How ‘The Tobacconist’ made me rethink my life
Robert Seethaler’s coming-of-age novel proves that when fiction meets truth, magic happens
The teenage tobacconist who lived in pre-War Vienna never existed.
But his neighbourhood does. The corner store where 17-year-old Franz Huchel first met Sigmund Freud in Robert Seethaler’s Der Trafikant (‘The Tobacconist’) is on Währinger Strasse. As streets go, this one teems with history. Whether that’s a hardware store dating from 1879 that still sells screws apiece or a singularly beloved bookshop (it’s owner, Petra Hartlieb, wrote the Austrian equivalent of the comic tell-it-all that is The Diary of a Bookseller), it’s a three kilometre stretch that appeals to art and theatre aficionados as well as to families.
Co-incidentally, it’s also a street that led to a dream of my own. There was a time when I hoped to study journalism at the University located there. When I didn’t get in, I was crushed. I’d dropped out of another course,and, some may say, foolishly staked my future on the chance of getting in. It had taken me two years to realise that I wanted to be a a journalist-the idea of giving up without being given a chance to fight for my dream felt unbearable.
Now, I couldn’t be happier over not having got in. It led me to leave the country in pursuit of my dreams, a decision that allowed me to meet people and see places I never dreamed of doing. It helped mold me into the person I am today. Still, whenever I pass by the modern glass-front building, I grow slightly wistful-for have-been’s and would-be’s. It’s not acute enough to call regret-only a lingering curiosity for a life different to the one I know. That seems to be the nature of a first dream. Or a first love.
Transplanting oneself into his stories is easy because Seethaler puts a spotlight on the big questions surrounding life, death and love. His sparse, evocative prose that has been likened in style to Denis Johnson lets one forget time and place in favour of mulling over the truths he has to tell.
Lines such as this one testify to that sentiment:
“You can buy a man’s hours off him, you can steal his days from him, or you can rob him of his whole life, but no one can take away from any man so much as a single moment. That’s the way it is.” (A Whole Life, Robert Seethaler)
Yet, I’ve found that, despite being an emotionally rather than locale driven coming-of-age story, there’s a particular joy in reading The Tobacconist in Vienna.
Traversing the cobble-stoned streets in search of the buildings, parks and churches that serve as the picturesque backdrop to Franz Huchel’s life helped me re-examine my own ties to the place I’ve spent so many years living in.
‘The city was bubbling like the vegetable pot on mother’s stove. Everything was in constant motion, even the walls and the streets seemed to be alive, breathing, bulging.’
That’s Franz’s first impression of Vienna upon arrival at Westbahnhof.
Considered the premier transport hub of the city, the railway station is a port to one of the city’s major shopping streets, Mariahilfer Straße. The main artery of Vienna, this is where all demonstrations ultimately head. It’s the nexus of both religious proselytizing and pamphleteering for social causes but also the place where the plight of the homeless is brought to eyes more viscerally than ever.
Here, I’ve grabbed a hasty lunch, conducted casual interviews and browsed for foreign language magazines I couldn’t get my hands on elsewhere. It’s where I’ve also met a member of a rather odd cult, though that’s a story for another time. At the onset of Covid-19, I remember it being a long mile of emptiness, like something out of an apocalyptic film where everyone dies and the last shot is of an eerie landscape devoid of human life.
Before the pandemic, the terminal at Westbahnhof, with its glass-fronted doors reflecting approaching trains, was also a place where I’d stand still, like Franz-not to take in the overwhelming hustle and bustle of the city (Vienna has calmed down quite a bit on that front!) but to acclimatise to being back again, freshly jetlagged and carrying bulky suitcases.
Do I still fit in? Can I do this? What will change, what has already changed? In many ways, I can understand Franz’s trepidation-after all, his story is one long peregrination, taking him from an idyllic lakeside community to a world of cramped, filthy apartments, seedy cabarets and opulent palaces. As Franz discovers the sights and smells of Vienna and falls in love for the first time, the reader gets to experience both the highs and lows of someone impossibly young, triumphing and simultaneously failing to find his place in the world and time he lives in. It’s also an excellent birds eye view on the mounting tension that led to the rise of fascism in pre-war Europe and a beautiful picture of the innocence that youth can harbor in spite of all the turmoil that threatens to overwhelm it.
