Madensky Square (26 page)

He consulted his papers.

‘There is no one of this name here.’

Oh God, Nini – did you have to give a false name as well as everything else ?

‘Herr Lieutenant,’ I said, elevating the oaf to officer status, ‘the girl is just twenty years old. She is a minor. Would you allow me to see the prisoners you took last night ? That’s all I ask. Justice must be done, I entirely see that; she must take her punishment. But I am, in effect… her mother. I only ask to know where she is.’

I made no attempt to bribe him. The sums involved, the procedure, the donations to the Prison Officers’ Welfare Fund, were out of my reach. I could only entreat.

‘You may look at the female prisoners taken last night. Three minutes only. And leave the basket here.’

I followed a janitor into the basement.

It’s the smells that tell you first that you are in a place without hope. Unwashed bodies, urine, vomit… Then the sounds; moaning, keening, a raucous laughter that is worse than the wails… A monotonous, endless banging of something against iron… And the cold.

We had passed through a steel door into the women’s quarters. A series of cages, each the size of the lion’s cage in Schonbrunn Zoo, but filled with women. Some stood by the bars, hanging on with their hands as Alice had stood at Rudi’s funeral; some lay huddled on the ground, rolled up as if to make themselves as small as possible and minimize their wretchedness. A few sat with their backs to the wall, gossiping, not ashamed. These, I supposed, were the prostitutes who were picked up and released at the whim of the police. Nini was not in the first cage, nor in the second, on the floor of which lay a woman so old that it was impossible to believe she was still capable of wrongdoing. In the third cage I saw her at once. She had lost her jacket and her blouse was torn, one spiky shoulder protruded from it. There was a bruise on her forehead and a patch of dried blood. She still wore her assassination shoes.

‘Nini.’

She lifted her head, came towards me. Best not to remember her look as she saw me; I have done nothing to merit that.

‘Oh, Frau Susanna! How did you know?’

‘Lily told me. Don’t worry, Nini. I’ll find some way of helping you.’

She shook her head. ‘The others are all in the same boat. They’re all my companions. I mustn’t get anything they don’t get.’ She pushed her hair out of her eyes – prisoners are not allowed hair pins. ‘But we did it,’ she whispered, ‘we killed the swine!’

‘Yes. And a number of other people too. Listen, Nini, you know you mustn’t admit to anything – not even taking messages. Nothing. Not for your sake – you wouldn’t mind being martyred – but because you’ll make trouble for someone else.’

‘I know. Don’t worry, they can cut out my tongue.’ Then suddenly her eyes filled with tears. ‘They don’t let us go to the lavatory,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect that. We have to go in a bucket in here. With everyone watching. I expected the beatings, but not that.’

‘I’ll get help, Nini; we’ll get you out.’

But the janitor had had enough. ‘Time’s up. No more talking.’

I was led back to the office. ‘The sanitation in this prison’s a disgrace,’ I said furiously. ‘I’m going to see that questions are raised in Parliament.’

He shrugged. ‘No one’ll spend the money. Did you find the girl?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, they’ll be charged next week. Nothing to be done till then.’

‘I’ll be back with a solicitor,’ I said, and left.

I drove straight to the lawyer who had helped me when I rented my shop. He did not deal in criminal cases, but recommended a colleague in the Borse Platz. The colleague kept me waiting an hour and said he would find it very difficult, on ethical grounds, to defend an Anarchist. Even if he could overcome his scruples, the fee would be very high.

‘How high?’ I asked, and blenched as he told me.

‘Don’t you have a friend in Important Places?’ he asked, leering at me. ‘They’re worth all of us poor lawyers put together, these important friends.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t.’

Not any more. Not now.

Then I drove to the main post office and found Lily behind her grille, and she helped me to send a cable to New York.

Somehow I’ve crawled through the last three days. I’ve left it to Gretl to explain to my clients what has happened and most of them have been patient and understanding. The Baroness Lefevre even offered to ask her husband to plead for Nini, but when it came to the point the Baron didn’t feel able to intervene on behalf of a girl who wanted to destroy the fabric of society.

Meanwhile I’ve gone backwards and forwards between the prison and the offices of anyone I thought might possibly help me: lawyers, welfare workers, priests, but nothing has happened – nothing.

