Madensky Square

  ‘I’m not going to interest him in an avowed Anarchist. I’m going to interest him in my intended. For I intend to marry Nini, you know. What she intends is nobody’s business.’

  I didn’t tell him about the typhus. He doesn’t have to have all my nightmares.

  Daniel has been at the Bristol for five days. The ship on which he was due to return sailed from Genoa and he let it go. Each day he comes and tells me what he has done. He never gets ruffled and if he gets discouraged he keeps it to himself, but it seems to me that his nondescript eyes, the freckles on his nose, are growing darker.

  The children are a trouble. When they see him coming they run out of their houses, pursued by the irate voice of Father Anselm from the presbytery, of Helene Schumacher forbidding her girls to go out inadequately dressed into the snow. Daniel only speaks to them for a few minutes and then they are off. Once they became vile slavers on the Gold Coast, dragging the captive Africans to their ships, only to be overcome in their turn by pirates and forced to walk the plank. Once they set off in canoes to find the source of the Rio Negro, beating off crocodiles, piranha fish and savages, and claimed new territory for the Austrian flag. I never saw children play together as they played with Daniel Frankenheimer in the doomed square. I think Maia would have gone through fire for him.

  When he could stay a while we talked and I learnt about his family. He was proud of his father’s achievements, but impatient of some of his attitudes to his workers. ‘He’s too paternalistic; he won’t see that times have changed. Unions are here to stay — people want things by right, now, not by the gift of their employers. But he’s got the most terrific flair.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  Daniel grinned. ‘She’s an obsessive. Little and mad; looks like a wolverine — and acts like one too when she’s after something.’

  ‘What’s she obsessive about?’

  ‘Well, the family partly — Dad and me and my older sister. But mostly her music school. She was trained as a pianist, you see. And I must say she’s made a marvellous job of it. People are auditioning to come there now from all over the world.’

  ‘It’s for exceptionally talented children, isn’t that right?’

  Daniel nodded. ‘Her people came from Russia originally and she’s based it on the ideas of the Imperial Ballet School in St Petersburg. Incredibly hard work, the top teachers, but a chance for the children to perform as they go along and be part of the world they’re going to join. When Gustav Mahler was in New York he came to see it and he wrote my mother a letter saying he wished he’d been trained there instead of the Vienna Conservatoire!’ Daniel laughed and cut himself another slice of Herr Huber’s latest leberwurst. ‘Last month the fire alarm went off in our house in Fifth Avenue. My father pulled all the documents out of the safe and the maids rescued my mother’s jewels — but my mother came down in her nightdress and all she was holding was her letter from Gustav Mahler!

  Then he went off to the next round of meetings and dinners with recalcitrant and obstinate officials. As he crossed the square, the little ragged boy I’d seen first climbing on St Florian’s shoulder, stepped out from behind a chestnut tree and took his hand.

  He has done it! Daniel has performed the miracle! Nini is out; she is free!

  I had no warning. I was fitting a customer when a black limousine with a flag on the bonnet drew up outside. The chauffeur got out, opened the door, handed Nini out — and drove away without a word.

  She wore the clothes she’d been arrested in and there was a blood-stained bandage round her head.

  ‘Oh, Nini!’ I said, embracing her. And then: ‘It doesn’t matter about your hair — nothing matters except that you’re safe.’

  She winked. Yes, really; this half-starved, exhausted girl winked at me. Then she pulled off her bandage and her hair, uncut, abundant and filthy tumbled round her shoulders.

  ‘Good God, Nini! How?’

  ‘I tricked them. I borrowed the bandages from one of the women who’d been shaved and when they came to me I said I’d already been done. They were in such a muddle most of the time, and drunk into the bargain.’

  She went to the bathroom and spent an hour there, and then she slept. She slept till early evening and only then, sitting in her dressing gown drinking the broth I’d made for her, did she ask: ‘How did you do it, Frau Susanna? How did you manage to get me out?’

