The Flowers of the Forest

by Joseph Hone

  ‘It’s just possible. But don’t you see? – the man said he’d call again tomorrow afternoon. After three o’clock. That’s about half-way through the matinée. It fits. He’s using a public phone – backstage somewhere probably. Yes,’ Klaus ran on, ‘maybe he’s not on stage at that moment, can just step out for a minute. You see, if the police had been monitoring the call – and he doesn’t know that they haven’t been – and even if they managed to trace it back to a call-box in the Staatsoper – well, there’s probably a hundred people backstage at any one time there. How could they isolate any single person? Especially if he’d gone back on stage immediately afterwards.’

  ‘All rather far-fetched,’ I said, suspecting Klaus’s Sherlock Holmes act had been done more to impress Rachel and Madeleine than as a pointer to any actual truth.

  Klaus turned to Madeleine. ‘Well, we’ve heard it now ourselves: as you say, the man is reading or memorising the statement, so surely – he’s an actor: that well-modulated voice, and exaggerated too, just as an actor would do it – disguising it, in case anyone tried to identify him afterwards in that way. Probably a bit-part player – there’s lots of them in The Gypsy Baron. Crowds of gypsies –’

  ‘And hussars too,’ Rachel put in.

  ‘Of course. They come right after the “Dompfaff” duet – the arrival of Graf Homonay and his troop of Hussars. Of course! They interrupt the lovers. That’s why the man stops so short on the call. He’s on stage in the next scene. It’s my guess that he’s one of the Hussars. Perfect cover!’

  Klaus was very pleased with himself. I really didn’t know if he had a point or not. One flaw struck me. ‘But why,’ I said, ‘should these Croatians go to all the trouble and risk of getting a Viennese bit-part actor to read the message out, when they could do it themselves?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Klaus said expressively. ‘Maybe they don’t speak too good English or German. Or this actor may be a sympathiser – one of the Red Brigade or some such.’

  ‘I think it’s just a recording in the background,’ I said. I disliked Klaus’s confident deductions. ‘It’s all too unlikely,’ I said again.

  ‘Well, we can find out, can’t we? We can be backstage at the Staatsoper when he calls tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘We should give the tape to the police,’ Madeleine said steadily. ‘And let them handle it.’

  ‘You can,’ Klaus replied forcefully. ‘But you run the risk that they know about you all in Vienna by now. They may just pick you up and keep you on ice – and that will be the end of it. The Viennese police aren’t going to interest themselves in arresting bit-part players at the Staatsoper on your behalf. Besides, it’ll be too late then. The performances will be over.’ He turned to Madeleine. ‘You wait in your room at three o’clock and I’ll take Peter with me to the Staatsoper – and we’ll watch tomorrow afternoon, backstage. I can easily pretend I’m auditioning for some singers or musicians. They know me well there in any case.’

  There was silence in the big van. it was nearly midnight. We were all tired. ‘Well, why not?’ I said limply, giving in once more to Klaus’s proposals, sure that I was simply placating him and his wild ideas and allowing us all to get home to bed.

  All the same, Klaus was right about the Viennese police. He spoke to me next morning at breakfast, sipping his orange juice, in a white silk shirt, a confident mischievousness about his face, the day so bright once more.

  He said, ‘The manager told me privately this morning: he’s had a routine enquiry from the city police – purely routine, a list they send out round all the hotels and guest-houses every week, lost tourists, credit-card thieves and so on. All three of you are on it. By name. I told him it wasn’t important – some family row in England. Lawyers chasing you. So he’s agreed to say nothing about it for a day or so. But he’ll have to report it by the end of the week. So, you can’t go to the police. We’ll go to the Staatsoper this afternoon instead.’

  ‘Why take all these risks, Klaus?’ I asked.

  ‘Risks? Where are the risks? You are all innocent, are you not? And what are old friends for? It’s a matter of action, Peter. Never wait until things happen to you!’

  ‘It’s dangerous. These Croatians –’

  ‘It’s more dangerous just to wait for them. We must take the advantage here. See if we can identify this man – follow him.’

  ‘But we’re not the police. We’ve no –’

  ‘No. But you were the police, were you not, in a way? With British Intelligence. This is really your kind of job, is it not?’ he added formally, almost coldly.

