Theirs Was The Kingdom (59 page)

The old man, however, seemed indisposed to dismiss the topic so arbitrarily. He said, mildly, “It’s true, then? You have no special preference? They are as one to you?”

“Any one of them will make someone a good wife when the time comes.” He looked carefully at the old man, now occupied with filling his pipe. “Perhaps I should start giving you advice, Herr Körner. Perhaps you should spend less time in here and more out looking for husbands.”

“Ach, that is their own and their mother’s concern,” he replied, impatiently, “but since you have lumped them together, and speak of their marriage prospects, I take issue with you on one account. If I were a young man about here, with his way to make, I would not give the younger trollops a second glance. I would make myself agreeable to Gisela, who is worth more than her brothers and sisters combined. As a wife, surely, but also as a mistress if I know women, and I should, set down here among so many of them. Gisela has brains and you are too young to understand that a woman takes her brains to bed with her and they are still there in the morning. She could have married more than once. Did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t,” admitted George and his mind conjured, for the first time, with the sacrifices the years must have demanded of Gisela, who seemed older than any of them and yet, when one thought about it was just as pretty and only a year or two older than Sophie, of the swaying walk.

“There’s no need for Gisela to become an old maid on the family’s account,” he said. “They’re old enough to look for themselves now, aren’t they?”

“She will stay for all that,” Max said, “until the others are married, and the two boys done with their apprenticeship.”

He stood up, knocking his half-smoked pipe on a piece of cowling that he used as an ashtray. “So too will you, Herr Swann. A little longer, perhaps, until we get that monster on the road again. But let me say this. If you are restive, and this time-wasting beast does not dominate you entirely when the picnic season is upon us once more, give a thought to Gisela. You would, perhaps, find her more rewarding than those other minxes.”

He shuffled out on this, leaving George to lock the storehouse door. It was an improbable conclusion to what George thought of as a curious discussion between two people of widely separated generations, linked by a common obsession with an array of nuts, bolts, cogs, cranks, and levers that added up to Maximus.

6

The discussion had one decisive result. In the light of what the old man had said, George became increasingly aware of the self-effacing Gisela, as she went about her work in the house. He had assumed, up to that time, that she was already on the way to becoming a facsimile of the placid Frau Körner, always busy, often perspiring gently over the stove, but never occupied with anything not directly associated with running what amounted to a youth hostel. But he was learning about women and came to the conclusion that Gisela’s abstraction was due to something less definitive than the preparation of endless meals and garments, that she had access to a world of her own behind the habitually amiable expression in her china-blue eyes, gentle mouth, and high white brow, that had a way of wrinkling in a manner that suggested a restrained impatience with the sustained clamour of the family. Little by little he came to see her as the central but unobtrusive prop of the household, without which there might be no high spirits, no shameless shirking of domestic chores, and certainly no skilful catering for the picnics and outings along the Danube, across to Labau, into the Wienerwald, and on the wooded slopes of the Kahlenberg.

Their relationship was friendly but more of a brother and sister than that existing between George and the other girls. There was no tension here. He never flirted with her—she was too dignified for that—and he never teased her, as her sisters often did, but without in any way disturbing her equanimity. All the same, he found himself watching her closely and it came to him that maybe the old man was right, and that she had a well-stocked, well-ordered mind, sealed off by what she accepted as her duty to a widowed mother, an ageing, eccentric grandfather, and five younger brothers and sisters, all of whom appeared to take her very much for granted.

She, for her part, did not unbend towards him, as all the others had by this time. To her he was still a gentlemanly English student, who brought distinction on the house by staying here and taking such an interest in grandfather’s invention, so that it was difficult to establish the free and easy access he had won so effortlessly in the case of Sophie, Valerie, and Gilda. When this did happen, he discovered that the old man’s guess had been shrewd. Gisela was rewarding in a way that the other girls were not, for all their gaiety and accessibility.

It came about by chance, when the family, including for once Max, had made a Sunday crossing of the short arm of the Danube to Lobau. They were playing some childish game (the Viennese adults, he had discovered, were much addicted to what he thought of as childish games) akin to hide-and-seek, among the oaks and chestnuts of the island.

He had just “caught” Gisela, who had been hiding in a hollow tree some five feet from the ground, and as she clambered down to surrender he took advantage of her landing to embrace her, a little objectively, as though to decide how she would react.

Her response surprised him very much. Instead of simulating protest, as Valerie or Sophie would have done, or subsiding gleefully, as he had come to expect of Gilda, she took control of the embrace, as though resolved to make the very most of it. As they were screened by a cluster of oaks and waist-high bracken, she was able to bring so much enthusiasm to the contact that he found himself being kissed in a way he had never been kissed by her sisters, not even the venturesome Gilda. She kissed him with parted lips, using her tongue, and she used her body too, exerting so much pressure with her thighs that they parted and enfolded his braced leg so that he was reminded instantly of Max’s dictum concerning women who took their brains to bed with them. But the disturbing result of this was that it reawakened in him all the bittersweet longings of his first weeks away from Rosa Ledermann, making his impersonal hankerings after Sophie, Valerie and Gilda seem relatively adolescent. The scent of her hair, the flickering movement of her tongue, and, above all, the sustained pressure of her thighs drove him wild and he thought, savagely, “If I don’t get a woman of my own I’ll go berserk…” But then her abandon touched some spring of tenderness in him and he spoke her name, three times, four times, and raised the hand that was beginning to caress her body to her hair, stroking it gently at the back of her head where it parted to divide into two thick, swinging plaits. They heard the family hallooing for them from the adjacent glade and presently they separated and walked back wordlessly and a little shyly, keeping their distance. But the sharp-eyed Max, puffing away at his pipe where he sat on a log, looked up smiling as he saw them emerge from the thicket and conveyed what he had seen by winking at George over the shoulders of Frau Körner, who was kneeling before the picnic hamper that always accompanied the Körners on these occasions. There was no immediate sequel to this encounter, although sometimes, when Gisela was coming and going about her work, they would exchange a level glance, as though each knew something the others did not. But then, like a summer storm that blew up out of the sky over the looming Alps, the pleasant rhythm of the Körner household was shattered.

