The Road to the Open

by Arthur Schnitzler

"He's in Athens," replied George, "I've heard from him twice, not yet in any great detail.... How strange it is, Herr Doctor, coming back as a stranger to a town where one was at home a short time ago, and staying at an hotel as a gentleman from Detmold!..."

Doctor Stauber got into his carriage. George asked him to give his very best regards to Frau Golowski.

"I'll tell her. And I wish you all further success, my dear Baron. Goodbye."

It was five by the Stephanskirche clock. George was faced with an empty hour. He decided to stroll slowly into the suburb in the thin tepid autumn rain. He had scarcely slept at all in the train and he had been at the Rosners' two hours after his arrival. Anna herself had opened the door to him, greeted him with an affectionate kiss, and quickly taken him into the room, where her parents welcomed him with more politeness than sincerity. The mother, who preserved her usual embarrassed and slightly injured tone, did not say much. The father, sitting in the corner of the ottoman, with a blue-coloured rug over his knees, felt it incumbent on him to inquire about the social and musical conditions of the little capital from which George had come. Then he had remained alone awhile with Anna. They first exchanged question and answer with undue quickness, and subsequently endearments, which were both flat and awkward, and they both seemed disappointed that they did not feel the happiness of seeing each other again with anything like the intensity which their love had given them to expect. Very soon a pupil of Anna's put in an appearance. George took his leave and hurriedly arranged an appointment for the evening with his mistress. He would fetch her from Bittner's and then take her to the opera to see the performance of Tristan.

He had then taken his midday meal by the big window of a restaurant in the Ringstrasse, made purchases and given orders at his tradesmen's, looked up Heinrich, whom he did not find at home, and finally, obeying a sudden idea, decided to pay his "return-thanks" visit to Doctor Stauber. He now walked on slowly through the streets which he knew so well and which already seemed to have an atmosphere of strangeness; and he thought of the town from which he came and in which he was feeling at home far more quickly than he had expected. Count Malnitz had received him with great kindness from the very first moment. He had the plan of reforming the opera in accordance with modern ideas and wanted to win George to him, so the latter thought, as a collaborator and friend in his far-reaching projects. For the first conductor, excellent musician no doubt though he might be, was nowadays more of a court official than an artist. He had been appointed when he was five-and-twenty and had now been stationed in the little town for thirty years, a paterfamilias with six children, respected, contented and without ambition. Soon after his arrival George heard songs sung at a concert which a long time ago had spread the fame of the young conductor throughout almost the whole world. George was unable to understand the impression produced by these quite out-of-date pieces, but none the less warmly complimented the composer with a kindly sympathy for the ageing man in whose eyes there seemed to shine the distant glamour of a richer and more promising past. George frequently asked himself if the old conductor still thought of the fact that he had once been taken for a man who was destined to go far, and whether he, like so many other of the inhabitants, regarded the little town as a hub from which the rays of influence and of fame fell far around. George had only found in a few any desire for a larger and more complex sphere of activity; it often seemed to him as though they rather treated him with a kind of good-natured pity because he came from a great town, and in particular from Vienna. Whenever the name of that town was mentioned in front of people George noticed in their smug and somewhat sarcastic manner that almost as regularly as harmonies accompany the bass, certain other words would be immediately switched into the conversation, even though they were not specifically mentioned: waltzes ... café ... süsses Mädel[2] ... grilled chicken ... fiacre ... parliamentary scandal. George was often irritated by this and made up his mind to do all he could to improve his countrymen's reputation in Detmold. He had been asked to come because the third conductor, a quite young man, had suddenly died, and so George, on the very first day, had to sit at the piano in the little rehearsal-room and perform singing accompaniments. It went off excellently. He rejoiced in his gifts, which were stronger and surer than he had himself hoped, and it seemed to him, so far as he could recollect, that Anna had slightly underestimated his talent. Apart from this he threw himself more seriously into his compositions than he had ever done before. He worked at an overture which had originated out of the motifs of Bermann's opera. He had begun a violin sonata, and the mythical quintette, as Else had called it once, was nearly finished. It was going to be performed this very winter in one of the Court soirées, which were under the direction of the deputy-conductor of the Detmold orchestra, a talented young man, the only person in fact in his new home with whom George had so far become at all intimate, and with whom he was accustomed to take his meals at the "Elephant."

George still inhabited a fine room in this inn, with a view on to the big square planted with lindens, and from day to day put off taking an apartment. He was quite uncertain whether he would be still in Detmold next year and he also had the feeling that it would be bound to wound Anna, if he were to do anything which looked like settling down as a bachelor for any length of time. Yet he had said no word in his letters to her about any of the prospects of the future, just as she, on her side, left off addressing to him doubting or impatient questions. They practically only communicated to each other actual facts. She wrote of her gradual return into her old groove of life, and he of all the new surroundings among which he must first settle down. Although there was practically nothing which he had to keep from her, he made a special point of slurring over many things that might easily lead to a misunderstanding. How was one to express in words the strange atmosphere which permeated in the morning the rehearsals in the half-dark body of the theatre, when the odour of cosmetics, perfumes, dresses, gas, old wood and fresh paint came down from the stage to the stalls, when figures which one did not at first recognise hopped to and fro between the rows of seats in ordinary or stage dress, when some breath which was heavy and scented blew gently against one's neck? And how was one to describe a glance which flashed down from the eyes of a young singer while one looked up to her from the keys...? Or when one saw this young singer home through the Theaterplatz and the Königsstrasse in the broad light of noon and used the opportunity not merely to talk about the part of Micaela, which one had just been studying with her, but also about all kinds of other, though no doubt fairly innocent, things? Could one recount this to one's mistress in Vienna without her reading something suspicious between the lines? And even if one had laid stress on the fact that Micaela was engaged to a young doctor in Berlin who adored her as much as she did him it would scarcely have improved matters, for that would really have looked as though one felt obliged to answer and reassure.

How strange, thought George, that it is just this very evening that she is singing the Micaela which I practised with her, and that I am going here along this same road out to Mariahilf which I used to take a year ago so frequently and so gladly. He thought of a specific evening when he had fetched Anna from out there, walked about with her in the quiet streets, looked at funny photographs in a doorway and finally walked with her on the cool stone flags of an ancient church, in a soft but how ominous conversation about an unknown future.... And now all had turned out quite differently to what he had hoped—quite differently.... Why did it strike him like that?... What had he anticipated then at that time?... Had not the year that had just passed been wonderfully rich and beautiful with its happiness and its grief? And did he not love Anna to-day better and more deeply than ever? And had he not frequently yearned for her in that fresh town as hotly as though for a woman who had never yet belonged to him? To-day's early meeting with its flat and awkward endearments in the sinister atmosphere of a grey hour really ought not to lead him astray....

He was at the appointed place. When he looked up to the lighted windows, behind which Anna was giving her lesson, a slight emotion came over him, and when she came out of the door the next minute, in a simple English dress and a grey felt hat on her rich dark blonde hair, holding a book in her hand, just as she had appeared a year ago, an unexpected feeling of happiness suddenly streamed over him. She did not see him at once, for he was standing in the shadow of a house. She opened her umbrella and went as far as the corner where she had been in the habit of waiting for him the previous year. He gazed at her for a while and was glad that she looked so fine and distinguished. Then he followed her quickly, and caught her up in a few strides. She informed him at once that she could not go to the opera with him. Her father had been taken ill this afternoon.

George was very disappointed. "Won't you at any rate come with me for the first act?"

She shook her head. "No, I am not very keen on that sort of thing. It is much better for you to give the seat to some friend. Go and fetch Nürnberger or Bermann."