Blue Self-Portrait

the girl, turns and returns to his faithful accompaniment, with the ease of habit at last allows himself to be led towards a table near the great bay window, chooses a place with his back to the girl, facing the black trees. He has the idea of ordering a tall blended whisky on the rocks and is to be found shortly after, holding his glass and swirling the ice, there with his everyday company deep in vast solitude, the very kind that holds nothing for him, he’ll realize that this solitude has done nothing and never will do anything for him. Better with his usual accompaniment than with the girl who understands without feminine decorum, he thinks, tries to convince himself, looks out gloomily at the black trees, this is how he should be, much better to be accompanied than understood, much much better. He lays his jacket over the back of the chair and sits as if on a piano stool, he’s never known how to lean back, wouldn’t refuse to lean back if he had to but has long ago forgotten the possibility of leaning back, feels relaxed straight-backed like this, sleeves rolled up as in spring, plays his part in a laidback conversation that helps digest their guided tour of music and the Third Reich, the meal is pleasant, the food exceptional. The gleaming and beautiful trout presents to eye and knife an extraordinary flesh, the white burgundy, ideally chilled, felicitously accompanies the sweetness of life in company. At this juncture in the pleasure of his usual accompaniment the pianist mentions the Blue Self-Portrait by Schoenberg, can’t he talk about anything else, a self-portrait he hardly knew anything about, discovered at the exhibition, a painting which, he says again, ‘particularly struck’ him, can’t he say anything else, in this expression dissolving away the Blue Self-Portrait which strikes nothing at all, it’s enough to call the Blue Self-Portrait a particularly striking work just once to be rid of said Blue Self-Portrait, he remarks to himself with a tacit cheerless irony, but time marches on, the pianist gives the accompaniment a sign they should leave, going back past the girl’s table he will not stop again, twice would be once too many, will devote himself to the future both near and distant, the schedule that drives him, he is aware, his open-cast mine of a career, smashing the resonant ore, his career and nothing but the mineral in the open air, that weighs on him at times, rarely, like a tragic destiny.

I’m all fired up, my sister said, I saw so many things in Berlin, I heard so much music in Berlin, I got so so many replies and also came up with so so many brand-new questions that you see me now full to bursting. I’ve such an urge to play the violin you can’t imagine. I shall jump on my violin soon as we’re at the airport, I’ll work like a nutter and my feet shan’t touch the ground, I’ve a maniac energy for music, I’ve such an urge to work I could easily get my violin out right here in the plane, straight away, it’s such torture waiting for landing. Do you think it would bother anyone if I got my violin out in here? my sister asked quite capable of doing it. My sister could play the violin in a plane, she played the recorder in front of the Bauhaus Archiv, wanted, in front of the Bauhaus Archiv entrance, to go straight into a bird-and-recorder duet and did it, played the recorder with the sole aim of holding this free public duet with bird, although without her violin but luckily with that medieval school-supply instrument shaped for collective happiness, had begun this passerine improvisation, she’d said, without sheet music or rehearsal, in front of the Bauhaus Archiv, without the least shame but with passion, moved as my sister often is, since she was little, this is how she’ll behave, absence of shame—and passion. Violin she’d certainly have played if she’d had a violin with her, the recorder was better than nothing and perfect for the bird, she plays violin sitting beside the other violinists following the score and in her row, she plays in several symphony orchestras and directed by several conductors, but also plays the violin anywhere at all and when the desire takes her and directed by no one, but in the end did not get it out in the plane. I’ll wait, my sister said, till we’ve landed because if I’m playing the violin I can’t enjoy the plane to the full. Like all pilots airline pilots are nutters, said my sister, they’ve all blown fuses in their brains, otherwise they couldn’t be airline pilots, you don’t become an airline pilot by accident, you have to be completely loopy from the start to want to be a pilot, even an airline one. You’ve got to have quite a few screws loose to do that job now I think about it, and my sister set to thinking about what it might mean to be an airline pilot, went deep into the poetry of this technical idea. I was relieved that she’d given up on pulling out her violin, I wasn’t in the mood for musical antics, I took music seriously with Adorno on one knee and Mann answering him from the other one, with the pair of them on my wobbly knees and moreover the pianist who went on making me bellow in silence, no really I wasn’t in the mood to listen to my sister playing the violin on the plane. Don’t imagine I had any problem with my sister, I’ve never had any trouble with her behavior in general or her violinist’s exploits in particular, I went through the same education as my sister and recognize the same deleterious impact on her, I’ve adopted a lenient attitude to that education, in any case towards its effects on my sister, although I