If you don't find this funny, please write and tell us why not.
I was disposing of my potatoes, of whatever peculiar shape, in order to create pork-chop three-decker. It's very easy: brush the chops all over with olive-oil, stick in the grill for about four minutes each side, and while you're at it slice some veggies and cheese. Take the chops out, brush with pesto on top, add the veggies and cheese, pop back in the grill for a couple of minutes, and serve with spare veggies and salad.
'Veggies and cheese' is a variable in the equation. You could use gorgonzola and tomatoes - if you were some sort of wealthy but depraved European sense-freak. Some of us, however a) need to use whatever's in the fridge to dispose of pork-chops before they go funny and b) BACK BRITAIN, so I used tatties and cheddar grown by the sweat of honest brows. Like so:
On the matter of putting stuff to use before it shows its age excessively: long, long ago, back when I was young, fresh as grass, and innocent, I started to work on a story. Well, that makes it sound like a discrete event, which it wasn't: several strands came gradually together in a rope. Things changed and changed again, and my obsessive-compulsive redrafting disorder didn't improve things on that score. I wasn't sure what the story was about or why I was writing it; but for the first time I had a real sense the the characters were growing and thinking for themselves, and so whatever it is I have a lasting affection for it.
And I still haven't bloody well finished it! What a productive person I am. But perhaps polishing and publishing the existing chapters here will help me get it back on the rails. And to ensure that I am still in the business of creating something a bit more intellectual than pork slathered in cheese, I will publish it with exclusive authorial commentary.
What's more: daily! Can it be done? Well, sacrifices must be made. People will go hungry. People will go cold. People will be made destitute. Some civil rights will have to be suspended. And yes, people will die. But I think it can be done.
So, comrades, onward with the seven-day plan! On to:
A book-smuggler's tale, Chapter 1
Where to begin, where to begin? With Vienna!: the city of emperors, artists, warriors, kings, saints, scholars, sieging sultans! A city of old streets and long memories, deeds heroic and villainous! A city of fate: for here, not long ago, the most powerful men in Europe had gambled with the fates of millions - and here, too, my own fate was to be decided. To a boy who had never before left his native province, it seemed on that evening at the chill and dark beginning of 1857 to be the center of the universe.
I remembered to step off the train, but that done I could only stand where I was, transfixed by the ghostly silhouette of the St. Stephens cathedral above me. Passengers jostled past, but I stayed with my boots buried in the snow that lay thickly on the platform, and soon I was alone. I don't know how long I lingered there in the shadow of the city; it was the numbness spreading out from the edges of my being that at last prompted me to set off, but I kept staring up at the spires and so staggered unseeingly along as if I were drunk. In a way, I was.
The whole city was like a deserted house: silent, still, and shrouded with white sheets. I, drifting along the narrow streets, felt no more substantial than a snowflake: had I been any more light-headed, any tinier in comparison to the great metropolis, the wind might have carried me away.
I suppose I must have been following the directions I had been given before I left home, but any memory of consulting signs or haranguing natives, such as were out of doors at this hour, has vanished: all that remains is an awed boy wandering alone through the snow and the history, lost in some dream of the past and the future. As with all the best dreams, the dull parts I have forgotten - up to a point. The parts just after I found my way to the address where I was to stay were among the dullest; but I regret that they are necessary to make some sense of my narrative.
It was a fine house, viewed from the outside: it had been built in the 80s of the previous century, making one think of Mozart, and was picked out by highlights of driven snow glowing silver in the moonlight; the windows had the yellowy glow of hospitality. But I felt rather nervous as I knocked: how could I feel otherwise? There was warmth and good cheer and the unmistakable scent of wealth inside, while there I stood shivering on the doorstep with snow in my hair and snow on my boots, all that I owned of the world in the battered trunk beside me, not knowing a soul inside. I felt like a stranger, even an intruder. The low boom of iron on oak did nothing to assure me.
It seemed to take a long time for the door to creak aside and reveal, anticlimactically, a footman looking put-upon. He peered at me quizzically, which seemed to confirm all my anxieties; my voice, when I spoke, sounded cracked and odd.
"I'm Ottokar Jánkovač...?"
"Ah. Yes. Sir." I felt there was something fundamentally false about any 'sir' addressed by man so overdressed as he to a bedraggled youth dripping on his threshold.
