Late Fame Page 3

  “Which theater is he at?”

  “None for the time being. Last winter he was in Abbazia . . . And then there’s Fräulein Gasteiner.”

  “You mean there are women in your group?” “Of course. She is a very remarkable person, you’ll find her interesting. She has a wonderful voice.”

  “And where is she?”

  “She’s performed on various stages. But she’s too eccentric, she doesn’t fit into the regular theater life.”

  Meier told him about some more members of his circle. Then, quite abruptly, he said, “And would you perhaps allow us to read something of yours as part of the recital?”

  “Whatever do you need me for?” replied Saxberger. “You have such a rich selection already.”

  But Meier persisted and in the end Saxberger promised that he would pick out something well suited from among his works.

  They said goodbye where they had encountered each other two hours before. Saxberger headed towards Währinger Straße and then to his habitual restaurant. As he entered, he was greeted no differently than usual; some took no notice at all of his arrival. Others called out a comfortable “Servus.” As matter-of-course as that undoubtedly was, today he found it unseemly. And as he sat at his place and found himself surrounded only by mundane conversations in no way interrupted by his coming, he thought: you might have stood up when I walked in. But a quarter of an hour later, he was already caught up in the general discussion and had his opinion like all the others about the currency question, about the fraudster who’d been arrested the day before and about the unrest in Serbia.

  •

  Three evenings later, Saxberger was overcome by such a keen desire to see his young friends again that he curtailed his daily walk in the fresh air and found himself standing at the door of the coffee house as early as seven o’clock.

  As he went in, he saw his acquaintances sitting at a larger table along with several people he didn’t recognize. Meier came two paces forward to shake his hand and the other men rose from their seats. Those he didn’t know were introduced to him. One was Friedinger, a fairly large and portly young person with a diminutive moustache; another was Bolling the actor, who had a malicious cut to his mouth; and the third was an already rather more mature man with a full black beard and a bald head, who was wearing a threadbare, double-breasted black frock coat. As this character, who went by the name of Linsmann, was introduced to Herr Saxberger, he took his hand, pressed it and nodded several times so seriously that it was as if he wanted to reassure him of his most heartfelt sympathies.

  The conversation revolved around the recital evening. Staufner, who, as before, sat in his winter coat with his hat still on, had a sheet of paper on the table in front of him and was eagerly making notes. The program was almost settled; except for Blink, who was solely a critic, and for little Winder, who wrote everything, who always sat there attentively and of whom no one took any notice, all those present were included in it. The bald gentleman with the black beard had been chosen to open the evening with a lecture titled “What we want.” Saxberger learnt all this in the first fifteen minutes he was there. The bald man was to be helped in the composition of this lecture by the critic Blink.

  “Gentlemen,” said Blink, “if it’s all right by Linsmann, I’ll write the lecture myself, and Linsmann can read it, because he has such a sonorous voice.”

  To Saxberger’s surprise, Linsmann nodded his agreement without appearing the least bit hurt.

  Various other items on the program were brought up. It was agreed that Bolling would also have to present something from an author who was already famous, in order to preempt the false assumption that the whole evening had been planned just to give publicity to a small clique.

  “Gentlemen,” said Staufner, “far be it from us to behave like that, and that’s something Linsmann should emphasize in his speech, Blink.”

  “I know myself what Linsmann has to say,” objected Blink. Linsmann stroked his beard and nodded.

  “Oh!” cried Staufner, “that won’t do! Each of us has the right to make proposals for the Linsmann speech. It’s our program that’s supposed to be expressed in it, not the personal opinions of Linsmann.”

  Blink laughed. “I don’t even know the personal opinions of Linsmann.”

  “And Herr Saxberger,” Staufner suddenly said, “what’s it to be for you?”

  “Excuse me?” asked the man he’d addressed, a little abashed.

  “You must read something! You’re one of our own, so please do us the honor of standing up publicly as one of us.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” shouted the others.

