The Salzburg Tales

by Christina Stead

  My sister Anna was fifteen, and absolutely enchanted with the idea of being in love, of having a fine trousseau and of making a marriage that Riga would talk about. She would lie on the couch for hours while I played with her beautiful hair, building it up into old-fashioned court styles and ringlets, talking about love and lovers, wishing for a plum-coloured silk dress, gesticulating, her brilliant eyes rolling and laughing, sometimes filling with tears, describing the lovers she would like to have, the way she would choose a husband. She sighed to have a great dowry so that she could absolutely choose her husband as a princess: then she would show her free and independent choice by picking a prince! I told her Papa would choose for her.

  The eldest son of the house opposite was in Berlin, in the diplomatic service, but the second son, a lieutenant, had his two rooms on the second storey opposite our sitting-rooms; and there he spent hours in the morning and afternoon and evening, dressing and undressing, polishing, blowing, brushing, trimming, burnishing. The mirror of his dressing-table was fixed near one of the windows, so we could see him standing there, examining his chin, smoothing his moustache and brushing his eyebrows with a small stiff brush.

  Anna had been away at a young ladies’ seminary all the winter of her fifteenth year, and she was so full of the novelties and tattle of the school year and news of the town, that she did not leave off talking for two weeks. Then one evening, coming into the salon, I found her standing perfectly still at the window looking at the house opposite, where the red sunlight blazed on the buttons and nose of the lieutenant, who was once more examining himself with science in the glass.

  “Gretl,” she said in a whisper, “how beautiful he is, really!”

  I told her primly that one could not say that a young man was beautiful, but she said: “He is beautiful, Gretl, look, there, there is my ideal!”

  She talked so much about the young man that I was offended: I was really a severe little thing, and besides, not half so pretty as Anna.

  From that hour on, nothing but night and the admonitions of parents drew her from the window. The next day she opened the window when Mama was out and leaned out as if to admire our garden: then she began to read, sew, recline, pose and gaze sentimentally in all directions out of the window. Imagine her disagreeable surprise when she saw the lieutenant walking up the street one evening with a young lady, whose parasol he carried. “It is only his cousin,” she cried out, and began to bang things about the room, and presently sat down and wet her handkerchief and blouse through with tears. Perhaps it was the lieutenant’s cousin: at any rate, we did not see the girl any more, and poor Anna took heart again.

  Her attentions were not lost on the young man, who at first looked amicably at her, but grew more and more bored by her admiration, as the days went on. He actually gesticulated angrily at her once or twice, and once shut the window with such a bang that splinters of glass flew out of the top panes. At that he was furious, and my sister, somewhat ashamed, but laughing until she got red in the face, hid herself in the curtains. The next morning the glazier fixed up the window and the soldier drew his curtains, pointedly, when he began to tittivate.

  Nothing deterred poor Anna: she hung out of the window to see him come out and go down the street: she even waved her handkerchief boldly at him. I was terribly ashamed of Anna. One morning she kept me in the window by force, and looking at the lieutenant began to describe very expressively the passion she felt for him; he must have known almost the words she used, she rolled her eyes and acted so. He came to the window and stared at her fixedly. She turned a little pale and stared back at him. The soldier began with great gravity to remove his clothing; he let his breeches fall to the floor, and at the same time started to undo his underpants. Poor Anna, after a horrified moment, turned her pale face to me, saying, “Oh! Oh!” rushed from the seat and began weeping hysterically on the sofa.

  She never looked at the lieutenant again, and he lived at his ease, but she could never hear the family mentioned without blushing for years after. I used to peep cautiously from behind the brocade curtains, at times, at him examining his face and profile eternally in the mirror, and had the impression that if one went into his room alone, one would find his face painted on the mirror by force of its having been reflected there so many times. He gave me the impression of one of these wooden soldiers, so stiff and high-coloured, who stand at the gates of toy castles. My first husband was a colonel, to think of that! And poor Anna, at twenty, ran away; dear me, that was a sad story, for she died that year and her husband came back to us a broken man, absolutely a broken man, and my father and mother out of pity made him their friend, and so he stayed in our house for years. He was my husband’s friend for years and visited us every Sunday. Poor Anna! Well, to think of it all now, so many years ago!

