Old Masters (13 page)

for such a thing as that all the prerequisites are lacking at the Ambassador,
Reger said. On the Bordone Room settee he was able to pick up the most complicated ideas and follow them through and eventually bring them together in an interesting result, but not at the Ambassador. But of course the Ambassador has a number of advantages which the Kunsthistorisches Museum lacks, Reger said, not to mention the fact that I am each time enchanted by the lavatory at the Ambassador since that lavatory was recently rebuilt; in Vienna, let me tell you, where all lavatories are in fact more neglected than in any major city in Europe, this is a rarity, to find a lavatory that does not turn your stomach, where one need not, while using it, hold one's eyes and nose firmly closed the whole time; Viennese lavatories are altogether a scandal, even in the lower Balkans you will not find a lavatory which is quite so neglected, Reger said. Vienna has no lavatory culture, he said, Vienna is one great lavatory scandal, even at the most famous hotels in the city there are scandalous lavatories, you find the most ghastly pissoirs in Vienna, more ghastly than in any other city, and if ever you have to pass water you get the shock of your life. Vienna is quite superficially famous for its opera, but in fact it is feared and detested for its scandalous lavatories. The Viennese, and the Austrians generally, have no lavatory culture, nowhere in the world would you find such filthy and smelly lavatories, Reger said. To have to go to the lavatory in Vienna is usually a disaster, unless you are an acrobat you get yourself filthy, and the stench there is such that it clings to your clothes, often for weeks. The Viennese are altogether dirty, Reger said, there are no city-dwellers in Europe who are dirtier, just as it is a well-known fact that the dirtiest flats in Europe are the Viennese flats; the Viennese flats are even dirtier, a lot dirtier, than the Viennese lavatories. The Viennese keep saying everything is so dirty in the Balkans, you hear this kind of talk everywhere, but Vienna is a hundred times dirtier than the Balkans, Reger said. When you accompany a Viennese to his flat your mind as a rule boggles at the dirt. Of course there are exceptions, but as a rule Viennese flats are the dirtiest flats in the world. I always wonder, what must those foreigners think when they have to go to the lavatory in Vienna, what must these people, who after all are used to clean lavatories, think when they have to use the dirtiest lavatories in the whole of Europe. The people only hurry to pass water and emerge from the pissoirs horrified at so much dirt. Everywhere also that horrible stench in every public lavatory, no matter whether you go to a lavatory at a railway station or whether you need to go in the Underground, you have to visit one of the dirtiest lavatories in Europe. In the Vienna cafés too, and especially there, the lavatories are so dirty you feel nauseated. On the one hand this megalomaniac cult of gigantic gateaux, and on the other these frightfully dirty lavatories, he said. With many of these lavatories you have the impression that they have not been cleaned for years. On the one hand the café proprietors protect their gateaux against even the slightest draught, which of course is of benefit to the gateaux, and on the other they attach not the slightest importance to the cleanliness of their lavatories. Just wait, Reger said, if you ever have to go to the lavatory at one of those, for the most part, rather famous cafés before you have started on your gateau, because when you return from the lavatory you will have lost all your appetite for eating even a mouthful of the gateau offered, or maybe even served, to you. And the Viennese restaurants, too, are dirty, I maintain that they are the dirtiest in the whole of Europe. Every other moment you are confronted with a totally bespattered tablecloth and when you draw a waiter's attention to the fact that the tablecloth is bespattered and that you do not intend to eat your meal off a tablecloth bespattered from one end to the other, that bespattered tablecloth is but reluctantly removed and replaced by a fresh one, by asking for a dirty tablecloth to be replaced then you merely attract furious and indeed dangerous glances. In most taverns you do not even get a tablecloth on your table and when you ask for at least the worst mess to be wiped off the dirty and very often even beer-wet table-top you invite an ill-mannered grumpy response, Reger said. The lavatory question and the tablecloth question are still unsolved in Vienna, Reger said. In every big city in the world, and I can say that I have visited nearly all of them and have come to know most of them more than just superficially, you get a clean tablecloth on your table as a matter of course before you start your meal. In Vienna a clean tablecloth or at least a clean table-top is anything but a matter of course. And it is the same with the lavatories, the Viennese lavatories are the most nauseating not only in Europe but in the whole world. What use to you is a superb meal if, even before you start eating, you lose your appetite in the lavatory, and what use to you is a superb meal if your stomach turns afterwards in the lavatory, he said. The Viennese, as indeed the Austrians, have no lavatory culture, an Austrian lavatory has always been a disaster, Reger said. Much as Vienna is famous for its mostly really excellent cuisine, at least as far as desserts are concerned, its renown with regard to its lavatories is inglorious. Until quite recently the Ambassador, too, had a lavatory which defied all description. But one day the management came to its senses and built a new one, an exceptionally well-planned one, in fact
a perfect one not only architecturally but down to the last hygienically sociological detail.
