The Novel in the Viola (3 page)

‘I want you take it to England with you,’ said Julian.

‘But I don’t play anymore. And anyway, it’s Margot’s.’

Julian shook his head. ‘Margot hasn’t used this old thing for years. And besides, it can’t be played.’ He smiled at me. ‘Try.’

I was about to refuse, but there was something odd in his expression, so I picked up the instrument. It felt heavy in my hands, a curious weight in the body. Watching my father, I placed it under my chin and picking up the bow drew it slowly across the strings. The sound was muffled and strange, as though I had attached a mute beneath the bridge. I lowered the viola and stared at Julian; a smile twitched upon his lips.

‘What’s inside it, Papa?’

‘A novel. Well, my novel.’

I peered inside the f-holes carved into the body of the instrument and realised that it was stuffed full of yellow paper.

‘How did you manage to get all those pages in there?’

Julian’s smile spread into a grin. ‘I went to a string maker. He steamed off the front, I placed the novel inside and he glued it shut.’

He spoke with pride, pleased to confide his secret, and then his face became serious once again.

‘I want you to take it to England, for safekeeping.’

Julian always wrote in duplicate, writing out his work on carbon paper in his tiny curling hand, so that a shadow novel appeared upon the pages underneath. The top layer on watermarked white paper was sent to his publisher, while the carbon copy on flimsy yellow tissue remained locked in his desk drawer. Julian was terrified of losing work and the mahogany desk held a word-hoard. He’d never permitted a copy to leave his study before.

‘I’ll take the manuscript with me to New York. But I want you to keep this copy in England. Just in case.’

‘All right. But I’ll give it back to you in New York and you can lock it inside your desk again.’

The hall clock chimed the half hour.

‘You must go and dress, little one,’ said Julian, planting a kiss on my forehead. ‘The guests will be arriving soon.’

It was the first night of Passover and Anna had dictated that it was to be a celebration, a party with champagne and dancing like there used to be before the bad times. Crying was absolutely forbidden. Margot came round early to dress and we sat in our dressing gowns in Anna’s large bathroom, faces flushed with steam. Anna filled the tub with rose petals and propped the dining room candlesticks beside the washbasin mirror, like she did on the evening of the Opera Ball. She lay back in the tub, her hair knotted on the top of her head, fingers trailing patterns in the water. ‘Ring the bell, Margot. Ask Hilde to bring a bottle of the Laurent-Perrier and three glasses.’

Margot did as she was bidden, and soon we sat sipping champagne, each pretending to be cheerful for the benefit of the others. I took a gulp and felt the tears burn in my throat.
No crying,
I told myself and swallowed, the bubbles making me choke.

‘Be careful there,’ said Anna with a giggle, too high pitched, striking a note of false gaiety.

I wondered how many bottles of wine or champagne were left. I knew Julian had sold the good ones. Anything expensive or valuable was liable to be confiscated; better to sell it first. Margot fanned herself with a magazine and casting it aside, marched to the window, opening the sash to let in a cool breath of night air. I watched the steam trickle outside and the gauze curtain flutter.

‘So, tell me about the department in California,’ said Anna, lying back and closing her eyes.

Margot flopped into a wicker rocking chair and unfastened her robe to reveal a white lace corset and matching knickers. I wondered what Robert thought of such exciting underwear and was instantly filled with envy. No one had ever shown the slightest interest in seeing me in my underthings. Robert could be quite dashing in the right sort of lighting, although he always got rather too animated when talking about his star projects at the University. I had once grievously offended him when I’d introduced him at a party as ‘my brother-in-law the astrologer’ rather than ‘the astronomer’. He’d turned to me with a haughty glare, asking, ‘Do I wear a blue headscarf and dangling earrings or ask you to cross my palm with silver before I tell you that with Venus in retrograde, I see a handsome stranger in your future?’ ‘Oh no, but I wish you would!’ I replied, and as a consequence he’d never really forgiven me, which was a pity, because before that he used to let me take puffs on his cigar. ‘The university at Berkeley is supposed to be very good,’ Margot was saying. ‘They’re full of kind things about Robert. They’re so pleased he’s joining them and so on.’

‘And you? Will you play?’ said Anna.

Margot and Anna were the same; they were caged birds if they couldn’t have music. Margot lit a cigarette and I saw her hand tremble, ever such a little.

‘I shall look for a quartet.’

‘
Gut. Gut
.’ Anna nodded, satisfied.

