I don’t tell Anneliese any of this.
Anneliese has finished her coffee and cake. She opens her bag on the table, so I can see all her things – the silver compact, the bottle of Mitsouko. She takes out her lipstick and smooths it on, her lips puckered as though she is blowing a kiss to herself. Then she snaps the lipstick shut and gives me a vivid, tulipy smile.
‘But apart from being careful – well…’ She makes an expansive gesture. ‘You can do what you like. Why not? That’s my philosophy, Stella,’ she says.
This conversation thrills me.
13
The air is warm as summer. I decide to explore for a while before I head back home.
I wander the cobbled streets of the inner city, and find myself in a small, rather intimate square. This is Franziskanerplatz. A great grey church looms over the square, the Franziskanerkirche. There’s a fountain with a figure of Moses. I dip my hand in the water; it’s bitter, in spite of the warmth of the day.
In a courtyard leading off the square, I can see a little bookshop. On a sudden impulse, I walk through the entryway into the courtyard, which is as still and immaculate as a painted room. White pigeons preen on the balcony rails, shuffling and softly cooing; it sounds as though the air is breathing. Shadow lies over the courtyard, but high above there’s a square of luminous sky.
The bookshop is dimly lit and cluttered, and has a rich, complex smell – of dust and moulds and beeswax polish. I pass shelves of fairytale books, and can’t resist flicking through one of them. I come on a coloured plate of a princess, with hair of an indigo darkness and a rather witchy smile. The princess reminds me of someone; for a moment I can’t think who, then I realise it’s the woman Harri Reznik met at the gallery. I snap the book shut and put it rapidly back on the shelf.
I look for books on psychoanalysis. I want to learn more about Dr Freud – for when I see Harri again. I correct myself – just in case I see Harri again. Crossing my fingers superstitiously.
I find a thick volume, called Die Traumdeutung. The title intrigues me – the book is all about dreams. I open it up. The German looks quite readable, but it’s a very long book, and I know I’d struggle with it.
The bookseller examines me with an air of mild surprise. His eyes have a dull translucence, like a sucked boiled sweet.
‘I don’t suppose you have this book in English?’ I ask him.
He frowns slightly.
‘Are you sure this is what you want, fräulein? We have many books more suited to a young person such as yourself.’
‘Yes, I’m sure,’ I tell him.
He finds me a translation. The Interpretation of Dreams. I’m delighted. I count out my money, feeling a quick surge of triumph.
After dinner, in my bedroom, I open The Interpretation of Dreams.
There are many dreams described, and Dr Freud’s analysis of them. The analysis is complex and intricate, but again and again he says that all dreams are wish-fulfilment. This interests me, yet it troubles me, too: it doesn’t entirely make sense. Some dreams maybe: I’ve sometimes dreamed that my father has come back to life. But so many dreams are unpleasant. I think of the dream of suffocation I had a few nights ago. Not all our dreams are good dreams.
I flick through the book, reading at random where something catches my eye. There’s a dream that sounds pretty, flowery. A woman about to be married dreamed of making a floral arrangement, an elaborate confection of violets and pinks, which she placed in the centre of her table. According to Dr Freud, the dream expressed her bridal wishes: the centre of the table represented herself and her genitals. When she discussed the dream with Dr Freud, the violets made her think of the English word ‘to violate’. He says that the dream embodied her thoughts on the violence of defloration, expressing her fears and her longings in the language of flowers.
I’m a little shocked by this, but I don’t stop reading.
My eye falls on a dream with a striking image – a young child set on fire.
A man’s child had died, and the body was laid out, surrounded by tall lighted candles. The man went to sleep in the neighbouring room; and dreamed that his child was alive again and standing next to his bed. The child caught his arm and whispered: Father, don’t you see that I’m burning? And in the dream he saw that the child was indeed all on fire. The man woke from the dream, and noticed a glare of light through the door. He rushed into the neighbouring bedroom; a candle had fallen, the dead child’s shroud was ablaze. Dr Freud explains that even this dream had wish-fulfilment in it – because in the dream the man had thought that his lost child was still living.
