Waiting for Sunrise (5 page)

‘See you on Wednesday,’ Lysander said.

‘Halifax Rief’s son, how incredible.’

Lysander sat in the Café Central drinking a Kapuziner and thinking about his father. As usual he tried to bring him to mind but failed. All he had was an image of a big burly man and a square fleshy face under thick greying hair. He could hear the famous voice, of course, the resonant bass rumble, but what lingered most fixedly in his memory of his father was his smell – the aroma of the brilliantine he used in his hair, his own mix, prepared by his barbers. A sharp initial astringent whiff of lavender underlayed by the richer scent of bay rum. A very perfumed man, my father, Lysander thought. And then he died.

Lysander looked around the big café with its high ceilings and glass dome. The place was quiet. A few people reading newspapers, a mother and two little girls inspecting the pastry trolley. Sun slanting through the tall windows, setting the ruby and amber lozenges of coloured glass in the panes aglow. Lysander signalled a waiter and ordered a brandy, feeling like sustaining the tranquil mood. When it arrived he tipped it in his Kapuziner and took out Blanche’s letter. The first he’d had from her since arriving in Vienna – he had written to her four times . . . He flattened the sheets. Royal blue ink, her strong jaggy handwriting filling the page, going right up to the edge.

Darling Lysander,

You will be cross with me I know but I do miss you, my lovely man, honestly, and I keep meaning to write but you know me and how ‘frantic’ everything is. We had the copyright read-through of ‘Flaming June’ but something was wrong, apparently, and we all had to re-foregather two days later. It’s a lovely part for me and I was thinking there’s a young Guards officer that you’d be ‘perfect’ for. Shall I tell dear old Manley that you might be interested? He’ll do anything I ask him, silly besotted dear. But you’d need to come home soon, my treasure. It would be lovely to work together again. Is your mysterious ‘cure’ going well? Will it last ages? Are you taking salt baths and having cold showers and drinking asses’ milk and all that? I tell people you’ve got a ‘condition’ and they go – ‘Oh. Ah. Right. I see,’ and rush off looking serious. I’m going down to Borehamwood tomorrow to have a ‘cinematograph test’. Dougie says I have the perfect face for the ‘flickers’ so we shall see. I had a lovely note from your mother asking me if we had decided on the ‘great day’. Do think about it, sweetness mine. I show people the ring and they say ‘When?’ and I laugh – my bell-like laugh – and say we’re in no hurry. But I was thinking that a winter wedding might be so special. I could wear furs –

He folded the letter and put it back in his pocket, feeling vaguely sick. It was as if he were hearing her voice in his ear, reminding him what had brought him to Vienna, forcing him to confront the reality of his particular problem. He could hardly marry Blanche in these circumstances. Imagine the honeymoon night . . .

He lit a cigarette. Blanche had had lovers before, he knew. She had practically invited him into her bed but he had insisted on being honourable, respectful – now they were betrothed. He took his notebook from his pocket and made a swift calculation. The last time he had tried to have sexual congress with a woman had been with a young tart he’d picked up in Piccadilly. He counted back: three months, ten days ago. It was days after he had proposed to Blanche and was purely by way of necessary experiment. He remembered the small frowsty room in Dover Street, the one gas lamp, cleanish sheets on the narrow bed. The girl was pretty enough in a lurid way with her paint on but she had a black tooth that was visible when she smiled. He had started well but the inevitable result ensued. Nothing. We can try again, the girl said when he had paid her, don’t really count, do it, when nothing happens? You have to pay though – blank cartridge still makes a bang.

Lysander allowed himself a sour smile – some soldier-client had probably told her that and it had stayed in her head. He stubbed his cigarette out. Perhaps he should tell Bensimon he was engaged to Miss Blanche Blondel – it might impress him as much as Halifax Rief.

He paid his bill – remembered to put his hat on – and stepped out into the afternoon’s warm sunshine, pausing on the café steps, thinking he might walk back to the Pension Kriwanek – maybe skip supper? – wondering also where he might go this coming weekend – Baden, maybe, or even Salzburg, make a short trip of it, the Tyrol –

‘Mr Rief?’

