by Vera Caspary
She led me toward the cash register and the impatient supervisor. I was introduced as the wife of the famous millionaire who owned Schloss Liebhofen and the whole story was repeated: about my having been like a sister to Mimi, sharing her bed on cold nights. I thought of the drafts sweeping through the corridor when I slept on the floor and of those companions who had shared Mimi’s bed.
“Can you forget, dear little sister, how I brought you tidbits and sweets from the restaurant where I entertained?”
Falsehood and crude efforts at charm had a sickening effect. I was at once repulsed by Mimi and nauseated by the sweets on trays and counters. Hand kisses, affectations of naivete, false memories were like the cunning confections, decorated cakes, chocolate boots, Lebkuchen houses, all pretending to be something they were not; too rich to be digested. The boss affected candy smiles, allowed Mimi to neglect less dazzling customers so that she might fawn upon the rich. I kept my courtesy cool, sent good wishes to her mother, hurried out into the pure air.
A few days later I had a badly written, misspelled note from Frau Stompfer. It was filled with sad descriptions of their privations…“What kind of Christmas can we give the poor children without money to buy candles for the tree?”…and manufactured memories, “…two Christmases we tried to provide you with the little gifts and treats that make this holiday sacred to a child.”
I shoved the letter into the lowest drawer in my desk. I tried not to think of the Stompfers, but I could not shut out of my mind the thought of three small children deprived on Christmas Day. At bedtime I showed the letter to Gerhard.
“Revolting.” He crumpled it in his hand and tossed it into the basket. “Is that what made you so doleful all evening?”
“I’ve told you about the Stompfers.”
“Professional beggars.” He had used this phrase several times a day during our travels, particularly in the southern part of Italy.
“But think of the children…”
“Don’t forget how they treated you when you were a child. The mattress in the corridor and the pork on Sim-days…” He shuddered, extending a patent leather slipper toward the basket with the crumpled letter. “Don’t let your heart bleed. I get letters of that sort every day of my life.”
“Do you throw them all away?”
“I’ve always given my share to charity. My mother taught me to be selective and discreet with my sympathies. But people like these are sick with envy. Don’t encourage them, please.”
I could not get them out of my mind and early the next morning before the maids had started work I hurried downstairs to recover the letter. Without telling Gerhard, I bought a postal money order and sent it to Frau Stompfer. On Christmas Eve I received a large card decorated with figures of saints and angels whose wings were crusted with tinsel, and a note of gratitude with the unwelcome assurance that Frau Stompfer regarded me as a daughter. I did not show this to my husband.
It was otherwise a delightful season, fat with feasting, rich in entertainments. I was intoxicated, but not so much with the punch and champagne as the whirl of activities and my place in this society. In the first weeks of Fasching we were invited to villas, hunting lodges and castles, some old and beautiful but none so splendid as our own. What solemn thought was given to the choice of every gown and bracelet, what discussion to the decorations of the tables, the vintages of wines, the menus and entertainments, and how I cherished and repeated to Gerhard the compliments of the flirtatious men. Vain and secure, devoting myself to such trifling conquests, I lived for each carefree moment, tried to forget the past, saw the future as an endless Fasching without the carnival Tuesday that introduces penitence and Lent. If anyone had suggested that this complacence would end, I should have looked down from my pedestal with aristocratic scorn. In those weeks I honestly believed that all the pretty trifles had been designed for the exclusive pleasure of Frau Leonora Metzger.
Tragic news came on the twentieth of February, during an evening of peaceful enjoyment. The country had never been lovelier. Early snows had melted, leaving the air damp, the ground soggy. Dreams of an early spring had ended with a drop in temperature. For many days the hoarfrost had accumulated, coating every twig and branch with silvery luster. One morning we woke in a world-of silence. The snow blanket was so heavy that you could not hear a hoofbeat or wheel on country roads. All animals were still. When the weather turned warmer, the snow softened but froze once more so that every twig, branch and leaf was like white jade. On the branches of the fir trees snow made designs varied according to the patterns of the needles, and on the bushes the tips of twig clusters became bouquets of white lilac. Everything glistened. Colors were hard and bright, every cheek painted with a rosy circle. In their peaked hoods little children were elves in the enchanted forest.
