The Vienna Melody (43 page)

As unobtrusively as possible, so that Fritz would not notice, she looked round. Beside her and behind sat people with ecstatic and intent expressions on their faces. For most or them a visit to the Burgtheater had been until now beyond their means; only since the revolution had things changed.

I must have been mistaken, thought the girl, turning her eyes back towards the stage. As she did that they swept over both sides of the auditorium. In the box on her right sat her mother, smiling, enchanted, and enchanting. On the left in the first tier was a scarlet uniform. A hand held an opera glass. It was directed at Martha Monica.

From where she sat no one could notice that her attention was divided between the love scene and the opera glass. There was no doubt about it—it was pointed at her. Not for a fraction of a minute did it alter its direction. Its lenses glinted in the dark.

Why won't he look away?
Martha Monica thought.

She considered changing her position quietly, so that he could not see her face.

But then wouldn't he know that she had noticed him?

Impertinent creature!

I mustn't so much as glance in his direction, she thought. If I don't take my eyes off the stage he will stop. When she had stood it long enough she looked again. The opera glass had not deviated from its position even by an inch.

In one way it was quite sporting of him, she admitted. Too bad that he interfered with one's enjoyment of the performance.

In the High Priest scene at least he will surely look at the stage?

But no, he was still gazing at her.

What did he think, anyhow? He could do it because he was an Italian? “All Italians are treacherous,” Grandfather Stein used to say. But probably only because they had broken the Triple Alliance.

Doesn't he realize that it is awfully noticeable to stare into the auditorium during the performance? And he in the uniform of a former enemy!

The uniform was good-looking. People might say what they pleased, a uniform was more becoming than civilian dress. He himself was rather handsome, and he knew it, of course. Undoubtedly he was very conceited and had had all kinds of love affairs.

Martha Monica would drop her gloves and pick them up so that she could turn round and have her back to him. Thank goodness, up to now he could not possibly have noticed that she was aware of his gaze. Did Mama notice his staring? No. She did not. She seemed to like Selma's performance tremendously.

As unobtrusively as possible Martha Monica shifted her position.

“Why are you squirming around so? Are you bored?” Fritz whispered, annoyed.

“What do you mean? I'm enjoying it hugely!” she whispered back.

“You should!” Fritz said.

Incredible. That man had risen and was now standing and staring at her. She was not going to tolerate that! From someone who had only just been introduced! Not even turning her back on him had had any effect. Now he just stared at her back. Besides, her dress was so décolleté.

Selma was a great actress. Mustn't it be marvellous to be able to act like this? Conte meant “count.” To think he took Fritz for her father! She didn't even resemble Fritz. But she did not resemble Papa either. How disgustingly uneasy it made you when someone did not let you out of his sight for an instant!

Gaetano Corbellini. Conte Gaetano Corbellini. Italians had such pretty names. Yet how could he be called Count since titles of nobility had been abolished? But not in Italy, she recalled. His accent was so funny!

The end of the play. No one could be more convincingly and at the same time less theatrically in love than Selma was on the stage. Good for her and Hans. At last the Italian had stopped.

After the performance Fritz went backstage to congratulate Selma and to meet his wife. As outsiders were strictly forbidden admittance there, Martha Monica hurried up to the first floor to her mother's box so that they could all go home together. But neither Mama nor her companion were there.

For the two mothers also had gone backstage. Frau Rosner was already a familiar figure to the staff, and she beamed with pride when the strictly guarded iron door was so quickly opened to her and her companion.

Walking into Selma's dressing-room, Henriette felt the old antagonism with which she had come to the theater return. In her eyes the fact that Selma was undoubtedly a great artist did not improve matters. On the contrary, Selma's fame would make up to Hans for the glamour she did not have. Her fascinating profession would replace for him the charm she lacked. Her erroneous views and prejudices would gain authenticity through the admiration with which the Viennese spoiled actors.

“Frau Alt wanted to tell you how much she liked your performance.” Frau Rosner's words betrayed anxiety and excitement.

