The Vienna Melody (58 page)

“I think Fritz is right,” she said. The thought of his being far away had always been terrifying to her. First during the war, and later when Selma had threatened her with it. Now it seemed harder to bear than ever. Hans was the only one for whom she lived. Franziska had her husband. Mono had consoled herself for the recall of her Italian and did not need her. Hans needed her, even if he did not know it, did not admit it, did not love her as before. Hans, who had always been so good to her except for those dreadful weeks, and that she had long since forgiven him.

“It will only be for two months.” He spoke uncertainly, as he did when he was a boy.

“That's no time at all,” she replied. Supposing he never comes back? it occurred to her, and she put her hand to her heart, which nowadays was apt to trouble her. “Will two months be enough?” she asked.

“Easily,” he asserted. “Our Ministry of Education, which means, of course, our all-powerful Cousin Peter, is sending Fritz over to negotiate with Koussevitzky and Stokowski. You probably don't even know their names. They're American conductors.”

“Are Toscanini and Bruno Walter no longer good enough for Salzburg?” Heririette asked, and then reproached herself again for speaking in the old tone she had sworn to give up.

“They want to put Salzburg on as international a basis as possible. I find it very reasonable. It's shameful how little Austria is known abroad.”

“Yes,” Henriette agreed.

“And I could discuss a branch with Steinway,” Hans told her. “You remember that was always a favorite idea of Papa's.”

She nodded. They were passing St. Anna's. “And when are you leaving?” she asked casually.

He cleared his throat and answered, “Tonight.”

“Really,” said Henriette. “Are you packed?”

“I don't need much for such a short trip,” he replied.

How often he emphasizes the shortness of the time, she thought. “Perhaps I can help you?” she suggested. “I seem to remember that you're not much of a genius at packing.”

“I was going to ask you to lend me Simmerl.”

“It will be better for me to do it. Simmerl grows crankier every day. I have always loved to pack. Probably because I have traveled so little.”

They had passed through the angel entrance into the house and were going upstairs. Henriette went slowly.

“By the way, tomorrow they'll start to put in a lift,” he said.

She was rooted to the spot with amazement.

“It's not good for you to climb so many stairs, Mother.”

“Your going-away present to me?” she asked, her breath quite taken away by all the news being sprung on her today.

“To us all. Don't talk so much while you're climbing.”

Does he consider me an invalid?
she thought.
I was never ill in my life except when I bore him
. As they passed Otto Eberhard's door she could not help thinking:
A lift in Number 10!

“Foedermayer will make reports to you on everything that goes on in the factory. He's absolutely dependable.”

“Your father felt that about him too,” she said reflectively. She remembered how she had climbed the stairs with Franz when he came home from the war. She walked now almost as slowly as he did then. “Do you think Papa would have approved of the lift?” she asked.

“As a lift, probably not. But as a convenience for you, yes.”

“You're right. He was always thoughtful.”

She went straight to Hans's apartment to save time. She did not even inquire when his train left; one could always assume, at least, that it went in the late evening or night and thereby gain a little extra time. She knew nothing about trains. She had once been in Venice for a single day, but otherwise only in Ischl and Abbazia.

She laid aside her crepe-trimmed hat and veil, drew off her gloves, and looked round to see what she should do first. She immediately jumped at conclusions when he brought out a dress suit. “Will you bring a dress suit?” she asked.

“Fritz is taking his. They wear them on board ship.”

“I see,” was her comment. That wild musician was always putting such erroneous ideas into the heads of people.

Taking the dress suit out of his hands and laying it carefully on the bed to fold it, she inquired, “What's the name of the ship you are taking?”

“The
Île de France.
I didn't want to travel on a German one.”

“Why not?”

“But, Mother,” he said with a smile, “you really are not politically minded. Haven't you heard that the man who took the examinations with me at the Art Academy is now governing Germany?”

“That you and he took examinations together and were failed, I have heard. You certainly told me about it often enough,” she retorted, with a slight spark of her old-time humor. “Incidentally, your grandfather Stein considered me quite a politician. I even predicted that you would never make a name for yourself in the army.