I took another gulp of champagne and stared at my mother and sister. They would make friends wherever they ended up. In any city in the world they could arrive, seek out the nearest cluster of musicians and for as long as the sonata, symphony or minuet lasted, they were at home.

I watched my sister, long-limbed and with golden hair, like Anna, falling in damp curls on her bare shoulders. She sprawled in the wicker chair, robe dishevelled, sipping champagne and puffing on her cigarette with an air of studied decadence. A film of perspiration clung to her skin and she smiled at me with dreamy eyes.

‘Here, Elsie, have a puff.’ She held the cigarette out to me, letting it dangle between her fingers.

I knocked her hand away. ‘Don’t call me that.’

I hated being called Elsie. It was an old woman’s name. Margot laughed, a rich tinkling sound, and at that moment I hated her too and was glad I was going far, far away. I didn’t care if I never saw her again. I retreated to the window, unable to breathe through all the mist. Despite the heat I clutched my robe around me, not wanting to take it off in front of them and display my big white knickers and schoolgirl brassiere or the small roll of baby-fat oozing around my middle.

Sensing a round of bickering about to start between Margot and me, Anna did the one thing she could to make us stop. She began to sing. Later that night Anna performed before all the assembled guests, while the garnet choker around her neck trembled like drops of blood, but it is this moment I remember. When I think of Anna, I see her lying naked in the bathtub, singing. The sound filled the small room, thicker than the steam, and the water in the bath began to vibrate. I felt her voice rather than heard it. Anna’s rich mezzo tones were inside me. Instead of an aria, she sang the melody to
Für Elise
;
a song without words, a song for me.

I leant against the window frame, feeling the cool air against my back, the notes falling on my skin like rain. Margot’s glass sagged to the ground unheeded, the champagne trickling onto the floor. I saw that the door was ajar and Julian lingered in the doorway, watching the three of us and listening. He disobeyed Anna’s rule for the night. He was crying.

CHAPTER THREE

An eggcup of saltwater

The guests arrived for the party. A manservant had been hired for the evening, and he stood in the hallway, collecting coats from the gentlemen and assisting the ladies with their hats and furs. Robert was the first to arrive; he came before eight and I fixed him with a stare to display my disapproval. According to Anna, extreme punctuality was a terrible habit in a guest, although to my irritation, when I complained about Robert, she said that it was acceptable in family or lovers. Some guests didn’t arrive at all. Anna issued thirty invitations the week before. But people had started to disappear, and those who remained decided it was best not to draw attention to oneself, to live quietly and not make eye contact in the street. We understood that some would prefer not to come to a Passover soirée at the home of a famous Jewish singer and her avant-garde novelist husband. Anna and Julian said nothing about the missing guests. The table was silently re-set.

We all gathered in the drawing room. Those who had chosen to attend the party had apparently decided by unspoken accord to dazzle in their finest. If coming to the Landau party was dangerous, then they may as well be resplendent. The men were dashing in their white tie and tails. The ladies wore dark furs or dull raincoats down to the floor, but when they removed their chrysalis-coats we saw that beneath them they sparkled like tropical butterflies. Margot’s dress was shot silk, indigo blue as a summer’s night and studded with silver embroidered stars, which twinkled as she moved. Even fat Frau Finkelstein wore a plum-coloured gown, her white, doughy arms puckered by tight gauze sleeves, grey hair plaited into a crown and studded with cherry blossom. Lily Roth conjured a feathered fascinator from her bag like a magician, and fastened it in her hair, so she resembled a bird of paradise. Every lady wore her jewels, and all of them at once. If in the past seeming garish or extravagant or petty bourgeois had troubled us, now, as we felt everything sliding away into blackness, we wondered how we could have worried about such things. Tonight was for pleasure. Tomorrow we would have to sell our jewels – grandmama’s spider-web diamond brooch, the gold bracelet studded with rubies and sapphires that the children had teethed upon, the platinum cufflinks given to Herman when he made partner at the bank – so tonight we would wear them all and shine beneath the moon.

Julian sipped burgundy and listened to Herr Finkelstein’s stories, smiling easily in all the right places. I’d heard them all – the time he met Baron Rothschild at a concert, and the Baron, mistaking him for someone else, had tipped his head and the Baroness her sherry glass,
‘and who on earth would have dreamt there was a smart fellow as bald and round as me? I must find my double and shake his hand.
’ I rolled my eyes, bored from a distance. Julian saw me and gestured for me to join them; I shook my head and edged away. Julian stifled a laugh. Margot exchanged pleasantries with Frau Roth, Robert hovering beside her, awkward and incapable of small talk. He could discuss only his passions: astronomy, music and Margot, while Frau Roth’s sole topic of conversation was her seventeen grandchildren. I hoped they were not sitting next to one another at dinner.

