The White Hotel (23 page)

Together with a blue baby coat she had knitted, Lisa sent a letter saying she understood; and in any case it would have been difficult for her to leave her aunt, whose rheumatism was much worse.

Two weeks later came a letter which struck her like a blow in the face. Vera had died in giving birth. It was the result of the fall in Milan. So Victor believed, though no one else did. The baby boy was well. Victor’s mother had come immediately from her home in Georgia to take care of him. She was very old, but strong; it was good to have her near. People said the baby was the image of Vera. Victor could not believe his beloved wife was gone. He had thrown out all her records, because he could not bear to listen to her voice and know she was dead. He had turned on the wireless—and there was Vera singing a Brahms lullaby to her baby.

On the day following the letter’s arrival, obituaries of Serebryakova appeared in the Viennese newspapers: as it were, confirming her death.

Lisa wept for days. It seemed incredible to her that she could mourn so deeply, and miss so much, a friend she had known in the flesh only for a single day. Yet such was the case. To Victor, she could not think what to write. Words of sorrow and sympathy sounded false as she wrote them down, though they came from her soul.

Long after the shock had passed, she continued to mourn. In the winter of the same year, she had news from Leningrad of
the death of Ludmila Kedrova, her friend and former ballet teacher at the Mariinsky. They had maintained a warm correspondence over the years, whenever the political situation allowed; and Lisa never forgot her godson’s birthday. Ludmila was only fifty—stricken by cancer. The deaths of these two friends, both with children who needed them, affected Lisa badly.

She, too, fell ill for a time: with the pains in her breast and pelvic region, from which she had not suffered for many years. It was sheer grief, she thought; and a bewilderment was added to her grief, in that Vera’s death affected her worse than Ludmila’s. She wondered if she was partly grieving for herself. She associated Vera with the single day in her life when she had been treated, however absurdly and undeservedly, as important. Since then, she had had more singing engagements than ever before, but none had been particularly significant; and now she was less in demand. She woke up one day and discovered she was forty. Others knew it before she did. She was the opera singer who had not quite made it; and few directors are keen to engage such a person for their productions. Of course, if you were a Patti, a Galli-Curci, a Melba, you had hardly begun; but if you were merely talented—you were dead. At least, that was how she felt, and it seemed to her that she was actually not singing so well. She knew her fears were morbid, and put them down to her not having properly lived till she was past thirty, which made her overconscious of the years flying. Now already, whether it was the effect of her throat troubles or simple loss of confidence, her voice was less pure. It was no help, either, that she had bad trouble with her teeth. The dentist saved some with gold fillings, but had to extract four. The dental plate affected her vanity and her voice. It was ludicrous, she thought, to be singing the
Liebestod
and to be conscious of having false teeth.

An event from a long way away, which had nothing to do with her personally, tormented her worse than grief. A man who had committed many murders was tried and condemned to death in Düsseldorf. The case was a sensational one in many respects, and therefore was seized upon by the press, even in Vienna. The condemned man had killed indiscriminately, men, women and children—though mostly women and little girls. He had terrorized Düsseldorf, and now that he was caught there was such a public outcry that the rusty guillotine was to be used—the first execution in Germany for several years. With varying degrees of seriousness and sensationalism the Austrian newspapers were joining in the heated debate about capital punishment. It was a subject, of course, about which everyone felt passionately and self-righteously.

Lisa, though tortured by thoughts of the murdered children, held a passionate, instinctive conviction that it was abhorrent to take human life. Many of her friends agreed. Many others felt just as fiercely and “morally” that the mass murderer, Kürten, should be put down like a dog with rabies. There were ferocious arguments. One of her friends, a school teacher called Emmy, normally the kindest and gentlest of people, became red-faced with fury, and stormed out of the coffee house where they had been arguing. Before leaving, she threw into her friend’s lap the lurid newspaper which contained the most sordid details of the case. Lisa had to fight down the waves of nausea as she forced herself to read the article.

The criminal, of course, had had an indescribably dreadful childhood: ten children in one room with their parents; living on dogs and rats; raped by an older sister; his father a drunken psychopath. Kürten’s schooling had been in the arts of torturing and masturbating animals. All this confirmed to Lisa that his
criminality was not his fault. The rest of the article made her doubt whether, even in his own interest, he ought to be suffered to live. He killed because he needed to drink blood. One night he had been in such a torture of frustration, not finding a victim, that he had cut off the head of a sleeping swan on the lake and drunk its blood. He was reported as expressing the hope that when the guillotine struck he would remain alive long enough to hear his own blood gush out.

There were other horrific details; such as, that he had dug up some of his victims long after and had sexual intercourse with them; and—more quietly chilling—that he had continued to live placidly with his wife, who had been ignorant of his secret activity and obsession. But it was the image of the swan, and the man’s longing to hear his own blood gush, which haunted Lisa for weeks, as a compulsive daylight nightmare. She would stop dead in the street—her head spinning with the thought of the sleeping swan, the falling blade.

