But let me not fool myself. I know why this September is so magical. It’s because I’m going to see the sea with Gernot. I’m going to have three days and nights with him and the waves will lap at our feet and his right arm will embrace me.
Magdalena’s trousseau is finished. Gretl will take the wedding dress to the Winters’ apartment; the rest of the things are to go down to Linz for there is to be no honeymoon: the couple are going straight to the villa with the bird table that is not a bird table framed between dark trees. On Monday Herr Huber will come to settle his account, but before that he has arranged a party — the last before his wedding.
At the end of September there is always an Operetta Night in the Stadtpark Kursalon. Singers come from the Volksoper; they have electric lights now, strung between the trees, and after supper (which is taken out of doors if the weather is fine) there is dancing to an orchestra which plays on the bandstand from which Strauss himself so often conducted with his fiddle.
For Alice the evening means hard work projecting her voice over the sound of rattling crockery and burghers enjoying their food, but for Herr Huber the occasion is all he could ask for to celebrate his coming bliss.
He looked so happy when we set out. I’ve blamed myself since for letting my own affairs swallow me up during those minutes in which I might have prevented what happened. But that’s foolish. I was up against the lying sweetness of music that tells you no love is ever unrequited, no passion unfulfilled, while it is playing. I may be the best dressmaker in the city, but I’m no match for the Viennese waltz.
Herr Huber had secured a table beside the dance floor with a vacant place for Alice when she could join us. Frau Sultzer had tried to prevent Edith from coming. ‘She’s still in mourning,’ she said, but her own mourning did not prevent her from cavorting through the Vienna Woods telling the Group how to recite Grillparzer, and Edith now sat beside Magdalena consuming, without even the faintest tremor, a substantial portion of Tafelspitz.
I had come reluctantly, but I found I was enjoying myself. Herr Huber’s exuberance, his intense enjoyment of the food — above all his melting and voluptuous pleasure in the music, was somehow infectious. I even managed to feel some pity for Magdalena. The bargain she had made might be a shoddy one, but it was hard, none the less, for the butcher’s endearing sensuality — so evident to Alice and myself from the beginning — was entirely beyond her comprehension.
‘Wien, Wien Nur Du Allein’ sang the soubrette above the chorus, and yes, it was true. Only Vienna, only being here under the chestnut trees was what we wanted. The women whose men were present stretched out their hands across the table; those whose men were absent or dead (but not absent tonight, though dead) looked into their glasses and smiled.
The meal was cleared. More wine was brought. It was time to dance.
‘Would you like to try, my dear?’ said the butcher shyly to Magdalena.
‘No, thank you. I don’t dance.’
Edith too shook her head though Herr Huber was polite enough to ask her. Beneath the table I could see his feet in their white spats, tapping, tapping…
‘Well, perhaps we’d better show them,’ I said — and he beamed and rose to his feet, wiping his hands carefully on his handkerchief.
He was an extraordinarily good dancer; one rested on his stomach with the greatest comfort. As we spun and reversed to ‘Voices of Spring’ we attracted — for the floor was still fairly empty — some approving nods, and from a group of army officers, a smattering of applause.
‘Won’t you try, Magdalena?’ I said as we returned to our table. ‘The orchestra’s so good.’
She looked for help to her friend, but the Bluestocking was talking to Alice who had joined us, and with the lightest of shrugs she let herself be led away by her fiancé. And of course she could dance; what Viennese girl is unable to waltz?
‘May I have the pleasure, Madame?’
I looked up to find one of the soldiers who had applauded us bending over me. A Captain, rather older than the rest. It was an impertinence: I was with friends — but as I was about to refuse he held out his hands in a gesture that was curiously familiar and said ‘Please?’ — and I got to my feet.
The feeling of familiarity persisted as we circled the floor. He was about my own age, with dark eyes, a touch of grey in his moustache. I asked him the usual things: did he come here often, where was he stationed, was he married?
Yes, he was married. ‘And you?’ he asked, glancing down at my hand. ‘You never, married?’
Even then, in spite of the strange form the question took, I wasn’t sure.
‘No, I’m not married.’
‘But you’ve done well. You’re so elegant. So lovely and —’
At this moment all the lights went out. A deliberate ruse on the part of the management or an electricity failure? I don’t know. But as soon as it was dark, I knew who he was. When I could no longer see his face, I remembered everything else: the way he used to hold out his hands, knowing that the good things of the world would come to him, the feel of his skin… and I was back in the attic of the fruit market, learning how simple love was — how unalarming.
‘Karli! Oh, Karli!’
‘I came back, Sanna, I came back,’ he said, pulling me closer. ‘It was a long time, I know… they sent us all over the place, but I want you to know that I came back. On my wedding night when I should have been upstairs I sat down and wrote you a letter — only there was nowhere to send it.’ The orchestra, by the glimmer of their desk lights, played on. It was the ‘Destiny Waltz’ and in the darkness I was seventeen again. ‘I didn’t realize how special you were, Sanna; I was so young, but later…’
I stroked his hair. ‘It’s all right, Karli. I managed. I’m fine now; I have a good life and so do you. It was so long ago.’
‘Yes, it was so long ago. But I never forgot. It was like being in the sun all the time, being with you. You think it’s always going to be like that when you’re young… you don’t realize. I thought that’s what love was like, but it was you. It seems so awful that it’s all gone — that there’s nothing to show for it.’
I nearly told him. Oh God, so nearly! I wanted to say it so much: ‘We made a golden child out of those weeks together, you and I. I have seen her and she is unparalleled, and though she is lost to both of us, she lives!’
But I didn’t say it. I sent him back untroubled to his life. If he’d been happier I might have told him, if he’d spoken of his wife with pride — but I know what it cost me to leave our daughter where she is, and I did not think he had the strength.
Then the lights went on again, the past vanished, and I saw not my young lieutenant, but a tired man with broken veins on his face and disappointed eyes. Karli too came out of his dream, and as the music drew to a close he led me back to my table, bowed formally, and gave me his card.
‘If I can ever be of service,’ he said — and I watched him walk away to join his friends.
Only then did I notice that I had returned to a calamity. Alice and the Bluestocking had risen to their feet, both with a look of horror on their faces. I followed their gaze.