For me, the recent breakup of 1918, which had made Bohemia part of the republic of Czechoslovakia, was not in the nature of revolution, because my grandmother remained in the castle, the same as before, still presiding over her cast of elderly prima donnas. Kocour, the night watchman, and Prochazka, the coachman, were both in their seventies; Kucera, the head gardener, was eighty; the cook, who was in her sixties, was the youngest leaf of this fading but stalwart four-leaf clover. The other servants—the undergardeners, the stable lads, the housemaids, kitchen maids, and scullery maids—were ever changing, but only because part of their role was to be young. They were like the chorus and corps de ballet of an opera house, constantly being replenished without anyone’s noting the difference.
One afternoon, the newly significant sight of a freshly baked equality cake decided me to seek reassurance. We were sitting round the table in the Garden Room, enclosed on three sides by the walls painted with fluttering cockatoos; the arched, pillared opening on the fourth side gave onto the flagged terrace. Behind its balustrade lay the rose parterre, the blooms enmeshed in the scrollwork of low-trimmed box. Beyond the lawn, at the far end of the chestnut avenue, the park stretched as far as the eye could see, full green and fading to blue in the distance. Emma had finished her coffee-dispatch service at the sideboard, where she poured out while the two other maids carried the cups to the table and offered the sugar from the box with the tarnished silver lid and the broken hinge.
"What would happen if there were a revolution?" I said. "Like the French Revolution, with Robespierre, I mean."
Uncle Frederick said, "He’d guillotine every maid who can’t carry a cup of coffee without slopping it over. Isn’t that so, Emma? Do you hear?"
"To be sure, sir, and always at your service," Emma said. With one hand, she was now offering a platter of poppyseed roulade to my grandmother, while holding the dish with the equality cake in the other, at shoulder height. Yet she was able to turn her head in the direction of the two maids leaning sloppily against the sideboard and to sweep them with a nasty glance.
"But he wouldn’t guillotine Frederick," said my mother. "He’d keep him in the prison down in the park, and make him sing the ‘Marseillaise,’ ha, ha."
"And what would happen to the Austrian Room?" I asked.
The Austrian Room, with its panoramic frescoes supposedly inspired by the Salzburg Mountains, was my heart’s delight. I had never got used to it, which meant that I never stopped loving it. It grieved me that no one else in the castle shared my devotion. The maids looked at it simply as a room with crazy wallpaper, accustomed as they were to the dull, unspectacular, and exceedingly fertile plains in our part of Bohemia. The cook venerated it, but without favoritism, just as she venerated the Saints’ Room and the Garden Room—mainly because the Sternborns had nothing like it in Sestajovice. My grandmother looked upon it as "a pleasant accident," because it had only been discovered some years after my great-grandfather had bought the castle, when workmen were called in to repair a wall. My mother professed to be fond of it "because it’s rococo, and rococo is always nice, it never goes out of fashion," using almost the same words and the same tone of voice as when she was being polite about someone’s coat. And Uncle Frederick, who was an art dealer, had once dismissed it, saying, "With that sort of stuff you couldn’t tempt a dog to come out from behind the stove, do you understand? What am I to do with it—scrape it off and peddle it round?"
"What would happen to the Austrian Room?" I repeated.
"They’d stable horses in it," said Uncle Frederick. "A self-respecting revolutionary horse won’t feed unless it’s housed in a frescoed hall."
"But how could they put horses in the Austrian Room," I asked, "when the Austrian Room is on the second floor?"
"You are being ridiculous," said my mother. "They’d burn the place down, of course. So there wouldn’t be a second floor to worry about."
"And what would happen to the park?" I asked.
"They’d break the wall down and chop off every tree and trample it into the ground," said my mother. "And turn the cattle loose in it into the bargain, to make quite sure it’s properly devastated."
"Do you really think so, Mama?" I asked. "If they came here and saw how beautiful it is— I mean, why should they?"
"Beautiful, ha, ha," said my mother. "Beautiful means nothing to them. What good is a castle to the canaille? And the park? They can’t use it, and they can’t live in it." Turning to my grandmother, she said, "Isn’t that so, Mama? It’s true, isn’t it?"