  ‘I didn’t, Nini. I tried and tried, but I failed. It was Daniel Frankenheimer who got you out.’

  She put down her spoon. ‘Daniel? But how? How could he, in New York?’

  ‘He isn’t in New York, he’s here.’ And I told her the full story. ‘He’s at the Bristol and he’d be glad to see you when you’re rested, but not before.’

  ‘I am rested,’ said Nini. ‘Actually.’

  She then went upstairs to attend to her toilette, which took some time for she chose to regard her bruises as a fashion point needing to be offset by an olive green silk scarf (mine) knotted just so, and this in turn caused other problems.

  Which she solved, I do assure you . . .

  Did I look like that when I drove off to the Bristol — my eyes so bright, my hands touching my hair almost as though they were the hands of someone else, the man who soon now . . .

  Yes, I suppose that’s how I looked, but it doesn’t matter. She left an hour ago and I think — yes, really, I think — it’s going to be all right.

  No, I was wrong.

  Is it because she doesn’t believe in God that she’s so savage with herself and the world? So obstinate and stupid? Can the woman in Salzburg be going through what I’m going through now: the anger, the frustration at seeing happiness thrown away? Surely my daughter can’t be such a fool?

  Daniel lost his temper. I don’t blame him; it’s foolish to imagine that the power he exerts can’t have a darker side. I can see why he acted as he did, but he has lost her. He knows this. He left yesterday to catch the Lusitania in Cherbourg.

  Nini stayed all night at the Bristol. Perhaps it was the happiness I saw in her face when she returned that set her off. I’ve never known anyone so convinced that happiness is not for her. I could see it all begin — the guilt, the questions.

  Daniel came to lunch. He wanted to make the practical arrangements for her to join him in the States, but she began almost at once, bragging about Knapp’s assassination, about the blow struck for the proletariat. It was twenty-four hours since she’d come out of prison, but she seemed already to have forgotten what it was like.

  ‘I shouldn’t have come out,’ she said. ‘I should have insisted on waiting till everyone was released. It’s only because the system’s so rotten that you could get me out. It’s not till all the swine like Knapp are dead that the People will be free.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the People.’ Daniel put down his knife and fork. ‘You don’t think it might be possible to help the people without blowing them up? In some more modest way, perhaps? By using democratic means? By working for the eight-hour day and better housing and paid holidays, without bloodshed and carnage. Or is that not dramatic enough?’

  ‘No, it’s not. You have to make the world see. Kropotkin said blood shed for the revolution is blood shed for humanity, and he’s right. If you’re mealy-mouthed and afraid nothing gets done. You have to be strong and not have scruples, and destroy the Enemies of the People without hesitation.’

  I saw the exact moment when Daniel lost his temper; there was this apparent darkening of the eyes and skin which is his response to trouble.

  ‘I’ve got something to show you, Nini,’ he said. ‘Now. Come with me.’ He pulled her out of her chair. ‘Get your coat.’ And to me, without any of the respect he’d shown me up to now, ‘You’d better come too. Perhaps you can make her see sense.’

  He bundled Nini downstairs, waited, glowering, whilst she put on her coa
t. We strode out into the snow and down the Walterstrasse. God knows what it is about that boy in his extraordinary muffler that makes the cab drivers stop for him, but he only flicked his fingers as we crossed the road and the driver turned and reigned in beside him.

  ‘Get in,’ he said, and gave the cabby his instructions.

  I hadn’t been in the Municipal Hospital since Rudi died. The same corridors, the same smell of lysol as we followed Daniel. Nini was very pale now, but he didn’t even look over his shoulder.

  No one stopped us this time; it was visiting hour. The corridors grew a little lighter, a little less sombre, and we entered a ward with pictures on the wall and a rack of well-worn toys.

  And so neat, so clean, so small in their iron beds — the children.

  Nini faltered and turned away, but Daniel took her arm and led her to one particular bed over which two nurses were bending.

  They straightened, recognized Daniel.

