The Vienna Melody (64 page)

Whereupon a brother who wrote reviews for the Sunday book supplement of the
Neue Freie Presse
expressed himself as disappointed in Brother Alt's remarks. To tell the truth—and among brothers one was pledged to tell it—he had been unable to find any real continuity in his conglomeration of ideas, which he attributed to undigested reading of Marx, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Taine, and Spengler. Also he misinterpreted the problems of the day. America was no problem to Europe. The problem of Europe was Europe.

Ebeseder jumped up. “They say of us Masons that we are a power factor,” he declared irritably. “But if they listened to us here they would think we are a social club. Why the devil don't we at last make use of the power we are supposed to possess? Five hours' journey from here there have long since ceased to be any lodges, and a free expression leads to the concentration camp. But we sit here and work on Sisters' Nights!” He went on to say that it was only through such lodge members as Brother Alt that Freemasonry could recover the significance it once had had and which it needed more urgently now than ever before. “Who will help us, brothers? Parliament no longer exists. The Government of Messrs. Schuschnigg, Starhemberg, Fey, Miklas, and whatever the rest of the professors, Parlour Fascists, and black shirts are called, is insanely amateurish, not to say criminally insane. Who will help us Austrians if we do not help ourselves?”

“Your party colleague, Monsieur Leon Blum in Paris!” someone answered, and there was laughter.

“My party colleague Blum has his hands full dealing with un-teachable people like you!” retorted Ebeseder with the sharpness characteristic of Austrians of the opposition in Parliament.

“Bravo!” cried four or five people. The majority of the rest had not been listening.

Then Hans was asked to make a concluding comment. He explained that he had nothing more to say, which appeared to suit most of the members. Did he play bridge or tarot? As he did not the bridge and tarot players went about their games. A moment later the green-topped tables in the next room were filled with players and onlookers and one heard nothing but bidding.

It was all wrong
, Hans thought, directing the concluding comment to himself as he fled from the complacent gathering at the first opportune moment.

When he left the building to walk the few steps over to Number 10 he was stopped by someone. It was pitch-dark, and he could only see that it was a woman. Since the rendezvous hotel, Romischer Kaiser, happened to be in the same narrow street, this was no uncommon occurrence and he paid no attention.

“Good evening, Herr Alt,” he heard a voice say behind him. On turning round he recognized his shorthand-typist.

“What are you doing here?” he asked in amazement.

The girl stammered in her hurried reply. An express letter had come, and she thought it might be important. She handed him the letter. By the light of the single streetlamp on the corner he saw that it was of no consequence. The new shorthand-typist could not, of course, have known that.

“Thank you, that was very kind of you,” he said. “Only I am sorry that you took the trouble so late in the evening.”

“It wasn't any trouble,” she replied.

“How did you know where I was?” it occurred to him to ask.

“You said you were going to make a speech in the Lodge. Was your talk successful?”

“I don't think so. Good night, Fraulein Hübner.”

“May I say something, Herr Alt?”

“Of course. What is it?”

“I know I've no right to say this. But I have seen you every day since you came back from America—and I don't think I have once seen you look happy.”

“I'm afraid these are not times in which one can very well be happy,” he replied without arguing the point. He had had more than enough discussion upstairs.

“To be happy is a silly expression. I mean something else,” she said. “Forgive me, I'm detaining you.”

“What else did you mean?”

It took her a moment to answer. Then she said, “That you give the impression of being a very unhappy man.”

“And I made such an effort to dictate glowing letters in English to you! You see what a bad actor I am! Besides I'm a bad speaker too.”

“You do everything well,” the girl said in a tone of absolute conviction.

In the poor light of the streetlamp he looked at her. Until now he had scarcely given her more than a cursory glance when she came in with his letters or to take dictation. She was very young.

“Thank you,” he replied shyly. “I'm afraid you are mistaken again.”

“No,” she said. “I feel so sorry for you.”

