Wonderful, Wonderful Times (5 page)

If anyone's going to do any breaking or hurting around here, it'll be Anna and Rainer.

No more crisp frost on village streets. No more thin-soled Sunday shoes unsuited to weather and wearer alike. No one goes in to see the Western with a spring in his step and (though the only others there are jerks with snotty beaks and hair slicked back with brilliantine) emerges from the cinema a cowboy. No fear of coming home too late or of being hit with hard objects. And then having to lug the heavy bucket of piping pig broth out to the sty. And if you forget to take off your good shoes beforehand they'll stink so

badly you'll have to downgrade them for wearing to the sty only.

The twins are not marginal figures. They are the main characters. They are the centre of things, which is not a central point at all but in fact a broad spectrum of people.

What the siblings exude is not
joie de vivre
such as a youngster listening to a transistor radio exudes but rather anger and revulsion. You give your kids all the love in the world and the way it turns out in the end you might as well not love them at all. They believe that there is a part of every human being that is not pre-determined. Something unforeseen that is outside society's bounds and thus completely free. Only underlings like cake and the music of Elvis, Peter and Conny.

Rainer sups clear chicken broth with unidentifiable things floating in it yet again, things that cloud its clearness after all.

Then you could always tear these new Conny-style skirts apart with your teeth. The skirts are in fashion, recently the grey masses of girls have been eager to wear them because the material is cheap and they're everywhere you look and if the skirt is red it sends a cheerful message and if it's blue it's dramatic.

Destroy the piled-up crow's-nests on the heads of unbelievably ugly girls and dismantle them by pulling out the hairpins. Grind velour pullovers between your teeth for as long as it takes for all trace of the pile to have disappeared, leaving just the floppy smoothness of ordinary pullovers. Rainer bites his lip so the blood flows, seeing them pass him by, saying take me, no, take me instead, they've applied black eyeliner to their eyelids and white lipstick or pale pink lip gloss, they are a grey flock with occasional patches of blossom in their midst. Beneath the underskirts specially starched by Mummy there is an abdominal

smell. They have to have a petticoat. But it won't wash itself.

Rainer does not want closer contact with a girl just yet. He wants to pass judgement on them from a distance. He still has time for intimacy, he knows.

Mummy enters abruptly and is justifiably alarmed by her brood, but she says: what's needed rather than this is for our off-spring to have beauty in its thoughts, words and deeds. That is why they go to the grammar school. You learn that there. What they need is to build bridges, not demolish them, one bridge leads to our fellow-man and the next from our fellow-man to us. The twins do not want to build bridges.

Anna: We are ourselves indeed a freedom that chooses, but we do not choose to be free. We are condemned to freedom. If I look at you, Mama, that's plainly true. Forsaken in freedom. That's you exactly. And that forsaken condition has no other cause than the very existence of freedom. You can tell by looking at you.

Mummy does not understand. What she does know, though, is that the world would be a lot better off if it paid more attention to its philosophers and artists than to its own tiny egoistic spirit, which lacks an overview. People should place their belief in Beethoven and Socrates.

The twins explain to Mother that the non-existence of that selfsame Mother is conceivable and possible. But I gave birth to you, me personally, one after the other. So you exist. That's why. And so do I. What rubbish. It's a beautiful, infinite, bright and youthful world, especially if you're young yourself. And now they can cut out the new Elvis poster, at last she gives them permission after previously having forbidden them to do so.

Mother is shoo'd out like a fly. And once again the children have the not-quite-normal look they had before.

Mother leaves, and in the doorway she says that her children, who will always be little children for their Mummy to look after, their whole lives long, ought to take pleasure in the insignificant things in life, too. There are people who take no notice of strangely shaped trees, flowers or bushes by the wayside, or even damage them. These are the same people that are cruel to animals. They are thoughtless people, ordinary, average people. Which her children are not. Her children should heed the little things that others disregard. She brought them up to do so. And she has often had to struggle with her husband. The aforesaid husband is a soldier and thus of coarser stuff and he'd rather watch cheap B movies. If he were not of such coarse stuff he wouldn't have been able to kill. He needed that coarseness. A soft streak would have been amiss, it would have been at odds with the profession.

