by Eva Ibbotson
‘Goodness, Edith, what have you got in there?’
The Bluestocking threw me an agitated glance. ‘Could I come through into the workshop?’
‘Of course.’
The cutting-out table was clear. Edith asked for some newspaper which Nini brought. Then she opened the case. Plaited into four strands, fastened by twine, the lengths of white-blonde hair tumbled out in incredible profusion. ‘Good God — what is it?’
‘It’s Magdalena’s hair. I told you it belonged to The Christ. She’s cut it right off and she wants to sell it. She said one could get a better price if one sold it privately. Only I don’t at all know where to go.’
I ran my fingers along the marvellous silky stuff, feeling quite shaken at this heroic butchery.
‘You’ve found her then? But where? Where is she?’
‘She’s in the Convent of the Sacred Heart. She’s going to be a nun. That’s why she wants me to sell her hair; to get money for the order.’
‘I see. And the man I saw her with?’
‘He’s a Jesuit priest — Father Benedictus. He was her confessor when she was being confirmed. She went to ask him if she could be released from her engagement — she went several times, but he wouldn’t let her. He said to be offered a pure marriage and a chance to help the church financially was a fine opportunity. They’re very practical, these Jesuits. But of course when Herr Huber broke his side of the bargain, Magdalena felt free . . . and she ran away and took refuge with the nuns.’
‘How did you find her, Edith? Did she send you a message?’
Edith shook her head. ‘I packed some toilet things and went round to all the convents saying I’d brought some things for her and would they give them to her. In the first three they said she wasn’t there, but in the fourth they just took them and asked if I’d like to see her. She’s only a postulant still, she’s not walled up.’
‘You seem to have been very resourceful.’
Edith shook her head. ‘I just remembered what she said when she was little. Again and again she said it. “I’m going to be a nun because I love Jesus more than anyone else in the world.” I think he was so real to her she couldn’t bear anyone else even to touch her. She wanted to make the sacrifice for her family, but she just couldn’t.’
Then she asked if I would come with her to the convent. ‘She looks so different — it isn’t just the hair, it’s everything. You know how dreamy she was; not quite in the world. Well that’s all changed. And if you saw her, Frau Susanna, you could help me to tell Herr Huber.’
‘He doesn’t know yet?’
Edith shook her head. ‘I told her family, but they just weep and wail though Herr Huber gave them quite a big sum of money even after she ran away. You’re so good at making people feel better, and I don’t know how to say things . . . only in essays, not to real people.’ She gave a little sniff. ‘I’m going to miss Magdalena. We were both misfits — she was too beautiful and I was too ugly.’
So I went with her to the Convent of the Sacred Heart. There was no difficulty about seeing Magdalena. The woman who admitted us was Sister Bonaventura who had made the silken rose on the rich cream dress I wore to the Bristol, and we are friends.
The convent adjoins a group of almshouses with a small hospital, and the nuns are responsible for this.
It was there that we found Magdalena. She wore an apron and a cap over her shorn hair, and was swabbing down, methodically and carefully, the stomach of an ancient lady who lay on an iron bed. Nothing could have been further than the image I had had of Magdalena rapt in prayer and communicating with her saints. Rather she looked — as she dried the old lady and rolled her over like a strudel — like a satisfied housewife attending to her daily tasks. And it occurred to me that Magdalena’s love affair had ended rather better than Alice’s or Nini’s — or mine: in a busy and contented marriage.
We exchanged a few words, but Magdalena had started on a second patient, cutting the toenails on a pair of gnarled and yellow feet, and we soon took our leave.
There seemed to be no point in delaying over breaking the news to Herr Huber. On the way to his shop in the Graben, we called for Alice. She was packing for her journey to Switzerland but she agreed to come with us. The butcher has a special fondness for her and I felt we needed help.
We found Herr Huber supervising a display of knackwurst, and the way he looked when we told him that Magdalena was safe — the relief, the tenderness on his face, the sudden hope we had at once to extinguish — is best forgotten.