And that your brother—” She stopped short.

He kissed her tenderly.

“Is your train going so soon?” She turned away. If one had never in all one's life been allowed to play-act one could not change all in a flash, no matter how firmly one was resolved to do so. “I need some tissue paper. I wager you haven't any,” she said.

“Over in the drawer. I think Selma put some in there.” At the mention of the name they were both silent. In the drawer with her things he found the tissue paper Selma had bought. Her books were also there and the copies of her parts. And even her silver cuirass.

“She was tremendously tidy,” Henriette said, after a pause. And then, finding that her praise was still too slight, she added, “I mean it's so unusual in an actress.”

He said nothing but watched her as she took his things, carefully smoothed them out, and packed them with as much economy of space as possible in the steamer trunk. A layer of clothing, then a layer of tissue paper, exactly as she had been taught by her old housekeeper, Theresa. Father Stein had been a great traveller. The gray streak along her brown parting, which she had always left gray, was now white, and her beautiful brown hair was gray.

“Mother?”

She looked up.

“Nothing. Except that I'm terribly fond of you!” When she looked out of the corner of her eyes that way she seemed so incredibly young.

“Even if it isn't true one loves to hear things like that,” she said. She had begun to arrange his shirts.

“Do you know something?” he asked suddenly. “I'm going to make a suggestion! Fritz and I are taking the
Île de France
in Le Havre and are spending a few days beforehand in Paris. If it would amuse you won't you come with us to Paris? How's that?”

She put down the shirt she was holding. “Paris?” She spoke the name with the respect and yearning felt by all her generation for the place.

“It would be a bit of recreation for you after all you've been through. Wouldn't it?” he urged.

Her eyes shone. How often she had begged Franz to take her to Paris! How she had always devoured the books that came from there! For a time—and this was something she had never confided to anyone—she had even seen a resemblance between herself and Madame Bovary. And an almost greater one between Franz and the doctor Bovary. “That would be marvellous!” she said.

“Settled!” he said excitedly. “Let me finish packing my own things, and you go up and fix yours. Meanwhile I'll telephone for a sleeping-car reservation for you. Anyhow, you needn't pack many things. We'll buy what you need in Paris!”

She would be buying in Paris. The saleswoman at Spitzer's would no longer have to say to her, “A genuine Paris model, Frau Alt!” She would choose her own genuine Paris models in Paris, in one of those fabulous establishments she knew so well by name. At Poiret's or Lanvin's.

“Hurry, Mother! Look your best!”

Now she was walking down the Champs-Élysées. The Rond Point. The Arc de Triomphe. She was driving in the Bois. All the smart younger set in novels had their
pied-à-terre
in the Rue St. Honoré. Or was it the Rue de Rivoli? In the great Opera House women wore tiaras in their hair.

“What are you thinking of?”

From St. Augustine it struck two.

“It's very sweet of you,” she replied, and the flush in her cheeks gave way to a deep pallor. “Thank you so much, Hans.”

“Now I feel really happy about my trip!” he said, delighted.

She took up the shirt and laid it in the trunk. The left cuff was not quite in place, so she straightened it. “Unfortunately it can't be done,” she said, talking into the trunk. “Mono heeds me. And there are other reasons.”

She knew he would not believe her, but nothing else occurred to her. For she could not tell him that during the requiem she had made a vow. Not such a simple one as when he had left for the war. A real one. There were those who made vows earlier and took the veil. And there were others who came late, very late, to take them and who yet bought Paris models. Henriette sighed and straightened up. She would have to continue to buy her Paris models in Vienna.

“You're old-fashioned,” he said, disappointed. “I really never thought that of you.”

Nor I of myself, she thought. I always imagined I was so modern. That was probably another of my mistakes.

