Wittgenstein's Nephew Read Online Free Page B

in order to arouse sympathy and a bad conscience in passersby and induce them to open their wallets. Unlike Paul, Isaw not only the wretched child, shamefully exploited by a greedy mother, but the mother herself, crouching in the bushes and counting a wad of bills in an appallingly businesslike manner. Paul saw only the child and its wretchedness, not the mother in the background, counting the takings. He actually cried and gave the child a hundred-schilling bill, feeling ashamed of his own existence, as it were. While I saw through
the whole scene
, Paul saw only the surface—the distress of the innocent child, not the monstrous mother in the background. This shameful exploitation of my friend’s good nature was bound to remain concealed from him, while I could not fail to see it. It was typical of him that he saw only the superficial picture of the suffering child and parted with the hundred-schilling bill, while I could not help seeing through the whole scene and naturally gave the child nothing. And it was typical of our relationship that I kept my observation to myself, wishing to spare my friend, and did not tell him about the unspeakable mother counting her money behind the bushes and forcing her child to act out this charade of suffering. I left him with his superficial view of the scene; I let him give the child the hundred-schilling bill and go on blubbering, and even later I forbore to enlighten him. He often referred to this incident and recounted how he had given a hundred-schilling bill to a poor lonely child (in my presence), but I never disclosed the truth of the matter. Where the wretchedness—or ostensible wretchedness—of human beings (and humanity) was concerned, Paul never saw beneath the surface; he never saw the whole picture as I did, and the likelihood is, I fancy, that throughout his life he quite simply refusedto see the whole picture, contenting himself with surface appearances for reasons of self-protection. I was never content with surface appearances—also for reasons of self-protection. That was the difference between us. In the first half of his life Paul squandered millions in the belief that he was helping the helpless (and thereby himself!), but in reality he squandered those millions on the basest and unworthiest causes—though in doing so he was of course helping himself. He continued to squander his money on those who were supposedly destitute and deserving of charity until he had none left, until he was thrown upon the mercy of his family, but their mercy was short-lived and quickly withdrawn, since mercy was to them an alien concept. Paul, for his sins, was born into one of Austria’s three or four richest families, whose millions automatically multiplied year by year under the monarchy, until the proclamation of the republic led to the stagnation of the Wittgenstein fortune. Paul very soon threw away his share, more or less in the belief that by doing so he could combat poverty. The result was that for most of his life he had virtually nothing, being persuaded, like his uncle Ludwig, that it was his duty to distribute his
dirty
millions among his
spotless
fellowmen and so ensure their salvation and his own. Paul would walk through the streets with wads of hundred-schilling bills in order to distribute those dirty bills among his
spotless
fellow citizens. But the recipients were nearly always like the Traunsee child: wherever he found people to press his money on,
in order to help them
and
to make himself feel good
, they were always
Traunsee children
. When his money was gone, his relatives supported him for avery short time, acting out of a certain perverse sense of propriety, not out of generosity and not as a matter of course, because they too, it must be said, saw not just the superficial aspect of his situation but
the whole dreadful picture
. For a whole century the Wittgensteins had produced weapons and machines, until finally they produced Ludwig and