Telegrams of the Soul (16 page)

Danube, small track, big leather factory, wobbly granite pavement,
good enough for the wide-tired truck rolling along at a snail's pace! But the automobile leapt, galloped, hopped, like a déclassé vehicle on this paved truck road. To the left lay the winter embankment, to the right a raised plateau made of sand and gravel dug out of the Danube studded with young birch trees. From there one had a panoramic view of blue-gray hills, black factory chimneys and the glow of the sunset. In the distance reared the somber dynamite depot, the Laaerberg, the Central Cemetery, the Kahlenberg—. The dark red blaze of the striped sunset surged against the gray molten lead-colored sky and earth. The leather factory reared up like a black beast, and three massive chimneys sent black smoke into the blaze like little spurts of steam that would like to put out giant fires! The slender delicate young birch trees in the Danube landfill trembled in the evening wind and the two friends picked out lovely smooth light brown pebbles as souvenirs of the pleasant evening. Back on the highway waited the red automobile, Mercedes 18-24, which, in fourth gear could rip along like a little road-running Orient Express.

The red blaze against the leaden sky turned raspberry colored, then dark gray-red. The two friends remarked: “Now there's nothing more to see. The play is over.” So they climbed into the red automobile and said to the chauffeur: “Fourth gear, please—.”

They whizzed back to the Grabenkiosk.

Still seated there was the French lady whom one only dared greet with one's eyes.

But at this late hour one felt entitled to say “Good evening—.”

And the two gentlemen politely bid her: “Bon soir—.”

__________________

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The Café-pavilion “Am Graben”

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Horse-drawn hacks

††
A trotting race track in the Prater

The night won't pass. Naturally you keep dwelling all the while on each and every one of your thousand unnecessary sins. Nevertheless or precisely for that very reason, the night won't pass. How foolishly you lived, or rather, failed to live, actually just slid by, dying a little every day. You've got no Bismarck-brain, never took yourself in hand, failed to fulfill man's sole true purpose! A thousand things drove you from yourself, robbed you of your innate, indwelling vitality, drove you away from the best of your self!

That's why the night won't pass.

Because the sum total of your dumb and unnecessary sins is staggering.

Did you really have to that time?! No, you didn't have to at all, especially not in this altogether perilous affair! So why did you go and do it?! So that this neverending night would afford you the human occasion to keep remembering and, as it were, dredging up your stony life of sin, and so that it would keep tormenting you for not having been enough of a man throughout this long preciously petrifying period of your life!

That's why your night won't pass!

 

Morning consultation.

The doctor is seated, like a district attorney, behind a massive desk, with a serious, searching look on his face.

The delinquent (patient) enters.

“Please, have a seat—.”

Pause, during which the district attorney (doctor) studies the criminal to ascertain any sign of paralysis or simulation—.

“Now then, my dear Peter Altenberg, seeing as I've known you for quite some time now through your interesting books, I take the liberty of dispensing with the conventional title ‘Sir' in the case of a famous person like yourself. Apropos of which, I understand your female admirers address you directly with the initials ‘P.A'!? I dare not as of yet permit myself that honorific abbreviation—.

“But let's get down to business! So, my dear Peter Altenberg, what are we going to have for breakfast?!”

“
We
?! That I can't tell you. But I myself take coffee, a light coffee with plenty of milk—.”

“Coffee?! Is that so?! Coffee be it then, light coffee with plenty of milk—?!? Coffee, if you please—!”

“Yes, please, it's my regular morning drink, to which I've been accustomed for thirty years now—.”

“Very well then. But you are here, in fact, to disabuse yourself of your previous lifestyle, which does not appear to have done you much good, and, more importantly, you are here to acquire the necessary energy to at least attempt to gradually undertake such salubrious changes in your heretofore accustomed, indeed perhaps all too accustomed, lifestyle!?! So, for the moment at least, let's stick with coffee with milk. But why such a pronounced aversion to tea?! One can also sip one's tea diluted with milk—?!”

“Yes, but I prefer to drink coffee with milk—.”

“Do you, Mr. Altenberg, have a particular reason for deeming the satisfaction of a morning tea as insufficiently bracing for your nerves?!?”

“Yes, because I don't like the taste of it—.”

“Aha, that's just what I wanted to establish. Now then, my dear sir, what do you have with your beloved and seemingly indispensable morning coffee with milk?!?”

“With it?! Nothing!”

“But you must have something solid with it! Coffee on an empty stomach doesn't taste good—.”

“No, I have nothing with it; all I like is coffee with milk plain and simple—.”

“Well, my dear Sir, with all due respect, that just won't do here. I'm afraid you'll have to concede two rolls with butter—.”

“I loathe butter, I loathe rolls, but even more so I loathe buttered rolls!”

“We'll neutralize that aversion in due time! I've brought off far more difficult feats, I assure you, my friend—. So, and now you will be so good as to quietly betake yourself to your breakfast on the veranda. One more thing: Do you customarily rest after breakfast?”

“That depends—.”

“That depends won't do. Either you rest or you take a constitutional.”

“Alright, so I'll rest—.”

“No, you will take a half-hour stroll—!”

The delinquent staggers out of the consultation room and presents himself for a punitive breakfast on the veranda, the punishment sharpened with two buttered rolls.

Several days later. The district attorney: “You see now, my dear famous poet, your facial expression is already much freer, I dare say, more human, not so preoccupied with set ideas—. Did the two buttered rolls do you any harm?! There now!”

No, they did him no harm, since he tore them up daily and scattered the crumbs in the chicken yard—.

Afternoon consultation.

“Mr. Peter Altenberg, to the director's office, on the double—.”

“Please be seated.

I strictly forbade the consumption of alcohol—.”

