Well now I know, because I have seen one of Laura Sultzer’s notices. It was pinned to the door of her room just as in the legends that Alice and I have collected through the years and there was no letdown at all.
Silence
! it said,
Frau Sultzer is reading Grillparzer
.
I stared at it entranced while the maid who had admitted me looked worried.
‘I don’t like to disturb her – she’s got them all in there, you see.’
‘The Group, you mean? She’s reading aloud?’
‘That’s right. It’ll be a good hour before they’re through.’
But I’d come myself with Edith’s completed bridesmaid’s dress instead of sending Gretl, for I have decided to keep an eye on the Bluestocking, and I had no intention of going without seeing her.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll take full responsibility,’ and I knocked and opened the door.
Laura sat on a high-backed chair reading aloud from Austria’s most famous (and some would say her only) poet. Round her, in poses of rapt attention, sat her acolytes. I took in a pair of hermaphrodite feet in open sandals and the bosom of the lady who does Croatian cross-stitch, heavily banded in red and black.
‘I’ve come to borrow Fraulein Edith,’ I said cheerfully, ‘I want her to try on her dress.’
Frau Sultzer put down her book and glared.
‘As you can see we are busy.’
Edith rose quickly to her feet. ‘Oh, but Frau Susanna has come herself…’
Accompanied by stares of outrage from the ladies, she hurried to the door.
The room that Edith took me to had to be her bedroom because it contained a bed. There was, however, nothing else even mildly feminine: no dressing table, no mirror, and the wash stand looked dangerously small. Instead there were bookcases lined with dark tomes and on the wall, framed in black, the prizes Edith had won at school.
The dress was a perfect fit, the soft green not unbecoming, but as Edith’s bespectacled face, the bewildered eyes, emerged, I had again the feeling that in designing for her I had missed some clue.
‘Have you been attending to your diet?’ I asked her, for there was a large red spot in the middle of her chin.
‘Well, I try. I remembered what Herr Huber said about red meat making good blood. Of course when I’m with the Group I can’t… but when I’m alone, Cook sometimes brings me a steak.’
‘That’s good. Now all you have to do is wash your hair a bit more often and your skin will soon improve. Dandruff is very bad for acne. Every three or four days with a good shampoo.’
‘Every three or four days!’ Edith looked at me with horror. ‘But my mother… I mean, surely that would interfere with one’s natural oils?’
‘Edith,’ I said firmly, ‘I do assure you that there is nothing that needs interfering with so much as one’s natural oils.’
As she was dressing I asked her a question I had been turning over in my mind. ‘Has Magdalena ever given you a hint of another… attachment? Someone she is fond of?’
‘No, never; never. If she’s got another attachment it’s to the church. To God. She’s asked Herr Huber to let her go into retreat once a month here in Vienna after their marriage; just for a few days. So you see…’
And I did indeed see. A few days every month to be with her lover – and for the rest, her family provided for, a generous and complaisant husband. Well, why not – many people would regard it as a sensible solution to her problems, but there was something about Herr Huber’s innocence that made me furious on his behalf.
I was preparing to leave when Edith touched my arm.
‘I’ve got something for… your friend. If you think she’d like it? If it wouldn’t upset her?’
She led me to her rolltop desk, opened it – and took out a package. Inside was a long-stemmed pipe with a blue dragon on the china bowl.
‘It was my father’s favourite,’ said Edith and, somewhat unnecessarily, added: ‘My mother doesn’t know.’
‘That’s very sweet of you, my dear. I think she’d love to have it.’
But I’d caught sight of something else that Edith had hidden in her desk. A book that was quite different from the scholarly volumes stacked round her walls. The cover was garish, the title, in tall red letters, stood out clearly,
The Art of Pork Butchering
by Hector Schlumberger.
Alice was sitting at her table playing patience with the new pack of cards she’d bought for Rudi to use during their summer idyll, and she’d lost weight.
‘Edith thought you’d like to have this.’
She took the pipe, opened the porcelain lid, closed it… traced the outline of the dragon with one finger.
‘It was his favourite,’ she said, as Edith had done. And then: ‘Sanna, I’ve never asked you, but I wondered… I mean how long does it go on hurting so
much
? How long was it before it stopped hurting after you came back from Salzburg ? They say that Time Heals, but how
much
time ? When did it stop, the hurt about your daughter?’
