'Elegant and original... beautifully crafted, without a word out of place or a sentence too many.' - Time Out
Part One
BREAKFAST WAS SIMPLE but distinctive: black olives with mint and lemon juice sprinkled over them; feta cheese, tomatoes and Turkish bread; hard boiled eggs; mineral water to drink.
"Turkish breakfast," said Medar, as he speared an olive and ate it, carefully spitting the stone back onto the fork and delivering it to the side of his plate, fastidious as ever. Reid nodded slowly. It was all he could do to sit upright and sip occasionally at his water. Conversation was beyond him. They had been to a party the night before. In the third. Then they had gone to a couple of bars before returning to Medar's apartment near the Ottakringerstrasse, in the sixteenth. There they had drunk a litre of Austrian rum between them before falling asleep as dawn approached. Medar is from East Anatolia and he prides himself on his ability to drink a great deal and then to get up early the following morning as if nothing out of the ordinary has occurred. On this occasion they had slept for only three hours and Reid was not sober enough to feel hungover, not drunk enough to enjoy the feeling.
After a while spent watching Medar eat, Reid went through to the kitchen, opened the fridge and returned with a jar of hot, pickled peppers which he handed to the Turk.
"Colleague, your arse will never forgive you."
"My stomach's going to be happy in the meantime, though, friend."
Medar shrugged, untwisted the lid, took out a pepper and handed the jar back to Reid. Reid held it in his hand for a moment, reading the label, before putting it down and breaking a piece of bread from the loaf which he dipped in the jar before eating.
"I remember when I first tasted these bastards. I ate half a jar one night and spent most of the next day on the toilet. I didn't spot the connection so I did the same again two days later. Then I realised."
"And now, colleague, you are a hard-assed man, no?"
"Hard-assed enough, friend."
He put a pepper in his mouth, chewed it thoroughly and swallowed, nodded and smiled.
Medar's apartment is furnished according to a minimalist taste which reflects his approach to life. In one corner of the main room there is his desk, at which he and Reid were eating. In the opposite corner there is the spare mattress upon which Reid had slept and in front of the window stands a large wooden cabinet upon which there is an expensive stereo. Apart from that the room is empty. Medar's music collection is appropriate to the decor: lots of Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Archie Shepp and Don Cherry and, for when Medar is alone, a collection of bootlegs of a Kurdish jazz band whose name Reid could not pronounce and which he found too strange to his ears, even by the standards of Medar's normal tastes. Reid disliked silence, so he decided to put on some music. After a few minutes of flicking through the albums and cassettes he finally found what he was looking for, what he always played if he awoke in his own apartment in the seventh. "A poem which was written by myself and which is dedicated to my grandmother and the revolutionary struggle which transpired during the sixties..." The introduction to Mama Rose was guaranteed to bring a smile to Medar's face. They cleared the plates and the uneaten food from the desk and, as Reid started washing the dishes, Medar said that he was going to shave.
The kitchen of Medar's apartment doubles as a bathroom - there is an extra sink and a shower in the corner - and while Reid washed the dishes he watched Medar as he studied his reflection and then applied shaving soap from a tube in thick stripes across his skin. Reid could hear the rasp of the razor blade. Medar noticed that he was being observed and said:
"Where I am from we take shaving seriously, colleague. Shaving is important."
"Unless you have a beard, my man."
"Only intellectuals have beards."
Reid punched him quite hard in the ribs and they laughed because Reid had been growing a beard for five weeks and Medar was always making jokes about it, saying that in comparison to the Turkish, the English were like little girls when it came to hair. Then Reid put on a different record and smoked a cigarette while Medar finished getting ready to go out.
Usually on Saturdays the two of them ran a stall at the flea market. They would sell sunglasses and T-shirts or anything they liked. They made no money from it now, nor did they need to. It was how they had earned a living when they first came to Vienna and setting up the stall every Saturday was a habit which they chose to hold on to, a reminder of what it had been like trying to survive in the city without permits, when the only way is to work illegally. As well as this, though, running the stall was a good way to spend the day and they had met many people by doing so. Most of their friends had been made that way. On this morning, however, neither of them was in the mood to take his goods to the market. When the necessity exists no longer, humility becomes either a luxury or a chore and as the weather was hot and sunny they decided to take the day off. They would, however, go to the market, or at least to the area, to meet some of their friends. At half-past nine they left Medar's apartment and took a tram to the Rathaus underground station and from there the U2 to Karlsplatz. Like many other people in Vienna, Reid and Medar seldom bought tickets for travel. Drivers do not check the passengers and there are few conductors. There are inspectors, however, and if someone is caught they must pay a small fine. Medar and Reid belonged to a group of people, each of whom paid a small sum into a contingency fund every month. If a member of the group was caught travelling without a ticket their fine would be paid out of the fund. As long as the group members were reasonably careful, the result was cheaper travel for them all. Reid could, of course, have afforded to buy a season ticket at the full price, but such games with the authorities pleased him.
