So you tolerate them. A kind of mutual complaisance develops: while they ecstatically inhale the ambrosia of their gods, one of whom is you, your nostrils suck in the sweat of their brows like a sacrificial smoke. And in this way, too, all sorts of bad manners evolve, don’t you agree? When one is with one’s own kind, one would never dream of thinking oneself better than anyone else. But if you’re incessantly surrounded by people who suck up to one person and snub another and make someone else realize that he is more than someone else or less than someone else or is doing something or other that is better or worse than what someone else is doing, or that he has more than other people or less than other people—yes indeed, then you too involuntarily start thinking about what you really are and do and have. And then it occurs to you that someone or other may be more or have more or do better things than you. He can be anyone and anything, a scientist or a nouveau riche or a film star . . . And then, of course, the whole thing blows up; you no longer have a society in which rank and fortune and kindred opinions and manners go hand in hand, you’ve got a motley crew consisting purely of people with nothing in common except that one talks about them, no matter why or in what terms, whether it’s because a man may be a prince or a jockey or an adventurer who hopes to break the bank at Monte Carlo—so long as people notice him. For, after all, that’s what snobs are all about: they want to be seen moving about quite casually among the noblest, the richest and the brightest and the best. And for this reason, of course, everyone has to know who they are. The snobs then make sure that the group keeps getting smaller and smaller and more and more exclusive. And anyone who doesn’t get fed up with taking part in this everlasting exhibition, or who doesn’t suddenly feel ashamed of having so much more than the others, and doesn’t withdraw, will, of course, do his best to belong to the select few and will show the others that he is and knows and has more than they—and thus the world will ultimately consist of nothing but snobs. But you know, when they first started hanging around us, the snobs, it was often very entertaining . . .”

23

Uncle Helmuth too is innocent in his fashion—namely, in the fashion of the damned. He is condemned to hate himself. He doesn’t realize it, of course. He thinks he hates others.

Uncle Helmuth feels challenged day in, day out, from above and from below and from all sides. He sings the loudest part in the chorus of those who have been given a dirty deal. Above him stand the rich, the plutocrats, the undeserving happy, free, frivolous. For them he doesn’t count; they look down their noses at him. He wants to hate them, but actually he gazes up at them in worship. He nurtures a childlike admiration for his factory director, who, until March 1938, played not only a leading role in Austrian industry but an even greater one in preparing the annexation of Austria to the Third Reich of our compatriot Adolf Hitler, and then of course vanished from the scene. (John and Stella once met him somewhere and called him “a stupid arsehole.”) And as for a certain Countess Kannwitz, who was interested in spiritualism, Uncle Helmuth absolutely gushes about her, calling her “one of the most important women of the century, probably the reincarnation of a very high luminary of mankind, like Buddha, or Madame Blavatsky.” She was an old fool who used to run after girls in high heels, bang her umbrella on their shoes, and rant, “Don’t wear high heels, they’re only for whores!” Which regularly led to highly unpleasant scenes.