  Saxberger smiled, feeling moved, and replied: “Very flattering of you, but I can’t give a reading. Really I can’t. I’ve never had any kind of practice and, in any case, how would I fit in? You are all young people.”

  “You’re young, too,” said Meier very calmly, as though this were entirely self-evident.

  “You’re younger than we are,” cried Staufner. “It’s not a question of years, but of heart. The man who wrote the Wanderings must be a youngster.”

  “I was when I wrote it,” countered Saxberger. “But that’s quite a few years ago.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” said Staufner. “For today’s generation, the Wanderings are the work of a newcomer—because no one knows them.”

  “And if Herr Saxberger,” said Meier, “doesn’t want to present an extract from his work himself, then Herr Bolling can read it instead.”

  “I’d be very glad to,” said Bolling, who let them hear with his every word just what a good speaker he was.

  “It looks to me,” put in Herr Friedinger, “as if that lot over there are laughing at us.” The others turned towards the table on which Friedinger had fixed his gaze, and Saxberger saw a group of five or six young people who seemed to be amusing themselves very highly.

  “They wouldn’t dream of it,” cried Staufner, “they’ll be laughing at some kind of hack joke.”

  “Who are those people?” asked Saxberger of Meier.

  Christian, the tragedian, answered for him: “Those are the talentless ones.”

  “Is that known for a fact,” Saxberger asked earnestly, “or do they call themselves that?”

  “We call them that,” mocked Friedinger. “And that one there”—he gestured at one of those sitting at the other table—“is about to have a play put on.”

  “Why do you call them talentless?” asked Saxberger, persevering.

  “Talentless,” interjected Meier in his calm way, “is what we generally call those who sit at different tables from us.”

  “Nonsense,” shrieked Staufner, “they really are useless. Someone has to put them in their place.”

  “I’m writing an article about it,” said Blink, his demeanor suggesting that this would dismiss them once and for all.

  “Don’t worry about them over there,” said Staufner. “We were talking about Herr Saxberger taking part in our recital. And something else has occurred to me.”

  “Incredible,” muttered Friedinger, but no one took any notice.

  “Herr Saxberger,” Staufner said to the old gentleman, “please write us something for our evening.”

  “But—?”

  “Yes, write us something new. Our audience should be allowed to enjoy something of yours that’s totally new, something completely unknown.”

  “Well,” said Saxberger, “don’t you think that the Wanderings are unknown enough?”

  “They’ve been published!” argued Staufner. “Anyone can go out and buy them. How much greater would the interest be if, as part of our recital, you could get to hear a brand-new work by—Saxberger.”

  All the others agreed with Staufner’s opinion, and Saxberger was pressed to please say yes.

  “Gentlemen,” he replied. “You must know that I have got quite out of the habit of writing poetry. No one ever paid any attention to me. That’s not something that affects you at twenty-three; but, by and by
. . . isn’t that so, Herr Meier, we spoke about it just recently.” Meier nodded and Winder gazed in silent admiration at the young man who had had such an intimate conversation with the old poet.

  They began to talk about the ignorance and injustice of the public; that was something each of them had already experienced. Saxberger felt just how rough a ride the public had given him. He complained along with the others.

  It had grown late, the company broke up. “You should write your memoirs,” said Staufner, as he parted from the old gentleman.

  When almost all of them had dispersed from the door of the coffee house, Saxberger found himself standing with Linsmann, who had barely said a word throughout the whole evening. And in Linsmann’s face Saxberger again detected the expression of sympathy with which he had greeted him as he entered. “Yes,” he said, and shook his head. “You, too, have been destroyed by the public.”

  Saxberger tried to rebuff him: “Destroyed . . . oh—”

  “Of course,” continued Linsmann. “It’s been the same for you as for me. You know—they squashed me, just squashed me flat.”

  “Is that so? . . .”