He bundled me through the hall and folded me into a chair; I staunchly resisted his efforts to relieve me of my trunk, which he seemed to take as an insult. On the positive side, it was a comfortable chair, and I soon found a mug of cocoa thrust grudgingly into my ready fingers. I let its warmth restore them to life before lifting it to my lips, which were almost frozen shut, and taking a hearty gulp. A draft of fire spread to every part of my body: my toes waggled; my brain started out of its stupor; the frosty haze fell from my eyes, and I became aware of where I was.
The hall was crowded, too crowded for me to gain any sense of the room itself, but no-one lingered there for long: it was all coming, going, hurried introductions, drawn-out goodbyes, urgent enquiries as to whether the Countess This could spare a moment to speak to the Baron That. What conversation flourished in this harsh climate was of that hardiest, ugliest species, gossip - though I did overhear two rustic-looking gentlemen, both drunk, who were speaking heatedly about gardening. I rather liked these thoroughly German types with their puffy red faces and callused red hands, but gardening, I'm afraid, has never been something I feel heated about, or feel anything about.
It took the hostess a while to find time for me. She was my aunt, but may not have remembered this fact: for my part I had until recently been scarcely aware of her existence. She found me in that advanced state of exhaustion wherein every muscle falls slack, crumpled over the chair like an empty set of clothes. She, I saw from the first glance, was almost a caricature of the weary Society wife: her straw-blond hair had lost any healthy glint long ago, which made obvious the first hints of grey amongst its braided, bundled strands. Under its excessive paint, her face was tired, worn, and lined. I could hardly imagine her bothering much about me; but she seemed to have some motherly instinct towards this damp young interloper, born perhaps from family resemblance, although I look much less like her sister than like my father - with whom my aunt, I gather, had never got on.
"Good evening, ah..."
I floundered. What to call her? We had never met: first names would have been as false as the footman's nearly-scornful 'sir'. But there seemed something wrong about calling one's flesh and blood by somebody else's surname, and something equally wrong with calling her simply 'aunt' before such an audience of great men - rich men, anyway, and men who would be great, and men who would be rich.
I settled for "...Good evening. I'm sorry if I'm intruding."
"Good evening, Mr. Jánkovač. I'm sure it's quite all right. I'm just a little busy now, but do let me show you where you'll stay. My husband will be up to speak to you as soon as he can."
We spoke German. Did she remember her own language?
I rose with an effort, took up my trunk, and shuffled along behind her. The crowd buffeted me, drove me off-course: I navigated between whirlpools of idle chatter, through winds made up of voices that pretended to be hushed as they announced the secrets of others. Affairs, dances, duels, and dowries formed a haze that obscured any strong personalities among the speakers or their subjects: everything became a gaudy blur.
I thought of a messenger riding into the palace late at night amidst drunken revelry with news of some far-off calamity, shivering and unheeded; of the old Polish tale of the jester Stańczyk sitting and brooding, the only one in the debauched court troubled by news of battles in the east. My boots made snowmelt footprints where they fell.
I found myself deposited in a dark little room above the party or soirée or whatever it was: it contained a bed and a desk that were almost touching, and was covered with a layer of dust worthy of some ancient barrow-tomb from which clouds blew up whenever anything moved, all made visible by a single feeble paraffin lamp.
I sat on the bed for I don't how long, thawing, knowing I should do something but again and again deferring it for just another second. But as my eyes adapted from the glitter of the rest of the house to the gentle lamplight, I saw that on all the walls were shelf after shelf of books, heavy and old.
Paper, I've always thought, ages much as people do, shrinking and wrinkling and going a slightly funny colour; I like to think of old books as ancient sages, withered and wise, like the oldest monk in the monastery who remembers long-gone kings and armies and legends. Books as old as these might almost have been copied out by such a monk... I took up the lamp and explored the little library reverentially, as though I were in a silent cathedral.
The books weren't as old as they had seemed to me in my excitement: all books that have been read much, I suppose, look old. These came mostly from Napoleon's time, and there was no scheme to them: there were diaries and ledgers along with history, biography, fiction, and at least one book of music. There also seemed to be a great many books about gardening, but somehow these did not rob the place of its temple-like quality.
