Madensky Square (13 page)

‘You had better see them on the model,’ said the Field Marshal.

I had been tidying the racks, keeping my back turned, though I had recognized him at once. Now I was told to go and change.

I came out first in the red silk with the fringed shawl. I’d learnt my job well of course and I knew how important it is to sell the dress, not only to the lady but to the gentleman who pays for it. So I passed carefully and quite close to the Field Marshal, and let him see the low-cut back, and hear the delicious frou-frou of the skirt. The next dress, too, I modelled meticulously, showing the tight-faced daughter how, if one picked up the skirt with the left hand the underskirt glowed a shade lighter, like the inner petals of a delphinium. But of course it was the third dress, the black velvet that he wanted her to have – men always want black velvet. It had a boat neckline and by leaning forward I was able to show her (and

a little also to show the gentleman who was paying) how it was cut exactly to the point where you could see the swell of the breasts begin. Not that she had breasts, poor girl, but that was not my fault.

She chose the black. Madame Hermine was pleased – it was the most expensive. The next morning Hatschek came for the first time with a note inviting me to supper at the Bristol.

Did I know that first time? I don’t know… yes, of course I knew. Not the full extent, but… yes, I knew. My satisfaction at my successful seduction technique was, however, short lived.

‘I decided to give you a year,’ said the Field Marshal, walking naked to a painting of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and turning it to the wall. ‘I didn’t want to take advantage of your Mate and so on. But then I decided nine months was enough. I’m going to buy a dress like that for you. It’s wasted on my daughter.’

‘No. I don’t want presents. Not from you.’

Later he repeated that strange thing he’d said in the shooting box. ‘You can’t imagine how I envied you when you lay there so wild and distraught and desperate.’

‘Envied me}’

He sat down beside me and pushed the hair from my face.

‘To have felt anything so intensely, so utterly. To be so open to sorrow. I’ve never felt anything like that, Susanna. It’s what we all want, to be entirely open to life.’

And under the sheet my toes curled with happiness because he’d said my name.

I have just met Rudi Sultzer and somehow I can’t get him out of my mind.

Laura’s court case came up today. She was fined five hundred kronen and ordered to keep away from the university in the future. Everyone says if it hadn’t been for her husband’s standing in the profession, the penalties would have been much more severe.

Needless to say the Group regards the outcome as a personal triumph for Laura. They were all on the steps of the courtroom as she came sweeping out, dressed to kill in a belted calico sack with which the lady who does Croatian cross-stitch had clearly had her way – and taking no notice of Rudi and the lawyers who had conducted her defence, they bore their whiskery heroine away.

I had been to see one of my outworkers who lives round the corner from the courtroom, and drew level with the building just as Rudi and his colleagues took leave of each other and he was left alone at the bottom of the steps.

I did not expect him to recognize me. I’d met him once at Alice’s, at the beginning of their relationship, when I called in unexpectedly, not knowing yet which were his ‘days’. He was sitting in his shirt sleeves, his hair rumpled, unabashed but a little shy, and the happiness he had just experienced was in his face.

Now, eight years later, I was shocked by his appearance. He was stooped, his suit seemed to be too big for him; he looked as weary as a man of eighty. Then he raised his hat, greeted me by name – and smiled.

The effect was extraordinary. The mischief, the sense of fun that Alice so loved in him were instantly there. Behind the gold-rimmed pince-nez the blue eyes were alert and amused.

‘The corset was successful ?’ he inquired.

‘Very successful.’

‘My daughter admires you tremendously. I must thank you for your kindness to her.’

He had replaced his hat, we were about to separate when, moved by some extraordinary impulse, I laid my hand on his arm.

‘I’m so glad that Alice has you,’ I said. ‘So terribly glad!’

As soon as I had spoken I was aghast. I have always kept silence about Alice’s affairs: only perfect discretion has made our friendship possible, and now in a public place in broad daylight I had made this highly personal remark.

But Rudi Sultzer had ceased to be Atlas. His shoulders straightened and he looked at me with a quite extraordinary gratitude as though I had given him a marvellous and unexpected present.

Then very distinctly, he said: ‘She is my only happiness.’

It was a mistake to take Sigismund across to the churchyard,

I see that now. Tonight I came in late and found a bunch of flowers on my doorstep.