  ‘Ah, Herr Frankenheimer.’ The sister lowered her voice. ‘He seems a little better. He liked the engine you sent, but of course he doesn’t really know much yet; we have to keep him so heavily drugged.’

  The boy turned his head on the pillow. Seven years old, perhaps. A grey-white face, fair hair darkened by perspiration. For a brief moment he opened his eyes.

  ‘Would you like to see?’ whispered the nurse. ‘The surgeon’s made a beautiful job of the operation; there’s a good chance that he’ll pull through now.’

  She drew back the bedclothes. The child moaned once. There wasn’t anything to see, actually. Only that he had no legs.

  Daniel lifted his head.

  ‘Meet an Enemy of the People, Nini,’ he said quietly. ‘His name is Heini Fischer. His mother took him to town to look at the shops. They didn’t buy anything because his father’s unemployed, but they like to look in the windows. When Herr Knapp drove by, she pushed him forward so that he could see the important gentleman in his fine car.’

  Nini showed no emotion. She didn’t gasp or turn faint. She just walked away down the ward, down the corridor, out of the hospital. I followed her, but she said nothing, and when we got home she went to her attic and I heard her pull the chest of drawers across so as to block the door.

  She came down in the morning to do her work, but still she wouldn’t speak and when Daniel came she went upstairs again and refused to see him.

  It has been her life since she could think at all: the revolution, the movement, the cause. It was what sustained her in the slums of Budapest and the tenements of Vienna: the danger, the romance, the ideology. I think it has all gone, banished by those small, blood-soaked stumps in Heini Fischer’s bed.

  But of course in destroying her beliefs, Daniel has destroyed the part of her he loved the most: the wild, brave, passionate girl who wanted anything except to live an everyday, unthinking, uncommitted life.

  He knew at once, even in the hospital, what he had done, but he waited for a few days in case she would see him. Before he left he gave me a card.

  ‘It’s the name of our agent in Vienna. If ever she changes her mind he’ll fix everything up for her: passports, tickets, money.’

  I embraced him, and there were tears in my eyes. At the door he said something unexpected. ‘Of course if he’s dead, it’s different. But if it’s not that, if he’s alive still, I’d have thought it would come right. I’d have thought you were almost impossible to leave.’

  Then I let him out at the back because the children were waiting for him in the front, and he had to catch his train.

  Herr Schnee has gone. The van came two days ago and his belongings were piled into it.

  ‘No point in hanging round,’ he said gruffly, coming to shake my hand.

  I’ll miss him; already the empty shop next door makes my rooms seem colder; it’s incredible how quickly a place looks neglected and forlorn. I think it has shaken everybody, his departure — we can see that it’s true now, that it’s going to happen, the destruction of the square.

  Poor Augustin Heller is ill; he sits in his dressing gown and coughs. It may be the dust as he moves piles of books that have been undisturbed for years, but I think it’s exhaustion and fear of the future. I’d feel afraid if I was going to live with Maia’s mother in Wiener Neustadt.

  ‘He’s so messy in his habits,’ she complained when I took him some soup, not knowing she was there, and Maia scowled. She loves her grandfather, I think.

  I’ve decided to accept Peter Konrad’s offer. I looked at two more shops, but they were dark and gloomy places without any accommodation, and the only one that was at all possible was ludicrously expensive. Peter and I understand each other, it should be all right, and at least Nini will be looked after; he’s offered to employ her as a vendeuse — though personally I’d rather be served by a cougar than Nini in her present state. Fortunately there’s so much work to do now, finishing orders, clearing the stock, packing, that she goes to bed thoroughly exhausted. What she does when she gets there is another matter. Much what I do, I suppose.

  It now becomes necessary to celebrate Christmas.

  I shall do my best. I’ve ordered my carp from the fishmonger and asked Old Anna to keep me the smallest Christmas tree that she can find. Usually I decorate the shop, but we are at the packing case stage now and there would be no point.

