The Vienna Melody (40 page)

“But you wanted to help him,” Henriette contradicted. “Why do you walk so slowly?”

Two schoolboys ran towards them from the direction of the skating rink. “Spit three times!” they called out laughingly. “A nun!” They spat and ran on.

For the previous six days it had been the fashion in Catholic Vienna to drag everything Catholic in the dust.

“Yes, I did want to,” Sister Agatha confirmed. But that this was her first excursion into the outside world since she took the veil, that she had resolved to remain cut off from all other human beings for the rest of her life, and that she would have broken that resolve for no one in the world except Henriette, all that she kept to herself.

“If you could do it then, when you were not even a nun, you must be much better able to do it now!” Henriette answered in her always naively illogical way.

The Salesian sister did not respond. Everything along their short way seemed to her to have changed. There stood the same houses, but they looked unfamiliar. Their size was all wrong. What used to be broad was narrow now.

“Please don't tell him I came to fetch you,” begged Henriette as they entered the angel doorway.

“No, I shan't,” the nun promised.

Franz was sleeping. It was an uneasy sleep that brought beads of sweat to his forehead. Sometimes one could hear him babbling. Martha Monica sat by his bed. The curtains were drawn.

“This is your cousin, Sister Agatha,” Henriette said softly to her daughter.

“My saintly cousin?” asked the girl with a smile. She showed no signs of embarrassment either at the nun's religious garb or at the odour of carbolic that she exuded. She kissed her.

“Yes. I think she is saintly,” Henriette answered.

The nun's pale cheeks tinged with color. “How lovely she is!” she said to Henriette. This young creature was so like her mother that she seemed to bring back the past with irresistible force. “Perfectly lovely!” she repeated, and looked at Mono with the admiration she had had for Henriette and which Number 10, disapprovingly, called worship.

“You're terribly sweet,” Martha Monica said to her new relative, who now was spoken of as a saint in Number 10.

When the invalid woke up he made a gesture in Henriette's direction. “Do you want to be alone with me?” she asked. He nodded and tried to speak. As she leaned over to hear him better it seemed to her that his mouth had become twisted. But it was hard to see in the darkened room.

She made a sign to Martha Monica to leave, then said: “Christl is here. She wanted to pay you a visit.”

An incomprehensible answer came from Franz's lips.

“Good morning, Uncle Franz,” Sister Agatha greeted him, with the steady tone of someone accustomed to reeling at home beside a sickbed. “You have overdone things. A little rest will be good for you.”

Her uncle made a contemptuous gesture and then indicated that he wanted to write. Henriette brought him a pad and a pencil, drew the curtains, and, with Christl's help, propped him up on his pillows. Now his twisted mouth was so visible that Henriette threw a look of horror at her niece. The nun nodded reassuringly to her from behind the sick man.

“Ask Mr. Foedermayer to come to me as soon as possible,” Franz had written in his precise handwriting.

Henriette promised to notify the head clerk of the Alt Firm at once. When she came back from the telephone she heard Sister Agatha say, “It's best not to talk, Uncle Franz.”

He raised his hand and let it fall again, as much as to say, “Nonsense!”

Yet, with a firmness which contrasted with her soft voice, Sister Agatha insisted, “Believe me, Uncle Franz. The person who has not learned to be silent knows nothing. I haven't spoken out for seventeen years.”

The words were addressed to the sick man, but Henriette knew they were meant for her. On hearing that dreadful reproach she said imploringly, “Christl!”

The nun understood. Do a miracle, was what she meant.

Her firmness belied her gentleness. She rose. “I hope you will soon feel better, Uncle Franz,” she said firmly and softly. “I shall pray for you.” And she left the room.

Henriette followed her into the vestibule. “Don't go,” she said.

“But, Aunt Hetti—” answered the nun, calling her for the first time by that name, just as she did when they were playing ‘marriage' together and Uncle Franz was dealing with a dangerous adversary in the next room. Now he fought against one who was more dangerous. In her innermost heart Sister Agatha envied him. Uncle Franz would fight, be conquered, and conquer.

