Memoirs of an Anti-Semite by Gregor Von Rezzori Page B

the best possible training. She declared that she agreed completely with his father, Dr. Goldmann, that it would be a crime to put the boy wonder, who was ready to perform, before an audience now; they should do all they could to foster his personal maturation as well as the development of his virtuoso abilities. To be sure, she did not go so far as to make contact with Dr. Goldmann himself, but used Stiassny to inform the father of her views, aims, and decisions regarding young Goldmann.
    Aunt Sophie’s designs for educating a genius, which were occasionally communicated to us, too, with poignant eagerness, would prompt Uncle Hubi to turn to me pointedly and ask, “Are you coming out to the farm with me? I have to check something about the sheep. I think they’re driving them regularly into the new preserve by the river.” And then, quite uncharacteristically, he would address Aunt Sophie tangentially, so to speak, as she sat at the breakfast table, wrapped in thought and spreading honey on her roll. “I don’t think we’ll be back for lunch,” he said. “We’ll eat out with the steward. Stiassny will most likely say that we need have no illusions about the gap that we’ll be leaving— nicht wahr , Stiassny?”
    I loved riding out to the farm, and not only because it was conducive to my training as Count Sàndor’s emulator. I would listen attentively to all of Uncle Hubi’s tips and pointers, which he would illustrate by anecdotes; having spent his life on horseback, and being an old cavalry officer, he had made riding an ideology, the metaphor of a way of life, and despite his pyknic constitution, he was an excellent horseman. But beyond all this, I was very satisfied when I said to myself that the sight of the two of us riding through the village must have made an impact on the street urchins, the boys who had been about to humiliate me when Haller, the blacksmith, saved me from them as from a swarm of flies. Now they had to be convinced of the power behind me, which someday I myself would represent and embody.
    For it was more and more obvious that Uncle Hubi intended to make me his successor. He began systematically to integrate me into the circle of his chores, duties, and activities. And, needless to say, it was once again Stiassny who could not help putting this situation into words.
    â€œI have recently seen a little color in one’s cheeks, which has caused me some worry about one’s honorable state of health,” he said. “Could this possibly come from one’s now growing seriously into one’s role of heir apparent? I mean, it appears no longer as a fiction, as a carefully considered possibility and hallucination, but instead has finally found the concrete relationship of function. One is learning one’s future métier, nicht wahr? One is being confirmed in one’s task, albeit for the moment only by holding the horses of one’s predecessor in the chain of inherited duties, and whisking away the flies from those selfsame horses with a leafy twig, while Herr Uncle has his hours of chitchat with the steward about the situation and how to improve it. But still and all, one is present, one does listen, one is initiated and instructed. Why, that must strengthen one’s self-esteem, mustn’t it? Or am I mistaken? But then who am I to know of such matters? Still, the groom will one day be a cavalier and landowner, just as the squire becomes a full-fledged knight. Perhaps one no longer feels so utterly rejected and excluded from the loftier status that attaches our honorable hostess to young Goldmann. One is strengthened by the notion of becoming something definite, however different from and less spectacular than what one’s more gifted friend is through his piano-playing. One must admit, of course, that what he is doing is quite extraordinary. But this very perfection, nicht wahr , this ruthless perfection that