What did was the entrance of my uncle. All my nerves jarred when he thrust open the door: he might have been a Vandal breaking into my little monastery, come to plunder the relics and burn the books. He certainly had a barbarian build: he was a strong, four-cornered man - perhaps it's prejudice, but I think that had we been in China I'd have known him for a German nonetheless - and I'll admit that I disliked him when first he met my eyes. I need not be ashamed of that: my instincts was entirely correct.
"Good evening, Ottokar," he said stiffly.
"Good evening, Herr Eferding." There seemed nothing wrong with this form of address: I'd be damned if he was any flesh and blood of mine.
"Settling in well, are you?"
"Yes."
"Forgive the dust."
"Yes."
"Do feel free to make it yours."
"Of course."
"I say... you look tired. Have you eaten?"
I was tempted to end this absurd attempt at friendly conversation by answering 'yes', but my stomach rose in revolt.
"Not since lunch."
"Do come down, do come down. You can join in with dinner, there's places to spare, not everybody's been able to come... and if you are to live in Vienna, you must know people."
Knowing People, I guessed and rightly, was most of Herr Eferding's work: a profitable occupation, but requiring a capital of time and cunning as well as money. Going from what I had gleaned from my father, Eferding (or his father, or somebody) had made his modest fortune in, what was it?, pots and pans, I think, some clattery maufacture - and, well, those were the days when money couldn't quite speak for itself: a place in the highest circles could not be outright bought. Once your frying-pan maker could afford a splendid house in old Vienna, he was obliged to fill it with People, and Know them, if he wished for his children ever to escape the indignity of having a frying-pan maker for a father. And for a mother? A bourgeois girl from his provincial town (he was from my native Brno originally, or Brünn, as it was in his language), rescued from near-poverty by a pretty face, where her plainer sister had married a lowly clerk. A Czech, too, and so like any Czech only a few generations from the peasantry.
I'm not sure what Eferding made of the clerk's son. He was friendly enough: was a person of rank and wealth supposed to be friendly to their inferiors? To people like me, with no wealth and no rank, not even an inferior one? Even servants knew where they stood. I realised how far I was from the world I knew.
These reflections went on as I followed him downstairs. Dinner was beginning with an awful crowding and crush; I felt almost grateful for his bulkiness. I was assigned to one of his spare places, and there I spent the meal with my head down, nibbling at scraps. I could hardly bare to swallow anything: the air imparted to it a taste of smoke and sweat, and it was all abominably rich.
Hours must have heaved their fat bellies along. Course followed course. The wine was tolerable but I drank sparingly: there is no pleasure in getting drunk without friends.
At last, dessert! How did they force it all down? Long practice, I theorised, long stretching of the gut to its very limit. They must have been trained by their families from an early age: I thought the smooth red faces of the older guests had a perversely childlike quality. Those under a certain age, though, were pale, the women painted white as China plates.
The dinner dissolved itself into shifting conversational sands: dunes rose and fell as people were carried from place to place by the winds of rumour, and I, the lonely Bedouin, was lost in the swirl. I had just eased myself to my feet and resolved to go upstairs, to try to ignore the babble and read or sleep, when I had a chance encounter. There are several such encounters in this story, most of which change it for the better: Vienna, where the many corners of Austria's awkward shape are folded together, is a good place for chance encounters.
As I dodged towards the stairs, I heard a phrase escape from the noise around me with striking clarity: not only in its smooth bass tone, loud and assured, but also in the simplicity of its words. To say anything directly here was to overplay one's hand - for it was all a game, a game with very high stakes - but the speaker employed a remarkable bluntness.
"I'll tell you a secret. There's a charming young woman at this charming dinner who I'm planning to abduct," said his mysterious voice. I turned instinctively to identify it, feeling that natural urge to go towards something that strikes anyone caught uncertain in a crowd.
It was easy enough to locate the young man: he was slouched luxuriantly in a chair, contemplating the chandelier through the bottom of his glass with an expression of idle curiosity. His neck-length hair, from which no light escaped, seemed to have been carefully sculpted, his pointy mustache and goatee to have been painted on with a fine brush. The hand not occupied by the glass held a cigar, which like the fingers between which it was wedged, his mustache and beard, his mouth, eyes, arms, legs, words - everything about him - was long and narrow.
