by Eva Ibbotson
The cathedral clock struck ten, and a minute and a quarter later, our St Florian’s. It’s the scents that are so marvellous at this time of night. Stocks and tobacco flowers from the sacristy garden; syringa on the Schumachers’ wall . . . and close by, stabbingly sweet, a dark red rambler, L’étoile d’Hollande, flowering for a second time.
I heard Rip bark once and someone hushing him. Then silence, and I resumed my litany of smells. Lilies from the urns of the Family Heinrid, a sprig of cupressus rubbed between my fingers . . .
And one more smell . . . a smell that I couldn’t believe, that had to be a mirage, a dream, it was so lovely!
Only it wasn’t. It was here, it was real — the scent for which I’d trade all others in the world.
I picked up my skirts and hurried towards the light of the porch. A pebble was dislodged; the smell of onions grew stronger.
‘Hatschek! Oh, Hatschek!’
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘It’s me.’
‘Oh God, I’m so pleased to see you. It’s so long, the summer. But he isn’t in Vienna? He can’t be?’
He shook his head. ‘He’s still away and working himself into the ground. I came with dispatches. But he sent a letter.’
A letter. We don’t write to each other, Gernot and I. It’s too uncertain, too dangerous. In heaven I shall be able to write to him, but not here.
Then suddenly the night became ice cold. Why a letter now? Because he has decided to be faithful for ever to the high-born Elise and accompany her to the sulphurous springs of Baden Baden? Because the Kaiser has sent him to govern Mexico . . . ?
I broke the seal, took out a single sheet of paper.
‘On the sixth of October I’m going to Trieste to meet the Colonel of the Southern Division. It’s only a brief meeting — no inspections — no reviews — and after that I’ll be free for three days. This is what I want you to do. Take the night train — the 18.35 from the Sudbahnhol I shall be in the front of the train with my aides, but don’t look for me. When you get to Trieste go to the Hotel Europa; you’ll be booked in there and as soon as I’ve finished I’ll come for you. We shall go on to Miramare where, at long last, I shall keep my promise. I may die unshriven but you shall — I swear it — see the sea.’
I looked up. ‘Oh Hatschek! I’m going to see the sea!’
‘Aye. And about time too. All these years he’s been meaning to take you and there wasn’t ever a proper chance. It’s funny you not having seen it; an educated lady like you.’
I shook my head. But I’m not allowed to mention my peasant origin to Hatschek. For he approves of me, he really does. I’m not like Serbia or Macedonia. I’m good for his master.
‘I know you want me to chew up this letter and swallow it,’ I said challengingly. ‘But I’m not going to. When I’ve read it a few times I’ll swallow it, but not now.’
He grinned. ‘I’m to tell him “yes” then?’
‘Yes, Hatschek. You’re to tell him “yes”.’
He took a packet out of his tunic. ‘It’s all there — the tickets, the sleeper reservations, the address of the hotel. He says, not to miss the train whatever you do. It’s the last one out over the weekend.’
‘I won’t miss the train.’
No need to inform Hatschek that I shall be sitting on the platform three hours before the train is due. Let me keep my dignity. Not that I fool him. Hatschek knows perfectly well how dementedly I love his master.
The sea, people assure me, is not at all like a very large lake. It is not like the Bodensee, where Alice once sang Fledermaus on an enormous floating raft. You cannot see across to the other side of the Bodensee, but the sea is not like that. It is not like a whole row of Attersees laid end to end, nor like the lake into which I threw my daughter’s doll, though that lake was very, very deep.
The sea is different . . . other . . . it is something else. Everyone agrees on this. There is salt in the air that one breathes, and always a little wind — and the birds that wheel above the waves are serious birds which don’t sing, but mew and shriek and cry. The sea makes a hem for itself, a strand on which flowers are not allowed to grow: it belongs to the world of the water, this hem, a golden boundary. So important is the sea that it makes the sky above it different too; the clouds move faster — and suddenly when one looks up, there is a ship. Not a paddle steamer or a barge. A ship.