Vienna is an ambivalent place. Venerable coffeehouses clash with glittering skyrises, shady wine taverns and hipster bars with social housing and so called ‘foreigner’s districts’. It’s a cultural mecca for both young and old but also a place fraught with racial tension. Thomas Bernhard, the Austrian playwright famed for his love-hate relationship with the city, wrote in his acclaimed play Heldenplatz: ‘The city of Vienna is a singular place of mindless malice’ while grudgingly admitting in Beton: ‘A long time I thought Vienna was my city, maybe even my home’.
It’s possible to lose oneself in the wide paved streets lined with baroque buildings and the glitz and glamour of coffeehouse culture and opera performances. Most tourists come to experience that regal vision of Old Vienna. A select group find themselves enamoured with the opulent graveyards and the city’s opulently macabre celebration of death and mortality that once gave it the reputation for being Western Europe’s foremost Necropolis. The remainder is taken by the music and art scene or just the curiosity of seeing what makes Vienna consecutively top the Mercer study for highest standard of living in the world. But as any city dweller will tell you, real life can only be experienced off the conventional trail.
Seethaler seems to understands this. Born in a working-class family in Vienna’s 10th district (informally known as one of the aforementioned ‘foreigner’s districts’), he has a penchant for populating his fiction with lovable outsiders and down-upon-their luck eccentrics that experience society from a different angle than most.
As such,he also doesn’t shy away from depicting the places that best reflect these figures in their mistakes and follies.
In the latter vein, Prater proves to be one of these places for Franz.
One of the oldest amusement parks in the world, it used to be an exclusive imperial hunting ground before Emperor Josef II decided to gift it to his people as a place for common recreation in 1766. While the nobility continued to keep to the main avenue,the Prater entrance (later renamed ‘Volksprater’/ ‘People’s Prater’) began attracting a crowd of commoners ranging from soldiers to craftsmen as different businesses (ex.doughnut and gingerbread sellers) began to crop up on the ground.
Seethaler lists the major attractions of Prater in minute detail.
Franz, he writes, already sees the Giant Ferris Wheel from afar. Being a landmark with a unique silhouette, it is easily visible on the Viennese skyline and affords one one of the most spectacular views over the city. Continuing in his rundown of attractions, Seethaler describes how, in his quest to fall in love, our hero enters the eponymous Spiegelkabinett (‘House of Mirrors’), losing his way in the maze of glass panels, how he watches children ride ponies on the Pony carousel (once the oldest ongoing attraction in Prater, it was refashioned into a high-end coffeeshop in 2016 after animal rights activists complained over the practice) and how he cries for his lost childhood in the eponymous fairy tale grotto ride. ‘Slowly he walked past the rides, shooting galleries and food stands, the Autodrome, the Slap-man, past Fat Berta, the colourful Wheel of Joy and the Great Ghost Train.’ It’s a moving fact that the families he sees laugh, kiss and hug each other still come to visit the theme park as of old, but for me, the tearful fairy tale grotto ride takes the cake.
As a child, my favourite ride wasn’t that one but another one mentioned in passing in the novel-the Great Ghost Train. Nonetheless, I’ve felt the same slew of emotions Franz does in connection with it. Back then, the eerie painted interiors and the cheap scares appeared thrilling to me, seeing as heights make me queasy and water scares me. I remember craning my neck backwards in the dark, trying to keep the ‘scary’ figurines in view and wishing the ride would never end. Even then, I was more scared of real life horrors than the made up ones-it’s probably why I still remain relatively unaffected by your run of the mill bloody slashers or typical jump scare.
Going to Prater and getting on the Ghost Train was something of a family bonding experience as well. Just like Franz, who, when he sees a figure of Red Riding Hood on the ride is reminded of his mother telling him fairy tales, I connected the ghostly spectres to memories of my father telling me scary bedtime stories about real-life outlaws hiding in the forest, evading capture and hunting elephants for tusks.
