'Elegant and original... beautifully crafted, without a word out of place or a sentence too many.' - Time Out
Part Two
"SO, Franz, we made it. You're free for the day."
"Indeed. But there will be problems later."
"Later is later. Maybe you should not return to the home. Stay here with me, or at Reid's. You are welcome."
"There are advantages to staying in the home which would not apply were I living here as your guest, Medar. I can take care of the nurses. It is simply a matter of behaving as they expect you to - very stupid, that is. They are seduced by their youthfulness and believe it to signify superiority over their charges. In truth they are fools. Typical Austrians. I should call them to inform them that I am at least alive and not dead or the problems will be all the greater. May I borrow your telephone?"
While the old man called home Reid opened the door for Christa and Feargal who had just arrived. They were still laughing about their adventures and Reid felt a jar of anger when he saw them.
"Can you believe it, Reid, we got caught."
"It wasn't a problem, though. I kept my mouth shut and Feargal pretended he couldn't speak German. He gave them a false name and an address in Ireland. They weren't so bad about it."
"Did you have any problems with Franz?"
"No, no problems. You see the crowd?"
"They like their spectator sports, the Viennese, do they not?"
"Seriously, though. They all gather at a moment's notice in the street and talk to each other about whatever's going on. We're strange people, I told you."
"I like that, though. It's not what you'd expect in a city like this, complete strangers yapping on to each other about nothing at all."
"You should see them at election time or when everything was blowing up in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. They just talk shit the whole time, though. Is Franz OK?"
"Sure, he's just calling the home now to try and calm them down about it. Don't know what he'll say to them, but you know Franz."
Franz told the nurses that he had completely forgotten that he lived in the home and, thinking that he was lost, had taken a taxi back to his old address - Reid's apartment. He would return as soon as he could, but he was lost again, so he was not sure what time that would be. Reid was silent while Franz related this and while Christa explained what they had planned for the day. She and Feargal seemed so at ease with each other that he felt excluded, as if he were the newcomer, not the Irishman. Reid's affair with Christa had been short-lived. One night, soon after they first met each other, they had dinner together - Medar had been out for the evening - and for reasons Reid still did not understand they had ended up in bed. It was her first time and, in fact, her only time as far as Reid was aware. The repercussions of the event went on for many weeks: a series of terse phonecalls in which she informed him that she had not had her period, that she was sure she was pregnant, that she hated him. The calls culminated in her arrival at the Ottakringerstrasse apartment one day, a pregnancy testing kit in her bag. She could not use it at home, she said, because her mother might interrupt her. Could she use it here? That had been four months after their night together and with disbelief Reid had agreed. They spent a perverse thirty minutes together awaiting the outcome which was inconclusive. Her period had started that evening and they had remained close ever since, but with the subtlest sexual tension between them. To Reid it was clear that any change in the nature of that tension was bound to change the relationship.
"The zoo, why, I haven't been to the zoo in sixty years. More, even. Terrible place."
"Shall we go there, then?"
"Of course, of course. But first, if you do not mind indulging an old man, I should like a coffee."
Christa rolled her eyes and went through to the kitchen to make some.
"And Medar, perhaps you would do me the honour of packing that pipe there for me, if you have no objection to my borrowing it."
"Of course now. I have not smoked it for several years, but it should be fine."
"It is a good pipe. Dunhill is good. Why do you not smoke it any more?"
"When I was younger such things pleased me. Perhaps one day I shall start again. The tobacco, anyway, is fresh. A gift from a friend who visited from Turkey recently."
Christa brought a coffee through for each of them and they watched Franz's face relax into a picture of contentment as he sipped from the cup and lit the pipe.
"You I do not know, or...?"
"Franz Lasker, Feargal..."
"O'Neill. From Ireland and the rest of the world."
"Irish... Then you too are part of a great cultural diaspora such as my people."
"For sure, Mr Lasker. The Gael and the Jew have plenty in common, it's a fact."
"Both share a history which is honourable and dishonourable, tragic and facile. Interestingly it is the honourable which has been facile and the dishonourable which has been tragic. One might expect otherwise. Welcome to Vienna, friend, but please, you will call me Franz. Only the nurses in the home call me Mr Lasker in their ignorance."
"Franz is a doctor."
