9780810112049

Chapter One

return to galicien

The Professor, the Fossil, had dug his sister's grave. He had already arrived at this hypothesis before he had the least proof in hand. Already on the way to Vienna, as the train rumbled through Bruck-an-der-Mur, then on through Mürzzuschlag, and was about to enter the Semmering tunnel, which he once thought the longest in the world, he felt that he had understood Franza's message. That is, if one could even call it a message, himself feeling like Champollion, the first to shed light on a forgotten form of writing, an occupation he would have much preferred.

Before the tunnel, before he had to cease studying the cartouche of a king on the one side ("The Concise Dictionary of Egyptology") and a telegram from the Austrian postal system on the other, he felt certain. He tucked Franza's three-page telegram into his coat pocket and readied himself for the through journey. For one thing was still the same, namely that the railway still scrimped on electricity for its day trains. The blue lamp indeed was lit, but it shed hardly any light in the compartment where he sat thinking, How typical of Franza to send a telegram. She couldn't simply write a letter, and it must have been at least a couple of years, no, more like ten years since she and the Fossil--by whose holy will indeed?--since she decidedly was not the same as before and went out of his life, not only disappearing from Baden, just outside Vienna, but also from the mind, in which it is truly possible for things to disappear, escaping just as she had from Galicien, just as she had run away from him in Vienna and retreated from him, ever since she....

But who had she become? A woman, his sister, who, though that word made him think of someone, no longer was what she used to be and no longer the same woman. And how typical, he said to himself: Although she had sent him only a few telegrams, this one perhaps the second or third in ten years, it was still typical, or at least that's what he felt as he sat in the dark and no longer enjoyed the taste of his cigarette and stubbed it out in the broken ashtray as he thought to himself, How typical.

When a train travels through the Semmering tunnel, when the story goes that it travels to Vienna, something is named, a city called Vienna and a village called Galicien when the story is about a young man who could be identified as Martin Ranner, but who could also just as well be called Gasparin, though it remains to be seen, if nothing changes entirely--if, in fact.... And though it's proven that Vienna exists, one cannot comprehend it through a single word, for Vienna exists here on paper and the city of Vienna completely elsewhere, namely at 48°14'54" north latitude and 16°21'42" east longitude. Thus the Vienna here cannot be Vienna, for here there are only words that allude to and insist that something exists, and that something else does not exist, though it is not this specific train that travels through the tunnel named above, nor the young man who sits in the train that travels through the tunnel.

What is it then? The train schedule might confirm that here (where?) trains travel daily through the tunnel, and also at night, but it cannot confirm this particular train, nor what is on this piece of paper; therefore no train can be traveling and no one can be sitting inside it, meaning that none of it exists, not even this: He thought, read, smoked, gazed, saw, strolled, tucked away a telegram, then later said--therefore no one can be speaking if none of it exists. Only the rubble of words that tumbles, only the paper that turns over with a rustle, otherwise nothing happens, nothing is turned, no one turns and says something.

Who then will say something and out of words construct something--everything, that is, and much else that is not? Yet the paper wants to travel through the tunnel, and before it enters (but indeed it has already entered!), before it does, it is still not covered with words, and when it emerges, it is covered and its pages numbered and divided up. The words line up together, and brought along out of the darkness of the through journey (lit only by the blue lamp) the originals and the copies roll on, the illusions and the true conceptions rolling into the light, rolling down through the head, emerging from the mouth that speaks of them and asserts them and distinguishes them from the tunnel inside of one's head, although this tunnel in fact does not exist, itself only an image appearing from time to time inside a certain cranium, which if split open would reveal little, for there would be nothing there as well, neither of the tunnels.

What does it mean then? Such a digression, during which a train travels through the Semmering tunnel, would have to conclude that in relation to the train, just as with all else, a confusion exists. Yet as far as we're concerned the train can travel on, for what is written about it will be spoken, the train will travel on, since it is asserted that it exists. For the facts that make the world real--these depend on the unreal in order to be recognized by it.

Also the Semmering tunnel has an end and always had one. He was then eighteen and she was twenty-three, about to give up her studies, allegedly having fainted in a hall of anatomy, or in an equally romantic tale she fell into the Fossil's arms. Meanwhile, the Semmering mountain, its slopes almost completely covered in snow right down to the area around the tracks, hung there without a word, reflected in his eyes. He had misplaced his ticket, so when the conductor approached he handed him the telegram absentmindedly, then stuffed it back into his pocket with an apology as he rummaged through all of his pockets, looking twice in his wallet amid the bills and scraps of paper, all because of Franza, and at last found the damned ticket. All because of this telegram, stop and stop and stop, as she put it, as if without those traffic signs he would have to hypothesize and ponder and imagine once more another conclusion (how many had it been?) arrived at amid these stops.

