The Vienna Melody (61 page)

“You know,” she said when the lawyer was no longer in sight, “I have even thought that we needn't wait so long. Of course it's ungracious of me, now that you have just had a lift installed for me, but I think it would be enchanting if we all moved away from here together—you, Mono, and I.”

“Why not?” he asked.

With her training in the Otto Eberhard school, she never expected such an easy victory. It had been ground into her that to arrive at legal results one must prepare a scaffolding of paragraphs, foolscap with lawyers' writings, so that she asked with an infinite sense of relief, “Do you really mean that?”

“Why not, if you wish it?” he told her. “I certainly do not cling particularly to this house. Nor does Mono. Besides, there is nothing we would rather do than give you pleasure.” Under the impression of Dr. Herz's successor's diagnosis he almost said, “One last pleasure.”

“Splendid!” she said. “That's wonderful! Now all we have to do is get the others to agree. I mean, the other coowners.”

“That will be the simplest thing in the world,” Hans said. “They never loved us overmuch, you know.”

In front of the door to Peter's apartment, which had been Otto Eberhard's, she asked him, “Will you handle it? But please do it as quickly as possible! Will you?”

“I shall speak to Peter at once,” he promised. And mother and son joined the Tuesday evening guests.

 

Their host was in magnificent humor. The wife of his chief, the Minister, had assured him that these evenings of chamber music were a sheer delight. The von Kagenecks of Brünn, leading figures of society there, could not say enough in praise of Fritz's second symphony, and complimented him on his cousin. They called Fritz “our maestro,” and, according to them, one would hardly recognize Vienna. It had become once more the irresistible city of enchantment that it used to be under Francis Joseph. The performances at the opera under Bruno Walter! The theater in the Josefstadt, that jewel of the speaking stage, under that genius Max Reinhardt! The matchless Philharmonic concerts!

“You've performed miracles,” said Frau von Kageneck, in praising the achievements of her host. “There's nothing to be seen of the Reds and even less of the Browns!”

“You are all too amiable, Baroness,” was the rejoinder of her host, with the duelling scar on his cheek, who had so rapidly climbed the ladder of officialdom to reach his present position of chief of the Department of Art and Culture. “That is due only in a very modest degree to my efforts. I shall not deny that I make the cultural mission of our little state my particular affair, but the credit must lie with”—here he bowed in the direction of the wife of his exalted superior—“His Excellency, the Minister, and in the very first instance with our highly revered Chancellor!”

“Of course,” agreed Herr von Kageneck, who owned a sugar refinery and a publishing house in Brünn. He had had the honor of being received the day before by Dr. Schuschnigg. He had scarcely ever, he averred, in all his career met a more significant statesman nor one with so fine a mind.

At this point the aide to the vice-chancellor felt it incumbent to put in a word of praise for his own chief. Prince Starhemberg had had, according to him, the smartness necessary to root out the Red and the Brown mobs.

“But, Baron Kari, wasn't Ernstl at one time associated with Hitler?” inquired Frau von Kageneck (née Baroness Eichhorn), who was informed about everything. The young man in the Heimwehr uniform indignantly objected. “Baroness Maud! How can you say such a thing? Ernstl is beyond himself with rage when he so much as sees a picture of that house painter!”

“He does look repulsive,” was the opinion of the lady from Brünn, who had recently had an opportunity to observe the German Chancellor at close range from a specially favorable seat at the Olympics in Berlin. She was prepared to admit that “Ernstl” (under which name Prince Ernst Ruediger von Starhemberg was meant) had, in the course of years, developed into a statesman.

Martha Monica found that amount of praise all too niggardly. Her interest in politics derived only from the particular angel she was in love with. And since, at the moment, her heart was set on the aide to the vice-chancellor, she preferred the vice-chancellor to all other statesmen of history. “And he is marvellously handsome,” was her judgment. Whereas Chancellor Schuschnigg looked “more like a scholar.”

“One might do worse,” remarked Hans.

Henriette, however, begged them “not to speak of politics.”

