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CHAPTER 1

Friday 7 July 1939

I hate Fridays. Fillet of cod and boiled potatoes. The custodian's son went to buy me half a pound of saveloy on the quiet. I feast on it in my room. Outside, it's gray, with a dull light.

I never kept a diary in the old days. I'm not sure it's such a good idea now.

* * *

I put a Caruso record on the phonograph just before my afternoon nap. Keeping the volume down. Vesti la giubba e la faccia infarina, la gente paga, e rider vuole qua ... It's the best recording. Not at all nasal. The needle glides over the grooves, caresses the wax. The horn vibrates but Caruso's voice stays firm.

My chest hurts. It makes the whole upper part of my body feel tight, like cramp.

Sunday 16 July 1939

It's Sunday. It's been a bad week. From every point of view. But today, the courtyard is filled with radiant sunlight.

The preparations for the festival are in full swing. I'd love to take a walk as far as the Festspielhaus. But I don't know if my lungs will hold out.

* * *

What a wonderful day! I had a drink by the river. The surface of the Salzach rippled in the breeze. The white wine went to my head. I didn't have the strength to go all the way to the old town. The fronts of the houses are already covered in flags that flap in the wind. They say the Führer is going to put in a brief appearance. He may even attend one of the concerts.

Tuesday 25 July 1939

Hans came to see me. He brought me some tickets. He's adamant that I make an effort. Two or three articles. The coming festival has put new life into me. The medicines knock me out. I threw them in the garbage cans next to the kitchens. Without anybody seeing me.

After Hans left, I went down to the dayroom to have a cup of tea. I don't go there often. I don't like seeing the others, the sick. They're all decrepit. And unshaven. I avoid talking to them. What would we talk about anyway?

There was nobody there except two old men bent over a wireless set that was blaring out military marches interspersed with short items of news. I asked them to turn down the volume. They refused. I stood up and switched off the wireless myself. They didn't even react.

By the time I got back up to my room, I was in a bad mood.

Thursday 27 July 1939

They took Sapperstein away this morning. The gauleiter is cleaning up the city for the festival, before the distinguished guests arrive. They came into the canteen at breakfast time and whispered a few words in his ear, politely. Sapperstein stood up and limped out after them, without saying goodbye to anyone. I wonder who could have tipped them off. I must remain on my guard.

Nobody here suspects my ancestry. All the same, I went to the town hall just before noon, to be on the safe side. My birth certificate doesn't mention my father's religion. But there is my sister Gertrude and her Jewish husband. I've no idea what's become of them. They left all of a sudden, without warning. For America, I think.

Monday 31 July 1939

The custodian's son has brought back my suit from the dry cleaner's and I've polished my best shoes. It's all very exciting. I strut in front of the mirror. I've bought a cream to look less pale. It makes me seem oddly younger. And a ribbon for my typewriter.

I'm feeling fine. I drink lots of tea.

Tuesday 1 August 1939

At lunchtime, the grand opening of the festival was announced over the radio. Minister Goebbels has come specially. Hans hasn't been able to get me a ticket for the gala evening. I opened the window of the dayroom to hear the fanfares, the sirens of the official motorcade, the cars hooting their horns in the distance. It was like another world. But a nurse came running, closed the window, and told me off. Is she afraid our germs will escape and contaminate the Great Reich? Then I saw the two old men from the other day, sniggering. So this was how they'd got their revenge, by complaining to the staff. One of them shook so much with laughter that he started coughing very loudly, almost choking. He couldn't breathe. Well done! He was the one who'd asked for the window to remain shut.

I didn't go down for the evening meal. I had no wish to see the other patients all shriveled up in their pajamas or dressing gowns. I donned full evening dress, with a silk handkerchief in my breast pocket, if you please. I put Der Rosenkavalier on the phonograph and closed my eyes, imagining the auditorium, the uniforms, the men in tails, the women in their furs and their jewelry, the orchestra tuning up. I even held my pencil between my fingers and pretended I was smoking a cigar. And then I fell into a very deep sleep. Now, it's three o'clock in the morning. The silence scares me. I don't want to die. Not in the middle of the Festspiele.

I think about Maria, about mother and father, and about all those who are gone, who died before all this started. What about my son? He's stopped writing. If he sends me a letter from Palestine, I'll be questioned, perhaps even arrested. I have nobody left. I live surrounded by dying men, bad-tempered nurses, dashing soldiers, busy civilians, alone, in the wings. I'm not on stage anymore. Everything is gradually disappearing. And will never return.

Monday 14 August 1939

I've just come back from the concert, exhausted. I can hardly breathe, but I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Die Entführung aus dem Serail, conducted by Karl Böhm, in a production by Völker. Kautsky and Ulrich Roller also took part in the venture, which will go down in history. What style! Mozart has never been performed like that before. It was brilliant. Powerful. Astonishing!