"A doctor? And I'd been told you worked as a waiter all your life."
"Doctor of Philosophy, honorary, from the University of Vienna. It is one of those absurdities which seems to please the Viennese when they have stuffed themselves too full of pork to eat any more and their coffee has gone cold in its cup. 'Ah, yes,' they say, 'let us make amends. Franz Lasker is very old and furthermore he is Jewish... He shall be Doctor of Philosophy and by this mark of respect we are absolved of our guilt...' Fools."
"Franz isn't too keen on the Viennese."
"With the exception of those present, of course. Were you aware, Feargal, that despite the fact that Austrians comprised only eight per cent or so of the population of Hitler's Germany, half of the Jews who died in the Shoah were killed upon the instructions of Austrian Death Camp commandants: Stangl, Fritsch, Gerbing, Burger, Seidl, Globocnik, Sommern-Frankenegg, Murer, Roschmann, above all Eichmann himself. And we should not forget Hitler. In Vienna Hitler found his inspiration before the first war. Indeed, the Habsburgs will be called to account for much which grew out of their empire. Did you know that they funded the Bolsheviks? They wanted to destabilise Russia's monarchy, so they helped Trotsky print his papers. Stalin too spent time here. Lenin was in Czechoslovakia. Think of it: in the first fourteen years of this century the seeds were sown for the annihilation of how many people? Fifty million? One hundred million? Two hundred million? Untold suffering as a result of several centuries of unremarkable incest. My apologies, I could go on at some length."
"Please do. I'm fascinated."
"Though if we don't leave soon the zoo will be closed. Franz talks history at length wherever he is, friend. You'll get your lesson."
"Quite right, Reid. The zoo is as good a place for history lessons as anywhere. Let us go there."
They decided to take a taxi to the zoo because Franz's wheelchair would have been too much of a problem on the trams. When they arrived at Schoenbrunn Feargal seemed impressed for the first time all day.
"Makes the Brits' efforts seem a little sad by comparison, does it not?"
"Indeed, colleague, but consider the hardship which must have been caused by the building of this."
"Medar's right. All the tourist guides go on about this places, but if you think about it this is more a symbol of social philistinism than of artistic beauty."
"Count the bricks and for every one of them a Jew was murdered."
"Is that a fact?"
"Do not take Franz too literally, colleague. He has a fine sense of injustice and of allegory and an enduring contempt for symbols of power be they nurses uniforms, this building or the Westautobahn which Hitler built. But his use of facts and figures is at best symbolic."
"For a philosopher, Medar, your disregard for semiology is regrettable. For a Turk it is unforgivable."
"The dialectic is nevertheless of some interest."
THERE was a long queue for tickets to go into the zoo and when Reid saw that the ticket collector had left his post he tugged at Christa's sleeve and whispered to her and the others that they should simply walk through. As they were passing the barrier he heard a shout from someone waiting in the queue. When he looked back he saw that the man ho had shouted and his friend were trying to do the same thing. They hesitated at the barrier and were caught by the ticket collector who went running over to them. They pointed at Reid and the others, but the attendant simply glanced over and shrugged. Some succeed, others fail. It is all a game.
The zoo was built in the latter part of the nineteenth century and in architectural terms it is attractive. It was designed as a showpiece for the world fair, and matches the palace. In its time it was probably regarded as a magnificent zoological achievement, but by today's standards and especially in comparison to modern zoos in other cities, it seems cruel and inhumane. Their first stop was the cages where the big cats are kept - some lions and then some beautiful black panthers. None of them spoke while they looked at the panthers and Reid reflected that, no matter how many times one had seen this before, the size of the cages was always a shock. Franz was the first to speak.
"'Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe so müd geworden daß er nichts mehr hält. Ihm ist als ob es tausend stäbe gäbe und hinter tausend Stäbe keine Welt.' Rilke."
"You'd think they would have done something about this by now."
"You know what we were saying, about romanticism and violence: I think this zoo is a good example. This is a very romantic place in some respects, and certainly in its time I'd imagine it was seen as romantic, but there's a violence all around us. Not just the size of the cages, but those hunks of meat they're feeding the animals in there, everything about it. Of course maybe for someone who's sensitive to the suffering of these creatures, the violence is too blatant - you know, those panthers just look miserable and you don't need to be a vegetarian to see that. But a hundred years ago that violence still existed and this would have been considered romantic. It's our attitudes to violence that have changed, not the idea of the romantic. I think if the violence is too overt the romance is lost. The place should be beautiful and the violence subtle in relationship to our perceptions of it."
