Madensky Square (14 page)

Frau Egger blew her nose and looked round for more brandy, but in vain.

Then he took up with Lily… Oh, it was wonderful; you can’t believe it, Frau Susanna! For months he didn’t come near me and he was almost good-tempered. It was like being born again. I started embroidering a footstool cover in
petit point
. I used to love embroidery when I was a girl, but after my marriage I couldn’t seem to settle down to it. And now it’s all over and there he is again with his white stomach and his Habit. I should have known,’ she wailed, beginning to cry again, ‘I should have known that nothing good could ever happen to me.’

As a result of this conversation I have decided to be noble. Frau Egger shall have her buttons. Let no one say that I put my professional reputation before compassion to a deeply stricken soul.

Last Sunday Herr Huber took us on an outing to Linz to show us the villa he is buying for Magdalena, and to introduce his fiancee to his two sisters, maiden ladies who have an apartment on the ground floor of his old house beside the Danube.

I have always been fond of Linz: a splendidly solid town where the walls always seem thicker than anywhere else, the beds more solid, the pretzels on the cafe tables larger. It seemed to me absolutely right that Herr Huber’s empire should have its centre there.

‘I would be most grateful for your company,’ Herr Huber had said to me. ‘You have such excellent taste and Fraulein Winter is so young. There are decisions to be made about the furnishings and I don’t want to burden her.’

Alice too had been invited, but a mentally defective producer had decided to put four live Lipizzaners into
Wienerblut
, which meant extra rehearsals, and it was Magdalena, Edith and myself who set off at daybreak in the butcher’s car.

Magdalena, disdaining a motoring veil, sat beside her fiance, her hair a considerable driving hazard, but there was one most encouraging sign. On her lap she held a large brown parcel securely tied with string.

‘It’s a present for the house,’ she volunteered – and at her words a look of the purest joy passed over the butcher’s face.

We stopped for the
Gabelfruhstuck
without which Herr Huber would not have expected to get through the morning, and by midday had reached the villa, twelve miles out of Linz, which was to be Magdalena’s home.

It stood alone in a copse of evergreens. Built by a master builder for his own use, it was adorned by no less than three pepper-pot towers, any number of gables, a porch and a conservatory. In the garden which was of the romantic kind containing nothing that is edible, we could make out, between two dark cypresses, a bird table with fretwork eaves and elaborately carved legs.

The house had just been vacated by the workmen; ladders still stood about; there was a smell of new paint.

‘Well, my dear, do you like it?’ said Herr Huber. He never touches his fiancee, but the tenderness in his voice is overwhelming.

‘Very nice,’ said Magdalena.

She thought the Bohemian chandelier he had installed in the hallway was ‘very nice’ too, and that he should do exactly as he liked about bringing the drawing room carpet from his house in Linz. Her knee-length hair in ravishing disarray after the drive, still clutching the parcel which she made no attempt to unpack, Magdalena wandered through the empty rooms, as patently uninterested in her new home as she had been in her wedding clothes.

In the dining room I took pity on Herr Huber. The notebook he had brought to write down his bride’s suggestions remained empty; the lines on his forehead increasingly resembled those of a bloodhound who has lost the scent.

‘I must say, I think a French chintz in maize or dark honey would look lovely in those windows. Swagged, and with a fan edging… and the material repeated in the upholstery of the chairs. With a pale grass-cloth on the walls you’d bring the sunshine right into the room.’

I babbled my way through into the study, offering wine-coloured velvet to offset the mahogany panelling, and we went upstairs, Magdalena still carrying the parcel about whose contents I became increasingly curious. A favourite vase? A clock inherited from the army officer? And what was delaying her? Surely a housewarming present should be unpacked at once?

In the first of the spare bedrooms I became quite carried away, suggesting a Dutch look to match the blue and white tiles on the stove; in the second I effortlessly conjured up an Indian bower with parrots on the wall and curtains of printed cotton from Rajasthan.

In the master bedroom, however, with its window looking out on to the lawn and the bird table framed in dark trees, my inspiration faltered. It was possible to imagine anything except the Hubers’ bridal night.

But my sudden silence didn’t matter, for it now became evident that Magdalena was nowhere to be seen.

‘She’s gone outside,’ said the Bluestocking with a nervous gulp.

