Evergreen (20 page)

The children came in to meet us, a handsome little boy and two blond girls. Liesel is just Iris’ age. She played the piano very well, I thought, although I am no judge. What lovely manners the children have!

June 27th

Now that I have spent a day with Eduard I can clearly see the outline of the boy who parted from me: the same very charming smile, the prominent jaw, the eyes that crinkle. And yet he looks like an Austrian gentleman. I see that he cares about his clothes, or else it is Tessa who cares for him.

But I am saddened about Dan. He doesn’t look like his brother anymore, and they are identical twins! He is quite round-shouldered and his smile is almost apologetic. His wife Dena is rather pretty, although too plump. She doesn’t care about her figure; she took two helpings of whipped cream. Anyway, she’s nice and I liked her at once. I felt easy with her, as I did not with Tessa.

I can see that Tessa does not think much of Dena or Dan; it is obvious that they live in different worlds. Dena helps Dan in his fur shop, though it must be very hard on her. They have six children, and she whispered to me after dinner that she expects again!

I wish I could have had more children. I could have them still; perhaps it isn’t too late? I am only thirty-five. Joseph is terribly disappointed that we have only two, I know, although he never says a word. I suppose he thinks it would be a reproach, or perhaps that there’s no use discussing things that can’t be helped. He is supremely practical and doesn’t waste words, as surely I ought to have learned by now.
It was rather an awkward evening. It is apparent to me that my brothers do not get together very often, although no one said so. But what really amazed me was that there should be a language problem between them! An entirely manufactured one, to be sure. Dan and Dena speak Yiddish at home. Dena is a poor girl with no education and she has lived among people like herself ever since coming to Vienna. Tessa naturally speaks no Yiddish, only German and French, as she took pains to let us know. However, Yiddish and German are really so closely related that, with a little effort, they would all be able to understand each other. Joseph swears that they do, that Tessa only pretends not to. He had very little difficulty understanding Tessa’s German, he said. I think she is an
unbending
woman. I wonder whether Eduard can be happy?

July 1st

We have been so busy seeing the sights here that I haven’t had time to write. We have seen all the museums and the Hofburg, the great palace where the last Emperor lived up to a few years ago. Also the Spanish Riding School, a most glittering hall. Such courtly ceremony, such marvelous white horses, a true spectacle! Joseph enjoyed it, I’m sure, but he did remark to me later that such stuff is at best childish and at worst wrong, in that it perpetuates a useless way of life, catering to people who do not work. Of course, to Joseph that is the worst damnation of all, not to work. I did not think we would get him in to hear the Boys’ Choir in the chapel but to my surprise he went, and had to admit that the chapel is gorgeous in the original sense of the word: it glitters.

Oh, and we saw the Burgtheatre and the lovely Burggarten. Eduard has been so eager to show us everything and, since he has his own business, he can take all the free time he wants. We went to Schönbrunn and I was enthralled to think that this is where Maria Theresa
lived, and in France at Versailles we shall see where her daughter lived and died. I want to reread Stefan Zweig’s
Marie Antoinette
when I get home. Now that I have seen all this she will seem much more alive to me. I am making so many good resolutions!

July 2d

Eduard has been so wonderful. I told him I am almost sorry to have had this time with him because now it will be so very hard to part. It’s funny how different he is when Tessa is not with us. And yet I’m sure he loves her; he looks at her with such pride.

This afternoon we were invited to Dan’s house and Eduard said he would take us there. (It is Sunday and all the church bells are ringing, there must be thousands of them. That’s another thing I shall remember about Europe, that sweet clamor that makes a vibration up the spine. Joseph doesn’t like the noise, he says, but I think it is simply that he doesn’t like churches.)

Anyway, we drove to Dan’s. He lives on a poor street where the stores are all open, in spite of it being Sunday. It is like the lower East Side. They sell dress goods, men’s suiting and other dry goods, wholesale and retail. The men sit in the doorways and coax you to come in and buy. Yes, it is like the lower East Side except more quiet and orderly, without pushcarts. But the people live upstairs above the shops in the same way.