"Essentially you are correct, colleague, but for one thing: this is Austria and, as Franz will detail at length, the Austrians have a violent heritage which they do not relinquish willingly. Look around you: for the Austrians here this remains a romantic place. That, Reid, is why nothing has been done about this."
"Medar is right. You need only stand near a sausage stand for half an hour to see something of the Austrian attitude towards animals."
"Tell me, friend, do you approve of the romantic? As you define it, I mean. Does this type of violence please you?"
"I'm not sure I'd want to answer that one, Reid. It might be an unromantic thing to do. As I said, or Medar said, the romantic is inextricably bound up with the violent, but for the romantic person the violence of his deeds or his surroundings has to be barely visible even to himself, it has to be wrapped up in his desires do that the violence, in so far as it can be detected, must be an integral part of the romanticism, not something external to it."
"What do you think, Franz? Was the Holocaust romantic?"
"Come on, Reid, I'm saying that the romantic is always violent, not that the violent is always romantic."
"Franz?"
"Unfortunately, Reid, I believe there is some truth in what Feargal says. I trust that I have seen enough in my life to be able to reject quite emphatically anything romantic, and it is true that violence in itself can never be said to be romantic. I suspect that it is the actual process of cloaking violence in one's desires which assigns the violence its romantic appeal. For some of my people, who desire that they be seen as the chosen people, the violence of the Holocaust has indeed acquired a romantic element. Perhaps in the years immediately succeeding the war this was not the case. As Feargal says, the violence was too near, too overt. But as time passed the romance was born. Tales of heroism in the camps, in the Warsaw Ghetto, stories about Wiesenthal hunting Nazis in South America... All these things became tied up with the desires of the Jews after the war to assert their status in the world. The cause, the Holocaust, achieved a status in turn which in my view it does not deserve. They worship Wiesenthal, but in rational terms he simply plays his part in a greater tragedy about which there should be nothing romantic. This is not true of all Jews, of course, but of some. It is the victims who are today's romantic heroes: the blacks in South Africa, the Irish, the Palestinians. Particularly so in the eyes of well to do whites in their comfortable homes in Grinsing, shielded as they are from the realities of the violence they see and hear about on their television sets."
"So you don't condone that, Franz."
"No, Christa, I do not condone it, I do not condemn it. It simply is so."
"Though you'd approve more of the classical than the romantic from what you're saying."
"Certainly not, Feargal. The classical has a violence all its own in which I have every bit as little interest."
"So what, then, Franz."
"There is an old Jewish saying: If you are offered two choices, take the third." "And that would be?"
"You ask me, Medar? You surprise me."
"Nevertheless, I am interested to hear what you have to say."
"If both the romantic and the classical share a propensity to violence, and if this violence is found to be unacceptable, then we must ask ourselves what is non-violent and, indeed, whether non-violence is at all possible in the modern world."
"But what do you think?"
"Me, I am altogether too modern for my own good."
"So your third option is no option at all."
"No, indeed not. My option is simply to listen to jazz music for most of my waking hours and to adhere to the arcane principles of non-action as far as possible."
"Now I know you're winding me up, Franz."
His face crinkled into a grin and he nodded vigorously before returning his attention to the panther which had stopped its pacing and was lying down, licking its paws.
BY the time they reached the seals it was almost feeding time and a large crowd had gathered on the tiered viewing area. For all their perceived faults the Viennese show respect for the old and handicapped and whilst the others stood at the back, mothers and fathers pulled their children out of the way and Reid was permitted to wheel Franz down to the front. They would get wet, he knew, but Franz had insisted that there was nothing in the zoo he wanted to see more than the seals being fed. While they were waiting for the zookeeper to come with his buckets of fish Franz said to Reid:
"Feargal disturbs you, no?"
