Madensky Square (23 page)

I heard his music.

I think I have lost Gernot.

We do not telephone, but this time, for something so important, he would surely have phoned ? If he still loved me he could not be so cruel as to deny me a chance to explain. Or he would send me a letter telling me where I could get in touch with him. But in all the weeks since I missed the train there has been no word.

So I think that something was damaged permanently when I failed to come to him. I have never before not kept an assignation, you see. Once I had a broken ankle, but I still came. Once, in a blizzard, I was ten minutes late, but I have always come. And I think that he cannot forgive me. For I have no illusions about myself and Gernot von Lindenberg. In the eyes of God we are equals, and perhaps in bed (where God, so strangely, often seems to be present) but in the eyes of the world we are desperately unequal. There must be a hundred women waiting to step into my shoes.

Alice guesses that something is wrong. ‘Is it the little dog, Sanna? Is that why you’re sad?’ she asked me.

No, it is not the little dog. I miss Rip very much – we all do in the square – but he was ten years old and died in an instant. Each time I look out of the window in the early morning I wait to see him come down the steps to fetch the paper and then remember he is not there – but it is not the little dog. What has happened to my face cannot be laid at

Rip’s door. How do the cells in my skin, the follicles of my hair, know that I have lost Gernot? ‘A woman is as old as her elastic tissue,’ a pompous friend of Professor Starsky said once, and my tissue has become profoundly inelastic. Nini has taken to bringing me hot milk at bedtime. Soon, if this goes on I shall be wearing navy blue with touches of white.

Oh God, no. Not that. Gernot will write, he will phone, he will send Hatschek. I
cannot
have to live without him!

Meanwhile I’m not the only person with problems. Gretl’s fiance who is now in charge of his own fire engine, has given her an ultimatum: marriage within six months or the engagement is off. Gustav Schumacher has jammed the master switch in the saw shed and fused the electricity supply to two apartment houses and a laundry, and Leah Cohen’s husband has bought the tickets for the Holy Land.

‘Promise you won’t dress Miriam when I’ve gone, promise me,’ she begged. ‘That’s the only thing I can’t stand, the idea of Miriam swanning about in your lovely clothes.’

Edith Sultzer has just telephoned to say she wants to see me.

She arrived with her briefcase so full that the lock did not shut and she had to hold it under her arm.

‘Goodness, Edith, what have you got in there?’

The Bluestocking threw me an agitated glance. ‘Could I come through into the workshop?’

‘Of course.’

The cutting-out table was clear. Edith asked for some newspaper which Nini brought. Then she opened the case.

Plaited into four strands, fastened by twine, the lengths of white-blonde hair tumbled out in incredible profusion.

‘Good God – what is it?’

‘It’s Magdalena’s hair. I told you it belonged to The Christ. She’s cut it right off and she wants to sell it. She said one could get a better price if one sold it privately. Only I don’t at all know where to go.’

I ran my fingers along the marvellous silky stuff, feeling quite shaken at this heroic butchery.

‘You’ve found her then? But where? Where is she?’

‘She’s in the Convent of the Sacred Heart. She’s going to be a nun. That’s why she wants me to sell her hair; to get money for the order.’

‘I see. And the man I saw her with?’

‘He’s a Jesuit priest – Father Benedictus. He was her confessor when she was being confirmed. She went to ask him if she could be released from her engagement – she went several times, but he wouldn’t let her. He said to be offered a pure marriage and a chance to help the church financially was a fine opportunity. They’re very practical, these Jesuits. But of course when Herr Huber broke his side of the bargain, Magdalena felt free… and she ran away and took refuge with the nuns.’

‘How did you find her, Edith? Did she send you a message?’

Edith shook her head. ‘I packed some toilet things and went round to all the convents saying I’d brought some things for her and would they give them to her. In the first three they said she wasn’t there, but in the fourth they just took them and asked if I’d like to see her. She’s only a postulant still, she’s not walled up.’

‘You seem to have been very resourceful’

Edith shook her head. ‘I just remembered what she said when she was little. Again and again she said it. “I’m going to be a nun because I love Jesus more than anyone else in the world.” I think he was so real to her she couldn’t bear anyone else even to touch her. She wanted to make the sacrifice for her family, but she just couldn’t.’