I fetched the Baedeker and looked up Miramare. Population 2,100. A botanical garden with interesting palm trees. The Hotel Post, the Hotel Bella Vista, numerous pensions . . .
Sappho lived by the sea. They say that when she died she flew away over a cliff and became a swan, but I shan’t do that. I shall take the ocean from my lover’s hands, and I shall live.
September
‘But you can’t,’ said Nini when I told her that I was going away for three days on October the sixth and she would have to look after the shop. ‘It’s the day of Sigismund’s concert.’
I had forgotten this. I had simply forgotten.
‘It can’t be helped,’ I said. ‘Someone will be glad of my ticket.’
‘He’ll be so upset.’
‘No, he won’t. He won’t even notice, so many people are going.’
Nini snorted and I glared at her, but she can’t be reprimanded too severely at the moment because she is still very unhappy about the American boy who ‘betrayed’ her on the Grundlsee. Far from relaxing her Anarchist views, Nini is throwing herself with an even more fanatical intensity into her work for the cause, and next to the poster above her bed which says Property is Theft she has stuck another saying Blood Shed for the Revolution is Blood Shed for Humanity under which, I suspect, she cries herself to sleep.
Today I met Frau Egger coming out of a shop in the Fleischmarkt. I cannot say that she is my favourite client, but it is my habit to greet all my customers with politeness, so that I was amazed when she flushed bright red and scuttled away, still in the loden cloak I had made for her. Is she perhaps becoming unhinged from the strain of receiving the Hof Minister’s attentions every Tuesday and Friday afternoon? Certainly there seem to be far fewer barrel organs about these days.
I love September; even as a child I think it was my favourite month. The little Schumacher girls are making corn dollies and wreaths of Michaelmas daisies for the church just as I made them with my mother when I was a child. And of course it’s the most exciting time of the year for the shop: you can see the whole panorama of the coming season in the orders I receive. Frau Hutte-Klopstock has been reading a life of Pocahontas and thinks it would be nice to go to the races in something fringed and the Baroness Lefevre must have got tired of sitting on ortolans, for she has forsaken Chez Jaquetta and ordered a skating costume lined with fur.
But let me not fool myself. I know why this September is so magical. It’s because I’m going to see the sea with Gernot. I’m going to have three days and nights with him and the waves will lap at our feet and his right arm will embrace me.
Magdalena’s trousseau is finished. Gretl will take the wedding dress to the Winters’ apartment; the rest of the things are to go down to Linz for there is to be no honeymoon: the couple are going straight to the villa with the bird table that is not a bird table framed between dark trees. On Monday Herr Huber will come to settle his account, but before that he has arranged a party — the last before his wedding.
At the end of September there is always an Operetta Night in the Stadtpark Kursalon. Singers come from the Volksoper; they have electric lights now, strung between the trees, and after supper (which is taken out of doors if the weather is fine) there is dancing to an orchestra which plays on the bandstand from which Strauss himself so often conducted with his fiddle.
For Alice the evening means hard work projecting her voice over the sound of rattling crockery and burghers enjoying their food, but for Herr Huber the occasion is all he could as
k for to celebrate his coming bliss.
He looked so happy when we set out. I’ve blamed myself since for letting my own affairs swallow me up during those minutes in which I might have prevented what happened. But that’s foolish. I was up against the lying sweetness of music that tells you no love is ever unrequited, no passion unfulfilled, while it is playing. I may be the best dressmaker in the city, but I’m no match for the Viennese waltz.
Herr Huber had secured a table beside the dance floor with a vacant place for Alice when she could join us. Frau Sultzer had tried to prevent Edith from coming. ‘She’s still in mourning,’ she said, but her own mourning did not prevent her from cavorting through the Vienna Woods telling the Group how to recite Grillparzer, and Edith now sat beside Magdalena consuming, without even the faintest tremor, a substantial portion of Tafelspitz.