And there’s been no answer to my cable. I hadn’t really expected it.

I’ve been allowed to see Nini for a few minutes each day. She still holds her head proudly, she still, even in her rags, keeps that extraordinary style, and she’s admitted nothing.

There hasn’t been much actual cruelty on the part of the prison staff – it isn’t necessary. The filth, the horrendous sanitary arrangements, the haphazard mingling of sick and deluded women with young girls does its own work. There are bruises on Nini’s face which were not there when she was admitted, but when I asked her how she came by them she only shook her head.

I’ve decided to swallow my pride and beg that slimy lawyer in the Borse Platz to defend Nini. If I hadn’t been so distraught I’d have realized at once that I only had to sell The Necklace to get his fees. But when I called there this afternoon, he had left for the assizes in Graz.

This morning I went to the prison early and for the first time found Nini looking frightened. At the back of the cage sat three women, huddled and weeping, with white cloths round their heads – and on one of the cloths, bloodstains.

‘It’s typhus,’ she whispered. ‘They’ve found a case of typhus and they’re shaving everybody’s head. They came and did them this morning and the rest of us are going to be done in batches. You should see the wardresses – they have these cutthroat razors and they just shave you to the scalp. They love doing it because it’s what the women mind most of all.’

It is that that Nini fears: losing her hair – but I know about typhus. I saw our neighbours’ little daughter die of it at Leek.

Upstairs, the prison officer told me to stay away. The women are now in quarantine.

I drove back, utterly sick at heart, as near defeated as I remember being. As the fiacre stopped at the corner of the square, I looked out, amazed. It has been snowing for days; the fountain is frozen, there are icicles on St Florian’s head. People hurry across, their footsteps muffled. No one lingers.

But the square was full of children. I’d heard their shouts before the cab turned in through the chestnut trees and now I saw them in their mufflers and fur hats, bright spots of colour on the whiteness of the snow. They were running and calling out to each other, some were crouched low beside piles of snowballs – one, a ragged little boy I don’t ever remember seeing before had climbed on to St Florian’s shoulders as a lookout and, even as I watched, was brought down by the arrow of an attacker.

For it was a battle that was being fought – but a battle with rules. The fountain was the stockade in which the besieged American pioneers bound for the Golden West defended their kith and kin. The children’s toboggans had been piled up like covered wagons and from behind them the intrepid settlers fired on their attackers.

But the Indians were brave too. Screaming their uncouth war calls, they leapt from General Madensky’s plinth, charged from between the chestnut trees… Maia’s imagined horse was shot from under her and a Red Indian chorister from the presbytery pulled her on to the back of his saddle and galloped on. Among the settlers I saw – but could scarcely believe my eyes – Ernst Bischof allowing little Steffi to provide him with bullets of snow.

The door of the Schumachers’ house opened and Helene called the girls in to lunch.

She might have saved her breath. Mitzi, inside the stockade, was tending the wounded; Resi, who had strayed from the safety of the wagons, was being dragged off to be scalped.

A prosperous-looking couple crossed the Walterstrasse with a fat little boy in ear muffs.

‘Can I play ?’ he shouted – and ignoring the protests of his parents, he ran to Madensky’s statue and instantly became an Indian brave.

I had never seen a game like this. There were scarcely any props: the Indians had no feathers, the settlers no guns – yet so engrossed was each and every child in his part that I could have told exactly what they were doing.

But now a boy, older than the rest, in a corduroy cap and outsize muffler appeared from behind the statue of St Florian. He must have died earlier, perhaps the better to mastermind the game – and taking heed perhaps of Frau Schumacher’s pleas, he suggested to the settlers a heroic demise, en bloc, and to the Indians a triumphant ride off into the hills.

Not a boy, I realized as I looked more carefully: a young man. At the same time Nini’s voice sounded distinctly in my head: ‘
It was the children that made me notice him.’’

Impossible. I had sent the cable only three days ago. Then he bent down, beat the snow from his trousers… and pulled up his socks.

He had never had my cable. His mother was travelling to Paris on business and he came with her for talks with the European branches of the bank, and because he wanted to see Nini. ‘I’ve bought her a Christmas present,’ he said, stamping his boots clean in my hall.

