The Maimed Read online

  Praise:

  Originally published in 1923 and accurately described by Thomas Mann as depicting "a sexual hell," The Maimed is also one of the most provocative novels I have ever read.

  — Los Angeles Times

  ... a sexual hell, full of filth, crime and the deepest melancholy—a monomaniacal digression, if you will, but nevertheless the digression of an inwardly pure artistry, which one might hope will mature into a less one-sided view and representation of life and humanity.

  — Thomas Mann

  ... great and terrible, alluring and repulsive—unforgettable, although one would like to forget it and flee the evil sense of oppression it creates.

  — Stefan Zweig

  The Maimed is a fascinating novel, rich in symbolism, rife with grievous suffering, and permeated with psychological torture ... Kevin Blahut's translation is exceptional given the many nuances that exist in Prague German.

  — Slavic and East European Journal

  Ungar's The Maimed captures the suffocatingly claustrophobic life of Franz Polzer, a life haunted by lies, deceit, brutality, blackmail, and physical and moral coruption.

  — The Education Digest

  This is an absolutely riveting tale.

  — RALPH

  David Lynch and Patrick McCabe fans will fall right into this marvelously dark and psychotically twisted tale. It is a maniacal blend of sadism mixed with the vivid portrayal of an individual's descent into psychosis and his perceptions of the equally insane world around him: Blue Velvet meets Butcher Boy.

  — NewPages

  Hermann Ungar

  The Maimed

  Translated from the German by Kevin Blahut

  Twisted Spoon Press

  Prague

  Copyright © 2002 by Twisted Spoon Press

  English translation copyright © 2002 by Kevin Blahut

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be used or reproduced in any form, except in the context of reviews, without written permission from the Publisher.

  Originally published in German as Die Verstümmelten (Berlin: Ernst Rowohlt, 1923)

  “Fragment” first appeared in Vers und Prosa, 1, no. 5 (Berlin, 1924): 177-180.

  Cover by Pavel Rut

  First published in English in March 2002 by

  Twisted Spoon Press

  P.O. Box 21 – Preslova 12

  150 21 Prague 5, Czech Republic

  www.twistedspoon.com

  ISBN 978-80-86264-13-4 (illustrated paperback)

  ISBN 978-80-86264-71-4 (e-book)

  The Maimed

  Since his twentieth year Franz Polzer had been a clerk in a bank. Every morning at quarter to eight he would go to his office, never a minute earlier or later. When he stepped from the side street where he lived, the clock in the tower would strike three times.

  During the entire time Franz Polzer had been a clerk, he had changed neither his position nor his apartment. He had moved into the apartment after giving up his studies and entering his profession. The woman from whom he rented the apartment was a widow, about as old as he was. She was in the year of mourning for her husband when he moved in with her.

  In the many years of his time as a clerk Franz Polzer had never been on the street in the late morning, except on Sundays. He had forgotten what the city was like during the day, when shops are open and hurrying people are pushing each other on the streets. He had never missed a day at the bank.

  The streets through which he walked in the morning offered the same picture every day. In the shops the shutters were being pulled up. The workers stood in front of the doors, waiting for their bosses. Every day he met the same people, schoolgirls and schoolboys, tired female clerks, ill-tempered men who were hurrying to their offices. He walked behind them, the people of his daytime, as hurriedly, thoughtlessly, and unnoticed as one of them.

  People had predicted that, because of his talents, Franz Polzer would attain a leading position in his profession through diligence and perseverance. The entire time he had never considered that, basically, the hopes he had attached to his career had not been fulfilled. He had forgotten these thoughts. He forgot them in all the small tasks that had carved up his time since the very beginning. He would get up in the morning, wash, get dressed, glance at the paper while still eating his breakfast, and set off for the bank. He would sit at his desk, on which piles of papers had been heaped. These had to be compared with the entries in the books in the shelves around him. Every sheet that he had checked over, he marked with his initials and then put in a folder. Around him in the room and in the cubicles many other men and women sat at desks that looked exactly like his. The smell of these men and women, the sound of their monotonous occupation and conversations, pervaded the whole building. Franz Polzer was completely suited to his occupation. It offered no occasion for distinction, and thus also no opportunity for attracting the attention of his superiors.

  At midday he would eat at a small tavern near the bank. The afternoon passed like the late morning. At six p.m. he would organize the papers and pencils on his desk, lock his drawer, and go home. The widow would bring him a simple dinner in his small room. He would remove his shoes, jacket and shirt-collar. After dinner he would read the paper thoroughly for one hour. Then he would lie down to sleep. He slept badly. But he seldom dreamt. When he did dream, he dreamt that he had forgotten his initials, which he had to write hundreds of times every day, or that his hand was paralyzed, or that his pencil would not write.

  In the morning, Polzer would get up like every other morning, and begin his day, which passed like every other day. He was sullen and morose, but it never occurred to him that there could also be something else besides sitting at his place in the bank every day, that it was possible to get up later, go for a walk through the streets, to eat two eggs in a glass for breakfast in a café and eat lunch in a good restaurant.

