The Tobacconist Page 9

  Your Mama

  ‘I’m a nobody. A worthless piece of muck. A doormat for humanity to wipe its feet on. A dustbin filled to the brim with bad thoughts, bad feelings and bad dreams. That’s how it is. On top of which, I’m unattractive. Unsightly. Unappetizing. And fat. Oh God, I’m so fat! A great fat hippopotamus. A portly ten-ton walrus. A pathologically distended female elephant. All that’ll be left of me after my death is a blob of fat the size of a lake. Oh, Herr Professor, if only I were dead already! If only it were all already over, done with, finished!’

  Mrs. Buccleton started sobbing again. Her chin quivered, her cheeks shook, her whole body began to quake. She was indeed severely overweight, and no beauty in other respects, either. The only notable thing about her, aside from her corpulence, was her pale blue child-like eyes, which were usually very wide and seemed permanently ready to fill with tears at the slightest provocation. Mrs. Buccleton’s hysteria was absolutely typical of the condition. She was American, extremely wealthy, forty-five years old, and came from a sunny but tedious small town in the Midwest. Spoiled by her father, who had died young, never liked by her mother, cheated and run out on by both of her husbands, she had tried to bury her lifelong anguish beneath mountains of jellied pork, pies and cherry cake. Since she had first entered the consulting room a couple of months earlier, her progress had been modest. She always arrived an upstanding woman of the world, but no sooner had she allowed herself to be helped out of her bespoke loden jacket — made by a tailor famed well beyond the city limits, who specialized in extra-large clothing — and lowered herself onto the couch, wheezing quietly from the exertion, than she turned into a helpless, snivelling little child who, in addition, made a mess of the expensive cushion covers by smearing them with tears and makeup. Strangely, Professor Freud liked her nonetheless. For some reason he suspected that beneath her irritating demeanour and the thick layer of fat there was a virile mind and an open heart. She also paid on time and in dollars.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. As always he sat at the head of the couch, watching the toe of his own shoe bobbing slightly up and down.

  ‘And I get fatter with every passing day!’ continued Mrs. Buccleton. ‘I’ve put on a few kilos this month, too. My clothes no longer fit me. Or rather, I no longer fit into my clothes. But it’s got to the point where I’m ashamed to go to the tailor. I’m ashamed to go anywhere at all. I’m ashamed to be seen by my own reflection. And above all I’m ashamed to be lying here in front of you, Herr Professor!’

  Freud leaned back a little further. The only real reason why, in all of the innumerable therapy sessions over the past few decades, he had retreated behind the head of the couch was that he couldn’t bear being stared at by his patients for a whole hour. Nor could he bear having to look into their faces: beseeching, angry, despairing, contorted by other emotions. Lately in particular he had often felt overwhelmed by the exhausting hours with his patients, helplessly observing their suffering, which for each and every one of them seemed to encompass the entire world. How had he ever come up with the ridiculous idea that he wanted to understand this suffering, or that he might even be able to alleviate it? What on earth had got into him to make him devote the best part of his life to illness, depression and misery? He could have remained a physiologist and gone on cutting insect brains into wafer-thin slices with his scalpel. Or written novels: exciting adventure stories set in far-off countries and ancient times. Instead, here he was, contemplating Mrs. Buccleton’s round head from the shadow of the corner where he sat. Her bleached-blonde hair was grey at the roots, and as she sniffed quietly her nostrils quivered. Viewed from this angle, Mrs. Buccleton’s nose looked like a pudgy little animal quaking with fear on being abandoned in an unfamiliar and threatening wilderness. There was something about it that Freud found touching. At the same time, he was annoyed at himself for being touched. It was always things like this, apparently small and trifling, that made him forget the distance he so painstakingly established between himself and his patients: the crumpled handkerchief in a director-general’s hand, an old teacher’s crooked wig, an undone shoelace, a quiet swallow, a couple of dropped words, or, like now. Mrs. Buccleton’s trembling nose.

  ‘So you’re ashamed,’ he said. ‘What are you ashamed of?’

  ‘Everything. My legs. My neck. The sweat patches under my arms. My face. My whole appearance. Even at home, even under my blankets, I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed of everything I do, have, and am.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Freud. ‘And what about pleasure?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘What about pleasure? Don’t you feel something like pleasure, too, sometimes?’

