The Vienna Melody (5 page)

She clinked her glass with his. “Confession over?” she asked after draining her glass.

He nodded.

“Absolution?”

“A rosary.”

“Thanks, Padre.”

“And a kiss!”

“Unwritten laws!”

“I don't care a straw for them.”

“But I do.”

“So, you are for the Hapsburg ritual!”

She offered him her lips for a fleeting second.

In an open pavilion on the main side of the garden a brass band had begun to play. It was the army band of the Vienna regiment, the Fourth Hoch-und-Deutschmeister. The men in blue uniforms sat there stiffly behind trumpets, cymbals, and drums, led by a band-master whose left hand, with outstretched ring finger, rested on his hip. The polished surfaces of the instruments reflected the light of the gas lamps, and the lyre-shaped program stand in front of the balustrade displayed a number one. Number one was the “Double Eagle March.”

She held out her empty glass.

“That's what I like.
Prosit!
” he said rapturously.

“
Prosit
.”

Then the crayfish were brought in a tureen reeking with caraway; on the lid was a red crayfish in porcelain.

“Why aren't you eating?”

She had emptied a second glass. “But I am,” she said, taking up a pair of claw crackers with deft fingers. In the light numbness induced by the wine everything seemed easier. It might be possible to forget that it was not for love she had chosen this man who was gazing at her so ecstatically, but for another reason, one she could not confide to anyone—not anyone in the world. Not even to him who, despite all, was in her thoughts night and day—to him least of all! In her romantic little head all doubts disappeared, and in their stead arose a boundless conviction that what one desires one can have. And enjoy. And hold fast to. Even him! Oh, if only she could have held him fast! It required only a mite more courage, such a ridiculously tiny mite! And that Greek girl, a sixteen-year-old child, would not now have been in her place! The child was not “afraid of conventions”—that was all. Good God, when she reflected how much she had turned her back on! She struggled with the thoughts which the wine and the military music brought back so powerfully to her mind. It was while listening to this same music that they had made their plans, plans more dazzling than anything else in the world!

Franz spoke her name, and she looked up.

“Are you lost in a daze? What were you thinking about just then?”

“I was listening to the music. They play well. Pour me another glass!”

“Won't you get tipsy?”

“I'd like to.”

The herbs gave a dry tang to the cold white wine which seemed to grow lighter the more one drank of it. The guests at the various tables applauded, and the bandmaster bowed. His dark moustache was turned up in twirled points. A color sergeant laid the notes for the next piece on the stand in front of him, and a corporal turned the program placard so that now number two was displayed. Number two was a potpourri from the
Fledermaus
operetta: “'Tis here with us a custom,
chacun à son gôut.
” The guests at the tables hummed their favorite verses.

“Look out for the sauce; sauce coming,” warned the waiters, darting about with high-stacked trays. Appetites seemed insatiable; people ordered dishes with their cheeks already stuffed full, and when those dishes came they sent for more. The May evening was still young enough for the glow from the gas lamps to create a twilight in which one could distinctly glimpse the crests of the chestnut trees with their luxuriant pink and white blossoms; the sky between them was deep and cloudless. “'Tis here with us a custom,
chacun à son goût!
” blared the band, and every one seemed to have had a particularly good day today, or, if it was bad, to have forgotten it. A wave of well-being engulfed the garden.

When they had finished dinner Franz told their driver that they were going over to the fairgrounds of the Wurstelprater for an hour or so and would meet him at a quarter of nine at the Jantschtheater to drive home.

“Very good, Herr Baron,” answered the driver.

If only there were not this eternal comparison! He too had said to his coachman: “Bratfisch, follow us.” And Bratfisch had tipped his small-brimmed top hat and had answered, “Very good, Your Imperial Highness!” And then he had given her his arm, and it had been heaven on earth.

Now she was walking arm in arm with her fiancé past the merry-go-rounds and the shooting-galleries, with their earsplitting noise. With the other man she had gone on to the still meadows where there were violets.

