.’

  ‘And I’m certainly not one of the best.’

  ‘That remains to be seen,’ said the professor, looking up at the dining room window, where Anna had appeared with raised and threatening forefinger, an unmistakable indication that he should come back inside now, at once, immediately, into the warm.

  ‘Is that your daughter?’

  The professor nodded. Franz looked up at Anna and greeted her with the widest smile of which his frozen cheeks were capable. She raised her hand immediately in a little wave, then quickly tweaked the curtains straight and disappeared behind them.

  ‘She looks a bit like my mother. From a distance, I mean.’

  ‘Do you really have to remind me that I’m as old as Methuselah?’ grumbled Freud. He closed his eyes and took a last, concentrated puff on his Hoyo; but it was over. The taste of the cigar scarcely compensated any more for the pain in his mouth. Carefully he set the burning stump down on the armrest and watched as the embers slowly faded.

  ‘Thus it departs in peace,’ he murmured as it went out, and Franz nodded. They looked at each other.

  ‘Now what?’ asked Franz.

  ‘Now I’m going to write you a prescription,’ Freud replied, ‘or rather, three prescriptions. And although it might sound a bit paradoxical, I’m going to write these prescriptions verbally. So listen carefully, and make sure you remember them! First prescription (for your headache): stop thinking about love. Second prescription (for your stomach ache and confusing dreams): put paper and pen by your bed and write down all your dreams as soon as you wake up. Third prescription (for your heartache): get the girl back — or forget her!’

  The sun had long since vanished. The cold wind blew a few scraps of newspaper down Berggasse. Someone opened a window; music escaped for a moment, a marching band of some sort, then all was quiet again. The Professor gathered himself, with an effort, and they both stood up.

  ‘I wish you luck, Franz!’ he said, and held out his hand. Franz felt the old man’s fingers in his, as thin and light as brushwood.

  ‘I’ll need it.’

  Freud had already crossed the street and was in the process of taking the house keys out of his coat pocket when Franz’s voice, by now trembling with cold, reached him again. ‘May I lie on your couch as well sometime, Herr Professor?’

  Freud turned around.

  ‘What do you want to lie on the couch for?’

  ‘Don’t know. I’ll find out when I get to lie on it.’

  Freud stared at the boy in disbelief. He pushed his hat back off his forehead and twisted his beard between two fingers.

  ‘First the prescriptions — and then we’ll see. All right?’

  ‘All right.’

  For a few seconds they were silent. Eventually Freud twisted his mouth into a crooked smile and put the key in the lock.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Franz!’

  ‘Merry Christmas, Herr Professor!’

  The tobacconist’s was closed over the Christmas period. Otto Trsnyek had entrusted both the keys and the responsibility for its silent rooms to Franz, and had gone to visit a second cousin in Potzneusiedl to ‘treat my soul and my leg
to a little peace and quiet in Burgenlandish ennui’. Franz spent most of the time in his little room, mustering his strength for the forthcoming re-conquest, on the one hand; on the other, because ever since that Sunday afternoon on the wooden bench he had been plagued by a vicious cold. Outside, it had been snowing non-stop for days. The municipal clearance teams, consisting of the emaciated unemployed and Austrian Army soldiers with the baby faces of country boys, had piled the snow halfway up the shop window. Inside the tobacconist’s it was dim and silent, and Franz had plenty of peace and quiet. Mostly he lay in bed and passed the time listening to the soft explosions of the coal stove and thinking about the gap in those Bohemian teeth. On Christmas Eve he lit a candle and polished off the entire contents of a parcel his mother had sent him, filled to the brim with vanilla crescent biscuits, deep-fried doughnuts, jam pastries and other floury delights that smelled of home and childhood. At the bottom of the box Franz found a little photograph. It showed his mother standing on the icy surface of the snow-covered Attersee. She was wearing one of her hand-knitted bobble hats, a woollen jacket, a winter skirt and her old traditional shoes, thickly lined with rabbit fur. She was looking straight at the camera and laughing. One arm was stretched out in front of her; it seemed to be pointing somewhere, perhaps towards the cottage, or perhaps beyond, to the fog-shrouded peak of the Schafberg. The photo had almost certainly been taken by Sieglmeier, the parish priest. The priest was one of the few people in Nussdorf in possession of a camera, and Franz’s mother had probably bribed him with a spicy fish soup, fresh strudels, or a promise to attend church regularly. Now a solitary tear fell onto the photograph, leaving a damp, round mark precisely where his mother’s arm projected into the sky. Franz quickly wiped his thumb across it and turned the picture over. Written on the back, in pale blue crayon, was the message:

  My dear Franzl,

  I wish you with all my heart a happy Christmas and blessed New Year.

