The Vienna Melody (21 page)

It was a very small red-papered room, in which there was a table, laid for supper, in front of a red brocade sofa. Above the sofa hung a half-blank mirror in a gilt frame; beside it stood a champagne cooler, and on the sofa sat Mammi. She still had her black half-mask on. Close beside her sat a gentleman, and he had his arm around her waist. At first Hans thought his father had come back from his trip.

“Hans!” cried Henriette. The gentleman beside her let his arm fall and turned round. It wasn't Papa. “This is a funny way to act!” he said crossly. But Mammi explained: “This is my little boy, Count Poldo.” Then the gentleman said: “You don't tell me! Why, he's quite a little man! Glad to see you! And what is your name?”

“Hans,” the boy replied sullenly. He couldn't bear the gentleman. Then he explained to his mother why he was there and that it was frightfully urgent. But all she wanted to know was how he had found his way there and whether anything had happened to him in the street. And the gentleman said: “There's no such hurry! Good old Niki took his time about pushing off! I'll order a cup of chocolate and whipped cream for the young gentleman. Or shall we give him a glass of champagne, just to break him in?”

Mammi looked so strange, as though she wanted to laugh all the time. She was lovely to look at, with her brown hair parted in the middle and dressed low, with yellow roses at her temples and on her décolleté gold velvet dress with a train. She was so like the picture Papa had of the Empress Elizabeth. But her eyes had a changed look. It wasn't just the mask.

“I really should be grateful to this little intruder. Now I'll at least find out, finally, who my beautiful unknown of this evening is,” the gentleman declared. It sounded like a phrase learned by heart. If he knew who Uncle Paskiewicz was, must he not also be acquainted with Mammi? Her eyes glistened disturbingly.

“Gome along, Mammi,” the child urged.

“Directly,” she said. “Don't you like it here? It's so wonderful here!”

From the next room came sounds of giggling. Someone sang, to the tune of the waltz, “
Wiener Blut
,
das ist gut
!” Someone else called, “I have been waiting half an hour for my champagne!” To which the reply came, “One little moment, Herr Baron.” Someone whispered, “Sweetheart! Do take that silly mask off at last!” The music, the air, in which smoke, perfume from the flowers, and wine were sweetly mixed, the constant, insistent sound of dancing, all had a bewildering and exciting effect. “Have some cake,” Mammi said. Hans didn't want any cake. And he didn't think it was wonderful there.

“Please, come along,” he begged again.

“Well, he is very persistent!'' the gentleman said. He was tall and good-looking, and he pleased Hans less and less.

“Yes, I'll come,” Mammi told him. “Don't you want to listen to the military band? As you go out it's playing on the left. The Lehár military band. Ask one of the waiters. You like military bands.”

“Thank you, no,” Hans answered. It was the first time he had not done what she asked.

“When your mamma asks you to do something you should obey!” the gentleman declared, and smiled, although his face was filled with anger.

What right had he to give orders? Fatigue and bewilderment fell from the boy. “Don't you love Christl any more?” he asked his mother.

At this Mammi made an apologetic gesture and said to the gentleman, “You see, Count Poldo, my son is very severe with me!” She took her black velvet coat trimmed with chinchilla from the rack and gave it to gentleman to hold for her as she pulled on her long kid gloves. He put the coat slowly around her bare shoulders, ridiculously slowly, thought Hans, who never took his eyes off him.

“Get your overcoat and cap,” Mammi said. “We're going now.”

Hans answered he had brought nothing with him.

“What!” Mammi cried with horror. “You came here bareheaded? In January?”

“This young man seems to have his own ideas of obedience,” the gentleman remarked.

“There was no time,” Hans explained.

“Good-bye, Count Poldo,” Mammi said. “I'm sorry it's all over so soon.”

“I'm awfully sorry!” the gentleman replied. “When shall I hear from you?”

“Will you telephone me?” Mammi asked.

“Tomorrow?” the gentleman asked.

“Very well.”

If he didn't know who Mammi was how could he telephone? Would she tell him her telephone number?

But she did not tell him, and she did hot take off her mask.

