The Exiles Return (17 page)

The month was October, a month of shortening days but of golden light from sunrise to sunset. There was not much time before winter set in, yet in that time he would start growing his roots.

He abandoned the too-familiar Inner City and on Saturdays and Sundays set out to walk through districts he had not seen during the years he lived near them. He walked along streets of which he had never known or only barely remembered the name, but tending always outwards, westwards or southwards, towards the vineyards and the hills where the fringes of the city were gradually engulfing the little outlying villages.

Lost in these neighbourhoods, he looked with tenderness at time-worn facades, peeped into wide-open doorways that often revealed inner courtyards surrounding a lime tree whose leaves were beginning to fall and were clothed with a crimson climbing vine. He read the names over shabby shopfronts displaying cheap underwear, groceries or ironmongery. Humble and out-of-date, and not very alluring, nevertheless the names had a familiar ring, names derived from farms and their husbandry, interspersed now and again with the Czech or Polish which contributes so much to Vienna’s inimitable flavour. And familiar, too, were the voices of the passers-by when he caught snatches of their conversation in a dialect he had to retrain his ear to understand. Some rebuilding, repainting and repaving was already going on, and no doubt, in time, concrete and plate-glass would take the place of wood and stucco, and asphalt would supersede the ‘cat’s head’ cobblestones.

If Sunday morning was fine he would take a tram to the end of the line and then begin the climb along a straggling village street, between cottage gardens and vineyards, into the wooded hills. For years now he had not walked at all, and at first he got so tired that he wondered whether, at his age, his muscles would ever regain the strength necessary to carry him on such day-long wanderings. But his delight in feeling the earth beneath his feet, and the moss and the stones, of seeing shafts of sunlight between the trees, the shadows of clouds on the grass of the meadows, and of breathing the smell of resin and fallen leaves – all this impelled him to persevere, and rewarded him with gradually increasing strength. When, in an open-neck shirt and dusty boots, he finished his day with a meal of black bread, sausage and beer in a humble inn, then rumbled back into town in a crowded tram, he felt as anonymous, as inconspicuous and unselfconscious as any indigenous citizen of his native city, physically exhausted but spiritually free, lonely but at peace.

He
was
lonely, but he was coming to terms with his loneliness, which was of a different kind from the loneliness he had experienced in exile. His loneliness over there had been like an incurable disease which held no hope of alleviation and no comforting prospect except death. But his present solitude, he was beginning to understand, was simply a concomitant of ageing, of ripening, and if there were deprivations there would also be compensation and enrichment.

His daily work at the Institute was routine, but it left him leisure to think. If it did not fall to him to inaugurate research projects, he could still follow up a few ideas inspired by past experience, and seek to connect various trains of thought that had flickered through his mind over the years but about which he had never had the time to think profoundly. And in his spare time, when it was no longer possible to spend hours wandering out of doors, he occasionally went to a concert in the evening or called on the Helblings, who always welcomed him most kindly, all the more so as they felt he was no longer making any particular demands on their sympathy. On the contrary: when he went to see them, he went deliberately to forget about himself and avoided all references to his own past and problems.

He had become a good listener, and found a special kind of detached enjoyment in his listening. There were often a number of quite interesting people at their flat, art historians, musicians, architects and journalists, and their talk was mostly of personalities, their ambitions, jealousies, quarrels and frustrations and not least of their love affairs, and in listening to them with benevolent amusement he was glad he had not, by speaking of himself, placed his own affairs on the same level.

For Kuno Adler was changing. He was becoming less vulnerable to things that used to burden or irritate him, less sensitive to what he once might have imagined to be slights and innuendos, and more ready to accept people at their own valuation without suspecting them of hypocrisy or deception. And this inner change gradually made itself felt in his relationships with the other workers at the Institute. It was an inner change that scarcely found any expression in outward occurrences, but rather in imponderables, in a shift of emphasis, an alteration of balance. Adler continued as he had begun, to perform his share of the routine tasks of the Institute, carrying out tests and writing reports for the hospitals, never interfering, never asserting himself, never criticising.