Prater isn’t the only landmark to play a starring role in the novel.
Conveniently, Franz sends off a slew of postcards to his mother featuring images of places of iconic value in Vienna. It’s relatively easy to visit most of them in a day, given that many of the sights mentioned are located on Ringstraße, the city’s premier boulevard. If you start from Mariahilfer Straße and walk along one straight line, it will take you straight to the the heart of Vienna, a sight particularly lovely in the spring sunshine.
My inner city walk on that front usually culminates at one of the select places featured in Franz’s postcards-St.Stephen’s.
St.Stephen’s, the most beautiful cathedral in Austria-or so I once heard a middle-aged man describe it to his son when they walked past it. It’s also an icon of resistance. On the front, behind a glass plate, there is an 05 carved into the wall-a symbol of a then prominent Nazi resistance group. The church itself was destroyed during World War II and rebuilt after people across the country feverishly donated to the cause. An incredible feat, considering that the nation was still struggling to become self sufficient in the post-war era.
The cathedral is also a harbinger of hope-never more so than when police officers were stationed outside its large portal in the aftermath of the 2020 terror attack, the first to the rock the city since 1975 . For a while, the images of people running across the square that fronts the building’s imposing facade were superimposed on the retinas of all Austrians. The night before, people had locked themselves in, frightened by news reports about gunmen roaming the streets. The fear was particularly acute because Vienna had long been an oasis of calm and quietude. Terror attacks happen in Paris or London, not here-we had all lulled ourselves to complacency with this conviction.
Still, the day after, I walked an hour to the cathedral.
I was bent on not letting one moment define my view of a place where I had gone in times both happy and sad. In the past, in high summer, I’d taken my friends up the North Tower. Their half-serious threats to eviscerate me on the sweaty climb up the 365 steps of the narrow, spiralling staircase still rings in my ears, the breathtaking view over the rooftops of the city still being ingrained in my mind. I’ve prayed and cried in a little side chapel of the cathedral when life seemed bleak and purposeless. I’ve worked close by. I used to wonder what it would take for me to stroll into the flagship Swarowski store and get myself something I liked. And every year, there would be the Christmas family visits to mass. And the lights, the huge tree and the huts with smoked meats and cheese and hard candy but most of all, the hot, glowing red punch stewed in spices.
In this sense, St. Stephen’s still hits the spot, both for a country boy trying to impress his mother as well as for an immigrant girl trying to find her bearings.
Beyond St.Stephen’s, the 6,5 km long Ringstraße carries many of the city’s top sights, ranging from the Burgtheater (‘National Theatre’), the Vienna State Opera, the Rathaus (‘Town Hall’), the Parliament, the University of Vienna as well as a smattering of beautiful parks, the latter being another of my personal favourites.
My parents were the first to instil my great love for public parks. They taught me the value of stopping to bask in the beauty of a rose even when harried by life. Growing up, I learned to regard forest bathing as a matter of practice, long before it became a wellness trend. It was only later that I learned that the sheer amount of blooming, green space available to the Viennese is uncommon for a major capital city. (Since 2010, 204 parks have been freshly created or remodelled in Viena. This corresponds to the equivalent of one new park for the city every 18 days.)
That’s why, on a purely aesthetic level, I approved of Seethaler’s choice in situating one of the key scenes of his novel at Volksgarten. Because those green lawns beckon. In blistering summer, I usually cross the street into Volksgarten, eager for some shade from the blazing sun. Past the nearby stage, where there is usually some performance going on and past the people throwing frisbees to plop myself down on one of the iron benches spread throughout the park.
In spring, I come for the roses.
Bright pink, pale yellow, sunset orange, rich burgundy and blinding white. There are 400 different kinds planted here, in one place. With a slim volume of Clare or Hardy balanced on my knees, heaven seems particularly close. Farther infield, there are steps that lead to the Theseus Temple, which is both a favourite selfie spot for tourists and a perfect place to lounge for others. Once, I stretched out on those steps with the two friends I count among the dearest I have in this world, laughing and applying sunscreen, a memory I still hold dear.