  Your Mama

  PS: Are you still in love?

  PPS: If your trousers are dirty, you can send them to me.

  PPPS: Stop calling me ‘Mother’, I’m your Mama and that’s that.

  Franz selected a particularly impressive card from the stand (a statue of Johann Strauss with a crown of snow on his head, surrounded by the Vienna Boys’ Choir) and wrote in his best fountain-pen script:

  Dear Mama,

  Christmas is almost over again, and I’ve eaten every single thing in your parcel. The last few weeks have been a bit of a strain, but I’m sure everything will sort itself out again in the New Year.

  Your Franzl

  PS: I’m still in love.

  PPS: My trousers aren’t dirty.

  PPPS: All right then.

  Franz finally recovered from his cold and fever in time for New Year’s Eve. He headed for Annagasse in the centre of town where, amid hundreds of Viennese in a ‘world-famous and highly regarded dance establishment’ (as promised in the advertisements cleverly placed in a number of newspapers), he welcomed in the new year by downing a two-litre bottle of vinegary white burgundy that he’d smuggled in under his shirt, and waltzing with a fat woman. Early the next day, the first of the hopeful new year 1938, he boarded the tram and trundled through the blizzard towards the Prater. The Giant Ferris Wheel loomed up in the sky, dark and still, and the rides lay as if dead and buried beneath a thick blanket of snow. The alleyways were almost deserted, with just the occasional disorientated pedestrian trudging around between the stalls. Glittering icicles hung on the great swingboat, and a crow squatted on the topmost cabin, hacking at the snow with its beak. Franz went over to the Schweizerhaus, where the lights were already burning and the snow had been shovelled away from the entrance in preparation for the first lunchtime of the year. He entered the bar room and went straight up to the moustachioed waiter, who was standing, heavy-lidded, behind the counter, examining a freshly-polished glass in the dim light of the ceiling lamps.

  Could he be of any assistance to the young gentleman, the waiter asked, without looking at him. Maintaining a bored expression, Franz looked around the room while casually pushing a banknote across the counter. He had a question, he said, a small thing really, quickly asked and even more quickly answered.

  It must be a really tiny little thing, said the waiter, if the value on this scrap of paper was anything to go by. Silently, Franz took another note from his jacket pocket and placed it beside the first. The waiter put the glass back on the shelf and slipped the money into his apron.

  Come on, he said.

  Outside it was snowing even harder now. Thick white flakes sank noiselessly from the sky, settling in their hair and catching on their eyelashes. Franz and the waiter sought shelter under a big chestnut tree.

  What exactly was this small thing, the waiter wanted to know.

  It was about one of his compatriots, said Franz. A Bohemian girl.

  Just because he spoke Czech, the waiter said, that didn’t make him a Bohemian, to make that quite clear. There was a soft rustling in the treetop overhead; a handful of snow fell gently to the ground.

  At any rate, said Franz, he was sure the gentleman remembered that, not all that long ago, he and this Bohemian girl had had a couple of beers and danced right underneath this chestnut tree. She was very beautiful. Quite plump, with hair as blonde as the sun, a delicately puckered upper lip, and a gap in her teeth that could have been sculpted by the hand of God.

  The waiter shrugged. A tricky business, memory, he said, staring sadly at the little mound of snow on his toecaps. Franz sighed and drew another banknote from his coat pocket.

  Oh yes, said the waiter; funny, but he did remember now, there was this fat Bohemian girl.

  Plump, said Franz. Plump, not fat.

  If you say so, said the waiter. What about her?

  Her address, answered Franz. Did the gentleman have an address for her? Or her name. Or anything. He certainly knew her, anyway; that much had been obvious.