  Mrs. Buccleton considered. Outside in the courtyard someone opened a window; two women’s voices were heard briefly, scolding, then all was quiet again. Freud’s gaze slid across his collection of antiquities. They needed to be dusted again at some point, thoroughly, he thought. The terracotta horseman already had a thin layer of dust on his head, and he even thought he could see the delicately shimmering thread of a spider’s web hanging from the Chinese watchman’s left ear. Perhaps, thought Freud, at some point his own bust would stand in some room, waiting silently for someone with a damp cloth to wipe the dust from its bald pate.

  ‘I feel pleasure when I’m eating,’ said Mrs. Buccleton. ‘When I’m eating a big piece of cake, for example.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Freud, and his chin slowly dropped onto his chest.

  ‘There you are!’ cried Mrs. Buccleton.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘You despise me!’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Your “Oh” had a despising undertone! Devaluating and despising! Also, you lowered your head. Did you think I didn’t notice? I know the sound of your beard on your collar!’

  Freud involuntarily sat up straight in his armchair and stuck out his chin. A moment later, though, he was annoyed at his own little insecurity, the ridiculous sense of having been caught in the act, like a schoolchild making faces behind the teacher’s back.

  ‘My dear Mrs. Buccleton, allow me to say the following,’ he growled, with all the affability he could muster at that moment. ‘My “Oh” had neither a devaluing nor a despising nor any other kind of undertone. Rather, my “Oh” was simply the expression of my attentiveness in the form of a sound. And if, from time to time, my head yields to the force of gravity, I would ask you to be so kind as to forgive it. It is now more than eighty years old, has done a lot of work in its lifetime and rests on a set of rather brittle cervical vertebrae.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Herr Professor,’ sniffed Mrs. Buccleton, in a small voice.

  ‘To return to our subject matter, dear lady,’ Freud continued sternly, ‘shame and pleasure are like siblings who go through life hand in hand — if we allow them to. For reasons that are still hidden in the darkness of your past, but which, with your gracious assistance, I intend, in the foreseeable future, to bring forth into the light of understanding, only one of the siblings is thriving, while the other is wasting away and only comes into its own in confectionery shops, if at all.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘But what can I do to help the poor thing come into its own?’ asked Mrs. Buccleton hopefully.

  Freud leaned forward, folded his arms across his chest, looked his patient in the eyes and gave her his most piercing stare. ‘Stop eating cakes!’

  With a cry of pain that rose from the very depths of her soul, Mrs. Buccleton thrashed her heavy body about until the couch legs creaked, the parquet shuddered, and the army of antiquities on the shelves began to tremble and jump as if, after centuries of paralysis, it had finally come to life.

  When Mrs. Buccleton had left, the professor stood at the window a while longer looking down into the courtyard. It had grown warm over the last few days; the snow had long since melted, and the chestnut trees would soon be budding. Yesterday, Schuschnigg had made a big speech to his people. He had appe
ared in public in his home town of Innsbruck, wearing a traditional Tyrolean suit, and had asked his listeners whether they intended to vote for a ‘free, German, independent, social, Christian and united Austria’ in the plebiscite announced for the thirteenth of March. And as more than twenty thousand supporters bellowed their assent into the clear Tyrolean mountain air, Adolf Hitler was probably sitting beside the radio somewhere in Berlin, licking his lips. Austria lay before him like a steaming schnitzel on a plate. Now was the time to carve it up. After Schuschnigg’s speech there were violent clashes between his supporters and opponents in Vienna. The patriots swarmed out all over the city roaring, ‘Heil Schuschnigg!’ and ‘We’re voting yes!’ Now, though, backed by the power of the silent masses, the National Socialists were crawling out of their holes again, too, and running noisily through the streets. ‘Heil Hitler!’ they shouted. ‘One people! One Reich! One Führer!’ The braying of scattered riotous assemblies echoed through the streets well into the early hours of the morning, like the furious barking of dogs.

