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.
Then we were out in the daylight, blinking, trying to adjust to the shock of daylight and ordinariness.
The train stopped. The other people got out. Sigismund made no move whatsoever.
‘Where would you like to go next?’ I asked.
A stupid question. He sat absolutely immobile, grasping the rail in front of him.
‘Again,’ he said.
I bought two more tickets. We went round again. Cinderella, Snow White, the great giant Rubezahl . . . When we got to the Sleeping Beauty he made his joke about the sleeping chop, when we got to Hansel and Gretel he crooned the ballet music from Humperdinck, and each and every time the train moved on, he sighed.
‘What about one of the roundabouts?’ I suggested when we were out once more.
He shook his head. ‘Please, again,’ he said.
You can believe it or not, but we went seven times round the Grottenbahn. Seven baby mice, seven benevolent giants, seven jokes about sleeping chops, seven golden princes waiting for Thumbelina . . .
Then I struck and pulled him out of the car and we went to look for something to eat.
The sun had pierced the mist. We found a place where we could sit under a chestnut tree, but Sigismund was not very interested in his Wiener wurstl. He wanted to know the stories. All the stories.
‘I can’t tell you all of them, Sigismund. Choose one. I’ll tell you the rest some other time.’
He chose ‘Snow White’.
‘Once upon a time,’ I began, ‘there was a woman who longed and longed for a child. She wanted a daughter more than anything in the world . . .’
I had stopped, fighting the lump in my throat. But it was she herself who urged me on; the golden-haired phantom who had travelled with us on the Grottenbahn and who is now — perhaps I’d better face this once and for all — old enough to have children of her own.
‘One day she sat beside her window which was framed in darkest ebony; outside the snow was falling and as she sewed she pricked her finger so that three drops of bright red blood fell on to the ground . . .’
He moved closer and his mouth parted. What had been done to this child, or left undone? Even in a Polish forest, surely, they had heard of Snow White? But of course it is women who tell these stories to their children. There seemed to have been no women in the boy’s short life.
‘I will get you a book, Sigismund,’ I said when I had finished. ‘All the stories are in a book.’
He shook his head. He wanted me to tell them, and of course he is right. The stories are for telling.
We went then to the roundabouts. He chose to ride not on a dappled horse — I had noticed already his dislike of horses — but on a swan. He enjoyed it, but he didn’t want to go round again. It was an experience complete in itself.
Then came the Wurschtlmann. He’s so famous the Prater is named for him and you can see why. A hideous rubber man with a red nose who, for a few kreutzer one can thump and pound and wallop to one’s heart’s content, knowing that he will right himself undamaged and come up for more. Give him a name — that of your mean-minded boss, your bullying commanding officer — and you can punch him insensible and walk away, purged.
‘Would you like to have a go, Sigismund?’
Even before he shook his head I saw him instinctively shield his hands, hiding them behind his back — and that was the first time I remembered the concert.
In the end, though, the Prater is about the ferris wheel whose fame has spread throughout the Empire. It towers over everything else, its carriages take you a hundred metres into the sky. To be up there and look down on the city is to ride with the gods.
So I asked him: ‘What about the giant wheel? Would you like to go on it?’
His hand tightened in mine. A tremor passed over his face. She had not been frightened even at six years old, but the boy was scared.
‘The view is very beautiful from the top. You can see all Vienna.’
He stood still in the middle of the path. He tilted his head and gave a small sniff.
‘I want very much to be brave,’ he said in his low, cracked voice. ‘I very much want it.’
And suddenly it all dissolved — my long antagonism, my restraint, the resentment that I felt at being asked for what belonged only to my daughter. I saw him sitting beside his dead mother in the Polish forest, waiting for her to wake . . . Saw him wobbling on the Encyclopedia of Art, playing and playing because he could no longer talk. I remembered the silent patience with which he’d endured his uncle’s bullying, saw the graze on his forehead of which he’d said no word.
And I knelt beside him and took him in my arms.
‘You are brave, Sigi. You’re very brave, my darling,’ I said — and kissed him.
So now I can tell you this. They are entirely exact descriptions of what happens, those ones in the fairy tales which tell you what occurs when you kiss an ugly frog, a hairy beast, with proper love.
Sigi didn’t kiss me back or cling to me. He just straightened his shoulders and then in a calm, almost matter-of-fact voice, he said: ‘Now we will go up,’ — and then led me to the brightly painted carriages swaying high above our heads.
It is evening now and I am sitting at the window waiting for my lovely day. Sigi is asleep in the house opposite; he will play tomorrow and play well, I know it. Kraszinsky has had enough of a fright to leave him alone. I went in with him and helped to put him to bed; he was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. And he made no fuss at all when I told him I wouldn’t be at the concert.
‘I have to go on a journey, but I’ll be back on Tuesday and then we’ll go to Demels and have a splendid Jause!
‘Can we eat Indianerkrapfen?’ was all he wanted to know. ‘Yes, Sigi. Lots of Indianerkrapfen.’