"Difficult to say what would happen in such a case," said my grandmother.
There was no telling how much attention she paid to our talk, because during all that time she had been occupied with spooning up and swallowing the crinkled skin of the boiled milk in her coffee. She was fond of it, whereas the very sight of it made my mother shudder, and I had had interesting talks with the cook about this divergence in tastes. But at the moment this did not interest me, because I was gripped by anxiety. My grandmother’s short, noncommittal utterance, although it was one of her habitual turns of phrase, scared me, whereas my mother’s and Uncle Frederick’s remarks had been too frivolous to be frightening. It scared me even more than the cook’s conversation, because I understood the cook’s violence-loving nature.
"But how could there be a revolution?" I asked now. "If you have to have canaille for a revolution, where would they come from? Do you have to make them come over from France?"
"You fascinate me," said Uncle Frederick.
"You are being ridiculous," said my mother. "Really, Edith, how can you talk such nonsense?"
"But Mama," I said, "you get your clothes from Paris, too."
"Not all of them," said my mother, her eyes sparkling with annoyance, "but naturally, some. Where else should I get them from? Show me the Patou, show me the Worth, in any other country in the world and I’d be only too glad—I’d be positively thankful, I assure you—but in the meantime—"
"Do you have to tell us, you extravagant goose?" said Uncle Frederick. "We all know your meantime. In the meantime, you could be in Timbuktu, and in the spring the cuckoo would sing, ‘Patoo, patoo,’ and the blackbird would chirp, ‘Worth, worth.’ "
"You are not being funny," said my mother. "Is it fair, I ask you, when ..."
She was now changing from vexation to self-pity, and I knew that the entertainment value of the quarrel was over. I thought how odd it was that even talk about revolution was bound to end in recriminations over my mother’s dress-maker bills.
IN THE EARLY EVENING, about an hour before dinnertime, I sought out my grandmother in the Austrian Room. I knew she would be there, sitting over a game of patience. I wanted to speak to her alone, hoping to get her serious and considered opinion as to the possibility of a revolution. I found her sitting in a basket chair, whose green paint had worn off into lakes and islands, behind a wobbly bamboo table, which matched the other pieces in the room in age and shabbiness. She sat with her back to the window, close to my favorite wall panel—the one with the chamois on top of piled-up rocks, with distant crags veiled by a silvered, white-frothed waterfall. Unfortunately, my mother was standing behind my grandmother, looking at the cards laid out on the table.
As I came in, my grandmother was saying, "Three and four makes seven, and four would make eleven, but I haven’t got a four."
My mother said, "Edith, if I had a neck like yours I wouldn’t show myself till the hour of twilight. Get out of my sight."
I said, "Mama, I’m sorry about what I said about your clothes from Paris. I mean, I know you get some from Madame Rachelle’s in Knightsbridge, too."
"Three and eight makes eleven," said my mother.
"Not so fast," said my grandmother.
"But what I wanted to know," I said, "is where does the canaille come from?"
"It doesn’t have to come from anywhere," said my mother. "It’s here right under your nose. It’s all around us. What did you imagine?"
&n
bsp; "Where? How do you mean?" I asked.
"You were right," said my grandmother. "Three and eight makes eleven."
"The village people, of course," said my mother. "Including the elite—I mean, the postmistress and the innkeeper. And the farmhands in the yard who perform with the cows and the pigs. And the peasants on the estate. And even the stationmaster in Celakovice, who salutes so smartly and makes such a fuss over us, and holds up the train for us when there’s a lot of luggage." Turning to my grandmother, she added, "Isn’t that true, Mama?"
"I’m afraid so," said my grandmother. "They’d all add up to a nice rabble, like five and six makes eleven. If you’d let them add up, that is."
"No," I said, "it couldn’t be. They always greet you so nicely when we drive out with Prochazka. There’s no one on the road ever who doesn’t, and on special occasions they fall on their knees and kiss your hand."
"What do you imagine?" said my mother. "Do you think they love us? They’d string us up on the nearest tree if they had the chance."
