The Wax Fruit Trilogy

by Guy McCrone

  Maximilian turned to say a word to Henry, to draw him into the conversation he was having with the husband of Phœbe’s friend. But as he did so applause broke in the theatre. The conductor had come in, and was taking up his baton. Herr Hirsch turned back to listen to the opening music of the new opera.

  There was little overture, apparently, for almost at once the curtain had risen on Luther’s wine-cellar in Nuremberg, lit only by beams of moonlight, while the voices of the Spirits of Good Cheer could be heard singing their opening chorus behind the scenes.

  Henry was glad to be left alone. Let them sit listening to this tomfoolery, and leave him in peace!

  Now the innkeeper had come in, carrying a lamp. Obediently the light on the stage jumped up to reinforce the effect of brightness. The engineer in Henry was puzzled. How could so many gas-burners jump into flame at once? But he was forgetting. He remembered having read that the new Director had installed a system of electric contacts near each gas-jet. By merely switching on the current of electricity and the flow of gas at the same time, immediate and full illumination would result. It was ingenious and interesting. But they had better take care. People, these days, were rushing into all kinds of new uses for electricity without taking enough thought.

  Now the prologue was over. People whispered that Herr Ferenczy was singing this new part well. There was applause while the curtain descended slowly on Hoffmann, as he began to tell of his unhappy loves. Presently it had risen on the first of the Tales.

  Henry watched the traffic of the stage without bothering to take it in. The chorus of Spalanzani’s guests were coming in to hear the song sung by Olympia, the wonderful mechanical doll.

  Suddenly his eyes were caught by a little, plump lady of the chorus. Her paint, patches and high marquise wig merely underlined her identity. It was Pepi Klem. Sweat broke upon him. He looked at Phœbe. Had she, too, seen Pepi? Would she think he had brought her here, knowing, yet caring nothing?

  But the fixed, charming smile remained on Phœbe’s face. Now the human doll had been brought from its cabinet. Spalanzani’s guests passed down before it, one after another, to admire its finery. Now for a moment Pepi was right in the front of the stage. Phœbe could not miss her.

  But Phœbe’s expression did not change.

  This was horrible to him, this iron control! It was well that she did nothing now. But when once they were home again, he knew she would smile, say what a pleasant evening it had been, bid him a bright goodnight, and go off to her own room.

  Doing what he conceived to be his duty, he visited his child regularly. He had learnt from Frau Klem that Phœbe had seen the child in the Volksgarten. That it had upset her. But not by the flicker of an eyelid had Phœbe betrayed any of this to himself.

  And he loved Phœbe. He always would love Phœbe, he supposed. Yet this coldness would kill him! In her heart she would blame his callousness for bringing her here tonight. But he hadn’t known. Pepi had said something about work again, but he had, typically, taken little notice.

  Down on the stage the doll was singing her elaborate, high-pitched song. Sitting among Spalanzani’s guests, Pepi was simulating an elaborate, coquettish interest.

  Crude rage took hold of Henry—crude rage and revulsion. That young woman was a slut! She should be at home. What right had she to flaunt herself thus brazenly, with a child little more than two months old? He was glad that soon he would shake the dust of this terrible strumpet city from beneath his feet!

  But now, in the flash of his rage, a dark place was illuminated. Would he be glad to leave Vienna? What of the child he would leave behind him in the Quellengasse? He knew now that his son had entangled his affections.

  His desperate eyes again sought his wife. The fixed smile was still upon her lips.

  A great bitterness flooded Henry—bitterness and dark bewilderment. The doll had finished her song. He could see Pepi down there on the stage clapping in mock applause.

  He must get out of here! Out, to walk by himself and think. Real applause had broken in the auditorium at Fräulein Jiona’s singing of the doll’s music. Under cover of the noise he opened the door of the box, signed to Maximilian and went. Outside, rudderless and distracted, he fought himself back to some kind of composure, striding up and down the empty foyer.