AT Karlsplatz they left the underground and walked a short way along the Wienzeile to a café by the Naschmarkt where they always met a friend of their for a coffee and perhaps some food at about ten. Christa was already there when they arrived, sitting with an Irishman who she introduced as Feargal. Feargal was originally from Cork, he said, but he had lived in London for some time and had been touring around Europe for the previous two years. He had just spent six months in Frankfurt but he did not like the city much, although he had found a good job there, working as a barman in an expensive nightclub. Christa had discovered him asleep on a bench in the Kaerntnerstrasse late the night before. Typically for her - for all three of them - she had woken him up and invited him to stay at the apartment she shares with her brother. They enjoyed such gestures and, indeed, Reid had an Australian guest at the time who had been staying with him for two months already.
When the coffees came for Reid and Medar, Feargal mentioned what a problem he was having finding a place to stay. Medar replied:
"No one said to you, colleague, that life would be easy."
Feargal's mouth opened wide with anger and he did not answer. Reid said:
"Medar's only joking, friend. If there's a man who believes in taking life easy, he's the one."
Reid knew that Medar, with his un-European attitudes, took some getting used to and he wanted to defuse the situation before any hostility took root. In truth Medar had meant the words in all seriousness. Despite his generosity and warm nature, Medar has a didactic approach to everyone he meets and if he sees the opportunity to speak some words of wisdom, painful or not, he employs it. When Reid said this Feargal smiled, but he was quiet for some time.
Christa, who was a student of fashion design at the School of Applied Arts, had been in trouble with her tutor. Earlier in the week it had been the anniversary of the Annexation of Austria by Hitler in March 1938. One of Reid, Medar and Christa's friends was an old Jew called Franz Lasker. Reid had bought Franz's apartment from him two years before and the old man now lived in a nursing home. Christa had told her tutor about Franz in the past and he wanted her to bring him to the school to deliver a guest lecture. Franz always refused to be stereotyped by his Austrian compatriots and Christa was uncertain whether inviting him to speak was a good idea. The invitation did, however, present Franz with a rare opportunity to spend the day away from the nursing home and the strict medical regime there. He was never allowed either coffee or tobacco because, the doctors said, it was bad for his circulation. This was something against which Franz, with the support of Reid, Christa and Medar, had rebelled Bly. As Medar was fond of saying, Franz should have been squeezing his life dry, not allowing it to evaporate away. The doctors were firm but as soon as Christa picked him up from the home, Franz demanded that they go for a cup of coffee before doing anything else. It was his first in over a year and his enjoyment was so apparent that Christa bought him another and then a third. By then the old man was shaking like a leaf and she decided against taking him to the school. She rang her tutor and told him that Mr Lasker had died in his sleep the night before. She was too upset by this tragedy to come to school. Then they went to a tobacconist where she bought Franz a pipe and his favourite tobacco and they spent the rest of the day driving around Vienna, from one coffee house to the next. It was the first time he had seen most of the places they visited in twenty-five years or more and both of them thoroughly enjoyed the outing. The problem was that Franz's nurse, worried that he had not returned by noon, called Christa's tutor to find out what had happened. Christa's tutor was angry with his student.
"But what annoyed him most was when I told him what I thought of him anyway, wheeling out old Jews just to soothe his conscience. He's an old Nazi, you know. A real one. He couldn't do much about it, though, because the principal's a friend of my dad's. Actually, I did tell Franz that I might go and see him today. What do you guys think?"
While Christa related her story Reid observed Feargal closely. He was young with smooth features, short-cropped hair and stubble. He had a large ear-ring in each ear and his eyes were deep brown - almost black - and intense. He wore black boots, black trousers and a black polo neck sweater such as Medar always wears, and looked for all the world, thought Reid, like a refugee from the set of a sixties TV series. The most striking thing about him, and what convinced Reid that Feargal was no mere fashion victim come home, was the plain steel hook which was attached in place of a hand to his forearm. Feargal noticed Reid's stare and, after tapping the hook twice on the table, he smiled, raised his arm and scratched his nose with the hook in a theatrical gesture and said:
"Legacy of a misspent youth, I'm afraid."
Medar broke in and said:
"Be proud of your misspent youth, colleague. A truly misspent youth would be one which left no legacy for others to see. I too have my own legacy."
