Madensky Square (30 page)

‘There’s a green taffeta and a white silk. I’ll fetch them and—’

She interrupted me. ‘I’d like to see them on the model, please.’

‘Very well.’

I found Nini and told her to put on the green taffeta, and in spite of her troubles she swept into the salon with her beaky nose in the air, handling the rustling train with her old bravura.

‘Yes, I like it. Could it be altered quickly? I leave tomorrow.’

Nini had been revolving in the centre of the room. Now she wheeled round, walked over to the woman in the gilt chair and addressed her with a sudden and most disconcerting rudeness.

‘Did he send you?’ she asked, at her most Magyar and insolent.

She had met her match. The woman in the Chanel dress drew together eyebrows that were only slightly less arrogant than Nini’s.

‘Nobody sends me,’ she said icily. ‘I am here on business.’

‘But you’re his sister, aren’t you ?’

The change was remarkable. The woman’s face puckered up in a smile, the eyes shone. ‘Ah, that was beautiful,’ she said appreciatively. ‘I shall dine out on that!’ Her voice now was gentle, she had seen the wretchedness in Nini’s face. ‘I’m his mother, actually.’

‘Oh. How… how is he?’

Frau Frankenheimer shrugged. ‘He’s back in New York and working very hard. His father’s pleased to have him back; he’s put through some useful deals already. So are the eligible girls of our circle. Invitations pour through the letter box…’

She broke off deliberately and, ignoring Nini, said: ‘Actually

I didn’t come here primarily to buy a dress and certainly not to talk about my son. I came to ask you about a child who used to live opposite. A pianist, Sigismund Kraszinsky. I was told that you knew him well, that he owes his career to you.’

‘No, not that. But, yes, I know him.’

‘Well, the problem is this. I heard him in Paris a few weeks ago and offered him a place in the school I help to run in New York. It seemed to me that he was exactly the sort of child we want: highly talented but in need of a very thorough grounding in musical techniques. And in need of a stable background in which to develop – the school is residential; any child who enters it is cared for till he’s ready to make his debut. However, the boy refused. He said he had to make money, a great deal of money. He seemed to be obsessed by that.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I see.’

‘So I left it - in any case we have far more applicants than there are places. But a few days ago, just as I was leaving Paris, I had a cable. Apparently the child has changed his mind and he now wants to come. I’ve talked to Van der Velde and he’ll let him go - he knows by the time we’ve finished with him he’ll be worth a fortune and he can take some of the credit. But… I don’t know how to put this without sounding priggish… though we offer a highly technical curriculum, we do try to develop the idea of a talent as a gift from God, something that carries certain obligations. And if there’s something money-grubbing in the child himself- if money is the prime objective, which would be perfectly natural given his background - then I don’t think he’d fit in.’

‘No, no, no!’ I came towards her; I think I was wringing my hands. ‘No, he’s not like that at all! Listen, please listen. Let me tell you why he wanted money.’

Once I began to talk I couldn’t stop. I told her everything about Sigi – our first meeting by the fountain, the day at the Prater, the accident – and the last evening at Sachers. ‘That’s why he wanted money, you see. Not for himself – never for himself.’

When I finished she rose and laid a hand on my arm. ‘I won’t tell you that you are going to be proud of him because I know you are already. I won’t even tell you that the world will hear of him, because you know that too. I’ll just tell you that we’ll look after him as you would have done… you or the red-haired angel’

Then deliberately shrugging off emotion, she became practical.

‘Now the only question that remains is how to get Sigismund to New York. I’d like him to go at once because term begins next week and I’ve lured Leschetizsky over to take a master class. But I’m not going home yet – I’m on my way to St Petersburg; I still have grandparents there, they’re in their eighties and I’ve promised to visit them before it’s too late.’ ‘Sigi’s too young to travel alone,’ I said. She nodded, holding my eyes.

‘Yes, definitely. Daniel will meet him and take him to the school, but I’ll have to try to find someone to go with him on the boat. The uncle’s going back to Preszowice, and anyway he’s useless. Well, no doubt something can be arranged.’

There was a rustle of taffeta as Nini stirred in the green dress.

‘I could take him,’ she said gruffly. ‘If you like. Just take him over and maybe stay for a short time, if Frau Susanna can spare me. Just for a visit.’