Then she asked if I would come with her to the convent. •She looks so different – it isn’t just the hair, it’s everything. You know how dreamy she was; not quite in the world. Well that’s all changed. And if you saw her, Frau Susanna, you could help me to tell Herr Huber.’

‘He doesn’t know yet?’

Edith shook her head. ‘I told her family, but they just weep and wail though Herr Huber gave them quite a big sum of money even after she ran away. You’re so good at making people feel better, and I don’t know how to say things… only in essays, not to real people.’ She gave a little sniff. ‘I’m going to miss Magdalena. We were both misfits – she was too beautiful and I was too ugly.’

So I went with her to the Convent of the Sacred Heart. There was no difficulty about seeing Magdalena. The woman who admitted us was Sister Bonaventura who had made the silken rose on the rich cream dress I wore to the Bristol, and we are friends.

The convent adjoins a group of almshouses with a small hospital, and the nuns are responsible for this.

It was there that we found Magdalena. She wore an apron and a cap over her shorn hair, and was swabbing down, methodically and carefully, the stomach of an ancient lady who lay on an iron bed. Nothing could have been further than the image I had had of Magdalena rapt in prayer and communicating with her saints. Rather she looked – as she dried the old lady and rolled her over like a strudel – like a satisfied housewife attending to her daily tasks. And it occurred to me that Magdalena’s love affair had ended rather better than Alice’s or Nini’s – or mine: in a busy and contented marriage.

We exchanged a few words, but Magdalena had started on a second patient, cutting the toenails on a pair of gnarled and yellow feet, and we soon took our leave.

There seemed to be no point in delaying over breaking the news to Herr Huber. On the way to his shop in the Graben, we called for Alice. She was packing for her journey to Switzerland but she agreed to come with us. The butcher has a special fondness for her and I felt we needed help.

We found Herr Huber supervising a display of knackwurst, and the way he looked when we told him that Magdalena was safe – the relief, the tenderness on his face, the sudden hope we had at once to extinguish – is best forgotten.

‘She was on her knees as when I first saw her?’ he asked eagerly. ‘She was in prayer?’

‘No. She was swabbing down an old lady’s stomach,’ I said firmly.

‘And she has cut her hair,’ said Edith. ‘She has given it to The Christ.’

‘Like Cosima Wagner,’ put in Alice.

Herr Huber’s bewildered round eyes went from one to the other of us. ‘Did Frau Wagner give her hair to The Christ?’

‘No. To Wagner. She cut it off and put it in his grave. He was The Christ to her. Well, God…’

But poor Herr Huber was quite unable to deal with a shorn Magdalena swabbing the abdomens of ancient ladies. We carried him off to lunch at the Landtmann, but he was a broken man, able to swallow only a couple of schnitzels and a slab of oblaten torte.

‘I’m giving up my room at the Astoria,’ he told us. ‘And I’m putting a manager into the shop here. There’s nothing in Vienna for me now.’ He brightened for a moment. ‘Fortunately I’ve had a good offer for the villa. A very good offer.’

I didn’t ask if the bald Saint Proscutea was included in the fittings.

‘You’ll be living in the old house by the river, then?’ said Edith, and Herr Huber nodded.

I suggested that Magdalena’s trousseau should be sent to her convent for the nuns to sell, and he agreed to that.

‘Of course I shall be coming to say goodbye. You have been such good friends to me.’ He dabbed his eyes. ‘And everyone is welcome in Linz. My sisters would be so happy.’

‘How soon are you leaving ?’ asked Edith.

‘In about three weeks. Earlier perhaps.’

Edith put down her knife and fork. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘So soon?’

I have told myself that I have lost Gernot and I have believed it. Yet deep down there has been a glimmer of hope. After all it is not sense to think that one broken assignation – even such an important one – could have such consequences. My fears could have been due to the time of year, the shortening of the days, the cold which so easily extinguishes hope.

But now I know that it is true. I have to live without him.

I know because of Hatschek.

This is what happened.

The Baroness Lefevre, the one who got tired of sitting on ortolans, lives in a grace and favour apartment in the Hofburg.

She’s had influenza and I said I would call and fit her for her skating costume.