He lifted his sweater to show Feargal the lumpy, hairless mass of scar tissue on the right side of his lower abdomen, where he had been shot whilst playing with friends during his military service in Turkey.
"Not quite the same, though, is it?"
"Not as dramatic, colleague, but evidence enough. Scars are honourable. Be proud."
"SO, what are you doing in Vienna, friend?"
Feargal seemed surprised that Reid should ask him this.
"I'm just passing through, you know. Seeing what there is to see, see if maybe I feel like staying a while."
"Reid's a writer, Feargal. Tell him what you really want to do."
Reid shot a glance of annoyance at Christa. When he first arrived in Vienna he had fostered dreams of becoming a novelist, but those aspirations had soon been suffocated by the need to earn money, by his desire to spend time with friends, by the fact that his work as a journalist at the English-language radio station placed such demands on his creativity that there was little left for a work of fiction. Reid noticed that Feargal did not seem any happier about Christa's comment than he was and said:
"I've only toyed with the notion myself. I'd not want to be a writer so much as a poet. But it's just an idea, you know. I never will be, I expect."
"No harm in trying, friend. There was a time when perhaps I'd have liked to write. I don't know."
"You know nothing, colleague."
"As Medar so rightly says: I know nothing."
"You know nothing because you deserve to know nothing."
"Whereas Medar, on the other hand, has a monopoly on the truth."
"The truth may not be owned. It comes to those who know best how to employ it."
"So you're telling me that the truth, although it can't be owned, can be employed?"
"Your attempts at rhetoric are laughable, colleague. You should stick to journalism and leave philosophy to the philosophers of this world."
"I know nothing."
Reid pushed away his empty cup and reached for Christa's packet of cheap Austrian cigarettes, leaned back in his chair and lit the cigarette with Medar's Zippo.
"You see: always our colleague tries other people's cigarettes, food, drinks. He is concerned that his own choice has excluded him from some esoteric pleasure essential to his future contentment and well-being. Reid: you pride yourself on the breadth of your experience of life, but the tragic reality is that your experience lacks depth and texture. You know nothing because you merely play at learning. You learn nothing and you play-act your life."
"Jesus Christ, what did I do to deserve this?"
Feargal looked happy for the first time since Medar and Reid had arrived.
"No one said to you, colleague, that life would be easy."
Medar laughed and slapped the Irishman on the back.
"Good, good, colleague. You, perhaps, could be a writer."
Medar's didacticism focuses particularly on his friends' and acquaintances' abilities to fulfil their respective ambitions. He is at an advantage in this because his own ambitions are very simple: he wishes to marry, have three children - sons - and buy a motorbike. When the children are grown up he will travel back to Turkey with his wife and his motorbike and live on money sent to him by his sons. Neither Reid nor Christa had any clear desires for the future but the fact that those desires went beyond simply wishing to marry and settle down meant that Medar was free to say as he wished regarding their abilities, Reid's in particular. He said to Feargal:
"What you should understand, however, is that it is not possible to become a writer or a poet, as our colleague imagines. Either you are already a writer or you are not. What Reid calls becoming a writer is, in truth, the process of discovering that you are one already."
Reid, believing that any ambition may be fulfilled given the time, money and commitment, said:
"Don't listen to this asshole, friend. You got something to say, say it. You don't: get pissed instead and it'll come to you soon enough. Anyone can write if that's what they want. You just got to make the choice."
"The existentialist speaks, colleague. What do you make of that if you are not overwhelmed by the profundity of his statements?"
Feargal only shrugged.
"Anyway, Medar, you haven't told me what you've been up to yourself. I haven't seen you for a week."
Medar carefully tapped a cigarette out of Reid's packet, lit it and inhaled deeply, waited for a moment and exhaled before answering Christa. Reid looked at him sardonically. He was used to Medar's behaviour when he is aware that he is at the centre of everyone's attention. When he has a story to relate he likes to make the most of it.
"This has been an interesting week for me. Thursday night in particular was interesting, most interesting. I arranged to meet some colleagues in a bar near my apartment. It is a shit bar where many pimps go, but it was convenient for us. We had some drinks and a good conversation, but the friends had to leave relatively early. I did not feel like going home and it was too late to go somewhere else, so I stayed and ordered another beer. Beside me at the next table there was a very attractive Hungarian girl who was also quite friendly. I spoke to her while I was waiting for my drink and we seemed to be getting on quite well, but the barmaid, when she returned with my drink, said to me: 'Leave this poor girl alone, Turk, she doesn't want to talk to you.' I was insulted, as you can imagine, so as she walked away from the table, I said to her in quite a loud voice: 'You are so ugly, tart, no one would fuck even your arse.' This she did not like, especially, I think, because many of the other guests laughed when they heard me. She threw a heavy glass ashtray at me, but it missed and smashed against the wall. I got up, hit her and knocked her out. KO with just one punch. She should have known better: where I am from it does not matter to us if it is a man or a woman who comes to us and wants to fight. We always accept the challenge. Anyway, two of the pimps came to me and said I should go outside with them. The Hungarian girl followed us out and the pimps said: 'OK, if you leave now we will forget about this.' I was happy to go, because there were two of them and also because it was a very good night to go for a romantic walk under the stars with this girl."
