Wertheimer had entered the first-floor room in the Mozarteum assigned to Horowitz and had heard and seen Glenn, had stood still at the door, incapable of sitting down, had to be invited by Horowitz to sit down, couldn’t sit down as long as Glenn was playing, only when Glenn stopped playing did Wertheimer sit down, he closed his eyes, I can still see it in every detail, I thought, couldn’t utter a word. To put it sentimentally, that was the end, the end of the Wertheimerian virtuoso career. For a decade we study the instrument we have chosen for ourselves and then, after this arduous, more or less depressing decade, we hear a genius play a few bars and are washed up, I thought. Wertheimer wouldn’t admit it, not for years. But those few bars of Glenn’s playing meant his end, I thought. Not for me, since even before meeting Glenn I had thought of giving up, pondered the senselessness of my efforts, wherever I went I had always been the best, being accustomed to this fact didn’t prevent me from thinking of giving up, of breaking off something senseless, against all those who affirmed that I belonged to the best, but to belong to the best wasn’t enough for me, I wanted to be the best or not at all , and so I gave it up, gave my Steinway to the schoolteacher’s child in Altmünster, I thought. Wertheimer had put all his eggs in his piano virtuoso career, as I have to call it, I hadn’t put any eggs in such a piano virtuoso career, that was the difference. For that reason he was fatally wounded by Glenn’s Goldberg bars, not I . To be the best or not at all has always been my motto, in every respect. And so I finally wound up in the Calle del Prado in total anonymity, occupied with a writer’s inanities. Wertheimer’s goal was to be the piano virtuoso who proves his mastery to the musical world year in, year out, until he keels over, until, if I know Wertheimer, he turns into a doddering octogenarian. Glenn wrenched this goal away from him, I thought, when Glenn sat down and played the first bars of the Goldberg Variations. Wertheimer had had to hear him, I thought, he had had to be destroyed by Glenn. If I hadn’t gone to Salzburg back then and hadn’t wanted to study with Horowitz at all costs, I would have continued playing and I would have accomplished what I wanted, Wertheimer often said. But Wertheimer had to go to Salzburg and enroll in Horowitz’s course, as they say. We are already destroyed and still we don’t give up, I thought, Wertheimer is a good example of this fact, for years after having been destroyed by Glenn he didn’t give up, I thought. And it wasn’t even he who had the idea of parting with his Bösendorfer, I thought, first I had to give away my Steinway so that he could auction off his Bösendorfer, he would never have given away his Bösendorfer, he had to auction it off at the Dorotheum, that is just like him, I thought. I gave my Steinway away, he auctioned off his Bösendorfer, I thought, and that says everything. Everything about Wertheimer didn’t come from Wertheimer himself, I said to myself now, everything about Wertheimer was always taken from somebody else, copied, he took everything from me, he copied me in everything, and so he even took my failure from me and copied it, I thought. Only his suicide was his own decision and came completely from him, I thought, and so he may have experienced, as they say, a sense of triumph in the end. And perhaps thus, by committing suicide on his own so to speak, he had outstripped me in everything, I thought. Weak characters never turn into anything more than weak artists, I said to myself, Wertheimer confirms that theory absolutely, I thought. Wertheimer’s nature was completely opposed to Glenn’s nature, I thought, he had a so-called artistic attitude , Glenn Gould didn’t need one. Whereas Wertheimer continually asked questions, Glenn didn’t ask any questions at all, I never heard him ask a question, I thought. Wertheimer was
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