I was walking through the gate from the Michaeler Platz into the first of the palace courtyards when I saw Hatschek coming out of a door on the far side.

He saw me. There was not the slightest doubt about it. He was coming directly towards me and when he caught sight of me, he smiled his slow, stupid smile and touched his cap.

Then he must have remembered his instructions for he flushed a fiery red and turned on his heel.

It was absolutely unmistakable: the recognition and the rebuff, but I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t take it in – and I called to him and hurried after him. I was quite without pride; all I wanted was just a few seconds to explain – just a few seconds, nothing more.

He increased his pace – then, just as I was catching up with him, he veered to the right and turned in through the archway where the Swiss Guards stand on duty.

That part of the Palace is sealed off to everyone who does not have business there. Hatschek knew the password; some of the offices of the Ministry of War are there, and they let him through, but not me of course – not a distraught woman carrying a cardboard box – and I stood there waiting helplessly while he hurried down a flight of steps and vanished.

So it’s true, you see. It’s over. Hatschek has been forbidden to speak to me. I’m like Serbia now, and Macedonia – bad for his master.

I must have loved Hatschek too, just a little bit, for somewhere in the agony of losing Gernot is this other foolish grief for the Bohemian Corporal who was my friend.

All Souls’ Day was a suitable one for a day given over to the dead: murky, dark and chill.

The bereaved came to St Florian’s all the previous evening bringing candles and coloured lanterns to burn through the night. Professor Starsky, whose wife lies there, brought a wreath of artificial poppies, and this year as in all the years since I’ve been here, the grave of the family Heinrid was tended by a hired crone who sat all night mumbling liturgies. They’re all over Vienna, these frightening old women muffled in shawls who, for a few kronen, will guard the graves on the night of All Souls, munching fat bacon from their baskets and calling on the Holy Ghost for the lost souls in purgatory. Herr Heinrid (who is eminent; he’s Egger’s second-in-command at the Ministry of Planning) rents the same one every year and then arrives himself, after a good breakfast, to fill the family urn with flowers.

I don’t know where Rip is buried. I’d have liked to pay my respects to him but Frau Hinkler will speak to no one since he died.

I had lit candles by Rudi’s headstone because Alice is away in Switzerland, but on the day of All Souls I do not stay in the city with its flickering lanterns and its Masses for the Dead. On All Souls I have business elsewhere. I go to Leek.

The monks are generous. Everyone who has served the abbey can lie within its walls. No grave here is untended, for a lay brother keeps the flower beds bright and the grass cut. It’s a sunny churchyard on the slope of a hill; one could grow vines there, but the church grows souls instead.

On All Souls’ Day, though, there is seldom any sun. As I walked from the station with my basket, the rain bit my face and flurries of wind whipped at my cloak.

I went first to the grave of the old monk who had told me about Sappho and her songs. He doesn’t need anything – he never did, even in life – but I say a prayer for him and leave a white rose because of what he told me: that in the valley where she lived they grew wild, the hyacinths and the roses, and she used to make garlands of them for her friends.

Then I went to see my father.

I never went back to see him after I eloped with Karli. He knew nothing of my daughter’s birth. I meant to write to him when I was settled, but I imagined Aunt Lina gloating over my disgrace, seizing any letter that came.

Actually I was wrong. She fell ill soon after I left and found it increasingly hard to look after my father. Who knows, she might have been glad of someone young and strong to help her. For my father grew cantankerous and difficult as he grew older. In the end she went home to die and my father lived on alone.

It wasn’t till the year after I left my daughter under the walnut tree that I returned to Leek. My father was pleased to see me; he wanted me to give up my job in Vienna and come back to keep house for him, and I refused.

So it never went right after that. I came a few times, and I wrote, but I wouldn’t do the one thing he wanted. The guilt was bad – it still is – but that’s the trouble with guilt: it can make you suffer like nothing else but it can’t change what you do.

It always seems wrong to put flowers on my father’s grave: an awl, a chisel is what he would have wanted there; it’s his hands I remember – planing, sawing, measuring… So I left my candles and asked his pardon for letting him die alone (though I was there actually, during his last illness, trying to undo the neglect of years with my assiduous nursing).