  “THAT reminds me of another thing, too,” said the Frau Hofrat Privatdozent. “Ten years ago I could not remember these things, but now all the things that happened in my childhood are coming back to me. Dear me, how we laughed and how excited we were: it was a wonder of God, ein wunder Gottes, but I talk too much: another time.”

  “No, no, now,” said the Musician. “Why, you recall to me all the old Europe of our town families: I could sit here and listen to you all the evening, Frau Hofrat Privatdozent Ernenberg: it is more music to me than “Don Juan”.

  THE WUNDER GOTTES

  WHY, it is nothing at all, said the Old Lady, but with us, you know, at our age (I mean mine), one thing brings another. We sit and some slight odour or sound brings back days and months of our youth, and hey-presto, the day has flown and the lamps are lighted and someone is bringing us our evening soup before we know it. It is a pleasant dispensation of providence to make the slowfooted aged days pass quickly and gaily. Well, recall me, for I wander, but it is no story. I was just thinking of the time so long ago when that happened. Oh, it was a marvel, no-one could believe it, and everyone talked about it, as about a miracle, or the last day, for a year ahead: yes, a wunder Gottes it was. I was a little thing then, and poor Anna’s friend Frieda was the daughter of the man who was to be the new stationmaster.

  For we were in Eydtkuhnen on the frontier and they were opening the railway from Koenigsberg to Kovno. Nobody had seen a train. In the newspapers only pictures had appeared, and we stared at the engine, that great iron creature that took you across the country for a ride, and we were so agitated that when the time drew near we could hardly sleep at night. There were lots of people in the town who said it would never go, or else there would be terrible accidents, and then there were others more cautious who said it would do if you had to go to see some relative who was dying, but that otherwise, the donkey-cart and trap were the best. But the whole town was en féte. And presently the engine came in. Ach, that was wonderful! Frieda’s father, the stationmaster, brought us to the engine-driver and he took us for a drive up and down the track, for father was town councillor then, and my brothers were all well-known in the town. That was a wonderful time then: they went mad with excitement, and everyone said, ‘See the progress we are making: science is wonderful.’ My brother Julius went down to see the wonder, but Theodor stayed at home because the train came in at three o’clock and that was the time for his nap.

  My brothers were all doctors, but Theodor was such a comic as you never saw. For twenty-five years he played cards at night from eight o’clock to one: he took two hours over his lunch and no-one could disturb him, and after lunch he went and napped for three hours, then he had his sprechstunden from five to seven. Every afternoon at two o’clock when he went into the back room to take his nap he put felt covers over his two cages of canaries, so that they could nap with him. It was such fun! Twenty-five years he had canaries, and they took a nap with him after lunch.

  He worked besides, getting up for his first consultations at eight in the morning. My brother Julius was a good doctor too, ach, ohne spass, a good man, a wonderful doctor. When I think how good he was—if he were here now to see how I eat!
But he did women’s diseases and Theodor used to laugh at him for it! “How can you go poking into women’s chamber-pots,” he said to Julius: “and washing babies’ bibs,” and he called him “the diaper-king”: always, he called him “the diaper-king”. But never mind: Julius was a good man; and imagine, after he died we found in his desk two gold medals from the University of Kiel—he had won them, and nobody ever knew. He was so modest: a good man. His wife never knew he had the gold medals. That is nice, isn’t it? That is modest. They were all clever, my brothers: but Theodor did not like to work too hard; if anyone was really sick he was angry, and if any of his patients died, he used to send quick, quick to another doctor to come and make the certificate: he would never in his life look at the dead. He did not like trouble: in summer when the babies had convulsions, or diarrhoea, he did not like to go; even to my babies, he would not come. He only liked quiet disorders, not dangerous, and so he specialised in stomach complaints. For they are usually not serious, a laxative, a little exercise, and so on.