  What has not been easy to endure have been the visits of all the people who work in the square: the dustmen and lamplighters and window cleaners who come for their Christmas bottle of wine and their tip.

  ‘It’s a crying shame what’s being done to this place,’ they said one by one, ‘it’s a sin,’ — and the roadsweeper became so lachrymose that we had to have recourse to Gretl’s uncle’s eau de vie.

  In the café too there is little rejoicing. Joseph’s mother has shown no inclination to leave her bed; she used to start baking her poppyseed beiglis in the first week of December and the smell was always part of Christmas for me. And Father Anselm’s Adam’s apple seems more prominent than ever as he sets out the crib in the vestry and pins up the notice of the services for Holy Night. The new presbytery to which he’ll move the boys at the end of January is a gaunt red-brick building without a garden, and far too far from his beloved church.

  But there’s one household where this loveliest of festivals is secure. The Schumacher girls each have their advent ring, their gingerbread house (Donatella has already eaten the cotton wool smoke from her chimney). Their painted clogs went out punctually on St Nicholas’ Day so that the saint could bestow his silver coins, and their tree has arrived on a dray from the timber yard; the tallest, loveliest tree in Vienna.

  Herr Egger may have blighted the rest of us, but not Mitzi and Franzi, not Steffi and Resi or Kati and Gisi — and certainly not Donatella — as they prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ!

  Well, I did it! Christmas is over and until midnight, at least, nobody actually cried!

  It’s no good pretending that Alice and I were in the best of spirits as we lunched on my excellently roasted carp. Christmas is never the easiest time for Other Women, but in previous years there was the hope that January would bring the men we loved back in to our lives. Nor was Nini, gloomily chasing her food around her plate, exactly a social asset. But I had invited Professor Starsky to join us and there was plenty of wine. There are times when a well-informed dissertation on aphagia in the reptiles of South America can be of real benefit, and Christmas Eve in the year 1911 seemed to be one of them.

  We had scarcely finished the meal when Herr Schumacher called and asked me to go for a drive.

  ‘Now?’ I said, amazed. Alice and I were going over later to see the lighting of the tree and the children opening their presents.

  ‘Please,’ said Herr Schumacher, unaccustomedly humble. ‘Helene said you might be so kind. There is something on my mind.’

 
It was a strange drive I took with him, almost in silence, through the deserted streets, past windows where families still sat at table, past wreaths and ribbons hung on the doors. Then we turned in at the timber yard.

  I shivered as I stepped out into the slush and picked my way past the piles of timber and the scaffolding on the stable block. The place was far bigger than I had realized.

  ‘I wanted you to see for yourself,’ he said, and in spite of myself, as he began to show me round, I became interested. On every other subject Herr Schumacher’s conversation is to be avoided, but as he explained the function of each of the machines, ran his thumb along a particularly finely seasoned plank, or outlined his plans for expansion, he spoke with energy and sense.

  ‘My father was a carpenter,’ I said. ‘It’s one of the first smells I remember, the lovely smell of wood.’

  The tour ended in his office and here at last, Herr Schumacher came to the point.

  ‘Frau Susanna, I asked you to come because I know you have run your own business for a number of years. And very successfully.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you are a woman.’

  To this also I agreed.

  ‘Now what I want to know,’ he said, leaning towards me, ‘is this. Have you ever found yourself at a disadvantage on account of your sex? When a rep comes, for example?’

  ‘No. Never.’

  ‘And your accounts? Have you had difficulty with them?’ ‘Certainly not. Why should I? I can add and subtract and multiply. On good days I can even divide.’

  Herr Schumacher put up a hand to indicate that he had intended no disrespect. He paced to the noticeboard, rearranged the position of the calendar, turned.

  ‘You see, I have been in great trouble over the inheritance,’ he said, sitting down again. ‘It’s natural for a man to want everything he’s built up to go to his own kind.’

  I pulled up the collar of my coat. The office was unheated and the topic not one that excited me as it should.