Yet the story seems so full of sadness. The image haunts me – the man fast asleep in his bed; the child talking so calmly, trying to wake him. Burning.
14
Saturday afternoon, and I can’t decide what to wear: none of my clothes seem smart enough. In the end, I choose my grey flannel suit, like last week, and try to dress up the outfit, with a ring my mother lent me and a single strand of pearls. Doing these things, I’m caught in a daydream – of his voice, his touch on my skin. Then I take the tram to the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
The weather is still very fine. Bars of sunlight fall through the windows of the galleries; they seem almost tangible – as though they could leave a golden stain on your hand. I can’t quite believe that I might soon see him.
I make my way straight to the Cranachs; but Harri Reznik isn’t there. I walk slowly round the gallery, trying to look casual. Perhaps what he said was a throwaway comment, entirely without significance. Perhaps it wasn’t an invitation at all …
I sit for a while near Paradise, where I met him before. But today, this picture no longer delights me: the naked bodies seem pornographic, the decoration self-indulgent. Harri Reznik isn’t coming. I’ve been deluded: I’ve been living in a fantasy world. I promise myself I will never again be so stupid, so misguided. But in spite of my resolution, I feel a sadness close to tears.
I stand, and turn to leave.
I feel a touch on my shoulder.
‘Oh.’ A sudden light happiness rushes through me, even before I turn; smelling his faint cedar scent.
And there he is, standing in front of me.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ I say, stupidly.
And I think: Of course, of course he would come. How could I ever have doubted it?
‘Stella.’
He looks at me as though he can’t quite believe what he sees. As though he is an illusionist, and I am a flower, a flame, a white bird – something he has conjured up and holds in the palm of his hand. Something he has achieved, that astounds him.
I can’t live up to this look of his: I feel my face blazing red. I’ve so hungered for this moment – I was going to glitter, to enchant him. But now the moment has come, and my mind is empty of words.
‘So, Stella…’
I nod. I can’t speak. He must think I’m so foolish.
‘I wonder if I could buy you a coffee,’ he says. ‘We could go to the Frauenhuber. It isn’t far from here. Would you like that?’
But of course he knows what I will say. My presence here answers his question.
‘Yes, please…’
And we both laugh a little, looking at one another.
It’s hard to talk on the tram. It’s crowded, we have to stand very close, and I feel a thrill at his closeness – a thrill that is almost fear. Once, he reaches out and pushes a strand of hair from my face, as he did in the moment when we first met, and a thin heat moves through me.
The Café Frauenhuber is on Himmelpfortgasse. He ushers me inside.
‘This is my café,’ he says, a note of satisfaction in his voice.
The Frauenhuber is smaller and more intimate than the Landtmann. It’s dim and shadowy after the glare of the street, and very quiet – no sound but the chink of silver and glass, and people talking softly in easy weekend voices. I love everything about the place – the soft sepia light, the hushed stillness, the burgundy velvet armc
hairs.
We sit in a booth at the back. Harri orders coffee.
‘Would you like a cake?’ he asks me. ‘An apricot strudel, perhaps?’
But my mouth is dry.
‘No, thank you.’ Then I worry I’ve been ungracious. ‘I mean, that would be lovely, but I really don’t think I could eat.’
I’ve given too much away again. But he has a slight, secret smile; my nervousness seems to please him.
We are silent for a moment. The narrow table-top seems vast: there’s such a great space between us, a stretch of uncharted ground.
He leans towards me.
‘So, Stella. Tell me about yourself.’
But my mind is blank. I don’t know how to begin.
His hands are loosely clasped together in front of him on the table, and I see that his nails, like mine, are bitten. Maybe he isn’t always as confident as he seems. This reassures me. I start to talk – just the simple things. About the Academy, about Rainer and Marthe, and teaching little Lukas.
