“Oh. Oh, God.” Randall heard his breath go out in a gargle. “Ott … Otti.” He turned and shrank against the wall.
“Ja!” she cried, beaming like a jack-o’-lantern. “Ja, was sagst Du! Otti Kunz!” Her voice broke over him in shrill, delighted peals.
“Get—go—let me get out of here,” he said. He was struggling in the maze of her skirts and ruffles and her big, muscular arms.
“Why?” she trilled. “Why go? Solch’na’schaina Jungerl!”
“Let me go,” he said through his teeth. He could have slapped her but she had his hands pinioned while she embraced him with horrifying gusto.
“Immer ‘was neues!” she cried happily. Her voice swirled up and down in excited, singsong dialect. “You don’t escape from Otti!” she said, laughing. “This I promised myself already. I’m no fool.”
“Oh, God,” he mumbled.
She shook him gaily by the shoulders. “Silly! Stupid! What are you alive for? Without pleasure is what? Komm—nochmal!” and again she overwhelmed him. In his mind ran fragments of thought … you might as well … what have I to lose … Seymour would … how did she know …
Presently he asked her that. “Gott, what a child! You think a mask hides anything if you are looking for it?” She stretched herself like a cat. There was a clock ticking on the dado and she looked at it. “Now I let you go,” she said. She shook her forefinger under his nose. “But not for long.”
If he had ever imagined plunging into the maelstrom of careless pleasure in which the artists revelled, it could surely never have been with Ottilie Kunz. She was one of the half-dozen leading sopranos and would probably never have seen Randall at all, except that Pachl in the midst of the piano rehearsals for Feuersnot had caught a bad cold and Randall had been drafted to fill the gap for a week. He could not have known that the big prima donna had even noticed him. She was surrounded with the usual degree of obsequious fuss, but also there trailed in her wake a sizzle of gossip which Randall, if he understood it, was too naive to believe. And now he was engulfed by her. Well—if he allowed himself to think at all, it was of Seymour who could never again hand down advice in sarcastic superiority. Randall was not given a chance to think much. He was busy, he found himself with extra work on his hands, and when he received a peremptory whisper or scribble from Otti, he did as she ordered. She had trapped him in his unwillingness to seem childish and a prude.
A note was slipped into his hand one spring evening when he had been listening backstage to Die Walküre, in which Otti did not sing. He sighed. He had about decided that he had had enough, and during the endless bore of Wotan’s scene with Fricka, he had been cogitating how to shed Otti without making a fool of himself. The note said, “Come at once to Sacher’s, Apartment 141. Bring along a score and tell the Concierge you are expected.”
Randall went out to the passage and stood there hesitating. This looked like a bad idea. She could not be in Sacher’s except at the instigation of somebody who belonged there, and why then had she sent for him? He was very uneasy. Some kind of prank lay at the bottom of this and he dreaded involvement. Then he thought, oh, what’s the use—maybe this is the only way I’ll ever see the inside of Sacher’s—and how much harm can she do if I walk into anything so long as I’ve got a score under my arm? He went to the library and got out Otello and took it across the street to Sacher’s.
Otti greeted him boisterously. He found her lolling in a cushioned bergère in the midst of a spectacle of luxury such as all the gossip about Sacher’s had never led him to imagine. The room was a bonbon-box; silk walls, gilt, wildly elaborate furniture, enormous festooned curtains, rose-shaded lights, a thick flowered carpet and—Randall noted queerly—not a breath of air. Otti sat chuckling, and twirling the neck of a champagne-bottle buried in a pail of ice while Randall stood dumbstruck, gaping at an alcove whose swagged damask curtains displayed, rather than concealed, a vast brass bed heaped with lacy and beribboned pillows. He turned his shocked blue eyes on Otti Kunz and had to watch her lift up those great thick arms and chortle, “Come, a kiss.”
He drew back and said, “What are you doing here? Why did you send for me?”
“What am I doing here? Ach, it’s a child. Schluss with the questions.”
