It was like looking into the mirror, like being six years old again but better. She was prettier than I had been, for her eyes were brown. I could see that from where I stood, half concealed by the trunk of an acacia — and I thanked Karli, my long-forgotten lieutenant, for this gift. They were quite lovely, the brown eyes in the fair and golden child.
I had come as she was preparing for a party. Three stuffed animals were propped against cushions on the ground — a bear, a donkey and an elephant, and everything needed for their adornment lay to hand: bird cherries for earrings, necklaces of threaded berries, rings she had woven from the stems of grass.
‘You must be patient,’ she said to the animals, lowering a necklace over the donkey’s head. ‘It takes time to make things fit.’
Her voice was sweet and clear, with a trace of the local accent which would go, as mine had done, in the city.
After the necklaces came the earrings, causing problems with the elephant.
‘You’ll be pleased to look so smart when you get to the King and Queen,’ she told him. ‘You’ll be glad you didn’t wriggle. And remember, I have to get dressed too.’
I watched and watched. I looked at the child, into her, through her. She was gold, pure gold. Then slowly I dragged my gaze away and looked at the house. Neat white curtains, an espalier peach against the wall; petunias and begonias in the window boxes; bantams strutting in a wire enclosure.
My eyes roamed, searching and searching for something that jarred; something I disliked.
Nothing. My prettily dressed yet untrammelled daughter played in perfect contentment in a country garden with her well-loved toys. So I would have dressed her, so I would have wanted her to play. From my child there emanated above all that strange, unspectacular, almost never-encountered thing: a quiet, self contained and peaceful happiness. An ordinariness which is in fact so extraordinary, so unbelievably rare.
Then a woman came out with a glass of milk on a tray and a plate of biscuits and my daughter looked up and smiled.
The child had not noticed me, but the woman saw me. The resemblance must have been very striking for she knew me at once. She didn’t scream, she didn’t faint — she walked very carefully, slowly to the table and put down the child’s milk. Then she grasped the side of the tabie and held on. Just held on.
It doesn’t matter what she looked like. I try not to remember her, but her face went with the house . . . with the garden . . . with what she had made of the child.
So I turned and walked away. I was being good, you see — and as a matter of fact, it nearly killed me.
After all, I did not keep watch with Helene. Suddenly exhausted, I went back to bed just before dawn and was woken by Nini shaking my shoulders, worried because I was late for the shop.
‘It’s bad news, I’m afraid,’ she said.
I sat up quickly. ‘Helene Schumacher? Something’s wrong.’ ‘Yes. It’s the black apron not the white towel. Another girl.’ ‘If that’s your idea of bad news I’m sorry for you,’ I said furiously.I ran and bought a dozen red roses from Old Anna, and sent them round with Gretl.
‘Lisl’s been crying,’ she said when she returned. ‘Her eyes are all red. And the little girls looked like corpses, going off to school.’
‘Herr Schumacher, no doubt, is in mourning,’ I said grimly. ‘He went off first thing, even before breakfast. Just stamped out of the house with his umbrella.’
As the black apron collected more and more sympathizers my ill temper increased. I snubbed Joseph in the café when he referred to Herr Schumacher’s ‘misfortune’ and was rude even to poor Professor Starsky when he paused outside my shop to shake a commiserating head.
Reports of Herr Schumacher’s progress through the day did nothing for my state of mind. He had been seen in the Golden Hind at lunchtime, already considerably inebriated. There was a second sighting on the terrace of the Hotel Meissner. By early evening he was said to be in the Central having been assisted there by his dentist and his bank manager who’d stayed to join in the grief and lamentation.
I was unpinning my hair, ready to go to bed, when there was a knock at the door of the flat and Lisl, the Schumachers’ maid, stood there with swollen eyes.
‘The Gnädige Frau begs if you’ll come and see her for just a moment.’
‘Now? Tonight? Surely she’s too tired?’
‘No — she particularly said tonight if you could manage. Herr Schumacher is still away.’
‘I’ll come at once.’ And then: ‘The baby’s healthy, I understand?’
