some point, nearly morning, she finally . . . what time though,
dunno, around six or maybe seven? Dunno. Was she crying? I don’t think so. I was
just surprised when she refused to get up, even at nine she was still, she didn’t
get up all morning, her eyes were shut, but she wasn’t sleeping. And not a bite of
anything. Not even coffee. All day long just lying there. I’m going to lie here and
never get up again, she said to me. Really. She wouldn’t come to the woods on
Tuesday either. No one on earth. On Wednesday I got the eggs from Mizzi but she
didn’t want hers. And then the night after, her hair! Exactly, I didn’t go out for
my chess game; I really thought we’d be off to Steinhof to commit her. So did I. Her
beautiful hair. But on Friday she seemed better. Yes, that was my impression too.
Completely calm. There was a fresh snowfall on Saturday, her first time downstairs.
I draped my coat over her, and downstairs she said it made her dizzy to look at the
falling snow. I said: so don’t look. And I said: eat something proper, then you’ll
be able to stand on your feet again. And she opened her mouth and let the snowflakes
fall into it. Yes, that’s right. I couldn’t help laughing. Me neither.
And then it was Sunday.
18
On Sunday, thank God, the older girl finally wants to go out
for a little walk again. Are you going to see your friend? her mother asks. Yes, she
says. Her mother shuts the door behind her; before the door closes, the girl hears
her mother calling to her father: Don’t you think it’s strange that her friend
didn’t come to see her even once? Well, how could she? Maybe on the 7031? It’s her
parents’ own fault they know so little about their daughter. It’s not as if anyone
ever asked her if she wanted a sister in the first place, or whether she liked
Vienna so much the first time they visited that she wanted to move there. When a
handicrafts teacher at the lyceum had used the words
sloppy
and
shoddy
to describe a doll’s dress she had sewn with great effort, she’d
understood that even after years in Vienna she was still a foreigner here and would
remain one. She still remembers her grandmother coming to stay with them right after
she fled Galicia; for several days the kitchen had smelled like in the old days,
smelled of pear compote and challah, but when the provisions her grandmother had
brought with her were exhausted, her mother had immediately found the old woman
another apartment and forbidden her daughters to visit her there.
How lovely is
your dwelling place, oh Lord of Hosts.
Only then did she realize that she,
too, was of Jewish descent, but her father still took her and her sister to services
at a Christian church Sunday after Sunday, they sat in the civil servants’ pew with
other civil servants and their families. For more than ten years now, her father had
been telling his colleagues that his wife wasn’t so steady on her feet and therefore
attended a church closer to their home, and in this way — this much one must
grant him — he had advanced to the ninth pay grade, but even for a civil
servant of that grade, it was no great feat these days to starve to death as
miserably as the monkeys, camels, and donkeys in the Schönbrunn Menagerie. Did
keeping her misguided love a secret from her friend make her just as halfhearted and
deceitful as her parents? It had done no good to keep the truth to herself either,
for a truth remained even if it was never spoken aloud, day after day it went on
doing what it had to. Landstrasser Hauptstrasse, Arenbergpark, Neulinggasse —
which eventually turns into Gusshausstrasse on the way to the district called
Margareten and then later becomes Schleifmühlgasse — and finally
Margaretenstrasse itself — the scrap of paper on which her mother had written
down her grandmother’s address had been right there in the kitchen drawer.
19
Time to go. Let’s go
.
Every Sunday she went to the Vienna Woods to get firewood. She
dunno, around six or maybe seven? Dunno. Was she crying? I don’t think so. I was
just surprised when she refused to get up, even at nine she was still, she didn’t
get up all morning, her eyes were shut, but she wasn’t sleeping. And not a bite of
anything. Not even coffee. All day long just lying there. I’m going to lie here and
never get up again, she said to me. Really. She wouldn’t come to the woods on
Tuesday either. No one on earth. On Wednesday I got the eggs from Mizzi but she
didn’t want hers. And then the night after, her hair! Exactly, I didn’t go out for
my chess game; I really thought we’d be off to Steinhof to commit her. So did I. Her
beautiful hair. But on Friday she seemed better. Yes, that was my impression too.
Completely calm. There was a fresh snowfall on Saturday, her first time downstairs.
I draped my coat over her, and downstairs she said it made her dizzy to look at the
falling snow. I said: so don’t look. And I said: eat something proper, then you’ll
be able to stand on your feet again. And she opened her mouth and let the snowflakes
fall into it. Yes, that’s right. I couldn’t help laughing. Me neither.
And then it was Sunday.
18
On Sunday, thank God, the older girl finally wants to go out
for a little walk again. Are you going to see your friend? her mother asks. Yes, she
says. Her mother shuts the door behind her; before the door closes, the girl hears
her mother calling to her father: Don’t you think it’s strange that her friend
didn’t come to see her even once? Well, how could she? Maybe on the 7031? It’s her
parents’ own fault they know so little about their daughter. It’s not as if anyone
ever asked her if she wanted a sister in the first place, or whether she liked
Vienna so much the first time they visited that she wanted to move there. When a
handicrafts teacher at the lyceum had used the words
sloppy
and
shoddy
to describe a doll’s dress she had sewn with great effort, she’d
understood that even after years in Vienna she was still a foreigner here and would
remain one. She still remembers her grandmother coming to stay with them right after
she fled Galicia; for several days the kitchen had smelled like in the old days,
smelled of pear compote and challah, but when the provisions her grandmother had
brought with her were exhausted, her mother had immediately found the old woman
another apartment and forbidden her daughters to visit her there.
How lovely is
your dwelling place, oh Lord of Hosts.
Only then did she realize that she,
too, was of Jewish descent, but her father still took her and her sister to services
at a Christian church Sunday after Sunday, they sat in the civil servants’ pew with
other civil servants and their families. For more than ten years now, her father had
been telling his colleagues that his wife wasn’t so steady on her feet and therefore
attended a church closer to their home, and in this way — this much one must
grant him — he had advanced to the ninth pay grade, but even for a civil
servant of that grade, it was no great feat these days to starve to death as
miserably as the monkeys, camels, and donkeys in the Schönbrunn Menagerie. Did
keeping her misguided love a secret from her friend make her just as halfhearted and
deceitful as her parents? It had done no good to keep the truth to herself either,
for a truth remained even if it was never spoken aloud, day after day it went on
doing what it had to. Landstrasser Hauptstrasse, Arenbergpark, Neulinggasse —
which eventually turns into Gusshausstrasse on the way to the district called
Margareten and then later becomes Schleifmühlgasse — and finally
Margaretenstrasse itself — the scrap of paper on which her mother had written
down her grandmother’s address had been right there in the kitchen drawer.
19
Time to go. Let’s go
.
Every Sunday she went to the Vienna Woods to get firewood. She
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