I hesitated, then told the truth. ‘Oh Alice, it’s never stopped. I don’t know what time does, but I don’t think it does that. Only, after a while… two years… three, perhaps… the pain becomes manageable. It becomes part of you and if someone offered to take it away… you wouldn’t want them to because the pain is the link with the person you’ve lost. It sounds maudlin, but I don’t mean it like that.’
‘Yes,’ said Alice. ‘I see.’
She then went to get ready for the dress rehearsal of
Wienerblut
, which is just as bad as everyone expected. ‘They’ve given us new outfits for once: really very smart: sprigged muslin and poke bonnets… but you might as well be naked when the horses are on the stage. They’ve hired a special man with a gold shovel to scoop up their droppings and that’s all the audience will be waiting for. The man with the shovel.’
I know it’s completely ridiculous, but deep down I feel a touch of resentment because Rudi left her so unprovided for. It’s five years before she’ll get her pension and even then it’s nothing much. Yet what could he have done without hurting Laura, a thing both of them spent their lives trying not to do?
After all, the gardenias, the decollete were not in vain!
Sigismund has been reprieved. With luck now his piano will turn into an Arab steed on which he can gallop away to his destiny; a three masted galleon in which he can sail to glory!
I had given up all hope of Van der Velde but yesterday he came and he is going to give Sigismund a concert!
‘I’ve got an unexpected gap,’ he said, striding into my shop in his velvet-collared overcoat. ‘A soprano I booked for October has let me down, the bitch. It’s a six o’clock recital in the small salon at the Zelinka Palace so there’s not much at stake.’
‘He’s really good, then?’
Van der Velde shrugged. ‘He’s small for his age and he’s Polish; I can probably do something with that. But God, what a hovel! Someone’ll have to clean him up,’ he said, looking meaningfully at me.
‘Are you going to give them an advance? They’re practically starving.’
‘An advance! You’re out of your mind. They’ll get twenty per cent of the takings if there are any, and that’s generous. I’ll need every kreutzer I’ve got for advertising, and even then I’m chancing my arm. I’ve never seen an uglier child – and obstinate too. He won’t play the
Waldstein
. Still, its mostly Chopin they’ll want.’
He hadn’t been gone for more than an hour when Jan Kraszinsky appeared in the shop and asked me to make the boy’s concert clothes.
‘I don’t do boy’s clothes, I’m afraid,’ I explained. But he didn’t go, just stood there in his fusty black suit and looked at me.
‘Sigismund expects it. It was what he said first when Herr van der Velde said we must get some clothes. “She will make me some new trousers and I will see inside her shop!”’
‘I’m sorry.’
He took a step towards me. ‘Herr van der Velde said it was you who told him about Sigismund.’
‘I mentioned the boy, that’s all.’
He moved forward, tried to take my hand to kiss it, and I retreated behind my desk.
‘Sigismund must have… shining knickers,’ said Kraszinsky, his German not quite up to his vision. ‘And a blouse… with rufflets.’ He sketched a frenzied cascade of frills with his unwashed hands.
‘No! Absolutely not! Your nephew must not be dressed up like a little monkey.’ (Oh, why couldn’t I keep out of it? Why couldn’t I be quiet?)
‘But Herr van der Velde said that Sigi must look young. He must look like a very small boy so that people think he has even more talent.’
‘The child is small enough as he is; you need no tricks. Sigismund is a serious child; he must be dressed with dignity. Look, I’ll send you to a friend of mine – a man I worked for for three years. He speaks Polish too.’
I wrote down Jacob Jacobson’s address and still Kraszinsky stood there exuding his particular brand of obstinate despair.
‘Will you make me a drawing?’
‘AH right. It’s an informal concert so you don’t need velvet. Black grosgrain trousers – not shorts on any account. A white high-necked blouse – not satin: raw silk. The neck of the blouse and the sleeves piped in black.’
I sketched as I spoke. A miniature Peter-the-Great-as-Shipbuilder emerged, and did not please Kraszinsky.
‘But that is how the peasants dress in Preszowice.’
‘Yes. You want that look. You mustn’t try to turn him into a pretty Viennese boy – you can’t do it anyway. Be proud of where you come from.’