  I could see that Rachel had been telling him about me. I was a man with a tradition of derring-do behind me, though they weren’t to know my bravery had not extended much beyond culling through the Arab press on damp Monday mornings in the Holborn office ten years before. Rachel had probably told him as well that I had a little ivory-handled .22 revolver with me. I had it on me now. Klaus looked at me circumspectly, waiting for me to agree or refuse the challenge.

  Was it conceivable that he viewed me as a rival, as in some romantic opera, and was now contriving a match between us, to test my honour, a joust for the hand of a dark lady? I didn’t like the idea at all. But I could see it would appear cowardly of me to turn him down. Besides, it was all probably safe enough – for I doubted the truth of Klaus’s musical deductions: the clear-voiced terrorist in the Staatsoper was almost certainly pure fiction. So I went with Klaus that morning, down into the blazing city, to spy out the land.

  The Opera House, a great black grimed building, straddled the Opern and Kärtner ring like some grim barracks in the crowded sunshine. Tourists queued for last-minute seats, straggling round the theatre, which seemed to have half a dozen stage doors. But Klaus knew his way about and soon he was talking to one of the stage doormen – someone he knew vaguely, but a man who remembered him precisely. The greetings were effusive.

  ‘Ja, Herr Doktor Fischer … Nein, Herr Doktor. Danke schön, Herr Doktor …’

  The little man in a braid cap nodded his head up and down with furious willingness. In the background we could hear music, an orchestra tuning up, and musicians were coming in and hurrying past us, down a corridor.

  Klaus turned to me. ‘There’s a band call this morning. They’re fitting a new Saffi in. This is the musicians’ entrance. We’ll go over to the artistes’ entrance now. It’s all fixed.’

  ‘Danke schön, Herr Fischer …’

  The little man looked after us proprietorially as we walked down the corridor, miles long it seemed, which went right under the stage and came out on the other side of the building, leading to another stage door. Here we found a second man in a braid cap and repeated our performance with him.

  I heard the word ‘telephone’ and the man offered Klaus the use of one in his office. But Klaus refused politely. The doorman pointed down the corridor. They spoke rapidly in German, the man pointing upstairs, before we left him.

  ‘A problem,’ Klaus said. ‘There’s one public phone here.’ He pointed to a bubble booth near the stage door. ‘But the artistes have one on the floor upstairs. Come on.’

  Climbing a narrow stairway up two flights we came out onto another long corridor, running at right-angles to the stage. ‘Here,’ Klaus pointed to the row of dressing-room doors. ‘These are the male chorus rooms. And there,’ he nodded to a recess half-way along one wall, ‘there – is the phone.’ It was a few yards from the stairway down to the stage, in a fairly exposed position.

  ‘How do we watch?’ I asked. ‘We can’t just hang around out in this corridor all the time.’

  But Klaus was already walking down to the end of the corridor now, opening each empty dressing-room door as he passed along. Splendid gold-braided uniforms hung on hooks. There was a smell of stale make-up and old sweat.

  ‘We can hardly pretend to be members of the chorus,’ I said. ‘Or was that what you had in mind – getting dressed up as a hussar?’

  The orchestra sta
rted downstairs just then, the music coming up all round us faintly through the Tannoy system: the strains of Der Zigeunerbaron.

  Klaus had disappeared through a door at the end of the corridor by now and when I got there I saw it was marked ‘Herren’. I found him standing on the lavatory seat in one of the cubicles. There was a high partition all round these conveniences. But on tip-toe one could just see down the corridor, – not to the phone itself, but there was an almost clear field of vision in which one could identify anyone going into the recess.

  ‘Perfect,’ Klaus said, checking the angles and heights again. Then he started to hum with the music on the Tannoy. ‘… “doch treu und wahr” …’ I’d rarely seen a man in such a good mood.

  ‘What? We lock ourselves in here?’

  ‘Precisely. Go down there, and come out of the dressing-rooms: then cross over to the phone. Just to make sure.’

  I did as he asked. And he shouted back down the length of the corridor, his handsome gypsy head just visible peeking out above the partition. ‘Perfect! I can see everything.’