  When he reappeared in the box at the end of the act, Phœbe hoped, with every show of elegant concern, that there was nothing wrong with Henry.

  III

  December the eighth.

  It was after half-past six. Pepi Klem sat in her corner of the chorus gazing into the mirror and trying to decide just where, on her cheek, she should place the dab of black paint, which from the auditorium would look like a beauty spot. At last she decided upon the top of her cheekbone, just a little beneath the corner of her right eye, took up her paint-stick, made the spot and sat back to examine the effect.

  All about her in the large room was light, laughter, noise and comedy, half-dressed women. This was no hack, ageing chorus. The Director, Herr Jauner, had been determined to have everything and everyone of the best—soloists, chorus, orchestra. The posthumous masterpiece of Offenbach must be rendered with all the care and reverence due to it, and in accordance with the traditions of this, the most musical of cities. In February the dead composer’s work had been acclaimed in Paris. Now in December it must be still more acclaimed in Vienna.

  Several of the girls were clearing their throats, singing snatches. Pepi did the same, hoping that those nearby would note the fineness of her voice. But as nobody showed any interest, she stopped, gave her pert little face an additional dusting of rice-powder, and decided that she was enjoying herself.

  She was grateful to her cousin, Lisa, for getting her this work. It had come very soon after the birth of her baby. But work with this management was a chance not to miss, and she needed money. If she made a somewhat plump little guest in Spalanzani’s house and Giuletta’s palace, the chorus-master had been pleased with her voice, and she would soon regain the slimness of twenty-one. Besides, her mother helped with the child, and a neighbour, a good woman who had borne a child at much the same time as herself, had been glad, for a consideration, to undertake the nursing of it.

  Last night, on the part of the dressing-table assigned to her, she had placed photographs of her father and mother. The other girls had photographs. She must give herself the importance of having photographs, too. Now, tonight, she remembered she had another. She took it from her bag and wedged it between the glass and the frame of the mirror. It was of herself, holding the baby—a thin little card, of which she had only one copy, done cheaply and inexpertly in the Favoriten. The baby was not very clear—he had not stayed quite still—but it wasn’t bad of herself, she thought, as she looked at it now.

  “Whose child is that?” the girl next to her was asking.

  “My child.”

  “How sweet!” The girl smiled. Experience had taught her not to ask too many questions.

  But time was getting on. A call came for the ladies of the chorus to go down. Pepi stood up and gathered her loose dressing-wrap about her. As a Spirit of Good Cheer, she had only to stand behind the scenes and sing. When that was over, there was ample time to come back up here and finish dressing for the first of Hoffmann’s Tales.

  She found the large stage milling with people. Discipline in the Ring Theatre was not as strict as might be. This presentation, it was said, took more than two hundred, and most of them seemed to be here—men and women of the chorus, dancers, soloists, carpenters, scene-shifters, men in charge of the lighting.

  She pushed her way through them to the front of the stage and the closed curtain. To Pepi, as to any other stage-struck girl, this great wall of cloth, which would presently rise and disappear out of sight, was the very essence of excitement, of romance.

  Another girl was examining the audience through a peep-hole. Pepi touched her arm. “Please, will you allow me for a moment? I want to find my mother and father.”


  Yes! There they were, high up, right in front on the fourth gallery.

  She had wanted them to come last night, but the first night demands of the more influential had made that impossible. Besides, today was a Roman Catholic holiday, and her mother and father had been able to join the newly formed queue just after four o’clock. Pepi herself had left the Quellengasse long after they had. She had waved to them pompously as she passed them outside just before six.

  At the peep-hole she laughed affectionately at her blonde, untidy mother hanging over the brass rail, scanning the auditorium beneath her with the excitement of a young girl. Her father was sitting back in a typical attitude, running his hand through his fair mane, looking cross and impatient for the performance to begin.