The bunch was small and not in its first youth, and I recognized the piece of string with which it was tied. I’d last seen it round Sigismund’s neck supporting his crucifix. I recognized the flowers too: three withered geraniums from the grave of the Family Steiner, a spray of lilies, somewhat slimy at the stem, from the urn on the grave of the Family Heinrid, an acrid-smelling aster from the wreath of a recently interred councillor and (already quite dead owing to their touching frailty) the harebells that I had pointed out to the child with a particular excitement.

Tomorrow I shall send Nini over with a new ribbon for his crucifix. I’ll have a word with Father Anselm too – that impoverished pair across the way have enough problems without a charge of grave robbing!

‘Can you smell the limes?’ I’d asked the boy when I took him across, and he’d lifted his white face obediently to the dark bole of the tree and sucked in air like someone taking medicine.

From where inside him does he make his music, this sad, old child? Can you be a musician without being a person? Is there no one in this city who can tell me that?

On Sunday the Schumachers asked me for a five o’clock
Fause
. We had it in the garden under the lime tree which grows in the churchyard, but leans over the wall to shade their lawn. Mitzi, all by herself, had made vanilla kipferl and there were linzer schnitten and an iced and marbled gug’lhupf.

The little girls had changed out of the muslins they wore for church and romped in their pinafores, but however busy they were with their games the four eldest came back again and again, like members of the Imperial Guard, to surround die canopied perambulator in which the newest Schumacher lay in state.

‘Alfred is completely besotted by her,’ said Frau Schumacher, pouring chocolate for me into a rose-sprigged cup. ‘He insisted on that pram and you wouldn’t believe what it cost. It’s English – a Silver Cross.’

‘Well, she’s a bit special, you must admit,’ I said. ‘Those eyebrows!’

Helene’s face softened at my praise. ‘Yes, and she’s so
funny
! So dictatorial! If you take the bottle away from her she gives you such a
look
! But Albert really has no sense – it’s a wonder she isn’t sick the whole day long the way he jiggles her and rocks her and tickles her stomach. And he’s invited practically the whole of Vienna to the christening.’

‘When is it to be?’

‘On the twentieth of August. Albert wants to get it over before he goes to fetch his brother’s boy from Graz.’ Her voice had taken on a sombre note, for the goldfish slayer was to join the household early in September. Then she laid a hand on my arm. ‘I won’t press you again, but if you ever feel like changing your mind, there’s no one we would rather have for a godmother, you know that.’

‘Thank you… I’m very touched, Helene, but -‘

‘That’s all right, my dear. I don’t want to pry into your feelings. I just thought I’d tell you that we still feel the same as we did when Gisi and Kati were born.’

Oh, why can’t I? Why not for this baby who surely will have enough to bear? My daughter is eighteen years old: if I had ever ‘had’ her I would now be learning to let her go. And yet I still can’t, even in this formal and ritualized way, be a mother to anybody else.

‘What is she to be called ?’ I asked. ‘Have you decided ?’

Helene smiled as at an excellent joke she was about to share. Then she called to her girls: ‘Mitzi! Franzi! Steffi! Resi! Come here!’

The four eldest came at once.

‘Tell Frau Susanna what names Papa likes for the baby.’

Her plainly named Viennese daughters began to giggle.

‘Donatella,’ said Mitzi.

‘Galatea,’ said Franzi.

‘Leonarda,’ whispered the shy and ravishing Steffi.

‘Graziella,’ said Resi.

‘But which?’ I asked. ‘Which one is she to have?’

‘All of them!’ cried the children in chorus. ‘Every single one!’

‘He went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum with a notebook,’ said Frau Schumacher, shaking her head. ‘He spent all Sunday there looking for inspiration.’

‘Well, he certainly seems to have found it,’ I said.

Later I took Frau Schumacher to the shop to choose material for a summer dress. Mitzi had gone to play with Maia who was spending Sunday with her grandfather, and it wasn’t long before we heard Maia’s bossy voice coming over the courtyard wall.

‘We’re going to make a yurt. We’re in the middle of the Gobi desert on our camels and we’ve missed the oasis so we have to camp here.’

‘Can we make a fire and cook something nice?’ begged Mitzi.

‘No, of course we can’t! We have to crouch inside and chew raw yak meat. There’s going to be a terrible sandstorm – a fire would blow out straight away.’

‘That Maia!’ snorted Helene. ‘Last week she wanted Mitzi to be an Inca and sacrifice a llama. She’s a real bully, that girl’

A bully, yes, but a visionary too. At Mitzi’s age I too would have made yurts.

I have just had the most extraordinary interview with Frau Egger, the wife of the Minister of Planning.

