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students were too proper to be seen in a bar used by prostitutes—except for the one or two well-to-do students who would appear at the bar in order to
select
a prostitute. (These students were always embarrassed to be seen by Eric or me.) As for the prostitutes, they recognized from the beginning that Eric and I could not afford their more intimate company. Occasionally, there was an older one—my mother’s age—who would help me with my German.
    Baron von Wergenthin might first have attracted my interest in
The Road into the Open
because of his ceaseless fantasizing about women—and the ongoing difficulty of his relationships with them—but young Georg was also a Christian aristocrat whose principal friendships were with Jewish intellectuals, at a time when anti-Semitism was on the rise. By the time Eric Ross and I arrived in Vienna, anti-Semitism had not only risen, it had arrived—and it was intractable. It was also much more vulgar than my encounters with it in Schnitzler.
    Witness Georg’s meeting with Willy Eissler in the Stadtpark. It is
subtly
uncomfortable how Willy defends his Jewishness. He says: “The fact that I once had differences with Captain Ladisc cannot keep me from observing that he’s always been a drunken pig. I have an insurmountable revulsion, irredeemable even by blood, against people who associate with Jews when it’s to their advantage, but who begin to revile them as soon as they’re outside on the steps.
    One could at least wait until one got to the coffeehouse.”
    Later, Baron von Wergenthin reflects that “he found it almost strange, as he often had before, that Willy was Jewish. The older Eissler, Willy’s father, composer of charming Viennese waltzes and songs, distinguished art and antique collector and sometime dealer, with his giant’s physique, had been known in his time as the foremost boxer in Vienna, and, with his long, full, gray beard and monocle, resembled more a Hungarian magnate than a Jewish patriarch. But talent, dilettantism, and an iron will had given Willy the affected image of a born cavalier. But what really distinguished him from other young people of his background and aspirations was the fact that he was content not to renounce his heritage; he pursued an explanation or reconciliation for every ambiguous smile, and in the face of pettiness or prejudice, by which he often appeared to be affected, he refused to make light of it whenever possible.”
    By the time Eric Ross and I arrived in Vienna, the anti-Semitism had long been administered by means more severe than the “ambiguous smile”; it had degenerated to base thuggery—it was impossible “to make light of it.” Skinheads with swastika earrings, while not unusual, were not commonplace; what
were
commonplace were the shy citizens who looked away from the skinheads, pretending not to have seen them. As young, idealistic Americans, Eric and I could do no more than hold up a mirror to this inexplicable tolerance of intolerance. More than 30 years later, it is still a frequent topic of conversation between Eric and me: not simple intolerance but the tolerance of intolerance, which allows the intolerance to persist.
    Eric Ross went into the advertising business in Chicago; then he moved to Crested Butte, Colorado, where he was a ski patrolman and a folksinger for many years. Eric still lives in Crested Butte, where he is a tireless contributor (both as an actor and a director) to the Crested Butte Mountain Theatre; and he’s back writing ads again, when he’s not writing letters to me—he’s a most faithful correspondent. We try to see each other every year, together with our mutual best friend, David Warren. David is from Ithaca, New York—he was Eric’s and my nearly constant companion in Vienna, and the best student among us.
    Eric had the best motorcycle—a German Horex. However, the Horex lacked a