‘And the metamorphosis, yes.’
‘Metamorphosis, and many other things. He liked it here: he wrote to Milena in Prague, and told her all about the south—the land beyond the mountains: how exalted it seemed, how free he felt. And I think if he’d been able to live his life as he wished, he’d have been quite happy here, wandering round Merano and the lakes: he’d have been a tranquil, romantic figure, lazing in deckchairs and pacing up and down the promenades of Gardone and Salò. You can see it in the stories, if you look carefully, and know how to read them: you can see the way the Hunter Gracchus really wants to come ashore—and if Kafka could somehow make a trip back here, I think he’d be proud to see the Via Franz Kafka signs on the Riva waterfront. Don’t you? You’re very quiet. What’s the matter?’
She stopped and gave me a questioning look.
‘Why do you have Daru working for you?’ I asked her.
‘Stephane? Why not? You don’t approve of him? Another member of the staff you don’t care for? Perhaps you’d like to screen everybody we come into contact with and give them your certificate of approval? He’s been a great discovery for us; he fits into our lives as though he always belonged: I thank the fate that brought him to us. Novogrodsky adores him, Elista’s half in love with him, even Muscatine gets on with him. He’s been invaluable. And very informative about some details you never thought to mention—my treasure.’
Her tone had shifted. She leaned against a stone barrier and turned towards me, and gave an operatic sigh.
‘What details?’
‘You kept very quiet about Serghiana’s new supporters in the West. You said nothing to me. Don’t look surprised—I know you know: the French culture fund. I needed Stephane to tell me who was paying for her documentary about my husband. You didn’t even let slip that you spent last summer with her on location in Sils Maria—when we were just a few kilometres away—a short drive down the valley at Badrutt’s: you never called; you never let us know you were so near us—you didn’t breathe a word.’
‘Was I supposed to tell you about the French? Am I a spy for you now?’
‘No: you’ve become a keeper of confidences. Concealing things from me, editing things out. I know you feel more in tune with Semyonova than you do with me.’
‘That’s not true!’
‘Of course it is. I know it, and I know why. You feel loyal to her, you think she’s a tragic figure, noble and suffering, and intellectual and profound—whereas here with us you’re in a world of idle luxury and froth and sweet patisseries and pointless chatter, and the theme tune’s a Vienna waltz.’
‘None of that’s fair,’ I tried to say: ‘It’s not fair at all’—but she spoke over me, her voice sharp and cold.
‘It’s not hard to work out. Remember, I’ve known you all your life—I know the kind of child you were, I know what’s gone into you, I know the flavour of your personality—very well. You turn things back to front. That’s your way. False is true for you and down is up. But things in your world aren’t the way you want them to be. In fact they’re quite clear and straightforward. Semyonova’s harsh and remote with you, she neglected you, she abandoned you, just the way she neglects and abandons everyone: I care for you and support you, I smother you with affection and with gifts—yet you imagine Semyonova’s the one watching over you, you think she holds you in her heart. Stephane tells me you actually call her “great-aunt”. What delusion! She’s a wild Cossack from the Terek River, there’s nothing she has in common with you, she’s not fond of you the way I am: but you treat me as if I was the stranger from the backlands: you make quite sure there’s no warmth between us—no tie as close as blood. Nothing like it. It’s embarrassing; it’s hurtful. What did I hear you call me once—I’ll never forget it—you said I was just a family friend.’
‘But you told me never to call you Aunt Ady! Don’t you remember that? It was on the day you came to collect me from the Lyceum, from Zuoz. Muscatine was there. You said never. It was an instruction; a command.’
‘And you took me literally! How little you know about the world.’
I hesitated, and looked across to her. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ I said, and listened to my voice as I was saying the words: ‘It’s strange, sometimes, it’s hard—being so far away, half a world away—then suddenly back here—back into your life. I don’t mean to seem cold towards you. I don’t feel that way—at all.’
She stared back in silence.
‘Aunt Ady,’ I said then, and she smiled, and stretched out her hand towards me, her manner completely changed.
‘That’s all you needed to say. I understand how things are for you. Of course I understand: I see it in your eyes. That’s why you’re here with me now, that’s why it’s only us here, the two of us, walking together. All those others at the hotel are just the figures in the charade. You’re the one I’m close to. You’re the one I chose—long ago.’
‘Chose for what?’
‘Chose for what, Aunt Ady.’
‘Chose for what, Aunt Ady.’
‘To be my memory child.’
She looked at me carefully after saying this, and made a sign to me to come closer. ‘Do you understand the term?’
‘Maybe.’
Very gently, she put her arm around my shoulder, and rested her hand on mine. ‘Maybe’s not really good enough in this instance. It’s something important: an obligation—a task. I want you to know what I remember from the days when I grew up here—everything. I want you to remember it in your turn. And remember me when I’m gone from our world.’
‘Please, Aunt Ady,’ I said: ‘I hope that day doesn’t come.’