The singular beauty of the spot is one Franz himself acknowledges from the moment he mentions blooming lilacs in the narrative.
Yet he doesn’t get to bask-instead, he pours forth his heart to Freud in what is probably one of the most endearing fictional love consultations to ever take place. Going off on humorous tangents while trying to explain his dilemma regarding the woman he has fallen in love with (funny story: there’s a mention of pig somewhere), Franz despairs over what to do. To see Anezka again or not, to understand whether he wants to see her or not, even whether it is possible for him to see her at all. ‘Love is a wildfire that no one wants to put out or can put out.’ Freud’s input to the conversation is at times mocking but where it matters most astute. The impromptu consultation veers from matters of the folly of understanding women to the depths of psychoanalysis, which gives people an opportunity to expose the dark side of the soul rather than presenting them with ready made answers to their problems, emblematic for how Freud himself does not tell Franz what he should do regarding his love conundrum.
Reading this excerpt had me wonder how it is that so many profound encounters occur in parks. I’ve seen brides trail veils through foliage, taking their vows under canopies. A woman I did not know once entrusted her son to me in a park, causing me worry over what I should do in case she didn’t return. (She did, thankfully, after quite a delay.) A family member once told me a secret in a park that would have profound repercussions on my own life years later. Many times, when I wondered what to do with myself, when nothing in my life seemed to add up, I found myself visiting a park-to discover the exact shade of autumn red and orange that makes up fall foliage, to write my sorrows away or just to forget myself in all that natural splendor.
The act of forgetting-the love who betrayed him, the employer who was a friend to him and the tranquil life he knew before the Nazis took over is one of the central conflicts Franz has to face up to in The Tobacconist. His conversations with Freud prove a crutch of sorts, the relationship between the naive young man and the cynical elderly psychologist sparking precisely due to their disparity in class, education and age.
A conversation that proves memorable is the last one between them. It takes place in Berggasse 19, the real life address of Freud’s practice in Vienna.
Today, it harbours the Freud Museum. I went there once on a school trip. Beyond the fact that I enjoyed the outing, I remember little besides being disappointed that the vaunted couch upon which patients spilled their darkest secrets was not there- it had been transferred to London, where Freud moved to after the annexation of Austria by Germany. But reading the imagined farewell between the great psychologist and his young friend in The Tobacconist had me picture what I could still recall from my visit-the waiting room to the apartment, kept in its original state, with the slightly faded red gilt chairs and the black prints on the walls.
What Franz has to say in that moment is striking. He tells Freud about feeling less pain over his lost love but being ultimately worse off for not knowing where he was he was going or what he wanted from life. ‘I feel like a boat that lost its oars in a storm and is now drifting stupidly from there to there.’
I’ve felt that before. People plan their lives, their careers, their families, even their deaths, up to a certain point. There seems to be a recipe for happiness, success and fulfilment, one implicit in society and explicit in everything from the next self-help manual to the sermons of a popular preacher. For immigrants, that path is even more stringent. Social status, social approval, these things are of paramount interest to this group of people that cannot rest until they’ve ‘made it’. I followed that path until I couldn’t anymore. When I dropped out of university, it was the first time I allowed myself to ask what I wanted from life rather than what others wanted from me. What was my path? Where should I go? What should I do? Most importantly, what was going to happen to me now that I’d given it all up? It felt like sinking into quicksand.
The fictional Freud answers that question.
“But it’s not actually our destiny to know the paths. Our destiny is precisely not to know them. We don’t come into this world to find answers, but to ask questions. We grope around, as it were, in perpetual darkness, and it’s only if we’re very luck that we sometimes see a little flicker of light. And only with a great deal of courage or persistence or stupidity — or, best of all, all three at once — can we make our mark here and there, indicate the way.”