A young woman in the brightly-dyed and immodestly-cut evening dress of the decade was leaning over him, attempting to distract him from the spectacle of the chandelier without much success. "Pretty, is she?," she asked in what was probably intended as a whisper but was perfectly audible to me. In this world, I realised, it was not quiet that gave you secrecy but noise: the babble of others absorbed in their own intrigues.
"Why of course she's pretty! I could spend all evening describing her in elaborate metaphor and words ending in '-ic'. I might even resort to just making a few up! That is the hold that she has on my heart."
The young man took a puff on his cigar (it was most certainly a puff and not a drag): some magic of his demeanour turned the smoke from the industrial smog that filled the room into romantic sea mist.
I, for my part, was resolved to scorn this transparent cad and all his kind! ...And yet for some reason I hovered there, watching. Partly it was the guilty glee of evesdropping on an intimate conversation (who in the world can ignore the overheard phrase 'I'll tell you a secret'?), but partly it was that voice of his. It sounded very low coming from his slender mouth, and like a great river it flowed deep, smooth, slow, and sure to its destination. Yet I could hear a smile breaking through that last solemn, silly phrase, hinting at a keen appreciation of the absurd.
"Aren't you going to give me any hints?," asked the girl.
"Oh, she's unreasonably blonde. There ought to be a law! There's a law about dangerous drinks, a law about dangerous ideas, but no law about dangerously blonde young women. Shocking! Yes, and not to put too fine a point on it, she's leaning over me with that delightful expression girls have when they're pretending not to be excited. She does it especially well."
The young woman appeared satisfied that proceedings were speeding up. "But where will you take her?"
"That is an excellent question. To some secret dens of mine, I should think, charming places. Not out of the city, of course, that would be a real outrage! There is no city quite like Vienna-"
"Not even Paris? I thought I heard you speaking French earlier. Have you ever been there?"
"Ah, Paris!, Paris is all very well but it's no Vienna. You see, I'm a patriotic man - German true - and French girls aren't entirely to my taste. Swans is what they are, and madam!," he made a sudden movement of his cigar like a pantomime-villain about to slit a damsel's throat, "my taste is in eagles!"
In his melodramatic attitude, his head dropped back and I might have noticed that he was looking almost directly at me with his steely blue eyes; but I was too absorbed, too taken in by the show to care that the actor had noticed me. Had I registered the little raise of his eyebrows, I might have been more prepared for what came next:
"Right, that's settled, then, I'm abducting you. Be a good girl, run along and pack your bags, you can be abducted at noon, Monday, on the Graben. As long as you can pay the necessary expenses, of course. There's the cab fair, the..." He waved his cigar lazily in lieu of further running costs of seduction.
She gave him an incredulous stare; he matched it. She gave him a haughty stare; he raised his eyebrows again.
"What, do I look like I'm made of money or something?"
Watching her storm off with thunderclouds gathering above her head, I was unprepared when he rounded on me. Flustered, I wiped the smile off my face and remembered to scorn him.
"Why, hello there, young fellow." I tried to open my mouth to reply; he took no notice. "You wear a shabby coat, and your hair has been snowed on: a very worthy uniform, I'm sure, but how did you manage to be let in wearing it?" He himself, I should mention, was wearing an impeccable set of... whatever it was that we had in 1857. There was definitely a bowtie involved, and shining boots. Frankly, he did look made of money
"Oh, I'm, the, ah, host's nephew. I've only, uh, just arrived. My name's Ottokar Jánkovač."
"Ah, exotic! Blown in from the land of the Slavs on a winter night... Say, you a student?"
"...I shall be, very soon..."
"Which dep- oh, sorry, quite forgot: I'm Johannes Dietrich Wilhelm Oberkirch here, but please, call me Jan. I do Law. And which department are you in?"
"Philosophy."
Having overcome my shock at being addressed at all, I spoke with a clipped correctness. I would even say it was a filed and colour-coded correctness, but 'Jan' didn't let that bother him: he met it with a dashing flick of his mouth upward and to the right that told of some secret joke on the world at large that he and I shared.
"You're not very at your ease, my good man. I think you're suspicious of this obvious scoundrel! Very wise. And I suspect you're not an enthusiast of over-rich dinners and over-fed guests, either?
This was the first time I was taken aback by his alliance of insight and directness, but was not to be the last. I made an affirmative gargle.