Reid was surprised that it showed and said so. Franz was quiet for a moment and they watched the old bull seal playing and splashing the crowd, aware that he was the star of the show for the moment. Then he said:
"It doesn't show at all, but I know you well enough, Reid. He disturbs me slightly too, though I suspect that I understand him better than you do, and in any case I am not intimidated, as you are, by his lack of a hand. You should not be either, because the hook suggests that he does not take himself as seriously as one might initially imagine. Well, it is many years since I was his age, but only a few for you. You are too similar to him, you need to fear him in some way, perhaps, or at least be aware of the threat he poses to you. He challenges you, Reid. No one likes that."
"You truly think we are similar?"
"Reid, do you not remember how you told me that you modelled yourself on the great revolutionaries when you were younger? Guevara, Makhno, Durruti? Surely you would acknowledge the existence of a romantic streak to your own character. And don't forget that your revolutionaries were hardly pacifists."
"I suppose. But somehow there seemed to be a point to what those people did. They weren't doing it just to be romantic. It seems to me that Feargal, with this Gothic image he cultivates and what he says about violence, wants the romantic to be an end in itself. For Guevara and the others wasn't the romance just a by-product of the aims they had?"
"Was there ever a point to what you did? Oh, by all means, the words you spoke were honourable enough, but in truth did you ever do anything other than romanticise yourself and your life and then go on to exploit the image that others had of you for your own purposes, for the purpose of gaining the very power and wealth which you scorned so vocally?"
"I make no excuses for that, but my beliefs have changed."
"What changed first? Your beliefs or your circumstances? Did you adapt your circumstances to your beliefs? At first, perhaps, but later you altered your beliefs to suit your circumstances. It is not an uncommon phenomenon. Indeed, I have seen it and experienced it myself. I told you, did I not, that I was associated with the workers who took over the Karl-Marx-Hof in '34. People change, but we must look for the reasons. I am not criticising you, Reid, because there are arguments to support your way of life which, in terms of logic at least, do not differ from any other arguments. The logic of fascism is not substantially different from the logic of communism, anarchism or liberalism. Each of them results in wholesale slaughter. Indeed, fascism could be said to have a certain practical honesty which the others lack. I simply suggest that if Feargal disturbs you, it is to yourself that you must look for answers, not to him."
"I don't understand how you of all people can say that, Franz, about fascism."
"With ease. Austria is a social democracy of a relatively high order as Europe goes. But by its very nature there are subtle stresses at work in Austrian society which kill every bit as efficiently as the gas chambers ever did. Furthermore, if you speak to someone who, for example, left Germany for Poland before the war began, as a great many did, they might well tell you that the months in Poland, free from routine and filled with adventure as they were, were exciting and fulfilling where a peaceful existence in Germany was not. This should not be a revelation to you, Reid. Life attains a certain expediency under such conditions which, all too often, it lacks otherwise. People in Austria today do not die in gas chambers or of starvation in a concentration camp, but of boredom, of an awareness of their very peaceful insignificance. Hence the romance of violence, Reid."
"That's a pretty depressing way to se the world, Franz. I'd never realised you did."
"Perhaps I do, perhaps not. If there are things which come with age, one of them is the ability to open one's mind to such possibilities. That is something which you will learn before too long, I suspect."
The zookeeper arrived and started feeding the seals so they did not speak again until the show was over, Franz watching the action exIdly and clapping whenever the bull seal caught a fish that was thrown its way. Reid soon lost interest and started watching the other people who were around them, young parents and their children mostly, innocently enjoying their day out. For them, he thought, this probably was romantic, but the crowd made him feel claustrophobic and all he wanted to do was get out and go for a beer to get rid of his hangover.
"YOU know how the Viennese keep going on about how the suicide rate here's higher than anywhere else? I was reading an article the other day which said Austria's only fifth in Europe, after Hungary, Finland, Switzerland and Denmark."
"But what about the figures for the individual cities? I think maybe there are more here than in any other city."
"I don't know."
"You know nothing, colleague."
"Cut the crap, Medar."
They were sitting beneath the Gloriette, looking down towards the palace. They had become bored of the zoo and after the seals were fed they had decided to leave. Reid had not really enjoyed the visit because it seemed to him that the zoo became worse every time he went, even though they were trying to promote and improve it and build bigger compounds for the animals. He asked Feargal:
"So, what does the zoo tell you about Vienna or the Viennese, friend."
He had been quiet since they had come out and he lit up a cigarette before he answered. He and Medar were two of a kind that way.