  ‘But what happens if someone wants to use the lavatory?’ I asked.

  ‘They’ll have to wait. Won’t they?’ He smiled. ‘“Wer uns getraut …”’ He sang the words now that we had heard on the tape, the beginning of the ‘Dompfaff’ duet. ‘That’s our cue. You wait and see.’

  I thought he must be wrong – with his preposterous good humour, staking out a terrorist got up as a hussar from a lavatory seat: I was sure he must be wrong.

  By three-fifteen, when the operetta was well into its second act, we’d come back up the stairs and locked ourselves in the little cubicle. The tannoy sang faintly in the corridor for us and only one person had rattled the door of our cubicle, though the pissoir outside was often filled with hussars and gypsies – and the passageway beyond had frequently been a seething mass of them, in their elaborate tat and splendid gilt uniforms, as they charged up and down stairs.

  And then, just after 3.30, before the ‘Dompfaff’ duet started on stage, a rush of hussars emerged from all the dressing-rooms, stamping their heavy boots as they made their way downstairs for their entrance – to surprise the hapless lovers, with the Graf Homonay.

  Afterwards there was silence – just the weak sounds on the Tannoy, the beginning of the duet: ‘Wer uns getraut …’ We literally held our breath. Then the gypsy chorus joined the lovers, the velvet music rising on the air. But nothing moved in the corridor.

  I suppose I expected some great galumphing hussar in tights to emerge from one of the dressing-rooms, look both ways nervously, before making for the phone. But there was no one. The duet continued, the woman’s voice rising into ever-sweeter levels as the lovers exchanged vows. But nothing stirred and there was no sound from the empty corridor. Klaus looked at his watch. It was nearly a quarter to four. He was angry, fidgeting – a conductor on a podium which happened to be a lavatory seat, waiting for some tardy musician.

  Then a door opened quietly half-way down the passage and a neatly dressed young man with a briefcase, in a grey summer suit, came out and walked confidently down towards the stairway. Would he turn into the phone recess? He did – and I could hear Klaus’s sigh of relief.

  ‘That’s him,’ he whispered. ‘He must have been on half call – a chorus understudy, not needed. But that’s him!’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘It must be. That’s why he’s wearing ordinary clothes: he makes the call – then leaves straight away.’

  The man was out of our sight for nearly two minutes. Then he emerged again and disappeared down the stairs.

  ‘After him!’ Klaus said. And I had to admit then to the excitement of the chase, even though it wasn’t a hussar in tight pants and braid.

  I lost Klaus almost at once outside among the crowds of tourists wandering about Philharmonikerstrasse in the hot afternoon light – so intent was I on keeping my eye on the grey suit. This was, I supposed, a job I did better than Klaus. The young man crossed over the street behind the Opera House and threaded his way along beside the terrace of Sacher’s. Turning right at the end he cut into a main artery of the city, walking past the Augustiner Kirche towards the great pile of the Hofburg further down on the left, where the busy main road narrowed sharply, with an archway over it, dividing off into a clutter of little streets and alleyways, the heart of the old town. But once I’d caught up with him, after the first minute’s panic, he was an easy trail. He walked steadily, without stopping or looking for reflections in shop windows. An amateur, I thought.

  Opposite the huge Hofburg entrance he turned right into the narrow streets, crossed over a small triangular platz, and went into an old shop with all sorts of expensive Austrian feathered hats and green capes and Lederhosen in the neat windows. It was very crowded inside and the heat brought out the smell of fine wool and old leather. I thought I’d lost my man: he was nowhere to be seen among the wealthy tourists trying on long hunting-green capes and busy men crowding round small mirrors – admiring themselves, their heads surmounted by ridiculous little felt hats with chamois whiskers sticking out on top.

  The air was filled with strident ‘Bittes’ and ‘Dankeschöns’ and over-attentive old saleswomen. One of them approached me, smiling heavily.

  ‘I wanted –’ I gestured unconsciously to my trousers for some inane reason.

  ‘Ah! Lederhosen! Ja.’ She pointed up a narrow stairway at the side of the shop which I hadn’t noticed.

