A white plastic radio alarm clock reminded her that the day was shot. The cleaning lady wiped the floor with a damp cloth, then set off to do other chores. On the nightstand were some fusty knickknacks, nothing of any value. Inside a tin whose faded colors announced violet candies from the Café Demel, Produziert in Österreich, nothing was left but a few withered, shapeless lumps. Anna set it down in disgust. She lingered over some photographs in tawdry frames. The profile of a very young Adele, her marcelled hair cut short, had a softness that no longer survived. She was pretty, despite the vapid expression that seems to have been required in old studio portraits. She must have been a chestnut blond, but the black-and-white photo resisted too precise a reading. Her eyebrows were darker and drawn with a pencil in the fashion of the times. In a wedding photo, no longer quite so attractive and once more in profile, she had become a platinum blonde. By her side, Mr. Gödel eyed the lens skeptically. A group shot with the Mediterranean in the background showed her, large and ebullient, without her husband.
“You’re taking an inventory before the auction?”
Anna cast about for an excuse. She was doing her work, after all. It was her job to distinguish between personal mementos and cultural heritage.
The nurse’s aide helped Adele into bed.
“There, Mrs. Gödel. You get some rest now.”
Anna got the message: Don’t rile her up, she has a weak heart.
“Do you imagine that I keep Kurt Gödel’s Nachlass in my nightstand, young lady?”
“Your room seems like a very pleasant one to live in.”
“It is a place to die, not to live.”
Anna felt a growing urge to have a good cup of tea.
“I’m willing to talk to you, but spare me your young woman’s pity! Verstanden?” Do you understand?
“I gave in to curiosity. I was looking at your photos. Nothing terribly bad.”
She walked toward the portrait of Adele as a young woman. “You were beautiful.”
“And I’m not now?”
“I’ll spare you my young woman’s pity.”
“Touché. I was twenty when my father took that photograph. He was a professional photographer. My parents had a shop in Vienna, across from where my future husband lived.”
She took back the frame from Anna. “I have no memory of ever having been that person.”
“I often feel the same thing.”
“It must be the hairstyle. Fashions change so quickly.”
“Sometimes people in old photographs seem to belong to a different species.”
“I live surrounded by a different species. That’s what it’s like to enter what is delicately called ‘old age.’ ”
Anna gave a show of savoring this aphorism while her mind searched for ways to approach the reason for her visit.
“I’m pontificating, aren’t I? The old are fond of doing that. The less we are sure about things, the more we blather on about them! It distracts us from our panic.”
“We pontificate at all ages, and we’re always an old person to someone.”
When Adele smiled, Anna glimpsed the luminous young lady hidden in the stout, acerbic old woman.
“With time, your chin starts to get closer to your nose. Age makes you look more doubtful.”
Anna brought her hand to her face instinctively.
“You’re still too young to see this happen. How old are you, Miss Roth?”
“Please call me Anna. I’m twenty-eight.”
“At your age, I was so much in love. Are you?”
The young woman didn’t answer. Adele looked at her with new tenderness.
“Would you like a cup of tea, Anna? They are serving it in the conservatory half an hour from now. You won’t mind a few more old biddies, will you? ‘Conservatory’ is the name they give that horrid indoor porch with all the plastic flowers. As if none of us knows how to tend a plant! But where are you from? You avoided my question the last time. Do you travel to Europe often? Have you been to Vienna? You must take that sweater off. Is beige in fashion now? It doesn’t suit you. Where do you live? Our house was in the north part of Princeton, near Grover Park.”
Anna removed her cardigan. It was very hot in purgatory. If she had to make a deal, the old lady’s life against her own, she was in for a very long haul.
Adele was disappointed to learn that her visitor had never been to Vienna, but she was gratified by the present Anna had brought, a bottle of her favorite bourbon.
4. 1928: The Circle
“What kind of bird are you, if you can’t fly?”
“What kind of bird are you, if you can’t swim?”
— Sergei Prokofiev, Peter and the Wolf
Vienna brought us together. My city thrummed with such fever! It bubbled with fierce energy. Philosophers dined with dancers, poets with shopkeepers. Artists laughed in the midst of an amazing concentration of scientific geniuses. All these beautiful people talked nonstop in their urgency to rack up pleasures, whether women, vodka, or pure thought. The virus of jazz had contaminated Mozart’s cradle. We conjured the future and purified the past to the rhythms of black music. War widows, arm in arm with gigolos, tossed away their pension money. Veterans back from the trenches walked through doors that previously had been bolted shut. One last dance, one last drink before closing time. I had light-colored eyes and slender legs. I enjoyed listening to men. I could entertain them and, with one word, bring back to earth a mind that had wandered off into drunkenness or boredom. They blinked like sleepers dragged out of bed, surprised to be there, at this table, with all this sudden noise. They would stare at the wine stains to find traces of a vanished thought before deciding finally to laugh it off, to bring the conversation back to where it had started in the first place: my cleavage. I was young and tipsy, part swell-looking girl, part mascot. I had my place in the world.
For our first real date, I pulled out all the stops. He had invited me to the Café Demel, an elegant place where many people from society went. Those smartly dressed ladies sipping their tea had nothing on me. I wore an asymmetrical cloche hat that cast a discreet shadow over my port-wine stain. The creamy silk of my dress quietly brought out my natural coloring — it cost me a good month’s salary, my father would have had a fit. I’d borrowed a stole from my friend Lieesa — it had wrapped the shoulders of every girl at the Nachtfalter who’d gone after a respectable husband. I had no interest in getting married again. My respectful college boy offered me a temporary reprieve from the would-be pimps I met at the club. We were doing the getting-to-know-you waltz, making tighter and tighter circles. In those days, I didn’t use words like “concentric.” Lieesa would have looked at me funny: “I know where you come from, girl, don’t play that game with me.” Kurt and I had enjoyed a drink together once or twice and gone for some nocturnal walks, during which I’d pried a few confidences from him. He was born in Brno, in Moravia, a province of Czechoslovakia. Not one for adventure, he’d chosen Vienna because it was the easy thing to do: his older brother, Rudolf, was already studying medicine there. The family, originally German, seemed not to have suffered much from the postwar inflation — the two brothers lived quite comfortably. Often Kurt would hardly say a thing, apologizing for his silence, seductive without realizing it. He walked the tired, early-morning Adele home. He’d never seen me yet in the light of the sun.