In the end one word stood there: Franza. She must have come to her senses, for the last time she had clearly signed it "Your Franziska" or "Your old Franziska." Nonetheless, she was to blame for his low spirits, for it occurred to him for the first time what he could have done: pretend not to have received this telegram and later sent a postcard while under way, best of all one from Alexandria, something he could imagine vividly, Alexandria. So why in fact didn't he ignore the telegram? If there was ever something that did not fit into his plans, into his time so carefully divided up, it was indeed this telegram. And here he was traveling to Vienna after he had so meticulously prepared to leave Vienna, paying ahead on his rent, saying good-bye, setting things in order at the institute. Now he was traveling back to where he had come from already. Wiener Neustadt in all of its modern ugliness, after that Baden, then Vienna again, the South Train Station. The southern train. That was in fact the train that would always be their own, his and Franza's train. For just as one travels along one track in life and back again on the same, together they had really known only the southern train, all other railways of the world having been second class in comparison, and once experienced, forgotten for good.

Martin walked into the station and up to a telephone booth, having already counted out the coins in his hand. As he leafed through the telephone book and dialed, it would have pleased him to see the entire tasteless station once more leveled to a ruin. It then struck him just how the building must have once really been--somewhat windy, drafty, dark, somehow threatening, taking one's breath away as one entered, just as it must have been during the school term when Franza had allowed him to visit her for a few days. This South Train Station in which one no longer froze and was afraid naturally was not the real South Train Station.

He got through to the clinic. His repeated sentences, pressed through the crackling on the line, were then passed on further by one woman's voice to another. The first voice was sterile and empty, having said the name of the clinic a hundred times over and that it indeed was the clinic, while the second voice revealed an overly anxious devotion, for it was the secretary in the waiting room, the Fossil's right hand, if indeed there was a waiting room. Then the Fossil himself was on the line, rattling off his name, aware of his importance, pronouncing it with the slightly nasal tone that only those Viennese of the highest echelons and formerly of the imperial-royal order could still practice, though in the Fossil's case it was a special mixture of a cultured tone and a tone of authority, whereas Martin had settled into a younger, purified form of German, one full of coyness which was laced with soggy consonants, always a bit too soft, this softness never leaving the speech, even when one spoke curtly or was angry or wished to speak with precision as Martin did at this moment.

The Fossil attended to him like a welfare case or someone with an imaginary illness who had grown to perturb him, dishing out a precisely mixed dose of professional kindness and sharpness. If Martin understood anything in having only once interrupted him with a question, which was immediately ignored, it was that he should not get mixed up in the divorce (what? proceedings, contingencies?) being handled by a lawyer. And as he hung up it occurred to him that he understood less than he had before, when he had understood nothing, because earlier he was not involved in anything and had known nothing about a divorce.

He had come in search of his sister who had disappeared, and even now he still did not know where his sister was, or even why he had come when he had not received any information about her whereabouts. He threw another coin in and got the first voice again as well as the crackling. He hung up. He wanted nothing more to do with the second and third voice, for his ears couldn't stand it. He hailed a taxi and gave the driver the address in Hietzing. He rode along, having been defeated. Yes, if he really faced it, he had been defeated, banished beyond the borders of this world in which a brother obviously had no right to ask a question that could cause embarrassment to such an authority. If there was one thing he had to do it was to at least find the person who had sent the SOS to him, even if it required force and no further questions, and it had to be done right away, whether he got involved or not.

He couldn't figure out if the "Jesus, the Herr Doctor" that the cook let slip in all honesty, but also diplomatically, meant that his arrival disturbed her or pleased her, nor was he certain whether she would allow him to step into the apartment, though he did enter and close the door behind him. Luckily he remembered that she must be "Frau Rosi," and as he began to turn her name over in his mind, he realized that as she muttered a "Mary and Joseph" it meant Franza was not here. When Frau Rosi spoke it always involved an agonizing translation of her Viennese dialect into high German, such that one had to think of the words she wished to say, "Jesusmaryandjoseph" probably meaning that she felt her guardianship of the house was in question. Naturally she didn't feel she was employed as a guardian, nor as a servant, referring to herself instead as an employee who had insurance and benefits, and in no way the soul of the house, as the Professor referred to her among others, nor the foolish person who often bore the brunt of his tiresome, oppressive anger. She honestly did not know that the lady was no longer at a spa in Baden, though behind her brow she worked it out that she had been left in the dark about nearly everything. One morning she had found a cheap pair of panties, but certainly they did not belong to the lady. And once in the bathroom there had been a plastic bag and a hair comb, but naturally such things never occur in the best houses, and she was only in the best of houses and had always been, and whatever was known she would not elaborate upon in front of the lady's brother.