‘Yes.’
I put up my hair again, fetched a shawl and followed her.
Frau Schumacher lay alone in the big brass bed. Her kind, plump face was grey with fatigue and swollen with tears. In a bassinet in the corner of the room lay the baby in its muslin tent.
I went straight to the bed, took her hands, kissed her. I’d stitched a little bonnet for the baby weeks ago and laid it on the counterpane.
‘Congratulations!’ I said. ‘A healthy baby, Lisl tells me.’
‘Yes.’ Then the tears began to flow. She felt for her handkerchief, dabbed, mopped. ‘I don’t mind having another girl. I like girls. I would have seventeen daughters and it wouldn’t bother me. Why should it matter whether they have that silly thing between their legs? It only causes trouble. Either they have to have somewhere to put it and if they can’t find anywhere they start their stupid wars.’
I had never heard Helene talk like this, but I pressed her hands warmly to show how entirely I agreed.
‘And the baby’s beautiful. I love her. I tell you, Frau Susanna, as soon as I held her, I felt such love. She has violet eyes and the most perfect arched eyebrows. She’s a real personality. The girls love her too. But my husband . . . well, as soon as he heard it was a girl he just went out and Lisl tells me he was at the Meissner by lunchtime, quite drunk, and all his cronies commiserating. It’s his pride, of course, that’s all it is. He never took any notice of the last two — he never held them once or wanted to be near them. So what’s going to happen now?’
‘Well, she’ll just grow up with the others, surely, in the best possible home. Your husband doesn’t have to trouble with her if he doesn’t want to. She’ll have enough love from you and the girls.’
Frau Schumacher shook her head and lay back on the pillow. ‘It’s not my fault,’ she murmured. ‘The doctor explained that. It’s not my fault and it’s not his; it’s just a thing that happens, but Albert’ll never see that.’ And she began to sob again.
I went over to the bassinet and pulled aside the curtains. The baby lay deep in sleep. She had a beautifully shaped head, a warm peach-coloured skin, a retroussé nose.
Then she turned her head a little and I saw that one cheek was entirely covered by a livid crimson birthmark.
I let the curtain fall and returned to the bed.
‘Your husband doesn’t know?’
She shook her head. ‘He just marched out of the house as soon as he heard it was a girl. I wouldn’t let the doctor tell him — I wanted to do it myself. But now I can’t . . . ’ She began to cry again. ‘It’s awful how much I love this child already and I cannot bear it if he . . . if . . .’
‘You must tell him as soon as he comes in.’
‘Frau Susanna.’ She raised herself up on the pillow. ‘Would you tell him? That’s why I asked you to come. He admires you so much. “If Frau Susanna wasn’t a virtuous woman you’d have to look to your laurels,” he keeps on saying. It’s that first moment when he turns away from her or rages and says God is punishing him. I didn’t mind with the others, but I cannot bear it for this child.’
Do you know where he is?’
‘No I don’t, not for certain. He was at the Central about seven because someone saw him, but he may have moved on.’
‘Don
’t worry, I’ll find him, and I’ll tell him. Just rest now; just sleep.’
Herr Schumacher was not in the Central. He had been there and the proprietor remembered him well, and the party of sympathizers with which he’d been surrounded.
‘Seven daughters, poor gentleman,’ he said — and recoiled from my basilisk glare.
He was not in the Blue Boar either, but in the Regina the trail grew warm again. An inebriated gentleman, supported by two friends, had lurched past half an hour earlier, asking the passers-by what he had done to deserve his fate.
‘He went on about goldfish, too. Someone had killed his goldfish,’ said the landlord. ‘He went off towards the Graben. You could try the Three Hussars.’
And in that ancient hostelry full of antlers and oak panelling I found him. He was sitting between his faithful henchmen, the bank manager and the dentist, the centre of a veritable Pieta. Herr Schumacher’s moustaches were limp with grief, glasses and a half empty bottle of wine littered the table. The dentist’s heavy hand lay on the stricken father’s arm; the bank manager’s pince-nez glittered as he shook a commiserating head.
