Old Masters (16 page)

Museum
der Stadt Wien,
the Museum of the City of Vienna, she discovered in that Museum of the City of Vienna, which, in my opinion, is absolutely worthless, the Gauermann she had given to her niece. You can imagine the shock this was to her. She went straight to the management of the museum and learned that her niece had
sold
the picture, within a few weeks if not a few days of receiving it as a present from her aunt, my future wife, to the
Museum of the City of Vienna
for two hundred thousand schillings. Giving presents is one of the worst kinds of foolishness, Reger said. I very soon made my wife see that this is so and she never gave any presents of any kind afterwards. We tear an object which is dear to us, an object to which, as the phrase goes, our heart is attached, we tear a work of art out of our life, and the recipient goes along and sells it for a shameless, for a horrendous sum, Reger said. Giving presents is a terrible habit, motivated of course by a guilty conscience and very often also by a widespread fear of loneliness, Reger said, a wicked malpractice, and the present, the gift received, is not appreciated because it should have been more, and more still, and it ultimately only creates hatred, he said. I have never in my life given presents, he said, but I have also always declined to accept presents, indeed I have all my life been afraid of
being given
presents. And do you know that Irrsigler too had a part in my marriage? Irrsigler, as it subsequently turned out, had suggested to my wife, who was suddenly leaning, utterly exhausted, against the wall in the Sebastiano Room, that she should sit down for a while in the Bordone Room on the Bordone Room settee, Irrsigler had led her from the Sebastiano Room into the Bordone Room, and on his advice she had sat down on the Bordone Room settee, Reger said. If Irrsigler had not led her into the Bordone Room I probably would have never met her, Reger said. You know that I do not believe in chance, he said. Seen in this light, Irrsigler was our match-maker, Reger said. For a long time my wife and I never realized that basically Irrsigler had been our matchmaker, until one day, during a reconstruction of our relationship, we discovered it. Irrsigler once said that he had
observed
my future wife for quite a while that time in the Sebastiano Room, he had not quite realized the reason for her, to him at first,
odd behaviour,
it had even occurred to him that she might be about to photograph one of the paintings hanging in the Sebastiano Room, which is strictly forbidden, that in her exceptionally large handbag, a handbag
forbidden in the museum,
she might have a camera, that is what he thought at first, only later did he realize that she was simply utterly exhausted. People always make the mistake in museums of embarking on too much, of wishing to see
everything, so
they walk and walk and look and look and then suddenly, because they have devoured a surfeit of art, they collapse. That is what happened to my future wife when Irrsigler took her by the arm and led her to the Bordone Room, as we subsequently established, in the most courteous manner, Reger said. The layman in matters of art goes to a museum and makes it nauseous for himself through excess, Reger said. But of course no advice is possible where visiting a museum is concerned. The expert goes to a museum in order to view at most
one
picture, Reger said,
one
statue,
one
object, Reger said, he goes to the museum to look at, to study,
one
Veronese,
one
Velazquez. But these art experts are all utterly distasteful to me, Reger said, they make a bee-line for a single work of art and examine it in their shameless unscrupulous way and walk out of the museum again, I hate those people, Reger said. On the other hand my stomach also turns when I see the layman in the museum, the way he devours everything uncritically, maybe the whole of occidental painting in one morning, as we can witness here day after day. My wife had what is known as a
crise
de conscience
the day I made her acquaintance, chasing through the Inner City for several hours she did not know whether to buy a coat from the firm of Braun or a suit from the firm of Knize. Thus torn between the firm of Braun and the firm of Knize she eventually decided to buy neither a coat from the firm of Braun nor a suit from the firm of Knize but instead to go to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, where until that day she had been only once, in her early childhood, holding on to her father, who was very keen on art. Irrsigler of course is aware of his role of match-maker, Reger said. If Irrsigler had brought some other woman into the Bordone Room, I often reflect, Reger said, an entirely different woman, Reger repeated,