Occasionally he would approach one of the younger men with a request to double-check a result in order to confirm or correct his conclusions, or he would enlist the assistance of one of the technicians to perform a delicate manoeuvre. It was all done most courteously on both sides, but if in the first weeks and months the younger staff were inclined to regard him as an elderly, slightly out-of-date outsider to be treated with kindly tolerance, they gradually came to recognise that they had amongst them a man of wide and ripe experience from whom it would be profitable to learn if only he were willing to teach. This, however, Adler never volunteered to do, and would only express an opinion or give advice if he was specifically consulted. Otherwise he held himself aloof and confined himself strictly to his own tasks. This behaviour on Adler’s part avoided, as far as possible within the framework of one institution, any closer contact between himself and Dr Krieger.

In the beginning Dr Krieger was pleased that this should be so. He had, very reluctantly, been forced to accept the re-appointment of the returned émigré, albeit in the subordinate position of an assistant, but having had this man forced upon him against his will, he had decided to cloak his reluctance with a show of good grace and even with enthusiasm. Then, after his first gesture of welcome, he had thought that the easiest way to come to terms with the new arrival would be to leave him to his own devices and to ignore him. To his great satisfaction it then appeared that Adler would not make this difficult: he did not assert himself, as Krieger had feared he would, but seemed content just to be tolerated, probably humbled by the bitter experiences he obviously must have suffered abroad, for why, otherwise, had he chosen to come back?

Adler, on his part, did his best to keep out of Dr Krieger’s way in a kind of self-protective reaction against having an authority set over him which he did not intend to challenge yet hoped to notice as little as possible. But he also admitted to himself that he had taken an instinctive dislike to Dr Krieger as a person, for imponderable reasons which he assured himself had nothing to do with the fact that the latter was occupying the place which should have been his own.

The months passed, the work progressed, and imperceptibly a shift in the balance of Adler’s relationship to the rest of the staff began to take place. His prestige grew, he was treated with greater deference, and though his own unassuming habits never altered, he certainly felt inwardly more at ease. Finding he had time to spare from his routine work he quietly began a small research project of his own, using such equipment as was available at times when it was not otherwise in use. The little cubicle that had been installed for him, but had so far seemed to have no particular purpose, now became useful for keeping his private slides and test-tubes and for writing and filing his notes. He had also had an idea for a piece of electrical machinery for use in his research; and his old friend Grasboeck had put him in touch with an instrument maker who had his own workshop. Here Adler spent many happy evening hours getting the thing built and tested to the mutual delight of the inventor and the craftsman, whom he was able to pay for his skill and materials out of his small reserve of private savings – for at this time his dollars represented incomparable wealth in his now-impoverished country. This small apparatus, too, was installed in Adler’s cubicle.

Dr Krieger was not a sensitive man, but even he could not help noticing a change in Professor Adler’s standing within the Institute. It was difficult to say what it consisted of, but it showed itself in the manner in which he was spoken to by younger men and by the way the technicians were prepared to help him, especially one of the young women, who seemed to have taken it upon herself to look after him by cleaning his instruments and tidying up for him as if she were his own personal assistant. Yet he kept himself very much to himself, never gave any directions to anyone and so could not be accused of allocating to himself any authority in rivalry to Dr Krieger’s own.

Nevertheless, Dr Krieger did feel that his authority was no longer as absolute as it ought to be, that a rival source of power existed within his domain, and it irked him beyond endurance. However, as there was nothing tangible with which to approach his opponent, he had not known how to tackle him. Perhaps this new piece of machinery Adler had installed without his permission, without even notifying him or explaining its uses, might provide him with the longed-for opportunity. He decided to proceed diplomatically.