Henriette looked at the luxurious dressing table and then at the slim figure which jumped up as she came in.

“You were wonderful, Selma,” she said.

“Really?” Selma asked doubtfully. “Did you really like me?” It could not be just her make up which made her face so pale.

She must be very fond of Hans, thought Henriette. Otherwise she would not lay so much weight on what I think. Then, on the impulse of the sudden feelings which sometimes came over her without a second's warning, she took the violets she was wearing, handed them to her daughter-in-law, and kissed her.

 

Martha Monica stood waiting for Mama, Fritz, and Liesl in front of the stage door. This was also where the enthusiasts gathered to see what the actors looked like without make up. The portrayer of the High Priest was the first to come out. “Hooray for Devrient!” called the enthusiasts.

“Good evening,” came the muffled reply of the handsome white-haired man, with the collar of his fur coat turned up and a handkerchief over his mouth, as he pushed his way through the crowd of autograph-hunters.

“
Evviva
!” came a belated cheer.

It was the Italian officer who emerged from the stage door. Suddenly he was at Martha Monica's side, in his gold-trimmed hat, long pale-blue cape, and dragging saber. “
Evviva
!
Evviva
,
Signorina Ah
!
Prego
,
un autogramma
!” he cried.

Although she would rather not have done so, she laughed. It was so easy to make her laugh.

Then he went on in a rapid flow of barbarously mispronounced words: “Please, I am in Vienna only until tomorrow morning. Please come to Sacher's and have supper with me. I know it is impertinent. But I beg of you, do it. I have always wanted to meet a real Viennese girl. Now I know the loveliest Viennese girl in Vienna! Don't say no—please!”

“You are crazy!” she said,

“Perhaps,” he admitted. “Beautiful women have a way of making me crazy.” As he pronounced it, it sounded like “crazier.”

“But I'm not by myself,” she explained.

“
Naturalmente!
You bring your cousin and his wife too. Your mother is to take Signorina Rosner and another lady home. I just met her when I told Signorina Rosner she was as great as Duse.”

“How do you know suddenly my cousin is my cousin? Didn't you think he was my father?” Martha Monica asked. “And how did you get backstage, anyway?”

“I am a diplomat,” he told her with his merry laugh. “Besides, I have made investigations meanwhile.”

Here Fritz and Liesl appeared, and with his greeting of “
Buona sera
,
Signora
Drauffer,” he repeated his invitation.

If the dancer had had anything more tempting than warmed-up turnips and rice-pudding awaiting her for supper, Fritz might have been able to forestall her acceptance. Now, however, not only Martha Monica, but Liesl too, was so obviously in favor of it that the Italian simply offered his arm to the dancer, leading her to a taxicab, while Martha Monica was still standing with Fritz, persuading him not to spoil Liesl's pleasure.

The restaurant where the best food in Europe was served had continued unchanged; in fact, the food was still the best. Revolution, poverty, hate, had apparently melted quietly away in the face of this square red room, where there was place for not more than fifteen white-draped tables and where the waiters looked like prebendaries. On the wall, whence it had looked down for so long at the epicurean enjoyments of the archdukes of the house now banned, there still hung unmolested the Koch portrait of Francis Joseph. Frau Anna Sacher, the owner, still came to speak to her favored guests, with many of whom she was on a matriarchal footing. She dressed her hair in the style of the eighties, piled like a tower on her head and with frizzed curls across her forehead; her neck was enclosed in a high dog-collar necklace; she trailed a long skirt, carried a lighted cigar in her hand, and talked to you as she always had done. If under the monarchy she used to say, in her mannish voice: “Don't chatter such nonsense, Imperial Highness!” she was just as cavalier with the people who, having founded the republic, were already running it down.