Then she quickly finished his packing and said good-bye. She did not want to know when his train was leaving, she hated to stand about on station platforms and say, “Write soon. Did you remember to take warm things?” No, perhaps she was old-fashioned, but when someone went away all that was left was a bit of a white handkerchief waving, a little smoke, and much heartache, and she wished to spare herself that. “God keep you,” she said, and kissed him. She held him close, as she had done when he went away to war. Then, too, she had thought it was for ever. She believed it again today, but she said, as she had done then, “Come back safe.”

“Yes, Mother,” he promised. “Take care of yourself.”

That was exactly what he had said as he carried his heavily packed knapsack. Selma had stood behind him.

“Good luck,” she wished him. At the door she turned round once more. “And thanks for the remarkably easy journey. I was in Paris today for two minutes.”

Fritz had thought it was an excellent occasion to pull Hans out of a state of mind that to him seemed to be growing constantly more critical; the cult of the dead, in which he was indulging, bordered on the abnormal. Every day in the early morning a visit to the far-away cemetery. Every day fresh flowers in front of her picture. Hardly ever seeing anyone.

The musician still had his old feeling of sympathy for Hans, or rather he had gained a fresh one. The longer he “watched him,” as he called it, the more respect he had for him. I take my hat off to him, he said to himself. He is one of the very few people of my acquaintance who maintains absolutely the purity of his human standards. To call him an idealist, which they were prone to do in Number 10, he considered mere slackness of thinking. For where was the line of demarcation between a so-called idealist and someone you could not take seriously? Hans was most certainly to be taken seriously. If a word such as ‘realidealism' had existed it might have been appropriate for this practical idealist. To be sure, he was no luminary among piano-makers, and he made things easy for Messrs. Ehrbar, Blüthner, and his other competitors. But if he had produced books instead of pianos, or had a chair to teach Austrian history, or maybe even simply a pulpit, he would have been in his proper place.

Paris, which Hans had never seen, disappointed him. Nor did Fritz demur, although he was crazy about the French and everything Parisian, as long as it was not music. But he was tolerant enough to admit that what displeased his cousin about Paris was exactly the same thing they both had objected to in Vienna: an indolent, shortsighted insincerity which at the same time ridiculed and glorified. The two cities were almost alarmingly similar: both were seductive, both voluptuous, both decadent, except that, in their eyes, Vienna possessed more natural charm and Paris more artificial smartness of style. “Do you know what you are suffering from?” Fritz had said to Hans when he was drawing comparisons once more. “An Austria complex. You are a typical case of a man disappointed in love. Except that your unfortunate passion is for a country.”

“I thought I was suffering from Selma's death,” was Hans's rejoinder. It was the eighth anniversary of her death, and they were just coming out of the Madeleine.

 

In New York, on their very first evening, Hans went to see a performance of
Saint Joan.
Although Fritz looked upon it as utter madness to keep a memory so painfully alive, he realized that nothing could be done about it. He repeatedly asked himself if Hans had loved the dead woman as passionately while she was alive, and was inclined to doubt it. That was perhaps the very reason. It was a love he was trying to make up.

Hans never allowed himself to be drawn into any conversation about it. Yet when the Broadway actress spoke Joan's lines, “I will deliver you from fear,” Fritz saw a look of such unassuaged grief on the face of the man beside him that he took great pains to talk of other things: the theater building which he compared to an automat restaurant; Broadway, which he called a gigantic amusement park; and the public which did not discuss the play but business. He worked himself up into a kind of frenzy, only to divert Hans's thoughts or provoke him into an argument. “This is my second trip to the States,” he said, “but I can tell you the institution of the theater is to this day unknown over here. They go to plays in the way they go to restaurants. Can you remember what the theater meant to us when we were young? And even when we were older?
Nora
was the starting point of the emancipation of women.
The Weavers
initiated the legislation to protect sweatshop workers.
Ghosts
did the same for social hygiene. Girardi taught us to see Vienna; Kainz, the world. But over here the theater is a mechanical device. They've driven all experience out of it. The plays are routine. The public is routine. The actors—oh, yes, they are natural enough, but of a naturalness that makes you forget an hour later who played what. At home they were not so confoundedly natural, but in contrast they were personalities pure and simple.”