In front of the booths the barkers yelled hoarsely, “Roll up! We're just beginning! Good evening, sir! Good evening, madame! Six shots for two coppers! Will the lady have a try? She is surely a fine shot; you can see that right off!” They said that to every female being who passed by, whether cook or countess. And although Henriette was no shot at all, she believed them literally. She was in a state in which the word ‘impossible' (a word she rarely used, even when in a completely sober state) became superfluous. What does anyone know? Everything is possible. Perhaps he will give up the Greek girl and come back to me. Why not? He was utterly ruthless. Franz was considerate. Perhaps she would come to love Franz. Why not? People do say that you can come to love a person even when you don't love him at first.

She laid the light rifle to her cheek and aimed at a harlequin holding a drum in front of himself. He had a black heart on his breast, and in the center of the heart was a red circle. That was what one had to hit, and she did. The harlequin rattled his drum, and Franz shouted, “That's marvellous! I had no idea what a good shot you are!”

She nodded. She had not known it herself. Next she aimed at an eggshell bobbing up and down on a jet of water, and the egg splintered.

“A third try for the lady!” bawled the owner of the booth. “Three hits and you get a butter dish! What is the lady's target?”

The lady's target was the door of a tiny house. She aimed and missed. She did not win the butter dish but was given a lead medal instead.

Arm in arm, they wandered on. Now it was already night and the stars were out. A woman with a basket of lilies-of-the-valley stood by the path. He bought her a bunch and she stuck them, with her violets and her medal, in her belt. Then they went to a merry-go-round called “Kalafatti,” after a gigantic Chinese figure made of wood. The Chinaman stood in the center surrounded by black and white horses and gaily painted carts which swung up and down. She swung herself up on a white horse, and he mounted a black one. As she rode sidesaddle on her toy horse, he thought she looked like a child despite her long velvet skirt. It occurred to him that he should never forget that. He did not mean by this that he was too old for her, but rather that she had a perfect right to the unrestricted fun of her youth which had been denied him in his. It was remarkable how seldom she let him see this side, he could not help thinking, for she always acted so grown up.

“Do you like to ride on a merry-go-round?” he inquired tenderly.

“I adore it!” she replied.

Next he took her to a flea circus, a small wooden shed with a table on which was a glass case. An elderly woman stood behind it and overhead an oil lamp hung. It was all just as he had remembered it when as a boy he had longed in vain to be allowed to see it.

“Your Excellencies have come just in time for the races,” the woman said, and pointed to the glass case with a knitting needle as she introduced the fleas: “This is Pepi. This one Marie. This Rudi, Laura, Maxie.”

Five tiny dots were visible to the naked eye.

“Go!” the woman ordered, and rang a tiny silver bell. The five dots on the floor of the case began to move.

“All five got away to a good start!” the woman explained, and then, urging them on, she said: “Maxie, don't be lazy! Laura, look sharp!''

Pointing with her knitting needle, she added quickly: “Pepi will make it! Pepi is a whirlwind!”

That Pepi, the flea, was quick as a whirlwind made Hen­riette laugh. She might just as well have cried, for at this moment either would have been easy.

She was still laughing when they sat together in a small compartment the Giant Wheel, that delight of the Viennese. It rose from the ground imperceptibly, slowly, very slowly going up until it was way above the whole city. The soft outlines of the hills and the bordering woods were to be sensed rather than seen, though the Danube glistened under the bridges and through the districts, and both the flickering lights below and the restless stars above were swallowed up in the same glow along the horizon.

“I wish I could always ride like this! It should not go down,” she said.

“It shan't! In a month at the latest we'll begin to build. I'll build you a room way up high, shall I?” His words were like a promise to a child.

A warm breeze, carrying the confused sounds from below, came through the open windows of their compartment. The higher the wheel turned the quieter it grew.

“Yes,” she answered, but in the dark he could not see whether she was still laughing.