Reid and Christa laughed and Feargal smiled lopsidedly. Christa asked:
"So, is this the new love?"
"Unfortunately not. She does not like Vienna because, she says, it is too violent. She will return to Hungary next week. I have, anyway, my regular whore who I see once a week if I have the money. Her pimp does not like me because I tire her out too much, but he is scared, I think, that she will leave him for me if he tries to stop me seeing her. I pay my money, in any case, and he is not tough enough to worry me."
"Medar has a strange idea of the romantic, that's for sure."
"Nothing is certain, colleague. Certainties died with God. There is only fluidity and flux."
"You sure?"
"Yes, colleague, I am positive."
WITH the weather being so good they did not want to stay in the café for too long and Reid did not feel like going to the flea market and fighting his way through the crowds. Knowing that it would take them a long time to decide what to do instead, he ordered himself a beer, partly to stave off the hangover he could feel coming on and partly as a matter of habit: Reid liked to drink alcohol on Saturday mornings to remind himself that the weekend was underway and on Sunday afternoons to remind himself that it was nearly over. The others ordered drinks as well, even Medar which, Reid thought, was unusual for him. Normally Medar would say that one should wait until sunset before starting to drink alcohol and on Saturday mornings he would sit with a glass of tea and a superior smile watching Reid and Christa as they drank their beers, uncomfortable beneath his disapproving gaze. It remains an academic point with him: if Reid were to drink from the moment he awoke, Medar would still consume more alcohol between sunset and midnight than Reid ever could in an entire day. Medar asked Reid:
"Colleague, do you by some miracle have any food at your apartment?"
"You know me, Medar."
"So, then. We should go to the Naschmarkt, buy some food for tonight which we can leave at your apartment, and then, slowly, we can go somewhere."
"OK, my man, fine by me. But where?"
"Feargal, do you know how long you're going to stay in Vienna?"
"I can't say, Christa. If I was going to stay a while I'd need to find some work, not straightaway, but soon. Medar just mentioned, though, that you need a permit to work here, so perhaps I'll go back to Germany or to Italy instead."
"That's true, friend, but the issue of work permits in Austria is an academic one, whatever the authorities think: you need a permit to get work, but you need work to get a permit. There should be no problem."
"You can stay at my place for as long as you want anyway, Feargal. Money's not a problem either, not while you're here."
"Thank you, Christa, but I'd not want to put you out at all. If I do stay I'll sort something out, and a place to stay."
Medar raised his right hand to his chest, fingers out straight, and pushed the air away sharply in a swooping, characteristic gesture of dismissal.
"Colleague, whilst you are here, you are our friend. You must accept our hospitality or you will offend us."
"We'll see."
"The point being that we should do something today which will show Feargal something of our city."
"Christa is so thoughtful. Listen to her, colleague, here I am: a Turk. Here is Reid: from London. And Vienna is our city. Not all Austrians are so courteous."
"Is there a problem here with that?"
"Occasionally. Only yesterday Reid and I were in a shop in the ninth district and the assistant addressed me with the familiar form instead of the polite form one should use with strangers, especially with customers."
"But Medar was good. He asked her if he knew her from somewhere. Had they perhaps eaten dinner together earlier in the week or was it her who'd cooked him breakfast that morning? She was so stupid she still didn't get it, though, and I had to explain it to her and make her apologise. It was funny."
"People should show some respect. I have an MA from the University of Vienna, I am a professional, no?" "In so far as you can make a career out of doing nothing, I suppose so."
"This colleague has a fine sense of irony. He sits at a desk all day copying news articles from foreign papers and pretending that they are his own work."
"My work requires a great deal of skill, Medar."
"To plagiarise so well that the copy is indistinguishable from the original requires a special talent, that much is true. But a talent for what?" Reid took Medar by both shoulders and gave him a wet kiss on the cheek, a clear sign that enough was enough, and the four of them lapsed into silence.
Reid only went sightseeing when friends visited him from London and even then his tours were made in such a desultory way that on the second day he would give up. For him the best way to learn about a city was to meet the people who lived there, to have dinner with them, get drunk, go to a coffee house. Buildings could always be pointed out on the way. The only thing Reid did like to do was visit the occasional gallery, but in Vienna in March many of the exhibitions are shut or only partly open while they are prepared for the summer season. All sightseeing was a futile activity for Reid and he suspected the Irishman would see things that way. The first to speak was Feargal.
