Madensky Square

January

The boys are due to move out of the presbytery in three weeks and today there was a concert in St Florian’s in aid of equipment for the new building, which as it stands would do nicely as a workhouse or penitentiary. Ernst Bischof sang two Mozart motets and ‘I know that my Redeemer Liveth’, and though Helene and I have been waiting for his voice to break for the whole year, I think that if he had cracked or faltered then, we could not have borne it.

As I was leaving the church I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Van der Velde, fatter and more prosperous-looking than ever.

‘I was just going to call on you,’ he said, bending over my hand.

‘Good God! What brings you here?’

‘I came to hear the choirboy. They said he was good and he is, but he’s too old for me. By the time I’d built him up he’d be finished.’

He suggested a cup of coffee and I led him to Joseph’s. Somehow I didn’t want him in my flat.

‘And Sigi?’ I asked when we’d been served.

‘Well, you’ll have read about him. He did the German tour… Berlin, Frankfurt, Dresden, Dusseldorf… Then Switzerland and Paris… He gives a concert every few days and they do well.’

‘You’re pleased then?’

‘Yes and no. Mostly no. He’s insatiable. Wants more and more concerts — he’d play every day if I could get a hall. And he has to be paid in cash. This skinny infant insists on payment in gold coins. He screws them out of me after every performance — won’t wait till the end of the month.’

‘You’ve met your match, then,’ I said smiling.

‘It isn’t so funny,’ said Van der Velde angrily. ‘The critics are beginning to turn on me — this heartless impresario dragging the poor child round Europe. He ought to have time to study, to mature, they say. Well it isn’t me, it’s him. Oh, I admit I do all right out of him, but I’m not stupid. I know if he plays too much they’ll tire of him. But you tell that to the boy. His contract’s up in a fortnight and if he asks for any more money I’m going to turn him over to Meierwitz — he’s a Jew, he can deal with a kid that haggles like a stallholder in an Arabian souk. And I’m sending Uncle back to Poland.’

I asked a question that I regretted as soon as the words were out of my mouth.

‘Does he ever mention me?’

‘No,’ said Van der Velde. ‘Never. But he knows about the square. I showed him a newspaper.’

As we rose he said, ‘He’s coming back to Vienna, you know. Playing at the Redoutensaal on Friday. If you want a seat just mention my name at the box office.’ He bent over my hand again, then turned it so that he could kiss the inside of the wrist… that old tired trick. But I let him. It seems that these days I have nothing to defend.

I have decided not to go to the concert. It is over, Sigi’s story and mine.

I decided it — but when Friday came, I went.

That he was playing at the Redoutensaal shows how important he has become since his debut. It’s the most beautiful of our concert halls, in a wing of the Hofburg itself, and perhaps the best loved by the Viennese.

I thought there would not be a seat; I’ve never trusted Van der Velde to keep his word, but when I gave my name I was handed a ticket straight away.

The hall was full. Many in the audience were the usual fashionable, gushing women in Chez Jaquetta’s clothes, but not all. I found myself next to an old man with a full beard like Brahms, and remembered that I’d had him pointed out to me as Hans Klepstedt, the Director of the Liszt Academy of Music.

Then Sigi came on to the platform. I thought there must be some change, but he was just the same. His hair was a little longer, his concert master’s bow a little deeper, but that was all. Van der Velde had followed my lead over his clothes: the high-necked blouse, the dark trousers were a copy of the ones I’d made for him.

I bent my head, not wanting to be seen, and he began to play. Mendelssohn, Schumann, Hummel… and Chopin, of course. I doubt if he will ever be allowed not to play Chopin. Then the interval, and prolonged applause, but beside me the man with the beard frowned.

‘You didn’t enjoy it?’ I asked him.

‘Yes, yes. It was enjoyable. But he plays too much. The Mendelssohn was not prepared. They say he only learnt it three days ago.’

‘But he has talent?’ I asked as sharply, as anxiously, as any doting parent.

‘Oh yes. Undoubted talent. Exceptional talent. But he should have time to study, to reflect. Van der Velde will ruin him if he goes on driving him like this.’

‘They say the boy himself wants to keep on playing.’