"My sympathies. It must be awfully tedious for you. I confess myself such an enthusiast but only, if you will, as the hunter is an enthusiast of the fox."
He wielded his cigar much as a stage-magician might wield his wand: in a flurry of flamboyant flourishes and twirls that punctuated his speech. It was somewhat mesmerising...
At this point another young man entered the scene, springing onto the arm of Jan's seat and balancing himself there in spite of his bulk: he was a giant, and shifted with a restless energy, seemed to chafe in the unnatural confines of his dinner-jacket. He had a bowl of nuts held securely in one of his large hands, and was chewing a mouthful urgently.
"Mission accomplished," he said. "Have a few, they're the salty ones. Now, did my eyes deceive me or did I see that girl you had your eye on go storming past and spitting venom?"
"I thought this young gentleman was in need of rescue, so I dismissed her. He's Ottokar Jánkovač. Philosophy boy, as you might guess from his hair, and just blown in from the Czech country!"
The newcomer noticed me for the first time. His own hair was the colour of good brandy: a rich brown with red stealing through it in the right light. Its curls spilled down around his stark features and nearly joined with a bristly mustache. He wore then an expression which, I would learn, he usually did: 'I've got better things to be doing', it said. He was strong, formidably strong, but shook my hand as though he were absently drying his own.
"Christian Graf von Hoyerswerda, pleased to meet you, young sir. And to give you an idea of my sincerity, I haven't said that to anyone else all night."
"So you're not really enjoying my uncle's hospitality?," I said with a weak smile.
"I wouldn't even grace it with the title. We're only here because - stop me if I go wrong, Jan - Jan's father, who is a banker of considerable means, knows a woman."
"Right so far, albiet a little vague."
"Shut up. This woman is married to a man who knew the Minister of Finance in school. This man's son..."
"His nephew. His nephew who he has raised from his early years."
"Does that matter?"
"If they're going to get married it certainly..."
"This man's nephew keeps rather conspicuously being seen at the theater with the daughter of the minister of finance, who is engaged to be married to a rich shit from Bremen. Said shit's mother..."
"His mother's half-sister."
"You didn't know what I was going to say! Perhaps I was talking about his mother."
"I knew perfectly well what you were going to say, and it would have been scandalous."
"Fine!" Christian threw up his hands in surrender. "To cut it short, Ottokar, we are here in Society on behalf of Jan's father with a mission to disrupt this... entertainment. Believe me, there is little which could drag me here besides the possibility of sowing chaos and confusion."
"You're another student, yes?"
"Oh, sorry, yes. I study Law. I'm from Styria."
"His family have a crumbling castle on the crags!," said Jan cheerily. "It's crumbling because they're hard-up, but it does look extremely romantic."
We were moving gradually but purposefully through the crowd, which moved everywhere and yet stay filled everywhere, like a sea: fish flitted obliviously back and forth; great social whales, glittering with gems, discoursed to shoals of lesser creatures; Jan and Christian advanced, shark-like, and I swam along with them like a pilot-fish.
"You know, Ottokar," said Christian, "I don't think you belong here. Rich coming from me, I know, but really, its a damn shame, you being stuck here."
"Quite. He's here against his will. 'Tis unjust, I say, unjust!"
"We could show you a place where you'd fit right in, if you'd like," said Christian, seeming to muse aloud.
I was rather startled by so abrupt an offer to 'show me' anywhere: I hadn't expected any such invitations so soon after my arrival, or from them, or in fact at all - but I wasn't complaining, and in fact made up my mind to accept. There was something strangely compelling about the pair of them, infiltrating Society to nibble at its meals while they mocked its foibles. Perhaps that was where court jesters came from in the Middle Ages?: destitute nobles and ambitious commoners who fed themselves with their sharp tongues. Let them laugh! While we eat at their expense, the joke's on them.
I tried to remind myself that Jan was a rake, but my heart wasn't in it. I have a habit of judging people by their smiles: a bad one, I suppose, but it seldom leads me far wrong. Jan's smile was too earnestly winning for a mere cad; and he kept the company of Christian, whose dour cynicism, I thought, could hardly be deceived when it came to character. It was easy to invent reasons to take up their proposal and dutifully repeat them to myself.
"I should certainly be up for that," I said, surprised at the keenness of my voice.
"Splend- Christian, enemy vessel hard to starboard!"