“Indeed you did, Mr. Director, Sir—.”

“Do you recognize that stack of empty slivovitz bottles?!?”

“Indeed I do, they're mine—.”

“They were found today under your bed—.”

“Where else should they have been found?! I put them there myself—.”

“How did you manage to procure that poison in my asylum?!”

“I bribed someone. Two Crowns were not enough to corrupt his honest conscience. So I offered him three Crowns.”

“You're innocent then in this entire matter, but that two-faced orderly is the guilty party! I'll make him answer for this, despite his twenty-five years of service in this institution, in the course of which, as far as I can tell, his conduct was unimpeachable.”

“Mr. Director, Sir, just yesterday you remarked to me that, as a consequence of the constancy of my solid lifestyle here in your institution, I looked a good twenty years younger and was hardly recognizable!”

“I made the remark for pedagogical reasons, to fortify your self-confidence—.”

“Mr. Director, Sir, may I have the empty slivovitz bottles picked up at your office later?!? I get six Heller a bottle deposit, see—.”

Director to the underhanded employee: “Say, Anton, whatever prompted you after twenty-five years of unimpeachable service to allow yourself to be bribed by a patient, even by such a famous quirky poet, and to procure for him such a large quantity of brandy?!?”

“But Mr. Director, Sir, if I hadn't already been doing that for years for hundreds of alcoholics every one of them would've flown the coop after three days and we'd have had an empty asylum!”

“Very well then, Anton, but please make sure from now on that the empty bottles not be found—.”

“Mr. Director, Sir, that low-down orderly Franz pulled one on me, he's jealous of all I earn on the side—.”

Director to the orderly Franz: “Say, Franz, mind your own business! You make enough already by letting our alcoholics ‘have a little go' with our hysterical Misses—. To each his own. In a proper institution like ours order must be maintained!”

“Today, for Christ's sake, not the slightest little poem or sketch comes to mind, God knows, I'm just not in the mood!” is one of the lies you used to get away with a couple decades ago, say around 1870. Either you haven't slept enough, or jealousy hampers your “mental machinery,” a ghastly impediment of all bodily functions, practically prompting “the murderer within,” or it's your stomach, your worthy intestine, or “the rent,” “the tailor,” “the florist,” “the waiter,” or “ambition,” “envy,” “humiliation,” “injustices,” “disappointed expectation,” “the promise didn't prove fruitful.” Everything, just everything is to blame, or rather for the rest of us, pleasantly impeded your creation of the slightest little poem or sketch! “Mood” is one of those common lies! The “unhampered” organism is always in the mood! You ought to see me when somebody in parting presses twenty Crowns into my hand! It happened once years ago, and the magazine to which I was at that time an active contributor, previously inactive, wrote me: “Please do put a lid on your perfidious productivity.” (Der ‘März,' Munich, Kurt Aram, Editor!) “Mood” is nonsense, a lie, a swindle. It's enough to spawn perplexed amazement in “psychopaths!” Not to be in a “mood?!” That's impossible. There are only “somatic” causes, all matters of the mind, of the spirit are merely a necessary consequence of the overall machinery. Loosen the little screws, and the valves, and the “mood” must out! When the machinery's in working order, the mind and spirit work to capacity! Often beyond capacity.

Five in the morning. All is bathed in yellow sunlight. The air is still fresh and cool. Many tourists tear themselves out of sleep, suffer sleep deprivation, just to greet the sun. It'll be easy for them to banish their sleepiness with a splash of cold water. It's still cool out and you march into the hot day as into the heat of battle!

Far too few offer up their utmost to meet the day and the hour. And even the most contented heart longs for the extraordinary. Here comes the July Sunday in glaring yellow light! July Sunday, be the bearer of what we long for!

Everywhere you look, unhappy humanity is escaping. Running, exhausted, we fall in line, back to the daily grind! Monday, how sour you would be were you not the source and reason for Sunday's sweet anticipated pleasure! On Sundays, you see the weary plunked down in meadows and woods, washed clean of last week's filth, prepared to tackle the coming week.

As children we sat with our beloved parents evening after evening in the Stadtpark on the terrace of the Kursalon. We were served ice cream and cookie twirls and didn't have a care in the world. For years now, father has not set foot outside his cozy room, nor mother her cozy sepulcher. Bald and careworn, I wend my way through the Stadtpark, to the terrace of the Kursalon, where I select the very same table at which we once sat so carefree with our beloved parents. I order the same flavor ice cream as I did back then, raspberry-chocolate, with plenty of crispy fresh cookie twirls. The flower bed is just as it was, perhaps a little more colorful, the arrangement a mite more original. I see parents with their children. They argue and scold. Our parents never argued and scolded—never. Maybe it was bad that they didn't, but they had respect for their own little creations, and confidence in us too! We disappointed them; but they accepted this as their lot and our destiny. We never noticed the tears they shed over us—. Now I sit, bald-headed, careworn, in the Stadtpark, on the terrace of the Kursalon, at the very same table where we once sat without our beloved parents, eat the same dish of raspberry-chocolate ice cream as before, with plenty of crispy fresh cookie twirls—. The flower bed I look down on is a little more colorful, the arrangement a mite more original. But otherwise, nothing has changed from those days of dumb childhood to these nights of tired age! I see parents scolding their children in the park; our parents never scolded us; they hoped that we would one day repay their kindness, but we never did. We had a lovely childhood; and so we sink into memory, since the present has hardly enough substance to live on. Our parents were all too gentle, hopeful, too ready to bow to destiny. It was a curse and a blessing! For now we can look back on days that were idyllic—. Not everyone who sees the darkness closing in can look back with a thankful and loving heart on the lightness of former days—.