Madensky Square (17 page)

Upstairs there were more salons, and in the main bedroom a gigantic bed dripping with brocade, the legs carved into the shape of writhing and grimacing Turks under the heel of the Austrian conquerors.

‘Prince Eugene slept here,’ said the steward. ‘The family use it only on state occasions.’

This I could believe. But what was a state occasion? Had the midwife held up a squealing new-born child beside the carved posts of helmeted Habsburgs and said to Gernot’s parents: ‘It’s a boy!’? Would he die in this monstrosity, my austere and ironic lover?

On the way out I looked at the stables and these too surprised me. I knew nothing about horses then, but I was aware that Gernot’s life, like that of most soldiers, was largely lived on horseback.

But again I’d imagined it wrong. There were only three horses, two of them obviously carriage horses, and one which looked at me gently over the top of the door: a white horse with tender eyes. Not an Arab, I thought, nor a Lipizzaner -its back was very broad and its neck short - yet it carried Gernot and I spoke to it and stroked its nose: this quiet, domestic-looking horse who spent so much more time with my lover than I.

I said nothing to Gernot about my visit to Uferding for many months. But once when we had a whole night together, I told him that I had been to see his home.

‘Good God! When?’

‘Last summer. The syringa was in blossom.’ I smiled. ‘And the begonias.’

‘Begonias? Those little handkerchiefy things in primary colours? I didn’t know we had any.’

‘There was a whole lot of them, in writing, long live the kaiser, they said.’

He came and sat down beside me on the bed. The cigar was in full flight and he was grinning. ‘Did you like it? My home?’

I don’t think I hesitated even for a second. I spoke enthusiastically of the verandah where it must be so pleasant to breakfast, and the bed with the writhing Turks in which, or so I understood, he had been born.

‘Ah, yes, the bed… It’s entirely honeycombed with mouse nests, the mattress. But go on; I’m really very interested in your reactions.’

I was by now a little hurt by Gernot’s evident amusement, but I went on to describe my visit to the stables, my communion with his horse.

‘My horse? Yes, of course… Do tell me what you thought of my horse.’

‘I thought it was very nice. Very gentle and peaceful. I suppose I was a bit surprised because – Gernot, what
is
the matter?’

His mirth was now so extreme that he was compelled to abandon his cigar. ‘Yes, a very gentle horse indeed. A milk float would strain the poor beast, though he sometimes carries their mother-in-law round the park. She has very bad rheumatism, poor lady.’ He bent over me, his eyes tender. ‘I’m glad you’re so stupid, my dear sweet love. When I first saw you, so wild and distraught in the forest, I was overwhelmed by your capacity for grief. Then when I met you again in the Herrengasse modelling that dress, I thought you were the loveliest, most poised creature I had ever seen. Since then you’ve given me two years of utter delight and to be honest I was getting nervous. The fates can’t mean me to have this paragon, I thought: not a scarred, flawed, ageing bloke like me. But now that I know you are superbly and overwhelmingly foolish, I feel much better.’

‘Why? Why am I stupid?’

He decided to explain. ‘Do you really imagine, my darling idiot, that I would allow anyone in my employ to write long live the kaiser in begonias? Or anything else, come to that? Quite apart from the fact that the poor gentleman could serve his country best by dying as quickly as possible. Or that I would house all those ludicrous statues – and I never breakfast on verandahs because of the wasps.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You went to
Schloss
Uferding. It belongs to my cousin and he’s let it to a man from Wiener Neustadt who makes saucepans. A very good fellow – and patriotic, as you see. The horse is for his mother-in-law: an undemanding animal. I’m so glad you didn’t like the place. It’s a sort of joke; quite well done, I suppose, and we liked the funny fountains when we were children. I haven’t been there for years. It’s
Burg
Uferding that is my home.’

My lover continued to be so entertained by his supposed birth in the state bed of Prince Eugene and his wild rides,
venire a terre
, on the gelding of the saucepan manufacturer’s mother-in-law, that the love we made that night was distinctly on the rococo side. Afterwards I said: ‘I promise I won’t go there, I’m through with sentimental journeys. But what is the Burg like? The place where you
do
live?’

He rolled on to his back. ‘Quite small. High up. There’s a single tower… wooden… a courtyard. The rooms are a bit cramped… there’s a smell of leather and wood.’ He wound one of my curls round his finger. ‘The stables are almost as big as the house,’ he said, and grinned.