an Englishwoman or a Frenchwoman, it does not bear thinking about,
he said. We sit on this settee, utterly desolate, Reger said, more or less depression personified, hopelessness, Reger suggested, and a woman is placed next to us and we marry her and are saved. Millions of married couples have met on a seat, Reger said, indeed this is one of the most fatuous situations imaginable, and yet it is to this fatuous ludicrous situation that I owe my existence, because without meeting my wife I could not have continued to exist, as I now realize more clearly than ever before. For years I had sat on this settee in more or less the deepest despair and suddenly I was saved. I therefore owe to Irrsigler virtually everything that I am, for without Irrsigler I would have long ceased to be here, Reger said at the moment when Irrsigler looked into the Bordone Room from the Sebastiano Room. Towards twelve o'clock the Kunsthistorisches Museum is usually fairly empty, and on this day too there were not many people to be seen about any more and in the so-called Italian Department there was no one left except us. Irrsigler took one step from the Sebastiano Room into the Bordone Room as if to give Reger a chance to voice a request, but Reger had no request and so Irrsigler immediately withdrew again into the Sebastiano Room, he actually backed out of the Bordone Room into the Sebastiano Room. Irrsigler was closer to him than any close relative had ever been, Reger remarked,
there is more linking me to that man than ever linked me to one of my relatives,
he said. We have always managed to keep our relationship in an ideal equilibrium, Reger said,
in this ideal equilibrium for decades.
Irrsigler always feels protected by me, even though he has no clear idea in what respect he is being protected by me, just as I in turn always feel protected by Irrsigler,
naturally also without any idea of the actual connection,
Reger said. I am linked to Irrsigler in the most ideal way, Reger said,
it is a positively ideal remote relationship,
he remarked. Of course Irrsigler knows nothing about me, Reger said next, and it would be utter nonsense to tell him more about myself,
it is just because he knows nothing about me that our relationship is so ideal, just because I myself know as good as nothing about him,
Reger said, because all I know about Irrsigler is outward banalities, just as in turn he only knows me from outside in the most banal manner. We should not penetrate into a person with whom we have an ideal relationship more than we have already penetrated, otherwise we destroy that ideal relationship, Reger said. Here Irrsigler calls the tune, Reger said, and I am entirely in his hands, if Irrsigler today said to me, Herr Reger, from today you will no longer sit on this settee there is nothing I can do about it, Reger said, because after all it is madness to come to the Kunsthistorisches Museum for thirty years and to occupy the Bordone Room settee. I do not believe that Irrsigler has ever informed his superiors of the fact that I have been coming to the Kunsthistorisches Museum for thirty years and have been sitting on the Bordone Room settee every other day, I am sure he has not, from what I know of him he realizes that he
must
not do so, that the administration
must
not know about it. People are always very ready to send a person like me to the lunatic asylum, that is to Steinhof, when they learn that a person has been going to the Kunsthistorisches Museum for thirty years in order to sit on the Bordone Room settee every other day. That would be a real gift to the psychiatrists, Reger said. To get into a lunatic asylum a person has no need to sit on the Bordone Room settee every other day for thirty years, in front of Tintoretto's
White-Bearded
Man,
it would be quite enough for a person to
have this habit for a mere two or three weeks, yet I have had this habit for over thirty years,
Reger said.
And I never gave up the habit when I got married, on the contrary, with my wife I even intensified this habit of going to the
Kunsthistorisches
Museum every other day and sitting on the
Bordone
Room settee.