‘Don’t be sentimental: not about this! It’s much too serious. There are two deaths—for everyone. The first when we leave the world, and the second the real extinction—when the last person who remembers us and cares about us dies as well—and then the final trace of us is gone; then we’re just names, names to be forgotten; whatever we once were has vanished, it can’t ever be brought back; no one will ever know again the way we looked, the way we smiled, the scent of our skin, the way we moved and held ourselves, all our gestures, all the clues to our nature, the little things that give us away. They go—into oblivion—but for as long as you live on in someone’s mind, the mind of someone who loves you, and holds you close, then what you were and what you cared about hasn’t entirely disappeared or died.’
‘I see,’ I said.
‘Don’t sound so uncertain! That’s how we survive—the only way—in the memory of others. We’re given a second, paler kind of life: an afterlife that’s like a purer version of our own: filtered—stripped of what’s inessential, made more perfect, crystallised. Preserving that new life, that second, echoed life—that’s the task that we perform for those who go before us, and others in turn perform for us: that’s what I’m asking you to do for me. Will you?’
‘Of course I will,’ I said.
‘It’s a binding promise. Don’t give it unless you mean to keep it. Remember where you gave it—in the sunken garden in Merano, across from the Kurhaus, next to the cypress tree.’
She put her hand on my heart, and held it there a moment. ‘That’s my assurance; that beat’s your pledge. We’re kindred now—kindred by choice.’
She gave me another long, assessing look. ‘Thank you—my treasure,’ she said then: ‘And with my gratitude comes a burden for you.’
‘A burden?’
‘The burden of remembering. There’s so much to tell. I should have begun with the villa—of course we should have gone there—but we wouldn’t have had the time—not now, at any rate, not this morning.’
‘What villa?’
‘My father’s retreat. The Villa Sorgenfrei—ill-named! You can see the site from here, quite clearly. Look—follow where I’m pointing. Train your eyes towards that peak, then along the cliff face, halfway to the old castle and its tower: there—in the folds of the landscape, with the last vines in rows beneath it.’
‘It looks almost like a blur,’ I said: ‘Is that it?’
‘A blur—a stain—a darkness. Yes—that’s where it was—but it’s a ruin now.’
‘What happened?’
‘It was blown to pieces—bombed into rubble in the last days of the war. No surprise. It was a grand creation: it was much too beautiful to last. My father designed it himself, with his favourite architect—that modernist—the Slovene who’d worked for him in Vienna and Prague. They built a monument. The stone of the facade was all Istrian marble—it gleamed like a Roman temple in the sun. Inside, everything was sleek and sparse; you’d have thought you were in a building devoted to scientific study, not a private home—until you reached the pavilion at its centre; you went through glass doors and came out in a world of growth and flourishing—a conservatory, a glass-roofed hothouse, full of palms and bamboos and scented flowers from the tropics; you were dazzled by the light pouring down above you, you had to shield your eyes.’
‘I think I’ve seen another glass chamber very much like that,’ I said.
‘Really? Surely not one sited like that, so high up, almost in the clouds. When you reached it, it seemed like a paradise. There was an English garden sloping down, and a reflecting pool in front of the entrance, and a balcony and belvedere: you could look out towards the Bernina—you could see south too, down the valley where the railway runs—it was always bathed in sunshine—you would have thought it was the track to happiness.’ Her voice trailed away; she gave me a little smile.
‘And did you spend much time there? So far away, so far above the town?’
‘No—on the contrary. Once it was finished, my father never went there again. He’d laboured over its detail for so long, he’d expended all his enthusiasm and care on it, he’d made it perfect in the abstract—but when he saw the completed building it displeased him. It was exactly what he’d wanted, every detail was correctly executed, but he felt it was a monstrosity: he said everything about it seemed wrong.’
‘And after that—what happened to it?’
‘It was left empty for a year: then it was the summer guesthouse for his friends and his business visitors, and whenever anyone stayed up there, he made a point of apologising for its shortcomings: in the end he gave it to one of his factory managers from Brixen. When the war broke out it was requisitioned; they turned it into a barracks and an observation post. It was destroyed in the first Allied raids: the fire burned on for days and nights.’
‘And then?’
‘Nothing—no thought of trying to save it. No one missed its presence up there. People in Merano used to call it the Slovene folly: they thought it was repellent, and foreign: they would have been happier if we’d built another imitation castle in the hills. My father had wanted it to be a landmark, a glory for the ages, like Novacella or the Marienberg: in less than a decade it was gone.’
All through this account she had kept her eyes trained on the mountainside; she looked at me, and smiled a little. ‘We’ll wind our way back towards the river,’ she said: ‘We have an appointment to keep.’
‘Who with?’
‘It’s a surprise.’
‘A good one?’
‘Very.’
‘Do we have far to go?’
‘Not at all—just through this park, across the bridge with the decorated railings. And look, see—there—that statue? The woman with a book in her hands.’
‘This is who we’re meeting?’
Ady smiled. ‘Well—that would be something! This is Sissi. She used to be the most famous woman in Central Europe.’
I looked at the statue with more attention.
‘The Kaiserin,’ said Ady, in a prompting way: ‘She came to Merano often.’