‘She was on her knees as when I first saw her?’ he asked eagerly. ‘She was in prayer?’
‘No. She was swabbing down an old lady’s stomach,’ I said firmly.
‘And she has cut her hair,’ said Edith. ‘She has given it to The Christ.’
‘Like Cosima Wagner,’ put in Alice.
Herr Huber’s bewildered round eyes went from one to the other of us. ‘Did Frau Wagner give her hair to The Christ?’
‘No. To Wagner. She cut it off and put it in his grave. He was The Christ to her. Well, God . . . ’
But poor Herr Huber was quite unable to deal with a shorn Magdalena swabbing the abdomens of ancient ladies. We carried him off to lunch at the Landtmann, but he was a broken man, able to swallow only a couple of schnitzels and a slab of oblaten torte.
‘I’m giving up my room at the Astoria,’ he told us. ‘And I’m putting a manager into the shop here. There’s nothing in Vienna for me now.’ He brightened for a moment. ‘Fortunately I’ve had a good offer for the villa. A very good offer.’
I didn’t ask if the bald Saint Proscutea was included in the fittings.
‘You’ll be living in the old house by the river, then?’ said Edith, and Herr Huber nodded.
I suggested that Magdalena’s trousseau should be sent to her convent for the nuns to sell, and he agreed to that.
‘Of course I shall be coming to say goodbye. You have been such good friends to me.’ He dabbed his eyes. ‘And everyone is welcome in Linz. My sisters would be so happy.’
‘How soon are you leaving?’ asked Edith.
‘In about three weeks. Earlier perhaps.’
Edith put down her knife and fork. ‘Really?’ she said. `So soon?’
I have told myself that I have lost Gernot and I have believed it. Yet deep down there has been a glimmer of hope. After all it is not sense to think that one broken assignation — even such an important one — could have such consequences. My fears could have been due to the time of year, the shortening of the days, the cold which so easily extinguishes hope.
But now I know that it is true. I have to live without him. I know because of Hatschek.
This is what happened.
The Baroness Lefevre, the one who got tired of sitting on ortolans, lives in a grace and favour apartment in the Hofburg. She’s had influenza and I said I would call and fit her for her skating costume.
I was walking through the gate from the Michaeler Platz into the first of the palace courtyards when I saw Hatschek coming out of a door on the far side.
He saw me. There was not the slightest doubt about it. He was coming directly towards me and when he caught sight of me, he smiled his slow, stupid smile and touched his cap.
Then he must have remembered his instructions for he flushed a fiery red and turned on his heel.
It was absolutely unmistakable: the recognition and the rebuff, but I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t take it in — and I called to him and hurried after him. I was quite without pride; all I wanted was just a few seconds to explain — just a few seconds, nothing more.
He increased his pace — then, just as I was catching up with him, he veered to the right and turned in through the archway where the Swiss Guards stand on duty.
That part of the Palace is sealed off to ev
eryone who does not have business there. Hatschek knew the password; some of the offices of the Ministry of War are there, and they let him through, but not me of course — not a distraught woman carrying a cardboard box — and I stood there waiting helplessly while he hurried down a flight of steps and vanished.
So it’s true, you see. It’s over. Hatschek has been forbidden to speak to me. I’m like Serbia now, and Macedonia — bad for his master.
I must have loved Hatschek too, just a little bit, for somewhere in the agony of losing Gernot is this other foolish grief for the Bohemian Corporal who was my friend.
November
All Souls’ Day was a suitable one for a day given over to the dead: murky, dark and chill.