I had come reluctantly, but I found I was enjoying myself. Herr Huber’s exuberance, his intense enjoyment of the food — above all his melting and voluptuous pleasure in the music, was somehow infectious. I even managed to feel some pity for Magdalena. The bargain she had made might be a shoddy one, but it was hard, none the less, for the butcher’s endearing sensuality — so evident to Alice and myself from the beginning — was entirely beyond her comprehension.
‘Wien, Wien Nur Du Allein’ sang the soubrette above the chorus, and yes, it was true. Only Vienna, only being here under the chestnut trees was what we wanted. The women whose men were present stretched out their hands across the table; those whose men were absent or dead (but not absent tonight, though dead) looked into their glasses and smiled.
The meal was cleared. More wine was brought. It was time to dance.
‘Would you like to try, my dear?’ said the butcher shyly to Magdalena.
‘No, thank you. I don’t dance.’
Edith too shook her head though Herr Huber was polite enough to ask her. Beneath the table I could see his feet in their white spats, tapping, tapping . . .
‘Well, perhaps we’d better show them,’ I said — and he beamed and rose to his feet, wiping his hands carefully on his handkerchief.
He was an extraordinarily good dancer; one rested on his stomach with the greatest comfort. As we spun and reversed to ‘Voices of Spring’ we attracted — for the floor was still fairly empty — some approving nods, and from a group of army officers, a smattering of applause.
‘Won’t you try, Magdalena?’ I said as we returned to our table. ‘The orchestra’s so good.’
She looked for help to her friend, but the Bluestocking was talking to Alice who had joined us, and with the lightest of shrugs she let herself be led away by her fiancé. And of course she could dance; what Viennese girl is unable to waltz?
‘May I have the pleasure, Madame?’
I looked up to find one of the soldiers who had applauded us bending over me. A Captain, rather older than the rest. It was an impertinence: I was with friends — but as I was about to refuse he held out his hands in a gesture that was curiously familiar and said ‘Please?’ — and I got to my feet.
The feeling of familiarity persisted as we circled the floor. He was about my own age, with dark eyes, a touch of grey in his moustache. I asked him the usual things: did he come here often, where was he stationed, was he married?
Yes, he was married. ‘And you?’ he asked, glancing down at my hand. ‘You never, married?’
Even then, in spite of the strange form the question took, I wasn’t sure.
‘No, I’m not married.’
‘But you’ve done well. You’re so elegant. So lovely and —’
At this moment all the lights went out. A deliberate ruse on the part of the management or an electricity failure? I don’t know. But as soon as it was dark, I knew who he was. When I could no longer see his face, I remembered everything else: the way he used to hold out his hands, knowing that the good things of the world would come to him, the feel of his skin . . . and I was back in the attic of the fruit market, learning how simple love was — how unalarming.
‘Karli! Oh, Karli!’
‘I came back, Sanna, I came back,’ he said, pulling me closer. ‘It was a long time, I know . . . they sent us all over the place, but I want you to know that I came back. On my wedding night when I should have been upstairs I sat down and wrote you a letter — only there was nowhere to send it.’ The orchestra, by the glimmer of their desk lights, played on. It was the ‘Destiny Waltz’ and in the darkness I was seventeen again. ‘I didn’t realize how special you were, Sanna; I was so young, but later . . .’
I stroked his hair. ‘It’s all right, Karli. I managed. I’m fine now; I have a good life and so do you. It was so long ago.’
‘Yes, it was so long ago. But I never forgot. It was like being in the sun all the time, being with you. You think it’s always going to be like that when you’re young . . . you don’t realize. I thought that’s what love was like, but it was you. It seems so awful that it’s all gone — that there’s nothing to show for it.’
I nearly told him. Oh God, so nearly! I wanted to say it so much: ‘We made a golden child out of those weeks together, you and I. I have seen her and she is unparalleled, and though she is lost to both of us, she lives!’
But I didn’t say it. I sent him back untroubled to his life. If he’d been happier I might have told him, if he’d spoken of his wife with pride — but I know what it cost me to leave our daughter where she is, and I did not think he had the strength.