  Still at the peep-hole Pepi became aware of a hissing of gas. For a moment she did not bother to turn round. They were testing the lighting apparatus. They had done so last night.

  But now there was an excited shout! She turned round.

  By the new mechanism, the gas had been turned on, but the electric contacts had not lighted all the jets. Gas was streaming everywhere and rising to the hanging scenery above. All at once a darting flame set one of the side-pieces alight.

  The mob on the stage turned and ran, Pepi with them. But because of her distance from the entrance, most of the people on the stage were before her. She could hear a girl screaming as she fell and was bruised by the others on the stone stair leading down from the stage to the street. She would wait for a moment and keep calm. The men would control the fire presently.

  Suddenly she remembered she had foolishly left some money in her bag. She must take time to rush up to her dressing-room—it was only a step or two—seize her bag and bring it out to safety.

  Now she found herself standing, panting, before her mirror.

  Two other girls were there—fetching their valuables, too, perhaps.

  She took her bag and turned to go.

  Suddenly the lights went out.

  Down on the stage no one was at his post, and hysteria vied with folly. An excited scene-shifter drew the burning side-pieces up above the stage to where the other scenery was hanging, and worse—to where escaping gas kept collecting. The gas exploded; the scenery caught fire and began to fall down upon the stage. No one opened the cocks of the safety water-tank above. No one lowered the iron curtain. The cloth curtain was blown outwards, revealing the blazing stage to the waiting audience, who had, as yet, suspected nothing.

  There was panic and a rush to escape. But the same hand that had turned off the gas in Pepi’s dressing-room had turned it off on the stairs and in the passages. Only from the stage, which was supplied from a private gasometer on the roof, did gas continue to pour itself into the theatre, asphyxiating many more people than were burnt.

  Folly piled itself still higher. Cloakroom attendants had the keys of emergency doors in their pockets. It was nobody’s business to call the fire brigade. When the firemen came at last, they fought their way to the floor of the theatre, only to have their lamps extinguished by roaring draughts and their lungs choked by gas and dense smoke.

  But folly was not yet finished. In spite of the choking smoke, the firemen called out to ask if anyone were still in the theatre. There was no reply. They came out to say that everyone was safe, and took to removing furniture from reception-rooms and records from the office.

  Yet hardly any from the third and fourth galleries had been able to leave the theatre! The one or two who had fought their way to safety gave this terrible news! When the firemen returned at last to the help of the upper galleries, the narrow staircases were so much blocked with the crushed and the suffocated, that by the time these were removed, the galleries were collapsing into the inferno beneath.

  The windows of the chorus-room were few and high. They were shuttered against the December weather. Neither light nor air could come to the three girls that way. There was black darkness—black darkness, an increasing smell of smoke and, above all, the stupefying, giddy smell of gas.

  They called to each other, groping until their hands touched: then they clung together. Pepi could feel the others shuddering, sobbing with terror and coughing convulsively.

  She must try to keep her head. “We must feel our way round the wall until we find the door,” she said, as firmly as her voice would let her.

  They advanced until they touched a wall, then began to feel their way along it. They went slowly. The hands they felt with trembled.

  But the sickening smell of gas, combined with the acrid smell of smoke, made Pepi’s head spin. Now she needed all her resolution to keep upon her feet.

  “Here’s the door!” Her voice did not seem to belong to her. It came from far away. Unreal. She had felt like this once at the dentist’s. Bells rang in her ears. She seemed to feel herself fling the door open.

  No! That made it much worse!

  This smoke and gas! But was it, after all, a real door? Or was she—? If only this smoke and gas—! And was she on her knees—? Or was she imagining that, too?

  Her baby’s face seemed to be suspended above her, expanding and contracting like a reflection on glassy water.

  The Hayburn. But the Hayburn couldn’t help her here!

