“If you will have me; but a father is not very much chop with these big girls.”
“The house is in your name,” said the mother. “William, Rose’s husband, has managed it all these years and been our support, but the business continues in your name.”
At this moment the servant announced that lunch was waiting for them, and they went in to eat. At the door, seeing the old diningroom, little changed, with pots of flowers and lace curtains, James took his wife’s arm and stooped to kiss her forehead, but she slipped her arm out of his grasp and, flushing, went to the head of the table. James sat at the other end and nodded to himself ostentatiously, as if in private conversation with himself.
During the meal they did not question the father on his work or the reasons for his coming home, perhaps out of delicacy; but they began a discussion with William about a marionette he was carving to represent “Coppelius” in “The Tales of Hoffman”. Then the old man asked wonderingly:
“Does William carve your new dolls?”
“Oh, yes, Papa; wonderful marionettes with the most comical expressions; and William is a wonderful ventriloquist—wait till you hear him!”
The old man said nothing, but went on eating his dinner. At dessert he got the courage to ask for another glass of Tyrol wine, rough and red, which he had always liked, although it did not compare with the over-fruity Italian wine, and then he said cheerfully:
“Well, daughters, will you take the old marionettist back into the show? I haven’t forgotten how; I even used to make them for the boys back in Italy. You remember the pas seul I used to make the demon king do? I’ll bet you don’t have that in your show nowadays.”
The daughters hesitated, and then the mother said calmly:
“We don’t need anyone else at present in the show: we can manage perfectly as we are. I suppose there are odd things you can do if you want to stay about. The place is yours, I can’t say ‘No’ to that: if you want to spend a bit of money on it, we could get a new stage, for example. And I think a tour round the country would be a good idea: I have had a few offers, but not satisfactory.”
“This is a nice reception,” said the father, in cheerful reproach, dropping his fork and spoon on his plate. “I come so many miles, leave my work, my friends in Verona, all to see you. I am an old man, I borrowed money to get a new suit to see you, and I had to travel all the way third class and sit on newspapers so that I would not get the new suit dirty.”
“Why did you come third class? “asked the mother.
“Because I’m a third class body,” said James, spreading out his hands on his knees and shaking his beard.
“Didn’t you save all these years? “said the daughter Anna. “I thought you had a good job.”
“No, I didn’t save. Yes, I had a decent job doing Dantes and Tuscan girls in alabaster, but the pay is not high, good as it is counted in the trade. They put me on to imitating antiques from excavations, but I’m only good for the busts or for comic subjects. So I became a real ne’er-do-weel, drank with the other men, went to the cheap theatre, ran after a girl or two—there was one in the street just now, who is she? With the face of a medallion, a large bosom and small heels sticking out of thonged sandals: she waggled her tail at me in a red striped calico, pretty girl—hm, well, I slept at night on a straw mattress, and for clothing cheapened a secondhand pair of pants down in the old town. At last I got tired and thought I’d come home and let you keep me!”
His hand combing his beard trembled a little, but he smiled at them courageously, assuming a mischievous look.
William said nothing, but looked down on his plate, waiting to see what the family would do. The girls sat silent with clouded blank faces, and the youngest, a plump, ardent girl, said:
“You’re our father, even if we have to keep you. We always expected you home sometime, at least I did. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t got any money. There’s some money—it was for my wedding. I’ll put it off, I don’t care, if you want it—what does it matter, a few months? I’ll—I’ll put it—”
But she suddenly threw down her serviette and ran from the room. They heard her crying into a cushion in the next room. When they began to talk again her sobs grew less, but she did not come back.
