The Piano Teacher: A Novel Read Free Page B

anything but chic. Some get out before they have even sat down properly.
    If mass anger orders her to get out, even if she is still far from home, her own anger, concentrated in her fist, yields obediently, and she actually gets out—but only to wait patientlyfor the next trolley, which is as certain to come as the amen at the end of a prayer. These are chains that never break. Then, all fueled up, she mounts a new assault. Bristling with instruments, she arduously staggers into the mobs of homebound workers, detonating among them like a fragmentation bomb. If need be, she hides her true feelings and says, “Pardon me, I’m getting off here.” The approval is unanimous. She should leave the clean public vehicle at once! It’s not meant for people like her! Paying passengers shouldn’t let people get away with things like this.
    They look at the music student and imagine that music has raised her spirits; but the only thing that’s raised is her fist. Sometimes a gray young man with repulsive things in a threadbare haversack is unjustly accused, for he is a more likely culprit. He’d better get out and go back to his friends before he catches it from a powerful loden-sheathed arm.
    The mass anger, which has, after all, paid its fare, is always in the right for its three schillings and can prove it in case the tickets are inspected. During a surprise inspection the mass anger proudly shows its marked ticket and has the trolley car all to itself. In this way, it saves itself weeks of unpleasant, fearful purgatory, wondering whether an inspector might come.
    A lady, who feels pain as deeply as you do, suddenly shrieks. Somebody’s kicked her shin, that vital part on which her weight partially rests. In this dangerous shoving and pushing, the culprit, true to the principle of guilt, cannot be determined. The crowd is battered with a barrage of oaths, curses, insults, complaints, entreaties, accusations. The laments pour out of mouths that vent their spleen over their owners’ lives, the charges are discharged upon other people. The passengers are squeezed together like sardines, but they are not packed in oil. They won’t be anointed until later.
    SHE furiously kicks a hard bone, which belongs to a man. One day, SHE is with a fellow student, a girl, who has two wonderful high heels that blaze as two eternal flames, and a new fur-lined coat in the latest style. The girl amiably asks Erika: What are you dragging around, what’s it called? I meant this case here, and not your head up there. It’s called a viola, SHE replies politely. A viooola? What a weird word, I’ve never heard it, lipstick-coated lips say in amusement. Someone carries something called a viooola, which doesn’t serve any noticeable purpose. And everyone has to get out of the way because this viooola takes up so much space. SHE walks around with it in public, and no one catches her
in flagrante delicto.
    The people hanging heavily from the straps and those few lucky devils who can sit—they all crane their necks high out of their used-up torsos, but it’s no use, they spot no one. There’s no one they can gang up on for maltreating their legs with a hard object. “Someone stepped on my toes,” and a deluge of foul language gushes from a mouth. Who did it? The First Viennese Trolley Court, infamous throughout the world, is in session in order to issue a warning and pass a sentence. In every war movie, there’s always at least one person who volunteers, even if it’s for a suicide mission. But this cowardly dog is hiding behind our patient backs. A whole batch of ratty workers, on the verge of retirement, with tool bags on their shoulders, shove and kick their way out of the trolley. They’re deliberately walking to the next stop! When a ram disturbs the peace and quiet among all the sheep in the car, then you desperately need fresh air, and you find it outside. If you’re going to chew out your wife at home, you have to have oxygen; otherwise