  Her mother. Her mother could help her. If only her mother, leaning up there on the rail of the gallery, would—Oh, this smoke! She must keep her eyes tight shut. And this coughing! So bad for her voice, too! How could they expect her to sing if—? Yes, her mother could—

  But Pepi Klem no longer thought what her mother could do.

  The little moth had flown into the flame.

  IV

  Phœbe had waited in the night once before—when, as a child of fourteen, a fierce instinct had held her until she could snatch to safety the little boy she loved. Reason had fallen away from her then. It had fallen away from her now. Once again she was nothing but an instinct; but this time an instinct blinded by hurt pride.

  Bareheaded and dishevelled, she thrust her way through the surging crowd, pushing back and forth among them; dodging policemen, soldiers and firemen; jostled, shouted at, insulted—caring for none of them, in this red world of flame, smoke and embers.

  What did she seek? An escape from her own jealous sufferings? Appeasement for the heart Henry had come so near to breaking?

  But why was she seeking these things here?

  Or was she standing, primitively, crudely paying unholy homage to the gods of this dreadful holocaust?

  It was only when she found herself before the burning theatre that this strange madness came upon her. She had been waiting for Henry to return for his meal in their rooms in the Wieden. He was late, as he so often was these days. He had much to hand over, he said, before he returned to Scotland. But tonight he might be hanging back. The sight of the Klem girl on the stage last night must have increased his embarrassment.

  Then the house-porter’s wife had come up, fat and breathless, to tell Phœbe that the Ring Theatre was burning; that you could see the glow in the sky. Phœbe threw on her fur jacket, took up her gloves and went out to look.

  Everything around lay ominously quiet. Silver snow and moonlight. Somewhere a clock struck half-past seven.

  Yes. Just over there to the left of the Karlskirche there was a red glare in the sky. And was that a distant shouting? Phœbe made her way into the Wiedner Hauptstrasse to get a better view.

  Here she found excited people streaming towards the Opernring. She followed with them. As she passed the Opera House she saw the audience in their finery leaving hurriedly, or standing on the steps distractedly seeking Fiakers. The performance had been stopped. As she cut behind the Opera and thence along the Herrengasse, all the sky in front of her glowed red and angry. Her heart beat in her throat. Now she was in the Schottengasse. And now in the Schottenring among the mob before the theatre itself.

  It was after eight. But she had taken no account of time or exertion. She stood, panting. The flaming theatre lit up the Schottenring as th
ough it were broad day.

  About her the agonised citizens of this emotional city were standing, weeping aloud, imploring one another to do something. Some of them, as was obvious from their holiday clothes, had been in the theatre—people in poorer circumstances, most of them, who had gone early to cheap seats. This young girl cried that she had left her mother behind. She had hoped to return with help. This man—a wife and two half-grown children. This woman—her lame husband. If the firemen would only run their ladders up to that window there—she was sure it was that window—her husband had said he would wait. Oh, why didn’t they do it! The woman tried to tear her way through the crowd, fighting like a wild cat.

  A burst of sparks shot upwards from the roof. A gust of wind caught them and blew them towards the crowd. Police and soldiers shouted at the people to stand back. They paid little heed, brushing hot cinders from their clothes. Flames blazed up now—blue gas-flames.

  Phœbe moved again, struggling forward; her Highland eyes wide open, gleaming and possessed.

  They were suffering, these people around her. But she had suffered, too! Suffered when she lost her child! They were suffering and lamenting, for those who were suffering still more in that monstrous, burning trap.

  She was plunged in an ocean of suffering. Tossed hither and thither in buffeting waves of suffering. It filled her with a sullen exaltation.

  Another burst of sparks drove the crowd back for a moment. The licking fire roared and crackled. Again Phœbe thrust her way forward. What was that wild screaming. People at upper windows shrieking for help? They were suffering, too! She had suffered when she learned that Henry had been unfaithful to her; had touched, as she thought, the bottom of the pit. But when she had seen the Klem girl at the Crown Prince’s wedding celebrations—! No. It had been too much!