We pulled him out, helped him on to the sofa.
‘I can’t,’ he said, still not quite conscious. ‘I can’t. I don’t remember how it goes any more.’ And then something in Polish which he repeated. ‘Sleep,’ said Sigismund. ‘Please can I sleep?’
I could have murdered Kraszinsky at that moment.
While Nini locked the door and pulled down the blinds, I pushed the hair away from Sigismund’s face and found a bloodied graze on his temple. A stone thrown with venom would have made such a mark.
‘He won’t be able to play, will he?’ whispered Nini. ‘I don’t know.’
With twenty-four hours to go it seemed impossible. Even if they could get him to the hall what kind of performance could be expected from this weary little wreck? But it wasn’t the ruined prodigy I saw in Sigismund’s hollowed cheeks and stricken eyes; it was a sick and ill-treated child.
I sent Nini for some milk and a croissant, and while the boy ate and drank I tried to think what to do. I’d kept the day deliberately free of clients; most of my packing was done. And suddenly I knew…
‘Sigismund,’ I said, ‘we’re going away for a little while. Just you and I. We’re going to play truant.’
He put down his cup. ‘I don’t have to practise any more?’
’No. You don’t have to practise ever again if you don’t want to.’
‘And it doesn’t matter if I screw up my mouth?’
‘It doesn’t matter in the least.’
He was on his feet; he put his hand in mine. He was ready.
I gave Nini her instructions. ‘I’m going to slip out at the back. Give me half an hour, then go and tell Kraszinsky that the boy is safe. I’ll bring him back this afternoon.’
Only when we were in a cab bowling down the Walterstrasse did Sigismund ask: ‘Where are we going?’
And I answered: ‘To the Prater.’
The words were hard to say.
I had not been in the Volksprater — the Wurschtlprater — since I went to try out for my daughter the dappled horses on the roundabouts, the coconut shies, the swings. That day, twelve years ago, when I had been so sure that she and I were about to begin our life together, had been one of the happiest of my life. She was with me all the time in spirit, driving a miniature carriage pulled by white llamas, throwing hoops over bobbing celluloid ducklings, clapping her hands when I won for her a cross-eyed, fluffy dog. And at the end she led me, my lion-hearted daughter, towards the giant wheel with her blonde head tilted to the skies.
So it was not easy now to drive through the gates with this alien child.
Sigismund, as we got down from the cab, stood looking around him in bewilderment. There must have been fairs even in Galicia, but the boy seemed overwhelmed and his cold hand fastened tightly on mine.
But in any case I wasn’t going to let him choose what to do first. I knew. The treasure I’d discovered when I came here with my little phantom daughter was still there: I could see the brightly coloured sign above a clump of bushes. GROTTENBAHN, it said — and I moved resolutely towards it, paid, led the child into the first of the wooden coaches, painted a brilliant red and blue.
‘What is it?’ he whispered.
‘You’ll see.’
Only a few people got in behind us; it was late in the year for the Prater. The bell rang and we lurched forwards into the darkness. There was time to be properly afraid — and then the train stopped.
We were opposite the first of the lighted caves. It showed Cinderella stooping by the embers, her golden hair brushing the hearth. Everything that would later transform her life was there: the pumpkins, the mice… One baby mouse playing beneath the dresser was half the size of the rest, with tiny crooked whiskers. The clock ticked in the corner, hams and salami hung from the rafters. She was utterly forlorn, poor Cinderella, and as we leaned out of the train (which we were not supposed to do) we could see the tears glitter on her cheeks.
‘Who is she?’ whispered the boy beside me, and I realized that he had never heard of Cinderella; never in his life.
Yet he was transfixed, as I was too. For we were entirely in the kitchen, sharing her loneliness, her rejection — but at least I knew the future as did the children in the coaches behind me. That the old woman visible through the window was coming… that as soon as the train moved on she would be there, the fairy godmother under whose cloak one could see the glimmer of silver.
The train surged forwards and beside me Sigismund sighed. It was too soon, always too soon, that jerk of the train, one never had time enough. Another journey into the darkness, and then we stopped once more.
Snow White this time, and the glass coffin and the dwarves clustered round in mourning. And how they mourned! They held their heads in their hands, they clutched their handkerchiefs, one lay prostrate among the lilies of the valley on the ground. White doves hung above the bier, white roses sprouted from the earth and she lay with her raven hair streaming across her face.
And again for the other children in the coaches the sadness was almost pleasurable because they knew, as I knew, that the prince would come (one could see his painted horse, his handsome head on a distant hill), the poisoned apple be dislodged, the grief-stricken dwarves rise to their feet and dance.
But not Sigismund. ‘Why is she dead?’ came his hoarse little voice beside me. ‘Who killed her?’
‘I’ll tell you later. But it’s all right. She comes alive again.’
Another plunge into the darkness and the giant Rubezahl, our special Austrian giant and wholly benevolent. He was holding a cow in the hollow of his hand and chiding it for not giving milk while tiny people in the field below looked pleased.
And on again to the Sleeping Beauty. She lay back in a swoon holding her spindle and she had the richest, fattest plait of flaxen hair you have ever seen. A great hedge of thorns grew across the window and all around her lay the palace servants overcome as she was by sudden sleep. There was a sleeping dog, a sleeping chef in a tall hat — and a sleeping kitchen boy still holding aloft the cutlet he had been about to eat.
‘A sleeping chop!’ said Sigismund, pointing, and for the first time since I had known him, I heard him giggle. He had made a joke.
There were twelve stories depicted in the Grottenbahn and Sigismund knew none of them. The Little Mermaid, walking on her sore new feet towards her prince, Mother Holle trying to shake down the sky, Little Red Riding Hood carrying her basket between marvellously spotted toadstools while the great wet tongue of the wolf lolled between the pines…
The last but one of the lighted grottos was almost the best: Thumbelina landing in Africa, held in the beak of her swallow. And what an Africa! Swirling scarlet lilies, fruit hanging from palm trees — and in the petals of a flower as golden as the sun, Thumbelina’s tiny princeling awaiting her.
In the last of the caves, Hansel and Gretel lay asleep in the forest, pillowed on leaves, while above them an arc of angels in white nightdresses with pink bare feet and glittering halos, held out protecting hands.
And here at last Sigismund was able to make a connection through his music, and in his husky voice he hummed the theme of the ‘Angel’s Ballet’ from Humperdinck’s opera.
Then we were out in the daylight, blinking, trying to adjust to the shock of daylight and ordinariness.
The train stopped. The other people got out. Sigismund made no move whatsoever.
‘Where would you like to go next?’ I asked.
A stupid question. He sat absolutely immobile, grasping the rail in front of him.
‘Again,’ he said.
I bought two more tickets. We went round again. Cinderella, Snow White, the great giant Rubezahl… When we got to the Sleeping Beauty he made his joke about the sleeping chop, when we got to Hansel and Gretel he crooned the ballet music from Humperdinck, and each and every time the train moved on, he sighed.