The Viennese are in fact the dirtiest people in Europe and it has been scientifically established that a Viennese uses a piece of soap only once a week, just as it has been scientifically established that he changes his underpants only once a week, just as he changes his shirt at most twice a week, and most Viennese change their bedlinen only once a month, Reger said. As for socks or stockings, a Viennese, on average, wears the same pair for twelve consecutive days, Reger said. In view of all this, manufacturers of soap and linen do worse business in Vienna, and of course throughout Austria, than anywhere else in Europe, Reger said. Instead the Viennese consume vast quantities of scent of the cheapest kind, Reger said, and they all reek from afar of violets or carnations or lilies of the valley or boxwood. And it is of course logical, from the external dirt of the Viennese, to draw conclusions about their inner dirt, Reger said, and the Viennese are in fact not much less dirty inside than outside and possibly, Reger said, I am saying possibly, that is not with complete certainty, he corrected himself, the Viennese are actually a lot dirtier inside than they are out. Everything suggests that they are a lot dirtier inside than out. But I do not feel like pursuing the subject, he then said, that would surely be a task for so-called sociologists, to do a study of the subject. Such a study would probably have to describe the dirtiest people in Europe, Reger suggested. You do not know how happy I am that there is this newly-built lavatory at the Ambassador; at the Kunsthistorisches Museum there is still the old one. As I am getting steadily older and not younger, I have lately also had to visit the lavatory at the Kunsthistorisches Museum with increasing frequency, Reger said, and this, under the conditions still prevailing here, is a nerve-racking unpleasant experience for me every day, because the lavatory at the Kunsthistorisches Museum is beneath contempt. Just as the lavatory at the Musikverein is beneath contempt. I even once permitted myself the joke of mentioning in one of my reviews for
The Times
that the lavatory at the Musikverein, that is in the supreme of all supreme Viennese temples of the Muses, defies description and that for this reason, for this scandalous lavatorial reason, Reger said, it always costs me some selfdenial to go to the Musikverein, and that I very often ask myself at home whether or not I should go to the Musikverein, since at my age and with my kidneys I have to go to the lavatory at least twice during an evening at the Musikverein. But each time I have in fact gone to the Musikverein, because of Mozart and Beethoven, because of Berg and Schoenberg, because of Bartók and Webern, overcoming my lavatory phobia. How exceptional the music played at the Musikverein must have been, Reger said, for me to go there even though I have to visit the Musikverein lavatory at least twice during the evening. Art is merciless, I tell myself each time I enter the Musikverein lavatory, and so I enter it, Reger said. With eyes closed and my nose pinched as far as possible I pass water at the Musikverein lavatory, he said, this is quite a special art of its own which I have mastered with virtuosity for quite a while. Apart from the fact that the Viennese lavatories and the Viennese pissoirs are altogether the dirtiest in the world, with the exception of the so-called developing countries, nothing in them actually works as far as the sanitary equipment is concerned, there is either no water coming out of the taps, or else the water does not drain away, or else it neither runs in nor drains away, often for months on end no one cares whether the lavatories and pissoirs are functioning or not, Reger said. Probably the only way to improve this appalling state of Viennese lavatories would be for the city or the state, or whoever, to enact the strictest
lavatory and
pissoir
laws,
such rigorously strict laws that hoteliers and innkeepers and café proprietors would really have to maintain their lavatories and pissoirs. The hoteliers and innkeepers and café proprietors will not by themselves change this state of affairs, they will perpetuate this whole lavatory and pissoir mess into all eternity unless they are compelled by the city or the state to put their lavatories and pissoirs in order. Vienna is the city of music, I once wrote in
