The World as I Found It (58 page)

There were no cabs, and the trams ran only infrequently, so he walked home through the dirty slush, amazed, through the dull November sunshine, to see whole trees and houses that had not been gutted. Still, there was an oppressiveness about the city, the shabby dearth and airlessness of a place down on its luck and now too pooped to even keep up appearances. Gretl and Mining's letters were filled with tales of incompetence and corruption, of the endless indignities required just to secure the bare essentials of life. The swans and ducks in the Prater were long since caught and cooked, and those few citizens who still could feed a dog or a cat kept their pets inside. On Sundays, even the relatively well off could be seen lugging around sacks filled with barterables, spending their days setting up tawdry deals for a tough chicken or a bag of mushy onions. The censored news was as inflated as the money. In their desperation, even the most cynical were hungry for miracles, seriously entertaining rumors of trains of food, a secret “bread peace,” or an apocryphal scientist who had discovered how to extract starch from nettles.

The rococo angels at the gate of the Palais Wittgenstein were dirty as pigeons. The big house was a ship cut adrift, with no gardener, chauffeur, or footman, no one to scour the stone or reputty the rattling window. The shrubs, once squared so exactingly, had gone wild, and to the side of the house, the faded gazebo lay smashed like a basket under a bough that had fallen during a summer storm. The only sign of life was the black bunting over the door.

The ordinarily reserved Stolz, now the only man in the house, was beside himself when he saw who it was. Flustered, the old servant shook Wittgenstein's hand, then began weeping, dabbing his eyes with a folded handkerchief. Stolz was especially distraught to see his soaking boots. Did you walk all this way, sir? Oh, I wish you had telephoned, I gladly would have fetched you. I'm learning to drive, you know. I haven't been out alone yet, but I'm sure I could navigate the thing in a pinch.

Within a minute Stolz had brought him a snifter of brandy and dispatched Marta, the kitchen girl, to find Mining while he helped Wittgenstein off with his boots. Once he had unbuttoned his gaiters and peeled off his socks, old Stolz looked up mournfully, shamed to see these frozen feet that looked like blocks of lard.

Marta took his wet things. Stolz hurried for bandages. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to do something for him, but nobody knew what to do with him, least of all Mining. Groggy from incessant napping, her way of weathering depression, she lurched down the red-carpeted stairs and threw her flabby arms around his neck. He could see she had lost weight. The skin of her face was sagging, and her hair was flattened to one side. He couldn't stand her overheated misery, her instinct to hibernate like a bear to avoid the want and hunger of this interminable winter. Sobbing and clutching, Mining looked into his eyes, begging some response from him.

I know, he said wearily. I
know
…

But she only kept sobbing. Staring into his sister's hot, red face, Wittgenstein felt helpless and panicky. Mining wanted some kind of catharsis, but he was emotionally truncated, numb as a stump. How could he open up to her — to anyone — when he knew he would be shortly returning to the front? If he let himself go, he was afraid he might never stop.

Please, he said, gently prising himself from her grip. Leave me a minute.

Frowning, she said, of all things, Ludi, you're too calm.

I'm not too calm, he protested. I'm just exhausted. I've hardly slept in three days.

Hardly had he succeeded in soothing her than he had his next hurdle — his mother. This, he knew, would be another shock. Ever since Karl Wittgenstein's death, Frau Wittgenstein had been declining, but this last year, with Paul's amputation and her other sons away, the decline was even more rapid, the gray hair going stone white and the face sagging. It was hardest on Mining, the perennial nurse, because the old woman was so unpredictable, weathering a string of bad days, followed by a few better ones before the next bad turn. Stumbling and depressed, cranky and forgetful, then weepy, Frau Wittgenstein was increasingly prey to incapacitating migraines and indigestion, to phantom back pains and now worsening cataracts that encased the world in a cloudy sheath, indistinct and incomprehensible but no less pressing. Because of her failing eyesight, she had insisted on giving up her cavernous room in favor of a closet-size maid's room, where she now sat with her old woman's clutter, her heavy carved furniture deployed around her half like a family, half like a barricade. All day long she would sit wringing her handkerchief while Mining and several maids tried to divert her from the war news, which even censoring could not improve.