  “Well, and once someone’s been squashed flat, what’s he supposed to do? Do you really believe I could still bring anything off ?”

  “Oh . . .”

  “Not a bit of it.” He stared into the distance for a few seconds. Then he shook the old gentleman’s hand, again with that understanding expression, and, smoking his Virginia cigar, slowly went on his way.

  •

  Saxberger became a diligent visitor to the coffee house. Every evening he arrived between six and seven o’clock, sat down at the table among his young friends and, although he didn’t participate very actively in their conversations, he did listen attentively, even with relish. He almost felt that he was growing younger. A new era of his life seemed to have begun and from time to time he was a little disconcerted to think of the previous empty years, which now seemed very distant. After only a few days, he felt as at home among these young people as if he had known them for months. And they were right—he was one of them; he understood everything they said and he stood in the same relation to the rest of the world as they did: he had created something and sought the recognition that had been denied him. With them he had found it, at least in part, and done so at a time when he had almost forgotten he deserved it. He could no longer have any doubts about that and when, as sometimes happened, he leafed through his book of poetry, he himself lingered with a certain access of emotion over one or the other poem and began to shake his head in wonder at how the world could have passed so unheedingly over verses such as these.

  And his young friends, too, spoke often about the ingratitude of the public. They, too, had, as they claimed, chosen their favorite poems from the Wanderings; and in a poem that Meier had written a few days earlier you could, in the others’ estimation, clearly detect Saxberger’s influence. After insistent pleading, Saxberger had also brought the publications that carried the poems not included in the Wanderings. The yellowed old pages went from hand to hand in the coffee house, and the young people went from one astonishment to another as they read the verses that would simply have been lost had it not been for the “Enthusiasm” society.

  Little Winder asked Saxberger—it was the first time he had dared speak to him—if he could keep one of the old issues. Some of the young people decided to present him with manuscripts. He did not actually receive that many, because almost all of them were occupied with larger works that would be finished only over the course of the next few months. Nonetheless, Staufner gave him some poems that reminded him of Meier’s, and from Friedinger he received some short stories that for reasons not immediately apparent to Saxberger he described as comic. Christian sent a five-act tragedy to his house . . . but Saxberger could never quite get down to reading the tiny, cramped handwriting.

  They were soon ready to fix a date for the recital and to look around for a suitable venue in which to hold it. On the evening these questions were first discussed in earnest, and after their circle had already been together for some time, a woman entered the coffee house. She strode uninhibitedly, with a bright smile, to the table where the friends were sitting. “That’s Gasteiner,” Meier whispered to Saxberger.

  “Hello, kids,” she said as she reached them. “How are we all . . . Hello, Bolling,” she added, and gave her hand to the actor, who was sitting in the middle of the others.

  “Hello, Gasteiner,” he replied.

  “If you’ll permit me,” said Meier, and presented: “Herr Saxberger, the poet of the Wanderings—Fräulein Gasteiner, our tragedienne.”

  Saxberger stood and bowed to Fräulein Gasteiner. She was tall, no longer young, had a pallid face and wore dark make-up around her eyes. Her features were not unappealing and from a distance they even exhibited a kind of nobility which, however, disappeared up close. Then you saw the slightly crude shape of her mouth and the strangely ravaged lines of the face itself. Saxberger almost felt as if the woman who had appeared so imposingly at the door had, in sitting down beside him, become someone else entirely. She looked at the old gentleman with wide eyes. She rested her gaze on him for so long that he almost became embarrassed. Then she smiled and said, “So, you’re an artist, too?! . . .”

  “The poet of the Wanderings,” repeated Meier with such force that the Fräulein turned and looked at him questioningly. The answer she read in Meier’s eyes she understood so completely that she suddenly grasped her head, then clapped her hands together and, staring at Saxberger with even wider eyes than before, cried out: “The Wanderings?! You wrote the Wanderings?” And then, addressing herself to the others: “Yes, this—precisely this is how he would have to look.”

