The Vienna Melody (7 page)

They came to his bedroom.

“Perhaps I really shouldn't bring you in here?” he suggested, following close on her heels. “Do you like it?”

She was ready to scream with nervousness.

“Oh, yes,” she said.

This time he seemed to sense something. He walked rapidly to the window. “Look how far you can see,” he said shyly. And when she made no response he went on, “On the fourth floor we have an even better outlook. Our bedroom will be exactly over this one.”

She knew it was not the right moment: nevertheless she decided to ask the question. “Didn't you say something about two rooms?” She did not look at him as she spoke. Beside the polar bear skin on the floor there was a leopard rug; she fastened her attention on counting the spots on it.

“Two bedrooms?” he asked.

Fourteen spots. “Yes,” she replied, “or did I misunderstand what you said recently when we went up on the Giant Wheel?”

“We must go,” he said. “It's getting late.”

Apartments 4 and 5 on the mezzanine were next on their list. They found a jolly apple-cheeked woman, a man with a beard like Saint Peter's, a pair of freckled twins, and a Doberman pinscher—the household of the painter Drauffer and his wife Pauline, Franz's younger sister, the one who, when she was five years old, grew so hungry at the Emperor's wedding. They were all inquisitive people and wanted to find out a great many things.

“What do you think of our house? It's a sort of monkey house, isn't it?” “Do you think you'll have such a pair of rascals as these two here?” “And what do you think of Brother Franz?” “Is it true your father is going to be named to the Upper Chamber?”

All well-meant questions, but hard to answer.

Next came Franz's widowed aunt, the former Miss Kubelka, in Apartment 3 on the mezzanine, where it smelled of burned milk. They waited for a long time to see the daughter of the house, Anna, who had just taken their pug out. On the point of leaving, and indeed already at the door, the couple met her. She was dressed all in black, as though she had just come from a funeral, and her attention was centered entirely on the dog. As she removed his leash and muzzle she said, “Good little doggie. Such a good little doggie. Strulli did all his business.”

The pug, who must have been quite aged, because he waddled so and every movement made him pant, did not allow himself to be petted. But the former Miss Kubelka, an old woman going, on eighty, who was tiny and not quite clear in her head, made every effort to retain her visitors. First she attempted to do so by giving them coffee, but the milk was scorched. Then there was Anna, who did not come for so long. Now she turned to the dog, trying to make him interesting, but he refused to be petted. In the back of her mind there was only one thought:
These two will go downstairs to Sophie, and Sophie will say mean things about me!

“Allow me to introduce you to my fiancée,” Franz had said to his cousin Anna. The erstwhile Countess Hegéssy nodded with a stony expression. What her face may have looked like earlier in her history was hardly to be guessed at. Now it was completely blank. “I trust you will be happy,” was all she said.

To live one's life out in this house! The thought was like a cord around Henriette's throat as they went downstairs to make their last call. She was not used to a family, for she had lived alone with her father for years. Professor Stein had no family, or at least he acted that way. In any case, she could not remember ever hearing of grandparents, of an uncle or an aunt on her father's side. As for her mother, she had always been told that her maiden name was Aufreiter, that she came from Goricia, and that she was the daughter of a landowner. But no one had even so much as seen this landowner or his relatives.

“Anna has had a lot of bad luck,” Franz explained.

“You can see that from her appearance. She has behind her what is now confronting your sister Gretl, hasn't she?”

Franz shrugged his shoulders. “I haven't seen Cousin Hegéssy in an age. But if you ask me, Gretl has been through more. The count at least ticked Anna right off, nearly twenty-five years ago. But Gretl has been obliged, for at least that time, to watch the colonel, whom you are so sorry for, carry on with all his rascality. That is much worse.”

“Extraordinary!” Henriette said. “And all under the same roof.”

At which old Poldi opened the door to them at Apartment Number 2 on the ground floor.

