The Vienna Melody (50 page)

“Your own?” asked Dunois, Bastard of France, playing opposite her.

“No,” she replied, “the help and counsel of the King of Heaven.” Never had she said this more naturally. Hans was delighted. That was how art should be! So simple. So convincing.

She looked enchanting in her light, close-fitting cuirass of silver mail, with the pointed banner of France, three golden lilies embroidered on a field of blue in her left hand, and in her right her sword. Like a young boy, Hans thought.

Her eyes fell on him, as always, before she said the line, “I will deliver you from fear.” For it was not said to Dunois, but to him, to him alone, since she believed that fear was his failing and that he must rid himself of it. As she said it she raised the banner, as if in salute.

He nodded, entranced.

“Your wife's voice a bit thin today?” the stage manager remarked as he prepared the wind machine to be used three pages farther on.

“Not a man will follow you,” retorted Dunois on the stage, sitting with folded arms before his tent.

“I will not look back to see whether anyone is following me,” answered Joan. Now it seemed even to Hans that her voice was very light.

During the pause artfully introduced by Dunois at this point, Hans made a sign to her from the wings, “Louder!”

Dunois had risen to his feet. He went over to the girl in the silver cuirass, stood looking her over, his hands on his hips, then tapped her briskly on the shoulders and said: “Good. You have the making of a soldier in you.”

The triangular blue banner fell from Joan's hand.

“You are in love with war,” Dunois went on with his lines as he gave a puzzled look at the banner, picked it up, and handed it to her.

She did not take it.

There was a pause, during which the prompter could be heard whispering the cue, “And the archbishop said I was in love with religion.”

Saint Joan did not seem to hear. She did not take the banner; now her sword fell.

Dunois' eyes turned from the banner still in his hand to the sword at his feet.

“And the archbishop said I was in love with religion!” repeated the prompter more loudly.

“What's going on here?” asked the stage manager, his finger on the sentence Selma was supposed to say but did not. He ran round to the other side to prompt her from a nearer angle. These beginners! Once they lose their lines they don't know how to help themselves.

But Dunois had already taken over Joan's lines. “You mean you were in love with religion,” he said, helping her along. Then, since “religion” was the cue for his next sentence, he went on, “I, God forgive me, am a little in love with war myself, the ugly devil! I am like a man with two wives. Do you want to be like a woman with two husbands?” As he said this in his most masculine way, he stood the banner, which embarrassed him, against the tent, picked up the sword, and toyed with it as though that were part of his role.

“I will never take a husband,” came from Selma's lips, and Hans, who had been holding his breath, gave a sigh of relief. But it sounded as though it came from some enormous distance. “I am a servant of God,” the incredibly far-away voice continued. “My sword is sacred.” At these words she was in the habit of making a gesture with her sword that Hans particularly liked: she would cradle it tenderly in her arms and then hold it to her breast. Since she must have the sword to do that, Dunois now handed it to her. “Your sword,” he improvised as he did it.

She stretched out her hand; it dropped stiffly. Her lips said, “My heart is full of courage, not of anger.” Then she paused.

“I will lead,” came from the prompter's box.

“I will lead,” Selma repeated. At me word “lead” she was supposed to move towards the center of the stage, to the entrance of Dunois' tent. She took the first step and toe second. Then she collapsed.

“And your men will follow. That is all I can do,” whispered the prompter without raising her eyes from her book.

The girl in the silver armour lay on the floor of the stage. Her lips opened to speak. Her eyes were turned on Hans with a fear he had never seen in any human eyes.

“Selma!” he cried.

The stage manager had had the curtain rung down in the middle of the scene. Since the Imperial and Royal Burgtheater had been in existence no such thing had ever happened.

