But everyone else…
Herr Huber called in his motor and said he’d heard of a shop in the Graben three doors down from him which was becoming vacant. I went with him to inquire, but the rent was way above anything I could reasonably afford.
I’ve just managed to stop Nini from going to Ungerer to ask for her old job back (Only in the evening, just to help out a bit with money,’) and Gretl is threatening to postpone her wedding yet again. She’s told her fiancé that she must stay and help me pack, as though seeing her safely settled isn’t the thing I need most.
Peter Konrad has offered me the job of running the dress department in his store. This is a serious possibility and I must think it over carefully. The salary is good, I’d have a chance to travel — he even said he’d take Nini. It’s not what I want: I want to make dresses not buy them for other people, and I’d find it hard to work for someone else after being on my own for so long — I’m really very opinionated. But I don’t think things will ever come together again for me the way they’ve done here: the shop, the square, the people.
And Alice…
I’d left a note for her and as soon as she was back from Switzerland she hurried round. She wore the kind of pretty, silly hat she hadn’t worn since Rudi died and she was almost her old self, but her first concern was for me.
‘Your lovely, lovely shop — it’s insufferable. Only listen, Sanna, you know there’s room in my flat for both of us, don’t you? Lots and lots of room now that Rudi doesn’t come any more. You could stay as long as you like — for ever if you wanted to. And there’s nothing to pay — it doesn’t cost me any more to have you there.’
I hugged her and thanked her, but it wouldn’t work. We’re not girls any more; those times are past.
Then she told me why they’d asked her to come to Zurich. ‘It was because of Rudi, Sanna. He’s left me same money. Quite a lot of money!’
‘Oh, Alice, I’m so glad!’
‘It isn’t just the money,’ said Alice. ‘Well, it’s that too, of course — but mainly it’s knowing that he thought of me. And all that time! Ever since we were first together he’s put some away each month into the bank in Zurich. It’s so like him — thinking it out so that it wouldn’t upset his family, doing it so quietly. And do you know what was so marvellous? Being there in the National Bank talking to the manager and… being known as belonging to him. Being able to admit to a total stranger how much I loved him and everyone treating me like… his wife.’ She broke off and dabbed her eyes. ‘It was so lovely, Sanna, being able to hold up my head and… sort of declare myself. All those pieces of paper to sign, linking me with Rudi.’
Then last night I had supper at the Schumachers.
I didn’t want to go, I wasn’t in the mood, but Mitzi told me the occasion was special, there was to be a surprise, and at the last minute — I don’t know why — I put on the rich cream dress with the self-coloured rose. It wasn’t easy to take it out of the cupboard and it was slightly too grand for the occasion, but some instinct prompted me and I was right for the little girls clustered round me full of compliments — and still with this slight air of mystery. Maia was there too, spending the night with Mitzi, and Gustav growing even fatter and more vacant-looking. The saga of his disasters at the timber works is becoming quite Homeric.
It was necessary, of course, to admire Donatella, holding court in her cot, and Kati and Gisi who were too young to be allowed to stay up for supper, and then we sat down to one of Helene’s excellent meals: mushroom soup, roast goose…
Then Lisl came in with the desert.
I have never been particularly fond of knödels: it seems sad to me that fresh fruit should be covered in potato dough, rolled in breadcrumbs, fried… But it was clear that the knödel that was to be served to me was special. Mitzi and Maia took it from Lisl, it was on a Meissen plate all on its own, liberally doused in vanilla sugar — and a slightly unexpected shape.
‘It’s for you,’ said Mitzi, beaming. ‘It’s a surprise.’
‘We both thought of it,’ said Maia firmly. ‘Both of us had the idea, but Mitzi cooked it.’
I picked up my fork, hoping to rise to the occasion, whatever it might be.
‘Shall I cut it right through?’
‘Yes,’ said the girls, clearly relieved. ‘It would be best to do that first. You don’t just want to swallow it without looking.’
So I cut it carefully into two. In the middle of a very thick ring of dough was something brownish and small and just a little decomposed.
‘Goodness!’ I said, playing for time.
‘Don’t you see what it is? Don’t you recognize it?’ Mitzi’s blonde head and Maia’s black one were bent over my plate. And then, thank heaven, recognition came.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘It isn’t… it can’t be… but it is! It’s my pear!’ ‘Yes, yes,’ cried the little girls sitting round the table, and nodded and beamed.
‘We made it for you because we thought you wouldn’t get enough to eat the way it was. So we picked it,’ said Maia. ‘We did it secretly at night so that it would be a surprise!’
So you see my mother was right. It’s all still there: sparrows and leaves, knödels and friendship. Even without Gernot, it’s all still there. Somehow I’ll manage. Somehow I’ll find a way.
Egger has wasted no time. Men appear continually in the square: those men in brown overalls with hard hats and tape measures and furtive faces. The chestnut trees are to be cut down next month: already they’ve made white crosses on the bark. There’s always one tree — the one closest to Joseph’s cafe that I worry about: its leaves fall earlier than those of the others and its buds come out later. Maybe its roots, below the pavement, have encountered some obstacle, and I have the absurd idea that the white cross will kill it even before the felling: that it is a kind of evil eye.
Herr Schnee is being businesslike about clearing his premises. He’s morose and terse and says there’s no point in shillyshallying; the sooner he’s out and in a new place the better. He has a chance of a workshop on the other side of the town and is not inclined to be sentimental about the square.
Augustin Heller’s a different matter. He’s a broken man, wandering about his shop, putting things in piles and then forgetting where he’s put them. I can’t imagine how he will ever manage to get away. His daughter in Wiener Neustadt has ‘agreed to take him in’ as he put it. This is Maia’s mother — a woman as bossy as her daughter, but without her daughter’s imagination. No wonder that Heller has aged by ten years since Egger’s letter came.
Now I had better put down what happened this afternoon.
The Countess von Metz arrived in her creaking carriage and asked me to make her an evening dress. She was as rude and decrepit as ever but I had the feeling that she was concealing some kind of triumph.
‘I’ve come to ask you to make me an evening dress.’
‘I’m afraid that’s impossible, Countess. As you may have heard, my shop is closing and I can’t take any new orders.’
‘Ah, Egger.’ She banged on the floor with her cane. ‘Yes, I’ve heard. But you won’t let a parvenu like that stop you. You’ll start up somewhere else.’
‘No, I don’t think so. I’ve been offered a job in a department store.’
I hadn’t yet decided what to do about Peter’s offer but whatever else happened, I was going to get rid of the Countess von Metz.
‘I wouldn’t approve of that,’ said the incredible old woman. ‘I would not be pleased.’
I said nothing. She’d paid me for her green broadcloth with a piece of arsenic-impregnated wallpaper sandwiched between glass. It came, she’d informed me, from Napoleon’s house on St Helena and was the undoubted cause of his demise.