"Would there be a zoo in Vienna?"
"Not if you have a conscience." "Or maybe only if you have a very bad conscience."
"It's not a very good zoo."
"I like zoos however they are. Not in themselves, so much, but for what they tell you about the city and the people who live there. There's a park in Bolzano, where I was just last week, and they have an old bear there, kept in a pit of some sort. The poor creature's mad with the size of it and the heat, you know. Truly it's a sad sight. But the thing is parents still take their kids along to see it. Well, you only need a history book to tell you that the Italians are as barbaric as they come, that way, but still..."
"I hate to think what Vienna's zoo will tell you about the Viennese, friend. What do you say, Medar?"
"Zoos, I do not like zoos. All these peculiar creatures locked up. I do not like this. However, Feargal is our guest..."
"The zoo, then."
They finished their drinks and Reid paid the bill. Then they went over the road to the market where they would buy food for the evening.
Whilst he did not enjoy cooking, Reid loved to go shopping in the Naschmarkt with Medar. Many of the stallholders are Turkish and Medar knows most of them by name. He walks from one stall to the next greeting the owners and telling them what he thinks of the produce they have on display: 'These would not be fit for the goats, colleague.' 'The price of these tomatoes is reasonable, colleague, do they have pearls inside? Yes? Then you should worry that your customers will break their teeth. Teeth are more precious than pearls when it comes to eating.' Eventually he found a stall where he was happy and started directing the stallholder as if he was making a movie.
"Yes, colleague, a kilo, but please: more panache when you weigh things. Take pride in your work. No, just a large handful of those. But do it with style, colleague, style is all."
When he had everything he wanted there was the usual fight between him and Reid over who was to pay.
"Please, colleague, do not embarrass me in front of my countrymen. You can pay next time." He would always win because even if Reid succeeded in putting some money in his hand or his pocket, Medar would throw it to the ground and shout angrily. And the next tramp to come along would be a hundred schillings richer.
AS they walked from the Naschmarkt up towards Reid's apartment, Feargal suddenly ducked into a supermarket and emerged with two bottles of wine in a plastic bag dangling from his hook. Reid took this to be an example of macabre bad taste, particularly when he noticed the frozen stare on Christa's face as she watched him, but Feargal did not seem to notice the effect he was making, or if he did he kept his thoughts to himself. As they continued on their way, Reid fell into step with him and asked him about his first impressions of the city.
"It's very provincial, would you not say? And like toytown for grown-ups with the trams and the way everything's kept so clean."
Masking his own annoyance, Reid said:
"Don't say to the Viennese that you think they're provincial. They're dead proud of their cultural scene. Skin you alive."
"Oh, the cultural scene seems fine enough, though it's very much geared to a paying audience. I prefer places where it's all on the streets, you know. Filters upwards. It's to be expected, I suppose, with the city being stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, though. It's bound to be a bit isolated. You know that underground station near the café we were at - Karlsplatz? Christa was telling me how it's becoming a terrible place these days with the junkies and everything. But you must know yourself: compare that to bits of London, or Dublin even more, and Karlsplatz is paradise."
"Biggest topic of conversation in town at the moment. The theory is that the authorities are allowing it so they can keep tabs on what's happening. If you look around you'll probably see more plain clothes cops from the drugs squad than you'll see addicts. They get a bit exId about things here, it's true. But it's also true that Vienna's crime rate is catching up with the rest of Europe."
"Might not be such a bad thing, if I can say so. The place feels to me as if it could do with a new set of balls."
Reid was taken aback and could not find words to reply.
"Oh, Christ, you have to be so careful what you say. I think the town's great, all right. It just isn't Dublin or London. No buzz, you know."
Reid did not have to answer because they had arrived at his block.