  Among the interruptions of this monotony, one had made a particular impression on Polzer. This was the death of his father.

  Polzer had never been close to his father. What probably contributed to this was that Polzer’s mother had died soon after his birth. Maybe she would have been able to mitigate some of the conflicts. His father was a small shopkeeper in a country town. Polzer’s room was attached to his father’s shop. His father was a stern, hard-working, unapproachable man. From his early boyhood Franz Polzer had to help his father in the shop, and hardly any time remained for him to do his homework. Nevertheless his father demanded that he get good grades. Once when Polzer had a bad mark, his father refused to give him dinner for four weeks. At the time Polzer had been seventeen.

  One of his father’s sisters lived in the house, a childless widow, who had moved in with his father in order to manage the housekeeping after Polzer’s mother had died. Polzer had the murky idea that his father’s sister had forced his dead mother out of the house, and from the very first moment had opposed her with undisguised aversion. His aunt also made no secret of her feelings for him. She called him a bad boy who would never amount to anything in the world, dismissed him as gluttonous and lazy. She gave him so little to eat that he was forced to have an extra key made to her cupboard, and at night to steal secretly in his father’s house.

  A problem resulted from this, which can only be spoken of with great reserve. At the time Polzer was fourteen years old and had the easily excited imagination of boys, which is further stimulated by hate. Of the relations between man and woman he had no other idea than that it was something gruesome, in and of itself nauseating. The thought of a naked female body filled him with disgust. He had once entered his aunt’s room when she was washing. The image of her wilted upper body, her tiredly drooping flesh, made an impression on him that would not leave his memory. One night he was standing in the dark threshold of the shop, in front of the open bread cupboard, when the door to his aunt’s room opened. He pressed himself against the wall. His father stepped from the bright frame of the door, wearing a nightshirt. For a moment, behind him, the image of Polzer’s aunt appeared like a shadow. She bolted the door from the inside.

  His father walked right past him. His shirt was open, and even though it was dark Polzer thought he could see his hairy chest. For a moment he was brushed by the smell of fresh rolls that his father always took from the shop. Polzer held his breath and remained motionless long after the door of his father’s room had closed behind him.

  This experience awakened impressions in Polzer that would have lasting effects on his later life. Even though he had seen only his aunt’s shadow, he convinced himself that she had been naked. From then on he was haunted by the idea of the vile scenes that his father and his aunt must be acting out at night. Polzer had no other reasons for this suspicion than this one experience. And even later nothing occurred to clearly corroborate his opinion.

  Polzer spent his nights, until morning, without sleeping. He listened. He believed he could hear creaking doors and careful, tentative steps on the rotten floorboards of the old house. He emerged from a light slumber and felt that he had heard a suppressed cry. He was filled with bitter revulsion. At the same time, curiosity forced him to tiptoe past his aunt’s door at night. He could never hear anything but her breathing.

  Polzer’s father often beat him, and his aunt held him. In dreams his horror for the sight of his father was infinite; horror for his filthy clothes, his blunt, red dream-face. And behind this face he could see his aunt, encouraging his father to torment and beat him. When Polzer had such dreams, he wanted to be beaten again during the day. It was a
s though he needed to make everything true, also his hatred for his father, by actually feeling the blows of the heavy fists on his back. At the same time he felt that he was already an adult, but then he thought that he was weaker, much weaker than his father.

  A maid named Milka worked for the people who lived on the second floor of the house. She wore a loose blouse and often came to the shop. Once Polzer saw his father touch one of Milka’s breasts. That evening Polzer dropped a plate on the floor. His father beat him and his aunt dug her fingers into his lean flesh. He did not cry, and because of this his father beat him more severely. This is what Franz Polzer wanted.

  Whenever he had the opportunity, he would leave the shop and walk around the streets of the small town, just so that he did not have to be at home. He often spent the entire day in the house of a rich man named Fanta, whose son went to Gymnasium with him. A deep friendship bound him to Karl Fanta. At first Polzer had been reluctant to enter the Fantas’ house. He knew that the Jews had murdered the Savior and that they worshipped their God with dark, cruel customs. He thought it must be sinful and dangerous for a Roman Catholic to visit the house of a Jew. Milka told his aunt that she had worked for Jews before, and that she had run away before Easter. Because she had been afraid. Polzer was able to overcome his fear only gradually, through his love for Karl Fanta. Karl Fanta saw that Polzer was unhappy, and often both boys embraced, kissing each other while they cried.

  Polzer did not dare to open his heart to Karl Fanta. He grew up in the small, narrow house, in the dirty shop where he was forced to spend his free time between sacks of flour and pepper, pickle jars and boxes of candied fruit, asking insignificant people what they wanted, or sweeping the floor. He was ashamed of this shop. He was ashamed of his father, whose jacket was always covered with flour, who deferentially got out of the way when a rich bourgeois walked toward him. And he was ashamed of his aunt, who did not wear a hat, and whose black hair was slightly graying at the temples and disheveled by the wind. She also did not wear a kerchief on her head; one always saw the white line where her hair was parted, between the black hairs on the left and on the right. His friend’s mother was a large, dignified woman, who wore jewelry and dark clothes. She had a pale face with fine features, like her son, who bore a great resemblance to her. She also had black hair like his aunt, but it was combed into a crest. At her temples, as was the case with her son, one could see small, shimmering blue veins. The most beautiful thing about her, as with Karl, was her narrow white hands. Karl’s father was a corpulent gentleman, who spoke softly and deliberately, full of confidence and dignity. In this environment, in front of Karl, who was so beautiful, Polzer could say nothing about his father’s small shop.