  Frau Szubovic, the caretaker’s gossipy wife, appeared in the courtyard, waved up at the professor and started scattering pigeon poison in corners. Freud pretended he hadn’t seen her and quickly took a step back into the room. Unanswered letters were piled up on his desk. The whole world seemed to want something from him. People were cosseting their faint-hearted troubles and hadn’t even noticed yet that the earth beneath their feet was burning. He picked up one of the non-descript letters and opened it. ‘Esteemed Herr Professor Dr. Sigmund Freud! Next year our well-known and much-loved publishing house, Earthwork, is publishing an anthology with the provisional title Indigenous Orchards as Places of Spiritual Contemplation. With this in mind, Herr Professor, we are taking the liberty of requesting a short essay on the topic, or at least a few introductory words . . .’ He scrunched up the letter with a weary gesture and threw it at the wastepaper basket. The ball bounced off the edge of the basket, rolled back over the parquet and landed right in front of his feet. He felt a brief urge to give it a furious kick and send it flying across the room, but just then there was a rap at the door. It was, unmistakably, his daughter Anna. Martha knocked. Anna rapped.

  ‘What is it?’ grumbled the professor.

  ‘He’s back again.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The boy from the tobacconist’s.’

  Freud’s expression brightened. He had, in fact, always felt slightly awkward and out of place in the presence of so-called ‘common people’. With this Franz, though, it was different. The boy was blossoming. And not like the knitted blossoms on one of the many blankets his wife always draped so carefully over the couch, whose thick woollen fibres seemed, in some magical way, to collect the dust of the entire city — not faded and worn out from decades of sitting. No, this young person was not only still rather naïve, he also pulsated with fresh, vigorous life. Furthermore, the colossal difference between their ages automatically established the distance that Freud found agreeable and which was, indeed, the thing that made close contact with the majority of his fellow humans tolerable in the first place. Franz was very young, whereas the professor’s world was threatening to grow increasingly old. Even his daughter was already over forty, although suddenly he felt as if it were just the day before yesterday that he had perched on the edge of the bathtub brushing her milk teeth. Then there were the patients, as well as all his other relatives and the few friends who were still left. Slowly, with an old man’s small steps, you tottered progressively towards petrification, until in the end, without anyone really noticing, you could take your place in your own antiquities collection.

  ‘Papa?’ Anna had entered the room, without rapping a second time. She was wearing trousers again. The professor hated women’s legs in trousers, including, and especially, his daughter’s. In certain matters, however, it was inadvisable to start an argument with her, so as far as he was concerned she could wear her trousers. As long as she stayed at home in them.

  ‘Is he sitting on the bench again?’

  Anna nodded. ‘For the past hour and a half.’

  ‘Has he brought something?’

  ‘That I don’t know. But you shouldn’t go out any more, anyway.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You know perfectly well.’

  Freud shrugged his shoulders. Of course he knew. He was old. He was sick. He was a Jew. And there were far too many ruffians on the streets. But there could be no question of capitulating before events that hadn’t even really begun yet. And certainly not of capitulating before his own daughter.

  ‘No, I don’t know,’ he said, stubbornly. ‘Now fetch me my coat and hat.’

  Anna smiled. She stepped over to her father and took hold of his chin. He opened his mouth, and she pushed her thumb carefully into his jaw. With the tip she pressed firmly on the back of the prosthesis. There was a click, and he grimaced in pain.

  ‘In place,’ said Anna, after glancing briefly into his oral cavity. She withdrew her thumb, wiped it with a handkerchief, stood on her toes and kissed her father quickly on both cheeks.

  ‘Yes, all right,’ he murmured, stepping back and rubbing his beard. Over the decades he had learned to cope with pain; perhaps one day he would succeed in doing the same with expressions of affection.

  ‘Look after yourself,’ said Anna. Then she bent down, picked up the orchard owner’s crumpled letter and dispatched it, with a well-aimed throw, into the wastepaper basket.

  Just as Franz was preparing himself for a long wait and, contrary to all the time-honoured rules of Viennese decorum, putting his feet up to stretch out the whole length of the bench, the door across the road opened and the professor stepped outside. Like the first time, he crossed the road with steps that, though shaky, were nonetheless fairly assertive, and headed straight for the bench.

  ‘Did it ever occur to you to ring the bell?’ he asked. ‘It would make things a lot easier.’

