‘Thank you… I’m very touched, Helene, but —’
‘That’s all right, my dear. I don’t want to pry into your feelings. I just thought I’d tell you that we still feel the same as we did when Gisi and Kati were born.’
Oh, why can’t I? Why not for this baby who surely will have enough to bear? My daughter is eighteen years old: if I had ever ‘had’ her I would now be learning to let her go. And yet I still can’t, even in this formal and ritualized way, be a mother to anybody else.
‘What is she to be called?’ I asked. ‘Have you decided?’
Helene smiled as at an excellent joke she was about to share. Then she called to her girls: ‘Mitzi! Franzi! Steffi! Resi! Come here!’
The four eldest came at once.
‘Tell Frau Susanna what names Papa likes for the baby.’ Her plainly named Viennese daughters began to giggle.
‘Donatella,’ said Mitzi.
‘Galatea,’ said Franzi.
‘Leonarda,’ whispered the shy and ravishing Steffi.
‘Graziella,’ said Resi.
‘But which?’ I asked. ‘Which one is she to have?’
‘All of them!’ cried the children in chorus. ‘Every single one!’
‘He went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum with a notebook,’ said Frau Schumacher, shaking her head. ‘He spent all Sunday there looking for inspiration.’
‘Well, he certainly seems to have found it,’ I said.
Later I took Frau Schumacher to the shop to choose material for a summer dress. Mitzi had gone to play with Maia who was spending Sunday with her grandfather, and it wasn’t long before we heard Maia’s bossy voice coming over the courtyard wall.
‘We’re going to make a yurt. We’re in the middle of the Gobi desert on our camels and we’ve missed the oasis so we have to camp here.’
‘Can we make a fire and cook something nice?’ begged Mitzi.
‘No, of course we can’t! We have to crouch inside and chew raw yak meat. There’s going to be a terrible sandstorm — a fire would blow out straight away.’
‘That Maia!’ snorted Helene. ‘Last week she wanted Mitzi to be an Inca and sacrifice a llama. She’s a real bully, that girl.’
A bully, yes, but a visionary too. At Mitzi’s age I too would have made yurts.
I have just had the most extraordinary interview with Frau Egger, the wife of the Minister of Planning.
Her cloak is almost finished. She came this afternoon for a final fitting and it looked very nice, but she still wanted the military buttons with the owl’s head, the lance and the motto saying Aggredi. I can see that in the sight of God it really cannot matter if one of my clients parades down the Ringstrasse labelled Charge, but it matters to me, and I was about to argue when, to my horror, she clutched my arm and her eyes filled with tears.
‘Please, Frau Susanna… could I speak to you for a moment? In private?’
I tried to refuse. Nini was out at the lacemaker’s, but I was in no doubt that it was Lily from the post office that was on Frau Egger’s mind.
‘I know you’re busy,’ she went on, ‘but I won’t keep you and I’m desperate. I’m simply desperate!’
With considerable reluctance I took her up to my sitting room and fetched the bottle of eau de vie I keep for special customers.
‘I shouldn’t, I know,’ she said, draining her glass at a gulp. ‘I don’t usually drink spirits, but I’m so unhappy and I thought if I can’t speak to the Anarchist girl myself perhaps you’d ask her to give a message to Lily?’
‘Frau Egger, I honestly don’t think you have anything to worry about. I’m sure that —’
‘Oh, but I do, I do. You don’t understand, I have everything to worry about.’
She held out her glass with a trembling hand and I filled it again, but with misgivings. My eau de vie is made by Gretl’s uncle who owns an orchard in Bregenz, and consists of almost neat spirit through which an apricot or two has briefly passed.
Frau Egger was really crying now, grinding her handkerchief into her eyes.
‘It’s dreadful, quite dreadful. I’m in despair.’
I made another attempt to console her. ‘Nini assures me that Lily is no longer interested in your husband. She has given him up.’
‘I know! I know she’s given him up, that’s what’s so terrible! My cook’s sister-in-law works as a chambermaid in the Hotel Post where my husband used to take Lily. The walls are very thin and she heard Lily tell my husband that she didn’t want to see him any more because I was a good woman. “Your wife is a good woman,” she heard Lily say, “she takes soup to the poor and I don’t want to hurt her any more.” But I’m not a good woman, Frau Susanna. I only take soup to the poor because the cook always makes too much and really there’s not a lot you can do with soup. If your girl told Lily that, would she take my husband back, do you think?’
‘Frau Egger, I don’t honestly think Nini could tell her that.’
‘Oh, but she must! She must! She must implore Lily not to give him up. And if she could tell Lily that he expects all sorts of advancements after the November elections. Ennoblement is not out of the question.’
She gulped down her second glass of spirits and, fumbling about in her reticule, pulled out a very pretty gold-link chain.
‘My husband is not very generous,’ she said. ‘Men don’t often think of these things but if the bomb-throwing girl could give this to Lily… just to show her that I really don’t mind. That all I desire is my husband’s happiness. There’s a bracelet that goes with it if she wanted it.’
I was by now extremely harrowed, but it seemed necessary to bring the poor woman down to earth.
‘I really don’t think it would work.’
‘Oh, but it must work. It must!’ Before I could stop her she had reached for the bottle and poured out a third glass of brandy and tipped it down her throat. ‘Of course if it’s not that… if it’s not me being good, and the soup… I mean, if it’s my husband’s Little Habit, then she must tell Lily that one gets used to it. Really. Well, almost.’
I removed the bottle and put it away in the cupboard, but it was too late. Frau Egger was now definitely drunk and the marital despair of a lifetime poured from her.
‘You see, it’s all right for you, Frau Susanna. You’re beautiful and I don’t suppose you’ve ever had to… not year in, year out, with someone you don’t like. And of course my parents said I was lucky when Egger asked me. He appeared from nowhere and Father helped him get a job as a clerk in the Ministry — and I was on the shelf. But I didn’t realize how it would go on and on… Every Tuesday and Friday after lunch it has to be. His doctor told him twice a week is the right amount and everything Willibald does is as regular as clockwork. While I thought there might be children I could bear it but now I don’t know what to do. If I say “Let’s do it in the dark,” he says, “Come, Adelheid, you’re not as ugly as that —” but of course that’s not what I mean. It used to be easier because we had such an excellent organ grinder down in the street. A real musician. I used to pay him to come and play under the window in the afternoons when Willibald was home. Strauss waltzes mostly. I could manage while he played Strauss. Johann, of course… and Josef too. Not Eduard so much; Eduard’s waltzes are too sad. But of course the neighbours didn’t like it and then the organ grinder went away.’
Frau Egger blew her nose and looked round for more brandy, but in vain.
‘Then he took up with Lily… Oh, it was wonderful; you can’t believe it, Frau Susanna! For months he didn’t come near me and he was almost good-tempered. It was like being born again. I started embroidering a footstool cover in petit point. I used to love embroidery when I was a girl, but after my marriage I couldn’t seem to settle down to it. And now it’s all over and there he is again with his white stomach and his Habit. I should have known,’ she wailed, beginning to cry again, ‘I should have known that nothing good could ever happen to me.’