Since she had appeared she dominated the scene. The rumors about her past had crystallized into a kind of saga, and the generation who knew about it only from hearsay, judging by the beauty of her daughter, considered her the most seductive woman of an epoch grown legendary. Henriette was now accorded a position analogous to the one Frau Schratt had held in Vienna in her day, a kind of social extra-territoriality.

“She's still dazzling to look at,” remarked Captain Kunsti, program director at the Vienna broadcasting station, to the playwright Vogl, a compatriot. “Between you and me, Captain,” Vogl replied very discreetly, “I find her still a hundred times more attractive than her daughter. That woman certainly has a fascination about her.”

She unquestionably had, on this evening. It was as though the release from decades of severe control had restored her to herself and she blossomed out in the atmosphere that was hers. Music, brilliance, admiration, smartly dressed people, who brought her neither cares nor reproaches—this was her element. Anyone who knew her well would have noticed the glint in her eyes.

She took some Waldmeister punch offered her by Annemarie, who, despite all efforts to be stylish, still looked “Prussian,” emptied her glass, and asked for a second. “No champagne?” she inquired

“No,” answered the former Fraulein von Stumm emphatically. This was just a superior bourgeois establishment.

“Why do you say that so despotically?” Henriette asked with a laugh. “Sometimes you need champagne. Incidentally, your punch is excellent.”

Hans wondered whether he should warn his mother against the punch, but decided not to. He was touched to see her make up the small pleasures which had been denied her. He could understand so well what went on in people who were trying to make up for things they had missed. They were lucky to be able to do it!

A moment ago the actor who played the archbishop in
Saint Joan
had come up to him and resonantly declared, “She was a remarkable little woman. In time she would surely have accomplished things.” It was the revenge for the memorial tablet which the Burgtheater had never forgiven the murdered woman.

 

Henriette was dancing!

Young Waldstetten had invited her to dance. When Fritz saw that, he replaced the man at the piano, who was playing Viennese songs, and began to play a waltz. He had inherited the velvety touch of his master, Alfred Grünfeld. The
Schönbrunner Waltz
,
 
which was so ravishing under the fingers of that waltz magician of other days, now sounded as much so under his, and the old lady in the arms of the Heimwehr officer whirled with a fire and an enjoyment of life too long repressed. Her year of mourning was long since over. Her self-reproach had waned. Time had robbed her terrifying memories of their terror. Once she could move away from this haunted house—anywhere where it was friendly and bright and cheerful—then she could be rid of her memories too. Friendly, bright, and cheerful. That is how she had longed to have her life. And it could still be that!

“You dance divinely,” said the young baron.

“You think so?” she replied. There had never been much dancing at Number 10, but she still managed well enough. If her breath were not so short perhaps no one would have even noticed the difference between the old days and now. The girls of today really had no idea of how to waltz! The horrible jazz music had quite ruined it.

“Better than anyone I know. Even better than Miss Mono,” asserted her partner.

Fritz smiled to his aunt as she danced by him. “Thank you,” she smiled back. “You play enchantingly!”

“May I ask you something?” inquired the Heimwehr officer when the other couples had stopped in order to make room for the two to dance, and stood watching them admiringly.

Can he be going to make me a declaration of love?
thought Henriette, who began to feel the effects of her two glasses of punch.

“I want to ask you for Miss Mono's hand,” he said softly.

Her head swam with the punch and with joy. Leaning a little more heavily on the arm of her partner, she signalled to Fritz that she wanted to dance another waltz right away, so he began the beautiful
Blue Danube.
Past Frau von Kageneck, whom she heard say, “That is the most charming pair of dancers I ever saw,” past Captain Kunsti, who laid his hand on his heart in a gesture of homage, past friendly, admiring, delighted eyes she danced her favorite waltz.

I am play-acting
, she thought to herself in a moment of embarrassment.

“Are you displeased with me?” asked Baron Waldstetten when she gave him no reply.

This young man held you well. He was good-looking. “Why, son-in-law?” she said. “What is your first name?”

“Kari,” he answered excitedly.

