Waiting for Sunrise (13 page)

‘I can’t thank you enough, doctor. I’ve learned so much.’

‘You’re absolutely convinced the problem has completely gone.’

Lysander paused – sometimes he wondered if Bensimon had any inkling that he and Hettie Bull were lovers. How could he tell him that Hettie had proved that his problem had gone, dozens and dozens of times? She was still Bensimon’s patient, of course.

‘Let’s say recent experience – recent experiences – have convinced me all is functioning normally.’

Bensimon smiled – man to man – letting his inscrutable professional mask slip for a moment.

‘I’m glad Vienna provided other compensations,’ he said, dryly, walking him to the door. ‘I’m going to write up your case if you don’t mind – anorgasmia cures are worth documenting – and present it as a paper at our next conference, maybe publish it in some learned journal.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be thoroughly disguised by an initial or a pseudonym. Only you and I will know who’s being discussed.’

‘I’d like to read it,’ Lysander said. ‘I’ll give you my address – my family home, I can always be reached there.’

They shook hands and Lysander thanked him again. He liked Dr Bensimon, he had told him his most intimate secrets and he felt he could trust the man absolutely – and yet he had to acknowledge that he didn’t really know him at all.

He settled his final account with the stern secretary, earning a wan smile as they shook hands in farewell, and he took his now familiar stroll from the consulting rooms on Wasagasse along the Franzenring. This is the last time, he realized, a little saddened but at the same time pleased that his essential purpose in coming to Vienna had been so thoroughly achieved. What was it Wolfram had said? A ‘river of sex’ flowing underneath the city. That had been his salvation – along with Dr Bensimon’s Parallelism. He was well, life should be simpler, the way ahead obvious yet, since coming here, everything was a hundred times more complex. He had Hettie in Vienna and Blanche in London and absolutely no idea what he should do.

He walked past the big café – Café Landtmann – and realized that in all these months of passing it he’d never once gone in and so retraced his steps. It was roomy and plain, a little faded and grander than the cafés he chose to frequent – a place to come in the summer, he thought, and sit outside on the pavement. He took a seat in a booth with a good view of the traffic whizzing by on the Ring, lit a cigarette, ordered a coffee and a brandy and opened his notebook.
Autobiographical Investigations
by Lysander Rief. He flicked through the pages, full of notes, descriptions of dreams, a few sketches, drafts of poems – it was another legacy of his stay in Vienna. Bensimon had urged him to continue writing in it as part of his therapy. ‘It may seem a bit banal and inconsequential,’ Bensimon had said, ‘but you’ll come back to it once a few months have gone by and be fascinated.’

The café was quiet, caught in that lull between the bustle of lunch, the great Viennese punctuation mark in the day, and the first arrival of those seeking coffee and cakes in the afternoon. Waiters polished cutlery and folded napkins, others flapped out clean linen tablecloths or leaned on their serving stations, gossiping. From somewhere in the rear came the ceramic clatter of plates being stacked. The maître d’ combed his hair discreetly, using a silver tray propped against the wall as a mirror. Lysander looked around – very few customers – but then his eye was caught by a man a few tables away, wearing a tweed suit and an old-fashioned cravat tie, reading a newspaper and smoking a cigar. He was in his late fifties, Lysander guessed, and had fine greying hair combed flat against his head; his beard was completely white and trimmed with finical neatness. Lysander put his notebook down and sauntered over.

‘Dr Freud,’ he said. ‘Forgive me for interrupting but I just wanted to shake your hand. I’ve been most successfully treated by one of your ardent disciples, Dr Bensimon.’

Freud looked up, folded his newspaper and rose to his feet. The two men shook hands.

‘Ah, John Bensimon,’ Freud said, ‘my other Englishman. We’ve had our disagreements, but he’s a good man.’

‘Well, whatever they may be I’ve had the most rewarding psychoanalytical sessions with him. I know how much he respects you – he refers to you constantly.’

‘Are you English?’

‘Yes. Well, half. And half Austrian.’

‘Which explains your excellent German.’

‘Thank you.’ Lysander took a polite step backwards ready to take his leave. ‘It’s an honour to shake your hand. I won’t keep you from your newspaper further.’

But Freud seemed not to want to let the conversation end. He stayed him with a little gesture of his cigar.

‘How long have you been seeing Dr Bensimon?’

‘Several months.’

‘And you’ve finished?’

‘I feel – let’s say – as far as I’m concerned my psychosomatic problem is a thing of the past.’

Freud drew on his cigar, thinking. ‘That’s very swift,’ he said, ‘impressive.’

‘It was his theory of Parallelism that finally made all the difference. Remarkable.’

‘Oh “Parallelism”,’ Freud almost scoffed. ‘I’ll make no comment. Good day to you, sir. I wish you well.’

The great man himself, Lysander thought, going back to his seat, pleased he’d had the courage to approach him. Definitely an encounter for the memoirs.

_{*   *   *}

He hadn’t seen Hettie for four days and he was missing her badly. In fact, he calculated, he hadn’t seen her for a week . . . It was the longest period since the affair began that they had been apart. He scribbled a note to her and decided to go at once to the Café Sorgenfrei. Perhaps there would be something there from her, also. Out in the streets it was cold but not freezing and the new year’s snow was turning to slush, the tyres of the passing automobiles splattering the brown muck on the legs of pedestrians who ventured too close to the roadway.