And with the thought that it was only by God’s grace, or mere chance, that she was Elisabeth Erdman of Vienna and not Maria Hahn of Düsseldorf! Waking up one morning, full of sweet life, with small bright plans to buy some new make-up or go to a dance…falling in with a pleasant, charming man, and strolling with him in the woods; and then…Nothing. But even more unimaginably horrible, if she had been born as Peter Kürten…To have to spend every moment of your life, the only life you were given, as Kürten…But then again, the very thought that
someone
had had to be Maria Hahn and Peter Kürten made it impossible to feel any happiness in being Lisa Erdman….

After the execution had gone ahead, she read, in Emmy’s newspaper, that while the murderer had been on the loose nearly a million men had been reported to the police as the Monster, and
questioned, all over Germany. But Kürten had not been among them; for even the Prosecutor had said that he was “rather a nice man.” In jail, he had received thousands of letters from women, about half threatening him with dire torture, and the rest love letters. Lisa cried when she read this; and cried again, later in the day, when she sat quietly with Aunt Magda. Her aunt thought she was still grieving for her dead friends, and scolded her for living in the past.

But it was not the past—the present. For even though this murderer was dead (and Lisa prayed in her heart that he would not
still
be the same Peter Kürten when he entered whatever condition awaits the dead), yet
somewhere
—at that very moment—someone was inflicting the worst possible horror on another human being.

It was many weeks before she lived fully in her own body again, and before her severe pains began to fade into occasional aches. Long after the case had vanished from the headlines, a nine days’ wonder, she was haunted by the face of a small boy, lying on a mattress in a room with eleven other people; by a shy, kind man in glasses, liked by his workmates and loved by children; and by a white swan nesting at a lake’s edge, lost in a sleep from which it would not awake.

But Aunt Magda had to be helped to dress and to bathe; the shopping had to be got; the
Liebestod
had to be sung; the dentist had to be seen; a friend had to be visited in hospital; a new role had to be rehearsed; a plumber had to be called in to see to a burst pipe; Christmas cards had to be written, and gifts bought and sent off, to her shadowy brother’s family in America; followed later by more cards and presents for friends nearer at hand; a
new winter coat had to be bought; thank-you letters had to be written.

She exchanged frequent letters with Victor Berenstein, doing her utmost to try to answer his spiritual questionings: the great questions of life, death, and eternal life which were now preoccupying him. She was, herself, more confused about those questions than she had ever been; and told him so. Yet he seemed to find her friendship a comfort, in black days. Not only personally black, either, because he dropped hints that conditions in general had grown worse.

At this gloomy time of deaths and illnesses, there was also a resurrection from her dead past: none other than Sigmund Freud. A letter came for her out of the blue, saying that he had read with interest and pleasure reports of her appearance at La Scala, Milan, and hoped that her career was continuing to flourish and that she was well. He himself was “subsiding gently and more or less painfully” towards death, with repeated operations on his mouth. The prosthesis he had to wear was a monster. He continued to work, though with great difficulty, and had recently completed a study of her case, which was to be published in Frankfurt, together with her writings. That was his motive for approaching her. Would she be so good as to read the enclosed paper, and a typescript of her own pieces (which she might well have forgotten), and let him know if there was anything to which she objected? He had, of course, thrown a mask over her true identity, but would be reassured to know that he had her full approval for the publication. There would be some modest royalties, of which he would ensure that she received half, for her essential contribution.

Lisa, suffering at the time with her new dental plate, was full of remorse on reading about the Professor’s infinitely greater sufferings;
and took it as a lesson that she should not complain. She could conceive his misery at not being able to smoke cigars: he mentioned this prohibition, in his letter, as easily the most painful consequence of his cancer and the mutilating device he was forced to wear.

Straight after she had put the breakfast dishes to dry, Lisa took the thick packet to her bedroom. Until the evening, when she had to give a performance, she left her room only to cook her aunt some lunch. Aunt Magda, who still had sharp eyes, saw that she had been crying and that she ate almost nothing. She assumed it was to do with the letter and parcel she had received from Professor Freud and so, wisely, refrained from comment. Composing a reply cost Lisa so much energy that she had nothing left to give her audience that night, and her performance was, as the critic said, “colourless.”

Apt. 3
,

4 Leopoldstrasse

29 March 1931

Dear Professor Freud
,

Your letter came as a great surprise to me, and brought me painful pleasure. Pleasure, to hear from someone to whom I owe so much. Pain, to be forced to rake through the dead ashes. Not that I regret it, it has been salutary
.

I am sorry to hear about your ill health. I trust that your physician’s efforts will lead to a complete recovery. The world needs you too much to allow you to “subside gently,” much less in pain. You are kind enough to ask after my health and my aunt’s. Aunt Magda suffers greatly from rheumatism, but remains cheerful and alert, and I myself am in quite good health. The past year has not, unfortunately, been a good one in other respects. My friend from Petersburg, Madame Kedrova (Madame R.), died last winter, leaving a husband and a son of fourteen (my godson whom I have never met). And another close friend of mine died in childbirth. I think of the children who are left motherless, and reading Frau Anna G. reminded me of that tragedy in your own family circle. I hope your grandchildren are well. They must be quite grown up. I had the dreadful feeling, at the time, one of them would not long survive his mother. Please ease my mind by telling me it wasn’t so. I’m sure it was a product of my morbid imagination at that time. Please give my respects to your wife and Anna, and remember me to your sister-in-law. When I met her with you briefly at Gastein I had the feeling that we should be good friends if we had the chance to know each other better
.