"I wouldn't want to be too hasty about passing judgement if the truth be told. Let's just say that from what I've seen of Vienna, the zoo fits the city pretty well."
"Franz?"
"In so far as the Viennese are an utterly barbaric people and the zoo succeeds in being emblematic of that barbarism, I think Feargal is correct. For the rest I have nothing to say."
"And what does Christa have to say about all this, us passing comment on her city and her people?"
"Christa thinks nothing. You see that poster at Reid's place? 'My fatherland is international.' I don't give a damn, say what you like."
"What time is it now, Medar?"
"Perhaps time to return to your apartment, eat some food. It is too early for dinner and too late for lunch, nevertheless..."
"Franz?"
"I wonder if you would help me find a taxi and I shall return to the home. I am tired now."
"Are you sure, Franz? My offer was a serious one: you are welcome to stay at my apartment for as long as you like."
"Thank you, Medar, but as I said: there are certain advantages to life in the home, not least the fact that there is an elevator to take me from one floor to the next/ You would soon tire of carrying me up and down your stairs. I hope, however, that we can repeat these adventures another time. I should like very much to visit the Prater. It has been many years since I was there."
They wheeled Franz down the hill and over the courtyard to the front entrance and saw him into a taxi. Then the four of them went to the underground station and rode back to Kettenbruckengasse and walked to Reid's apartment. Ian, his guest from Australia, was there when they arrived, listening to music out on the balcony. He was a friendly person but her was nervous about taking up too much space, especially when Reid had guests around. Reid had told him not to concern himself, but as soon as they went in he disappeared off to his room and five minutes later he went out. Medar took control of the cooking and Christa helped him while Feargal and Reid went out onto the balcony with some more beers.
"HOW did you lose your hand? If you don't mind my asking."
Feargal paused to light a cigarette and drew on it a couple of times before he replied.
"When I was a small boy in Cork and I still didn't know what others meant when they said the world was round, I imagined somehow a little piece of string which I could twist around my finger, coiling it tighter and tighter until my skin went red, then blue and cold and I'd untwine the string and there'd be an imprint there in my flesh, white weals which I could press so they'd sting. A funny way to see the world, do you not think, Reid?"
"Children always have fantasies like that, ways of trying to understand the things they hear." "Yes, Reid, that's true. But you know, that image stayed with me, I never let it go the way people normally do as they grow older. The way I see it, it was as if that little piece of string crept off into some dark recess of my mind and stayed there, coiling and uncoiling like a black snake, restless and awaiting the fullness of the day when it would come forth."
"And did it?"
"Well, that's why I've no hand, you see. It's a bit of a story, but to cut it short, wen I was fifteen I was a heroin addict. It's a funny thing, but heroin generates an awful dark humour in you at times and as a joke - as a joke, mind - I had a tattoo put on me. It was of a little black snake uncoiling from the back of my hand and striking the length of my forefinger. It was a work of art, Reid, a true work of art. It had red eyes either side of the top joint and little fangs hanging down under the nail and a little red tongue on the end of my finger. You could see every scale of the thing. Cost me an arm and a leg to get it done. If you see what I mean."
"So what happened to it?"
He held up his left hand, palm facing Reid, to tell him to let him go on.
"You know what they say, Reid: there are no snakes in Ireland. If I'm honest my little joke didn't go down too well with anyone in the town. Not just with my parents, but with my friends as well. Heroin was just a hobby for most of them, you know. A weekend thing. I was too keen on the stuff for their liking and I had to leave. I went to Dublin thinking I could start all over, or at least find some people who were my sort. That didn't work out either because I got caught and stuck in this young offender's place run by the church. Godawful it was, but it got me off the junk for a while until I escaped and went to London. That's where I did this. With an axe. Don't ask me why, Reid. Perhaps because one of their sermons said if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. Maybe because I really did want to get off the stuff, you know. Maybe because of that damned tattoo, I just wanted to get rid of it."
"And did you get off it?"
"Too right. I was in hospital for two weeks. Trauma, you know. So after that I never went back on it. Left London, been travelling around ever since."
"And now, what do you think now?"
"I never learned to write with my left hand, or do anything at all complicated, though it's going on four years now. That's why the notion of poetry appeals. Less words to put down. But as well as that there's always the fear I'd start on the stuff again if I had a hand to do it with. I don't want that, Reid. More than anything at all I don't want that."