  As a Prater waiter one knew a lot of people, the waiter replied. It was hard to say.

  Franz stuck his last banknote in the waiter’s apron. Perhaps that made it a little easier?

  The waiter smiled. Why did it have to be such a porky little peasant, he wanted to know. After all, there were other, quite different opportunities to be had in the Prater; he was sure something could be arranged.

  Plump, said Franz, staring fixedly at him. Plump, not porky.

  Plump, porky, it was just a question of definition, said the waiter. But either way, cheap was cheap.

  At that, something snapped in Franz. With a stifled cry he hurled himself at the waiter and started to punch him. The moustache ducked away, bobbed two steps to the side, one back, one forward again, and threw a straight jab, quick as a flash. The blow caught Franz high on the bridge of his nose; there was a hollow sound and a shadow descended on him, cloaking everything in darkness and silence.

  Seconds later, Franz regained consciousness. He was lying on his back looking straight into the waiter’s moustachioed face looming over him.

  He was a bit out of practice, the waiter told him good-naturedly, but it would just about do for any country bumpkins who happened to come along. Should he help him up?

  No thank you, answered Franz, and stayed where he was.

  The waiter said that where women were concerned there was no need to resort to violence straight away.

  No, there probably wasn’t, said Franz.

  The waiter gave him stern, paternal look. Really — how stupid of him!

  Franz nodded. Could he perhaps get her address or name now, after all?

  Stubborn as a Styrian ox, said the waiter, shaking his head.

  An Upper Austrian one, said Franz, as the sweet taste of blood began to fill his mouth.

  If you say so, said the waiter. A light dusting of snow had begun to settle on his thick hair, giving him a grandfatherly look. The babble of his colleagues’ voices issued from the bar. Laughter. Someone broke into song. The
n all was quiet again. The waiter sighed.

  Not far from here, in the second district, he said. The yellow house on Rotensterngasse. Just follow the rats: rubbish heap to the left, rubbish heap to the right. The young gentleman could try looking there, if he absolutely must.

  Thank you, said Franz.

  You’re welcome, said the waiter. He jumped up and down a few times, smacked the snow from his shoulders and ran his fingers through his moustache. Hopefully there’d be an end to this shitty weather soon; it couldn’t carry on like this.

  Franz nodded.

  Now he really did have to go back in, said the waiter; there couldn’t be much point in standing around under a chestnut tree in the snow all day.

  Right, said Franz, goodbye.

  Goodbye.

  After the waiter had disappeared into the bar, Franz lay there a while longer, gazing up into the whirling snow. It soon seemed to him that it wasn’t the snowflakes that were flying towards him, but he who was rising up from the ground and hurtling away ever faster, higher and higher, up into the wide and silent sky.

  The yellow house on Rotensterngasse was a ruin, ripe for demolition. As the waiter had said, to the left and right of the entrance were rubbish heaps several metres high. The plaster was falling off the façade; the windows were either grey with dust or had boards nailed across them. Brownish icicles hung from the gutter, and the words SCHUSCHNIGG YOU JEWISH DOG! were scrawled across one of the cellar windows in green paint. The front door stood wide open, but in spite of this it was dark in the hallway and stank of damp walls and urine. There was something else in the air, too: a sharp, sweetish smell that wafted towards Franz like a distant memory of home. It smelled of pigsty. Franz couldn’t help smiling to himself. Cautiously he ascended the staircase; little lumps of mortar crunched beneath his feet, and with every stair the stench grew more pungent. At home it wouldn’t have bothered anyone, he thought, certainly not him. Generally speaking, the pigs stank less than forestry workers after their shift, for example, or schoolchildren after a sports lesson. He himself had even crawled into the neighbouring farmers’ pigsties from time to time, had cuddled the piglets like little pink brothers and snuggled up beside them in the straw. Here, though, inside these grey city walls, the smell was unseemly and disgusting. On the mezzanine floor one of the doors had come off its hinges, and in the room beyond he spotted the pig. It was a massive animal; heavy and motionless it lay on the straw-strewn tiled floor, snuffling quietly. Beside it, on a fruit crate, sat an old woman. She had a saucepan in her lap in which she was slowly and steadily mixing dough.