“There is really no occasion for that,” he said with growing embarrassment.

“But there is. Good night.” She stepped out of the lamplight and walked off.

“Thank you, Fraulein Hübner,” he called after her for the second time that day.

How long
 
did you really wait for me last night?”

“Have you been thinking about that?”

“To tell the truth, I have. In any case, I preferred thinking about that to other things.”

‘‘Then I'm glad I came. I too have thought about it, and I reproached myself. I suppose you have made up your mind about me?”

“To tell the truth again—no. Tell me a little about yourself.” She was standing in front of his desk, on which she had laid his morning mail.

“I'm afraid Herr Foedermayer would not approve. He will not tolerate private conversations in office hours,” she said.

“But I will. And I'm the boss.”

“Forgive me. I had momentarily forgotten that.” It came out so naturally that he had to laugh.

“You look upon Foedermayer as your boss, don't you?” Then, without giving her time to answer, he went on, “You're probably right. I've never been the head here and never shall be.”

“See here, Herr Alt: that is something I really can't understand about you,” the girl began. Then she evidently thought she had once more gone too far and checked herself.

“Since you don't in any case look upon me as the boss, you mustn't speak to me as though I were the boss. What is it you don't understand about me?”

“That you get so little joy out of your work here. So much that is beautiful is produced here. So much that will give joy to an untold number of people!”

“Won't you sit down? I'll have some dictation for you later.”

“Thanks,” she said, and seated herself at the narrow table where she was in the habit of taking dictation.

She could not have been much over twenty. She had the face of a real Viennese girl, soft and unaffected. No makeup to be seen; her eyebrows were not plucked; her mouth was barely colored with lipstick. The maturity early in evidence in Viennese girls was obvious in her too.

“I admit it,” he said. “But there are reasons for it. They lie far in the past. Allow me, as an older man, to tell you this much: the impressions you receive when you're young remain with you for life.”

She had to laugh. As she did it her cheeks dimpled. “It was because you called yourself an ‘older man.' Excuse me.”

“How old do you take me for, Fraulein Hübner?”

“Not for an older man.”

“Thanks. I hope you're more exact in other matters.” Nevertheless he did not tell her his age but began to dictate to the Pleyel firm in Paris. “
Cher confrère
…'' he began. Now and then he glanced at his shorthand-typist. She was leaning over her notebook and did not look up, She had lovely blonde hair.

Nonsense, he thought. I am not going to be impressed because a young girl who wants to curry favor with her boss makes friendly eyes at me. Then he dismissed the favor of the boss. That did not apply in this case. On the other hand, it was true that she had made an impression. And what had not happened for an inconceivable space of time now occurred: he began to be interested in a girl.

“Etc., etc.,
veuillez agreer
,
monsieur
,
l'expressiori de mes compliments les plus sincères
—You know the rigmarole.”

“Anything else?”

“No, thank you.”

She stood up, ready to go.

“Have you something special to do today, Fräulein Hübner?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I meant after office hours. Or could we have dinner somewhere together? It's nice and warm. We could sit out of doors.”

She blushed fiery red. “Thank you,” she said. “I'd love to.” At the door she turned to ask, “When the office closes could I run home and change my clothes?”

“Be sure you make yourself beautiful!”

All day he was in a humor no one had seen him in for a long time. Mr. Foedermayer was so struck by it that he cautiously put the question to his boss, over whom he still watched as though he were his apprentice, “Good news, Hans?”

“I rather think so, Herr Foedermayer. Tell me—when do you think a man should call himself an older man?”

“At sixty-five?” suggested Foedermayer. He was over seventy himself. And then, coming back to more essential problems, “We are, of course, not going to have that exhibition of our pianos in the Mozarteum?”

“Of course we're going to have it,” Hans told him decidedly. “It would be an excellent idea to have some prominent pianist playing for us every afternoon during the exhibition, don't you think?”