Dan’s flat is dark and crowded. The furniture looks too big for the rooms. It must be a struggle for Dena to keep house there with all those children and her father, who lives with them. He is a little old, old man in a long black coat and side curls. He looks more like her grandfather.

Eduard stayed for more than an hour. Dena brought out coffee and cake. They seem to exist on coffee and cake in Vienna but I must say it is delicious, and so rich
… (Eduard took us to Demel’s for pastry yesterday and it was superb). We got to talking, the three of us, about the things we remembered of home. It was very warm and good, not sad as I might have expected it to be. Joseph and Dena sat listening and seemed so happy for us. Joseph said he liked to enjoy my relationship with my brothers because he was an only child. Dena has three sisters but they all live in Germany and she hasn’t seen them in years.

“But it’s not far!” I said, and then was sorry I had said such a stupid thing because Dan explained, “It’s very expensive to travel, Anna.” And Dena added, “It’s not easy for us here, but in Germany it’s even worse. Many people there are starving.”

“Business is booming in America,” Joseph said. “Anybody can get ahead there. Have you ever thought of coming, Dan?”

Dan said he hadn’t thought of it; he was doing all right and this was home by now. He didn’t want to move and wander again. And then he added almost mischievously, “I notice you don’t invite my brother.”

Joseph looked flustered for a moment, but Eduard said, very simply, “No, I’ve been lucky.”

He was so different in that house, speaking in Yiddish to Dena’s father, telling jokes. And finally, when he said that he hated to leave but had to, we knew that he meant it.

Dan was different in his own house, too. We had a good supper, a bowl of rich soup, and chicken with dumplings on a platter in the center of the table.

“You can talk and be yourself without all those wooden statues standing around the way they do in Eduard’s house,” Dan remarked. There wasn’t any envy in the way he said it, but I didn’t tell him that we had maids at home too, although our Ellen and Margaret are hardly as stiff and formal as the people at Eduard’s.

I asked Dan how Eduard had met his wife.

“Die Gräfin, the Countess?” he replied, and Dena scolded him: “Dan, that’s not nice!”

“Well,” Dan said, “I call her that, anyway. Oh, she’s not really bad, just different. How he met her? He became a hero during the war, you know, and there was a party at someone’s house—rich people were always giving parties—and that’s how they met. I know her father wasn’t so pleased at the beginning, but after a while he came to think the world of Eduard and he took him into the family businesses. They have so many connections, textiles, banking, government. So that’s the story.”

After supper it was still light and I helped Dena clear away while Dan and Joseph went for a walk. Dan said that since Joseph was in the construction business he wanted to show him something. They were gone more than an hour and were in great good humor when they came in. They had visited a schoolhouse from the seventeenth century with walls three feet thick, still in use.

We get along so well together. It is really a sad thing that we must live as strangers! When we left Dena hugged me and said those very words: “It is a sad thing that we must live apart like strangers.”

July 4th

Today is the Fourth of July. It seems queer not to be at the beach, going out on the porch to see the fireworks exploding over the water. Iris will be watching at Ruth’s this year. She always gets so excited. I remember the first fireworks I ever saw, that Fourth when we went to Coney Island just before Maury was born. I feel far from America, far from my home.

July 6th

I must say Tessa has been very gracious to me. This afternoon she took me shopping and we must have gone in and out of every shop on the Graben and
Kärtnerstrasse. I bought a petit-point bag for myself, some gifts and a wonderful porcelain tea service. I told Tessa that, considering what it cost, I should have to wash it myself. I wouldn’t trust anyone with it.

“Ah yes,” she said, “I can understand that. Of course, I don’t have to worry like that because I have Trudl, who came with me from my parents’ house when I got married. She takes care of things as though they were her own.”

It must be nice to be as confident as Tessa is. I don’t think she means to sound arrogant. I think it is we who misinterpret. Are we perhaps envious of her confidence? Anyway, I’m glad I brought the good clothes Joseph wanted me to bring. The women here are really elegant.