"Ottokar, does eleven o'clock, outside here, tomorrow suit you?," said Christian matter-of-factly.
"Let no time waste, hm?," I said.
"Quite."
"To be sure, it suits!"
"Then we must part." Christian gave me a hand and we shook again, hurriedly, before he at last responded to Jan's urgent arm-tugging. I decided to observe from afar: it was fascinating to watch them at work.
The 'enemy vessel' matched with eery precision my mental picture of a 'rich shit from Bremen', from his hair (combed to the consistency of wet grass) to his accent (nerve-janglingly northern) to his boots (blindingly polished) to his walk (a strut that thought all the world was a stain to be scuffed off them). He was monopolising a cocktail tray and a young woman with bad grace when Jan and Christian struck.
"You, sir!," exclaimed the former.
"We have not forgotten you, Herr Schacht."
Herr Schacht tried to open his mouth, but not quickly enough.
"Know, miss, that Herr Schacht is a lier and a scoundrel who's fortune comes from dubious building contracts!"
"His father's fortune, rather, for he does nothing but spend it."
"Do I know you gent-," spluttered Schacht.
"He is also illegitimate!"
"And very nearly drove my dear sister to suicide."
I wondered idly whether Christian had a sister as the merchant of Bremen rallied.
"Well, sirs, I have never met you before in my life, and your accusations are quite..."
"Do I take it you are challenging me to a duel?!"
"I will be your second, good Johannes."
At this point, I thought it wise to escape whatever catastrophe was coming.
Back in my room, I surreptitiously slipped out my copy of Erben's anthology of poems, Kytice, and held it to the lamp. Through the floor, the sounds of the party came to a chaotic crescendo and then abruptly drained away, like a battle. Continuing to listen with half an ear I heard, somewhere below, what sounded like a voice raised in accusation, batting aside the objections of some other voice too quiet to hear; then the exchange stopped, and footsteps approached. Some instinct told me to hide away my book. I wasn't sure whether it was strictly legal: you never knew, in those days.
Herr Eferding's knock shook the door in its frame. Admitting him, I saw in the clenching and unclenching of his fist and the tension of his muscles a barely-contained fury; a fury which longed to manifest itself in some act of brutality. He spoke in an affectedly paternal tone; under it, too, seethed rage.
"Ottokar."
"Sir?"
"Eat well?"
"Very well."
"My chef's French."
"Indeed."
Seeing that this battering-ram of small-talk would not break down my gate, he cut to the point.
"Ottokar. I... should hope not to see you associating with people like Johannes Oberkirch. He won't be welcome in this house again, and... I'd hate to see a young man like you falling in with villains like him."
"It was an awful shame, what happened." I wandered what had happened: it wasn't as though I had heard the police turning up. By the sound of it there had been a commotion and the women and some of the men had been alarmed and some things had been broken. People, I supposed, must have become un-Known.
"Yes. You understand what I'm saying?"
"Of course."
"I'm glad."
He didn't sound it, and slammed the door to on his way out with undiminished anger. I returned to the anthology of Erben and finished 'The Water-Goblin'. There was nothing left to do outside my own room, so I went to wash.
On my way, I passed across the dining room. A troop of the surly footmen were sweeping up broken glass and righting overturned chairs under the direction of my aunt. Hearing my approach, she started; but on recognising me she gave a weak smile. Feeling that it was the right thing to do, I tried to return it, and to hide my shock: her hair was disturbed from its careful arrangement, her face smarted, and her eyes had a little black about them.
I returned to my room. Soon I had given up on reading and lay on the rough, unfamiliar mattress and the cold pillow, willing myself to sleep. My dreams were troubled.
Author’s commentary
Welp, this is the start. It’s been through more iterations than anything else, partly because it’s been there for longest and as mentioned I have a crippling redraft complex; but partly because I have smoothed the edges of the characters and gotten more of a feel for the society of the time.
The narrator’s voice is balanced somewhere between his wide-eyed young self of the time and the older self writing it down, and the balance wobbles somewhat – not that his older self is so much less wide-eyed.
My biggest worry about the story overall is that I spend too much time just pottering about my setting before finding the plot. I’m warning you, there’s like, ten more chapters of this. But Jan and Christian in particular are just good old-fashioned fun to write for, the bastards.
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