"So that's why you don't settle as well."
"Yes, one reason I travel is so I don't have to learn to use this. You can do without a hand when you're travelling. It doesn't take much to open a train door or to stick your thumb out for a lift. And the bar I worked at, this was a feature."
"And poetry? You really want to write poetry?"
"I don't know. Maybe I like the idea of being a poet more than I'd like the practice of it. A romantic occupation it would be, surely. As you'd say, Reid, the issue is an... academic one? At the minute, anyway."
Just then Christa came out onto the balcony with some more beers for them. Feargal was staring at Reid and smiling as he took the beer and handed her a cigarette.
"What's he cooking?"
"I don't know but in Turkish it's called 'split stomach'. Smells good, if that helps."
"Leave him to it, yeah?"
She took a seat and asked Feargal:
"Well?"
"Whatever Reid says, I think Vienna has the right amount of violence in its romance for me. I'll stick around a while. Reid's going to teach me to write properly with my left hand."
"Are you a romantic, Feargal? By your own definition of the word?"
"One tries, Christa. One tries one's best. Narcissus is my middle name. Franz said something interesting earlier, that he didn't endorse either the classical or the romantic view because they share the same violence and that's what he rejects. Now I think that's interesting and fair enough if you want to believe in his third option, but there's still a difference between the two: the classical demands formal beauty, so in terms of a life it asks that your existence when seen as a whole be formally perfect. The romantic view is much more the human one: there it's the beauty of deeds alone that counts; it allows for redemption for past errors by a redefinition of the context through further deeds. I couldn't possibly take a classical view - I condemned myself to the romantic many years ago just by not knowing what it was. The way I see it I might as well carry on by doing things properly."
"Reid, do you understand what this guy's going on about? Because if you do I'm going back to the kitchen."
"I'm interested."
"You see, Reid, there's an inevitable incompleteness about a romantic life which can't exist with the classical. The romantic is driven by desire, the classical by moderation. If you desire more than you have, your life can never be called complete. That's something which I choose to celebrate, myself, and when I die, I want to die a violent death. I don't give a damn what the two of them said about it: Sartre was on the side of the classical, Camus the romantic."
"Camus might not have agreed."
"As I said, I don't give a damn what they thought: you read The Outsider and the inevitability of Camus' early death is staring you in the face. The man didn't want to die of old age any more than Sartre wanted his heaven to be a solitary confinement block."
Reid did not answer because Camus was one of his favourite writers and, although he could see what point Feargal was seeking to make, he had always thought that it was a tragedy Camus had not lived longer. They sat without talking until Medar arrived with the food.
"SO then, Medar, did you enjoy your trip to see the peculiar creatures?"
"The ancient Romans would have put two white balls in a jar today, Feargal."
Feargal laughed - the only one of them who had not heard Medar's favourite line - and said:
"Back home they'd call that an awful waste of a good jar of drink, Medar."
"But no more of a waste than if they only put one ball in."
"True, but if they put any balls in their drink at all they'd have regretted the action that much they'd have to put in three black balls, four even, by way of penance for their deeds."
"Unless they were stoics, colleague."
"In which case doubtless they'd have been wise enough not to go wasting good booze in the first place."
"Reid, do you know what these assholes are on?"
Medar and Feargal launched into an explanation for Christa's benefit but Reid had lost interest and anyway, the food was worth concentrating on. Medar is an excellent cook and Reid would often get him to cater if he wanted to give a dinner party or even simply have friends round for an evening of drinking and talking. Medar's "split stomach" was aubergines stuffed with minced meat and tomato and spiced with cumin, all served with couscous and a tomato salad. They drank the wine which Feargal had brought earlier - it was not very good but there was lots of it and it reminded Reid of when he first lived with Medar and they would drink two litres of the worst red wine they could find every night before they went out - to "find their heads" as Medar puts it. One becomes accustomed to drinking wine which is of a good quality, but the occasional bottle of bad stuff pleased them, if only for reasons of nostalgia, and as they drank it Medar would say, as he did before: "Only the worst is good enough for us, colleague. Only the worst will do."