He took the sketch.
‘Will he want money now, this Herr Jacobson? Will he wait till after the concert?’
I was silent, remembering my years with Jacob, the warmth, the jokes. What if the concert was not a success, what if nobody came? Perhaps it would not be the best way to repay my debt to Jasha, to leave him with an unpaid bill.
“Oh, all right,’ I said irritably. ‘Bring the boy in the morning and I’ll see what I can do.’
He was outside the door as I opened the shop.
GROTTENBAHN, it said – and I moved resolutely towards it, paid, led the child into the first of the wooden coaches, painted a brilliant red and blue.
‘What is it?’ he whispered.
‘You’ll see.’
Only a few people got in behind us; it was late in the year for the Prater. The bell rang and we lurched forwards into the darkness. There was time to be properly afraid – and then the train stopped.
We were opposite the first of the lighted caves. It showed Cinderella stooping by the embers, her golden hair brushing the hearth. Everything that would later transform her life was there: the pumpkins, the mice… One baby mouse playing beneath the dresser was half the size of the rest, with tiny crooked whiskers. The clock ticked in the corner, hams and salami hung from the rafters. She was utterly forlorn, poor Cinderella, and as we leaned out of the train (which we were not supposed to do) we could see the tears glitter on her cheeks. ‘Who is she?’ whispered the boy beside me, and I realized that he had never heard of Cinderella; never in his life.
Yet he was transfixed, as I was too. For we were entirely in the kitchen, sharing her loneliness, her rejection – but at least I knew the future as did the children in the coaches behind me. That the old woman visible through the window was coming… that as soon as the train moved on she would be there, the fairy godmother under whose cloak one could see the glimmer of silver.
The train surged forwards and beside me Sigismund sighed. It was too soon, always too soon, that jerk of the train, one never had time enough. Another journey into the darkness, and then we stopped once more.
Snow White this time, and the glass coffin and the dwarves clustered round in mourning. And how they mourned! They held their heads in their hands, they clutched their handkerchiefs, one lay prostrate among the lilies of the valley on the ground. White doves hung above the bier, white roses sprouted from the earth and she lay with her raven hair streaming across her face.
And again for the other children in the coaches the sadness was almost pleasurable because they knew, as I knew, that the prince would come (one could see his painted horse, his handsome head on a distant hill), the poisoned apple be dislodged, the grief-stricken dwarves rise to their feet and dance.
But not Sigismund. ‘Why is she dead?’ came his hoarse little voice beside me. ‘Who killed her ?’
‘I’ll tell you later. But it’s all right. She comes alive again.’
Another plunge into the darkness and the giant Rubezahl, our special Austrian giant and wholly benevolent. He was holding a cow in the hollow of his hand and chiding it for not giving milk while tiny people in the field below looked pleased.
And on again to the Sleeping Beauty. She lay back in a swoon holding her spindle and she had the richest, fattest plait of flaxen hair you have ever seen. A great hedge of thorns grew across the window and all around her lay the palace servants overcome as she was by sudden sleep. There was a sleeping dog, a sleeping chef in a tall hat – and a sleeping kitchen boy still holding aloft the cutlet he had been about to eat.
‘A sleeping chop!’ said Sigismund, pointing, and for the first time since I had known him, I heard him giggle. He had made a joke.
There were twelve stories depicted in the Grottenbahn and Sigismund knew none of them. The Little Mermaid, walking on her sore new feet towards her prince, Mother Holle trying to shake down the sky, Little Red Riding Hood carrying her basket between marvellously spotted toadstools while the great wet tongue of the wolf lolled between the pines…
The last but one of the lighted grottos was almost the best: Thumbelina landing in Africa, held in the beak of her swallow. And what an Africa! Swirling scarlet lilies, fruit hanging from palm trees – and in the petals of a flower as golden as the sun, Thumbelina’s tiny princeling awaiting her.
In the last of the caves, Hansel and Gretel lay asleep in the forest, pillowed on leaves, while above them an arc of angels in white nightdresses with pink bare feet and glittering halos, held out protecting hands.
And here at last Sigismund was able to make a connection through his music, and in his husky voice he hummed the theme of the ‘Angel’s Ballet’ from Humperdinck’s opera.