When they reached the ground again it was striking nine. But the coachman knew a short cut. At a sharp trot they left the Prater through the Augarten gate. “To All Men from a Friend of Mankind” read the Emperor Joseph's century-old dedication inscription over it.

They made family calls; that was part of being engaged and was considered good manners. He should have introduced her to his family long ago! But Franz was aware that the inhabitants of Number 10 were almost unanimously opposed to the match, and in monuments of pessimism he also realized with what small degree of enthusiasm Henriette herself must look upon their marriage. Here was beautiful daughter of a famous father marrying an older man, who was no Adonis although he was nice and respectable (Franz in no way underestimated himself). However, he was no count, no virtuoso, no millionaire. Under the circumstances he rather hesitated to make calls on people from whom he could not expect the slightest evidence of enthusiasm! But now he could no longer delay, for his sister-in-law Elsa, Otto Eberhard's wife, had surprised him by asking: “Is your engagement broken?” To his perplexed “How so?” she had replied tartly: “I only thought it must be because you've waited so long to bring your fiancée to call on us.”

Whereupon he dressed himself, as was customary, in a long black coat, cursing as he put on a top hat and even took a pair of gloves. Then he drove to fetch Henriette at her home in Karolinengasse. She was dressed for the occasion in a new spring suit of shimmering green moiré which he found irresistible the moment he laid eyes on it, although the next instant he realized that the extremely tight bodice would not increase her chances with his family; not to mention her huge straw hat, laden with artificial flowers and velvet ribbons, which sat on her luxuriant chestnut braids and which anyone could see from afar was beyond the means of any ordinary mortal. I should have prepared her in advance, he thought.

They entered the old house through the main entrance on Seilerstätte. Henriette had never been there before, as no young girl of good family could visit her fiancé in his apartment. As the heavy oaken door swung open and Pawlik, the janitor, tipped his cap, she felt a rush of coolness which seemed to have been stored up there for a hundred years. She regretted having brought her fan.

They rang first at Apartment 7 on the first floor.

“Well, I've brought her to see you!” Franz said, after they had been taken into the living room. Then he performed the introductions. “This is my brother, Otto Eberhard. And this is my sister-in-law, Elsa.”

“Very pleased,” returned the Public Prosecutor, bowed to his future sister-in-law, and waited until she held out her hand, which he took.

“We are delighted,” said his wife, the former Baroness Uiberacker, and stretched three fingers out towards the young girl. Then she pointed to the sofa on one side of the room, which looked so dark with its golden-brown walls. The gentlemen seated themselves in armchairs.

Silence.

Really someone ought to say something
, thought Henriette.

“I hear you are going to live on the fourth floor,” remarked the lawyer's wife. “That is, when it is built.”

Henriette nodded. “I hope you won't be disturbed by the building,” she said as primly as she knew how.

“Not a bit! Otto's family will have gone to the country long before then,” observed Franz, who longed to light a cigar but did not think the time was yet ripe for it.

“My brother is always generous,” ventured Otto Eberhard, and then, with an engaging smile, he added, “at the expense of others.” Henriette, who was still young enough to take instantaneous likes or dislikes, began to hate the Public Prosecutor for that remark.

He went on smoothly: “It's of no consequence at all. We shall just have to breathe in a little more dust.”

“I shall be sorry,” answered Henriette, opening and closing the fan she held in her hand.

“There's no occasion for that,” said the lawyer.

So he was the one who denounced me to Franz, she thought as she looked into his cold blue eyes. She resolved that the subject of Rudolf should under no circumstances be raised.

More silence.

“Where is Peter?” Franz finally brought out. “Henriette would so much like to see him.”

“Oh, yes, very much indeed,” she repeated, although she had no idea whom they were talking about. There were so many names in this house!

A bell was rung three times, whereupon a fat little boy was led in by a straitlaced woman whose carriage was a model of erectness,

“
Dites bonjour
, Pierre!” she suggested. The little boy said, “
Bonjour
,” and was given a piece of candy obviously brought along for the purpose by his uncle Franz.