After the meal Christa and Reid cleared everything away and put the plates and pans in the dishwasher. As usual when Medar cooks, the kitchen was a disaster area and there was a lot of clearing up to do. Reid told Christa to leave him to it and go back out onto the balcony because he felt he needed a few minutes to himself. Somehow the hangover had become worse, probably with the sun and the bad wine and, even though he had taken a couple of aspirins, he had a headache which was stopping him from laughing and playing around with the others or joining in the conversation. He did little clearing up in the end and decided instead to take a shower which he thought might help. He felt better afterwards and put on another change of clothes because it was going to be cold in the evening.
The others had come in from the balcony and they were talking about what they could do the next day.
"Any ideas, Reid? Medar thought maybe the three of you could take me round Mauthausen or something. Christa could drive there."
"Don't, please, friend. Or at least I think I'll give it a miss. If the zoo's barbaric I don't think there's a word in any language for that place. Once is enough for anyone's lifetime."
"I remember when I went there, when I was fifteen or so on a school trip. We all had to go, you know, and on the bus everyone was really nervous so they kept making all sorts of jokes about Jews and ashtrays and things. I think that's too young to see it, actually, so I'd quite like to go again."
"What does Franz think about it really, though. I know he keeps on about the Austrians, but why's he here?"
"Franz stays for the sake of annoying the Austrians, friend. He loved winding up my old neighbour, saying 'Shalom' every time he saw him on the stairs or in the lift and giving him Ephraim Kischon books for Christmas. He's pretty outrageous at times. You should hear the things he says to the nurses - what was it today?"
"'Did your father gas my mother?' I think."
"Yes, or 'Is that my uncle's gold filling you're wearing for a wedding ring?'"
"And you had me feeling sorry for the man."
"He knows how to get to them, it's true. So, shall we make a move, go somewhere?"
"By all means, colleague, but there is the question of where. I would suggest that we drink another beer while we decide."
"I'll get them, you can start talking about it."
"WE haven't been to Miles Smiles in a while."
Miles Smiles is a tiny jazz bar in the eighth which they all liked to go to, but because it is so small it is often difficult to get seat. It was still early, though.
They decided to walk because it was not so far from Reid's place. Feargal took his hook off on the way and Christa was carrying it which made Reid's stomach turn. When they arrived the bar was already quite full, but there was one table free and they sat down and ordered some drinks. While they were waiting Feargal said to Reid:
"Christa told me something of what you do, Reid. Do you not find it a crashing bore?"
"Not at all. It's fairly simple work and it's well paid."
"Do you actually get to go on air?"
"Once a week to review books and plays."
"Well, I suppose that's not so bad, but you must have to work long hours, even if it is easy."
"Sure, but as I say, I get paid for it. It suits me. I have my apartment, I eat out all the time, I take good holidays. It's a fair life."
"Medar would seem to me to have the right idea with this thing he does, at the refugee centre. Enough money to live on and drink, plenty of free time, a roof over his head. I don't see that you need any more than that."
Reid shrugged because he did not see that it was any of Feargal's business anyway. Then Feargal said:
"I've always felt, myself, that the less you worry about possessions the better your life gets to be."
"I don't think I feel any different to you in that way, Feargal. If I didn't enjoy my life I'd change it."
Feargal just nodded and smiled.
When their drinks came Feargal asked:
"Would any of you care to join me in a smoke?"
There was a time when Reid would never have turned down the offer but by now there was more to lose if he was caught. Medar never touches dope because if he was sent back to Turkey he would be imprisoned immediately. While Medar and he shook their heads Christa shrugged in a noncommittal gesture of assent. Feargal went ahead and lit the ready-rolled joint he had taken from his pocket. He offered it firstly to Reid and then to Medar and Reid explained that it was too risky for them. Really it would be better if Feargal went outside to smoke it. He asked Christa if she wanted to go with him but she said no, she was not in the mood, so he went out on his own.
"Just like you some years ago, colleague."
"But never in a bar, surely."
"Possibly not, but on your first day in Vienna in a room in a youth hostel where even smoking cigarettes was prohibited."
"One learns."
"That is certainly true. With this beard you are looking truly ripe, colleague."
"If I'm looking ripe I really don't know what that makes you, my man."
"Riper, colleague. Much riper."
"So what do you guys think of him?"
