I’ve been allowed to see Nini for a few minutes each day. She still holds her head proudly, she still, even in her rags, keeps that extraordinary style, and she’s admitted nothing. There hasn’t been much actual cruelty on the part of the prison staff — it isn’t necessary. The filth, the horrendous sanitary arrangements, the haphazard mingling of sick and deluded women with young girls does its own work. There are bruises on Nini’s face which were not there when she was admitted, but when I asked her how she came by them she only shook her head.
I’ve decided to swallow my pride and beg that slimy lawyer in the Borse Platz to defend Nini. If I hadn’t been so distraught I’d have realized at once that I only had to sell The Necklace to get his fees. But when I called there this afternoon, he had left for the assizes in Graz.
This morning I went to the prison early and for the first time found Nini looking frightened. At the back of the cage sat three women, huddled and weeping, with white cloths round their heads — and on one of the cloths, bloodstains.
‘It’s typhus,’ she whispered. ‘They’ve found a case of typhus and they’re shaving everybody’s head. They came and did them this morning and the rest of us are going to be done in batches. You should see the wardresses — they have these cut-throat razors and they just shave you to the scalp. They love doing it because it’s what the women mind most of all.’
It is that that Nini fears: losing her hair — but I know about typhus. I saw our neighbours’ little daughter die of it at Leck.
Upstairs, the prison officer told me to stay away. The women are now in quarantine.
I drove back, utterly sick at heart, as near defeated as I remember being. As the fiacre stopped at the corner of the square, I looked out, amazed. It has been snowing for days; the fountain is frozen, there are icicles on St Florian’s head. People hurry across, their footsteps muffled. No one lingers.
But the square was full of children. I’d heard their shouts before the cab turned in through the chestnut trees and now I saw them in their mufflers and fur hats, bright spots of colour on the whiteness of the snow. They were running and calling out to each other, some were crouched low beside piles of snowballs — one, a ragged little boy I don’t ever remember seeing before had climbed on to St Florian’s shoulders as a lookout and, even as I watched, was brought down by the arrow of an attacker.
For it was a battle that was being fought — but a battle with rules. The fountain was the stockade in which the besieged American pioneers bound for the Golden West defended their kith and kin. The children’s toboggans had been piled up like covered wagons and from behind them the intrepid settlers fired on their attackers.
But the Indians were brave too. Screaming their uncouth war calls, they leapt from General Madensky’s plinth, charged from between the chestnut trees… Maia’s imagined horse was shot from under her and a Red Indian chorister from the presbytery pulled her on to the back of his saddle and galloped on. Among the settlers I saw — but could scarcely believe my eyes — Ernst Bischof allowing little Steffi to provide him with bullets of snow.
The door of the Schumachers’ house opened and Helene called the girls in to lunch.
She might have saved her breath. Mitzi, inside the stockade, was tending the wounded; Resi, who had strayed from the safety of the wagons, was being dragged off to be scalped.
A prosperous-looking couple crossed the Walterstrasse with a fat little boy in ear muffs.
‘Can I play?’ he shouted — and ignoring the protests of his parents, he ran to Madensky’s statue and instantly became an Indian brave.
I had never seen a game like this. There were scarcely any props: the Indians had no feathers, the settlers no guns — yet so engrossed was each and every child in his part that I could have told exactly what they were doing.
But now a boy, older than the rest, in a corduroy cap and outsize muffler appeared from behind the statue of St Florian. He must have died earlier, perhaps the better to mastermind the game — and taking heed perhaps of Frau Schumacher’s pleas, he suggested to the settlers a heroic demise, en bloc, and to the Indians a triumphant ride off into the hills.
Not a boy, I realized as I looked more carefully: a young man. At the same time Nini’s voice sounded distinctly in my head: ‘It was the children that made me notice him.’
Impossible. I had sent the cable only three days ago. Then he bent down, beat the snow from his trousers… and pulled up his socks.
He had never had my cable. His mother was travelling to Paris on business and he came with her for talks with the European branches of the bank, and because he wanted to see Nini. ‘I’ve bought her a Christmas present,’ he said, stamping his boots clean in my hall.
I couldn’t believe it. I began to tremble, so great was the relief.
‘What is it?’ he asked as he followed me upstairs. ‘There’s something wrong. She’s had an accident? She’s ill?’
I told him.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I see. That was to be expected, I suppose.’
‘Can you help, Daniel? I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried everything.’
He put an arm round my shoulder. Nini had described him exactly. He was small, he had a snub nose, his eyes were no particular colour and sock suspenders seemed to be foreign to his nature, yet I felt instantly comforted.
‘I think we’ll have some lunch,’ he said. ‘I’m staying at the Bristol — they’re supposed to keep a good table. Will you come?’
‘No… if you don’t mind, not the Bristol. I could make us something here. An omelette?’
‘Yes, I’d like that.’
I was upset that he wanted to have lunch. I wanted him to start at once doing whatever can be done. But when I came to eat I realized that I had been very close to collapse, and perhaps he realized it too, for he watched me closely and made me open a bottle of wine though he himself drank little.
Not till we had had our coffee did he push back his chair and say: ‘Right. I’d better get going. There’s just one favour I’d like to ask of you. I’d like to see Nini’s room. You see, even if I can get her out, I think she’ll turn against me. She’ll say it was just privilege, the rotten system and so on. So I’d like to be able to imagine her when I’ve gone.’
‘I’ll show you. But you won’t be able to imagine her for long. The shop is being pulled down, you see, and most of the square.’
‘My God!’
I took him upstairs. He walked over to the poster which said Property is Theft and the one that said Blood Shed for the Revolution is Blood Shed for Humanity. He touched briefly the lace-edged pillow and the picture of the candy-striped pinafore she’d cut out of Damenmode. He looked at the pile of leaflets urging the textile workers of Ottakring to strike and picked up the silver-backed brush I’d given her last Christmas.
‘She’s very tidy,’ he said. ‘Somehow I didn’t expect that.’
Then he wound himself in to his strange muffler, ready to go to the Bristol. At the door he turned and took both my hands. ‘I promise I’ll refer back to you as often as I can, but this is something that has to be traced out step by step. And it can’t be hurried. Everything has to be just so. If the bribe is too big they get suspicious, if it’s too small they get insulted. If you offer membership of the Jockey Club to someone who wants a permanent box at the Opera you’ve wasted a whole round of talks. And bribes alone are no good — there has to be pressure as well. It can take days… weeks…’
‘How will you start?’
‘With the American Ambassador. Thank God he’s in town — and what’s more, he knows my father.’