I was satisfied. In such a place I could see him and – just as important – I could see Hatschek.

The Kaiser has departed for his villa in Bad Ischl, and God help the poor chamoix which, for the next month, he will pursue relentlessly in lederhosen. They say he has run out of wall on which to stick their horns. Well, all of us have problems.

His departure is always the signal for the city to empty for the summer. Most of my clients have houses in the mountains or by a lake. Frau Hutte-Klopstock is going back to the High Tatras. The glacier named after her proved to be so small that it melted, and she and her husband are going to try and find glory by pioneering a different route.

Leah Cohen spends the summer on the Bodensee. She came to invite me to go with her, but though I shall close the shop for two weeks at the end of the month, I shan’t go away. There’s a lot of work to be done on the Huber trousseau, and I love these weeks of high summer: the dark trees trembling in the breeze that you can scarcely feel down below; the quietness.

‘How is the psychoanalysis?’ I asked her. ‘Does it help?’

Leah has been getting so depressed and having such bad dreams, that her husband has sent her to Professor Freud in the Berggasse for treatment.

‘Well, it doesn’t help my
depression –
but then I know why I’m depressed. It’s because I don’t want to go to the Promised Land and dig holes for orange trees. But I must say it’s simply marvellous for the feet! You know how my ankles kept swelling after Benjamin, and an hour on the couch is simply bliss!’

Professor Starsky is going to a conference on Herpetology in Reykjavik, and the English Miss will spend August on the moors near the Scottish border where her people live. A friend is going to take the setter bitch into the country while she is away which will give Rip a chance to pull himself together. Inflamed by the heat, his passion has broken all bounds. As soon as the bitch appears, he pounds across the square and weaves hysterically in and out of her legs. To see the stomach of your beloved arching high above you, as unreachable as it is desired, cannot be easy, and it is no wonder that as he lies panting in the shade of the chestnut trees, he is inclined to be short-tempered.

Herr Heller never goes away. His dusty shop is like the shell of one of Professor Starsky’s reptiles. Even when he leaves his books just to go and stand outside on the pavement, he somehow looks unprotected and a little lost. He’s going to have a hard time with his granddaughter, though. The Schumachers left yesterday with forty-five pieces of luggage for a fortnight in Ascona, so Maia won’t have anyone to bully into making yurts.

My neighbour on the other side, Herr Schnee, has had a splendid piece of luck! The tackroom and workshops of the stables housing the horses of the Carinthian Jaegers has been destroyed by fire and he has a big order for new harness in time for a state parade in October. His nephew is a cornet in this crack regiment which puts the Cossacks to shame for style and ostentation: shakos with golden plumes, dolmanyis, breeches of white kid, and he’s threatening to line up his horses outside his uncle’s shop for a fitting!

‘On my fiftieth birthday, this is to be -‘ said Herr Schnee, drawn out of his usual crustiness by this event. ‘He’s a wild lad; I wouldn’t be surprised if he meant what he said!’

Tomorrow I’m going to do battle with Nini!

My God – you’d think I was proposing to crucify the girl. Of course I realize that no one with Hungarian blood in them can be regarded as normal but my suggestion that Nini should go away to the country and have a holiday while I closed the shop was received as if I’d threatened to do her a frightful injury.

‘Why? Why should I go away?’

‘Because you need a break; because you’ve been working very hard; because the heat is impossible.’

‘I don’t want to go to the country. I don’t
like
the country. I never know what to do when I’m there. Walking up a mountain, walking down again, what’s the point ? Anyway why should I have a holiday when there are families living six to a room who can’t even afford the tram fare to the Prater? I don’t see what I’ve done to be sent away.’

‘For heaven’s sake, Nini, I’m offering you exactly the conditions you’re fighting so hard for for the poor and the oppressed. The Cohens have offered to have you, so have the Schumachers – or I’ll pay for a room for you in a pension.’

‘What about Gretl ? Why doesn’t she have to have a holiday?’

‘Gretl doesn’t spend her nights in stuffy cellars planning to blow up the bourgeoisie. Anyway she’s having the fortnight off to prepare for her wedding.’

‘Ha!’ said Nini. I saw her point; Gretl very much likes being engaged – the ring, the status – but she doesn’t show the slightest hurry to name the day. ‘And anyway,’ Nini went on, ‘something very interesting is coming up in Ottakring.’