“Why won't you help him?” Henriette asked.

“Because I cannot,” was the answer.

“Because you will not!”

“Do you still believe everything depends on will?”

“I need your help!”

“Uncle Franz will be helped,” the nun told her. “Say good-bye to Martha Monica for me. She must come to see me some time, if she has the leisure. I may have callers every Monday and every Friday from three to four.” With that she left.

Henriette heard her steps going down as far as the first floor, where, presumably before her former home, they stopped, but became immediately audible again and finally faded away.

For seventeen years she has waited for me every Monday and Friday
, thought Henriette, shaken and ashamed. Then she went back to the sickroom, saying to herself, “I will help him! It does depend on will!”

As if Franz wished to put to the test what was in her mind, when she sat down beside him, took his hand and stroked it, his twisted mouth took on an expression which she thought was a smile. Time passed. Otto Eberhard came, but was refused admittance. Down in the streets there were piercing cries, “Extra! The Hapsburg crime expiated! Parliament exiles Emperor Charles, Empress Zita, and the Imperial Family from Austria!”

Henriette stroked the burning brow of the sick man. Yes. He was smiling.

This is the letter which reached Hans before his return journey from his prison camp:

 

Hans! It makes me indescribably happy to know that you are coming back. If words could only convey some conception of it! How many others before me have said they were happy. I am happier than they are, but there are no words for it.

When you get back you will see all the calendars hanging on the wall of my room, on which I crossed off the days, keeping the old calendars. It was the only thing that showed me time was passing. The day you were taken ill, the day you were wounded, the day you were taken prisoner, the day I learned you were one of those most unfortunate ones ‘without documents'—each has a star. They were all Sundays, and Sunday always used to be my unlucky day. The casualty-list Thursdays are marked with a half-moon. Did you know that the lists of casualties were published every Thursday at the State Printing House in the Rennweg? Each half-moon meant: Not on the casualty list! This is just so as to help you understand my signs. Perhaps they will convey more to you than my words.

This is the first letter I have written you free from fear. Hence it is my first perfectly honest letter. The time has come for you to have a clear picture of everything.

The innumerable days and nights which I counted and crossed off, were a ghost-ridden interlude. In a mechanical way you continue to live even then, to be ambitious (see later), to work, to be subject to appetite and desire (Freud: “The uninhibited frankness of Fraülein Rosner”—remember?). But the whole thing is absolutely unreal. You are kept constantly running by a motor, presumably hope, you are constantly held back, and the brake is undoubtedly fear. And something always is telling you: this is infinitely unimportant. The one important thing is that Hans Alt is alive and is coming home.

So immeasurable has been my egotism. Or should I say my love? No, egotism is the more correct word. The people here, who turned anti-dynastic overnight, declared that the downfall of the house of Hapsburg was the downfall of egotism because the Hapsburgs never cared for anything except their house. You will remember what I thought of the house of Hapsburg. But I find the people who are complaining about egotism much more unbearable. Do you know anyone who is not egotistic? I don't.

By which I only mean to tell you how infinitely puny my conduct has been in these ‘great days' and since. Alas, you cannot be proud of me. All I ever wanted was to have it over. A thousand times better that we should lose the war than that I should lose you. I did not work in the Silver Cross or railway station canteens or in any of the other places you might have liked to have me work, although you were tactful enough not to say so. I loathed the war like the plague. And also the people who organized benefit balls, teas, exhibitions. If a woman wants to go into war service she should be a nurse in a frontline hospital. Nothing else counts. But I could not stand the smell of a hospital. No, you really can't be proud of me.

That is also why I have paid so little attention to your family. Theoretically they should perhaps have paid some attention to me, for “after all I am your wife (if only a war bride). But all these years they have preferred to have nothing to do with me, and your noble uncle, who grows more and more like the Duke of Alba in Don Carlos, even turned his face ostentatiously the other way recently when I passed him in Karntnerstrasse. That your mother cannot stand me is, of course, a ‘historic fact, and as for your father, the expression ‘cannot stand' is probably much too mild. I think he looks on me as the offspring of all that is evil. How this will turn out when we all shall be living under the same roof is difficult for me to imagine.