“What's wrong with the little woman?” asked the portrayer of the archbishop, holding his brocade train around his hips so that he could walk freely. “Send for a physician,” he called majestically into the wings. And to the mature lady who had so wanted to play Joan he said softly, “You know the lines, Countess? In your place I'd make a quick change. Now they can see what happens when they give leading parts to little amateurs. It goes to their heads, and they lose them.”

Meanwhile Selma had been laid on a sofa backstage. She was no longer conscious. When the theater physician had examined her he appeared to have reached an opinion. Had Frau Alt complained earlier of any such indisposition? Fainting? Early-morning nausea? Hans gave completely confused answers. Something similar, though of a less pronounced order, had occurred before, he said to the doctor. When? Five or six weeks ago. What had happened? It was necessary to be more precise. Frau Alt would have to go back into her part in thirty minutes at the utmost, therefore Hans must realize that everything depended on his furnishing exact information. If the patient did not look so feverish, the doctor said with a smile, he would be inclined to explain the occurrence in the simplest and happiest way.

People were standing about. “Quiet on the stage!” warned the stage manager. What a piece of luck that Joan did not appear in the next, the fourth, scene! Then came the long interval, and surely she would be ready to play in the courtroom scene?

“Presumably so,” said the house doctor, and looked at the thermometer he had given the patient. He shook it down immediately, so that Hans had no opportunity to read it. A slight temperature.

“What am I hearing?” asked the stage director on duty, who had been called over from the cafe across the way. “What a piece of luck that the public has not noticed anything!”

The actor playing Dunois came over while the stage was being set for the fourth scene. “Has she come to?” he asked, pressing his moustache, which had come loose with the excitement, with two fingers.

Hans shook his head.

“A little weakness. It happens sometimes,” the hero said ungraciously. In a group of actors, clustering not far away, one could hear him recount the whole incident a moment later, “I see the banner fall from her hand.
All right
, I think,
it's an accident
. Then she drops her sword. Right at my feet.
Isn't she going to pick it up?
I think. Not for anything. She won't pick it up. And she comes down on her line. Old Krischke down below is bellowing like a stuck pig once, twice, three times. She comes down on her lines. I sweat blood. The devil, I think to myself, I'll take the line. Then she collapses on me completely—and just before the wind scene!
I'll be damned
, I think!
She's gone and wrecked the wind scene for me!
”

Oh the sofa where Selma lay, with cheeks so red and respiration too rapid to please Hans, what an untold number of actresses had played illness and death. Perhaps that was why none, except Hans, attributed much significance to her illness. The only point of interest was whether she would be able to go on with the part or whether an understudy must be put in.

“She will under no circumstances act,” Hans called to the group of actors.

“Young man,” remarked the archbishop, who came over to the sofa as spokesman for the others, “I understand and share your excitement. But the fate of a performance is in the balance. Private considerations have no place here. Our good doctor will give the little woman an injection and put her on her feet again. I played Mephisto on three injections and with a temperature of 104.”

“She's not going to act,” Hans insisted.

Unexpectedly, the house doctor concurred in this opinion. He recommended that the patient should be taken home.

Hans carried her in his arms down the stairs and out through the entrance usually crowded with autograph seekers, but today the hour was still too early for them.

His arms, which had carried the unconscious form down the stairs in the theater, now carried her up the stairs at Number 10. The slim figure in the silver armour was light.

He met Otto Eberhard on the first landing, just returning from his evening stroll. “What does this mean?” he asked, catching sight of his nephew with a painted female in his arms.

“Selma is ill,” Hans told him, taking two steps at a time.

“Couldn't you at least have wrapped a cape around her?” asked Otto Eberhard, with obvious disgust.

But Hans and his light burden were already on the third floor. A quarter of an hour later Dr. Herz walked in.

“Another alarm?” the physician inquired, with a determined smile which seemed to say: But don't pay any attention to us doctors!