“I kiss your hand,” the gentleman said, and bowed over Mammi's right hand. Did he need to take so long just to kiss her glove?

Mammi's eyes had that terrifying glitter in them. And her voice was suddenly very low when she said, “Good night, Count Poldo. Pleasant dreams!”

“I know what I shall dream about,” he answered. “A thousand thanks for the charming evening.” Then they left the overheated little red room. The music throbbed on, the couples danced on, and the roses had not yet faded.

The tall doorman called a cab. “So you found your mother?” he asked with a grin. “Yes,” Hans said.

In the carriage he sat beside her. “If you're cold cover yourself with my coat,” she suggested, wrapping him in her perfumed soft cloak and drawing him so close to her that he could hear how her heart was pounding. Otherwise she paid no attention to him; she did not stroke his hair, as she usually did, and she did not ask him anything. He imagined she was so silent because she was thinking of his dead uncle. But then he heard her hum softly, “
Wiener Blut
,
das is gut
.” When a street lamp threw some light into the carriage he saw how her eyes still glittered.

“Mammi?” he asked.

“Yes?”

“Aren't you at all sorry that Uncle has died?” He could not understand why she took so long to answer.

But she had remembered something. That was how Franz had questioned her a long time ago, a long, long time ago, “Aren't you at all sorry that Auntie has died?” “Of course I'm sorry,” she said. Then she lapsed into silence again …

It was after half-past ten when they rang the bell on the first floor, and as they went upstairs the child's terror returned with every step. In the adventure and excitement earlier he had almost forgotten it. “I wonder whether she's still alive?” he whispered.

“What bad things you've inherited from me,” was her astonishing comment. Then she went on to comfort him: “Don't be afraid. Believe me, fear is the most superfluous thing in the world!”

She was right, for when they went into the apartment Christine was alive and did not seem to have been weeping at all. Nor was she alone. Strangely enough, she suddenly reminded Hans of his Aunt Hegéssy, because she looked with such a fixed stare at all the people in the death chamber—Aunt Gretl, Aunt and Uncle Otto Eberhard, Aunt and Uncle Drauffer, Aunt Hegéssy, the twins, and Cousin Peter. How they were all there Hans could not understand, but their presence embarrassed him. Needn't he have fetched Mammi? The other relatives looked at Mammi as though they had never seen her. The twins, now twenty-four years old and both university students, exchanged remarks in a low tone.

The candles were still burning in the room, and in addition they had lit two corner lamps and draped them with crepe. Christl and Aunt Gretl were in black. On the carpet beside the bed, bouquets of flowers, arranged in long sheaves with wire and laurel, gave off an austere perfume. The dead man was now dressed in a uniform with a pale blue tunic, a half-black, half-gold collar, and the coverlet reached up to the point on his chest where his Signum Laudis hung. Hans knew he had received that medal for a charge he had made on horseback in the Battle of Koeniggraetz.

His folded hands still held the cross, but he no longer had the same face. It had become that of some strange, aged man, and seemed made of wax or wood.

The relatives, all clad in dark clothing, were silent or talked in subdued tones to Aunt Gretl and suddenly appeared to have a feeling of great respect for Uncle Paskiewicz such as they had never showed before.

“Celebrating!” Aunt Elsa said to Mammi in a repressed voice. Out of haste, or for some other reason, Mammi had forgotten to remove her mask and did so only now. There she stood in her golden-yellow dress, with yellow roses in the point of the heart-shaped neckline and in her hair. Her shoulders and arms were bare; in her obvious embarrassment she had pulled off her long kid gloves. As she went over to Aunt Gretl Hans noticed, too, that she wore high-heeled black silk evening slippers which made walking difficult. “My deepest sympathy,” she said to her. Then she went up to Christine and kissed her twice. Then she wanted to kneel at the deathbed, but along one side were the flowers, and along the other Aunt Hegéssy, Uncle Otto Eberhard, and Cousin Peter were kneeling, and they did not make room for her. Uncle Otto Eberhard even said, in a tone loud enough for every one to hear: “Don't desecrate the dead with your masquerade!”