The white eyebrows rose, the great beard waggled to and fro. ‘Really? That surprises me. He is a genuine musician, he must know what he is doing to himself.’

Sigi came back and played the rest of the programme. The applause at the end went on and on; he was recalled for one encore, for two, for three… The women in particular would not let him go and clapped their gloved hands; bunches of flowers were brought in from the wings.

I slipped away, certain that I had not been seen. It was snowing, but I turned my collar up and plunged my hands deeper into my muff, needing to walk through the lamplit streets, needing the air.

A number of carriages passed me; then one which slowed down in front of me, stopped… The door opened and someone jumped down: someone muffled and very small.

‘Why did you hurry away?’ asked Sigi. ‘Why didn’t you wait?’ And as I looked at him, finding no words, he said: ‘We have to eat Indianerkrapfen, don’t you remember? You said in the Prater that we would.’

‘Yes, Sigi. I remember.’

The carriage had driven away. In search of chocolate eclairs, at eleven o’clock on a winter’s night, we went to Sachers.

They recognized him — from the posters, from the concert, I don’t know. The head waiter bowed and addressed him as Meister Kraszinsky and a fat lady in a mink coat came over and asked him for his autograph.

‘Is it nice being famous?’ I asked him.

He shrugged. ‘It is necessary if I am to make enough money.’

‘Why do you need so much money, Sigi? Why so much?’

‘Why?’ He looked surprised. ‘So that I can buy for you a house, of course. A house with a shop in it because you have lost yours.’

Thank heaven the waiter came then for our order. It gave me a few moments, at least, to control myself.

‘Wait, Sigi. Is that why you’ve been working so hard and giving so many concerts?’

‘Yes. But it doesn’t matter because it will be so beautiful, the house, and the shop will be beautiful too.’ He leant across the table. ‘It will be by a lake and there will be a balcony so that you can look over the water and see when I am coming home in the boat from my concerts. And on the other side, not by the water, will be the shop with yellow curtains like you have now. I saw such a house in Switzerland — ah, it was beautiful! It was like looking in a cave in the Grottenbahn. And Nini can come too if you wish it, and I will buy you a dog like… like Rip but with proper legs.’

I saw it as he spoke. I saw the house as he did, lit like a cave in the Grottenbahn and I tell you this: I wanted it. I wanted to live with him in a house by a lake with a dog with proper legs. I wanted to stand and watch him come home across the water to a meal I had made for him, and a glowing stove. I wanted it very badly.

Our order came and as the waiter set down the round, cream-filled puffs doused in ink-black chocolate, I knew that never in my life would I eat another Indianerkrapfen. And all the time my frantic thoughts went round and round. How could it be done? How could I set him free for his life without hurting him unbearably? How could I cut the shackles from this child whom life had already dealt the most terrible of blows, and not reject him. It was impossible.

Or was it?

I lifted my head. ‘Sigi,’ I said. ‘I can’t come and live with you in your house. In any house. I can’t.’

He had started to eat. Now he put down his fork.

‘Why can’t you? Why?’ The husky croak was very faint now, scarcely audible.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I’m going to tell you something that nobody else knows — not Nini, not anyone in the square — and you must tell no one. You see, I have a daughter.’

And as the café emptied, I told him the whole story. To this foreign child whom I now loved, I spoke as I had spoken only once before, to Gernot von Lindenberg that first time in the rain-swept hunting lodge. I told him of my daughter’s birth, her loss, the agony of seeing her once again in Salzburg and leaving her.

‘I don’t know where she is now, Sigi, and she’s not small any more, but I still hope… I still wait for her to come back to me. And if she came… if she needed me… and found you there instead, it would hurt her so much. She might come one evening to the window and see us having supper together and she would say “My mother doesn’t need me, she has another child.”’

He understood. His dream died and he grew pale, but he understood. ‘If it was your mother, Sigi… if she had lost you when you were little, she would wait always, wouldn’t she?’

‘Yes, she would wait.’

Then… listen to this… he felt in his pocket and he handed me — he handed me — his handkerchief because I was no longer in control. So I’ve done something, haven’t I? Surely, God, you can say I’ve done something for this child whom I found so ragged and unkempt? I’ve hurt him, I’ve handed him over to an unscrupulous man — but I’ve taught him about handkerchiefs!