“So it’s true,” he said stupidly. “About Prince Werdenstein. This is his apartment.”
“Of course it’s true. Who’s making any secrets? Come, give me a kiss.”
“Certainly not. I’m going.”
“Ach, what do you care? Not about poor Ludo, God knows. And you don’t care like that about me.”
“I certainly don’t.”
“Then come and drink some Sekt and don’t be so stuffy. Here.” She poured a glass and held it up.
“Otti, come to your senses. Have you no shame? Where’s your—your—prince?”
“Not here, selbstverständlich. He sent word he was prevented at the last minute. So I got bored and sent for you.”
“Well, I don’t like it. Good night.” Randall turned to leave the room. Otti Kunz bounded from her chair and wrapped him in her formidable arms. “Let me go,” he mumbled while she tried to silence him with kisses.
She had got the better of him in every contest before and it was foregone that she would do it again. As usual it was easier to give in, and perhaps worth a moment’s fun. He would certainly never play this game in quite this setting again, he thought.
They were in bed when they heard the key in the lock. Otti clapped her hand over his mouth as if she expected him to scream. With the other hand she waved wildly at the armoire in the corner. “Dort—dort!” she hissed. “Schnell!” But the salon door was flung wide by the bowing flunkey who had opened it and Randall, barely glimpsing the incredible figure which strolled through, dived under the blankets. He was rolled tight in a sweating ball, too terrified to feel anything, and he heard as if from miles away a cool, scornful voice sneer, “Well, Otti? A fool as well as a slut?”
There was a ghastly silence. Randall felt the bed shake with Otti Kunz’s trembling. He began to pray for unconsciousness, he wished he could be found dead when that apparition should rip off the bed-covers as he was sure it would. Instead he heard the icy voice say, “I will have a word in the salon when your guest is ready to depart.”
Randall heard the clashing brass rings as the alcove curtains were dragged shut. Rather than look at Otti Kunz he would eagerly have died; but somehow he crawled from the bed and made himself presentable, anxiously scanning the damask walls of the alcove for the usual small service door upholstered like the wall. He could see none. He stood dizzy with mortification. He heard Otti Kunz behind him breathing like a winded horse, apparently too terrified or too witless to pull herself together and get out of the bed. The situation was so mad, so impossible, so utterly without anything to do with him—Randall Holt, who had never asked to be part of anything happening in this room, this city, this country—that his very unrealness amidst it broke over him in an enormous wave. The actual image crossed his mind, the clean fierce decency of the American coast, the salty honesty of the air and the world where he belonged and where a thing like this could not happen. But if it did, something nudged at him, if it did, who would know what to do? Who would tell him what to do now? Why, he thought, unconsciously straightening his shoulders and stiffening his back, why Seymour. Of course. What would he do in this fix? I don’t know, but I’ll try to act as if I did.
He walked firmly to the curtains, whipped them back with another brassy clash, and stepped forward, keeping his chin high. The Prince was standing with his elbow on the mantel, drinking a glass of champagne. Randall had never had a good look at such a sight, he had only seen such figures in the distance. He took in the tight snow-white trousers, the pale blue tunic dripping with gold braid and lace, the medals and orders, the scarlet sash, the preposterous choker collar topped by a thin, vapid face wreathed in frizzy blond muttonchops and thinning fair hair. Why, thought Randall, you popinjay, you look like a
damned fool. There can’t be a man inside that get-up.
“Who are you?” asked Prince Werdenstein with the utmost insolence.
Randall did not answer. The Prince stared, produced an eyeglass, and screwed it into his right eye.
“It makes no difference at the moment who I am,” said Randall in English, “and your view of the situation is quite correct. With your permission—” he stopped speaking because to his left he saw the inevitable small upholstered door in the wall, and it was opening. Why, he thought, couldn’t it have been in that damned alcove?—and then he jumped at a squeal of panic from Otti Kunz in the bed behind him.
“Franz!” she shrieked. “Du verdammter Idiot!”