I couldn’t believe it. I began to tremble, so great was the relief.

‘What is it?’ he asked as he followed me upstairs. ‘There’s something wrong. She’s had an accident? She’s ill?’

I told him.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I see. That was to be expected, I suppose.’

‘Can you help, Daniel? I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried everything.’

He put an arm round my shoulder. Nini had described him exactly. He was small, he had a snub nose, his eyes were no particular colour and sock suspenders seemed to be foreign to his nature, yet I felt instantly comforted.

‘I think we’ll have some lunch,’ he said. ‘I’m staying at the Bristol – they’re supposed to keep a good table. Will you come?’

‘No… if you don’t mind, not the Bristol. I could make us something here. An omelette?’

‘Yes, I’d like that.’

I was upset that he wanted to have lunch. I wanted him to start at once doing whatever can be done. But when I came to eat I realized that I had been very close to collapse, and perhaps he realized it too, for he watched me closely and made me open a bottle of wine though he himself drank little.

Not till we had had our coffee did he push back his chair and say: ‘Right. I’d better get going. There’s just one favour I’d like to ask of you. I’d like to see Nini’s room. You see, even if I can get her out, I think she’ll turn against me. She’ll say it was just privilege, the rotten system and so on. So I’d like to be able to imagine her when I’ve gone.’

‘I’ll show you. But you won’t be able to imagine her for long. The shop is being pulled down, you see, and most of the square.’

‘My God!’

I took him upstairs. He walked over to the poster which said
Property is Theft
and the one that said
Blood Shed for the Revolution is Blood Shed for Humanity
. He touched briefly the lace-edged pillow and the picture of the candy-striped pinafore she’d cut out of
Damenmode
. He looked at the pile of leaflets urging the textile workers of Ottakring to strike and picked up the silver-backed brush I’d given her last Christmas.

‘She’s very tidy,’ he said. ‘Somehow I didn’t expect that.’

Then he wound himself in to his strange muffler, ready to go to the Bristol. At the door he turned and took both my hands. ‘I promise I’ll refer back to you as often as I can, but this is something that has to be traced out step by step. And it can’t be hurried. Everything has to be just so. If the bribe is too big they get suspicious, if it’s too small they get insulted. If you offer membership of the Jockey Club to someone who wants a permanent box at the Opera you’ve wasted a whole round of talks. And bribes alone are no good – there has to be pressure as well. It can take days… weeks…’

‘How will you start?’

‘With the American Ambassador. Thank God he’s in town – and what’s more, he knows my father.’

‘But how can you interest a man like that in a girl who wants to blow everyone up ? An avowed Anarchist ?’

‘I’m not going to interest him in an avowed Anarchist. I’m going to interest him in my intended. For I intend to marry Nini, you know. What she intends is nobody’s business.’

I didn’t tell him about the typhus. He doesn’t have to have
all
my nightmares.

Daniel has been at the Bristol for five days. The ship on which he was due to return sailed from Genoa and he let it go. Each day he comes and tells me what he has done. He never gets ruffled and if he gets discouraged he keeps it to himself, but it seems to me that his nondescript eyes, the freckles on his nose, are growing darker. The children are a trouble. When they see him coming they run out of their houses, pursued by the irate voice of Father Anselm from the presbytery, of Helene Schumacher forbidding her girls to go out inadequately dressed into the snow. Daniel only speaks to them for a few minutes and then they are off. Once they became vile slavers on the Gold Coast, dragging the captive Africans to their ships, only to be overcome in their turn by pirates and forced to walk the plank. Once they set off in canoes to find the source of the Rio Negro, beating off crocodiles, piranha fish and savages, and claimed new territory for the Austrian flag. I never saw children play together as they played with Daniel Frankenheimer in the doomed square. I think Maia would have gone through fire for him.

When he could stay a while we talked and I learnt about his family. He was proud of his father’s achievements, but impatient of some of his attitudes to his workers. ‘He’s too paternalistic; he won’t see that times have changed. Unions are here to stay – people want things by right, now, not by the gift of their employers. But he’s got the most terrific flair.’ ‘And your mother?’