Mining thought their mother would find it less upsetting if she saw Wittgenstein out of uniform, so he changed into a sweater and trousers, then followed his sister into the little room. He smelled the old woman before he saw her, a mixture of camphor, cologne and the stealthy, slow sweat of aging, feminine grief. Mining had warned him that she might look groggy because of the sedatives the doctor had prescribed, but even that wasn't preparation enough. She had worsened considerably in six months, and even then he couldn't get over it, to see this most composed and pristine of women now unkempt and phlegmatic, hardly moving when he entered, as if her mind needed time to adjust. The swollen feet on the settee and the gaping look. Wringing the now omnipresent handkerchief as he leaned down to her, saying:

Mother, I'm back. I'm here. I came as soon as I could.

Oh, my boy … my poor, poor boy …

In her former life, she had been comfortable only with a short, curt hug, but now she clutched him, emitting a feline moan so low as to be almost beyond the conscious frequency. And then before he could disengage himself, her heavy arm caught him round the back, slapping him such that he felt he was being burped.

I'm so sorry, Mamma, he said. And then to his surprise, a bubble like a hiccup broke in his throat and he was weeping, feeling somehow responsible for his brother's death, as if he bore the same disease. But this sudden surge of emotion from him rattled the old woman; it was not her son. Eyeing him in shock, she asked almost scornfully, Where is your uniform? — as if this accounted for his unsoldierlike weeping.

I've been wearing it for days, the son explained. I took it off.

The old woman paid no attention to this. Then you must be hungry, she said plausibly, as if by posing the standard questions she would find the pegs of what had fit formerly.

No, he replied. I'm not hungry.

But she, ignoring him, turned to Mining and asked, suddenly over-wrought, I take it they're preparing something special for Ludi? Then, assured that they were, she reached for the next peg, asking groggily, Have you called Gretl to tell her Ludi's home? And Paul — where is Paul?

For the better part of an hour until Gretl arrived, they went on like this, with Wittgenstein and Mining answering their mother's questions and ingeniously raising others so as to avoid the real subject at hand, which brooded about them like the muddy photographs that surrounded the old woman. Encased in their round frames, these portraits reminded him of a clutch of dusty old clocks. Here were Hans and Rudolf, then her husband, and now a tinted portrait of Kurt looking incongruously dashing in his uniform. Four clocks, all broken or stopped, and all of them telling different times, different stories. Wittgenstein just hoped the army stuck to
its
story.

As usual, Gretl, in her own oblique way, got closer to the heart of the matter. Toward dinnertime, she arrived in a long black motorcar driven by a young bearded Jew in a leather cap. For Gretl, wartime manners were now the order of the day: newly egalitarian, she let herself out of the car and then bent in the window, instructing the driver. He was a handsome young man, as dark as a Gypsy, and as bold. Instinctively, Wittgenstein hated the impudent way the young Jew addressed his sister, and even more the way she tolerated it, sarcastic but faintly titillated, what with Rolf — now Major Stonborough — off in Poland somewhere.

Lost in the gigantic leather bolsters of the back seat, meanwhile, was a boy of about eight in an oversize coat, wearing earlocks and a yarmulke. Wittgenstein knew well that feral look in his eyes; in Galicia, he had seen hundreds like him, crawling over the army garbage dumps, begging, filching coal, stripping corpses. The boy was ready to bolt, one hand on the door handle, the other on the arm of his little sister, who was clutching a quilted sewing box that Gretl must have given her.

Gretl immediately sensed her brother's aloofness as the long car shot off, winding erratically around the circular drive and narrowly missing the gateposts. He wasn't going to say a word, but Gretl had to have it out in the open, insistently asking, So how do you like my new chauffeur, Abba? He's from Warsaw, really extraordinarily bright — a Yeshiva boy before he studied at the university. He speaks four or five languages and does all my translating for me. A Zionist, of course. He lied to me when he said he knew how to drive, but he's improving.