Martin, who noted her consternation, was not interested in such an inquiry, but rather took a further step into the apartment, as if he were a police officer with orders to conduct a search as he headed directly into the sitting room with her behind him. He recognized everything, though the curtains were open now and a broom leaned in the corner and there was a sense of things having been tidied up that had little to do with the usual evening arrangement. Here the evenings had taken place, the last one more than six months ago, during which he had looked at her without being disappointed at all, but rather with complete indifference, looking on like an automaton who had been invited by accident. He made it a point to chat with Mahler, who had lost the position of Surgeon General and informed Martin of the complicated events behind the scenes. Meanwhile, Martin had stood there looking like a detective about to set down chalk marks or track down footprints or pieces of glass in order to remember precisely where each person had stood, or who had sat where and with whom, including the two most famous psychiatrists in Vienna, and the three not quite so famous, and the minions and invited clowns, and the writer whom he didn't know, and a globetrotter who used to market his slides to the public. There had also been Frau Gebauer in the middle, a pianist, and of course all the spouses of important men, as well as the head of the Ministry of Education. Yet it wasn't enough to simply observe who had been there, for he had also wanted to record the tangled web of rivalries and animosities that stretched between them. As he stood with Mahler outside the library, he had been amused at how such a tensely preserved harmony could be so easily disturbed by the slightest petty remark. Only later, on the journey home, did the usual forms of snobbery come out, as well as the contempt for all others felt by everyone there. And so he stood there in the salon whose walls, if they could talk, would have endless stories to tell, though they could say nothing about Franza as she had carried glasses back and forth, circulated, and was everywhere, asking him, Would you like a whiskey, Martin?--those being her last words to him and practically the only ones he could remember.

Meanwhile, Frau Rosi stood there with a dust cloth in her hand, holding it like a weapon, as if to prevent him from doing something. But what could that be? He walked further into a side room and she followed him. Then he opened the door to the bedroom he had never entered before, not even knowing its location. He then opened the wardrobe and took out a couple of dresses that had to be Franza's, and with a couple of dresses hanging over his arm he said offhandedly that he had to make a call. That seemed to disturb Frau Rosi more than the fact that he had taken Franza's clothes, for she said that wasn't possible, because, as you know, the telephone is in the office. So he walked into the office with the dresses still draped over his arm and sat down at the desk, though he didn't open a telephone book since there was none in sight.

Instead, there was a private directory with an unlisted number, the clinic number, the number for the Surgeon General, and the Baden number scribbled in the margin. He first called Baden again in order to assure himself that she was still missing as before, with only her things left behind, with the exception of the clothes she was wearing, the coat, and the accessories any female would need to go out into the street, though no one had been informed except the Professor, who didn't see the need to inform anyone. Obviously the police were not in the picture, for the matter concerned a Jordan. It trickled into Martin's consciousness that the "honorable lady" they kept referring to was also Frau Jordan, and he wondered how much of his sister was still his sister. He didn't worry about the fact that Frau Rosi still stood in the doorway "like a painted Turk," as she would later tell the Professor. Instead, what occurred to him was that this was the desk of the great shepherd of human souls. This caused Martin to feel further spite, for he thought he had read something in an article about theological foundations of the ministry and psychotherapy and the overarching relationship between them, though it was all the same to him, especially given how much better Herr Jordan had formulated it, Sickness and time and the sickness of the times, and in which areas natural science and the question of its domain in regard to religion needed to be explored. In his unrelenting anger, with his arm beginning to stiffen, he thought of how Franza would need entirely different clothes at this time of year, himself not an expert in such matters. Taking her clothes had only been a futile gesture, for he simply wished to take something of hers with him.