Now, Hans, brace yourself. Here comes the real thing. The introduction has been long enough (perhaps Freud's remark on my ‘uninhibitedness' is only ninety percent true?). But I do so want him to be one hundred percent, right! Because it was through him, thanks to him, that I have been for four weeks now—a member of the Burgtheater!

Joking aside, it's true.

I could send you a notice from the
Neue Freie Presse
in which Raoul Auernheimer wrote about me as follows: “The Grillparzer ‘Hero' of Fraülein Rosner is full of promise; indeed, it is already full of accomplishment.” I could enclose the notice of Felix Salten, which begins, “Heavens, but this little Selma Rosner has a great talent!” I could even quote Alfred Polgar to you; “Fraülein Rosner takes a definite step away round from the pretty to the positive. She adds an earthy and convincing grain of salt to the pallid, baby-blue part of a sweet, naïve young thing, by means of a charm that is clever enough to appear to be naïve. She plays, as it were, from her head to her heart, instead of the other way round.” I could add other chapters and verses to prove to you what a real success I had, but if I know you it would only irritate you more. You do not enjoy being faced with faits accomplis, and I am bringing you face to face with something width will remain one.

This is the chronological development of the remarkable happening. In the interlude condition I was in, my academic achievements left much to be desired. Jodi and Muellner had the patience of angels with me, but Freud lost his. One day he said, “Why don't you go on the stage, Fraülein Rosner? You will never become a practitioner of psycho-analysis. But I believe you are already a noteworthy actress.” (You see, I had made some excuses about not having my thesis ready because I had to help my mother in the store—incidentally that was the truth.) You know the complacent tone with which he says things like that and the deprecatory shrug of the shoulders which follows, making one feel like more of an idiot than ever. In any case, I was ready to murder him, and you can well imagine how my sweet fellow students enjoyed it. In my rage I asked right out of the blue whether he was intimating that he was preparing to fail me. But he explained in a quite matter-of-fact way that he had meant it in all seriousness. That I was wasting my time. If he were in my place he would let the seminars go and take lessons in acting.

That day, when I came home, I found the news that you had been taken prisoner. The slip from the Ministry of War gave no indication of your whereabouts. I did not know where to write you. I did not know how you were. My state of mind led to one of those scenes with my mother in which I behave so intolerably. She had chosen that particular moment as appropriate in which to tell me that your family is under obligation to do something for me if you no longer can. She, in any case, had reached the end of her rope. I regret to say I grew violent, too much so, took my belongings, and spent the night in the Golden Pear (the place you maintain is not a hotel. Nor is it.) To a certain extent my mother was right. A woman of my age should not be dependent. Even if I had received my Ph.D. summa cum laude it would have taken, as you know, at least three more years to get a paid job as a teacher.

So the next morning I went to the Berggasse to see Freud. He made me sit in the famous green armchair for more than an hour, talking in a frank and friendly way. Finally he sent me off with a letter in which he stated that he looked upon himself as an undiscovered dramatic critic and asked his esteemed friend, Hermann Bahr, elected head of the Burgtheater by the Reds, to give the bearer a trial. Mr. Bahr, whose beard is even longer than your unde Drauffer's, is fascinatingly clever. He received me and said, “All anyone needs to ruin his chances with me is a letter of recommendation. In your case the recommendation comes from the most distinguished living Viennese. Therefore I promise I shall not let it influence me against you. Recite something for me.”

I could have recited Muellner's formula theories or Jodi's value theory of ethics, but he wanted the Maid of Orleans or at any rate Viola in
Twelfth Night
. He finally agreed to let me do two scenes from Shaw's
Cleopatra
, which I had played in that charity performance in the Baden Arena, after which you and I argued so passionately and you were (rightly) so displeased. As I recited I had before me your angry face and I undertook to prove to you, not Mr. Bahr, that I was better than I had been in Baden. In any case, the director of the Burgtheater approved a scholarship for me at the Academy of Acting, I received instruction from Albert Heine, and four weeks ago I made my debut.