Knowing this would irritate him, Gretl made a wry face, then brightened, saying, But you look good — well, pretty good, hmmm? I'll never get over you without your hair.

Gretl gave him an impulsive hug, then continued talking, probing through the nervous patter. She, too, had lost weight and was, for her, dressed drably in a black woolen coat, dark green skirt and flat shoes. A beret was pulled over the tops of her ears, and in the tufts of dark hair that hung out, Wittgenstein saw, for the first time, flecks of gray. Gretl explained:

I only dress like this when I'm visiting my refugees — I could hardly come in a ball gown. Don't worry, though. When I shake the rich for money, I dress very prewar, but no jewels. Oh, no, it's dangerous wearing them — so many thieves now. And it breeds bad feelings, so many have had to sell them, you know.

Automatic talk this was, the chatter of exhaustion. Her eyes were dark and circled, and as she walked beside him now, kneading his arm, he could feel an edge of anxiety.

So how are
you
? she asked. You're all right?

I'm all right.

Good
, said Gretl, not sounding at all sure. They were heading toward the house, when she suddenly stopped with a stunned look, then asked: Tell me — do you know how to react to Kurt? I certainly don't. I mean, he was so queer you don't know what to feel. I hate to say it, but for me, he didn't matter — he barely
existed
. But you know, I've had the most incredible feeling that — that it's not his death at all but — I don't know. She looked around, her eyes widening to remember, then said, So you'll be here a week?
Two
weeks?

Six days.

But you'll rest, she said solicitously. And Paul shall be here, and Mining. Poor Mining — Mother has been so difficult, especially since the news. I know she's displeased with me, but I can't hide my feelings — you know how I hate this funerary business. I'm so pressed, I've been terribly busy lately, but for you of course I will make time. But only
six days
you have? That's all the time they could give you? Six days, for a death in the family?

Well, he said, it's not set down on schedules, so much for this, so much for that. It depends on staff levels, one's commanding officer.

But this was the wrong tone. Gretl immediately bridled at his stupid military superciliousness, not to mention his complacency. The idea that
he
, as a Wittgenstein, should subject himself to the whims of the state!

But surely you can get a few more days, she insisted. Then, pushily, Oh, come now. Sure you can.

But I can't, I really can't. He was getting annoyed. You don't understand.

Oh, I know. A civilian.

It's just a different world. Not everything is negotiable.

No, she agreed. For you nothing is negotiable, is it.

She was not one to cry, but then she burst into tears — furious with herself, as if she had spilled something down her dress front. And again for him there was that truncated feeling, a sense of profound emotional clumsiness, as if he were a giant trying to sip from a teacup. Smoothing his sister's round shoulders, he looked at his father's sprawling house and then realized that their world and past, their gentle speech and culture, values and manners — these were anachronisms that were now as worthless, in the world's hostile eyes, as the sagging imperial currency. Ancient world, he thought, your scruples are misunderstandings, and your sacred cows give not milk but thin tears. Wittgenstein saw then what Gretl had been saying between the lines. What she mourned was not Kurt but the slow passing of a family and a culture. These
shtetl
Jews were the first refugees, but by no means the last. If anything, Wittgenstein was amazed, in the aftershocks, to find their fussy little music box world even standing.

Still, he had his own illusions, the memories that soldiers carry around like grubby little photos in billfolds, believing that those at home are as warm and secure for their sacrifices as they themselves are insecure and vulnerable. For Wittgenstein, one such myth was his father's dinner table, which, in his memory, provisioned itself from its own former sumptuousness, serving up dreams, course upon course.

And so, at dinner that first night home, he was in for another small shock. The embroidered damask cloth, the brightly shined silver and the fearfully rare candles in the candelabra couldn't dispel it. The thick brown gravy, the powerful marinade and spices couldn't mask it, and the red wine, long buried in the cellar, couldn't purge it from the palate afterward. Horse meat, and none too savory horse meat at that. Turnips with horseradish. Cooked carrots. Wittgenstein, who could contentedly eat most anything now, looked with shame at his sisters and laid his fork on the side of the plate. The sight of his mother doggedly trying to chew stringy horse meat was almost more than he could bear.