Lysander jumped unconsciously. A tall man, lean hard face, neat dark moustache.

‘Didn’t mean to surprise you. How d’you do? Alwyn Munro.’

‘Sorry – dreaming.’ They shook hands. ‘Of course. We met at Dr Bensimon’s. Coincidence,’ Lysander said.

‘If you come to the Café Central you’ll meet everyone in Vienna, eventually,’ Munro said. ‘How are you enjoying your stay?’

Lysander didn’t want to make small talk.

‘Are you a patient of Dr Bensimon?’ he asked.

‘John? No. He’s a friend. We were at varsity together. I pick his brains sometimes. Very clever man.’ He seemed to sense Lysander’s reluctance to continue the acquaintance. ‘You’re in a rush, I can see. I’ll let you get on.’ He fished in his pocket for a card. Handed it over. ‘I’m at the Embassy here, if you ever need anything. Good to see you.’

He touched the brim of his bowler with a forefinger and stepped into the café.

Lysander strolled back to Mariahilfer Strasse, enjoying the sun. He took his jacket off and slung it over his shoulder. The Tyrol, he thought, yes – real mountains. Then, as he was about to cross the Opernring he saw another of the defaced, ripped posters. This time the head of the monster was left – some kind of dragon-crocodile amalgam – and the composer’s full name: Gottlieb Toller. He thought he might ask Herr Barth if he knew anything about him. He heard the sound of a band playing a militarized version of a Strauss waltz and he adjusted his pace to keep in step with the thump of the bass drum. He thought of Blanche’s beautiful long face, her thin, bony wrists rattling with bangles, her tall slim frame. He did love her and he wanted to marry her, he told himself – it wasn’t pretence or social convention. He owed it to her to try and become well again, to be a normal man happily married to a wonderful woman. He had to see this through.

He crossed the Ring with due caution and as he did so the band altered its tune to a quickstep or a polka. He felt his spirits lift with the rhythm as he ambled up Mariahilfer Strasse, the music fading slowly behind him, merging with the traffic noise, as the band marched off to its barracks, civic duty done, the good people of Vienna entertained for an hour or so. Lysander felt the sun warm his shoulders and a curious congregation of emotions assail him – pride in what he had done for himself, seeking his cure on his own terms, pleasure in strolling the now familiar streets of this foreign city and, as a muted undertone, a thin enjoyable melancholy at being so far from Blanche and her all-knowing, understanding eyes.

7. The Primal Addiction

‘What about masturbation?’ bensimon asked.

‘Well, it usually works. Nine times out of ten, let’s say. No real problems there.’

‘Ah. The primal addiction.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Dr Freud’s expression . . .’ Bensimon held his pen poised. ‘What’s your stimulus?’

‘It varies.’ Lysander cleared his throat. ‘I, ah, tend to think of people – women – that I’ve been attracted to in the past and then imagine a –’ he paused. Now he understood why it was useful not to be facing one’s interlocutor. ‘I imagine a situation in which everything goes well.’

‘Of course, that’s a hypothesis. The hypothesized perfect world. Reality’s far more complicated.’

‘Yes, I do know it’s a fantasy,’ he said, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. Sometimes Bensimon was so literal-minded.

‘But that’s useful, that’s useful,’ Bensimon said. ‘Have you heard of “Parallelism”?’

‘No. Should I?’

‘No, not at all. It’s a theory I’ve developed myself as a kind of adjunct to the main line of Dr Freud’s psychoanalysis. Maybe we’ll come back to it later.’

Silence. He could hear Dr Bensimon making little popping noises with his lips. Pop-pop-pop. Annoying.

‘Is your mother alive?’

‘Very much so.’

‘Tell me about her. What age is she?’

‘She’s forty-nine.’

‘Describe her.’

‘She’s Austrian. Speaks fluent English with hardly any accent. She’s very elegant. Very fashionably smart.’

‘Beautiful?’