Sophie was arrayed in her best finery that day. From the parting in her white hair to the tips of her shoes she gave an impression of impeccable neatness, and one could offer her no more pleasing compliment than to remark on a certain likeness which undoubtedly existed.

Henriette gave her this pleasure. “You are the image of Countess Festetics!” she exclaimed, thereby comparing her to the first lady-in-waiting to the Empress.

“Did he tell you that I like to be told that?” the old lady asked as she extended her hand for the girl to kiss. “Where does it come from—Paris?” was her immediate inquiry as soon as they were settled in the tapestry armchairs which commanded a view of the green walnut tree. “Don't hesitate to say yes, because I too believe that Paris is the only place to buy clothes.”

So Henriette confessed that her dress was a French model from the Spitzer Salon. If only these visits were over, she thought.

“Charming,” Sophie admitted, and asked if they had made all the calls in the house and whether they had seen every one. “Even the—” She was itching to say something about her arch-enemy, the former Kubelka woman, but decided it would be improper to initiate her new relative into such delicate matters too abruptly, so she desisted. On the other hand, she had no scruples about putting a question which so horrified Franz that his mouth fell open and he started out of his chair.

“You know that I was opposed to your marriage?” she said bluntly to Henriette.

Despite the experience of the last hour the girl looked at the old lady helplessly. “No,” she replied.

“What's that?'' Sophie asked, suddenly turned deaf.

“Aunt Sophie,” Franz roared, “we came to make a call on you!”

“Don't you think he's a silly fellow?” Sophie said, devoting herself to Henriette. “Of course you've come to make a call, and the last one in the house, at that. You have been to see that—that Kubelka woman first. And if you had had it your way you wouldn't have come calling at all. I mean Franz—I don't know about you,” she added to Henriette.

At this point old Poldi came in with some cherry brandy and Sacher cake.

Sophie shook her head as she watched her elderly servant pass the refreshments, and after Poldi had left she said, “You must be sure, my child, to get good maids. So much in life depends on the Poldis and the Maries. How many servants will you keep?”

This question being somewhat difficult to relate to the preceding one, a break in the conversation occurred, during which the parrot repeatedly offered thanks for nothing and Sophie, with firm fingers, cut the thin layers of the cake with chocolate icing. “I can well believe that you have had to eat your way through a lot of stuff,” she suggested as she passed the cake. “You can leave what you don't want.” She herself tasted a little piece. “Well, how many servants will you keep?”

“We don't know yet,” her nephew answered curtly.

“Miserable stuff, this icing,” Sophie objected. “You're not angry with me for what I said a few minutes ago, are you, my child?”

“Frankly I am, a little.”

Sophie nodded. “That's just what I like. I mean frankness. I never have liked to play hide-and-seek. I told Franz—”

“Auntie!” her nephew interrupted.

“Oh, shut up! Do you think the girl can't take the truth? I did my best to talk him out of this marriage, I daresay you can guess why.”

“Here I am! Here I am!” the parrot croaked from the next room.

“Yes, there you are! '' the old lady replied. She pushed away her painted porcelain plate with the slice of cake. “Or aren't you interested?”

“I'm afraid it wouldn't alter things even if I knew what you have against me,” said Henriette, mustering her last forces of self-control.

“That's the first nonsense I've heard you talk,” Sophie said decidedly. “Now if you two had let me have my say—it is advisable, my child, to let other people have their say, especially if they have had a little more experience—I should have told you that I had revised my opinion about you. Not only because of your appearance, which to be sure is not against you—it's a good sign that you are capable of blushing! You're clever too. Not too clever, I trust—it's never good for a wife to be too clever. You could probably be a good wife for that foolish man there if only you were a little less conceited. Tell me, what are you conceited of, anyway? You can't help being pretty or being clever either. And one may only be conceited about things one can do something about. Take, for instance, the things one denies oneself. Come here. Give me a kiss.”

Henriette had listened to her in a state of wounded feelings and confusion which increased with every word the old lady said. Yet she obeyed and went over and kissed her on her thin cheek. She also received the ghost of a kiss.