  ‘It did occur to me,’ answered Franz, who had immediately leaped to his feet and hurried towards Freud. ‘I just didn’t dare disturb you.’

  ‘Sometimes you have to disturb people if you want to reach them!’ said Freud. He handed Franz a little parcel, carefully wrapped in tissue paper. ‘Here’s your scarf back. It’s been washed and ironed and smells like a rosebush. The ladies have given it their all.’

  ‘Please send my heartfelt thanks and very esteemed greetings up to the first floor, Herr Professor! But don’t you want to sit down?’ said Franz, with an inviting sweep of his hand.

  ‘No thank you,’ said Freud, casting a furtive glance at the first-floor living-room window, which reflected the clear spring sky. ‘Today we’re going for a walk.’

  They walked up Berggasse, turned left on Währingerstrasse, walked in an arc around the Votive Church and on towards the Town Hall. The air was mild; it hadn’t snowed for weeks, and the lilac was in bloom in the Votive Park, far too early. A gentle foehn wind had swept in from the mountains and was blowing a tremendous number of flyers about the streets, encouraging people to vote that Sunday. YES TO AUSTRIA, they read, and RED-WHITE-RED UNTIL WE’RE DEAD! Franz had slipped the parcel with the scarf beneath his shirt, where it warmed his belly, crackling quietly. So the ladies had given it their all, he thought, and tried not to carry his pride before him like a lantern. He kept glancing out of the corner of his eye at the professor, who was walking alongside him, taking small steps. His cane clacked on the pavement in a steady rhythm, as if he first had to feel his way; he breathed shallowly and irregularly as he did so, with a quiet hissing sound on every exhalation. It made Franz want to giggle. Or actually laugh out loud. He had, in fact, always felt a bit clumsy and out of his element around so-called ‘clever people’. But with the professor it was different. This old man wasn’t just clever. Back at the lake you were considered well-read if you could more or less decipher the headlines on the parish newsletter or the timetable at Timelkam Station. And after a few pints of beer in the Goldener Leopold, if n
ot before, all the doctors and high school teachers from Vienna, Munich or Salzburg who came in droves in summer to lie on the shore, burning their white fish-bellies pink, proved that, when it came down to it, they were really quite ordinary minds, not to mention tellers of very dull stories. The professor, though, was so clever that if he wanted to read a book he could just go and write it himself. That’s how it is, thought Franz, and smiled, as they walked on in the shadow of the long university building. But there was something else as well. A single thought, which popped abruptly into his mind like a tiny shock and quickly spread, deep within him, to become a persistent feeling: a feeling that had now claimed a place for itself and — this much was clear — would not easily be banished again. He felt sorry for the professor. There were many things about him that touched Franz somehow. The lopsided jaw, for example. Or his back, which was always slightly bent. The narrow, square shoulders. The old fingers, withered and blotchy, that clung to the knob of his walking stick. Getting old is a wretched business, thought Franz. He felt melancholy and, at the same time, rather angry. What was the point of all that cleverness if Time got you in the end anyway?

  In front of the town hall, children and youths were gathered in small groups. They were hanging around on corners, standing arm in arm, blocking the pavements or running across the square, laughing and shouting, waving hats and swastika flags. A few solitary policemen stood watching the goings-on with their hands behind their backs. A boy of primary school age in short trousers crowed ‘Sieg Heil!’ and flung himself backwards onto the grass, arms and legs outstretched. The Friday afternoon traffic roared down Ringstrasse. Engines puttered, horses’ hooves clattered on the cobbles, coachmen clicked their tongues and flicked their thin whips hissing through the air. The pavements were populated with people chattering and talking over each other. It was warm, the sun was shining, there was a pleasant breeze. People were preparing for the weekend, for the next step, for the future; things were happening in the city, in the country, out in the world. A diesel truck lumbered slowly past with a group of labourers on the back. The men waved their hats and chanted slogans against Hitler and for the Austrian working classes. One of the men leaped from the moving vehicle after his flat cap; he had thrown it up high in the air and it had been carried away by the wind. He landed awkwardly, fell over and lay motionless on his side. A little crowd immediately formed around him. The truck drove on.