Once they were inside Reid's apartment, Medar put on some music and then fetched four bottles of beer from the fridge. He is supremely capable of making himself at home wherever he is, but Reid was not offended. They had lived together for five years and still spent most of their time at each other's apartment. They were used to sharing everything. Christa put the food away in the kitchen and Reid opened the French windows onto the balcony. He took an ashtray out, put it on the table and cleared away some of the junk which was always lying around out there. Feargal remained in the sitting room, browsing through the titles in Reid's extensive book collection, occasionally pulling a volume from its shelf by slipping the tip of his hook into the top of the spine. Reid's collection was built up as a result of his work at the radio station where, in addition to preparing news stories, he was responsible for reviewing new titles from England and America. Books were sent to him free by the publishers upon request. He was also good friends with the owner of one of the English bookshops in town and obtained books from him at a discount. English editions are expensive in Vienna. Every wall in Reid's apartment had bookshelves, all full, from the ceiling to the floor, and he had even started storing paperbacks in the cellar, something he regretted, but which was easier than finding a new apartment. It was a source of some amusement to Medar that his friend's home was so different from his own and, particularly, that Reid's taste in music suited his apartment just as Medar's collection is so appropriate to the starkness of the decor of his place. Reid liked some cool jazz but for the most part he listened to a mix of reggae, punk and new wave bands from the late seventies, music he grew up with in England and which, Medar says, would "fuck anyone's head". Medar had found some Santana, though, so he was happy.
Feargal came out onto the balcony and sat down with a copy of a book by William Burroughs.
"Burroughs claims that he shot his wife by accident, but I harbour a secret fantasy that he did it on purpose For a start it would square with his sense of humour, but apart from anything I think he's an almighty romantic at heart. There's not lot that's more romantic than shooting your wife in Mexico."
"Sounds like your idea of romantic shares something with Medar's, friend. Perhaps the two of you should get together and make sweet music by moonlight on the banks of the Danube."
"Feargal is correct, colleague. The romantic is always linked to violence, either against others or against the self, physical or mental."
"Though you wouldn't describe shooting you wife as an archetypal romantic act, surely?"
"Remember that the archetypal romantic hero wouldn't necessarily conform to what most people think when they hear the word romantic, especially when you get into the more Gothic stuff. Even Werther was pretty violent in his own fashion. And for that matter take a look at the romantic writers - Byron and Shelley didn't live what you'd call peaceful lives, Reid."
"So maybe that's how I could become a writer, Medar, if I shoot you."
"You would have to write something first. Anyway, I'm not your wife and you'd probably miss because you are so useless a specimen."
"Another beer, friend?"
Reid did not want to get into another argument with Medar, partly because his brain was still not in full working order - and was not likely to be all day - and partly because Feargal was beginning to disturb him. It seemed to Reid that for someone who was dependent upon the generosity of others for food and a place to sleep, Feargal made few compromises. He was an unwelcome intrusion on their comfortable familiarity as a group. And in a flash of honesty, Reid confessed that Feargal's interest in Christa, so apparent in the way he spoke to her and watched her, was a threat to their friendship. Reid's relationship with Christa was not an overtly sexual one - though at one stage, early on, it had been. Their friendship was exclusive in that neither had steady partners. If such a relationship would have made Christa happy, Reid would not have been against it. But he had doubts about Feargal's integrity, doubted the respect he would have for Christa's friendships with other men were he to become involved with her. When he went through to the kitchen she was still there, cleaning the oven.
"Reid, you're disgusting, you know."
"It's the cleaning woman, she never does anything around here. C'mon, leave it."
IT turned out that Feargal had a habit of using lighted cigarettes as bookmarks when he wanted to say something or take a sip of his drink and there was no ashtray within reach. It would have bothered Reid whichever book Feargal had been reading at the time, but at that moment he had on his lap a rare first English edition of a Günter Grass novel which had cost a great deal of money. Feargal asked:
"Would the two of you say that you were happier living in Vienna than you were at home.?"
"I suppose we wouldn't have stayed here otherwise, friend. We're as happy, at least; there are advantages and there are drawbacks. In the end it doesn't make much more difference to me than the fact that the bars are open all night and the rents are cheaper here than they are in London."
Reid was glancing nervously at the book while he answered Feargal, his eyes drawn almost against his will to the glowing tip of the cigarette as it moved ever closer to the book's top trim, the grey ash congealing around it. He was reluctant to say anything about it because, in theory at least, Medar and he shared an ambivalent attitude towards objects and to be too possessive was seen as a failing. It was an attitude which had developed out of circumstance. When Reid and Medar first came to Vienna they stayed in a room with two others in a youth hostel in the twentieth. After a week of searching they found the apartment which Medar continues to occupy. It was rented at the time and filled with old furniture which had been left behind by a series of previous tenants and, mostly as a symbolic gesture, they had thrown out or given away everything except the desk and the wooden cabinet which remain there to this day. They had come with few possessions of their own and did not wish to be weighed down by those of others they had never met.
Reid had been reading Régis Debray's Revolution in the Revolution at the time and, in a playful spirit, he and Medar chose to regard their early days in Vienna as a kind of insurrection against the prevailing order which, as they saw it, sought to bar them from living in Austria. Medar's apartment thus became the foco base and the observed Debray's "three golden rules" - "Constant vigilance, constant mistrust, constant mobility." They used pseudonyms and gave false addresses to people they met but did not like. Above all they recognised that with their relative lack of possessions they were at an advantage over others who came to Vienna seeking work, people who needed large apartments to house the things they had brought with them, the lifestyles they clung to. As Reid would often say: "If you can't carry it, you don't need it." That was their maxim.