I would be a
welcome gift, a real gold mine,
as the saying goes, for the psychiatrists, but the psychiatrists will not be given an opportunity to have me as a welcome gift and a gold mine, Reger said. After all, there are thousands of people in psychiatric hospitals who, so to speak, have committed some crazy act which is not nearly as crazy as mine, Reger said. There are people detained in psychiatric hospitals who just once
failed
to raise their hand when they should have raised it, Reger said, who just once said White instead of Black, Reger said, just try to imagine that. But I am not really crazy, he said, I am just a person of extraordinary habits, a person with one extraordinary habit, to wit the extraordinary habit of going to the Kunsthistorisches Museum every other day for the past thirty years and of sitting on the Bordone Room settee. Whereas to my wife it was
at first a frightful
habit, over the last years it
eventually
became
an agreeable habit
to her, whenever I asked her about it, she always said it was an agreeable habit for her to go with me to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, to our
White-Bearded
Man by
Tintoretto and to sit on the Bordone Room settee, Reger said. I do in fact believe that the Kunsthistorisches Museum is the only refuge left to me, Reger said,
I have to go to the old masters to be able to continue to exist, precisely to these so-called old masters,
who have long, that is for decades, been abhorrent to me, because basically nothing is more abhorrent to me than these so-called old masters here at the Kunsthistorisches Museum and old masters generally, all old masters, no matter what their names are, no matter what they have painted, Reger said, and yet it is they who keep me alive. I walk through the city and I think that I cannot bear living in this city any longer and that I not only cannot bear the city any longer but that I cannot bear the whole world and in consequence the whole of mankind any longer, because the world and all mankind have meanwhile become so ghastly that soon they will no longer be bearable, at least not for a person such as me. For a man of intellect just as for a man of sensitivity like me the world and mankind will soon no longer be bearable, believe me, Atzbacher. I no longer find in this world and among these people anything that I appreciate, he said, everything in this world is dull-witted and everything in this mankind is just as dull-witted. This world and our mankind have now reached a degree of dull-wittedness which a person like myself can no longer afford, he said, such a person can no longer live in such a world, such a person can no longer coexist with such a mankind, Reger said. Everything in this world and in our mankind has been dulled down to the lowest level, Reger said, everything in this world has reached such a degree of public danger and base brutality that I am finding it well-nigh impossible to go on living even for a single day at a time in this world and in our mankind. Such a degree of low dullwittedness had not been thought possible even by the most clear-sighted thinkers in history, Reger said, not by Schopenhauer, not by Nietzsche, not to mention Montaigne, Reger said, and as for our outstanding world poets, our poets of mankind, what they have predicted for the world and for mankind in terms of horror and decline is nothing compared to the actual state at present. Even Dostoyevsky, one of our greatest clairvoyants, described the future merely as a ludicrous idyll, just as Diderot only described a ludicrous idyll of the future. Dostoyevsky's terrible hell is so harmless compared with the one in which we find ourselves today that we only feel a cold shiver running down our spines when we think of it, and the same applies to the hell predicted and pre-described by Diderot. The one, from his Russian and West-Eastern point of view, no more foresaw or predicted or pre-described this absolute hell than his Western counter-thinker and counterwriter Diderot, Reger said. The world and mankind have arrived at a state of hell, such as the world and mankind have never before arrived at throughout history, that is the truth, Reger said. What these great thinkers and these great writers have pre-described is a positive idyll, Reger said, all of them, while believing that they were describing hell, merely described an idyll, a positively idyllic idyll compared to the hell in which we now exist, Reger said. Everything today is full of baseness and full of malice, lies and betrayal, Reger said, mankind has never been as shameless and perfidious as today. We may look at whatever we please, we may go wherever we please, we only look at malice and infamy and at betrayal and lies and hypocrisy and forever only at nothing but absolute baseness, no matter where we look, no matter where we go we are confronted with malice and with lies and with hypocrisy. What else do we see but lies and malice, hypocrisy and betrayal, the meanest baseness, whenever we walk out into the street,
when we dare to walk out into the street,
Reger said. We go out into the street and we walk into baseness, he said, into baseness and shamelessness, into hypocrisy and malice. We say that there is no country more mendacious and none more hypocritical and none more malicious than this country, yet when we leave this country, or even look beyond it, we see that outside our country too there reigns nothing but malice and hypocrisy and lies and baseness. We have the most distasteful government imaginable, the most hypocritical, the most malicious, the meanest and, at the same time, the stupidest, that is what we say and of course what we believe is true, and we say so at every other moment, Reger said, but when we look out from this mean, hypocritical and malicious and mendacious and stupid country we find that other countries are just as mendacious and hypocritical and altogether just as mean, said Reger. But those other countries are not really our concern, Reger said,