The prince and Randall gazed stupidly at the waiter who had entered carrying a tray with fresh glasses. Then they turned to look at Otti Kunz, scarlet-faced in the bed, her big pink bulk flapping like a wine jelly. Randall was bewildered but still intent on getting away; he even moved towards the door but a roar of “Stop!” from the Prince held him involuntarily. He turned to see the waiter wringing his hands and bowing and scraping before the Prince, gasping, “Exzellenz! Excuse! A mistake, a—”
“Who the devil is this man?” The Prince was standing over the woman in the bed. “What’s going on? This man doesn’t work here.”
“Nein,” moaned Otti Kunz. “OGott-OGott-OGott-” She was rocking herself in her arms.
Randall put his hand to his chin, narrowing his eyes at the waiter. Somewhere, something familiar … take away the apron and the striped waistcoat … somewhere around the Opera …
“It’s her husband,” he said.
“Donnerwetter! Is this true?” Otti Kunz waggled her bent head. The Prince threw a contemptuous glance at the terrified little man. “How dare you!”
“Excuse!” said the man again, half wailing. “I—would—I should explain. Believe me,” he pleaded, grovelling, “it was not Your Highness, your most exalted Excellency. It was—that!” He made a gesture at Randall. “What is honorable, what is well understood—” he made another hand-wringing bow. “But Exzellenz, this—this Amerikaner-”
The Prince touched his frizzy whiskers. A shifty expression crossed his cold grey eyes. He gave Randall a sneering look, then bestowed one each upon the nasty little man and the woman in the bed.
“There seems to be some idea,” he said in English to Randall, “that you should pay for your extremely ill-arranged entertainment.”
“Well, I’m not going to.”
The Prince pulled a musing, sardonic face. “I wonder.” He turned to Kunz and said, “You had some such idea?”
“Ach!” said Kunz.
“Of course,” said the Prince in his polished English, “if you were of any acceptable rank I should challenge you.” He took a Russian cigarette from a jewelled case and lighted it delicately. “Not, naturally,” he made a scathing gesture at Otti Kunz, “for that. But principle—honor—”
“Principle!” cried Randall. “Honor!” He looked from one corrupt face to the other, the highest and lowest of the type. “Now see here,” he said. “I didn’t want to come here, I was made a fool of too. I don’t want your wife,” he said to one man, “or your mistress,” to the other. “All I want is to get away from this tart.”
“Nobody will argue the epithet with you,” said the Prince. “But lèse-majesté—”
“I’m an American. We don’t recognize-”
“Pssst,” whispered Kunz, edging behind Randall. “Exzellenz is married to the Archduchess Franziska.”
Randall could not see why a royal wife made any difference. He stared, and the Prince said, “You will leave Vienna at once?”
“Why?” As soon as he had uttered the word Randall realized his naïveté. The story would be all over the capital tomorrow and his continued presence would provoke a cyclone of ridicule around Werdenstein. Randall said, “I intend to stay in Vienna and finish the work I came here to do.”
“Not if the Imperial Chamberlain has reason to arrange your departure.”
Randall was opening his mouth for a retort which he hoped would prove defiant, when they all started at the noise of heavy knocking on the door. Otti Kunz cowered lower in the bed, the false waiter slunk towards a curtain, the Prince scowled, and Randall stood dumb.
“Go away!” shouted the Prince.
Instead there was another rough knock. A bass voice boomed, “Hoheit, it is I!” Without further ado the door opened and Randall gulped with amazement at the sight of a black-upholstered barrel of a woman, moustached and menacing, gripping in two thick fingers a lighted cigar. She took in the scene with furious eyes and boomed at Werdenstein, “Never has my hotel been shamed in such a way! Two impostors, canaille, have got into this apartment tonight. Never, never,” she said again, snapping shut her teeth. She took a pull on her cigar.
“You are aware, Frau Sacher, that I had nothing to do with this. I was dealing with these riffraff in my own way when you had the effrontery to intrude.”