Mother can still see his wide-open mouth as he watched that entertaining Heinz Ruhmann flick. It was
Die Feuerzangenbowle,
his very favourite film. He has seen it numerous times and never tired of it. He is the only one to have perceived the subtleties of the film. Everyone else brays out loud at obvious gags. When it was made, the film was an indication of what lay in store. Father could see as much. Often, without being asked, he describes the content of
Die Feuerzangenbowle.
Unfortunately the children won't be getting to see it. In the film, the New Era was already showing its true face, in the shape of a young teacher with nationalist ideals. The teacher in the movie says that the Old Era must be unremittingly put behind us. Daddy thinks so too, and the twins are busy creating the New Era. Which is even newer than the New Era in the movie.

What are you all going on about, I'm against anything traditional that's out of date, you know I am. And I saw a whole lot of musicals featuring Marika Rokk, she has tremendous stamina and amazing willpower, because she still dances. And then there was that sentimental

Hans Christian Andersen movie. The star killed himself and his wife and children because the wife was Jewish. Before he died he had one final opportunity to display his profoundly humane brand of humour, which was not a destructive sense of humour. That kind of humour only works if it comes from deep inside. Deep inside he was lacerated by fast-acting poison. Some people die less conspicuously and perhaps the torment they suffer is even greater. As it was, his innards were torn apart, and all that remained to posterity of the Danish teller of fairy tales was celluloid. Something survived him, at any rate.

What wonderful, wonderful times they were. Scorching hot desert sand.

IT IS ESPECIALLY mild, this spring light that enters through the glass doors designed by Lalique, doors that were at the World Fair in Paris back in the twenties and subsequently brought to Vienna. In her own imagination, Sophie is also made of glass, or sparkling china, or (best of all) high-grade steel. Sport polishes Sophie up and has already succeeded in making her agile all-round. And what sport cannot manage, her father's library accomplishes: supplying the cultural background. She is more of a sporting lass than a culture vulture, though. No intellectual supers wot, Sophie. All of her contours are rounded, firmed up and gleaming. Dirt is altogether alien to the way she is, just as years ago everything that was un-German was alien to the Germans,
artfremd,
though nowadays of course a mighty tourist industry is getting under way, bringing the world into the Germans' homes or else transporting the Germans far from their homes to the world.

Nor is there any point on that smooth surface where an attacker could get a purchase. True, it is a tempting challenge to a groper, but he invariably loses his grip. Sophie enters wearing a tennis dress (she almost always wears some sporting outfit or other) and asks Rainer (who has a love for her that he doesn't show, so as not to compromise his position): Can you just lend me a twenty for the taxi, I haven't got any money on me and Mama's gone out for tea. Weeping softly, Rainer rummages in his little purse, Sophie gets the money, which represents a large sum to Rainer and which he will undoubtedly never see again. Because money means nothing to Sophie. She takes its availability for granted. Whereas Rainer gazes after his delicious twenty for quite a while, even after it's long since flown the coop. Rainer's father considers that riding

in taxis indicates an ambition to be a
grand seigneur,
an ambition that his son must quash, but it's pointless if he goes paying for other people's taxis. To Sophie, a taxi is a means of transport.

Sophie will never give the money back. She will forget about it. Because for her it has no real value.

Rainer's thoughts will dwell compulsively on that and other money. But he will never dare ask for it back.

The carpet is a great soft Persian expanse, Sophie is something you have to get inside but you don't know how because there's nothing to get a grip on. Should you fuck her in the mouth and pound her tongue to pulp so that she can't come out with any more of those thoughtless hurtful things she says, or should you do it from down below, which poses problems since she never lets you anywhere near the way in. You slip off. Though slipping off is nothing compared with the downhill social slide! It's the lesser evil. There may of course be a causal connection.