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘You’re familiar with her story?’
‘The name perhaps,’ I said, ‘in a vague way—yes.’
‘They don’t teach the history of Hapsburg Europe at your school? Sissi’s story: Empress Elisabeth—the beloved of her people, the long-haired anorexic, the pale emblem of a pale and dying kingdom?’
‘Not directly, no.’
‘My stars,’ said Ady then: ‘I wonder now what I’ve done in sending you off there. I thought I’d be preserving you and saving you from all the troubles that were tearing at our world…’
‘What troubles?’
‘Invasion, foreign occupation, the constant sense of conflict close ahead—that’s what I wanted to keep you from, but more and more I see there’s a change in you: you’re not exactly European anymore, are you? You’re becoming a young American—in your voice, in your accent, even.’
‘Wasn’t that the idea?’
She gave a quick, sad-edged laugh. ‘I don’t know that there was any well thought-out idea at all, my treasure: there rarely is. Let me introduce you to her—Kaiserin Elisabeth: Empress of Austria, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, and—oh, many other places. When I was your age I used to come to this park in the afternoons and sit and read the story of her life and cry bitter tears—or at least I thought I should be crying, and I thought my tears should be bitter, like my heroine’s tears for her dead son as she walked the paths of Gödöllő or Trautmannsdorf—but now I look back and I think they were tears for my world of childhood. We could see it fading even then, we could tell that it was dying, it was fragmenting in front of us—every day, with every headline, it drifted further into oblivion. And she was the incarnation of that world: lovely, weak, enslaved by her worship of her own image: the bereaved princess, surrounded by misfortune, remote, refined, unhappy, but always in a lovely way. You know what happened to her, don’t you?’
‘Something bad?’
‘Obviously.’
‘But a long time ago?’
‘In 1898—a year of terror all across the continent; quite like the present, actually. She was travelling in Switzerland, incognito, without a bodyguard, only a lady in waiting for company. She’d reached Geneva; she was staying at the Beau Rivage; somehow a journalist found out, and wrote about her visit. An Italian anarchist named Luccheni read the story, and chose Sissi as his target. He followed her and ambushed her: he stabbed her with his stiletto—straight through the heart.’
‘But that fits perfectly,’ I said.
‘It does?’
‘It’s another link to you. Don’t you see—she died in the same city that you went to as a diplomat; you told me all about that time.’
‘You remember! I wish it were true, but it’s not quite. Luccheni stabbed her as she was about to board a paddle steamer and make the journey across the lake to Montreux; she survived long enough to walk to the landing stage, she even went onboard, and the steamer sailed. It wasn’t clear how badly she’d been hurt; the weapon was so thin the wound was almost painless; there was scarcely any blood. Then she fainted away: there was a great panic, the captain turned the boat around, but there was nothing to be done: she died before they reached the shore. And ever since I first read her story, I see the image of her in the saloon of the paddle steamer, sinking into her chair of velvet, sighing, fanning herself, passing gently, imperceptibly away—and when I make a trip to Geneva, or to Vevey or Montreux, and I look out to the landing stages on the shoreline, and catch sight of the white steamers on the water, sleek as they are, and streamlined and low-slung, I imagine something very different—I see them as vessels of ill omen, bringers of grief and death.’
She shook her head, as though to dispel the image.
‘I hope you never see the world that way: full of symbols; full of unseen meanings. Come with me—let’s not be late. It’s only a short way now. Back over the bridge we crossed before—then we’re almost at the Wandelhalle. She’ll already be there, waiting.’
Ady set off. After a second I chased after her.
‘Who—who’s waiting for us?’
‘Elista, of course—I told her to take an outside table.’
‘Elista again!’
‘Your new friend. You
don’t find her elegant, and interesting—attractive, even?’
I gave no answer.
‘So quiet! Don’t be embarrassed. It’s only natural. She’s a very high-grade kind of ornament. You find figures like her on the periphery of artistic talent—often. Proficient, engaging young women, with a mission to complicate the lives that swirl around them.’
‘And is that what she does around you?’
‘That’s what she’s here for, my treasure: to create tension, to tangle things up. She had an affair with Novogrodsky, naturally, when she first met us: she’s gravitating towards Daru now.’
‘You don’t mind?’
‘You could say I encourage it. I much prefer dealing with women who’ve already betrayed me, rather than with ones I expect to.’
‘And we’re here to spend time with her?’
‘Of course not. I brought you here to see the man who’s sitting with her. Look—can’t you see—there, directly across from her, at the restaurant table in the sunshine, beneath that climbing vine in flower—the man in the pale summer suit and dark glasses, staring down at his hands as he talks. You don’t recognise him? He’s changed, it’s true—but not that much.’
I shrugged.
‘You can’t see who it is? It’s Keleti! Your old friend. You used to like him, anyway.’
‘Egon the cartoonist? But you said he’d gone to—to that place.’
‘To Klosterneuburg. I did. He did go there: there was an episode—an injury—he knew he had to be looked after: to be admitted. He went of his own accord. And now he’s made steps towards a recovery, and he’s been discharged.’
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