‘I expect it was the smell of the paint,’ I said quickly, seeing Herr Huber’s face. ‘New paint often makes people feel unwell’

We followed her out into the garden.

‘Look, she’s over there by the bird table,’ said Edith. ‘And she’s taken the parcel.’

Not knowing whether Magdalena wanted to be alone, we hesitated, but at that moment she turned, her hair rippling in the light, and beckoned to us with a friendly, almost welcoming gesture, and we set off across the lawn.

I should have known, of course. It wasn’t a bird table, it was a religious shrine, a crucifix hanging from the fretwork eaves. And Magdalena had unpacked her parcel.

‘Look!’ she said, and pointed to the figure she had released from its wrappings and placed between two candlesticks. Not Saint Lucy with her gouged-out eyes, not the breastless Saint Agatha… Quite a cheerful-looking saint and one that was new to me. The bald Saint Proscutea who had shaved off her hair to avoid marriage to a heathen, and wore on her waxen pate a slightly rakish wreath of thorns.

In her own way Magdalena had taken possession of her future home, and I was very much relieved.

Herr Huber’s old house in Linz was a very different affair. Solid, old-fashioned, with a verandah that ran the length of the first floor, it stood right on the towpath, square to the river, with a garden full of fruit trees and vegetables at the back. As he led us upstairs and out on to the balcony we could lean out and almost touch the horses as they pulled the heavy barges along, watch the tugs hoot on the wide grey river, or look across to the vineyards and gently rolling hills on the other shore. ‘Oh, but it’s beautiful, Herr Huber,’ said Edith – and proceeded to quote from Goethe. I had, of course, expected this – it was not to be hoped that the Master had failed to pen some lines on the significance of running water and its effect on memory, loss and time. But the ode was short, and when I took her out to look at the garden so as to give Herr Huber some time alone with his fiancee, I found the Bluestocking’s thoughts surprisingly similar to mine.

‘I was wondering whether Magdalena wouldn’t be happier here than in the villa,’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s so friendly here and there’s always something to look at… the river and the towpath, and the town all around one. So safe…’

‘Yes, I wondered the same thing, especially as he can’t sell the house anyway because of his sisters. But Herr Huber thinks that Magdalena shouldn’t be so close to his factory – those are the chimneys over there. And the slaughterhouse is just across the road on the other side of the landing stage.’

‘Well, of course, slaughterhouses are wicked,’ said Laura Sultzer’s daughter dutifully. ‘But it does mean he would be able to get home in the middle of the day; she’d see him more.’

‘If that’s what she wants.’

Edith threw me a startled look. ‘Oh, surely; he’s so terribly
kind
:

We returned to the house to get ready for lunch which we were to take with Herr Huber’s sisters in their apartments on the ground floor.

‘I wanted to order a meal for us all at the Ferry Hotel -they keep an excellent table, but I couldn’t disappoint my sisters,’ said Herr Huber.

And indeed the man who could have disappointed the Fraulein Hubers would have had to be made of steel. Much older than their brother, frail, and beautifully dressed in the bonnets and shawls of forty years ago, they welcomed us with twitters of intense friendliness. Fraulein Marianne, the elder of the two, was very deaf and carried an ivory ear trumpet; Fraulein Louisa, who was only slightly deaf, acted as her sister’s conduit to the world.

While Marianne made sure that no draughts, on this hot summer’s day, had pierced the double walls of their drawing room to trouble us, that the chairs we sat in were to our liking,

Louisa ran back and forth from the kitchen to confer with the cook – and presently we were led to the table.

Sunday lunch in Linz is a serious matter. It was clear that this occasion had been the topic of conversation for weeks past. The lace tablecloth was exquisite, the gold-rimmed Meissen dinner service a family heirloom.

Grace was said and the first course passed without incident. An erbsen suppe made with fresh garden peas, in which griess knocked floated, served with croutons of bread deep fried in butter.

Then came the entree.

‘We did think of a roast goose – we have one just ready to be killed and beautifully plump,’ said Fraulein Louisa, ‘but then we thought coming from Vienna you’d like something that’s special to Linz.’

The cook now arrived with a gigantic, steaming platter. As it was set down the sisters looked anxiously at Herr Huber who scrutinized its contents, gave a nod of approval, and tucked his napkin more securely into his collar.