All the Indianerkrapfen in the world he shall have when I have been with my lover by the sea.
I haven’t written for over three weeks. I couldn’t. I was too wretched.
It was because of Herr Schnee’s horses that it happened and who could have foreseen that? His nephew, the cornet, kept his promise. At five o’clock on the day of Sigi’s concert and my journey to the sea, he trotted into Madensky Square at the head of his troop. They were splendid horses, cavalry chargers, each ridden by a trooper in full regalia of the Carinthian Jaegers: dolmanyis, shakos, swords . . .
It was a kind of joke. It is not easy to remember that. A sort of birthday tribute to Herr Schnee — a salute — but a jape really. Horses do not need to be fitted for their harness, but the cornet was very young.
The day was misty, if you remember. Dusk fell early, but the lamps were not yet lit.
When the horses came I was standing outside on the pavement with my suitcase waiting for the cab to take me to the station. I saw how fresh the horses were; how mettlesome. One in particular, a black rid
den by the soldier who was next in line to the officer.
The cornet shouted, ‘Halt!’ and dismounted, and gave his reins to the man behind him. Herr Schnee came out, smiling and bowing, and walked along the line of horses which stretched past my shop also, and then he and the cornet went inside.
In the apartment opposite, Sigi and his uncle came out on to the step to wait for Van der Velde’s limousine. I was hidden from him by the horses but I saw how proudly he held himself in his new clothes.
Then. . .
I know what he saw. I know exactly what he saw in the dusk. He was four years old again in the forest in Preszowice. I know the word he screamed though it was in Polish:
Cossacks! Cossacks!
And he went mad. He raced across the square to the horsemen who had come to kill me as they had killed his mother.
Rip, barking, followed him.
The boy couldn’t see me as I stood pressed against the doorway of the shop. He threw himself at the leader of the troop, he tried — this midget — to wrest the man’s sword from its scabbard, and all the time he screamed abuse in Polish.
The trooper was amused at first. ‘Hey, hey,’ he said, reigning in his horse, controlling the cornet’s charger.
Then Rip arrived. In a paroxysm of barking, he ran between the horse’s legs.
I shouted to Sigi. ‘It’s all right, Sigi. It’s all right!’
He didn’t hear. Still yelling abuse in Polish, caught in his time warp, he started to tug at the bridle.
The soldiers were no longer amused. One of them dismounted and grabbed Sigi. He wriggled free and cut across behind the black charger.
‘You must run, you must run!’ he shouted, tugging at my skirt.
And Rip followed. Sigi after all was a member of his house and he barked defiance at the stamping horses . . . managed to rise on his vestigial hind legs . . . to nip the black charger in the fetlock.
Oh God, those seconds that pass so quickly that one cannot believe one cannot call them back and undo the horror they contain.
He was a good horse, the black; there was nothing vicious in him. He only reared up to escape the irritation of the yapping dog — and brought his forelegs down again. Not really very hard, but hard enough. Rip only had time to yelp once, and then he lay still.
There was so much blood — so unbelievably much blood for such a little dog.
The accident changed the soldiers’ mood. Their faces turned ugly, sullen, foreseeing trouble. And all hope of quietening Sigi’s madness vanished.
‘You see! You see how they kill!’
I had pulled Rip’s body clear; I wanted to cover him; I did not think it was fitting that he should lie there so mangled, so . . . exposed, and I took off my travelling cape and laid it across his body.
Then Van der Velde’s limousine turned into the square. Kraszinsky rushed up to him, and the impresario strode over to the horsemen.
‘Get hold of that boy,’ he ordered. ‘Take him to my car. Hold him down till I come.’
They responded at once to the authoritative voice, the velvet-collared overcoat. Two men dismounted and grabbed Sigi, still clutching my blood-stained skirt, and dragged him away.
Then my cab came. I seized my suitcase. Delivery, the end of the nightmare — Gernot and the sea!
I was pulled back savagely, my arm wrenched behind me. ‘Oh no!’ said Van der Velde. ‘You’re coming too. You landed me with this hysterical little tyke and you’re going to take the consequences.’
‘I can’t. I have to go. I have a train to catch.’
Van der Velde laughed and twisted my arm tighter. He was enjoying himself. ‘You can go when he’s played — because he’s going to play if I have to tie him to the piano stool.’
The soldiers were on his side. I was linked with the boy in blame for the accident. ‘Want any help sir?’ one of them shouted.
Van der Velde marched me across the square, pushed me in beside the child, slammed the door. As he started the engine I saw a misshapen figure in a grotesquely flowered hat come out of the apartment house: Frau Hinkler dressed for the concert. She stood for a moment on the steps, then began to walk towards the soldiers . . . to run . . .
I was very quiet in the motor. My suitcase had been left on the pavement, but I still had my purse with the tickets. Nothing else mattered; my blood-stained skirt, my missing cloak . . . not even the sobbing child on the seat beside me. As soon as the car stopped in a crowded place I would get out and run for a cab. Van der Velde would not dare to pursue me where there were people. There was still time.
