inform the other passengers of what her lips would not reveal. I still don’t know what Jews look like, otherwise I could tell whether she took me for one, I am more inclined to believe it had nothing to do with my appearance but with the expression in my eyes when I looked out of the bus onto the street and thought of Marie. This silent hostility got on my nerves, I got out one stop too soon, and walked the last bit of the Kölnerstrasse before turning off toward the Rhine.
The trunks of the trees in our grounds were black, still damp, the tennis court freshly rolled, red, from the Rhine I could hear the hooting of the barges, and as I entered the hall I heard Anna muttering softly to herself in the kitchen. All I could make out was “… a bad end—a bad end.” I called through the open kitchen door: “No breakfast for me, Anna,” quickly went on and came to a halt in the living room. The oak paneling, the wooden shelf with its tankards and hunting trophies, had never seemed so dark to me. Next door in the music room Leo was playing a Chopin mazurka. In those days he was planning to study music, he got up every morning at half-past five to practice before school. What he was playing transported me to a later time of the day, and I forgot that Leo was playing.Leo and Chopin do not go well together, but he played so well that I forgot him. Of all the older composers, Chopin and Schubert are my favorites. I know our music teacher was right when he called Mozart divine, Beethoven magnificent, Gluck unique, and Bach mighty; I know. Bach always seems to me like a three-volume work on dogma which fills me with awe. But Schubert and Chopin are as earthly as I myself probably am. I would rather listen to them than anyone else. In the garden, down toward the Rhine, I saw the targets in Grandfather’s rifle range moving in front of the weeping willows. Fuhrmann had evidently been told to oil them. Sometimes my grandfather drums up a few “old boys,” and there are fifteen enormous cars drawn up in the circular driveway in front of the house, and fifteen chauffeurs stand shivering among the hedges and trees or play cribbage in groups on the stone benches, and when one of the “old boys” has scored a bull’s eye you can very soon hear a champagne cork popping. Sometimes Grandfather used to send for me, and I would do a few tricks for the old boys, imitations of Adenauer, or Erhard—a depressingly easy thing to do, or I acted out little scenes for them: executive in a restaurant car. And no matter how malicious I tried to make it, they laughed themselves sick, said it was “capital fun,” and when I went round at the end with an empty shell carton or a tray they usually put in some folding money. I got along quite well with these cynical old codgers, I had nothing in common with them, I would have got along just as well with Chinese mandarins. A few of them went so far as to say my performances were “tremendous”—“magnificent.” Some even announced: “The boy has talent” or “That boy’s got something.”
While I was listening to Chopin I considered for the first time going after bookings so I could earn some money. I could ask Grandfather to recommend me as solo entertainer at capitalist gatherings or for the enlivenment of board meetings. I had even rehearsed a number called “Board of Directors.”
The moment Leo entered the room, Chopin vanished; Leo is very tall, fair, and with his rimless glasses he looks the way a deacon should look, or a Swedish Jesuit. The sharp creases in his dark trousers removed the last traces of Chopin, the white pullover above the sharply creased trousers didn’t seem right, nor did the collar of his red shirt, above the white pullover. A sight like that—when I see how someone has tried so hard to look relaxed—always depresses me deeply, like pretentious names such as Ethelbert or Gerentrud. I also saw once again how Leo resembled Henrietta without really looking like
The trunks of the trees in our grounds were black, still damp, the tennis court freshly rolled, red, from the Rhine I could hear the hooting of the barges, and as I entered the hall I heard Anna muttering softly to herself in the kitchen. All I could make out was “… a bad end—a bad end.” I called through the open kitchen door: “No breakfast for me, Anna,” quickly went on and came to a halt in the living room. The oak paneling, the wooden shelf with its tankards and hunting trophies, had never seemed so dark to me. Next door in the music room Leo was playing a Chopin mazurka. In those days he was planning to study music, he got up every morning at half-past five to practice before school. What he was playing transported me to a later time of the day, and I forgot that Leo was playing.Leo and Chopin do not go well together, but he played so well that I forgot him. Of all the older composers, Chopin and Schubert are my favorites. I know our music teacher was right when he called Mozart divine, Beethoven magnificent, Gluck unique, and Bach mighty; I know. Bach always seems to me like a three-volume work on dogma which fills me with awe. But Schubert and Chopin are as earthly as I myself probably am. I would rather listen to them than anyone else. In the garden, down toward the Rhine, I saw the targets in Grandfather’s rifle range moving in front of the weeping willows. Fuhrmann had evidently been told to oil them. Sometimes my grandfather drums up a few “old boys,” and there are fifteen enormous cars drawn up in the circular driveway in front of the house, and fifteen chauffeurs stand shivering among the hedges and trees or play cribbage in groups on the stone benches, and when one of the “old boys” has scored a bull’s eye you can very soon hear a champagne cork popping. Sometimes Grandfather used to send for me, and I would do a few tricks for the old boys, imitations of Adenauer, or Erhard—a depressingly easy thing to do, or I acted out little scenes for them: executive in a restaurant car. And no matter how malicious I tried to make it, they laughed themselves sick, said it was “capital fun,” and when I went round at the end with an empty shell carton or a tray they usually put in some folding money. I got along quite well with these cynical old codgers, I had nothing in common with them, I would have got along just as well with Chinese mandarins. A few of them went so far as to say my performances were “tremendous”—“magnificent.” Some even announced: “The boy has talent” or “That boy’s got something.”
While I was listening to Chopin I considered for the first time going after bookings so I could earn some money. I could ask Grandfather to recommend me as solo entertainer at capitalist gatherings or for the enlivenment of board meetings. I had even rehearsed a number called “Board of Directors.”
The moment Leo entered the room, Chopin vanished; Leo is very tall, fair, and with his rimless glasses he looks the way a deacon should look, or a Swedish Jesuit. The sharp creases in his dark trousers removed the last traces of Chopin, the white pullover above the sharply creased trousers didn’t seem right, nor did the collar of his red shirt, above the white pullover. A sight like that—when I see how someone has tried so hard to look relaxed—always depresses me deeply, like pretentious names such as Ethelbert or Gerentrud. I also saw once again how Leo resembled Henrietta without really looking like
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