Then Frau Rosi took the dresses from his arm, if only to try to do something, saying that she would like to wrap them in a plastic cover. Since the special suitcase wasn't there, she would put them into a different case. That was fine with him and didn't matter, for he had to call Frau Nemec and say ... what should he say to Elfi Nemec? He didn't know, for he couldn't call and tell her that he was in Vienna, sitting in a stranger's house at a desk he had no right to open. Besides that, his arm still hurt, and Nemec's number naturally was not in the Fossil's directory, and he didn't know Elfi's number by heart. Of course, he could call the Professor again and inform him in a cold, chilly manner that he was at his house and was debating whether to inform the police in the name of (indeed, which name?), on behalf of the family (but which family?), but the Fossil knew that there was no family, and that only Martin could claim in his own name to be missing an older, and on top of that, only sister, thus causing Martin to dismiss the idea.

As Frau Rosi was packing in the bedroom, he ripped open the desk drawers and quickly rifled through the folders, tax receipts, more folders, case histories, manuscript pages, and vouchers, all of them neatly written out in Franza's childlike hand, folder after folder, until finally he came to the bottom right-hand drawer, where he found what he had been looking for. There sat a couple of pages which described, no, which in fact were the beginnings of letters, though each was very short, the handwriting clear. It was Franza's handwriting, the pitched schoolgirl's handwriting from her high school days in Villach, which had developed no further and was still that of a fifteen-year-old, as if the end of the war had also sealed the handwriting in its final form--formal, very clear, but with nothing within it that would say who this person was.

Dear Martin, I must write to you. Dear Martin, I don't know where to begin or what I should say. My dearest Martin, it's so terrible, and yet I fear there is only you, which is why I'm writing you. Dear Martin, I'm so full of doubt, I must write to you.... That was all. Different dates, all of them from the last two years, the pages yellowed in part, in part dirty, then a folded page: Dear Martin, yesterday in the café as I sat there with those little packages, suddenly I could say nothing.

But when had he and she been in a café, and which one? He couldn't recall any time when she sat surrounded by small packages and couldn't say anything. He stretched out his legs and stared at the beginnings of these letters. What had caused his sister to write him letters that barely got beyond the initial greeting, and why were they lying here in this drawer? He took the rest of them out of the drawer and saw that some were written on better paper, proper stationery. My Sweetheart (that one wasn't to him), now I know everything (what?), I believe I know it all. My feelings are certainly no longer your business. (Did his sister have feelings? What kind? In any case, what a cold sentence, My feelings are no longer your business. How painful. No date. Most likely a letter from the past year or even more recent.)

The next page: My dear Leo, we must separate. But I can't even bring myself to mention it. You know why I can't talk about it. Also no date. His sister only dated the ones to him, and the beginnings of the other letters had no dates. On the last page, which began exactly like the one about the need to separate and whose sentences were only written out in a different position on the page, there stood a line of stenography, which couldn't have been from Franza, for she didn't know stenography. That meant it had to be from Jordan, for his shorthand was recognizable from the folders. Martin took out his fountain pen and tried to copy down the symbols in his notebook as best he could and stuck them in his pocket. He debated whether he should take the pages with him, then he decided on another solution, namely to leave them lying on top of the desk so that the Professor would see that he had had them in his hand. Despite this, he still felt the disadvantages of an incomplete education. No knowledge of shorthand, and here everything was in shorthand, and it was time for him to go.

He shut the bottom drawer and let Frau Rosi give him a suitcase and a large cumbersome bag. She didn't know where the good lady had put her special suitcase, for she must have taken it with her to Baden, something that clearly bothered Frau Rosi, though it was a situation that clearly wasn't her fault. Here no one was responsible for anything, not even Franza's disappearance. The smirk with which Martin looked back at the office was brought on by his imagining that this person so worried about the suitcase would later on that evening relate how he had been here and had taken some of Franza's clothes with him, as well as what had happened at the desk, which he'd left behind for anyone to see. Dear Martin, I must write to you. He would find out just what it was she had wanted to say.

And so with this ridiculous sense of triumph he left a noble Vienna house and two streets later caught a taxi, leaving a noble Vienna district as well, but without having told the Fossil his opinion of him. Since he knew less and less about him or what indeed had happened, this would have to consist of the opinion he had always had of him, namely how he had always gotten on his nerves with those pedantic sentences with which the Fossil had always dismissed him. That haughty tone had never bothered Franza, even though there was no need to use it at home, it being somewhat moralistic, and always there, and his sister seeming to fall for it.