"On which tree?" I asked. "On the linden tree in the gravel space?"
My mother did not speak.
"But why?" I asked.
"Because we’re in the castle, living the way we do," said my mother.
"Why shouldn’t we be in the castle if my great-grandfather bought it from those ladies Wagner?"
"You are talking utter nonsense," said my mother. "What would they care? They didn’t care in Russia, when the Bolshies came, whose great-grandfather bought what from whom. How do you think I’ve got my manicure woman in London, who’s a grand duchess? Not that I believe her, of course. But still. She’s Russian and she had to run. So there you are."
"But do you really think the villagers here are canaille?" I said.
"Be reasonable, Edith," said my grandmother. "Just take an example. You know the wall round the park—why do you think it’s there? And why do you think the glass splinters are stuck on top of the wall—for decoration? And do you know just how much it costs me to keep this wall in trim, year in, year out—twelve kilometers of it? And apart from that, there’s Kocour with his gun and dog at night. Do you think that’s all for nothing? If they had a chance, the people would break in and wreck the park and steal the timber and carry off the exotic trees, even now in full peacetime. No, I’ll keep the three back—I’ll put it by, and it will work out. So you can imagine what they would do in a revolution, when everything is turned upside down and servants are masters and masters are servants. But I can see no way out now, unless I cheat with the nine and pay it back later."
"Don’t, or you’ll be sorry," said my mother.
I looked at both of them, speechless with astonishment at the way they "mixed it up like a Christmas loaf" —life, death, looting, dispossession, and a game of cards tangled in between. I thought of the linden tree in the gravel space, and how it really was the only tree near the castle, and how it was braced with iron girders because it was two hundred years old and charred black down one side, where lightning had struck it. My heart shriveled at the thought of how indifferent they were to it all, how they could talk about the end of everything without even a change of countenance or tone.
"And what then?" I asked. "Will Grandmama run away and become a manicure woman?"
"You should, Edith," said my mother. "You’ll start a new fashion for black-rimmed fingernails, ha, ha."
"I’m stuck with the nine now. It’s hopeless," said my grandmother.
"And the castle?" I said. "Who’ll have it?"
"The rabble, the mob, will have it," said my mother, "and I wish them luck with it, what with no electricity and not a single bath in the place, and only that one flushing lavatory with a chain, because your great-grandfather said the servants needn’t have one or there’d be no difference between them and us."
"Too true," said Uncle Frederick, who had just come into the room. "That’s what is meant by having a social conscience. He had a social conscience, do you understand?"
My mother said, "No, don’t give up, Mama. It may yet come out all right."
"But in that case," I persisted, "as it’s so uncomfortable, perhaps nobody would move into the castle, and the Austrian Room would be saved."
"The panes would break," said my grandmother, "and the doors would rot, and the snow and rain would wash off the Salzburg lakes, or whatever they are. If only I could have shifted the nine."
"That’s not all of it," said my mother, "because the canaille would come in on Sundays, in loving couples, and write things on the walls."
"What would they write?" I asked.
Uncle Frederick said, "Fascinating and original thoughts. ‘Vasek loves Mila,’ and a heart with an arrow. ‘All boys called Ferda are fools.’ That’s the true poetry welling up from the soul of the people, do you understand?"
"I’ve bungled it, and nothing can save me now," said my grandmother.
"Start another, Mama," said my mother.
"I’d rather wait till the lamps are brought in," said my grandmother. "My luck might turn with the light."
"I don’t know about your luck," said my mother, "but I do know about the gnats and midges—they’ll come in with the light, on the dot. They’re the only things you can rely on to perform in this place. And when I tell Kucera to get his men to clear out the lake, because it’s so choked up with dead leaves and duckweed you can’t see a shred of water in it, he goes and plays hide-and-seek in the hothouses and sends impertinent messages. What do I care about his creepy-crawly enormous Calville apples that he grows outsize on that espalier only a foot above the ground, as ridiculous as a dachshund, and how nobody else can do it and Sternborn in Sestajovice never had anything like it? And the lake stays a mess, and we get midges from it, and Prochazka sends us his flies across from the stables, because they are filthy, too, as bad as the lake, but Prochazka isn’t worried, because he’s an inverted camel and can drink for a fortnight without doing a stroke of work. It’s a scandal, Mama, and you know it, and you sit year in, year out, between the impertinence of the garden and the drunken stables and the wasteful kitchen. I don’t know how you can put up with it, Mama. You must be a saint and a martyr."
