The Voyage by Murray Bail Read Free Book Online Page B

of snow.” He felt he had to say something. “Every year in our winter, plane-loads of Swiss and Austrian ski-instructors fly in, and work the ski resorts, taking our women.” Again Delage wondered what he was doing in such a large room in Vienna, the strange impenetrable aspects of it. He could hear himself talking too much, as if he was talking to himself—one way of showing exasperation. And while he went on talking his eyes rested on Amalia von Schalla’s head and shoulders there in the front row, the refined gray-blond hair pulled together with an oval-shaped diamond clasp which seemed to flash signals back at him. To think that he had come to Europe with one and only one aim, to introduce to the world his new piano, a truly remarkable design, “if I do say so myself,” only to find his attention and therefore crucial energies drawn to the Austrian woman, a woman from the upper echelons, that was for sure, who had the softness to show some interest in him. Sun from the porthole divided her body at an angle. “My mother said you did not know anybody there, apart from her,” Elisabeth said in a vague sort of voice. She sat up, proud of her breasts. “Aren’t you pleased I went looking for you?” The music had stopped, the man in the bulging black T-shirt stepped forward without introduction, both he and his opinions being well known in Vienna, at least to the so-called intelligentsia, the cognoscenti, without notes, the much-feared music critic of the daily newspaper, squintedand began speaking in rasping German. “What’s he on about? I don’t understand a word he’s saying.” Leaning against him, she breathed into his ear as she translated. “To say that Austria is the land of neurosis is to say something we do not need to hear any more. It is what the English call ‘old hat.’ In the same basket I put the figure of the mediocre watercolorist, undoubtedly one of our most successful exports, the devotee of Tristan , who took his impotence and his many rejections and disappointments out on the world, and I won’t bother to mention, as a by-the-way, his sympathizers, still alive, prominent citizens, and doing well in Vienna . . .” The speaker took a few steps backward and forward. “There is a different malaise now, just as insidious. Europe is tired. This city we call Vienna is tired. A spiritual and artistic exhaustion is here. Vienna is a broad face with half-closed eyes, stone circles under the eyes. And the eyes are old man’s eyes. It has always been difficult producing something exceptional. It is more difficult now. Hemmed in on all sides our writers are crazed, become vitriolic, repetitious, misanthropic, anti-state, catch alight. We all have our heroes who have committed suicide. Here every artistic endeavor shifts forward, then gets caught up in the circles.” From the front row Berthe Clothilde turned to her audience, smiling for their approval. It is always interesting to hear somebody attack their place of birth, the interpreter could have been smiling as she kept her mouth close to Delage’s ear. “The future is in other places. There are questions you should be asking. You are a pampered, complacent, self-satisfied, half-asleep lot who don’t care—see the way yousit smiling at me! You are satisfied with what you know, and nothing more. You think that is enough. It is not. It is not enough. All it means is you are not sufficiently new. You are facing the other direction. Isn’t it time to look and listen beyond where you are? Wearing jewelry and silk neckties are in themselves not enough. You dress up and attend concerts, and the opera of course, always the opera, but you no longer listen. You are into repeats. Take up embroidery instead.” This was more or less what Frank Delage had been saying for years to anyone who would listen, be open to the new, although the Austrian expressed it better, much better. Under the flattering light of the chandelier, the overweight