Adolf Hitler was there. With Bormann and Speer. In the royal box. I had to crane my neck to see them. He isn't very tall. He was half hidden by the rail. There were guards everywhere. Soldiers in full dress uniform around the auditorium and on the stairs, and hundreds more soldiers in battledress outside. Men in plain clothes checking the invitations. Police officers in the cloakroom, in the foyer bar, outside the toilets. You get used to them always being in the background. There are so many of them. Mostly young. They stand very straight, without saying a word, without disturbing anyone. Plunged into darkness along with the rest of us as soon as the curtain rises.

When the performance starts, the presence of the Führer is palpable. It hovers over the auditorium. But before long, the sumptuousness of the sets, the intensity of the sound, the genius of the music, carry everyone away. Into a sublime region. I took notes discreetly, with my notebook on my lap. Usually, I can detect the slightest wrong note. The smallest scraping of bow on string jars on my eardrums. Tonight, everything sounded perfect. Was it because I'm sick?

At the intermission, I found I was unable to stand. My handwriting is shaky. The seats next to me were empty. Nobody I could ask for a glass of water. I thought the performance would never start again. Music keeps me going. It's the only thing I have left.

Hitler didn't reappear until the lights had gone down again, preceded by his bodyguards. I looked up at his box, and started to wonder. A clash of cymbals made me jump. I was reminded of Stendhal: "a pistol shot in the middle of a concert." I don't have a pistol.

Very tired. This evening was much too stimulating for a sick man. A cold shower of sound and color that makes your head spin. I envy those who can breathe deeply, who can walk without difficulty. The world belongs to them. All they have to do is hold out their hands. Parades, public holidays, military balls, walks in the forest. All these things are forbidden me now. Yet I was like them once. When I was in good health, normal. And then, all at once, I was proscribed, marked. By disease. From one day to the next. Contaminated. Not good for very much anymore. Useless.

Hitler's right. People like me are dead weights, parasites.

* * *

People like me.

Friday 18 August 1939

Fillet of cod, boiled potatoes. I had two spoonfuls. God, how bland it is. I remembered Sapperstein, who wouldn't touch pork.

* * *

Hans didn't publish my article, claiming a lack of space. He was expecting me to find fault with the excess of Teutonic grandiloquence. It's true there was a kind of Wagnerian exaggeration in the interpretation. Too dramatic. Mozart is more subtle than that. More fluid. I got carried away by the percussion, the vigorous sounds of the horn and the oboes, Böhm's fiery conducting. And even the braggadocio of the flags and the uniforms. Like everyone.

I could have made a passing reference to Austrian reserve and good taste, the little nods that Mozart makes to the informed spectator in between the big effects intended for the general public. But the whole of the press is calling it a masterpiece, praising the glory of our culture, cheering our music-loving soldiers. So why should I stand out for my acerbic comments? That kind of criticism is unfashionable these days. And it's risky.

* * *

The chest pains have started up again. I can't get to sleep. The first rays of the sun burn my eyes. I ought to close the shutters. No, that would be even more confining.

The pain is becoming less specific. It's spreading like water in the hold of a ship. It makes my limbs go numb. I have less and less strength to resist the currents.

Thursday 24 August 1939

I was very surprised that the Party should authorize a production of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme by Strauss and Hofmannsthal. Because of the subject. And also because of the dubious nature of this new staging. I had the privilege to attend the very first performance in Vienna, some twenty years ago, superbly conducted by Richard Strauss himself. How can one compare such an artistic event with the awful pastiche I had to suffer through at the Stadttheater yesterday?

Heinz Hilpert doesn't even look like a conductor. He holds himself like a drill sergeant, too close to the rostrum. He seems to be haranguing the musicians, as if trying to shake them up instead of leading them. He over-emphasizes the baroque sonorities during the minuets, slaughtering Lully, and when he really ought to show a strong grip, in the ballets or the duels, he slackens off.

I almost left before the end, and not because I was tired. But I go out all too rarely to cut short one of the few evenings when I can mingle with the crowd, stroll about the circles without anyone wanting to put me to bed or give me an injection. Few people understand the delights of being like everyone else. For a pariah like me, it's intoxicating. The pleasure of passing unobserved, of melting into the anonymous mass of those who have the right to carry on living. Of letting oneself be carried along with the flow. It's as if one were suddenly accepted. Without displaying one's condition. Without a sign on one's chest saying: PATIENT.

But Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme? What an unfortunate choice. Dangerous, even. Isn't that strutting lout with his aristocratic pretentions, that self-important Monsieur Jourdain who shouts and screams to sound like an orator, just a bit like Hitler?