The coffee comes – wonderful Viennese coffee. I sip; it makes me feel brave.
‘And what about you?’ I ask him.
‘I live on Mariahilferstrasse,’ he tells me. ‘My mother has a shop there. I live with my mother and grandfather and Lotte, my sister. She’s seven.’
I hear all the tenderness in him, how he wraps his voice round her name.
‘Children are so lovely at seven,’ I say.
‘You like children?’
The thought is there at once in my mind, like a bale of bright silk spooling out – a delectable dream, of him and me and the child we could have. I look down into my coffee, afraid he will read my thought in my face.
‘I love children,’ I tell him.
‘I know I must seem a bit ancient to have a sister so young. My mother was in her late forties when Lotte arrived,’ he says.
‘I’m sure Lotte’s ever so sweet.’
He considers this.
‘Well, she’s a pretty thing,’ he says. ‘But there’s nothing flimsy about Lotte.’ He has a rather rueful expression. ‘She’s a very definite person. Very strong-willed.’
I’m charmed by the thought of this child – a small, female Harri.
‘And your family, Stella?’ he asks me.
I tell him about Brockenhurst: about my mother and father, and that my father is dead.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ he says.
I’m aware how he suddenly slows – his voice darkening, deepening. I feel at once comforted and understood. I think how he must soothe his most troubled patients just with the tone of his voice.
‘It feels quite a long time ago now,’ I say, as I said to Rainer. ‘But I still miss him.’
‘How could you not?’ he says.
He waits to see if I will say more. I tell him about the car coming too fast, which made my father’s horse rear and throw him. I don’t tell him everything; don’t tell him about the man and the woman, the woman’s red open mouth, her laughter; the way they didn’t look back.
‘My father died as well,’ he says then. ‘Not long after Lotte was born.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, in my turn.
‘It was a heart attack. Very sudden. For months I couldn’t believe it. Whenever I heard the door open, I’d look up, expecting him to come in.’ He shakes his head at the strangeness of this. ‘So – you and me, Stella – that loss is something we share…’
Yes, I think; we share a sadness. Does that bind you? Maybe it does. I would share any sadness with him, if only it brought us closer together.
‘So – have they always lived there, your family? In Brockenhurst?’ he asks me.
I smile at the way he says Brockenhurst, in accented English. It makes my home, all the lanes and copses and streams, those green, familiar places, seem alluringly foreign and strange.
‘Yes – my mother’s family have, I think.’
But I don’t know much about the history of my family. I’ve seen photographs of my grandparents, wearing stiff, formal clothes – pictures that date from the turn of the century. Before the Great War changed everything and the modern world began. But I don’t think much about the past.
‘And your family?’ I ask him.
‘My father’s family come from Galicia,’ he tells me. ‘My mother’s from Bukovina.’
I nod; but these names mean nothing to me.
‘My mother feels completely Austrian,’ he tells me. ‘This is her homeland, she says. She always likes to say that she is Austrian first, and Jewish second.’
‘Oh.’
I feel a vague dark flutter of discomfort. I hadn’t realised he was Jewish; I don’t know what it means to be Jewish. In England, people don’t seem to be very aware of such things. Though of course I’ve seen the newspapers: I know what happened in London, in Jewish Stepney, when Mosley’s Blackshirts tried to march through. How they were stopped by thousands of East Enders – Irish dockers and bearded Jews building barricades together. The newspapers called the riot the Battle of Cable Street. But Jewishness isn’t something that people talk about much, where I come from.
I wanted to be a woman of the world, but I’m just a girl from Brockenhurst. I feel so ignorant – I don’t even know the right questions to ask.
‘I don’t know very much about being Jewish,’ I say carefully.
He smiles a small crooked smile.
‘There isn’t much you need to know. You’ve probably heard what they say: Jews are just like other people, only more so…’
I still feel a little uneasy. I remember something from childhood – my father unrolling his old school photograph, picking out himself and his friends from the lines of earnest boys; then pointing to one child and saying, ‘Look – there’s a little Jew-boy.’ Something in his tone had troubled me. I remember thinking, How can you tell that? And why are you pointing it out? But I didn’t ask him.
