But the pear affected this motherly person much as Sigismund had done.
‘It’s not very big, is it?’
‘It’ll grow,’ I said firmly.
Though I do wonder… The first frosts are expected soon. Perhaps I should simply cut my losses and pick the thing?
Alice has received a letter which has troubled her. It’s from a bank in Switzerland and full of mysterious and pompous language. They want her to travel to Zurich bringing evidence of her identity, and she’s convinced that she has committed some misdemeanour of which she is unaware.
‘I think that’s most unlikely, Alice,’ I said. ‘I can’t imagine a more law-abiding person and Switzerland isn’t really a very frightening place. Also they say they’ll give you back your fare — and I shouldn’t think they’d do that if they’re going to arrest you. Anyway Swiss gaols are probably lovely: all scrubbed and hygienic with cow bells to summon the warder.’
It doesn’t seem to get any better for her, Rudi being dead.
‘If only there weren’t so many small bandy-legged men with gold pince-nez,’ said Alice, trying to laugh. ‘I see them everywhere.’
The search for Magdalena continues. I take no interest in it — where the girl has gone with her lover is no concern of mine — but Herr Huber seems to be shrinking inside his skin. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be wiser to tell him what I saw at St Oswald’s: one short, sharp blow might be better than this long-drawn-out distress. I have told Edith, but the Bluestocking in her own way is as obstinate as her mother and she doesn’t believe in Magdalena’s elopement.
‘I don’t think she’d do that,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t sound like Magdalena. She never wanted anything to do with men.’
Ah, I wanted to say, if you’d seen her with this man. If you’d seen the yearning, the way she leant towards him.
But I left it. I can’t do anything now about Magdalena, nor about the little Count of Monte Cristo preparing for his big day as I prepare for mine. For it’s less than a week before I take the train to Trieste. I’m making myself a dress of corn coloured shantung — very simple, very Greek. Fluted like a pillar I shall stand with my lover on a promontory licked by the azure water — and I shan’t only look like a temple, I shall be one. Yes, it’s true. The thoughts I have, the gratitude, the worship will be the kind of thoughts that they must have had in the dawn of time, those men and women who lived so closely with the gods.
‘Physical love is completely unnecessary for you,’ Gernot once said to me. ‘A work of supererogation. You’re in love with the whole created world. I’m competing with every idiot sparrow chirping on a window sill, with every tree that bothers to put out a leaf.’
If only it were true! If only he knew how the sparrows would fall and the leaves shrivel if I lost him.
But he shall know. I’m not ashamed that I mean to make of this journey a kind of sacrament. If either of us smile on our deathbed, it shall be because we are remembering our days and nights beside the sea. So move over, Oh Shulamite, for I assure you that the best bedroom of the Hotel Post or the Hotel Bella Vista (or even of a pension with an asterisk, hard as it is to imagine Gernot in such a place) shall be the setting for my ‘Song of Songs’!
I’ve bought a new sponge bag too.
October
I woke early this morning, the day before my voyage to the sea. The weather has been misty and autumnal, but I don’t mind that — indeed it makes it better. For once you go through the Mallnitz tunnel and come out on the southern slope of the Alps, the sun always shines, Gernot told me that. Just one tunnel and you are among the lemon trees and the blue skies, in the country that the songs are about. ‘Kennst Du Das Land Wo Die Citronen Blühen’ wrote Laura Sultzer’s Goethe, and tomorrow I too shall know it.
At seven thirty I slipped out to the apothecary in the Walter-strasse to fetch the special shampoo that Herr Frieberg mixes for me, for the dress of corn-coloured shantung in which I shall stand like a pillar on a promontory demands the echoing gold of my coiled hair and though Nature has done what she can, Herr Frieberg’s Special Mixture is undoubtedly a help.
When I had washed my hair and buffed my fingernails I wandered peacefully through the shop. Everything is ready for tomorrow’s journey. My hats, nested in tissue, rest in their boxes, my case is dusted, the shoes already packed. The most reliable cab driver in the Albertina Platz will come at five o’clock, a good hour before I need to leave to catch my train, but I love stations and hate rush.
Across the square I could see Jan Kraszinsky come out of the apartment house looking dishevelled and agitated as usual, and hurry off towards Joseph’s café. I haven’t seen Sigismund for days.
‘Let it go well for him tomorrow,’ I prayed — and forgot him.
In the long mirrors I saw myself, my hair loose, my eyes bright, and felt a surge of gratitude to God for letting me have a little longer, still, to summon beauty. He could so easily have smitten me with a spot on the chin, a cold in the nose, but He had seen into my heart and stayed His hand.
Kraszinsky had left the café and was running across the square. He was hatless, his coat-tails flapped — he was coming towards my shop and I was instantly angry. I wanted nothing of the Kraszinskys and their problems on the morning of my waiting day.
‘He’s gone!’ said Kraszinsky almost falling across the threshold. ‘Sigi’s gone!’
‘Nonsense! He’ll have gone out for a stroll.’
‘No, no! He never goes out now, I forbade it because of the boys.’
‘What boys?’
‘Herr Schumacher’s nephew and the other one who sings in the choir. They throw stones at Sigi and shout things.’ Oh God, poor Sigismund. I had known nothing of this. ‘When did you last see him?’
‘In the night. I woke up and I thought I must tell him to change the fingering in the polonaise, so I went in and he was there then.’
‘You woke him in the middle of the night to tell him that?’
‘Yes, yes… Often I have ideas in the night and I tell him. The concert must be a success, it must! I have borrowed so much money! Oh God, what shall I do?’
The man was quite out of control, shaking… a little mad. Did Frau Hinkler not see him go out?’
He shook his head. ‘He must practise still — he must practise! Yesterday he made a mistake in the last movement of the sonata.’
‘I’m not surprised he made a mistake. I’m surprised he can still play at all. Look, you’d better tell the police, but I’m sure he can’t have gone far. He may even be back now; he could have slipped in through the courtyard.’
I almost pushed him out of the door, but my lovely, quiet day of anticipation was shattered. Nini came out of the workroom and I told her what had happened.
‘Poor little scrap; I saw him yesterday at the window and he looked terrible; really ill. No wonder he’s run away.’
‘He hasn’t run away,’ I said crossly. ‘Where would he run to?’
Strange that I never thought of the obvious thing. Even after Nini gave a little squeak and said: ‘Oh! There’s something moving there, under the table,’ even then I didn’t think.
But of course he was there. He must have crept in while I was out at the chemist… come for sanctuary to the ‘little house’ of yellow silk he’d hidden in when he came to be measured for his clothes, and fallen asleep.
For he slept still; he had only stirred briefly. He lay curled up, his arms crossed over his chest. I saw a human embryo once, in a jar in Professor Starsky’s lab; a waxy white, curved little creature with slits for eyes who lay as the boy lay, seeming to protect itself from birth, from life.