  Polzer brushed his suit and pressed his pants under books. He wanted to look like a Gymnasium student from a bourgeois household and not like an old widower’s son. He concealed his hands, which were thick and red from his work in the shop, a habit that contributed to the impression of great uncertainty and awkwardness, which, even later, he never shook off. When a stranger was visiting Karl’s parents and quietly asked the master of the house about Franz Polzer, Polzer was aware that he blushed. It was as though this question were asked as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. Franz Polzer did not hear it; he felt it with an excessively sharpened inner ear.

  He wanted nothing more than to be from a good home. He blushed a long time afterward when someone asked him more specifically about his background. He always answered evasively. Sometimes he lied and said his father had been a Gymnasium teacher, or a judge. Once he even said that he was the son of an industrialist. In the next moment he felt the scrutinizing glance of the questioner glide over his suit, and, with humiliation, became aware of how wretched he looked.

  Karl Fanta’s father made it possible for him to attend the university in the capital. Polzer moved in with Karl. He decided to study medicine, while Karl studied law. Polzer was happy to have left home. He no longer had to see the shame of the shop before him, to obey his father’s strict commands, to see the part in his aunt’s hair and feel her words of abuse. From home he took a single memory that had always been dear to him: the memory of his mother. He had hardly known her. However, he believed he could remember that she had had him brought to her on her deathbed, where she lay with her hair undone. She pressed him to her and his hair became wet with her tears. This memory always warmed his heart. He fled from his aunt’s hate to his mother’s love, which grew in the same measure as his aversion for his aunt grew stronger.

  Polzer’s relationship with Karl was as intimate as such a relation between two young men of the same age could be. Polzer was happy to be able to live beside this beautiful young man, whose self-assurance and irreproachability he admired no less than the noble proportions of his body. Karl was always friendly to him, and Polzer felt a great need to be able to read Karl’s wishes from his eyes and help him in small ways. He prepared his linen for him and made sure that there was not a single speck of dust on Karl’s clothes. Karl had black hair that felt like silk. Despite his friendly confidences, Polzer often felt that Karl, inwardly, took no notice of him. He longed for a small show of tenderness, a repetition of those boyhood kisses. But this longing was not fulfilled.

  At the university people praised Polzer’s industry and intelligence. He passed the first preliminary examinations with excellent results. Then Karl became sick and the doctors sent him to the south, where he was supposed to stay for a year. No longer the companion of his rich friend, it was impossible for Polzer to continue his studies, and he was fortunate that Karl’s father found him a position in the bank.

  After a short time in the bank he became a different man. Everything melted away. Regularity, punctuality, and the inescapable certainty of the next day destroyed him. He became consumed in duties that carved up his time. In these seventeen years he had hardly ever met with anyone socially. Thus he became uncertain whenever he had to do something other than what he was accustomed to. If he had to talk to strangers, the words he was supposed to say would suddenly not come to him. He always had the feeling that his clothes were inappropriate, that they did not suit him, that they made him look ridiculous. The most minor irregularity confused him. In his room he also valued the most painful and familiar order. Every day the newspaper had to lie on exactly the same spot, parallel with the edges of the table. His pedantry went so far that he became annoyed when the curtain chords were not arranged equally in their length and did not lie bent in the right corner on the windowsill. Disgruntled, he arranged them properly.

  Franz Polzer had been working in the bank for ten years when his father died. The burial was on a Sunday, which meant that he would not have to miss a day at work. On Saturday afternoon he took a train out of the city.

  The day of the burial always remained Polzer’s most unpleasant memory. On the way there he couldn’t find a seat on the overcrowded train, and had to remain standing the whole time. His feet, unaccustomed to such exertion, hurt for days afterwards. He arrived in a bad mood and was greeted sullenly by his aunt, who probably believed that he had come to cause a dispute over his father’s shop. Despite the bitter winter cold, he found his room unheated. He slept on his old bed, tormented by bad dreams. In the morning no breakfast had been cooked for him. He found the idea of going to a tavern inappropriate, and had to remain hungry until the burial. People came whom he scarcely knew anymore. They shook hands with him. His aunt stood in the middle, beside his father’s body, laid out in state. Polzer stood like a stranger in a dark corner of the room.

  When the consecration began, he had to go to his aunt’s side. Now he saw his father for the first time. He was wearing a black jacket, which made folds over his chest. His hair had become completely gray. His face looked small and haggard. The sight of the body made no impression on Polzer. It affected him no differently than the sight of an unfamiliar object. He did not feel reminded of his father.