I bought a gold wristwatch for Joseph. It cost much less than it would at home, but still it was plenty. I’ve saved a good bit out of the household money; it is the only way I could get something really fine for Joseph, since he will never buy anything for himself. I shall not show it to him until we are on the ship, or he will make me take it back.

Tessa came in with me for coffee at Sacher’s. Joseph was waiting when we walked in with the packages. He looked pleased that I had bought things.

“Wait till she gets to Paris,” he told Tessa.

Tessa said that since we hadn’t been there before we would undoubtedly enjoy it, but as for herself, it bored her. Her parents used to take her every year for shopping and every year her mother had said it was the last time, because the workmanship in Vienna was far superior.

Joseph was amused, I saw, but he made no comment, for which I was thankful.

July 9th

Eduard and Tessa gave a big party for us tonight. It was splendid and I understood why Dena and Dan had
declined to come. I’m sure Dena would not have had anything to wear. There were all sorts of people there, musicians and government people and even a couple whose name began with “von,” which meant, Joseph said, that they didn’t work because somebody else worked for them, or stole for them, a few hundred years ago! Nevertheless, it was very exciting for me. When have I ever, when will I ever, see such an evening again?

After dinner we went into one of the drawing rooms where rows of gilded chairs had been set up. There was a string quartet and a piano. Most of the pieces they played were Mozart. I don’t know much about it but I’ve tried to learn. It’s funny, when you first hear Mozart it seems rather dry and twangy. One has to grow used to it. After a while it becomes very beautiful, clear and sprightly. I could tell that Joseph didn’t like it, though. The only music he likes even a little bit is Tchaikovsky’s, which one of the teachers in my music course likened to an emotional bath. But what’s the matter with taking an emotional bath if it makes you feel good?

After the concert everyone went out into the garden and Eduard—how much he reminds me of Maury!—introduced a man who bent over and kissed my hand. When Eduard left us the man, a very good-looking man who spoke beautiful English, asked me what I had seen of Vienna. So I told him we had driven through the Vienna Woods that afternoon.

“Ah, then you know the story of Marie Vetsera and the Crown Prince?”

I knew vaguely that they had had a love affair, but I hadn’t known that he was married, she was pregnant, and he had shot them both to death.

“Well, what do you think of the romantic story?” he asked, when he had finished.

I told him it was not as romantic as I had thought, that it was rather more sordid.

“You Americans are so innocent, so moralistic!” he said. “It would be fun to take an innocent woman like you and teach her a few things.”

Well, I have met with that sort of thing before! The words and the accent may be different but the question in the eyes is the same: “Do you—? Will you—?” And I know just how to turn blank eyes which say, “I don’t and I won’t.” Thank God that I know how.

I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted at such times. Perhaps a little of both.

July 12th

Tonight was our last night. We invited everyone to dinner at the hotel. Joseph ordered a grand dinner with the famous Sacher torte for dessert. He told the wine steward to bring the best wines, using his own judgment since, “I’m an American and I don’t know the first thing about wines.” That is something I always admire about Joseph, his utter honesty and absence of sham.

The dinner was gay, and sorrowful too. My heart was very full. We are leaving early in the morning for Paris and we told them not to take us to the train, but to say good-by right here. It would be easier for us all. So we left with many promises to visit back and forth, which I doubt will be kept. Little Dan … little Eli … when they had left and we went upstairs, I lay down on the bed. Joseph came over and lay beside me, and took my hand. After a while he told me that he had asked Dan whether there was anything he could do for him and Dan had said that there wasn’t. But Joseph had put some money in a bank account for him anyway and he wouldn’t get the notice of it until after we had left. I cried with gratitude for this kindness to my brother, this kindness of my husband’s.

July 22d

We have been in Paris almost a week and I have been too tired, too busy, too exhilarated to write a word until today. We have seen the great sights of this city, my “crystal chandelier.” Today we went up the Eiffel Tower, having saved it to the last.

From the top you can see blocks of white stone buildings, squares and streets thick with summer trees. The awnings are all of a dark burnt orange. I told Joseph that I wanted to stand and look so I would remember it forever.