The Times,
but it is also the city of the most nauseating lavatories and pissoirs. London by now is aware of this fact, but Vienna of course is not, because the Viennese do not read
The Times,
they content themselves with all the most primitive and most ghastly papers printed anywhere in the world for the purpose of stultification, in other words they content themselves with the papers ideally appropriate to the perverse emotional and intellectual state of the Viennese. The Russian group had gone. The settee in the Bordone Room was empty. Reger, as I had seen, had got up after Irrsigler had whispered something in his ear and had walked out, his black hat, which he had kept on all the time, on his head. There were now two minutes to go to half-past eleven. The Russian group was standing in the so-called Veronese Room, the Ukrainian interpreter was now talking about Veronese, but what she was saying about Veronese she had already said about Bordone and Tintoretto, the same trivialities, the same twaddle, in the same cadences in the same disagreeable voice, she was speaking not only the usual feminine Russian which basically always gets on my nerves, but she was moreover speaking in that, to me almost unbearable, piercing falsetto so that all that while I actually suffered an acute pain in my auditory canal. A hearing such as mine is sensitive and it scarcely tolerates especially disagreeable female voices in that certain falsetto pitch. Why Irrsigler had not been seen for some time, when normally, in accordance with regulations, he had to look into the Bordone Room every so often, I could not understand, it certainly seemed very odd to me that he had left the Bordone Room along with Reger and had not returned for such a long time. But as I have an appointment with Reger in just this Bordone Room at half-past eleven and as Reger is the most punctual and most reliable person I know, Reger will return to the Bordone Room at half-past eleven precisely, I reflected, and no sooner had I so reflected than Reger actually returned to the Bordone Room, though not, before finally sitting down again on the Bordone Room settee, without looking around him in all directions; anticipating this I had, as soon as I became aware of him returning to the Bordone Room, withdrawn back to the Sebastiano Room; I therefore once more posted myself in the corner of the Sebastiano Room into which I had been pushed by the uncouth Russian group and from where I was able to observe Reger who had now returned to the Bordone Room, that mistrustful Reger, as I was thinking, who was still looking around in all directions in order to feel quite safe and who, among other things, had suffered all his life from a positively fatal persecution mania, which of course had always been useful to him without being really dangerous to him or to anyone else. Reger was now again seated on the Bordone Room settee, studying the
White-Bearded Man
by Tintoretto. On the dot of half-past eleven he glanced at his pocket watch, which he had pulled from his jacket with lightning speed, and at the same moment I stepped out from the Sebastiano Room and into the Bordone Room and stopped in front of Reger.
Terrible, those Russian groups,
Reger said,
terrible, I hate those Russian groups,
he repeated. He commanded me formally to sit down on the Bordone Room settee,
come on, sit down next to me,
he said.
I am happy with every punctual person,
he said.
The majority of people are
unpunctual,
that is terrible. But you have always been punctual,
he said,
that is one of your great qualities.
If only you knew, he then said, what a bad night I had. I swallowed twice as many tablets as usual and still I slept badly. I constantly dreamt of my wife, I cannot get rid of those nightmares when I am dreaming of my wife. And I reflected about
you,
about how you have developed over these past few years. Strange how you have developed, he said. Basically you lead an unusual existence, a more or less totally independent one, allowing of course for the fact that there is no independent person on earth, let alone a totally independent one. If I did not have the Ambassador, he said, I would not survive the afternoons. Lately there have been so many Arabs going there it will soon be an
Arab hotel
when surely it has always been a