Harri takes out his cigarettes, offers me one. As he leans in to light it, I feel his warm breath on my face. A sweet, heavy languor spreads through me; all my troubling thoughts seep away.
The waiter brings more coffee, and we are quiet for a moment. There’s something I have to ask him. My heart jitters.
‘Harri. The woman you met at the gallery. Last Saturday.’ I try to keep my voice easy. ‘I was wondering who she was. Is she a good friend of yours?’
He gives a slight shrug, which reassures me a little.
‘She’s a doctor, too – a colleague. Ulrike Feldman. We trained together. She’s also studying psychoanalysis. We go to galleries sometimes – she’s passionate about art.’
This only makes her seem more glamorous to me. What man would not prefer such a woman – a doctor with lips bright as redcurrants, and passionate about art – to a very young piano student with rather sensible shoes? The weasel jealousy gnaws at me.
He reaches across the table and rests his hand lightly on mine. A vivid thread of desire moves through me.
‘We’re friends, that’s all. You don’t need to worry,’ he says. Understanding me exactly.
When he takes his hand away, I can still feel the imprint of his warmth on my skin.
I want to move the conversation on, to somewhere safer, easier.
‘Could you tell me more about your work?’ I ask. ‘Could you tell me about Dr Freud?’
A slight self-deprecating smile.
‘Stella. You shouldn’t get me onto that, or you’ll never shut me up again…’
‘But I want to know,’ I tell him. ‘I bought one of his books – the book about the interpretation of dreams.’
This is my moment of triumph. Though I can’t help blushing a bit, remembering the flowers that had such an intimate meaning.
‘You did?’
His face is like a light switched-on. He knows exactly why I did this. Because I hoped that I would see him again.
‘What did you think of it?’ he asks me.
‘Well, I haven’t read very much yet…’
&n
bsp; I’m briefly worried that he will quiz me. But he doesn’t.
‘You know, Stella – I feel this is such a significant moment in history. I mean, I know that’s quite a statement – but everything’s going to change. Dr Freud’s ideas will change the world,’ he tells me. His voice very strong and certain.
‘Oh. Really?’
‘How I see it, Stella – he changes the way we think about what it means to be human. He teaches us to understand ourselves and our world. And to understand our world is to change it,’ he says.
But it makes me feel a little dizzy – this talk of changing the world.
‘I wish I knew more,’ I tell him.
‘You mean it?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll teach you some of it one day, if you like.’ He grins. ‘Just so long as you realise what you’re letting yourself in for.’
I’ll teach you some of it one day … I want him to teach me everything, in the most meticulous detail. I think of hours spent together at café tables, learning about Dr Freud.
But then he picks up his cigarette case and puts it in his pocket. I know that soon we must part, and I’m very afraid – that in spite of everything he’s said, he could still slip away from me. The thought is a fist that squeezes my heart.
He calls the waiter, pays the bill. ‘I have to go, Stella.’
He isn’t looking at me. The air feels thin and shimmery between us. I sense all the nervousness in him, and it’s sweet to me.
‘I was wondering … There’s a concert at the Musikverein, next Friday evening,’ he says. ‘The Vienna Philharmonic.’
‘Oh.’
I have a sensation of soaring. Like a bird in the sparkling air above the red rooftops of Vienna. Like the fountain in the museum gardens that glitters and lifts into light.
‘It’s Bruckner. Do you like Bruckner?’ he asks me.
‘I love him.’
In this moment, Bruckner is my very favourite composer.
‘We could go, if you’d like that,’ he tells me.
‘Yes. Please. I’d love to.’
After the hushed quiet of the Frauenhuber, the noise of the city slams into us. It’s late now: we must have been in the café for hours. The shadows are long and there’s an edge of chill to the air, and a cold smell of night coming.
The English Girl Page 7