“Will you promise me something?” Sophie asked. “With you young people one can never tell when it will occur to you to call again on us old people. Did you go to school at the Sacré Coeur?”

“Yes.”

“Stand over there under that picture. Don't look so idiotic, Franz. By the time you have built your fourth story—one of your most foolish ideas; you would have had plenty of room on the third floor—it may well be that I shall have left this apartment. Consequently I now want her to promise me something. Does she know that I stand in the place of a parent to you?” Then, turning to Henriette: “He has, of course, never taken advantage of that and has always followed his own pig-headed way. But never mind that. Will you promise me something, my dear?”

On either side of the ikon over the private altar under which Henriette was standing two small oil lamps of ruby-colored glass were burning. The image was one of St. Jude. The whole proceeding suddenly struck her as so unbearably absurd that she would rather have run away.

“Yes,” she said.

The old lady rose, took her ivory-headed cane, and walked across the room. When she stood before her prayer stool she towered over Henriette. “That is right,” she declared, laying her cool thin hand on Henriette's. “Now repeat after me: I shall be a good wife to Franz!”

“I shall be a good wife to Franz.”

“I shall make sacrifices if need be.”

“I shall make sacrifices if need be.”

Sophie nodded. “Thank you, my child. I feel much easier in my mind now.”

A moment later the engaged couple stepped out of the Annagasse entrance into the open. Outside it was warm and bright.

“Now at least you know about the house,” Franz said as though pleading for forgiveness. “You can see why we need a fourth story?”

She looked at the angel with the trumpet without seeing him. “Yes, now I know the house,” she answered mechanically.
Absurd! Absurd! Absurd!
The word kept running through her head.

“His Imperial Highness requests your presence.”

The doorman had let her in through the iron door on the Albrecht terrace of the palace and then had led her through the so-called ‘kitchen wing' to the adjutant's apartment. There she was taken in charge by an Imperial groom of the chambers, who brought her as far as the high gold-and-white double doors.

From the very instant when she had received the note with these words: “I must speak to you and beg you to give me five minutes. You cannot refuse! All depends on these five minutes!” everything had happened in feverish haste. By a stroke of luck Papa was still at the University, and Theresa, the factotum who as a rule accompanied her on most occasions, was going to have a birthday in four days; so she had been able to say to her: “I cannot take you with me today. I must go and buy you a birthday present.” She had not had time even to change her clothes.

It was the afternoon of the Flower Parade, an occasion when those Viennese who had money drove in flower-decked carriages down the main avenue of the Prater. Those who had none lined the sidewalks and watched them. Consequently the city was empty.

“What has happened, Bratfisch?” she asked in her excitement. But the coachman said he knew nothing except that he had been ordered to fetch the young lady immediately. To her question: “Where to? You know that at least,” he only replied: “To the palace.”

In broad daylight to the palace?

He noted her expression. “Shall we wager a bottle of wine that no one will so much as lay eyes on our young lady?” he declared, “Or do you think I am taking you to the Amaliastairs? At the Opera Cross Drive Your Grace will get out. You will go a few steps up towards the Albrecht Palace to a small iron door and wait in front of it. Someone will open it. That will be Herr Loschek.”

The carriage smelled of his Turkish tobacco. On the back seat lay the black-and-white-checked robe, the same one he had wrapped her in once when they were on their way home from Mayerling. On the coach box sat Bratfisch, in his narrow-brimmed top hat, his brown velvet coat bound in black and his flowing black tie, just as he used to when he fetched her day after day without her ever being quite sure where he was taking her. It all came back.

Heugasse. Schwarzenberg Square. Schwarzenberg Street. To the right she could see Seilerstätte; a corner house there was surrounded by a high scaffolding; they were adding a fourth story. Was the elderly spinster still there, or had she already gone to the country? If she was still there the little ruby oil lamps were burning on either side of the image of a saint.