It’s not our destiny to know. It took me a long time to accept that but when I did, it felt liberating. The past years have been nothing I could have imagined for myself, good or bad, but they allowed me to know myself. I’ve tried to kill myself, an experience that helped me cover mental health stories with greater depth and empathy. I worked with the homeless, setting me on the path to become a journalist willing to write about the socially disenfranchised. I tried to save someone from a cult and learned that while I could be afraid, I was still strong enough to do the right thing when called upon. If I’d known any of what was to come, it would not have helped me at all-I’d have done the utmost to avoid all these experiences that now make up my collective self. Courage, persistence, stupidity-it really is what matters, in the end.
Franz, to the end, comes to embody all those emotions.
But before he gets to that state of mind, he goes on a trek to Kahlenberg.
A hill situated in the Vienna woods close to the city’s edge, it’s known for its excellent wine taverns and enamouring views. But beyond natural beauty, Kahlenberg has much to offer on the spiritual front. A picturesque church dedicated to St.Joseph can be found on the summit as well as a spiritual recovery center. It’s a fitting place for a protagonist confused about his direction in life considering that people in philosophical or religious writings often ascend hills in order to gain clarity.
Regardless of religious inclinations, Franz’s urge to escape into the green world may not be unfamiliar to most of us. At the onset of the pandemic when public life came to a standstill, people retreated to their second homes in rural areas (if they had one), became seriously invested in their gardens and rooftop balconies or just planned day-trips to nearby fields, meadows and woods. The tranquility of bird-watching became soothing all of a sudden, to the extent that even people living in metropoles with little greenery available to them began taking long walks across the cityscape.
But, it needs to be said, Franz’s desire for a glimpse of wood and mountains is typically Austrian. Next to skiing, hiking could be the unofficial national sport considering how in the pre-pandemic era, the elderly used to pound the pavements of Vienna with Nordic walking sticks tightly clutched in their fists. I, myself, never realised how deeply the urge to walk was ingrained in me before I left the country. To me, walking long stretches in the city with friends, eating ice cream, chatting or drinking beer was a matter of course until I realised that I rarely did that with my international friends-as such, we’d invariably meet straight at a restaurant rather than plan in time to walk together to it.
Walking to that extent, cresting a hill, fighting to stay on path is not just an excuse to tire myself out or burn calories-to me, hiking to places like Kahlenberg is in itself a transcendent experience. In the past, I’d made a memorable day trip there to celebrate a past birthday with my parents that culminated in a peaceful hour together at St. Joseph’s. That feeling of blessedness, that peace that stems from being with those you love, wholly in the moment, is one I remember fondly when I chance to return there.
And when I stand at the viewing platform, looking at hints of mist hanging over the city parted by golden rays,I find that for once, the cogs in my mind seem sluggish, letting me appreciate the tranquil sight in front of me without any intrusive thoughts. Given this effect, it’s unsurprising that Kahlenberg is surrounded by places named such as Himmel (‘The Heaven’) or Himmelwiese (‘The Meadow of Heaven’). The latter is also Franz’s vantage point which is oddly fitting, considering that it’s the exact place where Sigmund Freud came up with his theories on dream analysis and the subconscious.
Seethaler pays homage to the special atmosphere surrounding this city hill by portraying how Franz’s thoughts veer into the sublime. Sitting on a tree stump, he starts to consider how happy people who know nothing are in contrast to people who know a lot, knowledge which they are at pains to forget.
It’s telling that these thoughts of his are interspersed with natural observations such as the crawling of beetles or sunlight striking tree canopies.
As a writer, Robert Seethaler has confessed to being preoccupied with what remains of life at the end. In what could be called prose poetry, he teaches us that the so called big things are negligible. Nazism, Communism, that embezzlement scandal, this invasion or that economic crisis in the end can’t take away the importance of the likes of the endearing tooth gap of a beloved woman or the smell of sun and woods that spells home.
The Tobacconist proves that the smallest moments can couch the greatest stories and it taught me that I, like Franz, may leave a mark on Vienna just as it has left a mark on me simply by living.