On that February afternoon Gerhard and I had walked on crisp paths along the frozen lake. Sunlight had sparkled on the shining earth, every breath had been a renewal of life. In the evening after an early supper we sat before the open fireplace of our English bar listening to records on the player. Gerhard was called to the telephone. I selected a fresh group of recordings, turned on the machine again, welcomed his return with a smile. In his face I saw bad news.
Elfy was dead. The car in which she had been riding with her fiance had crashed into a trailer on a winding road. Gasoline had caught fire. They would not let her mother see the body.
Gerhard led me to a chair, poured brandy. Litzi rose from her place by the fire to rub her little body against my leg as though she had understood the sad message. As I touched the brandy to my lips, the glass fell from my inert hand. Music leaped out at us, Lotte Lehmann singing Schubert’s “The Trout,” I did not shed a tear nor make a sound when Suzi tucked me into bed and Gerhard brought sleeping pills from the store of medicines he kept in a locked cabinet.
Out of drugged sleep I woke in heightened awareness. Even now there remains solid recollection: the English bar, the voice of Lotte Lehmann, a glass broken on the hearth and, in the bed beside me, Elfy humming Bach in her sleep, reality and illusion so fused that one could not exist without the other. Under warm covers I lay chilled. No sounds came from outside, no bird in the trees, no animal prowling in the garden. At last I wept.
In the morning Gerhard told me that he had engaged seats for us on the plane from Salzburg. I said that it would not be necessary for him to come with me but he would not let me travel alone. As always when he could be helpful he felt important. Because he suffered a sense of uselessness, he enjoyed those emergencies that were not of a pleasant nature. For my sake he relaxed his prejudices and came to the Mayr apartment with me.
We were greeted at the door by the usual smells: laundry soap, drying clothes, boiled meat and onions. I felt disloyal in allowing myself to think critically of the home which had offered comfort to the waif. Heda met us with the newest baby in her arms, her hair wild, her face haggard. Frau Mayr’s greetings were more dignified. “Leni, Leni, my dear child.” She wrapped her arms about me. I forgot my husband, my snobbish nose, sobbed upon the breast of the woman I had come to comfort.
When my tears had subsided, Frau Mayr greeted Gerhard. “This is your dear husband?” She kissed him.
“Thank you for having been such a good mother to Leni,” he said. Praise from a stranger opened the ducts. Frau Mayr cried noisily and threw her arms around him.
His behavior was admirable. “I’ll leave Leni here to comfort you.” He went to stay at the Hotel Imperial while I spent my nights in the bed with Frau Mayr. He attended the funeral, sent a blanket of roses, paid a daily visit. Each time Frau Mayr kissed him when he came and when he left. Sentiment cooled, his nostrils drew in when she embraced him. She smelled of age, of dust, of reality.
“When,” he asked, “are we going home?”
I did not know how to answer. Trudl had to return to her husband and the shop in Velden, Heda to her home in Linz. They were poor, they had obligations to men who worked for a living. Frau Mayr coul
d not be left alone, I suffered guilt as well as gratitude. In my mind dwelt the ghosts of lies which had explained, not too logically, why the Mayrs had never been invited to visit Liebhofen and lies prepared to excuse in advance my husband’s absence at Elfy’s wedding. In a cupboard wrapped in tissue paper lay the gown she was to have worn; propped against the wall the bass fiddle. It brought her back too vividly. How she would have enjoyed a holiday in the castle! For all my lies and excuses, for the sins of omission toward my foster family, I felt that I had now to pay penance.
One morning Gerhard arrived very early and without warning. As I saw him entering my bedroom behind Pepperl with my coffee and hot rolls, I became concerned about the untidy apartment and feared that he would want to whisk me away without a thought for poor Frau Mayr. His requirements were quite the contrary. He said that I might stay as long as Frau Mayr needed me, but that he would have to leave at once.