Anna, the eldest daughter, coming to a decision, said:
“Don’t take any notice of that, Papa: Juliet always cries. Let’s talk it over in a sensible way; after all it’s a question of budgetting, isn’t it? Naturally, we didn’t expect you, although it’s nice to see you. It’s surprising that you didn’t write us in fifteen years, though. I didn’t get married, of course, on account of my trouble, so I am the man of the family, and you won’t mind me speaking frankly. Let’s hold a family council. We’re all interested, because while we make our living, there is not much over for extras, and if there is to be a rearrangement of our budget, we must all make a sacrifice. What Juliet says is nonsense, she can get married just the same; it’s not fair to keep the child waiting. The older ones must see that her happiness is not delayed. Now, as to the theatre, there is really not much place for you there, Father; but you say you’re a good sculptor for the trade. I don’t see why you shouldn’t get a position in this town, there is plenty to do—you can’t starve in Vienna. I will go out this afternoon, if you like, and speak to the wholesalers. If you can get them to take your supplies, you can work at home, in your own time, at leisure, and sell what you make.”
“You are very kind, Anna,” said the father. “It is good of you to try to place your father.”
“Father, don’t be unreasonable,” said Anna, “what can I do? We are working people. We only have the money we’ve made. Mother works. Juliet works, William works; and Juliet’s young man can do sleight-of-hand tricks, so that we think we can sandwich in a little variety between the puppet shows; but we all have to work hard to keep going.”
“Yes, I suppose so. Nevertheless, whether you think I’m a loafer, a nuisance, or not, you should try to cover your indifference with a little daughterly feeling and not talk straight away of putting me as a stonemason’s hand, or something,” said James.
“It’s impossible to explain the situation to you, I see,” said the daughter, “when you’re feeling obstinate.”
Anna, the mother, sat up in her chair and opened her mouth for the first time.
“James, you were my husband, but now that you reproach us, after coming back without a word, from fifteen years of vagabondage, like your fine brother Peter, I must say you’ve behaved irresponsibly. You left me alone when I was a young woman with five children to keep. I managed to do it. Now that you’re tired of roaming and seeing the world and spending your money on all sorts of rubbish, you want to come home and have us coddle you, as if you’d been the best of husbands and fathers. A man like you should never have children! You were ruined by that art-school scholarship…”
“Begin rather with the Fall of Adam,” said James, unheard. “…you wanted to be a sculptor. So you ruined a very good woodcarver to mess round with clay and hack bits of marble. A sculptor, running away at the bidding of his good genius! Get away with you, you know perfectly well, James, that you’ve wasted your time and done no good at all. You would have been much better off here, in the marionette show. You’re good with little things, Lilliputian dramas to amuse the babies; but you had to go off and try to imitate antiques. Now, you’ve made a hash of everything. You had better do what Anna says, and settle down here. You’re my husband: you’re welcome,” said the wife, calming down with all she had said, “they’d think ill of me if I turned you out, even after all that’s happened. But don’t be so toplofty; your coming back is a real upset for us, James, and the children will have to make sacrifices. It’s hard for them to do it, after working so hard; so be patient with them and try to do what they want.”
“The tramp’s progress is neatly set out,” said James calmly.
“Ah, look at that, will you,” said Anna, turning energetically to her son-in-l
aw; “he takes it sitting down, calmly. He likes that description of himself: he probably thinks it whimsical. Anything for a calm life, a plate of goulash and a glass of beer. I know what these itinerants of art are like.”
“I’ll go into the studio and see what space there is for work to be done in,” said James, rising. “I don’t insist on goulash or beer, but I like rye-bread if there will be any for supper.”
He climbed to the second floor where his workroom had been. All was cleaned up and put in one corner, while William’s worktable, with the half-made “Coppelius” lying on it, stood in the centre of the room under a skylight. Then James went down to the theatre and they heard him pottering about.
“Let him look,” said his wife to their daughter Anna, “perhaps he’ll settle down and we will be able to fit him in. If he goes away again, though, it will be no harm. I believe he likes strangers. Not that I would let him go without money in his pocket. It’s a little upsetting for me, too, of course. I went last month, you know, to see about a divorce.”
They had no room for James in the house so they rented a small room for him not far away, and he stayed there and did some fancy articles in wood ordered by a shop selling cheap objects d’art. When winter came on he went away from Vienna one morning and his family never heard from him again.