Her cloak is almost finished. She came this afternoon for a final fitting and it looked very nice, but she still wanted the military buttons with the owl’s head, the lance and the motto saying
Aggredi
. I can see that in the sight of God it really cannot matter if one of my clients parades down the Ringstrasse labelled
Charge
, but it matters to
me
, and I was about to argue when, to my horror, she clutched my arm and her eyes filled with tears.

‘Please, Frau Susanna… could I speak to you for a moment ? In private?’

I tried to refuse. Nini was out at the lacemaker’s, but I was in no doubt that it was Lily from the post office that was on Frau Egger’s mind.

‘I know you’re busy,’ she went on, ‘but I won’t keep you and I’m desperate. I’m simply desperate!’

With considerable reluctance I took her up to my sitting room and fetched the bottle of eau de vie I keep for special customers.

‘I shouldn’t, I know,’ she said, draining her glass at a gulp. ‘I don’t usually drink spirits, but I’m so unhappy and I thought if I can’t speak to the Anarchist girl myself perhaps you’d ask her to give a message to Lily?’

‘Frau Egger, I honestly don’t think you have anything to worry about. I’m sure that -‘

‘Oh, but I do, I do. You don’t understand, I have
everything
to worry about’

She held out her glass with a trembling hand and I filled it again, but with misgivings. My eau de vie is made by Gretl’s uncle who owns an orchard in Bregenz, and consists of almost neat spirit through which an apricot or two has briefly passed.

Frau Egger was really crying now, grinding her handkerchief into her eyes.

‘It’s dreadful, quite dreadful. I’m in despair.’

I made another attempt to console her. ‘Nini
assures
me that Lily is no longer interested in your husband. She has given him up.’

‘I know! I
know
she’s given him up, that’s what’s so terrible! My cook’s sister-in-law works as a chambermaid in the Hotel Post where my husband used to take Lily. The walls are very thin and she heard Lily tell my husband that she didn’t want to see him any more because I was a good woman. “Your wife is a good woman,” she heard Lily say, “she takes soup to the poor and I don’t want to hurt her any more.” But I’m
not
a good woman, Frau Susanna. I only take soup to the poor because the cook always makes too much and really there’s not a lot you can do with soup. If your girl told Lily that, would she take my husband back, do you think?’

‘Frau Egger, I don’t honestly think Nini could tell her that’

‘Oh, but she must! She must! She must implore Lily not to give him up. And if she could tell Lily that he expects all sorts of advancements after the November elections. Ennoblement is not out of the question.’

She gulped down her second glass of spirits and, fumbling about in her reticule, pulled out a very pretty gold-link chain.

‘My husband is not very generous,’ she said. ‘Men don’t often think of these things but if the bomb-throwing girl could give this to Lily… just to show her that I really don’t mind. That all I desire is my husband’s happiness. There’s a bracelet that goes with it if she wanted it.’

I was by now extremely harrowed, but it seemed necessary to bring the poor woman down to earth.

‘I really don’t think it would work.’

‘Oh, but it must work. It must!’ Before I could stop her she had reached for the bottle and poured out a third glass of brandy and tipped it down her throat. ‘Of course if it’s not that… if it’s not me being good, and the soup… I mean, if it’s my husband’s Little Habit, then she must tell Lily that one gets used to it. Really. Well, almost’

I removed the bottle and put it away in the cupboard, but it was too late. Frau Egger was now definitely drunk and the marital despair of a lifetime poured from her.

‘You see, it’s all right for you, Frau Susanna. You’re beautiful and I don’t suppose you’ve ever had to… not year in, year out, with someone you don’t like. And of course my parents said I was lucky when Egger asked me. He appeared from nowhere and Father helped him get a job as a clerk in the Ministry – and I was on the shelf. But I didn’t realize how it would go on and on… Every Tuesday and Friday after lunch it has to be. His doctor told him twice a week is the right amount and everything Willibald does is as regular as clockwork. While I thought there might be children I could bear it but now I don’t know what to do. If I say “Let’s do it in the dark,” he says, “Come, Adelheid, you’re not as ugly as
that-“
but of course that’s not what I mean. It used to be easier because we had such an excellent organ grinder down in the street. A real musician. I used to pay him to come and play under the window in the afternoons when Willibald was home. Strauss waltzes mostly. I could manage while he played Strauss. Johann, of course… and Josef too. Not Eduard so much; Eduard’s waltzes are too sad. But of course the neighbours didn’t like it and then the organ grinder went away.’