“Kari,” she repeated. They will have good-looking children. She had no grandchildren. “I am delighted, Kari,” she said. “Will you make her happy?”

“I—” he began, overwhelmed, but she interrupted.

“Don't make any promise. Even when you make a promise you don't always keep it. Promise nothing, but make her happy. It's the making happy that counts. Not the promising.”

“Of course,” agreed her partner enthusiastically.

“It's not quite such a matter of course,” was her opinion. “And it's very difficult.” Her head was swimming again.

“Would you care to stop, Frau Alt?”

“Of course.” It was her turn to say it. “But it's sweet of you, Kari, not to betray that I'm an old woman.”

The family discussion of Henriette's wish to move out of Number 10 Seilerstätte took the form of a regular session. Peter, who called the meeting and represented his invalid mother, Elsa, presided. He led the negotiations in the first-floor apartment, just as he did those in his office at the Ministry in the Minoritenplatz, suavely but also objectively, with all the little side remarks calculated, when it was a case of ministerial councils, to arouse the applause of ministerial councillors.

He sat at the head of the dining room table, extended for the occasion, and had before him the certified copies of the wills of Christopher Alt and Franz Alt, in addition to the extract from the files of the Registry, which Franz had had to produce for the same purpose as that now pursued by his widow: to bring Number 10 to a unanimous decision.

On the right of the chairman sat Henriette. The dancing, the punch, and the pleasure of the day before did not seem to have harmed her in the least. Quite the contrary. She wore a two-piece beige dress with a brown leather belt and large brown leather buttons. Much too young for her, was the opinion of one of the other ladies present. Her face was rested; the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth were skilfully hidden. Her full lips shone red against her markedly pale complexion; her hair, now turning white, was so luxuriant that it was dressed with difficulty but perfectly, and the fragrance of Chanel No. 5, which she diffused, appealed to the aesthetic sense of the departmental chief.

On his left (the order of precedence followed the bureaucratic protocol) sat the doyenne of the house, the widow of Colonel Paskiewicz. Despite her ninety-four years, she did not wear glasses, nor was her hearing impaired. But she had grown remarkably small, almost tiny, although in the colonel's day she was looked upon as tall. Now her expressionless, peaked, birdlike face did not reach even the rim of her high-backed chair. Next to her sat her younger sister, Pauline Drauffer, recently turned eighty-six, the same who had been so hungry at Francis Joseph's wedding ceremony. Although she no lodger possessed her round apple cheeks, her face still beamed with good humor. She too was elegantly gowned in bottle green with a jabot of real lace which her husband (out of atonement for goodness knows what pangs of conscience, so she thought) had brought her once upon a time from Brussels. Her eyes rested on him, her aged painter husband whom she, where women were concerned, still did not trust round the corner, and she smiled at him with the indulgence she had always shown for whatever he did. She would not have given up a minute, no, not a single minute, of her life, thanks to this husband who, although he looked like St. Peter, was yet the biggest rascal in Christendom. She had always found his every word interesting, and life at his side had been an unbroken joy, provided one did not expect the impossible of a rascal—that he should be a moralist. A man who all his life had painted half-naked women!

An exception had been made to allow him to come to the meeting, for he was only the husband of a co-owner (even so, the co-owner of only a one-sixth interest). It was made because Aunt Pauline was hard of hearing. So there sat old Herr Drauffer at the narrow end of the table opposite his nephew Peter, having scornfully refused, as always, to subject his open collar to the restraint of a necktie, and using the ministerial foolscap laid at each place to draw a cartoon of the chairman, which made his wife, who kept looking at it out of the corner of her eye, laugh.

“I open this consultation and greet those present,” Peter had said in true official style. Checking over those present in turn, he satisfied himself that the owners of Number 10 were represented in full, either in person or, as in the case of his mother, by an authorized agent, and, as in the case of dear Aunt Pauline, by an authorized assistant.

“Allow me to introduce myself. I am the authorized assistant,” remarked the old painter. Pauline laughed heartily, and Henriette, nodding to the couple, said, “And the best there is!”