But James’s mother looked out at the cloaked figures making tracks in the snow along the Nonnthalgasse beneath gloomy Hohensalzburg and said: “I dreamed last night that Peter and Cornelius met me in the street on a bright, sunshiny day; they were little boys and were going to school. Behind them was an old man with a long beard who came up and begged me for some bread: I looked at him and saw that it was James.”
“Your dreams are always the same, mother,” said James’s father. “I don’t think I dream of anything at all. Give me some coffee.”
At that moment the doorbell rang, and at the door the old woman found a man with a long beard, who said, smiling:
“I told you I was the stay-at-home of the family. Can I stay with you, mother? I will earn my own living.”
Till the end of his life James made small things for the tourists in Salzburg, and his mother went shopping and told the women about her son the sculptor who had travelled all over the world. She knew nothing about his wife, his children, or his marionette theatre, for James knew that she would think a marionette show a comedown for a sculptor.
THE sun was now high, and the noontide noises of the town came clear and loud through the wood. Some of the ladies wandered in the wood picking the wild violets which grow freely, or dislodging with polished thumb-nails, the red arboreal fungi. The others stayed in their seats thinking a while, indolently, of the tale told, and of their dinners. One of them, an English Poet, answering his friend, a poet too, related
The Poet’s Tale
GUEST OF THE REDSHIELDS
ON the second of January, when I was wondering how I should stave off my creditors on the fifteenth, Mr James Redshield visited me and acquainted himself with my home. It is a studio on the eighth floor, furnished with casement-cloth curtains, grass mats, a typewriter, a chair, a stove, and a lawyer’s filing cabinet. Shortly after, I was invited to the castle of the Redshields for the weekend. In the afternoon we rode, with a small party, through the beech and chestnut forest, where deer abound, and over the pastures of the estate. The weather was showery, with gleams of sunshine; and so that we should not be encumbered with waterproofs, our host ordered out two small donkey-carts, which followed us at a strategic distance, with rugs, mackintoshes, galoshes and umbrellas. Outriders, discreetly passing behind distant clumps of trees, warned off picnickers, poachers and billposters; with them, a small band of waiters carried provisions hot and cold, which were prepared for us in a small clearing, when the sun shone, around four o’clock. A small cloud driving over the scene, caused a band of footmen in livery to rise modestly from behind bushes and hold in readiness umbrellas and a waterproof canopy to cover the trestle tables. Our ride terminated and we encountered no untoward accident.
After a peaceful evening with my cultivated hosts, I retired to my room, one large and compendious. The curtains and wall covering were of the same silk and same design. When the door was closed I found myself in a floral bower, mossy and perfumed. In a cabinet at my bedside was an exhaustive collection of cigarettes of the strength and provenance I am used to. A bookcase contained the English poets bound in shagrin, the French poets in morocco, the Arabian Nights, with augmentations, in oasis goat, a private edition of the journals of the most famous prosewriters and poets in parchment, and the secret annals of the Papacy, the Quai d’Orsay, Scotland Yard and the lost archives of Gortchakov bound in sharkskin. A universal dictionary, a rhyming dictionary, a thesaurus, an illustrated bestiary, inks of various colours and consistencies, pencils of all hardnesses, penhandles of many shapes, and pens of steel, quill and gold, were all fitted into a combination lectern and writing desk, which held also a dictaphone, an improved pantograph for writing by hand, and a stenotype machine. The modern poet could desire no more.
A small handbook on the table explained that by pressing buttons in the entry I could change the wallpaper and curtains, or cause a series of spot, flood, and footlights to play, so that the aspect, perspective and size of the room would alter entirely. If I wished, the walls would slide back, leaving me enclosed in a pavilion of glass, transparent from within but not from without, so that I might ruminate in privacy on the rich and rolling demesne.
In a small glass-and-metal bar, fruits, soft and alcoholic drinks, coffee and mineral waters, cakes and comfits, bromides and sedatives, and bouillons in hot flasks stayed to comfort the wakeful guest. But I will not attempt to indicate the infinite advantages of this room: time can destroy but cannot compass them.