“Intrude!” roared the old battle-axe. “In my own house—intrude!”
Randall expected the Prince to do something dramatic or peremptory. Instead the man turned coolly to a table, picked up his goldlaced képi and white gloves and without a further glance at anyone, strolled to the door. He turned there and said, “Since you choose to deal with the scum, pray proceed, Frau Sacher.”
“Just one minute,” said Randall, to his own surprise. “I’ve been called three dirty names already, and I warn you right now that’s going to be the end of it.” He followed the Prince to the door.
“End!” shouted Frau Sacher. “The police will bring this affair to an end!”
“Not so far as I am concerned,” said Randall. He was quaking inside; his stomach, he was sure, was going to betray him. “You won’t call any police or do anything more about this, because if you do, somebody from the American Legation is going to make it very embarrassing for this—his—eh—Highness.” He stood with his hands in his pockets to hide their trembling. The Prince looked down his nose at Randall and then, furtively, at Frau Sacher.
“Probably,” he said with a poor show at authority, “it will be better if this person merely leaves Vienna immediately.”
“Probably,” said Randall, and never remembered the moves by which he found himself again in the street.
“So you see, Brother,” Seymour read, “I didn’t know exactly what to do and for the time being I came here to Dresden. I suppose I could go on with the work I was doing in Vienna, the opera is very good here. But I don’t feel much like it. To tell you the truth, now that I’ve told you so much of it already, I don’t like Europe. I never feel as if I belonged here. I’ve tried hard. They all say I play excellently but I’m not a pianist. They tell me to work with singers and look what happened. If most singers are like the one I got mixed up with, I don’t want anything to do with them. I guess I never realized that there is so much in a musical life besides music, and I don’t like the parts that aren’t the music. Anyway, I don’t know what to do now and I wish you’d tell me what you think.”
Seymour cabled Randall to come home.
CHAPTER 7
Randall stood on the pavement, looking at the house. Seymour watched him. He saw Randall’s eyes turn up and down the street, confirming his first shocked reaction to the growing shabbiness of the neighborhood. Then the wondering blue eyes moved back to take in the drab front yard of the Holt house, not yet totally abandoned like its neighbors, but losing the battle with smoke and soot and the march of the town away from this district. The house itself stood out suddenly to Seymour’s eyes as he saw, startled, what Randall saw: a forbidding sight. Seymour had drifted into the habit of not noticing it. Now he watched Randall gazing at the first and third storey front windows, whose blinds were all drawn like those of the fourth floor and the servants’ dormers in the mansard. Only the second-floor windows looked as if the house were inhabited. Randall turned, puzzled and questioning, to Seymour and then pau
sed at the sight of his brother, spruce and dashing with his sleek blond moustache, his smartly tailored clothes, and his expensive peccary gloves. Seymour said, “I suppose it does look queer when you’re not used to it. I just haven’t realized. But nobody uses all those rooms, Ran. Mama—you know—” He threw a glance at the third-floor windows. Lily had not let them be uncovered for years. “I use the second floor, that’s why it’s different. Grandmama’s bedroom and the library.”
“I guess you’re hardly ever here.”
“Well—” Seymour laughed.
They began to move up the front walk. Randall appeared increasingly troubled. Seymour knew that he was watching for his mother; would the door not fly open, and she be there on the steps? Seymour explained quietly why not. “She hasn’t been downstairs since—well, you know when. It was long before you went away. She’s terribly excited about your coming—more than is good for her, I’m afraid. But even that wouldn’t be likely to bring her downstairs.”
He was opening the front door with his latchkey. The entrance hall was very dark. Seymour apologized, lighting the gas. “I don’t leave a light burning,” he explained. “You can see why … dangerous …”
They stood at the foot of the stairs, and though Randall knew he ought to hurry straight up to his mother, he hesitated, with his foot on the bottom step. His face was very troubled. Seymour watched him and said, “I know, it’s always queer to be away a long time. Makes everything seem smaller, doesn’t it?”
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