The bereaved came to St Florian’s all the previous evening bringing candles and coloured lanterns to burn through the night. Professor Starsky, whose wife lies there, brought a wreath of artificial poppies, and this year as in all the years since I’ve been here, the grave of the family Heinrid was tended by a hired crone who sat all night mumbling liturgies. They’re all over Vienna, these frightening old women muffled in shawls who, for a few kronen, will guard the graves on the night of All Souls, munching fat bacon from their baskets and calling on the Holy Ghost for the lost souls in purgatory. Herr Heinrid (who is eminent; he’s Egger’s second-in-command at the Ministry of Planning) rents the same one every year and then arrives himself, after a good breakfast, to fill the family urn with flowers.
I don’t know where Rip is buried. I’d have liked to pay my respects to him but Frau Hinkler will speak to no one since he died.
I had lit candles by Rudi’s headstone because Alice is away in Switzerland, but on the day of All Souls I do not stay in the city with its flickering lanterns and its Masses for the Dead. On All Souls I have business elsewhere. I go to Leck.
The monks are generous. Everyone who has served the abbey can lie within its walls. No grave here is untended, for a lay brother keeps the flower beds bright and the grass cut. It’s a sunny churchyard on the slope of a hill; one could grow vines there, but the church grows souls instead.
On All Souls’ Day, though, there is seldom any sun. As I walked from the station with my basket, the rain bit my face and flurries of wind whipped at my cloak.
I went first to the grave of the old monk who had told me about Sappho and her songs. He doesn’t need anything — he never did, even in life — but I say a prayer for him and leave a white rose because of what he told me: that in the valley where she lived they grew wild, the hyacinths and the roses, and she used to make garlands of them for her friends.
Then I went to see my father.
I never went back to see him after I eloped with Karli. He knew nothing of my daughter’s birth. I meant to write to him when I was settled, but I imagined Aunt Lina gloating over my disgrace, seizing any letter that came.
Actually I was wrong. She fell ill soon after I left and found it increasingly hard to look after my father. Who knows, she might have been glad of someone young and strong to help her. For my father grew cantankerous and difficult as he grew older. In the end she went home to die and my father lived on alone.
It wasn’t till the year after I left my daughter under the walnut tree that I returned to Leck. My father was pleased to see me; he wanted me to give up my job in Vienna and come back to keep house for him, and I refused.
So it never went right after that. I came a few times, and I wrote, but I wouldn’t do the one thing he wanted. The guilt was bad — it still is — but that’s the trouble with guilt: it can make you suffer like nothing else but it can’t change what you do.
It always seems wrong to put flowers on my father’s grave: an awl, a chisel is what he would have wanted there; it’s his hands I remember — planing, sawing, measuring . . . So I left my candles and asked his pardon for letting him die alone (though I was there actually, during his last illness, trying to undo the neglect of years with my assiduous nursing).
And then to the grave that would call me back from the furthest corner of the earth.
My mother lies in her own place beneath a tombstone that says only: Elisabeth Maria Weber 1841-1887. She was the beloved wife of Anton Weber; she was, God knows, the beloved mother of Susanna Maria Weber, but it doesn’t say so. When we buried her, my father and I, we felt no need to state the obvious.
The bells toll and toll always on All Souls’ Day, the solemn chant of the prayers for the dead goes on from dawn to dusk, and there is always a wind. Yet the day I spend with my mother, muffled like those graveyard crones so that the cold won’t drive me away, is never sad.
We talk, you see. We talk and talk, my mother and I. I tell her everything that has happened through the year and she listens (God, how that woman listened!) and then she tells me what she thinks. I was twelve when she died but even now there are thoughts that come to me only in her voice.
Mostly she approves of me, she really does. There are certain pettinesses she doesn’t care for, and she thinks there’s no reason for me to carry on the way I do about Chez Jaquetta who also has to live. But my mortal sins — the conception of my daughter without benefit of clergy, my relationship with Gernot — for those, out of her great compassion she forgave me long ago.
