Younger translated this description without comment. Precisely by not reacting to it, Colette acknowledged its accuracy. He thought he saw color rising to her face.
'Of course I remember,' said the woman. 'What a lazy, haughty one he was. He had a stipend – his father had died, maybe? – so he didn't have to work. Wouldn't lift a finger. Just took long walks in the woods, playing his violin any old place. And what a temper. Ordered us around when he was sober, and insulted us when he was drunk.'
'It seems you're devoting a lot of effort,' said Younger to Colette after translating these comments, 'to someone who doesn't much deserve it.'
Colette frowned and shook her head, but didn't answer.
Younger explained their errand to the charwoman and asked if any of the Grubers still lived nearby
'So he's dead,' replied the woman. 'Well, that's another one. No, the family I never knew. He came from one of those river towns in the west, near Bavaria. I don't know where. Ask at the Three Hussars near St. Stephen's. That's where he ate all his dinners. Maybe someone there will know.'
The sun had set when they arrived back in central Vienna. In the taxi Younger asked the driver if he knew a restaurant called the Three Hussars. The driver said the restaurant was closed, but would be open again Thursday.
'It's just as well,' said Colette to Younger. 'I don't want you to come with me. I've taken up too much of your time already.'
'There's a game your brother plays, Fraulein,' Freud said to Colette that evening, 'with a fishing reel and string. He makes sounds when he plays. A sort of ohh and ahh. Do you know what he's saying?'
'Just nonsense,' answered Colette. 'Does the game mean something?'
'It means, for one thing, that there's nothing wrong with his vocal cords,' said Freud.
'To play the same game over and over,' asked Colette, 'is it very bad?'
'It's interesting,' said Freud.
Treating his dog to its walk the next morning, as the early sunshine shimmered off damp cobblestones, Sigmund Freud held the hand of a little French boy. Their conversation was distinctly one-sided. Freud chatted amiably, in French, recounting to Luc tales from Greek and Egyptian mythology. The boy was absorbed, but did not respond.
In a small triangular park, they came on a crowd encircling a man convulsing on the grass. His workingman's clothes were clean, if patched and fraying. His cap, evidently thrown to the ground when the fit began, lay next to his writhing body.
'If you were out with my wife and her sister,' Freud said quietly to the boy, 'they would undoubtedly cover your eyes at this point. Shall I cover your eyes?'
Luc shook his head. He exhibited none of the horror that children typically display in the presence of illness. Some in the crowd, taking pity on an epileptic, dropped coins into the man's cap. Eventually Freud led the boy away.
Luc wore a thoughtful expression. Then he tugged at Freud's hand and looked up at him, a question having formed in his eyes.
'What is it?' asked Freud.
The boy tugged again.
'That won't do, little fellow,' said Freud. 'I can't explain anything if I don't know what's troubling you.'
Luc stared, looked away, stared up at Freud again. Then he began pulling his pockets inside out.
Freud watched him, petting his dog's ears. At last he understood: 'You want to know why I didn't give the man any money?'
Luc nodded.
'Because he didn't do it well enough,' answered Freud.
Younger, alone in Vienna's old quarter, happened the next day on an open-air market, large and well stocked. It was clear that Freud wouldn't take money for treating Luc, so Younger decided to have a delivery made to number 19 Berggasse: fresh fruits and flowers; milk, eggs, chickens, ropes of sausage; wine, chocolates, and a few boxes of tinned goods as well.
But he stayed away from the Freuds' the entire day. There were several old, obscure churches he wanted to see. And there was the fact that Colette was hiding something from him.
'By any chance, Miss Rousseau,' asked Freud that night, 'was German spoken in your family?'
Freud had seen his patients that day, finished his correspondence, added notes to the drafts of two different papers he was working on, and apparently found time in addition to interact with Luc. He was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, where Colette was helping the maid clean up.
'We spoke French of course,' she answered.
'No German at all?' asked Freud. 'When you were a child, perhaps?'
'Grandmother was Austrian – she knew German,' said Colette smiling. 'She used to play a game with us in German when we were very little. She would hide her face behind her hands and say fort, then show us her face again and say da!
'Fort and da – "gone" and "there."'
Colette washed the dishes.
'You're pensive, Fraulein,' he said.
'I'm not,' she replied, looking steadily at her work. 'I was just wishing I could speak German.'
'If what you're concealing,' answered Freud, 'is connected to your brother, Miss Rousseau, I should like to know it. Otherwise, I have no wish to intrude.'
The Three Hussars, located on a quaint, uneven lane in the oldest quarter of Vienna, came alive at eleven-thirty Thursday morning Shutters parted, windows opened, the front door was unlocked, and an aproned waiter, all black and white, came out to sweep the sidewalk. This man was approached by a very pretty French girl, who smiled shyly and was directed by him into the restaurant.
Younger, installed at a cafe down the street, watched and waited.
Ten minutes later, the girl emerged, anxiety furrowing her forehead. Younger followed her.
Every street in Vienna's old quarter leads to a single large square – the Stephansplatz – where stands the cathedral of St. Stephen, massive, dark, Gothic, and impregnable, its roof incongruously striped with red and green zigzags, its south tower as absurdly huge as the left claw of a fiddler crab, dwarfing the rest of the body.
Colette passed through the gigantic wooden doors of the cathedral. She lit a candle, dipped two fingers into a stone bowl of water, crossed herself, took a seat on a lonely pew in the cavernous hall near a column three times her width, and bowed her head. A long while later, she got up and hurried out, never seeing Younger in the shadowy recesses of one of the chapels.
She walked more than a mile, stopping several times to ask for directions, showing a piece of paper that evidently bore an address. Having crossed the Ring and then the canal, she entered a large, ungainly building. It was a police station. After perhaps half an hour, she came out again. Younger, smoking, was waiting for her next to the doorway.
'So your Hans is alive,' he said.
She froze as if a spotlight had picked her out of the darkness. 'You followed me?'
He hadn't answered when a kindly-looking, mutton-chopped police officer hurried out of the station. 'Ah, Mademoiselle, I forgot to tell you,' he said in broken French. 'Visiting hours end at two. They are very strict at the prison. If you're not there before two, you won't see your fiancé until tomorrow.'
'Thank you,' said Colette in the awkward silence that ensued.
'Not at all,' replied the officer, beaming genially. He must have taken Younger for a friend or member of the family, because he said to him, 'So touching, two young people falling in love during the war, one from either side. If a single good thing can come from all the death, maybe this will be it. 'The officer bid Colette goodbye and returned into the station.
'You should have told me,' said Younger. 'I-'
'I'd still have brought you to Vienna. I'd still have introduced you to Freud. I'd probably have paid for your honeymoon. Whatever you'd asked me, I would have given you.'