‘Good evening.’
‘Frau . . . Susanna!’ Herr Schumacher recognized me, tried to rise.
‘Herr Schumacher, I have just come from your house.’
‘Eh. . . what?’ Tipsily he pulled out a chair which I ignored. ‘Is there anything wrong? My wife’s all right?’
‘Physically she’s all right. Emotionally she’s not. She is very much upset.’
‘Well, yes; anyone would be. I’m very much upset. . . my friends are too.’ He waved his arm at his companions, knocking over a glass. ‘I’ll have to take in my brother’s boy from Graz now. It’s a disaster; its —’
I now lost my temper.
‘Herr Schumacher, you make me ashamed to be a human being. Your daughter has a large birthmark on her right cheek. It is a serious and permanent blemish with which she will have to live. Your wife is exhausted and wretched — and you sit here like a sot; drooling with self-pity and drinking with your so-called friends.’
‘What . . . ? What did you say?’ He sat down heavily. ‘A birthmark? A big one, you say.’
‘Yes.’
The dentist had now grasped the nature of the calamity. ‘Hey, that’s terrible, Schumacher. Terrible! Not just a girl but disfigured!’
‘Dreadful, quite dreadful,’ murmured the bank manager. ‘You’ll have her on your hands all your life.’
Herr Schumacher shook his head, trying to surface from his drunkenness. ‘You say she’s healthy?’ he demanded. ‘The baby?’
‘Yes, she’s perfectly healthy. In fact she’s a very sweet baby otherwise. She has the most distinguished eyebrows.’
‘Still, if she’s got a strawberry mark no one’ll look at her. Or rather everyone’ll look at her!’ The dentist, still bent on consolation, tried to put an arm round Herr Schumacher’s shoulders.
The arm was removed. Herr Schumacher rose and managed to stay upright. ‘Idiot!’ he spat at the dentist. ‘Half-wit!’ He opened his mouth very wide and jabbed a finger at one of his back molars. ‘Do you see that tooth? You filled it a month ago and since then I’ve had nothing but trouble! Every time I drink something hot it’s like a dagger!’
‘Come, come Schumacher,’ said the bank manager. ‘He was only trying to —’
Herr Schumacher swung round to confront his comforter.
‘And you shut up too or I’ll knock you down. I’m surprised you’ve got the nerve to look me in the face! Two per cent on a simple loan with collaterals! Two per cent!’
He threw some money down on the table, staggered to the coat rack, jammed his hat on his head.
I had kept the cab waiting. The night air revived Herr Schumacher, but only partially, as he alternated between threats to knock down the bank manager and the dentist, and inquiries about his daughter’s health.
I had intended to leave him by the front door but Lisl looked at me so beseechingly that I accompanied him upstairs.
‘Where is she?’ demanded the new father, blundering into the bedroom.
‘There, Albert.’
Herr Schumacher strode over to the cot.
‘Lift her out!’ he bade me — and I took the swaddled bundle and carried it over to the light.
‘Give her to me!’ he commanded.
Frau Schumacher and I exchanged glances. He was still not entirely steady on his feet. I motioned him to a chair, laid the baby across his lap, and stood by in case of accidents.
Herr Schumacher stared intently at his daughter’s face. I had placed her deliberately full in the light and the livid mark showed up very clearly.
Then he began to talk to her: ‘Well, well, my pretty, that’s nothing to worry about! No, no, that’s nothing to bother you and me. You just wait till you’re riding with your father in a great carriage through the Prater.’ He bent down, laid one finger on the blemished cheek and began to make the foolish, clucking noises that drooling women make to little children. ‘We’ll have such times together, you’ll see! We’ll take a sailboat down the river and I’ll show you how to catch fish. And on Sundays we’ll go out to tea at Demels — just the two of us!’
And while he inexpertly joggled and tickled his youngest daughter, the blessed baby just lay there without a murmur, accepting it all — and presently Herr Schumacher informed us that she had little fingernails, his mother’s nose — and eyebrows.