He had long since given up interfering with God's creatures and had retired on a pension. But he let himself be persuaded to come for the sake of that youngster there who had caused him so much trouble on his arrival in the world. He thoughtfully laid his cigar aside on an ashtray, hung up his hat and coat, took his brown wooden stethoscope from his waistcoat pocket, and said: “Now, then, let's take a look at her.” Even though one had not practiced for six years and did nothing at present but collect stamps, it was yet in one's blood and bones.

“She's still unconscious,” Hans said when they reached the patient.

“So I see,” the doctor remarked, with his old trick of calming others by never appearing surprised himself. Nevertheless, he was not able to restrain all signs of uneasiness when he had finished his examination.

“Something serious?” Hans asked.

Let's not change styles now
, thought the elderly practitioner;
let's tell him it isn't serious
. So he said it, as he had said it untold times before, in light cases as in serious ones. Nevertheless he insisted on a stomach lavage. He himself was too old to undertake it, but a colleague would do it. He telephoned to a colleague.

With one ear on the breathing of his wife and the other listening to the telephone conversation, Hans caught one foreign word he did not know. When he inquired about it Dr. Herz said, “Nonsense!”

When the colleague arrived they held a consultation; they spent half an hour alone with the patient and then left together. Dr. Herz promised to telephone the results of the chemical analysis. He did not telephone but came himself. It was shortly before midnight when he rang the doorbell. Selma was not wholly conscious yet.

With his cigar in his mouth and his ready smile, Dr. Herz explained: “I wanted to relieve your mind before you went to bed. Tell me, by the way, your wife takes sleeping tablets, doesn't she?”

“Never.”

“How can you state that so categorically?”

“Because I know it. Of us two I am the sleepless one. Selma sleeps perfectly.”

“
Do you take sleeping drafts, Hans?”

“No. Why?”

“Because I do not know how else to explain the presence of veronal in her stomach.”

“Veronal? We don't even have any in the house.”

“Didn't you tell me that your wife suffered from headaches? What did she take for them?”

“If I'm not mistaken, pyramidon,” Hans said, making an effort to be as precise as possible, although his anxiety was increasing with every second. Selma made a movement as though she were in pain. Dr. Herz asked to see where their medicines were kept.

“Does anyone in the house take strychnine?” he inquired, bringing each little bottle and box of tablets up to his shortsighted eyes.

“Papa, I think. Didn't you prescribe it for him yourself?”

“That's why I asked,” the old man remarked, and continued his search. “I prescribed a strychnine and quinine combination when I was still coming here. It was the so-called
Wenckebach
—pills. So he's still taking them?”

“I believe so,” Hans replied, bewildered.

“And who has the prescription?” the doctor asked, chewing on his cigar.

“Mother, probably. What does all this mean?”

“Your wife, naturally, sees your father quite often?”

“Mother takes care of him almost singlehanded. She never likes to have anyone help.”

Closing the door of the small medicine cabinet, the old gentleman remarked, “Don't lay any special significance on my questions. But tell me, Hans, have you two quarrelled? I mean, has your wife on your account or for any other reason—perhaps professionally—had a disappointment?” As he spoke he wandered around the room, examining whatever lay on the table and desk.

“There is no happier marriage than ours! And professionally Selma has recently scored her greatest success!”

“Of course,” agreed Dr. Herz, puffing away fiercely. “My memory is like a sieve. What was it now? As the Maid of Orleans?” Hans now barred his way. “Please, Dr. Herz! What is it you're hiding from me?” He could no longer stand the old man's walking around and searching.

“I'm hiding nothing, my boy. But nature seems to be hiding something from me; that is a trick she is unfortunately in the habit of playing on us doctors. Now if I only knew whether your wife had any motives—Good God, don't look at me in such despair! I don't deny that there are symptoms of poison present. Please remember you picked up the word ‘poliomyelitis' earlier. That would have been a thousand times worse, for that is infantile paralysis, and I confess that my first suspicions were directed that way. The report on the contents of the stomach fortunately excludes that now, as it admits of a much more logical explanation.”