The strategy had worked, if success can be measured in terms of money and friends, and neither Reid nor Medar was willing to relinquish those earlier ideals completely. For Reid, though, that had become little more than a convention at best, a philosophy he pretended to but did not in truth adhere to. Habits such as carrying his passport wherever he went were no more than meaningless legacies of a time when Medar and he might indeed have needed to leave everything behind and take a train to Germany or Italy and start afresh. They would have done it then - as Medar says, you can buy bread and cigarettes most places these days - but after seven years in a city the ability to leave behind a comfortable existence with all its accessories is lost. Reid was about to say something about the cigarette when Feargal took it from the book, drew swiftly on it once, and stubbed it out on the balcony floor. Reid suspected that it was a deliberate attempt to bait him because Feargal looked at him very calmly and smiled innocently before saying:
"Well, you've built up an impressive library, at least."
"Say we go to this zoo, then?"
"Shall we visit Franz on the way? I did say to him that I'd probably go by, even just to say hello."
"Do you have the car with you?"
"No, my brother has it. He's gone to Linz to see some friends for the day."
"I wonder, colleagues, how would it be if we took Franz with us to the zoo."
Christa and Reid looked at each other doubtfully. They had attempted to obtain permission to take Franz out before, but the nurses had always refused, saying that he was too frail. Reid could not imagine that Christa's adventure with him earlier in the week would make the situation any easier.
"I don't know how we'd fix it, friend. They're pretty tight in there."
"We can at least speak with Franz about it. There is always the possibility that he knows a way to get out, perhaps avoiding the necessity of asking the nurses for permission."
"I'll bet he does, knowing Franz."
"If you don't mind my asking, who is this man exactly anyway?"
"Franz Lasker. Oldest Jew in Vienna."
"Great guy. Used to be a waiter in one of the coffee houses, until Hitler came. Then he took his family to New York, came back at the end of the occupation in fifty-five. You'll like him. He tells some good stories."
"How old did you say he is?"
"Nearly a hundred. Though you wouldn't know it to talk to him, cunning sod."
"To look at, though."
"Yeah, to look at. Methuselah Senior, Franz is."
"And how did you come to meet the man?"
"Reid here bought this place off him a couple of years back. We just kept in touch, that's all."
"But if this home's so terrible why does he stay there? Could he not just move out?"
"It's not that simple, friend. My old neighbour was a Nazi, former camp guard. He hated Franz and had him committed, it's easily done. Of course Franz is fine and the shrinks at the hospital said so, but you know these social workers. Same the world over. They put him in the home 'for his own good' or some such shit."
"But that's like something out of the last century. Was there nothing could be done to stop it?"
"Old fashioned city, Vienna. The funny thing is that the Nazi got carted off a few months later, too. He was done three times in two weeks for trying to torch the synagogue. Crazy as hell, I tell you, he was lucky not to get shot with all the cops there."
"It's a good way to get yourself a place to live, though. Find an apartment with some old guy living on his own, bribe the caretaker to tell the authorities he's senile and you're in, just like that."
"You are joking, I hope, Christa."
"It happens."
"Let's go, yes?"
While Christa and Medar cleared the bottles away, Reid changed into some different cloths. He wished that he had felt up to taking a shower at Medar's before they had come out, but it would have to wait until they returned from the zoo. He smiled as one of Che Guevara's sayings came to mind: "...the hammocks of guerrilla fighters are known for their characteristic, individual odour."
FEARGAL was still carrying Reid's copy of the Guenter Grass novel in his hand as they were leaving so Reid said to him:
"Here, I'll get you a paperback of this, I have one somewhere. Then you can put it in your pocket instead of having to carry it."
"Don't worry yourself. I'll probably not get around to reading it anyway. I hardly ever do unless they sit on the shelf staring at me for six months first, you know."
He handed over the book and, as casually as he could, Reid placed it on the table inside the door before he locked up and followed everyone down the stairs.
They had all taken another bottle of beer each and Reid's mood improved: it felt good to be out in the street with the sun shining and beers in their hands, as if they were on holiday. The start of the summer is worth celebrating after the winter when it is often too cold to have any real pleasure. This summer held more potential than ever for enjoyment because, with the events in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, the city was becoming even more cosmopolitan and for Reid it was this multicultural element which made Vienna a joy to live in. Franz's home was in the eighteenth district, so they would be making quite a detour on their way to the zoo. It was unimportant: Reid loved travelling by tram - so much less of a chore than journeys by underground. They could watch people on the streets and look our for friends or acquaintances doing something stupid when they did not know they were being watched.