‘Am I disturbing you, my dear colleague?’ Dr Krieger asked in his most suave manner, pushing open the door that led from his private room into the semi-partitioned workspace where Adler was sitting at his desk making notes in his almost illegible handwriting on a small scribbling-pad. He had obviously been tearing off one page after another regardless of where they came to rest: some had landed on the floor. It was early afternoon, but the winter day was already darkening and the neon tubes above the workbenches on the other side of the partition had already been switched on. Adler only had a green-shaded standard lamp on his writing table. ‘One moment, Herr Doktor,’ Adler said, finishing an entry in a notebook and getting up from his chair. ‘Of course you are not disturbing me. What can I do for you?’

‘I think it is time you and I had a little talk.’

‘Certainly, Herr Doktor, if you wish it. Do please sit down.’ He turned the chair on which he had been sitting and offered it to Krieger. There was only one other chair in the place and that was stacked high with papers, scientific journals and reports, mostly American. The table, too, was littered with all kinds of paraphernalia. While Krieger contemplated the disorder with evident distaste, Adler cleared one corner of the table with the sweep of an arm and hitched up onto it with one thigh, the other foot resting on the floor.

‘Sorry I’m in such a mess here,’ he said apologetically. ‘What do you wish to talk about?’ He was completely relaxed, in spite of his uncomfortable position, while Krieger, sitting rigidly upright on his chair, looked as tense as he always did because of his tight skin, closely cropped hair and pebbly eyes behind rimless spectacles.

Actually Krieger was at rather a loss about where to begin. He bent down and picked up one of Adler’s loose leaves that had fallen near his chair, glanced at it, shook his head and handed it back to its author with a smile of deliberate politeness. Adler said ‘thank you’.

But Krieger had found his opening. ‘I see you write your notes in English,’ he said. ‘I suppose it has become more familiar to you over the years than the language of your schooldays. And all those American publications to which you subscribe’ – he pointed to the stack of papers which filled the shelves and overflowed into the other chair – ‘you keep in touch with all the most recent developments – over there. No doubt you also correspond with your former colleagues?’

‘There is little occasion for that, and if I did, would there be any objection?’ said Adler. ‘I am writing a paper in English because I think this journal, to which I have contributed before, will print it. I have not yet made contact with any of the German language papers, but actually, as you know, the language itself is of secondary importance. The technical terms are international and the connecting text is easily translatable.’

Krieger continued: ‘Of course, living there for so many years, your ties with America must have become very close. And what about this little contraption here?’ – he pointed to Adler’s newly-installed apparatus – ‘I was afraid from the start that you would find our equipment inadequate, so you had it sent over to you – as a present, I presume, for your private use? It doesn’t figure on our budget, does it? For in that case you would have to request it through our proper channels and that is in the first place through me. But I don’t remember being consulted. In any case I don’t think any supplementary expenditure would have been approved in the present state of our finances. There are many things the Institute is badly in need of, but I haven’t been able to get them passed.’

‘This little machine, Herr Doktor? No, it didn’t come from America and it certainly has not burdened your budget. I had it built locally at my own expense. It didn’t cost much, I can assure you. If you wish to see its purpose I shall be glad to demonstrate it to you at any time. As for the little course of research I am carrying out on the side, I had understood from the authorities when I took up this appointment that I should be free to work on my own if I liked. I clearly remember the Sektionschef saying so at the interview I had with him. Perhaps it ought to have been put in writing. I didn’t anticipate there would be any objections. Or are you suggesting that I neglect the work allocated to me in the day-to-day duties of the Institute? If you have any complaint of that kind to make against me, will you please say so unequivocally.’

‘No, I have no complaint of that kind. How could I have? It is only that your general attitude and behaviour ever since you came here have more and more made me wonder. You hold yourself so aloof, so unapproachable – with one exception of which I will speak in a moment, about your private research project – you communicate with no one – again with the one exception, and certainly not with me who, I believe, should be the first to know about it. But to me, to me personally you are hostile, Herr Professor, you want nothing to do with me. You even write in English so that I should not understand. So why, why on earth, Professor Adler, did you come back?’