We came to the busy section by the opera. The car stopped. I reached for the handle of the door.
Van der Velde was in front, but Sigi saw what I was doing. ‘You’ll be all right now,’ I whispered to him. ‘You can see no harm has come to me.’
He didn’t answer. He had stopped sobbing; he made no noise at all, but he had begun to shiver. It was bad that time in the square when his uncle didn’t come home, but this was far, far worse. His whole body shook as if with a frightful fever.
If he had tried to pull me back, or screamed, I’d have made my escape, but he made no attempt at all to stop me. He just sat there, looked at me — and shivered.
So I stayed.
I suppose I must try to describe the concert, but the truth is, I don’t remember much.
In the artist’s room we tried to wash off the blood and tidy ourselves. Van der Velde led me to one of the press seats in the front row. Then he made an announcement: there had been a traffic accident on the way to the hall; he craved the audience’s indulgence for the child.
It was a good move, of course. There were sighs and whispers, a fluttering of programmes: the poor little waif. Then the impresario came down to sit beside me and make sure that I wouldn’t try to escape. The idea was that Sigi would be able to see me and know that I was safe.
What a joke!
He came on to the platform, bowed his concert master’s bow, began to play. He played the Beethoven sonata, the Chopin mazurkas, the waltz in F . . . There was not one moment, between the pieces, when he even glanced my way. For this child, who an hour ago had been completely mad, nothing existed except the piano.
I could have left in the interval; even Van der Velde saw that the child had forgotten me, but it was too late. The train had gone.
The concert ended in an ovation. There were cries of ‘bravo’ and ‘bis’; he was recalled again and again; a woman in a silver fox plucked a rose from her bosom and threw it on to the stage. My last glimpse of Sigi was of a dark head appearing briefly between the circle of well-wishers that surrounded him — newspaper men, autograph hunters, agents — and then vanishing once more.
That was three weeks ago and I haven’t seen him since. When the Kraszinskys returned to the apartment house, Frau Hinkler screamed such abuse at them, holding Rip’s body in her arms, that Van der Velde took them back to a hotel. He smells money now and is prepared to see the Kraszinskys decently housed. The cheque for Sigi’s concert clothes came through the post and now he is on a concert tour of Germany.
There’s one thing I still don’t know; whether the fuss, the acclaim was because he looked so young and there had been an accident, or whether he has a proper and lasting talent. I didn’t hear him, I was too wretched — and anyway I wouldn’t know.
No, I’m lying. After the encore that Van der Velde had specified, there was a fourth. Sigi chose that: it was the Mozart Rondo in A and I heard that.
I heard his music.
I think I have lost Gernot.
We do not telephone, but this time, for something so important, he would surely have phoned? If he still loved me he could not be so cruel as to deny me a chance to explain. Or he would send me a letter telling me where I could get in touch with him. But in all the wee
ks since I missed the train there has been no word.
So I think that something was damaged permanently when I failed to come to him. I have never before not kept an assignation, you see. Once I had a broken ankle, but I still came. Once, in a blizzard, I was ten minutes late, but I have always come. And I think that he cannot forgive me. For I have no illusions about myself and Gernot von Lindenberg. In the eyes of God we are equals, and perhaps in bed (where God, so strangely, often seems to be present) but in the eyes of the world we are desperately unequal. There must be a hundred women waiting to step into my shoes.
Alice guesses that something is wrong. ‘Is it the little dog, Sanna? Is that why you’re sad?’ she asked me.
No, it is not the little dog. I miss Rip very much — we all do in the square — but he was ten years old and died in an instant. Each time I look out of the window in the early morning I wait to see him come down the steps to fetch the paper and then remember he is not there — but it is not the little dog. What has happened to my face cannot be laid at Rip’s door. How do the cells in my skin, the follicles of my hair, know that I have lost Gernot? ‘A woman is as old as her elastic tissue,’ a pompous friend of Professor Starsky said once, and my tissue has become profoundly inelastic. Nini has taken to bringing me hot milk at bedtime. Soon, if this goes on I shall be wearing navy blue with touches of white.
Oh God, no. Not that. Gernot will write, he will phone, he will send Hatschek. I cannot have to live without him!
Meanwhile I’m not the only person with problems. Gretl’s fiance, who is now in charge of his own fire engine, has given her an ultimatum: marriage within six months or the engagement is off. Gustav Schumacher has jammed the master switch in the saw shed and fused the electricity supply to two apartment houses and a laundry, and Leah Cohen’s husband has bought the tickets for the Holy Land.
‘Promise you won’t dress Miriam when I’ve gone, promise me,’ she begged. ‘That’s the only thing I can’t stand, the idea of Miriam swanning about in your lovely clothes.’
Edith Sultzer has just telephoned to say she wants to see me.
She arrived with her briefcase so full that the lock did not shut and she had to hold it under her arm.