Free Memoirs of an Anti-Semite by Gregor Von Rezzori

theirs did not sound rehearsed. I listened with amused attention to my new friend Wolf, gauging him linguistically.
    He was almost bored when looking over the objects in my tower. True, his interest was briefly held by the case of butterflies, but I had anticipated a more explosive effect. He found the ivory skull anatomically wrong: his father had a genuine skeleton on which he could show me the mistakes. Coming to the ashtray with the modeled playing cards and cigarette butt, he shook his head, turning away with a shrug. In front of the Uhlan and Cossack skirmishes from Galicia he nodded. Even Count Sàndor’s riding feats captured his attention only for a moment: “Was he a circus director?” he asked, moving on, without waiting for my answer.
    He focused more thoroughly on Uncle Hubi’s crossed sabers and “little keg.” “Do you guys wear the little cap under the fox hats?” he wanted to know. No, I said, it was not like the yarmulke , the small black skullcap worn by Orthodox Jews under their hats (incidentally, for students who were not fox-majors, the hat was a colored cap with a visor, known as a “ couleur ”). The so-called “little keg” was worn as a sign of veteran fraternal dignity at festive drinking bouts. I became heated, flaunting the wealth of my newly acquired knowledge about the manners and mores of dueling clubs at German universities. I informed him that the new pledges were called “foxes” and they were under the care of the “fox-major”—the very brother who, as a sign of his dignity, could sport the headgear that reminded Wolf Goldmann of a rabbi’s hat. And I launched into detail about the “beer commentary,” the rigorously regulated ceremony of drinking, the so-called “boozing,” an important educational procedure: after all, a man had to learn how to hold his quantum of liquor decently and without loss of bearing.
    Wolf Goldmann listened to me with that grimace of a young ram staring into fire. “And you sing songs about the pretty blonde combing her hair over the Rhein rapids?”
    Yes, indeed—he meant “The Lorelei.” By the way, this was a poem by Heinrich Heine, who, as everyone knows, was a Jew, I added significantly. My words had no visible effect on him, and I was annoyed at my possibly making it seem that I was trying to get familiar with him in such a grossly goyish way.
    â€œIs that why the G-clef is embroidered on the cap, because you guys sing?” he asked.
    That was no G-clef, I told him, that was the so-called corps cipher. I unraveled the tangle of letters.
    He nodded again. His blazing ram-face stayed earnest. “But the swords? If they’re supposed to pierce, how come they have no points?”
    I could inform him about that too: those were no swords, or sabers or épées, but light rapiers, used only in student duels. You didn’t pierce with them, you fenced. Standing with legs astraddle, motionless, your body swathed to the ears in leather and cotton armor, one hand behind your back, you dueled with your other hand, likewise heavily swathed, lifting it over your head and aiming only at the opponent’s skull and cheeks. If you struck in such a way that the rapier’s edge cut into him, then the seconds interrupted the match and inspected the wound. The referee was asked to verify a “bloody” for either participant. When such “bloodies” were sewn up, their scars became the “cicatrices” which a German academic could be proud of. The duel consisted of fifteen rounds, each with a fixed number of exchanges. It was settled by the number of “bloodies,” unless one “bloody” was so serious that the physician—the “barber-surgeon,” as he was known in corps lingo—stopped the duel and declared the wounded party “disabled.” It was not shameful to be “disabled.” But woe