I sat in an easy chair with adjustable back and foot and placed one dangling foot on a small brass knob planted in the dais on which the bed stood. The platform immediately rose and the bed, all in a moment, sank into the ceiling without a trace, while the floor, perfectly carpeted and unencumbered permitted me to stretch my legs, when I felt kinaesthetic. On reading in the book of directions that the walls were soundproof, I took up a violin which lay on a table of calamander wood and silver, and began to play the Chaconne of Bach. A moment after finishing, I heard a light tap, which, I imagined, was on the shutters. I loosened these, but only the tempered wind was there. I looked forth. A rolled-up ladder was attached to the balcony, and at a careless tap of my cigarette, it unwound and invited me to descend directly into the park. The full but cloudy moon shone irregularly on the cockscombed glades, rounded knolls, ideal vistas, terraces and wildernesses sweetly artificed, which appeared momently along the serpentine paths; and here fountains, a well of dark sound, a jet of snow, and there watercourses, dulcet with pools, resonant with pebbles, with flute and lyre, descanted in the woods. In an hour I returned, wound up my ladder, closed the shutters and thought of sleeping. I had begun to undress, meditating lazily, when again I heard a soft rapping, louder than before. “Surely,” said I, “that is something, within the wall, a clickbeetle, or death-watch, a rat running over the beams, the hot-water pipes vibrating.” But I said: “Come in.”
A maître d’hôtel immediately entered the room through an invisible door in the wall, served by a secret passage. This mode of access was to avoid the embarrassment a guest feels at hearing a passepartout turned in his lock: moreover, since the passage was overheated, aliments could be conveyed along it without turning cold. The man had a silver-backed tablet in his hand, and, addressing me with a mathematically modulated courtesy, he asked if I would take anything on waking in the morning, and whether it should be tea, coffee, cocoa, or some other thing I might suggest. I said I would take tea.
“Ceylon, China, Russian or Indian tea?” he asked delicately, with pencil poised.
“China tea,” said I.
“Black or green?” he asked.
“Black,” said I.
“And o
f what flavour: Pekoe, Orange Pekoe, Congou, Oolong, Soochong, Pekoe-Soochong, Poochong or Bohea?”
“My mother liked Soochong,” said I.
“With, or without, an admixture of dried tea flowers, or jasmine flowers?” he continued.
Said I: “With jasmine flowers.”
“Now may I trouble you,” he said politely, “to know whether you like it hot or cold, and with or without lemon, or milk or cream, and sugar?”
“With milk and sugar.”
“As to the milk,” said he, “will you have whole milk, skim milk, condensed milk, buttermilk, cream or whey?”
“Whole milk,” I said, much taken aback.
“Should it be, sir,” he said, “from the Guernsey or the Jersey herd?”
“Guernsey,” I cried.
“Then as to the sugar,” he said, “will you have cane sugar (white or brown), beet sugar, palm, maple or sorghum sugar?”
And when I replied: “White cane,” he inclined and inquired: “From Cuba, the Philippines, Queensland or Natal?”
“Cuba, then,” I said, thinking that no more discrimination could be required, even of a guest of the Redshields.
Sensing my fatigue, he asked softly: “May I suggest the Province of Camaguey?”
“Even so.”
“Good, and as to form, loaf, granulated, crystallised, or soft?” he asked; and I replied: “Loaf!”
“Now, sir,” he said, in a firmer tone, “what will you eat?” In haste I replied, ere he could begin his inexorable enumeration: “Bread and butter.” But the words had not left my mouth before his ingeniously insinuating vocables were upon me with, Wheaten bread, corn, oats, barley or rye bread, gluten or protein bread, and if wheaten, as he took the liberty to suppose, whether that made from spring patent (high protein), ordinary spring patents, clears (first spring), soft winter straights, hard winter straights, hard winter patents or hard winter clears, and whether new baked, or old, hot or cold, and whether crumb or crust, and in what form, whether Danish, Swedish, German, French or English (for example), and, my choice being made, whether aërated or salt-rising bread, and in what shape, plain or fancy, tin, cottage, twist, roll or crescent?
The Salzburg Tales Page 7