  But if he ever got something more serious, quick, he sent the patient off to another doctor. He did not like trouble, Theodor, and so he used to sleep every afternoon, and when the first train came through from Koenigsberg, he would not go down to see it. He was angry because he heard the canaries cheep at the engine’s whistle. In the evening when he was playing cards and everyone wanted to talk about it, “What is it?” he said; “A very simple thing, I’ll explain the principle to you in five minutes, but not now, not now. There is no wonder in it”; and he got angry when he heard the Polish servant girl repeat what she had heard the townspeople say, “Ein wunder Gottes!”

  Poor Theodor! When he had lived in that house twenty-five years, his wife, Eugenie, wanted to move to a better house. A fine lady, Eugenie. She sat all day before a table, with a d’oyley, and on the d’oyley, a cup of tea, and that is all she did in her life. They moved to a better house, more elegant, but with no back room; and poor Theodor had a stroke; he could not move. In the excitement Eugenie could not be bothered with the canaries, so they sold them, and eight months after poor Theodor died. After the canaries were sold, he used to lie there in the elegant salon they had, with rich cushioned seats and portraits of our old father who had been a town councillor, and mother, with a black silk wig on, and the pictures of our grandmother and grandfather; and his own picture and Eugenie’s; and the picture of their children who were married and of his grandchildren. He would let his eyes stay in the room for hours and never turn his eyes from all those pictures, to the fine curtains and d’oyleys Eugenie had bought. Sometimes he would have the servant bring him a volume of Heine from the booktable and he would laugh a little, but he was very quiet all day in the house, and it was as if he did not hear the canaries and thought they were asleep under their felt covers. Eight months after he died. He did not like the new apartment.

  LAUGHING irrepressibly, the company rose, dispersed and slowly wandered downhill, and all through lunch-time, one heard people laughing suddenly as they recalled the tales of the Old Lady.

  In the afternoon they found that the Public Stenographer was getting ready to leave Salzburg, to go on to England, and the Frenchwoman, in the absence of the Viennese Conductor, brought her to the salon and insisted on her telling a tale to the women before she left. The Public Stenographer flushed, and refused, at first, but she suddenly made up her mind to it, and sitting down, plunged into her story without a preface.

  The Public Stenographer’s Tale

  OVERCOTE

  JUDE Martin, our father, was schoolmaster in our village, Sidbury-Nine-Churches. There is one church in Sidbury, and it has a Saxon tower, but you can see eight other belfries cropping out above the slopes and downs. The train does not run near there: it is very much the country.

  My father was a free-thinker. He attended church every Sunday, coming in late to make a disturbance, and sitting in the front row to laugh and make remarks aloud about Darwin and Galileo to annoy the minister during the sermons. The minister prayed aloud for the salvation of my father’s soul, to his face, every Sunday. We were shamed by the conduct of our father, but some of the villagers laughed in private, when the minister would not hear of it. Father used to go to the back-room of the public-house after Church to prove the Government was wrong, and to prove there was no hell: and he would come home laughing provokingly, mimicking the villager who said, taking his pipe from his cracked yellow teeth: “Yes, but, schoolmaster, them volcanoes, where does the fire come from?” and to whom he replied: “The earth has a boil and the boil busts.” We never laughed at that, although we could not resist listening to his highly-coloured stories: we expected to see the walls crack some day at his profanity and irreligion. An old villager said to me privately, taking me aside after the service once: “It ain’t right, Milly: it ain’t me that wishes your father harm, but he should watch out: the Lord will remember them words some day.”

  I remember the morning services on Sundays, the only days we were decently dressed, and wore boots and stockings. Mother put on her greenish-black dress with the pleated bodice and high collar, that we thought made her look so respectable: we were ignorant then. I remember the sun falling in through the clear glass, and the dust of my father’s snuff hovering in the sunbeam, and falling on his greasy, greenish, alpaca coat. Our father always wore a dirty coat and neckcloth, and long, dirty, black hair, as a protest against respectability, I thought then, designed as all his being was, to annoy and irritate people. Now I suppose it was because he was poor, had six children and an ignorant village girl for a wife.

