The Vienna Melody (69 page)

“Have you lost someone, mister?” a man asked with typical Viennese curiosity and sentimentality.

He did not see who it was. He saw nothing; everything was opaque. “Yes,” he answered.

Then he began to walk without knowing where he was going. He had lost someone. After losing the one human being with whom he wanted to live, he had lost the one land in which he could live. For him there was no other.

“Come back for me about ten,” Henriette had said to Simmerl.

Age was one of the best excuses. You could say your hearing was poor if you wanted to avoid the nuisance of the eternal radio, broadcasting absurdities anyway. You could say that your eyesight was not good if you were forced to go to the cinema, where the metallic voices and gray shadows had never been a cause for enthusiasm and where nowadays much less enjoyable fare was to be had. And you could say you were tired as soon as you could no longer stand the endless chatter about politics, which began whenever two people came together.

Simmerl, at whom you had to yell (his age was not an excuse), had replied, “Very good, Your Ladyship,” and Henriette had gone down to her nephew Peter's, where there was a Tuesday gathering. No chamber music was being played today, and only a few of the regular attendants were present. Henriette found it little to her taste to go into Society just now, but she realized that she must show herself there. It was only people like Hans, determined to butt their heads through the wall, who refused to admit this. People eat even on the day of a funeral, and they laugh again at some time or other afterwards. Life was the most illogical thing there was. It went on.

Henriette wore her old champagne-colored dress; why have anything new made now? For whom? The ladies from Berlin and Breslau, who were flooding Vienna these days, dressed so that you could not even look at them; for them her champagne-colored dress, worn so often, was still too stylish.

She sat for a while with Liesl Drauffer and Fritz, whom she began to like because they did not keep their mouths buttoned up, and later with Pauline, who was almost more hard of hearing than Simmerl. It was a cross to bear with these old people. With Pauline you literally had to shout at her. More­over, the subject matter of the conversation was not interesting: they were discussing Gretl's grave. For the colonel's widow in her will had expressed the wish not to be buried in the Alt family vault but with her Paskiewicz where she now actually lay. Here was another example of what attention should be paid to principles! In death Gretl had ignored the family will which in her lifetime she had insisted should be respected to such a degree, and why? Because this time it was a case of her own well-being.

That Joachim, Peter's eldest son, was a funny boy. He was constantly hovering around Henriette. She had never bothered her head much about these offspring of Peter's, but when she saw them she was at a loss to make them out. Adelheid was pretty, even if she was the absolute image of her Prussian mother, and the youngest appeared to take after his father. Anyhow he was just as plump. As she looked at him Henriette could not help remembering the fat little boy who, the day she came to pall on the family when she became engaged, was led into the room by a corseted Frenchwoman, and Franz gave him a candy. How many years lay between? Better not count them up—it makes one even older. But to think that they had named the fat youngster Otto Adolf! Otto Eberhard had sounded stiff enough and, God knows, had been it too! Incidentally, it must be a new fashion to let children take part in receptions nowadays.

“Well, Joachim, how are things with you?” she asked, having made up her mind to speak to the youth who did not leave her side. But he did not answer.

I probably spoke too low because a moment ago I was yelling so at Pauline
, thought Henriette, and repeated her question in a louder tone to the young man. He wore one of those new uniforms, cropping up every day which one could never really recognize.

But again Joachim did not answer. He merely stared at his great-aunt.

“Tell me,” said Henriette, taking it for social inexperience—and what could one expect with a mother who was wearing a blouse and skirt to an evening reception!—“have you lost your tongue?”

Then the young person in the black uniform opened his mouth and said, “I don't speak to Jewesses!”

At first she was not sure of his sanity.

Pauline had heard nothing. Fritz said, “Hold your tongue, you! We don't want to hear anything of that sort! Either today or on any other day!”

“Don't tell me,” Henriette asked the composer, “that he really meant what he said?”

“What does he know!” Fritz answered, vexed. “He blabs what he hears others prating. Haven't you had any tea yet, Aunt Hetti? May I get you some?”

“Wait a moment,” said Henriette, calling him back. “In the first place. I'm not taking any tea. And in the second, I want to know what that young man has in his mind. He's no longer so young that he can say such stupid things!” She had raised her voice slightly.

“Grand-aunt is insulting Joachim,” Joachim's sister Adelheid was heard to say to her mother, who was busy pouring tea.

“What I have in my mind is: Jews and Jewesses are to get out!” was the young man's reply to Henriette's question.

Again Henriette hesitated to believe he meant her. When, however, there was no longer any room for doubt she rose and slapped the young man in the face.

He shrank back, but his mother came up to Henriette.

“Frau Stein,” she said, still holding the teapot in one hand as she addressed her, “this German house is no longer a place for the encroachments of your race!”

The host also left a group of fellow functionaries to come to his wife's side. “I should have thought,” he said in an undertone, “that you yourself would have had the tact to stay away from our gathering. And when I saw you appear I hoped that at least you would be aware of the limits now drawn in German Society. I shall excuse the regrettable incident which has just occurred by attributing it to your age and ignore for this once the conclusions I should otherwise draw. But I must ask you to leave this company at once.”

But this is not possible
, thought Henriette.
To whom is he speaking?

Yet he was addressing her, and the guests were gaping at her, some of them disconcerted, others concurring, when Fritz, throwing back his now gray head, said, “Come, Aunt Hetti. Although I have not the honor to belong to your race. I'm so fed up with my own that I'm glad to leave this tea-party company for good.” He offered his arm to the old lady, while his wife Liesl, who for long had not been slim enough to dance moonbeams but who could still take the parts of ballet mothers, walked on her other side.

