Read Online Death in Rome by Wolfgang Koeppen - Free Book Online Page A

in the kitchen at home. I said no. And I remembered the great cold kitchen in our house, the floor tiles always damp and just washed; the boots of the uniformed messengers and the friends of the domestics were forever making new marks on the wet, gleaming tiled surface to the irritation of the servants, who always seemed to be flying off the handle, hectically noisy and hectically nervous. 'Where are you from originally?' asked Kürenberg. I told him the name of the place, and I was going to add that nothing tied me to it any longer, nothing but the accident of my birth, when I noticed Kürenberg looking at me in surprise. And then he cried, 'Ilse comes from the same town,' and she, wiping glasses, now turned to me, with a look that went right through me. And I thought, She can see the old avenue, the avenue with the cafés and the trees which have burned down now, but the cafés have probably been reopened, and people are sitting in them again, under parasols maybe because the trees burned down, or they've planted new trees, fast-growing poplars, she can see that just as I see it, objectively but with some emotion as well; or does she not know the trees burned down? I wanted to ask her, but she bustled out again into the bathroom, and Kürenberg was making a sauce using an egg-whisk, but I noticed his thoughts were elsewhere, he was upset, and then he said, having looked across to the bathroom as though to check she wasn't too close by, 'I was once the conductor there. They had a good orchestra, good singers, a fine hall.' 'It's in ruins,' I said. 'They play in the castle now.' He nodded. The sauce was finished. He said: 'There was an Oberpresident Pfaffrath. Are you any relation?' I said: 'He's my father, but he's the bürgermeister now.' He peered into a steaming pot and called, 'Ilse, quick, the colander.' And she brought the colander from the bathroom, a sturdy mesh, sturdy like herself, and he shook the rice out into the colander, leapt with it full of steaming rice across to the tub, poured cold water over it, shook it dry again, and hung the colander and rice in the steam rising from the saucepan, and said to me: 'It's a Javan recipe, the rice cooks and stays crunchy.' They had got around a lot, he had conducted orchestras all over the world, and they had settled into this life, they had no house, no permanent residence, they owned suitcases, fine, large suitcases, and lived in hotel rooms like the one I was standing in. And then I realized that I'd known Kürenberg for far longer than I'd thought, I remembered, of course I wasn't aware of it at the time, I was a child, I didn't understand what was going on, but now I saw it as though it was before my very eyes: I saw my father showing Kürenberg out, I was playing in the hall, and the way Father shut the door behind Kürenberg I could tell by his reddened face that he was angry and he told me off for playing in the hall, and he went in to Mother, and I followed him, because I didn't know where in the big house I was supposed to go, and I was curious as well, even though I knew he was in a bad mood, as he generally was when people came to him for help, they didn't seem to understand him in our town, because they often came to him for help, and it never even crossed his mind to intervene in lost causes. Not out of hatred, no, he wasn't twisted (he didn't like them, that was probably true enough), but he was afraid of them since they had been declared lepers. And most of all, even at that time, he feared Uncle Judejahn. And as though it were yesterday, I could hear him saying to Mother: 'Our General Musical Director'—he always expressed himself in long-winded ways, and titles never failed to impress him—'paid me a call, and asked me to try to obtain the release of old Aufhäuser, his father-in-law. I urged him to be mindful of his career and apply for a divorce -' And then Father caught sight of me, and sent me out in a rage, and today I know that old Aufhäuser had