“In fact,” he laughed nervously, “I’m on my way to the airport now.”
“Where are you going? You haven’t said.”
“Home. To Liebhofen.”
“Is something wrong?”
He looked shaken and pale with puffed eyes that had not had enough sleep. “A little matter I’ve got to attend to.”
“Has something happened?” But surely not to Liebhofen that had stood so firm for so many centuries and withstood such onslaughts. I thought of all the stock market reports and the long telephone conversations with brokers. “Have you lost money?” But that would not take him back to the village of Altbach.
The pale man laughed. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry, dear.”
“Then why are you so nervous?”
“Am I? A bad night. I shall have to quit drinking coffee.” He kissed me, and when Frau Mayr came into the room, raised her hand to his lips and offered a sentimental farewell. Then he hurried off to catch his plane.
V
All that was left of childhood remained in the dusty apartment. Every cupboard and drawer brimmed over with memories: old dresses and petticoats, scraps of silk and wool fabrics, birthday candles, theatre programs, little gold crosses on thin chains, first shoes, an old dirndl worn by three Mayr daughters and little Leni, frayed and faded pictures of the saints; and photographs, hundreds of snapshots pasted in albums, tucked in drawers, filled away in hatboxes, the graves of young dreams.
I stayed for five weeks with Frau Mayr. Day by day her life grew emptier. Furniture was sold or shipped to the daughters, the boarders moved out and Pepperl, the aging maid, was planning to go back and live with her old mother in Styria. Frau Mayr had been so staunch in the days that followed Elfy’s death, stronger than her daughters. Now that they had gone home, she clung to me, dependent on my decisions. Every day there was a change of plans. A woman with four daughters could not consider herself homeless, but who would wish to live in East Prussia with Lilly, or with Trudl in a two-room flat above a store in Velden? Heda wanted her in Linz. “It will give Mutti something to think of beside her sorrows if she has three children to love and I will have time for my harp again.” From Bradford, Lanes., England, came warm invitations. “But I do not speak the language,” fretted Frau Mayr. “What do you think, Leni?”
In a castle of sixty rooms (although many were never opened) it would have been easy for me to provide a suite for an old lady. But rooms and shelter would not have been enough. She would have wished to share our lives, to help with the housekeeping. My husband would have been forced to endure the odor of old age and the droning tunes of trivial memories. I tried to show with my devotion that I was grateful for the love and generosity she had spent upon me, but I could not deny that her repetitions had become boring. When she repeated a story for the fifth or twentieth time I made myself remember the hours she spent cutting down dresses for me and the sacrifices to give me a few groschen for books and ices.
It was unthinkable to demand that Gerhard be exposed to this boredom. During this period he was very attentive, telephoned daily to ask about my health and Frau Mayr’s plans. I said that I was lonely and aching to come home, but he always told me that I must be patient with the poor old lady.
“But how are you and is everything in order at Liebhofen?”
“Excellent. There is nothing for you to worry about.”
“Are you sleeping well now?”
“Oh, yes. And drinking coffee. Everything is in perfect order.”
After all of her deliberations Frau Mayr came to a sudden decision. “I have made up my mind to go to Bradford, Lancs., England.”
Old Pepperl gasped. In all the years she had worked for the family, she had never known the old lady to travel more than a hundred kilometers from Vienna.
Frau Mayr said, “Trudl and Heda I can go to at any time, but it is three years since Maria and her children visited us and I would enjoy to see that family again. Besides, it is my first chance to travel. How long will it take me to get a passport, Leni?”
It made me happy to be able to make all the arrangements and pay the expenses. The old lady shook her head over my ability to take care of reservations and schedules. “Little Leni, how much you know of the world!” So that she should not embark alone on her first flight, I selected a plane that would drop me in Salzburg. It was to leave at nine o’clock in the morning, arriving at the Salzburg airport at twenty minutes before ten. I telephoned the news to Liebhofen. Gerhard was pleased and promised to meet me with the car.