“Bravo!” cried someone from the other end of the room. It was long-bearded Otto, and although no one could remember when the twins, since they were grown up, had been of one opinion, they acted in unison on this evening as decades ago they used to do when they took such pleasure in teasing their cousin Peter.

“Exodus from Egypt,” commented the youth who was slapped. Now Henriette saw Simmerl arrive. You could say what you liked about that old man but he was punctual to the minute. “Thank you, Fritz,” she said to the composer. “Thank you, Liesl.” To Otto she said nothing. The man with the long beard had never been a favorite with her.

As always, when he came to fetch her, Simmerl announced with a bow, “It is ten o'clock, Your Grace.”

Henriette acknowledged the announcement. She nodded to Pauline, who sat there open-mouthed, not knowing what she should do. She nodded also to old painter Drauffer, who had been rambling around Heaven knows where, and had just arrived all out of breath. He showed by a grimace what he thought of the whole thing. Then she let Simmerl open the door for her and left. Today she again forgot the lift.

The renovating had not helped much. To be sure, it was electricity instead of gas which now binned in the staircase, but the patches of dampness were almost more evident under the gleaming fresh white calcimine than they used to be under the dull gray finish. It was a good thing that one should not talk while climbing the stairs. Or else one should have been compelled to say the one word over add over: incomprehensible.

Arriving at the fourth floor, Henriette made an effort to grasp what had happened. She was glad that Hans was not at home. He was so worked up about everything anyway, the poor boy.

The old lady could not settle down. She had been deeply upset, and immediately afterwards the annoying palpitation in her heart had begun again. She took ten drops of baldrian on a lump of sugar.

Mono's time must be close at hand, she thought, trying to force her mind on to other subjects.
I believe it will be a girl. I hope she will not call her Henriette, as she wrote to me she would. She is always so sweet and wants to give me pleasure. But Henriette is too old-fashioned a name. I really underestimated Franziska. It is very decent of her to have Mono to stay at her house at this time. In Salzburg it is much better than here. Down there Mono, with her Heimwehr husbahd, won't have any such difficulties.
Then she was thinking of the unborn child, who would be her first grandchild, when she noticed that Simmerl was still in the room.

“Thanks, I don't need anything more.”

“Good night, Your Grace,” he wished her.

“Good night, Herr Simmer!” she replied, whereupon he withdrew with his usual evening bow. Would he perhaps now turn against her too? If what had happened downstairs was possible anything was possible.

For her throbbing heart it was best to walk round the apartment a little. This she did, and everywhere she turned on the lights. In the light everything seemed more bearable, and that was something which had been lacking long enough in this house.

As she went from room to room the old lady tried to find an explanation. Downstairs, the society was German. Apparently she should have known that. And she had no place in German society.

And why had she no place in a society where she had always had her place, which, indeed, she had forced to belong to her?

The part about the Jews could not possibly be the reason, because that would be too stupid even to be considered. Anyone who was good enough for the Austrian Crown Prince should not be too bad for Frau Annemarie.

She paused in front of the photograph on the bureau. The picture had been taken in Agram. Franz had sent it to her from a business trip of several days in that city. She had had it framed and set it there ever since. “In memory of your Franz,” was what he had written under it. In those days there had been another picture before her eyes. Perhaps that was why he had sent her his. She studied his face, which had always been so easy to read. His mouth was still straight, and his eyes had that straight, trustworthy look which never changed and which nothing could change. Was it because of my sin? she asked the picture. You know, it never, seemed like a sin to me, and for so long I even looked upon it as my right. I have known now, this long time, that it was a sin on my part. Is it because of that?

They had stood together at the window, and music had floated up from below. Alfred Grünfeld had played waltzes at her wedding. She could hear herself asking, “Do you remember, Franz, what you promised me up in the Giant Wheel?”

She kept coming back to the picture, was that the reason?

Restless, she wandered from room to room. To have such a thing happen to you in your old age as happened down there tonight you must have been very wicked, she said to herself. And she attempted to add up the debit side of her ledger. Since she was born she had been a Catholic. She had seldom gone to confession. She had lacked piety. She had deceived. She had been selfish.

Then she wished to look at the credit side, but she saw nothing. The page was blank.

That cannot be so, she said in despair to the picture. She gazed at it until the face in it began to live. No, she now read. On the debit side there are many things. But for the credit side there are things too. The scales were balanced.

But was that enough? she kept asking, more and more filled with the sense of strange uneasiness she had always felt before the apparition came which she so feared and which, thank God, had not appeared for months. Was that enough for a lifetime?

There was noise in the staircase. The gathering downstairs was apparently breaking up. Immediately following, knocks echoed from the door on the fourth floor and the shout “Open!” When it was opened voices became audible in the vestibule.

Was it Joachim, who had wanted to turn her out of her own house, coming up in the middle of the night? Earlier she had been too dumbfounded. Now? she would give him the answer he deserved!

There was a light knock at her bedroom door. Simmerl, in his dressing gown, stood before it and said, “Three gentlemen are here, Your Grace. Or rather—three men. They say they are from the police. I did my best to make them understand that Your Ladyship had withdrawn for the night. But they say it is urgent. Would Your Grace care to see them?”

In the vestibule stood three men in a uniform she did not recognize. “Secret State Police,” said one of them.

“There must be some mistake,” suggested Henriette.

“It's no mistake.”

“What should the police be after in my home?”

“Where's your son?”

“Not at home.”

“Doesn't he live here?”

“Yes.”

“At a quarter before midnight he is not at home?”

“He often comes home later than that.”

“What does he do with himself?”

“He goes for walks. He loves Vienna.”

“You mean the Vienna Schuschnigg System? Wasn't he a great friend of Schuschnigg? With him every evening? What?”

“I mean Vienna. I am somewhat tired, gentlemen. I'd like to go to bed.”