Modern paintings and
objets
everywhere, emanating long traditions in culture and art which you can only share in once you have taken possession of these things somehow or other. The best way of doing this is to take possession of Sophie, but (see above) there are no loops or straps to get hold of her by. Though Rainer has studied the rules of art thoroughly and has a good knowledge of them he owns no art objects whatsoever. Oh and anyway, the rules of art do not exist, because what makes art art is the fact that it obeys no rules at all. Rainer has reached this conclusion all on his own. People, on the other hand, are subject to laws because otherwise it would be every man for himself, anarchy. So says Rainermother to Rainerfather and so says Rainerfather to Rainermother. Rainer, however, has rather a penchant for anarchy, precisely because he knows the laws that govern the social life of man and despises them. Everything has to be destroyed. And nothing built up again afterwards.

Out shoots a Rainer mitt to apply the tried and tested lever hold to Sophie once again, but she glides straight through him and says she has to get changed now. Yet again. I'll come with you. That's what you think.

So he stays put. One of the countless errors of the middle classes is that they are soon demoralised when they venture out on their clumsy forays. When they have a real chance they relax their grip and do not even pretend to persist. The whisky's here. Help yourself while I'm gone.

Rainer tugs violently at his cheap loose-fitting pullover, Sophie gives him the slip, yet again. This is getting dreary.

His wretched brain wanders off to old and recent humiliations. Points in his deformed mind where the film is forever catching and sticking. Nothing of beauty. Only unlovely things. Sunday outings with Mother surface, trams smelling of damp socks, crammed with pathetic grey crowds of people of the kind a long war produces and cannot disperse right away. Off we go, to the Vienna Woods. Balaclavas made of unravelled respun wartime wool, baggy skiing trousers, brogues, and worst of all the dreaded packed lunch. Giving off a cheesy reek. Making you thirsty. But you can't go to a cafe or restaurant because it costs money, children can drink water, but there's no water anywhere to be found. Presently the cheese sandwich will be exuding its quintessence from beyond Mummy's cheap metal teeth and sending forth stench from her stomach, because she didn't chew properly. Chewing too much simply spreads the evil taste everywhere.

The detested shelter where they have to wait for at least twenty minutes till the next 43 comes curving round. The end of the line. Neuwaldegg. Invariably packed in the middle of a pack of impoverished humanity. Often they save the fare and walk back along the Alszeile, at the end of which (isn't Mummy

super) they are allowed a ride on the merry-go-round for the cost of the tram fare, which brings home to them all the more clearly the fact that they are children, a fact they want to put behind them. Nonetheless the kiddies, Rainer and Anni, shout and cheer, the poison of passing cars already in their heads and hearts. Not because it pollutes the environment (which has already been ruined by the War in any case) but because there is no capital to buy a car. And then there's Anni, grubbing in dog-dirt and wastepaper to draw attention to her serious emotional problems. Emotional problems are a luxury and are therefore ignored. She wants to be on her own in a swish car and not stuffed into a lousy tram (let alone with the family) where everyone is equal and you can't be special. If you were in a Mercedes, no one could come up any more and ask: What's the boy's/girl's name. Stroking your head with hands that quite plainly proclaim their owner a member of the worker species. And not realising that the infant they're patting already bears the poison of individualism in its heart. And is prepared to squirt it.

Once, when she was being stroked by one of these mittened hands, Anni actually wet herself, and all the while putrid garlic breath was wafting across her and she was being talked to as though she were a normal child, which even then she wasn't. Neither normal nor a child. The hot urine trickled down between her thighs (that downward impulse), ate its acrid angry way into her hand-knitted woollen knickers, and relentlessly found its way out of the dismal Sunday scene, along the grooves on the floor of the tram. Drip drip. Down fall the maternal arms like clubs and thump and retire upwards again and then down once more, keep-fit for Mumsy who has just had a nice relaxing outing. Insane bawling from the female infant. At the first blow, Rainer has instantly taken refuge between two aged granddads, clawing hold of the Vienna Woods walking shoes one of them is wearing. Does the lad go