Then the lights went on again, the past vanished, and I saw not my young lieutenant, but a tired man with broken veins on his face and disappointed eyes. Karli too came out of his dream, and as the music drew to a close he led me back to my table, bowed formally, and gave me his card.
‘If I can ever be of service,’ he said — and I watched him walk away to join his friends.
Only then did I notice that I had returned to a calamity. Alice and the Bluestocking had risen to their feet, both with a look of horror on their faces. I followed their gaze.
Herr Huber was standing in the middle of the empty dance floor. Blood from three long scratches ran down his cheeks, and he was crying.
I don’t think I shall ever forget the sight of that huge, wretched man, unaware of the glances that were thrown at him, mopping and mopping with his large white handkerchief, now at his bleeding cheek, now at his streaming eyes.
Of Magdalena Winter there was no sign.
For twenty-four hours we heard nothing. Magdalena did not return home, she sent no word to Edith. Then, just as the police were about to be called, a message written in her own hand was delivered to her parents. She was safe; she was well; she was not to be searched for — and that was all.
Safe in the arms of her lover, I was sure, but held my peace. ‘It was my fault,’ said Herr Huber, sitting in my armchair. His kind face destroyed by grief, he stared blindly into his coffee cup. ‘I behaved like an animal. An animal.’
He had arrived in my shop as promised to pay for the trousseau which Magdalena now will never wear.
‘It was the music,’ said the butcher. ‘The music and the sudden dark. It overcame me.’
‘But what exactly happened, Herr Huber? What did you do?’
He put down his cup. ‘I kissed her on the mouth,’ he said, and blushed a fiery crimson.
‘Good God! Is that all? But you were to be married in less than two weeks. Is that so terrible?’
‘Yes it is, Frau Susanna,’ he said solemnly. ‘I broke my oath.’
‘Herr Huber, I think you’d better explain what kind of marriage you had in mind. I have often been puzzled by certain aspects . . .’
‘Yes . . . yes. Only it is necessary to speak intimately.’ He paused to wipe his eyes. ‘You will of course have asked yourself why such a beautiful girl should agree to marry a man like me, especially when so many ot
her people had proposed to her.’
‘I wouldn’t have put it like that. But go on.’
‘It was because I agreed to her conditions. A pure marriage. A marriage of companionship. Well, not exactly companionship because naturally she did not want to spend too much time with me. But she agreed to live in my house and share my meals and let me adore her. Just to see her move about, to look at her, that was all I wanted. It was a privilege for which I would never have ceased to be grateful. To wake and know she was there . . . to see her moving across the lawn with a watering can . . .’
‘And what was she proposing to do in this extraordinary menage?’
‘Well, she had the benefit of knowing that her family was cared for — she’s extremely attached to her brothers — and she was going to devote herself to work for the church. You could say that she was going to marry Jesus and I was going to marry her — only not carnally.’
‘Herr Huber, you are a grown man, a man of the world. Did you seriously imagine that this bizarre arrangement would work?’
‘I have to say to you, Frau Susanna, that I hoped . . . yes, secretly I hoped . . . I thought that if I was very patient . . . very patient . . . that one day perhaps she would lean her head against my shoulder, just for a moment . . . and I would touch her hair. Not stroke it . . . not at once, not for many months . . . ’ He had begun to cry again and, aware that I was about to lose my temper, I busied myself with the coffee cups. ‘Then perhaps very, very slowly . . . perhaps in a year . . . she would let me brush her hair or sit beside her on the bed and hold her hand . . . And, yes, yes; I admit I dreamt that the time would come when she would come to me and smile that divine smile of hers and say, “I’ve been silly, Ludwig; of course I’d like to be like other married women.” ’ He paused and looked at me like an enormous, desperate child. ‘I loved her so much, you see. So terribly much.’
‘Well, I think the whole thing is disgusting,’ I said furiously. ‘Obscene. You’re a healthy man with an interesting profession —’