If there was a shadow over Reid's enjoyment it was his growing resentment of Feargal's cynicism in his view of Vienna and its people. Vienna was, after all, Reid's home and he found Feargal's attitude towards it offensive. As far as Reid was concerned, if a city was clean and there was seldom any trouble on the streets, that was no reason to dismiss it as boring. Feargal had said that life in Vienna was not like "real life" but he would not say what he meant by that. He was cynical again when he saw a motorist being stopped by the Environmental Police because his car exhaust was making too much noise.
"But it's good, Feargal. If you let people get away with things like that, the problems just get worse."
"Surely, surely, but all this state control, Christa... Do you not think it removes some of the humanity from life?"
"Personally, colleague, I feel that it does. But within the structure of Austrian society there are many opportunities for spontaneity, because this structure allows economic freedom. The structure of Turkish society is, however, built on the hot-blooded mentality. As a result there is no economic freedom or political freedom and little real spontaneity. This is problematical. The Turkish system, although built in a more human way, is inhuman. Austrian society is the other way."
"But surely there's plenty people here lacking any economic freedom. This place might be pretty, but it's not utopia. You said yourself, Medar, that those men selling the newspapers earn a pittance for standing in the street fourteen hours a day, six days a week."
Reid said:
"What you say is true, friend, but it's true of all countries to some extent. There are, for example, laws in England which simply couldn't exist here. There are laws here which do not exist - or are not enforced - in England. For my part I would rather have policemen stopping drivers from polluting the air than preventing citizens drinking between eleven at night and eleven in the morning in the place of their choice. When it comes down to it, in any case, the reason we stay here is because our friends are here. That's the most important thing, don't you think?"
"Yes, friends are important. But so is humanity in itself, as a quality. Well, I should talk. All I'm interested in is having the freedom for myself. It just occurs, that's all."
"I think you do something about that just by being yourself. Every time you laugh because you're happy you're bucking the system."
"Reid has some strange ideas, colleague. Do not let them worry you."
"We're here."
The building where Franz lived was a new one, purpose built to house old people and to ensure that they could not go missing by accident or design, so Reid knew it would never be easy to get the old man out. In the first place the nurse on duty at the reception desk was unhappy about the idea of allowing four visitors into the building when they had no appointment. Eventually Christa convinced her that they would not exI Franz and they were allowed to go through to the gardens where he was sitting in his wheelchair, on his own, staring into the distance looking miserable. Reid always marvelled at the expressiveness of Franz's features, at the deep lines etched into his skin. He brightened up when he saw them but, Reid thought, his greeting lacked the usual effusiveness and it was all too apparent that he was unhappy.
"Welcome, welcome. You did not tell me, Christa, that we would be having a party."
"Franz, how would you like to come out with us for the day?"
"Of course, I should like to spend the day somewhere with you very much indeed, but as you know there are some problems with these Nazi doctors and nurses."
"Come on, Franz, they're only doing their jobs."
"Following orders?"
"Is there some way we could smuggle you out? Got a back gate or something?"
Franz screwed up his eyes and closed them for a moment, then he smiled craftily.
"There is of course the fire alarm."
"They let everyone out?"
"Indeed. We are supposed to assemble here, in the gardens, but anyone who is in the front part of the building, in reception or near one of the fire exits on that side, should go into the street and wait there to be collected by the staff. If three of you took me to reception, perhaps to ask some foolish question, the other could set off the fire alarm and we might attempt our escape. How does that sound?"
"Sounds fine to me. Who's going to do what?"
"I'll set off the alarm. If I get caught I can't get into as much trouble as you people. Do you know where I'd find one, Mr Lasker?"
"If you go up the stairs, turn right and go to the end of the corridor you will find an emergency exit which leads directly to the street. When you open the doors the alarm is set off automatically, but you must run and hide somewhere because there is an office at the foot of the stairs and you may be seen."
"Feargal, I'll come with you and then we can all arrange to meet up... where, guys?"
"Medar, you place? It's not so far."
"We can, in any case, take a taxi."
When they had sorted out the final details, Medar and Reid wheeled Franz through into the reception area while Feargal and Christa went upstairs. Just as the nurse was explaining why it was "strictly forbidden" to take alcohol into the home, the alarm sounded and they were hurried out into the street along with a dozen other inmates and their visitors. After ten minutes or so two fire engines arrived and a crowd of passers-by gathered to see what was happening, so they drifted away round a corner and hailed a taxi.
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.