On the day before, we were informed that our flight had been canceled. Frau Mayr was all packed and ready, impatient to leave. We were offered seats on a plane that would leave twelve hours earlier, that very night. I telephoned the change of plans to England, had no trouble at all talking to Maria in Bradford, Lanes. It was not so easy to get a connection within our own country. There had been a snowstorm, telephone wires were down, it was impossible to get Altbach on the wire. Frau Mayr was so restless that I decided to leave anyway.
Her first flight so enchanted the dear lady that she forgot her fear of the new experience. At Salzburg she kissed me and said farewell without a tear. I tried to telephone from the airport but the wires were still down at Altbach. Nor was it easy to find a taxi driver willing to risk his life on a long drive on the frozen roads. At last, by offering to double the fare, I was able to engage an ancient, shabby car.
The journey was slow. As we drove into Altbach the hands of the church clock slid toward twelve. Windows were shuttered. Beyond the village rose Liebhofen like a sturdy rock. Curtains had been drawn, shutters closed. At the gate we waited for the old porter to get out of bed. The castle door was locked as well, but my husband allowed me to carry a key.
I found the entrance hall empty but brilliantly lighted and saw the table prepared for one of those exquisite suppers with fine porcelain, yellow cymbidium orchids, special viands and champagne. From the upper floor came the sound of music, a tune from one of my American albums—“Cheek to Cheek.”
On the staircase I was accosted by Imre, his face as pale as peeled fruit. He was Hungarian, impeccable in service, as quiet as a worm. Imre had a peculiar walk, the result of having been valet to a Budapest aristocrat and having had to wear the master’s new boots to soften them for the baron’s feet which, unfortunately, had been smaller than Imre’s. In the beginning I had hesitated to ask him to fetch things which I could easily get for myself, but later I discovered that he looked down upon me because I did not demand more service of him. Standing on the staircase he seemed more than ever to show disapproval.
“Gnädige Frau, we did not expect you before tomorrow.”
“I tried to telephone, but the wires…”
He interrupted nervously, “I will inform the gnädiger Herr,” slid past me on the stairs and hurried into the long hall without pausing to hold the heavy door at the entrance, nor the one that led to the English bar.
Gerhard came out to meet me, his arms outstretched for an embrace. He was dressed for the evening in his newest smoking of dark blue silk
with narrow lapels. “So good to see my darling little girl. How unfortunate that I was not able to meet you at the airport. Was it difficult getting a car to bring you home?”
“How could you meet me? You didn’t expect me until tomorrow morning.”
“I received a message that Vienna was trying to get me on the telephone. And so I anticipated this happy surprise. You see, I have been playing those records of yours…” The tune had ended and another one started. “Dear lady, may I have this dance?”
“Silly,” I said.
“What about supper? I have ordered a feast for my charming wife. I hope you have not eaten anything. We shall celebrate your return.”
“But it is so late. The servants must be in bed.”
“Everything is prepared and Imre has stayed up to serve us. Hurry and change your clothes to fit the mood of the feast.”
Such lavish welcome made me happy so that I did not bother to consider the illogic of Gerhard’s explanations and Imre’s surprise at my arrival, nor wonder at the strange new scent, heavy and Oriental, in the air of the English bar.
The supper was another of those kitchen masterpieces, conceived, prepared and set up like a theatre production. Neither of us could eat much. Such thoughtfully arranged meals had always preceded a repetition of the prison stories and a session with the secret books. Anticipation did not sharpen my appetite. Gerhard, too, seemed nervous. He made a visible effort to show interest in my conversation, said, “Yes, Leonora,” or “Is that so, dear?” like a worried adult behaving dutifully to a chattering child.
Coffee was brought to the table. This surprised me; I had expected it to be waiting in his study along with the brandy and liqueurs and sugared fruits according to the routines established in our earlier sessions. Instead Gerhard advised me not to drink coffee. After such a fatiguing day, he said, it would be a good idea to go to bed immediately. At the foot of the staircase he kissed my wrists and the palms of my hands.