By the time his wife died, Herr Huber had his own slaughter-house, a factory working entirely to his specifications, a pleasant house with a balcony overlooking the Danube, and seven shops. Frau Huber had not seen the poetry of charcuterie, but she kept the books and enjoyed their prosperity and consequence, and her death left him very lonely.
Then last autumn he’d come to Vienna thinking he might rent a shop in the Inner City. It was a big step, but he felt he still had it in him, being on the right side of forty. He’d seen a property that looked promising, but there were certain problems.
When in doubt Herr Huber, like the rest of us, turned to God. He’d gone into the Capuchin church in the Neuermarkt and asked God whether he should rent 167 Augustinergasse and God had said no. The access at the back was poor and the drainage doubtful.
Then just as he was about to rise to his feet, Herr Huber had beheld a vision.
‘A vision,’ he repeated. ‘There is no other word for it, Frau Susanna: a vision.’
Magdalena Winter was in white, she was in a state of rapt devotion and as she walked down the aisle past Herr Huber in the almost empty church, she smiled.
‘At the Lord Jesus of course, not at me. At her thoughts… But I cannot tell you…’
Herr Huber, however, did tell me. Of his involuntary pursuit. Of the days spent hovering outside the apartment where she lived. Of at last making himself known to her mother. Of the unbelievable bliss, the incredulity when he discovered, after months of patient courtship that, given certain conditions, she would marry him.
I happened to be looking up from my sewing as Herr Huber, in his slow dialect, pronounced the words ‘certain conditions’ and I did not like what I saw. His red face had flushed to an even deeper crimson and a feverish exaltation glittered in his round, brown eyes. What kind of ‘conditions’ did a penniless girl lay down for marriage to a rich man in his prime?
To conceal my disquiet I asked about the bridesmaid and her mother. Had Herr Huber met the Sultzers?
Herr Huber had. ‘Frau Sultzer is a most intelligent woman. She has an amazing mind.’
‘And Edith?’
Fräulein Sultzer is very clever too. She is studying Anglo-Saxon at the university. The epic of Beowulf in particular.’
‘Could you describe her at all?’
There was a long pause while Herr Huber once more had recourse to the toilet water and the handkerchief. His brow was furrowed and I could see him straining to supply me with an encouraging fact.
Then his frown cleared. ‘She doesn’t have whiskers,’ he pronounced. A last dab with the handkerchief, and then he added, ‘Yet.’
I have just made a complete fool of myself. I went to see Alice to tell her about Herr Huber’s visit and on the way back I thought I saw across the width of the Kärtner Ring a figure that I recognized.
Yes, I was sure that I knew that soldier in the uniform of the Bohemian Dragoons with his slow gait and clumsy boots. I even thought I could smell across the heads of the fashionable crowd who promenaded there, the whiff of the raw onions that nothing can prevent Corporal Hatschek from chewing when he is off duty. And my heart raced, excitement coursed through me — and I lifted my skirts ready to hurry across the road.
But the Ringstrasse is wide, the hansom cabs are never in a hurry. By the time I’d reached the other side there was no sign of him.
I’d imagined him then. Conjured him up out of my deepest need. It’s not the first time that I’ve run across the road like a homesick child towards this onion-chewing corporal and found he was a mirage. Well, so be it. There is only one cure for what ails me, and thank heaven I have it in abundance. Work.
They’ve let him out, the little Count of Monte Cristo, the walled-up piano-playing child. It was early evening and I had just shut the shop when Nini called to me:
‘Look, Frau Susanna. He’s down in the square!’
A small dark-suited figure, a Goya dwarf, had appeared, framed in the doorway of the apartment house. There was an air of bewilderment about him: he was like the prisoners in Fidelio who blink at the sudden light.
Then he moved stiffly out into the square, now golden in the last rays of the setting sun. There was no one else with him and he had nothing in his hand: no ball or spinning top or hoop. When he reached the fountain in the centre he stopped, but he didn’t bend his head to search for fish or touch the water or run his fingers along the decorations on the rim. He simply stood there, and I realized that he had absolutely no idea of how to play.
This was not a child; it was an unnaturally compressed adult. One sees them sometimes in Flemish paintings: tiny burgermaster’s daughters, their heads caught in vice-like ruffs; their small plain faces unutterably grave. Velasquez painted them at the Spanish court; knee-high infantas, imprisoned in silk.
I watched for a few minutes from the window. Then I went out into the square.
Close to, it was worse stilclass="underline" the white face, the dark clothes, the air of ‘otherness’ which clung to this non-child. His black hair under the cap was long and greasy; the meagre neck unwashed.
No use putting one’s arm round such an old, old soul. I felt that if I asked his name he would stamp his skinny legs and vanish into the ground. So I gave him only the greeting we’d used, passing each other, in the country when I was a child.
‘Grüss Gott.’
The child that was not a child did not reply. He only looked at me: at the blue ribbon threaded through the flounce on my skirt, at the forget-me-nots tucked into my belt, at my white blouse… His black and eastern eyes, too small, too melancholy, stayed on my face as I looked down on him.
Then he laid one arm across his narrow chest; the other vanished behind his back. His feet in their dusty shoes came together — and in silence he gave me a perfect concert master’s bow.
The Baroness Leitner came to order a travelling suit. Her husband is going to America on a diplomatic mission and she is to accompany him. She insisted on trying on the rich cream dress, and it fitted her too. I thought it only fair to warn her, though, that it was not a very practical dress to take on a journey — very crushable and not at all easy to clean.
After she left, saying she would think it over, I saw the girls look at each other in puzzlement. It’s true that I need to get the money back that the dress cost me. True, too, that the Baroness only slightly resembles Frederick the Great. But I know that out there, somewhere, is a woman whose life will be transfigured by this dress and until she comes I have to wait.
Meanwhile I have a new client. We were having lunch when the phone rang down in the workroom.
‘It’s the Hof Minister’s wife — Frau Egger. She wants to come this afternoon.’
‘Tell her five o’clock.’
I wasn’t as gratified as I should have been. Hof Minister Willibald Egger, who has crawled and schemed his way to the top of the Civil Service, is a most unpleasant man who delights in pulling down beautiful old buildings to improve ‘mobility’ and ‘traffic flow’. Nobody believes that he is greatly concerned with the problems of the Viennese cab driver. What he wants is to achieve ennoblement or have a street named after him. So far a Willibald Egger-gasse has eluded him, but the rumours that cause poor Joseph such distress all emanate from Egger’s department of ‘Development’.
‘You shouldn’t dress his wife,’ raged Nini. ‘He’s an absolute swine. Do you know what he does? If the lunch isn’t ready the second he comes in from the ministry, he picks up a great cow bell and rings it and rings it till the poor girl rushes in with the soup. The maids have to line up every Saturday to have their fingernails inspected and he bullies his coachmen so much that they’ve had five in a year. Not to mention the Nasty Little Habit.’