‘Would you?’ Frau Frankenheimer was entirely matter of fact. ‘That would certainly solve the problem.’

And she began to discuss the alterations to the green dress – but it was at this point that I remembered something Daniel had said. Something about wolverines…

It all happened so quickly after that.

Less than a week after Frau Frankenheimer’s visit, I stood on the platform of the Westbahnof saying goodbye.

Nini was shivering in her cloth coat. She has sold the Russian sable and given the money to the family of the little boy who lost his legs.

‘You’ll be cold on the boat,’ I said. ‘Let me lend you my shawl.’

She shook her head. ‘I’ll wrap a rug round me,’ she said, and I saw her swaggering round the deck, starting a new fashion for steamer-rug cloaks.

‘It’s only a visit,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course.’

‘And anyway you’ll come. It would be a marvellous place to have a shop, New York.’

‘Yes, marvellous.’

We’ve said these things to each other a hundred times since Frau Frankenheimer’s visit. We had to.

The guard came along the platform, calling to the passengers to take their seats.

‘Goodbye, Nini.’

We hugged each other quickly, and then she climbed into the train and waited for the boy.

A stupid, concert-going lady had presented him with an outsize bouquet of hothouse flowers. As I bent down to him, his face was almost hidden by the outsize blooms.

‘We’ll meet again, Sigi. We won’t lose each other. Not you and I.’

He said nothing. This child of all children knew how easily people are lost. As I kissed him I heard for the last time that husky, almost inaudible croak.

‘I hope she comes soon.’

‘Who, Sigi?’

‘Your daughter.’

‘Yes, I hope so too.’

But she could have come running down the platform with outstretched arms and I wouldn’t even have seen her, as I stood watching the train go out and waving, waving…

There were a number of things I needed as I came back from the station: oblivion, a hot bath, a large glass of Gretl’s uncle’s eau de vie – but not, God knows
not
– Frau Egger pacing dementedly between the packing cases.

‘Oh there you are, Frau Susanna! Thank heavens! I’ve been so distracted… I don’t know what to do. I’m at my wits’ end!’

But this was too much.

‘Frau Egger, your husband has destroyed my livelihood and made a great many people most unhappy – I really cannot discuss any more intimate details of—’

‘No, no. It isn’t that! It’s far worse! I know I shouldn’t come to you, but I have no friends, and it’s all to do with the buttons he says, and now he’s gone completely mad. He’s going to fight a duel!’ ‘A duel?’

She nodded. ‘This afternoon, in that meadow by the Danube Bend where they used to fight – except that I think it’s a corporation dump now, but that wouldn’t stop Willibald.’

I sighed and removed my coat. ‘You’d better come upstairs. And try to be calm – just tell me what happened, quietly.’

It had begun just before Christmas, she said, with the arrival of a mysterious stranger late at night asking to see her husband. ‘He didn’t give his name, but he was the kind of person one admitted,’ said Frau Egger.

The man was closeted with Egger for an hour and after he left, the Minister was in a dreadful state, white, shaking, hysterical. And the next day he said he had to go abroad on urgent business.

‘He wouldn’t tell me what it was or why he had to go, but from the way he packed all the valuables, even my pearls, I knew he meant to flee the country.’

‘But what about his work at the Ministry?’ ‘I don’t know about that. He went on going to his office, but I don’t know what he did there. He was quite wild all that week - furious and frightened at the same time. And then just before he was due to leave Vienna, something extraordinary happened. We were having lunch and a military parade went by outside the window. It was the Carinthian Jaegers marching with a full band and you know how smart they are.’ ‘Yes.’ I had good reason to know that. ‘And Willibald went to the window and suddenly I found he was standing to attention and saluting! And then… he went upstairs to the attic and when he came down he was wearing a military uniform. It was much too small for him -he’s put on weight and he couldn’t get most of the buttons done up, but they were the same buttons I found, with
Aggredi
on them. And then he saluted again and said: “Herr Lieutenant Willibald Egger at your service!” ‘ ‘I see. So he had been in the army.’ ‘Yes. And after that he became quite different: calm and almost dignified and yet… sort of mad. He said things about dying for his regiment and bringing down the traitor who had betrayed him and so on. I really feared for his reason and I began to… spy on him and to ask the servants to watch him.’ She flushed. ‘They aren’t very fond of Willibald and they’re always ready to listen at keyholes and so on.’