Yet as he traveled toward the city and still had not given the driver a destination, having told him to just drive toward the city, since he had not yet solved the Nemec Problem, and because he couldn't solve all problems at once, and Nemec was pressing to come visit him over the weekend in Carinthia, and because he was thinking about the moralistic tone, the disgust, the beginnings of the letters, and Elfi Nemec's peculiarities in bed, it suddenly struck him that he had to return home immediately, and so he said to the driver: The South Train Station. Franza must be at home. Whenever something happened between them, there would always be this: Each and every time they would know where the other was at any critical moment, and he knew, against all reason (and reason itself he had learned to respect, for it had always stood by him), that he only had to catch the train in order to solve his little mystery.

For it was like the time when, as a teenager, Franza was hanging around with the English soldiers, learning some English, and then suddenly turned and ran away and kept running, all the way to the Gail River, into which the gang from Tschinowitz had thrown him and in which a ten-year-old could have drowned as his senseless schoolmates looked on from the shore. That's when she showed up, and although he had not seen her running, it was as if now, years later, he could see her, a barefoot wild thing pulling her little brother out of the water. Clearly, he had been crazy to come to Vienna. She must have gone home, for she was either dead or at home. There was no need to alert the police. Nor Jordan. Conclusion: She could only be dead or.... If that was the southern train he could see, right on time, dusky, covered with soot, and if it indeed would soon be leaving, then finally this oppressive station would be behind him.

"He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick."

A night journey. Return to Galicien. Matthew 12:20. How irresistible Galicien is, the love for it. Now he was totally exhausted and slept on and off. Yet such love is irresistible. At least he could bring her a few dresses. Beyond that he didn't think of anything, for nothing else occurred to him, since he was unable to formulate even a sentence. Yet he thought, The Jordans of this world, and how did that sentence go that Franza had always said to him? The Jordans could not be vanquished, but love is--no, it went quite differently than that, for it had been her special saying: Among a hundred brothers. He would have to ask her what that meant: Among a hundred brothers. And what did he himself mean by this other phrase, "The Jordans of this world"? To him this one person represented many, only because he made him so angry and from the beginning seemed so suspicious, there being no other reason. What in fact did that slave to honor and glory know? Within Martin's inexhaustible storehouse of anger there existed over a hundred words with which he trampled Jordan, or the Jordans, in the dust. Who in fact was he? The more his rage became bound up with his exhaustion, the more exhausted he became. Images of his sister rose up inside of him. Only now, at night, as he approached her, he could not imagine her running down a hill, and no longer could he see her barefoot, her legs scratched, wearing a cloak made out of curtains, the curtains from the kitchen. She had always worn those rags, a Ranner, a vulgo Tobai, the last of a long line, a mythic figure who had pulled him out of the Gail, who had gone into the cold water.

It was for this figure that he searched his childhood, no longer having much recollection of it, except for certain words, a couple of images, "The war is over," planes just above the treetops, white bread, a captain, jars of marmalade in which he stuck his fingers and then licked them, soldiers and then more soldiers, always friendly, and who also transported their mother to the village of Maria Gail. Did he remember the funeral, or had Franza in fact not taken him? The wailing of the relatives, one Nona, one Neni, both of them ancient and as helpless as the children, a father on a list of missing persons, on many lists, no funeral, then no longer any Nona, and no Neni, only Franza, who presented him to the soldiers who then gave them white bread and chocolate, and also a captain who one day took him back to school, and Franza, who went to school as well. Then darkness. Gaping holes. Nemec would never believe that it all had to do with his sister.

The trail from Warmbad to the Gail River, which is labeled as trail #21 by the tourist bureau and acclaimed as a superb wildlife area as it travels past Zillerbad and along the Ziller Creek, also runs part of the way through a romantic wooded area. The entire hike to the Gail takes 1 1/2 hours and provides beautiful views to the north (see trail #10). The point where three countries meet. Three languages. From here we can retrace our steps backward (see trail # ...).

Martin had the taxi take him only as far as the railway crossing at Warmbad. He needed to walk, yes, along the Ziller Creek, though at night he couldn't see anything and there was no thought of turning back. He unwound from his long journey, the many hours in the train, and breathed deeply. Soon he could hear the Gail at the bend in the river, the unmistakable sound of where the Ziller Creek flowed into the teeming water. Now Martin could ready himself for the musty house that still belonged to him, for Franza had gotten the money and he the house, and a bit of money as well, which he had used to finish his studies, though the house was still there. He knew every bump along the path and gave sway to each of them in much the same way that the path followed the banks, always keeping the right distance from the river's gravel bed, as if he had a sixth sense for the contours of this landscape.

(Continues...)

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The Book of Franza & Requiem for Fanny Goldman

0810112043

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