Again the twins exchanged whispers. Otherwise no one stirred. Only Christl said, “Wait, Aunt Hetti, I'll make room for you. I know Father was very fond of you.”

“That's true!” someone said. It was Uncle Drauffer. Aunt Pauline nodded.

Under the disapproving eyes of the others Christl removed two bouquets from the floor and Uncle Drauffer two others, so that Mammi could kneel at the bedside and say a prayer.

“Why is the boy still up?” Aunt Elsa asked.

“Because he wanted to help me! He was the first to come to me. That was terribly sweet of you, Hans,” Christl answered, although the question was directed to Mammi.

Christl did not speak of his having fetched Mammi. She went to the door with him and laid a cold hand in his. Had he been of help to her?

Her hand was too cold. It almost seemed to him as though he had only made everything worse by bringing his mother there.

“Come along, Mammi,” he said almost angrily.

This time she went with him at once.

Henriette's love for this man so overwhelmed her that she had room for nothing else in her life. It was an obsession, come suddenly upon her after a decade of conventionality and daily routine. Whoever said that you grow accustomed to another person lied. Whoever said you can grow fond of someone you have never loved did not know life. She believed that she knew it now. Ten years wasted was what she felt.

The children had been born, and people said, A happy marriage. Franz even declared he had never been happier. Even that she questioned. Oh, he loved her with a dependable kind of affection which was slightly warming but never, never, never set one on fire. He fussed over her, but that was not what she wanted. She wanted someone who could raise her to the heights. Anything but the commonplace!

The children were handsome, and thoughts of Herr Jarescu had faded to a pale shadow. Papa was a member of the Upper Chamber, and she herself was a respected member of society. Even the bachelors in the chess club, to which Franz went regularly every evening after dinner, respected her. At thirty-two Henrietta was inclined to a distrust which at twenty-two had been foreign to her nature. She ceased to have illusions about herself.

When she met Count Poldo Traun she knew that resistance was useless. She did not even attempt it. Memories crowded overpoweringly into her mind—his fascinating eyes, his inimitable, careless grace of gait. His speech was like
his
had been, with many foreign words and a contempt for the commonplace. He even dressed as Rudolf had. She had never seen English-cut suits on anyone else. She did not think him either clever or even dazzlingly handsome. Rudolf was incomparably cleverer. She saw all of his faults before she capitulated to his charm. But she capitulated completely.

In the past ten years, which had been so uniform that she could not distinguish one from another, with childbearing, parties in the yellow drawing-room, summer holidays in Ischl, there had been no lack of occasions when she had said to herself: This protected and safe life is the right one. For a while she had expected that her conversation with the Emperor would lift her out of her rut of uniformity. But Francis Joseph appeared to have forgotten her existence. When she was compelled to admit that the house and its atmosphere lay like a pall over her and that she no longer called it anything but a prison to herself, she decided that it was foolish to make such an effort to remain merely with jailers and fellow prisoners. The slogan of wasted life was going around Vienna in those days, after the publication of Arthur Schnitzer's story
To Die.
In an impulsive moment she wrote to him how enthusiastic she, an unknown reader, was about the book and that it had taught her to see life in its true colors. “I fear you overestimate my insignificant contribution to the knowledge of men. Such as we can teach only those who already know the answers,” was the ironical author's reply.

Conveniently enough, Franz had to leave on a two-week trip to Trieste and Agram. After that she met Count Traun every day. At the Metternich Ball they met for the fourth time, and it was only then that he reminded her that they had dined together, many years earlier, at Mayerling. She had forgotten that, for Mayerling was associated in her mind with only one person. This abruptly reawakened memory swept all her scruples. Her superstitions did the rest, and all fear of conventions vanished.

The day after the ball she went to his apartment, and from then on lived in a state of ecstasy such as astonished even her experienced lover: he had never known such passion combined with such innocence. When he said as much to her she grew angry, because she thought he did not understand her. One might assert she was a bad wife and a bad mother, but not talk such sheer nonsense of someone who knew life as she did! Yet he insisted on it. He went so far as to swear that it was her greatest charm.