This hurdle safely over, the ladies beamed at us.

‘A Linzerschmankerl!’ said Fraulein Louisa. ‘You won’t find it anywhere else.’

I found this easy to believe. In the centre of the dish was a piled-up circle of rindfiletspitzen, the marbled flesh enveloped, but not obscured by a rich dark sauce. Then came a ring of kidneys, each embedded in its halo of perfectly roasted fat. Moving outwards one came to the rolled-up slivers of ox tongue, alternating with sawn-off segments of thigh bone filled with dollops of creamy marrowfat – and after that stretching away in concentric circles, the roast potatoes, the semmel knodel, the rings of onion fried to the colour of caramel.

Each one of us was now served. Horse radish was handed separately, as was the red currant jelly, the spinach, the crusty bread…

•Oh, dear!’ The exclamation, quiet and desperate, came from Edith Sultzer.

I had quite forgotten; so had Herr Huber. Both of us were speechless, and it was Magdalena who lifted her head and said calmly:

‘Edith never eats meat. She is a vegetarian.’

An assassin leaping through the window with a revolver could not have caused more distress! By the doorway, the cook covered her face with a plump hand and as Fraulein Louisa yelled the dreadful information into Fraulein Marianne’s ear trumpet, the ladies fell into a litany of self reproach.

‘How foolish of us!’

‘We should have asked!’

‘We’re so out of touch here, you see.’

‘I could make an eierspeise,’ said the cook.

But at the thought of feeding a valued guest on scrambled eggs, the ladies plunged into even deeper distress. Topfen Palatschinken were mooted, a spinach roll…

I now decided to intervene.

‘Fraulein Sultzer,’ I said, laying a hand on Edith’s arm, ‘I have long been meaning to speak to you on the subject of your diet. In my view you are seriously anaemic; I’m experienced in such things and I assure you that there are signs. If you could force yourself to swallow just a few mouthfuls of meat – if you could overcome your disgust – I’m absolutely certain that you would feel the benefit.’

The butcher, who had risen to console his sisters, sat down again. ‘It is true, you know,’ he said in his deep, comfortable voice. ‘It is red meat that makes good blood.’

‘Oh, but I couldn’t… My mother…’

‘Your mother’s vegetarianism is noble,’ I said firmly. ‘We honour her for it. But sometimes a principle has to yield to expediency. After all, you have your work to think of. The Plotzenheimer prize and
Beowulf
. You have no
right
to let yourself get run down.’

‘Perhaps just a mouthful of the Filetspitz ?’ suggested Herr Huber. ‘There’s nothing to distress you in a filet; it’s a very calm meat, that. You needn’t finish it.’

Edith’s anxious, myopic eyes went back and forth between us.

‘Well, perhaps… if you think… if it’s for my work.’

She took up her knife and fork, cut off a piece of filet, put it in her mouth. Herr Huber was right; there wasn’t anything to distress her, and she swallowed it, speared another piece, and swallowed that also. When the filet had gone she looked surprised and began on the kidney, and this too proved undistressing for she finished it, embedding fat and all. Her spectacles steamed up, a flush appeared on her face, and she turned her attention to the rolled-up slivers of ox tongue…

There is nothing like a narrowly averted disaster for making a party go with a swing. As Edith began to scoop the marrow from the bones, the ladies laughed and clapped their hands, enchanted to have saved a soul from the perils of inanition; Herr Huber told stories of his early days; the wine flowed…

We returned to Vienna by train. When Herr Huber, who had business to attend to in Linz, dropped us on the station platform, loaded with baskets of flowers and fruit which the sisters had insisted on picking for us, Edith thanked him with such warmth that he was quite embarrassed.

‘Na, na,’ he said. ‘Linz isn’t like Vienna. No one’s intellectual here. My sisters almost never read a book.’

‘But they were so kind,’ said Edith. ‘So terribly kind. I liked them so
much
.’

As the train drew away, it was the Bluestocking who leant out of the window and waved, while the lovely Magdalena sat back in her seat and closed her eyes.

Alice has great plans for her summer idyll with Rudi. She is cleaning the flat from top to toe and has made an extra-thick cover to put over her canary so that Rudi can sleep in the day if he wants to – and she is going to cook.