‘I feel I should inform you that my daughter is entered for the Plotzenheimer Essay Prize in Anglo-Saxon studies,’ she continued, `so I would be grateful if you would keep her fittings as brief as possible. It is imperative that she wastes no time.’
‘Her fittings will be exactly as long as necessary, Frau Sultzer,’ I said.
I then led Edith away, removing Beowulf from her nervous clasp, and while Nini measured her, I tried to think what I could do to make this unprepossessing lump into a pretty bridesmaid.
The first step was obvious.
‘Fräulein Edith, if I am to dress you properly, one thing is essential. A proper corset.’
She stared at me, her short-sighted eyes widening behind her spectacles. ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t! Mama would never permit it. She doesn’t approve of them. My underclothes are made by a lady who comes to mother’s Goethe readings.’
‘Yes, I can see that. But I really cannot sew for someone whose bosom has to be looked for every time they come. It needn’t be anything very tight or constricting. I’ll give you the name of an excellent woman in the Graben: she’s not expensive.’ I wrote a name on a piece of paper and handed it to Edith. ‘After all, there’s no need to trouble your mother; just mention to your father that I insisted on a foundation garment. I’m sure he’s aware of the existence of such things.’
Edith shook her head despairingly. Her light brown hair was full of dandruff, but I refrained from suggesting a good shampoo and raw liver sandwiches for it was clear that the Bluestocking, at the moment, could take no more.
‘Anyway, no one will look at me,’ she said, ‘not with Magdalena as a bride.’
‘Anyone I dress gets looked at,’ I said firmly, but I was curious about Magdalena Winter and Edith answered my questions freely enough.
Magdalena and Edith had attended the same school since they were seven years old. From the first it seemed Magdalena had been spared the traditional disasters of childhood: chicken pox, acne, braces on her teeth. Not only was she beautiful, she was exceedingly devout.
‘She always said she wanted to be a nun. Always. But of course when you look like that… All the same, we were very surprised when she accepted Herr Huber.’ Edith broke off, flushing. ‘I don’t mean… I mean, Herr Huber is very kind. He called on us and brought us a salami, but we’re vegetarians and Mother gave it to the poor. Only, Magdalena had a lot of offers and some of them were very grand — and she’d refused them all.’
I tried to visualize this paragon. ‘Is she dark or fair?’
‘Fair. Almost white. In the nativity play she was always the Virgin Mary and her hair sort of rippled out over her blue mantle. People just gasped.’
‘And you?’ I asked the Bluestocking, ‘what were you in the nativity play?’
‘Oh, I was a sheep,’ said Edith. ‘I was always a sheep.’
Back in the salon, Frau Sultzer was still bent over her Schopenhauer, occasionally pencilling a Yes! or an Indeed! into the margin.
How sad for poor Schopenhauer to have died before he knew how absolutely Laura Sultzer agreed with him.
I had intended to see the bride and the bridesmaid together but Herr Huber had sent a message to say that Fräulein Winter was unwell. She had a chest infection and the doctor had advised her to stay indoors. Since there was a great deal of work to be done on her trousseau I’d suggested that Nini and I go round to her house with some samples, and as soon as lunch was over, the butcher appeared in his new canary-yellow motor to drive us to where she lived.
Magdalena’s mother was the daughter of an army officer who had fought at Königgratz; her father was a taxidermist at the Naturhistorisches Museum who suffered from chronic asthma and had been retired early on a shockingly inadequate pension.
‘The elephant seal at the top of the main staircase is his work,’ said Herr Huber, steering his motor down the Wipplingerstrasse. ‘A very able man.’
Magdalena had two younger brothers, twins of ten who were destined for the army. They had fallen behind at school and now had to be coached for the Cadet Corps.
‘I’m taking care of all that, of course,’ said the butcher. ‘I regard it as a sacred trust.’
He left us at the entrance to the Kreuzer Hof and we made our way through an archway into a sunless courtyard and up an outside staircase to the third floor. The smell of sauerkraut and drains accompanied us; on the dank, arcaded passage that ran right round the building, aproned women with crying children filled buckets at the communal taps.
Frau Winter opened the door to us, mumuring a brave lie about it being the maid’s day off. The tiny parlour was spotless and every surface was covered with crocheted doilies or antimacassars or lace-fringed cloths. There were pictures of the Kaiser, of the murdered Empress Elisabeth — and one portrait of an army officer whose insignia I fortunately recognized.
‘Ah, the 3rd Light Cavalry! The corps that fought so magnificently at Königgratz.’
Frau Winter’s pale eyes lit up. ‘Yes. That’s my father. The boys are going to join his old regiment. They have to!’ In her voice I sensed her desperation, the endless fight against the poverty and squalor by which she was surrounded. No wonder Magdalena had felt obliged to marry a wealthy man.
The twins now appeared, clicked their heels, bowed. With their cropped flaxen hair, light blue eyes and sturdy physique they were every recruiting officer’s dream.
‘Go and tell your sister that the ladies are here,’ Frau Winter ordered — and to the faint, unheeded sounds of inquiry from the taxidermist behind a door, we were led to Magdalena’s room.
It was an extraordinary place. All the rooms were dark, for Frau Winter had placed the thickest netting between herself and the communal passage outside, but Magdalena’s room, which had only a small high window, was crepuscular. One felt as if one were in an aquarium or deep below the sea.
‘Oh!’ Nini beside me had given a little squeak, her hand touched mine for reassurance — and no wonder.
All round the room — on the shelf above the bed, on the chest of drawers, on the small table, there stood glass jars and inside each of them something white and sinister appeared to float. Curled up embryos? Pickled organs? Had we strayed into some kind of mortuary?
Then our eyes grew used to the gloom and we could see that they were figures made from wax: little doll-like models of martyrs and saints.
‘Do you like them?’ came a voice from the bed. ‘I made them myself.’
Magdalena rose and stood before us in her dressing gown and I forgot the waxen puppets and simply stared. Both Herr Huber and Edith Sultzer had described Magdalena as beautiful, but nothing had prepared me for what I saw. The girl was tall and slender; her loose hair rippled to her knees, her curving eyes were the colour of lapis lazuli.
‘The ivory brocade you bought from Seligmann?’ whispered Nini.
But I was ahead of Nini. I had already cut the brocade into panels floating down from the shoulders, drawn the back ones into a train… had wired the top of the bodice so that Magdalena’s throat came out of the cloth like a lily from the stem.
‘I’ll show them to you,’ said Magdalena, and moving gracefully over to the chest of drawers, she took down one of the glass bottles and handed it to me. ‘That’s Saint Lucy; she’s one of my favourites.’
The doll in her waxen grotto was holding in her pink-tipped hands a velvet cushion on which rested her gouged-out eyes.
‘This one’s Saint Nepoumak,’ she went on. ‘He’s got the rope round his neck, ready to be thrown in the river. And the one next to him is Saint Katherine. She was broken on the wheel, that’s why she’s in two parts like that. Though she joined up later.’