  “Herr Saxberger,” said Christian, as he took the actress’s strikingly long boa and hung it on a hook, “is going to take part in our evening.”

  “That’s wonderful,” exclaimed Gasteiner, and she again gave Saxberger her hand. Then, abruptly, she dropped out of this dramatic tone and back into the breezy one of before, saying, “Well, kids, what else is going on? Goodness, is that our little Winder [she had noticed him long before], how are you, little Winder?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned to the waiter. “Bring me whatever you want!”

  “A café au lait?”

  “For the love of God! Not a café au lait—an absinthe!” And, turning back to the others: “I would commit crimes for absinthe! I would murder for an absinthe. Now then, kids, who’s coming on Sunday?”

  “Where to, where to?” some of them asked.

  “I’m giving a guest performance in the Orphan in Wiener Neustadt.”

  “You must be a splendid Jane Eyre,” said Bolling. “Shame that Mr. Rochester isn’t in my line. I’d like to act opposite you in the Orphan sometime.”

  “We’ll all go,” said Staufner—“if only we could bring some of these measly Viennese theater directors with us.”

  “I’m going, in any case,” said Blink. “I’ll see to it that there’s something in one or two of the papers.”

  Fräulein Gasteiner pressed the critic’s hand and shot him an ardent look. “I’ll write to the director today so he can reserve some seats—one, two, three—”

  “Not for me,” little Winder said anxiously, “I don’t think I’ll come.”

  “Yes, yes, we already know,” said Friedinger, “your mother won’t allow it.”

  “Oh, I’m sure his mother will say yes,” said Fräulein Gasteiner, looking tenderly at little Winder.

  Bolling expressed the opinion that no modern actress anywhere would be able to play the “Orphan” after Gasteiner. The talk then turned to some of these actresses and Saxberger, like the others, was simply amazed by the incredible blindness of theater directors, who always engaged the most talentless actresses around and let the best of them be poached not just by Berlin, Leipzig and Hamburg, but even by the theaters of Klagenfurt and Linz. Fräulein Gasteiner involved herself only very sparingly
. She contented herself with giving an occasional melancholy nod or breathing a soft “Yes, that’s how it is.” And when the bitterness had risen to its high point, she spoke like a queen judging and pardoning: “Kids, let’s leave off the poor little things [she meant the tragediennes of the Viennese theater] and talk about your recital instead.” With this word “kids,” which Fräulein Gasteiner used so often, Saxberger felt he was being excluded.

  “The things you’ve sent me are magnificent, truly magnificent!!”

  Staufner handed her the sheet of paper which had of late always been on the table in front of him, and she quickly glanced over it.

  “You, as you can see, are down for the third and sixth items.”

  She read in an undertone: “One . . . two . . . three . . .yes, there I am—right—four—Saxberger. So you yourself are going to read, Herr Saxberger?”

  “Right,” said Meier, “that’s something we have to make a decision about. May I ask, Herr Saxberger, how things are with your new poem?”

  Saxberger was both pleased and a little startled. Meier was talking about his new poem as though it were a matter of course. He hardly dared say that he hadn’t even begun it yet. “You must leave me a little more time,” he said in the end.

  Fräulein Gasteiner suddenly burst out, “And may I present it?” She had trained her eyes on him as though this were a question of tremendous seriousness. Saxberger felt it: his answer had to be swift and decisive—this was a look that ordered and insisted. “I haven’t even finished it,” he replied. “I don’t really know whether I’ll—”

  “If I don’t have anything of yours to read, esteemed maestro—I’ll cancel. I’ll just cancel.”

  All of them began to assail him with pleas. It was under his aegis that they wanted to conquer. And he must promise, solemnly promise, that within a week at the latest, the new poem—it did not have to be particularly long—would be ready to be presented to their circle.

  “Ah, we’ll show that rabble,” cried Staufner. “I know some people who’re going to get the shock of their lives.”