Two days after he had put on his uniform, Egger had driven to a secret destination and when he returned he was more exalted than ever. He fetched his sabres from the attic and he began to make telephone calls to his acquaintances.

‘I heard him talk to Heinrid on the phone – that’s his deputy at the Ministry – to ask if he’d act for him, but Heinrid hates Willibald – he’s opposed him all the time over the plans for the square, and he wouldn’t. But the chiropodist said he would.’ ‘I can’t believe this, Frau Egger. No one fights duels any more.’

‘It’s true, Frau Susanna. I know it’s true. And then yesterday afternoon Willibald made me… you know… come up to the bedroom. And it wasn’t Tuesday or Friday which is when he does it. Well, you know… it was Wednesday. And he kept saying he forgave me.’ ‘Forgave you for what?’

‘I don’t know – the buttons perhaps – but he forgave me and he said he’d left me well provided for – though actually the money comes from my side of the family. And why I know it’s serious is because of… The Habit. He didn’t try it once, he didn’t even
think
of it, he was so lit up. And I’m terrified, Frau Susanna; I don’t know what to do! I don’t want him to be killed. I wish he’d never been born but I don’t want him to be killed and I certainly don’t want him to kill anyone else. He’s a good fencer in spite of his stomach – he goes to the salle d’armes once a week…’

‘It will be just some harmless quarrel from his student days, perhaps.’

‘No, no, you don’t understand. It’s a Field Marshal he’s challenged.’

I didn’t hear any more, but I wasn’t hysterical, I promise you. I put on my coat, but before I left the house I went down to the workroom and cut off a double length of black veiling which I fixed under my hat so as to conceal my face. It was only then that I ran into the street to find a cab.

It was not the corporation dump – on the contrary. There was a notice saying
It is Forbidden to Leave Litter
and a smell of gas from a nearby gasometer.

But the rest of it was the exact landscape of the nightmare I’d had when I lay in Gernot’s arms and he’d joked about challenging the man with the camels: the birches, the snow, the carriages of the seconds drawn up by the road – and I knew for certain that the creeping wretchedness of the last weeks had led me to this moment: to Gernot lying dead, his blood staining the ground.

Yet I managed to walk (or rather to stumble, for my double layer of veiling made it almost as difficult to see as to be seen) as far as a tree to which I clung.

At the end of the field on which I stood was a narrow belt of birches, then a meadow beside the river. It was there that they were assembled. I could make out two men in uniform -Gernot’s seconds - and a little round man in a brown overcoat, the chiropodist, perhaps. Another, a tall man in a frock coat and top hat, was bending over a black bag: the doctor. The principals were further off. I just caught a glimmer of Gernot’s scarlet and blue and then it was gone.

I’d intended to throw myself between the combatants, to scream, to threaten to call the police – God knows what I’d intended, but it didn’t matter because all I was able to do was hold on to the tree. Then one of Gernot’s seconds caught sight of me and hurried across: a Captain of Dragoons.

‘Frau Egger! This is terrible. You must leave at once – at once! This is no place for a woman.’ ‘I… can’t.’

‘My dear lady, I assure you there’s nothing to be anxious about. It’s just a routine matter. The duel was forced on… the gentleman for whom I’m acting but he has everything under control. They’re only fighting to first blood – the most your husband will receive is a scratch on the cheek. Now please return to your carriage.’ He left me. I heard someone counting out the paces, heard a word of command. The tree to which I clung was an oak; they’re strong trees, neither of us fell down. I couldn’t see the combatants, but I could hear… Hear the clash of the sabres going on and on… then an oath… a scream…

The doctor, his coat tails flapping, began to run.

I didn’t faint. I would have liked to, but I didn’t, and when they brought the stretcher through the birches, I saw that the blanket shrouding the still figure covered also the face.

It was the little fat man they sent to tell me.

‘Madam, we have the gravest news. You must be brave. Your husband is dead.’

‘It was his own choice.’ The Captain of Dragoons who had followed spoke tersely. ‘There’s no doubt about it. Both parties are agreed.’