But to the matter at hand: he would offer fifteen thousand.
He sighed contentedly after making this decision, luxuriating in the warmth of his office. The room actually felt cozy today, for the talented Fraulein Metzinger had seen to it that the office stove was supplied with just the right amount of coke, so the rooms were warm, but not stifling. She of course did not herself personally shovel in the fuel; rather she had taken it on her own authority to pay Trinkgeld to the Portier’s younger brother, who lived with Frau Ignatz in the building. This modest tip insured that Oskar — no one in the building knew him by any other name — made several trips each working day during the cold months to keep the fire humming along. Fraulein Metzinger had even begun to charm grumpy Frau Ignatz. What could the young woman not do?
He filled out and signed the document of offer and the next instant Fraulein Metzinger tapped lightly on his office door.
‘Sorry to bother you, Advokat. Do you have a moment?’
She wore a look of pinched concern on her face that surely meant that no good news was forthcoming. He could only hope that she was not going to leave the firm. Fraulein Metzinger had already proved herself an invaluable and able assistant.
‘Please,’ he said, rising from his desk and gesturing to a chair. She sat primly, almost defensively, like a witness steeling herself against a potentially badgering counsel.
‘I need your help, Advokat.’
Such a statement would normally be met with considered restraint from Werthen. ‘Help’ from an attorney usually meant unpaid legal advice. But coming from Fraulein Metzinger the words were like a Mozart theme, soft and playful. He was relieved, nay overjoyed that she was not asking to be relieved of her duties, was not here to complain of overwork and a boss whose head was more attuned to inquiries than it was to legal matters.
‘What is it, Fraulein Metzinger?’
‘I have a certain friend.’
Oh, God no, Werthen inwardly groaned. Perhaps this was not better after all. He was hardly the one to be giving romantic advice.
‘A “friend” is not really what I intended. But I just do not know how else to refer to him. He is a young boy, actually.’ She paused.
Werthen leaned back in his chair. ‘Yes.’
‘His name is Heidrich. Heidrich Beer. His friends call him “Heidl.”’ She smiled at this thought. ‘Well, you can see why I call him Huck, then. After Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.’
Werthen allowed that he did not.
‘“Heidlbeer,” you know, is the equivalent of the American blueberry or huckleberry. I went to Mr Twain’s lectures when he was visiting our city a couple of years ago.’
‘I did not know you were a literary lady, Fraulein Metzinger,’ Werthen feebly said. But he found himself rather confused, wondering exactly what sort of help the woman needed with said Huck.
‘He is a child of the streets so far as I can tell,’ she said suddenly. ‘I would see him by my tram station, offering to carry packages for people, to fetch coal. Any small task to earn a few Kreuzer. I let him carry my shopping one day, and he chattered on and on as if he did not want me to leave.’
‘He has no fixed address?’ Werthen asked.
She shook her head. ‘I believe he lives in the Zwingburg under the Schwarzenbergplatz.’
Werthen knew of this location through Berthe and a friend at the Arbeiter Zeitung who was working on stories about Vienna’s homeless. Hundreds if not thousands lived in the sewers like rats, for there were walkways along the open channels of waste; nooks and crannies where one could get out of the elements at night. The Zwingburg, or stronghold, was part of the Vienna sewer system, the so-called ‘cholera sewer,’ because the expansion of the original Inner City sewers had begun in earnest only after a deadly cholera outbreak in 1830, which killed two thousand. These included places like the high arched nether regions beneath the fashionable Schwarzenbergplatz, reachable via the manhole covers in the square above and then down long spiral stairs. The Zwingburg was an underground warren of living spaces along the sewers. It was reachable only when a wooden plank was laid across an intersecting channel of the sewer. If the police came to raid the place, the residents simply lifted the plank, like a moat-encircled fortress raising its drawbridge. There were also numerous side channels along which those same residents could flee if need be, an intricate maze that only those who lived there could navigate.
‘He goes there when it’s wet or too cold at night. Otherwise, he says he would rather sleep in the Prater. He has no family. His mother died when he was five, and his father is a Strotter, a rag and bone man who ekes out a living in the sewers using a net to catch scraps of fish and fish bone that he sells to the soap manufacturers. Or if he is lucky he might land a piece of jewelry someone has inadvertently flushed down the toilet. Huck has no connections with him.’
‘It sounds a hard life for a boy. How old is he?’
She shook her head, a show of disgust rather than lack of knowledge.
‘He cannot be more than twelve, thirteen. But in ways he is an old man already.’
She paused long enough for Werthen to wonder again where all this was headed.
‘I want to adopt him, you see.’
He was shocked, quite speechless for a moment.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Adopt him.’
‘Fraulein Metzinger-’
The tone of his voice prompted her to interrupt.
‘I do not want advice regarding the wisdom of my decision, Advokat. I am only asking you about the proper way to go about such a legal adoption.’
It was Werthen’s turn to shake his head now. ‘I do not see a court in the land allowing it. You, a single woman. No. It is an impossibility.’
‘Please do not give me false hope, Advokat.’
Her irony broke the tension; he felt himself smiling.
‘I am not judging you,’ Werthen said. ‘I may think such a move would be a disastrous mistake, but that plays no part in my assessment. Legally, I can see no way that an Austrian court would allow such a thing. Number one, the boy appears to have a parent already-’
‘He wants no part of the boy,’ she interjected.
He held a hand up to ask for patience. ‘A parent, delinquent in his paternal duties, but a parent nonetheless. The court will move to fine said parent for allowing his son to go homeless.’
‘As if that helps Huck.’
‘Please, Fraulein Metzinger. Allow me. Number two, you are, as I commented, a single woman. Employed, yes, but with the means to care for an adolescent? With the skills required to make a home for such a youth?’
‘So it is better that he sleeps in the sewers? That he carries coal for strangers to make enough each day to buy a stale Semmel? That he risks bodily harm living on the streets? The boy has been abused, beaten. His left arm was broken so badly by another homeless person stealing a crust of bread from him that it never healed properly. To this day Huck’s forearm has a crook in it.’
‘I am merely telling you what the legal and societal arguments would be.’
‘I am sorry, Advokat. I understand you are only trying to explain the legalities. But it is all so frustrating.’
Their discussion was interrupted by the sound of the outer office door opening and closing.
Fraulein Metzinger quickly glanced at the clock on the wall.
‘He is early.’
She got up and moved quickly back to the outer office. Werthen heard her voice and that of another. Then a rapping at his doorframe.
‘This is Heidrich Beer,’ Fraulein Metzinger said as she re-entered Werthen’s office. She had in tow a pathetic-looking youth of about twelve dressed in patched clothing and bearing with him a distinct smell of decay. The frayed cuffs of his pants reached well above the tops of the worn lace-up boots he had on; his upper body was covered in a hodgepodge of layers of oversized vest, woolen jacket and knee-length pressed felt coat rolled up at the sleeves and obviously the property once of someone much larger than he. On his head he wore a shiny derby cut at a jaunty angle. Despite the angle of the hat, his face appeared weary, concerned, and almost defeated. As Fraulein Metzinger had said, he looked much older than his age; for this boy there had been few enough happy, carefree moments of childhood, Werthen knew. He stooped slightly to the left, perhaps the result of the broken left arm, as if he were still protecting the injury.