But this time she was not entirely pleased with me. She was sorry that the little dog died, sorry that Sigismund had gone without a word and very, very sorry that I had lost Gernot for she knew, if anybody did, how deeply I had loved him — but did I not still have my shop, my work, my friends, the beautiful square in which I lived? What about the sparrows, my mother wanted to know? What about the autumn leaves? She did not really want a daughter to whom a Hungarian Anarchist felt compelled to bring hot milk in bed.
‘It’s the only bad thing, Sannerl,’ said my mother in her soft, warm dialect. ‘Turning your back on the created world. Not seeing, not touching, not hearing. It’s what we can’t be doing with up here, that kind of waste. You’ve had twelve years of good living. Don’t whine, my darling. Because it is a kind of whining: getting bags under your eyes and not tasting the butter on your bread.’
I listened. I wept a little and I remembered how I’d lost my Lebensmut after my daughter was born and how everything goes wrong when you lose courage. Then I gave her the flowers that Old Anna always saves for me to bring to Leck — and went home.
And the next morning the letter came.
It was thick, white, with my name typed in black letters and the seal of the House of Habsburg on the back.
I took it with such eagerness. I knew it was from Gernot: he was going to forgive me: he was going to explain Hatschek’s strange behaviour: the nightmare was past!
Then I opened it.
The official language confused me so much that I couldn’t at first take in what I was reading. I had to go through the pompous cold jargon of bureaucracy twice before I understood the contents.
It was not Gernot who had written to me. It was the Hof Minister Willibald Egger.
What I remember next is Nini bending over me asking if I was all right.
‘What is it, Frau Susanna? Has something happened?’ motioned to the letter on my lap.
‘But he can’t!’ said Nini when she’d read it. ‘He can’t do that. He’s insane!’
‘The Walterstrasse is narrow,’ I managed to say.
‘So it’s narrow; that doesn’t mean he can pull down the whole side of the square. He can’t! Not your shop and Herr Heller’s and Herr Schnee’s. . . He can’t!’
‘Ah, but he can, Nini. He can.’
I took the letter from her. The kind man had provided a map to show the extent of his depredations. The chestnuts would come down and General Madensky on his plinth. Joseph would lose his terraces. The new road, veering westwards through the demolished side of the square and the presbytery garden, would leave St Florian’s as an isl
and surrounded by traffic.
‘What does he mean you won’t get any compensation?’
‘I only rent the shop, you know that — he can give notice without paying me a kreutzer, and he has. April the first. Herr Schnee’s in the same position. Heller owns his shop so I expect they’ll have to pay him something, but it’ll be a pittance; Egger will see to that.’
‘It’s unbelievable. A swine like that, a man with a disgusting Little Habit able to destroy people’s lives . . .’
Gretl had come through from the workshop and the girls went to make me some coffee. I had begun to see what the loss of the shop would mean to them, but they only thought of comforting me. Then Herr Heller came past the window and knocked on the door of the shop. His white hair was on end; he looked grey with shock. Heller is sixty years old; his shop has been his life.
Helping him to a chair, pouring some coffee, steadied me a little. As he was drinking it, Herr Schnee arrived from the other side.
‘Isn’t there anything we can do,’ said poor Heller. ‘An appeal? A petition?’
‘Waste of time,’ said Herr Schnee tersely. ‘No one can do anything to stop Egger. Heinrid’s been trying for years: he’ll have opposed this scheme, with his family buried in St Florian’s, but he’s only the second-in-command and Egger’s got them all in his power. You’ll see — this place’ll end up as the Eggerstrasse with motors hooting down it all day long and clouds of dust and fumes. That’s probably why he’s bricking up the fountain: to make a place for his statue.’
We looked at the plans again. What was left of the square would be a travesty, that was certain.
Joseph came next from the café.
‘I told you . . . I told you. No one believed me. They’re all in league against us, the bureaucrats.’
‘At least you’ll still have a roof over your head,’ said Herr Schnee. ‘You can still run your café.’
‘What’s the use of that? It’s the terraces that brought the custom. My mother’s taken to her bed.’