They returned home from an evening boat trip one summer dusk to hear the engine rattling away across the yard and saw, what was unique in these circumstances, the barn door swinging free in the evening breeze that had ruffled the surface of the river all the way from the Kai.

George realised at once that something was wrong. Shouting to Gisela to keep the others back, he ran across the grain store to find Maximus running at full power, its rear wheels spinning above their blocks and the place full of acrid exhaust. For a moment, bemused by the fumes and stunned by the roar of the machine, he could not see the old man but then he noticed his red slippers protruding beyond the front wheels and beyond them a hand, clutching the heavy crank that they used to start the engine.

He guessed then what had happened. The engine had a fierce kick and the old man, having clearly ignored George’s plea that only he should use the crank when they were testing, had either collapsed over the task or had been flung clear by the recoil, perhaps striking his head on a bulkhead or the stone floor.

He switched off, lifted Max, and carried him across to the house, leaving one of the girls to bolt the doors and telling another to despatch Rudi, fleetest of the boys, for Doctor Dahn, who attended the Körners for minor ailments. He tried to give Max a sip of brandy but his lips were blue and unresponsive so that it was obvious to George, aware of the danger of those fumes, that the old man was half-suffocated, as well as suffering from shock. With the womenfolk fussing around Max, George carried him up to his room and laid him on the bed, whereupon, to George’s relief, Max vomited and became half-aware of his surroundings, gesturing feebly with his left hand, as though to shoo them away from his bedside.

George interpreted this as a command to clear the room of women and ordered them all outside, for it seemed to him important to learn precisely what had occurred inside the store so that he could brief the doctor on arrival.

As soon as they were gone, Max made a great effort to pull himself together, continuing to gesture feebly with his left hand, then speaking in a slurred, hesitant voice, as though having difficulty with his breathing. George understood then, with a sinking heart, the reality of the situation. Max had not necessarily been flung backwards by the kick of the crank, and there were no external injuries to his head or any other part of his body. It was clear, however, from the thickness of his speech and the strange inertness of his right arm, that he had suffered a stroke. He said, detaining George with a surprisingly fierce grasp, “Doctor?” and when George nodded, “Cylinder flooded… slow to start… should have waited…” And then, “Switched off?”

“Yes, yes,” George said, “forget the damned machine. I warned you to leave heavy work to me, and I mean to see that you do in future!”

But the old man smiled feebly and said, carefully enunciating his words. “No future, boy… only for you, and that engine in there. Finished… Dahn will tell you… here,” and he lifted his sound hand to the cage of his ribs.

“Damned nonsense!” said George, explosively, “and don’t let Frau Körner and the girls hear you talk like that! Rest will put you right, and I’ll see you get it. As soon as the doctor comes…” But then he stopped, for the old man was looking at him pleadingly, his lips moving as though he had something further to say.

When George was silent, Max took a long, rasping breath and went on, “Listen… haven’t long… damned doctor will dose me… know him… sleep for a week… mightn’t wake… another pillow behind me… mustn’t… lie… flat…” so that George eased him into a sitting position, supporting his back with cushions taken from the chair under the window.

“What is it you want to say, Max?”

“This is the end for me. Don’t waste time, clucking like those women… known about this for years. Dahn warned me times enough, but what is a man to do? Went on with what I started. Like Benz, like all of them. Now that engine passes to you… don’t argue… put it in writing, diagrams and records, too. Witnessed. Saw to it months ago. Dismantle. Get it crated and carried to London.”

He could say no more. The effort seemed to bring on a second seizure, for he writhed and groaned but was just able to swallow a sip or two of brandy George held to his mouth. Then he lay still, breathing very heavily, and George stole away, dismayed and angry that a man as tough and resolute as Maximilien Körner could be demolished so quickly and so finally. George knew somehow, that whether or not the old man survived this attack, he would never do more than shuffle round the inside of that shed of his, watching someone else at work on his creation.

Gisela sought him out after the doctor had left, giving instructions that Max was to be kept in bed, free from worry and on a light diet for at least a month, and thereafter was on no account to tackle the staircase leading to the ground floor. Gisela was not profoundly upset, as all the others seemed to be, but it was clear that she had guessed the truth, and saw this as evidence of a heart condition the old man had somehow succeeded in concealing from all save the doctor. She said, quietly, “You were alone with him. I heard him talking. Was he speaking of that engine of his?”

George admitted that he was, telling her that Max seemed insistent he should take it with him when he returned home, and had even instructed his lawyer to this effect. He said this with embarrassment, as though they were already discussing the terms of the old man’s will. “No matter what he wants I wouldn’t deprive his family of any of his property. You know that, don’t you, Gisela?” and she said, calmly, that she did, but that no one else was likely to want it, for none of them understood it and all but himself went in fear of it.

“Would it be worth money in your country, Herr Swann?”

“No,” he said, “not in its present form. It might ultimately but it needs a great deal of modification before it could be patented. I could arrange that for your mother. If it ever did produce money I could make sure she got it.”

“We’ll discuss it later,” she said, and went away to comfort her mother.

From that day on Max never left his bed, although, as the summer drew to a close, he progressed to some extent and could sit up and talk more or less coherently. His right arm, and to some degree his leg too, was paralysed, and when George went in to talk with him he realised the old man was resigned to the fact that he would never work again. He gave George messages for the firm, among them his resignation.