This, unfortunately, I knew to be true and it was one of the reasons I was determined to send her away.

‘Nini, I’m not prepared to argue. I’m closing on the twenty-second and you’re going away.’

She flounced off in a temper, wearing white pique to paste slogans on a railway bridge. When she returned, however, she was in an accommodating mood.

‘One of the men told me about a summer camp for workers’ children on the Grundlsee. It’s run by an international welfare organization. Children come from all over the world, and doctors and students and counsellors look after them. They want people to wash up and do the chores, I wouldn’t mind that.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘That’s settled.’

I haven’t said anything to Jan Kraszinsky about my efforts on Sigismund’s behalf which is as well because there’s been no sign of Van der Velde.

‘We have money for six more weeks,’ he said when I met him in the paper shop.

The child is practising something which seems to smoothe out everything inside one very gently, yet at the same time

makes one feel as though there are bubbles inside one’s nose, so I suppose it is by Mozart.

Oh God, I don’t know how to write this…

I felt it the last time I lay in Gernot’s arms; I knew it was there, the ultimate horror waiting to strike. Only it isn’t I that have been struck down; not this time. It is Alice.

Two days ago, Rudi Sultzer collapsed in his office. They thought it was the heat and he was taken home to the Garnisongasse to rest. Laura gave him vegetable juice and read to him from
Faust
and said it was nothing serious, but the doctor, when he came, disagreed with her. Rudi’s heart was tired and he needed absolute rest. Then yesterday morning he had a second attack and this time an ambulance took him to the Municipal Hospital. His heart was not just tired, it was failing, and he lay propped on pillows, blue-lipped and scarcely conscious, fighting for his life.

‘He looks so small, Frau Susanna,’ said Edith, who had hurried in on the way home from the hospital to cancel her fitting. ‘And almost no hair. I hadn’t realized how much hair he’d lost. It’s a terrible place, that hospital. Nothing prepares you.’

No, nothing. And certainly not Laura Sultzer or
Beowulf
.

‘What do they say about his chances?’

She shook her head. ‘They don’t say much – but they don’t expect him to recover, I know.’

‘Is he in a public ward ?’

‘No, he’s in a room on the second floor overlooking a dark ; courtyard. Oh God, it is an awful place to die, that hospital!’

I let her cry, patted her shoulder, but my mind was fixed
[
on one thing only: how to help Alice.

For all of yesterday, all of today, Alice has sat on a wooden [bench in the hospital waiting room, waiting for the moment when she could rise with the other visitors, summoned by the bell, and go to bid her love goodbye.

It never came, this moment, nor would it. Two visitors per person is the iron rule in that barrack and in case of serious illness, only relatives. Alice knew this as well as anyone, she expected no miracles, but it was impossible for her to leave the building in which he lay.

‘Does he seem at peace, your father?’ Edith frowned. ‘I don’t know… it’s so difficult for him to breathe. He said something to my mother… something about not having been worthy of her. But he didn’t finish it properly… he seemed to lose interest as he said it… as though it was too difficult, or not important. Then once or twice I thought he was looking for someone. Not my mother or me. Someone else. Perhaps I was imagining it.’ She picked up a pincushion and began to denude it of pins. ‘No, I wasn’t imagining it.’ I waited, afraid even to move.

Edith gulped and went on quickly. ‘I saw a woman in the waiting room in the hospital. She was sitting there in a white dress with a flowery hat. I thought I’d seen her before once, when Father had pneumonia. She was standing down below in the street and it was raining. She just stood there – she’d forgotten her umbrella and the rain completely ruined her hat. I remembered it because it was a pretty hat, like…’ She broke off, flushing, and turned away. I made up my mind.

‘Fraulein Edith, you love your father, I think?’ ‘Yes. When I was little we used to do a lot of things together, but my mother felt that… I mean, my father was not very spiritual,’ said Edith, her voice trailing away.

‘Well, listen; you have a chance to do something for your father. It’s not something any young girl could do, but you have been brought up to be broad-minded and aware of…’ Here I faltered, unable to imagine that Edith had been brought up to be aware of anything as simple as the relationship which existed between Alice and her father. ‘I think that the person your father was looking for is the woman you mentioned. She is someone he has known a long time and been fond of, and I think he’d like to say goodbye to her.’