Reid shifted in his seat somewhat uncomfortable but Medar said:
"Feargal is goo. Young, a little immature, but good. We must make sure he stays some time here, Christa. If there were not these problems I would have liked to smoke with him, out of courtesy at least."
"Oh, I think he'll stick around a while. He asked me on the way here if it was really OK for him to stay at my place. He wants to learn to write with his left hand, he says, then take it from there."
After a few minutes Feargal returned.
"You know, my grandmother was a fearsome old cow. Used to tell us a story, my brother and I. Well, not a story exactly, but sort of a story: 'If God breathes on you and you're good,' she'd say, 'a little glow of warmth will kindle in your heart and spread through your body until your whole soul is aflame with love. But if God breathes on you and you're found to be bad, your soul will turn firstly to ice, then to stone and, after a long, long time, it'll crumble to dust and be scattered by the wind.' By Christ she was a dreary old cow, but she could put the fear of God in a child when it suited her, you know."
He had gone white as a sheet and he stopped abruptly. Christa asked him if he was all right and Medar said:
"Colleague, you should not use these drugs if this is their effect on you."
"Medar, don't start, OK. Feargal, do you want to go outside again, get some fresh air?"
He nodded and Christa helped him to his feet and out the door.
WHEN Christa came back she was laughing.
"He's really ill. I put him in a taxi and sent him home. I hope he's OK - the taxi driver made me give him two hundred schillings in case he's sick."
Reid felt relieved that Feargal had gone. He had felt under attack all day. The fact that Feargal would be staying in Vienna for longer was a blow, but although he usually saw Christa quite often he did not depend on her company as much as he did on Medar's. If their friendship was affected it would be a loss to him, but he felt that it was something he could resign himself to. In any case, Reid was by no means convinced that Feargal was the type to stay in one place and he did not imagine that Vienna would appeal to his taste in the long run.
Medar seemed more relaxed as well, but Christa was restless and quiet. After another drink she said she wanted to go home and see Feargal because she was worried that he might be ill after smoking the whole joint himself. Medar and Reid said they would go with her and then maybe on to somewhere else, somewhere in the centre for a change.
Her apartment was on the edge of the first district, close to the University, so they walked. They said little. It seemed to Reid as if conversation had become superfluous without Feargal's presence. Perhaps it was simply because the whole day had been for his benefit and now that the audience had left half-way through the show they all felt at a loss for words. When they reached the Ring, Medar said he wanted to go home because it had been a long day and he was tired. Reid suspected that he would probably go and visit his whore because he had plenty of money that he had not spent on drinks and it would be unlike him to save it. Reid reluctantly decided to walk Christa back to her place and then he too would go home, or somewhere else.
Feargal had made it back to Christa's apartment without any problems. He was sitting at the table in the dining room, back to the window, a pen in his hand and a notebook in front of him, carefully forming letters and words on the paper. When they walked in he looked up with a smile and said:
"You missed me, then. I'm just in the middle of practising my joined-up. It's coming quite easily so perhaps poetry's not the only option after all, Reid. It's like being back at school, though."
Christa went across to him and leaned over his shoulder to look at what he'd written.
"Feargal, that's great. I can read it, at least."
"I'm pleased to hear it. It's taken me the best part of an hour."
"I'm going to buy you a typewriter. Won't that be easier?"
"A typewriter? Well, we'll see. I'm quite enjoying doing this after my own left-handed fashion if you see what I..."
Reid closed the door quietly behind him as he stepped out into the hallway and went down the stairs, into the street. When he looked up Christa and Feargal were silhouetted in the window. He was holding his hook to her face, tracing the outline of her lips with its tip as they looked at each other.
Reid watched them for a few moments before starting the twenty-minute walk to his home, aware that the subtlest of shifts had taken place in the fabric of his universe, aware too that nothing he could do would change that. The wind was up and he shivered slightly, but in his heart he thought he could feel a glow of warmth and he smiled. Tomorrow he would give Feargal that Günter Grass book.
Copyright © Steven Kelly 1991/1995
Steven Kelly is the author of the short story collection Invisible Architecture and the novels The Moon Rising and The War Artist. By day, he maintains web sites for a living - including his own on-line literary magazine The Richmond Review. By night, he writes. Contact Steven Kelly via The Richmond Review.