Fatal Lies (46 page)

As soon as Liebermann took Amelia in his arms, he was aware of a difference. She was more confident and followed his lead with less effort.

‘Have you been to see Herr Janowsky for a lesson?' he asked.

‘No,' she replied. ‘Although I still intend to, once my brother leaves.'

‘Well, I have to say,' Liebermann remarked, ‘your dancing is much improved.'

‘I think,' said Amelia, ‘that I understand – although
understand
is not really the correct word – I think I now
appreciate
the value of your initial advice: to listen to the music with greater care. To . . .' She hesitated and the ghost of a smile crossed her face. ‘Feel it?'

She was dressed in the same clothes that she had worn for the detectives' ball: a skirted décolleté gown of green velvet. Yet she appeared to Liebermann more elegant than he remembered. As they passed beneath a massive crystal chandelier, the light fell on her pewter eyes and he experienced momentarily a sensation like falling. It was not the same feeling as a physical descent but something more profound.

‘My brother seems to have made a friend,' said Amelia and, once again, a fleeting smile illuminated her face.

Randall was talking to a dark-haired lady who was wearing an exquisite creation of red silk, black lace, and pearls. She was holding a feathered carnival mask on a long handle and made extravagant use of her free hand while speaking. Liebermann guessed that she was French.

Just before Randall slipped from view they saw him produce a rose from behind his back.

The orchestra was playing with sparkling virtuosity – a great, carousing, fortissimo waltz in which extraordinary liberties were being taken with metre. The melody was held back by the introduction of subtle hesitations, which made the music hover for the briefest moment before each reprieve of the principal theme.

Liebermann recalled a passage from von Saar's
Marriane
: a waltz could melt away years of repression, fanning flirtation into passion. The rapid motion, the relentless turning, the dizzy euphoria, the heat of a woman's back felt in the palm of one's hand . . .

Amelia looked up at him and her eyes had never appeared more beautiful. He rediscovered the shock of when he had first noticed their inimitable colour, neither blue nor grey but something in between: their depth enhanced by a darkening at the edges of each iris. Liebermann drew her closer and his lips brushed the silver ribbons in her flaming hair.

The impetuous élan of the orchestra was contagious.

Is this the time?

He had asked himself this question before – on so many occasions.

Is this the time?

Suddenly the tension dissipated, and he whirled Amelia around with such enthusiasm that she briefly achieved flight.

‘Doctor Liebermann?'

He laughed, and the vertical crease with which he had become so very familiar appeared on her forehead.

‘What is it?' she asked.

How appropriate
, thought Liebermann,
that we are attending the clockmakers' ball.

There would be time enough . . .

Even if Nietzsche was right and there was such a thing as eternal recurrence and every man and woman was destined to revisit the lost opportunities of the past in perpetuity – he no longer cared. Psychoanalysis had taught him the importance of little things, and perhaps it was these little things that made human beings human: the mistakes, the blunders, the qualms, the petty vacillations and doubting. Liebermann understood – better than most – that there were hidden virtues in human frailty.

Yes, there was time enough
: the promise of days and months and years to come.

Amelia was still looking at him quizzically – waiting for an answer. When it came, it was intellectually disingenuous but emotionally sincere. It
felt
right.

‘There's no place like Vienna!' Liebermann cried. And, once again, Amelia's feet parted company with the ground.

I would like to thank: Hannah Black, Clare Alexander, Nick Austin, and Steve Mathews – once again – for invaluable editorial and critical assistance; Professor Ignaz Hammerer and Dr W. Etschmann (Militärgeschichtliche Forschungsabteilung, Heeresgeschichtliches Museum) for information concerning Austrian military academies; Mirko Herzog (Technisches Museum) for erudite answers with respect to the media and postal services in turn-of-the-century Vienna; Professor Thomas Olechowski (University of Vienna) for advising me on press censorship under the Habsburg Monarchy and recommending the
Arbeiter Zeitung
for the puposes of my plot; Clive Baldwin for alerting me to the existence of Erzsebet Báthory; Luitgard Hammerer for acting as my unpaid translator, research assistant and city guide in Vienna (and for finding out about the employment of specialist pastry cooks in Demel); Simon Dalgleish for checking my German and correcting several linguistic errors; and Nicola Fox for continuing to put up with it all.

St Florian's military school owes an enormous debt to the
Oberrealschule
described in Musil's
Confusions of Young Törless.
I have unashamedly raided this masterpiece for useful detail, atmosphere, specific settings, and even the odd character. Other books that were informative on the subject of education in
fin de siècle
Vienna were Arthur Schnitzler's
My Youth in Vienna
and
The World of Yesterday
by Stefan Zweig. Quotations from Nietzsche are mostly from
A Nietz sche Reader
(selected and translated with an introduction by R. J. Hollingdale). Translations of songs were by William Mann, Lionel Salter, and Richard
Stokes.
Studie U
was a real document – and is referred to in chapter four (Politics and Powers) of
Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and Its Culture
by John Lukacs. Descriptions of Venice in Vienna were based on photographs in
Blickfänge: einer Reise nach Wien
published by the Historische Museum der Stadt Wien.

Information on the history of the ink-blot test (before Rorschach) can be found in
The Origins of Inkblots
by John T. R. Richardson, an article published in
The Psychologist
in June 2004. Biographical details on Justinus Kerner can be found in
The Discovery of the Unconscious
, by Henri F. Ellenberger. Frau Becker's dream is based on case material reported by Freud in
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
, Lecture 7. The opening of Freud's university lecture is a transcription of Lecture 20 from the same work. Freud's episode of jealousy is exactly as described by Ernest Jones in
The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud
. The description of Mahler's ‘funny walk' and leg movements can be found in
Gustav Mahler: Letters to his Wife
(edited by Henry-Louis de la Grange and Günther Weiss in collaboration with Knud Martner). Randall Lydgate's description of Toltec civilisation is taken from
The Myths of Mexico and Peru
by Lewis Spence, published in 1913 by George G. Harrap and Co. The absinthe ritual (as performed by Trezska Novak) is described in Barnaby Conrad's
Absinthe: History in a Bottle
. The
Erotes
– translated into English as
Affairs of the Heart
– was once attributed to Lucian, but is now thought to be the work of an unknown author referred to as Pseudo-Lucian. I took a few liberties with my interpretation of what Pseudo-Lucian wrote – but Herr Sommer's fundamental arguments based on this work are accurate. Liebermann's advice to Amelia Lydgate on waltzing is adapted from a description of the waltz that can be found at http://www.vienneseball.org/Gallery.htm

Frank Tallis
London, 2007

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This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

First published in the United Kingdom in 2008 by Century

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