I hadn't seen an audience laugh so heartily for a very long time. Nobody seemed to be making the connection, even though it was staring them in the face. Even the grimaces, the emphatic gestures. The bursts of temper.

But there's nothing amusing about Monsieur Jourdain. Hasn't he finally gained the upper hand over those who made fun of him? It's his caste that's leading the world now. For a thousand years! In any case, I didn't have any desire to laugh. Laughing leaves me breathless.

So I didn't write anything flattering about the performance. A colleague of mine came out with quite a different analysis. He compared that grotesque bourgeois with a Jewish capitalist. According to him, Molière chose the name of the unsavory fellow specifically to condemn those yokels from the banks of the Jordan who want to monopolize everything with their money and think they can hide their hideous appearance beneath their frock coats and top hats and silk ties. They get in everywhere. Even the army, like Dreyfus. But they don't fool anyone. Especially not Mozart, he concluded.

Saturday 26 August 1939

Dr. Müller is very angry with me. He says my excursions are endangering my health and especially the health of the others. Yesterday, he ordered a chest X-ray. My lungs are swarming with germs. He showed me the patches on the negative. It's very contagious. He threatens me with an ablation if I don't behave myself. He treats me like a naughty child.

I thank my father every day for not having me circumcised. Dr. Müller is a great admirer of National Socialism. He examines me once a week, from top to bottom. Was he the one who informed on Sapperstein? To avoid trouble?

* * *

What if I had coughed at the concert, beneath the royal box, spreading my germs everywhere ...

Monday 28 August 1939

The Festspiele has been cut short. There was a brief, rather curt announcement on the wireless. A whole week has been cancelled. The closing concert, scheduled for 8 September, won't now take place, apparently because the Vienna Philharmonic has to travel to Nuremberg to perform Die Meistersinger at the Party Congress. It's scandalous. Appalling!

* * *

Signed a standing order so that I don't have to keep going to the bank. The treasurer of the sanitarium has given me a discount. If I die, the sanitarium's management committee will be my executor. It will take care of the formalities. And pocket all the money. Dieter is hardly going to come back from Palestine and raise an objection. I said he was in America, pursuing his studies. In Maine. The treasurer didn't even ask me for his address. In any case, there's not much left in my account. And the rent I get for my small apartment just about covers the cost of my board and lodging. The rest goes on the treatment. My tenants are a nice young couple. He's a train driver, I think. His wife works from home as a seamstress. They've never come to see me. Well, as long as they pay their rent on time ...

It's all a question of what holds out longer, my lungs or my wallet.

* * *

Thursday 31 August 1939

A patient showed me a newspaper article about bacterial infections. Apparently, a German scientist has discovered a treatment that can cure some kinds of tuberculosis. Dr. Müller says it's too soon to talk about it. The discovery is a recent one, and needs to be tested. The pharmaceutical companies are overwhelmed with commissions from the government for other products that are more urgent. And that also need testing.

In any case, the development of this new medicine may well be delayed because of something that strikes me as absurd. Something that has nothing to do with medical matters. The scientist in question, Gerhard Domagk, is in serious trouble with the authorities because he's been awarded the Nobel Prize this year. For this particular discovery, as it happens. Even though it's strictly forbidden for any German citizen to accept the prize since the Swedes have given it to opponents of the National Socialist regime. And to Jews. That's the way they decide things now.

Friday 1 September 1939

This morning, the armies of the Reich invaded Poland. A surprise attack. Now it's clear why the gauleiter cut short the Festspiele by a week.

I remember my war. Especially the noise. The cannon fire, the yelling of the officers, the neighing of the horses. And the menacing silence at night, just before dawn. But that was something else, the Great War. It lasted four years!

* * *

I've just come back from the canteen. The others irritate me. They're all worked up. They talk about troop movements, and panzers. They pass the newspaper around. There's a map of the combat zone on the front page. They're delighted. As if this offensive had anything at all to do with us. Who cares about Poland?

* * *

I didn't even glance at the daily paper. I prefer the news in brief on the wireless. One sentence per subject, short and sharp. This morning, the German armies invaded Poland. That's all you need. I should write my memoirs in the same concise, telegraphic style. Didn't go down to the canteen this evening. Reread beginning of Werther.

The silence of my room comforts me for once. After all the commotion. I'm really pleased that I'm no longer part of all that.

Sunday 3 September 1939

Bad day. Coughing like an old man. Unable to stop. The tea burns my throat. When it's cold, it makes me nauseous.

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Excerpted from "Saving Mozart"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Actes Sud.
Excerpted by permission of Europa Editions.
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