I knew this was my last party as a guest. I studied the manservant in his black tie, and impassive face, and tried to imagine myself as one of them, refreshing glasses and pretending not to hear conversation. Pity I’d never said anything worth eavesdropping upon when I’d had the chance. I tried to think of something now – some profound insight upon the state of the nation. No. Nothing. I smiled at the servant, attempting to convey some sense of solidarity. He caught my glance, but instead of smiling back, glided over.

‘Fraulein? Another drink?’

I looked down at the full glass in my hand. ‘No. Thank you. I’m fine. All topped up.’

A flicker of confusion showed on the man’s face – clearly I had summoned him for my amusement. I flushed, and muttering some apology hurried out of the drawing room. I lingered in the hallway, listening to the snatches of chatter floating from the next room.
‘Max Reinhardt is to leave for New York next week, I hear . . . Oh? I thought it was London.’

I closed my eyes and fought against the impulse to stick my fingers in my ears. The kitchen door was firmly shut but emanating from it was a series of clatters and bangs and some of Hildegard’s more colourful curses. No one, not Rudolph Valentino, not Moses himself, could have persuaded me to enter the kitchen at that moment.

From my vantage point, I saw Margot and Robert whispering in the corner, hand in hand. I had it on good authority that flirting with one’s spouse in public was the depth of ill manners (with someone else’s husband it was perfectly fine, of course) but once again, Anna informed me that within the first year of marriage it was quite acceptable. I hoped Margot had written their first anniversary in her diary along with a note to ‘stop flirting with Robert’. She would be in America by then, and with something like regret I realised I would not be able to tell her to behave. I must write and remind her. Although, I mused, it was possible Americans had different rules, and I wondered if I ought to point this out to her. At that moment, I was feeling charitable towards my sister. While at most parties I watched as the men swarmed around Margot and Anna, tonight I had caught little Jan Tibor surreptitiously glancing at my bosom, and I felt every bit as sophisticated as the others. In the darkness of the hall I puffed out my chest and fluttered my eyelashes, imagining myself irresistible, a dark-haired Marlene Dietrich.

‘Darling, don’t do that,’ said Anna, appearing beside me. ‘The seams might pop.’

I sighed and deflated. My pink sheath dress had once belonged to Anna, and although Hildegard had let out the material as much as she could, it still pinched.

‘It looks lovely on you,’ said Anna, suddenly conscious that she may have wounded my feelings. ‘You must take it with you.’

I snorted. ‘For washing dishes in? Or for dusting?’

Anna changed the subject. ‘Do you want to ring the bell for dinner?’

The bell was a tiny silver ornament, once belonging to my grandmother, and tinkled a ‘C’ sharp according to Margot, who had perfect pitch. As a child, it had been a great treat to put on my party frock, stay up late and ring the bell for dinner. I would stand beside the dining room door, solemnly allowing myself to be kissed good night by the guests as they filed in for dinner. Tonight, as I rang the bell, I saw all those parties flickering before me, and an endless train of people walking past me, like a circular frieze going round and round the room, never stopping. They chattered loudly, faces pink with alcohol, all obeying Anna’s dictate of gaiety.

My family was not religious in the slightest. When we were children, Anna wanted Margot and me to understand a little of our heritage and at bedtime told us stories from the Torah alongside tales of ‘Peter and the Wolf’ and ‘Mozart and Constanze’. In Anna’s hands, Eve was imbued with the glamour of Greta Garbo, and we pictured her lounging in the Garden of Eden, a snake draped tantalisingly around her neck, a besotted Adam (played by Clark Gable) kneeling at her feet. The Bible stories had the wild and unlikely plots of operas and Margot and I devoured them with enthusiasm, mingling the genres seamlessly in our imaginations. Eve tempts Adam with Carmen’s arias and the voice of God sounded very much like
The Barber of Seville
. If anyone had asked Anna to choose between God and music there would have been no contest, and I suspected that Julian was an atheist. We never went to the handsome brick synagogue in Leopoldstadt, we ate schnitzel in non-kosher restaurants, celebrated Christmas rather than Chanukah and were proud to be amongst the new class of bourgeois Austrians. We were Viennese-Jews but, up till now, the Viennese part always came first. Even this year, when Anna decided we would celebrate Passover, it had to be a party with Margot in her wedding sapphires and me wearing Anna’s pearls.