‘I suppose so. She was a very beautiful young woman. I’ve seen photographs.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Anneliese. Most people call her Anna.’

‘Mrs Anneliese Rief.’

‘No. Lady Faulkner. After my father died she married again to a Lord Faulkner.’

‘How do you get along with your stepfather?’

‘Very well. Crickmay Faulkner’s older than my mother – considerably older. He’s in his seventies.’

‘Ah.’ Lysander could hear the pen scratching.

‘Do you ever think about your mother in a sexual way?’

Lysander managed to suppress his weary sigh. He had expected better from Bensimon, really.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not at all. Never. Ever. No.’

8. A Dashing Cavalry Officer

Lysander looked at Wolfram in astonishment. He was standing in the hallway in full military uniform, his sabre dragging on the floor, shako under his arm, spurred black boots with knee guards. He looked huge and magnificent.

‘My god,’ Lysander said, admiringly. ‘Are you going on parade?’

‘No,’ Wolfram said, a little gloomily. ‘My tribunal is today.’

Lysander walked round him. The uniform was black with heavy gold frogging, like writhing snakes, on the plastron front. A furred dolman jacket hung from one shoulder. His shako had a red plume matching the red facings on the jacket collar and the stripes down the side of his trousers.

‘Dragoons?’ Lysander guessed.

‘Hussar. Have you got anything to drink, Lysander? Something strong? I must confess to having some nervousness.’

‘I’ve got some Scotch whisky, if you like.’

‘
Perfekt
.’

Wolfram came into his room and sat down, his sabre clinking. Lysander poured him some whisky into a tooth glass that he knocked back with one gulp and held out at once for a refill.

‘Very good whisky – I think.’

‘You don’t want to have whisky on your breath at the tribunal.’

‘I’ll smoke a cigar before I go in.’

Lysander sat down, looking at this Ruritanian ideal of a dashing cavalry officer. When he puts his shako on, Lysander reckoned, he’ll be seven feet tall.

‘What’s the tribunal about?’ he asked. He felt he could reasonably try to ascertain what was the cause of Wolfram’s limbo in Pension Kriwanek, now judgement day had arrived.

‘A question of missing funds in the officers’ mess,’ Wolfram said, equably. He explained: the Colonel of the regiment was retiring and officers had contributed to a fund to buy him a splendid present. Donations were made anonymously, money being slipped into the slot of a locked cashbox set on a dresser in the mess dining room. When the box was finally opened they found only enough money to buy the colonel ‘a medium-sized box of Trabuco cigars, or a couple of bottles of Hungarian champagne,’ Wolfram said. ‘Clearly we either gave very little money to our beloved Colonel or someone had been pilfering.’

‘Who had the key to the box?’

‘Whoever was on the rota to be supervisory officer of the mess each week. The box was there for three months. Three months equals twelve weeks, which equals twelve suspects. Any one of whom had plenty of time to make a copy of the key and take the money. I was one of those twelve supervisory officers.’

‘But why do they suspect you?’ Lysander felt a stir of outrage on Wolfram’s behalf.

‘Because I’m a Slovene in a German regiment. German-speaking Austrians, I mean. There’s a couple of Czechs but the German officers will always suspect the Slovene – so I spent six months here while they decided what to do with me.’

‘But that’s ridiculous. Just because you’re a Slovene?’

Wolfram smiled at him, tiredly.

‘How many countries are there in our great empire?’

‘Austria, Hungary and . . .’ Lysander thought. ‘And Croatia –’

‘You haven’t even started. Carnolia, Moravia, Galicia, Bosnia, Dalmatia – it’s a vegetable soup, a great big stinking salad. Not to mention the Italians or the Ukrainians. I’ll take one more whisky.’

Lysander poured it for him.

‘You have Austria.’ Wolfram moved the bottle and put down the glass beside it. ‘You have Hungary. The rest of us are like the harem for these two powerful Sultans. They take us when they want, violate us when they feel the need. So – who stole the Colonel’s money? Ah, must be the wily Slovene.’

There was a knock on the door and Traudl looked in, blushing.