  On the first floor was another small room – occupied entirely with silly men this time, fingering a variety of short leather pants, crushing them up brutally in their hands as if trying to mutilate them – and others throwing green felt capes over their shoulders dramatically and putting hunting hats on – Germans for the most part, exclaiming ecstatically as they gazed on their preposterous transformations in various mirrors.

  The long mirrors were on the doors of little fitting cubicles which opened now and then, the glass swinging round into the bright light, reflecting all the frenzied sartorial change, so that the room seemed like a stage for some mad sylvan ballet, where the mirror images of men in dashing hunting capes were superseded by others emerging from the boxes with knobbly knees and lederhosen. But there was no sign of the perfectly ordinary man in the grey summer suit.

  ‘Ja, Mein Herr?’ A salesman came up to me.

  ‘I – thought: a cape,’ I said. ‘If I could look at some.’ There were three cubicles I saw now and the door of one of them hadn’t opened since I’d arrived in the room. If my man wasn’t inside it, he wasn’t anywhere.

  I went over with the salesman to the other side and tried on some capes. And then, to pass the time, I put on some of the fearful little feathered hats as well.

  ‘Is a Styrian hat,’ the man told me, beaming.

  ‘Yes. It’s fine.’ I looked in the mirror. Moon-faced, capped and feathered I was like some ogre, a vast fright from one of Grimm’s fairy tales.

  ‘Is right size.’

  ‘Almost, but not quite, perhaps.’ I glanced in the mirror again, adjusting the horror. The cubicle door behind me opened and a young man in lederhosen, long white socks and a frilly summer shirt emerged. He was carrying a briefcase. He wasn’t such an amateur after all, I thought.

  He pushed his way downstairs and I apologised for the hats and capes and followed him: a fair-haired, broad-faced, well-built youth in his early twenties. He might – as I soon saw when we both got outside – have been one of any number of country boys up in the big city for the day, or there for some festival, for the streets seemed full of them that afternoon, all dressed in the same manner.

  He walked back out onto the main street, down past the Hofburg, turning left along a parkway, where he eventually came to a big tram stop. We waited ten or fifteen minutes in the rush hour, before he climbed aboard one marked ‘Grinzing’. I pushed my way on after him.

  Half an hour’s ride took us out to the end of the line, to the northern suburb of Grinzing, an
obvious tourist trap on the lower slopes of the Wienerwald, with wine taverns and folksy restaurants every few yards along the streets. The man hurried away from the terminus and started to walk uphill, out of the city. But there were still many people about and it was easy to follow him.

  Indeed there seemed a great number of us – tourists as well as commuters – all going in the same direction. At the top of the rise, after twenty minutes hard walk, I saw what the attraction was: a folk-dance exhibition or festival of some sort, already under way in a kind of asphalt amphitheatre which rose further up the hill towards a shabby old building immediately behind it – some small, run-down country palazzo it seemed at first, set on a peak with a stupendous view over the whole city, lying out beneath us now in a hazy dream of late afternoon light, spires and cupolas glinting as the sun sloped, with the Danube visible at last, an almost blue ribbon by-passing the city on its eastern boundary.

  Several hundred spectators had already gathered above the dancers in a rising arc – a dozen men and women stomping about to the raucous strains of a silver band. And now that my man had begun to move among the other dancers preparing to take over the platform next, it was almost impossible to keep sight of him as he bobbed away from me among waiting groups got up in every extraordinary variety of Austrian folk dress – men in tall golden stovepipe hats and peach-skinned women like summer dreams in richly embroidered lace set beneath fabulously decorated aprons and smocks. The silver band thumped vigorously and a small breeze on the hill made it less hot, but I was soaked in sweat after the long climb – and even identifying the man with the briefcase I could hardly keep up with him as he threaded his way among the dancers.

  Was he part of that group there? – about to move on to the platform. Yes, he’d stopped and was talking to someone. But when I’d caught up and the man turned I saw it was someone else, equally fair-haired, identically dressed.

  I was very near the silver band now, just behind the platform, and the blaring trumpets stunned me, the sun flashing on the instruments as they swayed with the jaunty folk tune. I’d lost him. The briefcase had disappeared. And then I saw him – or at least someone in lederhosen carrying something – high up above me on the skyline, beyond the circle of spectators, moving onto a terrace in front of the old palace.