Watching the passing motor cars carefully, Lysander wondered, not for the first time, if he should learn to drive. Perhaps that could be another part of his Viennese education – then he realized he could hardly afford the price of driving lessons. He had just paid Frau K his next month’s rent in advance and found himself left with only just over a hundred crowns. He’d cancelled his German and French classes until further notice and had telegraphed his mother once again for more money. It made him feel inadequate – why should his mother be subsidizing his love affair with Hettie, he thought. He admitted to himself that he’d been living these last weeks in a self-imposed decision-free limbo, happy to drift in the here-and-now. The problem was – and he had to face it as his money ran out and a return to London beckoned – that he was finding it very hard to imagine a future without Hettie. Was this the beginning? Sexual infatuation shading into love? And yet, during all the weeks of the affair, despite all the endearments and confessions of powerful emotion on both their parts, she had never once spoken of leaving Hoff.

What to do? . . . he pushed his way through the swing door of the Café Sorgenfrei and elbowed aside the heavy velvet curtain that kept the draughts out. Grey strata of smoke hung in the air and made his eyes smart as he approached the bar to hand over his envelope. There was the young barman in his puce waistcoat – what was his name? – and his preposterous dragoon-guardsman’s whiskers.

‘Good afternoon, Herr Rief,’ he said, taking Lysander’s letter. ‘And we have a little package for you.’ He reached below the bar and drew out a flat parcel tied with string. Lysander felt a small surge of joy. Bless Hettie – they must have been thinking of each other, simultaneously. He ordered a glass of Riesling and took the package over to a table by the window. He opened it carefully to see that it contained a libretto.
Andromeda und Perseus eine Oper in vier Akten von Gottlieb Toller
. The cover was a colour reproduction of Hoff’s poster – Hettie in all her nakedness . . . He riffled through the pages, imagining a note would fall out and when nothing did he then turned back to the title page to look for an inscription. There it was; ‘For Lysander, with all my love, Andromeda.’ And below that in a series of distinct lines, he read,

There are times when I am wholly confident in the destiny of HB

But there are other times when I find that I am

not completely honest

Superficial

Facing-both-ways

Cowardly.

_{*   *   *}

Lysander wondered why, given his reduced financial resources, he had decided to pay the two-crown supplement to have dinner that night with Frau K and Josef Plischke. Perhaps he just wanted some company, however trying and mediocre. The main course – after the cabbage soup with croutons – was
Tafelspitz
, a boiled-beef stew of ancient lineage, Lysander thought, concocted days ago and allowed to simmer endlessly on a stove in the invisible kitchen. And still the gravy was watery and the meat sinewy and stringy. Plischke ate with enthusiasm, complimenting Frau K on her cuisine in a tone of leaden sycophancy that drew Frau K’s most pleasant thin smile from her.

As they chatted, about some aerial demonstration this summer at Aspern with a dozen flying machines, Lysander mentally did his accounts – he had telegraphed his mother two days ago asking for another £20. With luck that should arrive in his bank tomorrow and, with further luck and careful husbandry, that amount should keep him going for another month or two. He decided not to think what might occur beyond that time when his money would run out yet again. Perhaps he should try and find a job himself – maybe teach English to the Viennese? But two months more in Vienna meant two months more of Hettie. He realized, with a small shock of self-awareness, that he was beginning to define his life around her –

There was a loud banging at the door and he heard Traudl go to answer it. For a second he imagined it might be Wolfram, drunk, come to carry him off to the bordellos of Spittelberg.

Traudl appeared at the dining-room door, flushed and trembling.

‘Madame,’ she said in a small voice. ‘It’s the police.’

Frau K’s face pinched itself into a rictus of disgust at this violation of her pension’s probity and marched out into the hall. Plischke burrowed in his mouth with a toothpick, searching for shreds of
Tafelspitz
. Lysander looked at him – that imperturbability was a bit too swiftly donned. What have you been up to, Josef Plischke?

Frau K reappeared in the doorway.

‘They wish to see you, Herr Rief.’

Lysander made the instant assumption and felt the shock in his gut. His mother. Dead? Fatally ill? He felt sick and threw down his napkin.

There were three policemen in the hall. Grey uniforms, black leather belts. Shiny, peaked, badged helmets with flat tops. One man wore a short cape and it was he who saluted and introduced himself as Inspector Strolz.

‘You are Herr Lysander Rief?’

‘Yes. What’s happening? Is there some kind of problem?’

‘I’m afraid so.’ Strolz smiled, apologetically. ‘You are under arrest.’

Lysander heard Frau K’s shocked gasp from the door to the dining room behind him.

‘This is completely ridiculous. What are you arresting me for?’

‘Rape.’

Lysander thought for a second that he might fall over. ‘This is absurd. There’s obviously been some kind of mistake –’

‘Please come with us. There will be no need for handcuffs if you do exactly as we say.’

‘May I collect a few possessions from my room?’

‘Of course.’

Lysander went to his room, his brain a babbling confusion of supposition and counter-supposition. He stood there frozen – Strolz watching him from the doorway – trying to think what he might need. His overcoat, his hat, his wallet. His notebook? No. He suddenly felt very fearful and alone and had an idea. He rummaged in his desk drawer, finding what he was looking for.

He went back into the hall, avoiding Frau K’s eye, and asked Strolz if he could be permitted to say a word to his friend, Herr Barth.

‘As quickly as possible.’

Strolz stood behind him as Lysander knocked on Herr Barth’s door and heard him say, ‘One minute,’ then, ‘Come in.’

Lysander realized that for all the months they had been living next door to each other this was only the second time he had been in Herr Barth’s tiny bedroom. He saw the piled, tottering towers of sheet music, the music stand with his damp woollen combinations draped over it to dry, the huge double bass in its container in the corner by the sagging bed with its embroidered coverlet.

‘Did I hear the word “police”, Herr Rief? They’re not after me, are they?’

‘No, no. I’m the one who’s been arrested – it’s a ghastly mistake – but I have to go with them. Could you contact this person and say I’ve been arrested? I’d be most grateful. They’ll know what to do.’

He handed over Alwyn Munro’s card. ‘He’s at the British Embassy.’