She noticed at once that the Italian officer would require special attention, and she ordered Jean, head-waiter for generations, to give him a corner table reserved for someone else. “When the gentleman from the National Council comes send him into the Hunting room,” she said contemptuously. She had served so many deputies of the Reichsrat that it struck her as ridiculous to have that already superfluous institution now called the National Council. Just now she had been saying to one of her regular guests, Professor Stein, how stupid it was of the Sozis to change all names connected with the past; just as stupid as it had been during the war to tear down signs like “
Magasin de Modes
” and to declare Shakespeare an enemy alien. The Burg Ring Boulevard was now called the November Twelfth Ring, as if one would not remember that horrid day anyhow; Richardgasse was rechristened Jaurèsgasse. These asses believed that a change of name was sufficient to wipe out a tradition!

Of the two ladies and two gentlemen who were given the corner table, she was interested only in the young girl whom the officer put next to him. She was so pretty and thoroughbred! She seemed quite young, and it was obviously her first supper here. Frau Sacher supposed that it would not be her last. As for the Italian, she believed she had seen him before. In any case she looked upon him as one of the foreign parasites who had infested Vienna, since peace was declared, like so many bluebottle flies. They drained the city of what little blood had been left to her and lived here like kings, for the Austrian currency daily was sinking farther into bottomless depths, and they were given incredible amounts of Austrian crowns in exchange for their own trumpery bills. But the idiotic Government kept insisting that these people represented foreign lands with whom, no matter what the cost, it was necessary to be on good terms in order to obtain loans and staple foods. The devil take them!

“I trust you find everything to your taste,” was her greeting to her new guests.

As far as Fritz was concerned, this was not the case. On the other hand, Liesl enjoyed the delicious food, and Martha Monica was blissfully happy. For an instant it had struck her as strange that Grandfather Stein had left almost as soon as they had come in, so that she did not have an opportunity to speak to him. In the next instant she argued that he had probably not seen her. She did find, however, that it was horrid of Fritz not to take cognizance of the extravagant pains of their host to please all of them. They were given food the very existence of which was only a memory. And Fritz did not even touch it. Besides, they had champagne—the real French wine, not the German
Sekt
! This was the first French champagne of Martha Monica's career. How untrue it was to say that it was a strong drink. Quite the contrary. It slipped down like lightning, and afterwards you felt as light as a feather.

Everything suddenly made you laugh. Even Fritz, when he said again and again: “We must be going now.” Fortunately the gentleman at her side paid not the slightest attention. She really could not call him “the gentleman at her side.” He wanted her to call him “Gaetano,” but she had known him too short a time for that. He called her “Donna Monica.” How wonderful that sounded on his lips! Perhaps she could call him “Conte Gaetano”? She tried it, but that too sounded funny.

“Please, Fritz, let's stay here a little longer! Don't be so difficult. Do you think it's so awfully nice in Seilerstätte? Here it's warm and bright and gay. At home it's cold and dark!” She had intended to keep these thoughts to herself, but suddenly she had expressed them out loud.

“I don't wish to stand in the way of your enjoyment,” Fritz replied in an almost sullen manner. “But I fear we've already trespassed too long on the hospitality of Conte Corbellini.”

Of course he would! Why had he not taken a drink? If you don't drink champagne you do act like a stick of wood.

The Italian remonstrated energetically, but Fritz insisted on their leaving. Martha Monica would never forgive him as long as she lived! He made a sign to Liesl and she rose; Conte Gaetano made a regretful gesture—they all had to go. As they passed Frau Sacher she said to Martha Monica: “We shall see you here again soon, Fräulein.”

If only she might be right! But who would ever take her out into the big world since Conte Gaetano was leaving early tomorrow! “It was heavenly,” she said to him as he helped her into her coat in the vestibule.

“Donna Monica,” he answered quickly in Italian, “I love you! I'm leaving for Rome tomorrow morning at six. We'll never see each other again.
Dio mio
, do find some way so that we can still be together for a little while! I love you! Do you hear me?”

She heard. This was not the first declaration of love that had been made to her, but it was the first that could be taken quite seriously. This was not just a tennis partner. It was an Italian officer who was a diplomat and was leaving tomorrow at six for Rome. “That will be impossible,” she answered, racking her brains how to make it possible.