  The minister would pray in a loud severe voice sent over my father’s head, but whenever he came to this point, “to the end that we may obtain forgiveness of the same, by his infinite goodness and mercy”, my father would sneeze regularly, and the motes of snuff danced madly in the sunbeams; and our mother would blush deep, deep, for she never got used to her husband’s being an outlaw. Father would recite the Lord’s Prayer, without kneeling, in a falsetto high-church twang, which made the little boys giggle: he lathered them if they giggled in school. When it came to the Anthem, my father stood up and sang out full and clear, in his strong baritone: in singing he was not a mocker, for it suited him to sing.

  We got the idea that our father was a wicked man and one likely to lead our minds into error. In school, when he was supposed to teach Scripture, our father would read the Epistle of St. Jude, for example, “… Even as Sodom and Gomorrah… Likewise also these filthy dreamers that defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities”, and he would teach the children that Sodom and Gomorrah were rich, independent cities full of free men, and that they were destroyed by accident. I don’t say he believed what he said, but he had to pretend to be smart, and always up to everybody’s game, even when it came to what he read in books. I don’t know what he didn’t teach those children, all to excuse himself for having a dirty coat, and calling out in Church. But fortunately, they didn’t understand: they all left school too young to get influenced.

  After church, our mother would take our hands, and hurry home to make dinner. Father stood about the churchyard to speak to the minister, or turn his back on him, just as it suited him, to take snuff and look for Patsy Blake.

  Patsy Blake was a village girl, fifteen years old when he first took up with her, an ignorant creature, but pretty and bold, the sort that men seem to admire. Our father put her in charge of the infants’ department to teach the little ones their ABC, although she had left school when she was twelve and had never known anything. It was just to keep her near him and to stop her from seeing the boys. The whole village knew that there was something going on between my father and Patsy Blake; we knew too, even the little ones; but our father was one who somehow never cared, and never got punished or ostracised like anyone else.

  Patsy Blake came home with father every Sunday to dinner, and mother waited on her hand and foot. She sat in her chair laughing with him and flirting with her eyes
, while mother carried the dishes in and out. We said to mother, “Don’t wait on her.” Mother pretended nothing was wrong, but she would stay a long time in the kitchen between meat and pudding, wiping her eyes on the oven-cloth, till father called out to her for the pudding: then one of us would go to help her and would pretend to jostle in the passage, so that we would have time to wipe the flour off her eyes. Those two were never ashamed. We used to say to mother, “Mother, it’s all right, it’s only father’s way: there’s nothing between them:” but we could see things were wrong. I don’t say they were guilty, but our mother died fifteen years ago and father married Patsy Blake in a year. I am sorry for her now: he treats her as badly as he did the other, and sits whole days in his chair, reading his books, answering in rude superior language when she speaks, laughing in his snobbish way at jokes she can’t understand, eating what she brings him without a word.

  Father shoved his children into any class at all, at school, and often sent us home to do any job that occurred to him. His sons he shouted at angrily all the time, degrading them before the other boys, calling them “thickheads” and “donkeys” and the girls he ignored altogether: the better for us. The three boys left school at twelve, but he kept the girls on to fourteen so that we could teach.

  I ran away to London when I was fourteen, got a job as a nursemaid, and studied French and German. As soon as I could, I sent for my two younger sisters, and got them to study, so that we could go into business together.

  In 1914 I got a job in Antwerp, and took my sister with me, sure I could get her a job: both of us went over the very week war was declared. There was nothing for us to do, and we could not get back: so we sat round with other foreigners. Every day in the park, my sister met a German and, talking together, I suppose they took a fancy to each other. I did not see much in him myself: he was rather stout. She was the beauty of the family: we knew she would marry. She went to see him in the internment camp and it was kind of agreed that they should marry when he got out. Whether she married him to keep her word, or because she fancied it, I don’t know. You think you know a person all your life, and you don’t know the first thing about them.