My grandmother, disdaining, as usual, to reply, stacked the cards and said, "It feels very close. Have a look, Edith, at the sky. Does it look like thunder?"
I stepped to the nearest window and leaned out over the sill, which was mottled like the bark of a plane tree, with the dirty brown paint peeling off in patches. I craned my neck to the right till I could see at least the farthest end of the terrace, where it curved round and where the balustrade gave way to the ivy-clad crenellations, which were as fake as the Gothic library wing itself. "Yes," I said, "it’s black behind the library. But over the park it’s lovely and peculiar. Do look at the sky, Mama."
My mother turned her head and said in a voice still weary from her grievances against the servants, "Yes, it’s nice." Then she added, in a softer and more animated tone, "It’s a good color. I once had a ball gown exactly that shade of green. You never knew it; that was before you were born. With diamanté straps. Frederick will recall it. Utterly and uniquely unusual. Nobody else had anything like it."
"Are you out of your mind?" said Uncle Frederick. "Do you think I can keep track of every blasted rag of yours? But it must have been utterly unique if you had it, because even then you were an utter and unique goose. But a younger goose, do you understand?"
"Do you always have to be offensive?" said my mother. "And do you always have to insult me with my age, when everybody else always thinks that Edith is my sister? Let me tell you, only the other afternoon, when—"
"Edith," said my grandmother, "run downstairs, will you, and tell them to shut all the windows before the rain?"
I left the room reluctantly, because this quarrel promised to be the most entertaining of the day.
II
IT WAS ALMOST four o’clock in the afternoon when I started out on a most familiar way, though this was the
first time in my life I was traversing it on foot. It was wind-still and chilly, and it had been drizzling on and off all day. Ahead of me, the park showed only treetops, owing to a dip in the ground, presenting an impenetrable screen as far as the eye could see—a deep, drenched green, fading to a dull blue in the distance. As I reached the turn of the road, where Prochazka had always given the whip to the horses so as to achieve the drive in with an impressive rumble of wheels and clatter of hooves, the wall came into view, and just then the sun broke faintly out of the clouds and sparkled on the glass shards. I halted, choked by rising tears and shaken by a nervous laughter. The park wall, which I had known to be soiled, patched, pitted, and crumbling, was smooth and prosperous-looking, sleekly clothed in a coat of gray paint. I said to myself, Hurry up. It’s no use dawdling. The afternoon coffee will be ready in the Garden Room. But there won’t be equality cake—it’s only the middle of May now, and the first cherries won’t be ripe till June.
Skirting the wall, I reached the entrance of the drive. The gateposts were brilliantly whitewashed, but I refused to be dazzled by their surprising neatness; instead, I peered at them closely, searching in vain for a trace of the pedestals on which the stone poodles had used to sit—a pathetic pair, trying so desperately to look like lions. I might have known, I said to myself.
I turned into the drive, enclosed on one side by the stables and on the other by the garden wall, and picked my way through the soggy mud, between ruts and remnants of paving, barely glancing at the farmyard opening to my left. I followed the bend of the drive and stopped. Ahead of me, beyond the vast, rounded gravel space, stood the castle, its matter-of-fact grandeur belying the absurdity of the fake Gothic wing. With its lion-colored, rough-surfaced stones, it had always looked more durable than neat, but now, to my bewilderment, it had a new, smoothly delicious tidiness, like an old print from which the smudges have been erased. This, I saw, was because of the window frames, which were painted a glossy white. I went across the gravel space, searching for the spot where the linden tree had been, but it had vanished as completely as the poodles. I continued toward the castle and found that the front door had vanished, too; it had been transformed into twin pointed windows enclosed in a pointed arch. But the door to the servants’ entrance stood ajar, and I went in.
The Darts of Cupid: Stories Page 11