Frau Sultzer’s court case is coming up next week. The university is suing her for trespass and damage to property — and indeed the rats she has released all over the building look damaged. Those that have been seen, appearing from time to time in the Academic Board Room or the cloakrooms, have that wet look which is never a good sign in rodents, and their pink eyes are glazed and dull.
Unfortunately, her notoriety has gone to Frau Sultzer’s head. Notices saying Silence! Frau Sultzer is reading Schopenhauer have been replaced by notices saying Silence! Frau Sultzer is preparing her defence. Actually, the person who is preparing her defence is poor Rudi, along with the lawyer he has called in and to whom he is paying a lot of money, but the Group is very much excited by the whole business and the lady who accompanied Laura on the back of the tandem on the historic ride to the University is much grieved that she is not appearing in court also.
But Alice, when we met in Yvonne’s hat shop, was radiant. True, Rudi still comes home to rooms full of women with salad hanging out of the corners of their mouths; true, too, that the lady who makes Edith’s underclothes has started on that Croatian cross-stitch in black and red that high-minded women go in for, so that he has to hide his pyjamas. But at the end of July Frau Sultzer is taking Edith and the Group to St Polten where they will go for walks and listen to her Appreciating Nature, and Rudi has pleaded pressure of work and will stay behind.
‘I’ve been so worried about him,’ said Alice, at the same time lowering a dazzlingly beautiful black tulle hat clouded in polka dot veiling on to her curls. ‘Last time he came he was so exhausted I thought perhaps we shouldn’t make love. In fact I suggested it.’
‘I expect he thought that was a bad idea?’
Alice turned her head away in the hope that the hat would be less becoming from the side, but it was not. ‘He thought it was a perfectly terrible idea,’ she said and smiled into the mirror. ‘But now everything will be all right. I’ll soon get him completely well again, you’ll see. Can’t life be absolutely marvellous suddenly!’
She then took the exquisite hat to Yvonne, a shrivelled old charlatan who is nevertheless the best hatmaker in Vienna, and returned shaking her head.
‘Thirty kronen for a handful of tulle — she’s mad!’
‘Let me lend you the money, Alice; please. It looks so marvellous on you.’
‘No, Sanna, it’s
sweet of you but I’d rather not. Anyway, who needs a black hat in the middle of summer?’
Magdalena is better. Herr Huber brought her for a fitting in his canary-yellow motor, and with the kind thought of saving Edith from the back of the tandem he picked her up at her house and brought her too.
The contrast between the two girls was almost painful. Magdalena drifted in, a rosary dripping from her fingers; slender, willowy, dressed in white. Behind her came Edith with her bad skin, her dandruff-covered hair, her extraordinary spectacles.
But what upset me was the way Herr Huber looked at his fiancée. Naturally I had expected him to be very much in love, but the adoration, the humble yet frenzied worship, worried me. I wish I understood this marriage.
Of course Magdalena is very beautiful though I admit I felt a little disconcerted as I welcomed her. Not because of the rosary, though I do not have many clients who bring rosaries to their fittings, nor by the absent look in her deep blue eyes, but by the fact that at eleven in the morning in a dress shop in the Inner City, she was wearing her lovely, rippling hair loose almost to the knees. You can of course design for these Ophelia-like girls who model themselves on the English pre-Raphaelites, but it had been my intention also to consider occasions like the Meat Retailers’ Outing, or afternoon tea with Herr Huber’s sister in Linz.
I left Edith in the second cubicle while I draped Magdalena in Seligman’s brocade. By the time I reached the Bluestocking with the toile for the moss-green crêpe, she had been waiting for some time in her unfortunate underclothes and I had no right to be irritated by her bulging briefcase lying on the velvet stool, but I was.
‘You could leave your case outside, Fraulein Sultzer. It would be quite safe.’
A sort of gulp issued from the Bluestocking and her pale lips twitched into a nervous smile. Then she snatched the briefcase and began to empty out the contents. A black and tattered copy of Beowulf an Anglo-Saxon dictionary, two note books . . . and something rolled in tissue paper which she put into my hands.