“It would cost a fortune and not sell a single piano,” said his old mentor, rejecting the suggestion. “Fuss,” was what the real head, the father of this young man, would have said.

“Horowitz will, in any case, be in Salzburg with his father-in-law. Fritz is spending the whole summer there, for his symphony is to be produced. Arthur Schnabel would be glad to do a favor for us. I shall write immediately to Rosenthal and Johanna Harris. Send Fraulein Hübner in to me.”

Without a word the old man left the room, from the walls of which the portraits of the heads, the real heads of the firm, looked down disapprovingly. Immediately afterwards the girl appeared.

“It's all off for tonight?” she questioned in a tone of disappointment.

“On the contrary. Please take this: ‘Dear Mrs. Harris: At the Salzburg Festival this summer there will be an exhibition of our pianos at the Mozarteum. As Mr. Harris' Third Symphony is to be on the program for August seventh I trust you will be coming over. I should like to ask you'—But why am I dictating that to you!” he interrupted himself. “Write her one of your flawless letters and invite her to play some Schubert for us on one of the afternoons. Don't forget to tell her she is an outstanding player of Schubert.''

“Is she that, really?” asked the shorthand-typist.

“There is no sense in lying. Remember that.”

“Advice from an older man?”

“From a man. I have done some research meanwhile.”

“I shall not forget it, Herr Alt.”

The incredible happened when later that afternoon Mr. Foedermayer heard Hans singing in his office. It was Schubert, to be sure, and only the ballet music from
Rosamunde.
But he was singing.

Still later Hans was waiting at the Karlskirche. From where he stood he could see the coppery patina on the cupola of the cathedral, the green roof of the Technical Institute, and in front of it the hawthorn in pink bloom, laburnum, lilacs, and the acacias in Roessel Park. The air had the mildness and fragrance of springtime in Vienna. When he suddenly saw her coming his heart chopped a beat and then began to pound so that he could scarcely speak. “My, but you have made yourself pretty!” he said after she had been standing in front of him for a while.

“I had too little time,” she said deprecatingly. “But you have a new tie on, haven't you, Herr Alt?”

He was pleased that she had noticed it. “Well, where shall it be? The Prater? Kobenzl? Grinzing? Sievering?” he suggested.

She chose Grinzing, and they took a taxi. “Wouldn't the tram have done?” she asked, falling easily into the Viennese dialect which she evidently tried to suppress in her business hours. They drove past the Opera House and along the Ring. The sun was setting and lavishing its splendour on the old trees of the wide boulevard, the public parks to the right of it, on the facades of the baroque houses and monuments on either side. As far as the eye could reach were the airy outlines of the castle, the museums, the Parliament, the City Hall, and the University, all magnificent and all lovely. And above them rose the green heights of Kahlenberg and the Vienna Woods.

“Is there anything more beautiful?” he asked.

“I've never been out of Vienna. Isn't there anything more beautiful abroad?”

He did not answer.

“But you have been in Berlin and Paris and in America.”

“Yes. That's why I say it.”

She reflected. “Do you mind if I ask you many questions? I know so frightfully little.”

She had blushed. One must be on one's guard with her, he thought. “You went through four years of the Realschule; that much I know from your record. What did you do after that? I, too, like to ask questions.”

“Are you interested in that? I have not much to tell.” Nevertheless, she told it as they were sitting in the garden of a small Grinzing inn where new wine was served. Actually it was a courtyard with a few linden trees, a few bare tables and benches. On the tables there were lighted candles in globes. On the benches couples were sitting. On a wooden platform, at a table lighted by two candles in globes, two men fiddled and another played a mouth-organ. Above this courtyard one could see the houses of the ascending village, which used to be the independent community of Grinzing and later had been incorporated in Vienna. Simple, yellow, friendly houses on the gently rising slope of the vineyards leading to wooded Kobenzl, with a parish church between and vineyard hills beyond.