I seem to have stumbled on another impasse. Marie Konrad came to see me this afternoon.

I’ve always liked Peter Konrad’s wife. A good mother, a good wife, pretty and entertaining. I’ve been to her villa in Schünbrunn for dinner, and we meet sometimes in theatres or restaurants.

Still I was surprised when she asked if she could speak to me alone. We’re acquaintances rather than friends.

‘I’m sorry to come like this,’ she said when we were settled upstairs. ‘I feel ashamed… but… I’m frightened. Yes, to tell the truth, I’m frightened and I came to ask if you could help me.’

‘I’d like to help you,’ I said, mystified. ‘But how?’

She had begun to fidget with her reticule, to smooth down her perfectly smooth collar. Then she lifted her head and I saw that she was blushing.

‘By not taking the job my husband offered you in the store,’ she blurted out. ‘That’s how you could help me, Frau Susanna. That was what I came to ask you to do.’

I didn’t at all understand what she was trying to tell me. ‘But why? How would that help you? Have you someone else for whom you want the job?’

She shook her head. ‘It isn’t that.’ She was dreadfully ill at ease and I was becoming increasingly puzzled. ‘It’s Peter. He’s a good husband — a very good husband — but he looks so distinguished, and well… he’s susceptible. There have been affairs, of course, but they didn’t last. But if you came to work with him, if he saw you every day and stayed behind with you to consult and so on, I know… I just know how it would end. And this time it would be serious.’

‘Frau Konrad, I assure you, on my honour that I have never and would never —’

She interrupted me. ‘No, no — I don’t mean you. I’m not accusing you of anything. I know you would do what you could to stop it — but you’re not like the others and he has always… felt attracted to you. You should have heard how he spoke of you after he took you to the Opera. The way you walked up the staircase… the Arab who wanted to buy you with camels. And a Field Marshal in full uniform — a Field Marshal — picking up your handkerchief.’

I winced as the knife went in, but Marie noticed nothing.

‘He doesn’t know yet; he thinks it’s just admiration. But I know — and I’m afraid. Seeing you all the time, sharing your interests…’ Her head was bent; she laced and unlaced her fingers. ‘You can’t help it — you’re so beautiful.’

‘Am I?’ I said, suddenly flooded with bitterness. ‘Are you sure? Am I still beautiful?’

She looked up, staring intently at my face. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘You look tired now, but it doesn’t matter. It’s your bones and the way you move… and your smile.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘Oh God, it’s really so awful isn’t it, this love.’

‘Yes, it’s fairly awful.’ I walked to the window, looked out at the square I’ve loved so much, turned. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell him no. I’ll refuse. But he must still take Nini if she wants it.’

‘And you won’t say that I’ve been?’ she begged.

‘No, of course not. Don’t worry, I’ll find an excuse.’

‘You’re so good. So good!’ She tried to take my hands but I shook my head and freed myself. I was good once, in a village behind the hill in Salzburg, and it has nothing to do with something so trivial as this.

All the same, I don’t quite know what is to happen now, or where I shall go.

At eleven this morning a carriage stopped outside my shop and a woman got out. She was in early middle age, slim and small, with an unremarkable face which nevertheless seemed familiar and a look of purpose and intelligence.

She greeted me, gave no name, removed her furs — and I gasped. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but you must tell me. Who made that dress?’

She smiled. ‘It’s good, isn’t it. So simple…’

‘Yes, but that kind of simplicity… And I’ve never seen worsted used like that; only in clothes for men. It’s French?’

‘Yes. Her name is Coco Chanel. She makes hats in the Avenue Gabriel and a few dresses privately for people she knows. She’s only a girl still, but there’s no doubt she’s a genius.’

The perfection of the beige wool dress so hypnotized me that it was a while before I realized that I had a wealthy customer with impeccable taste, but alas too late. My stock is practically exhausted.

‘I’d like to see some evening dresses. Is there anything you could show me?’

‘Very little, I’m afraid.’

I explained the situation and she nodded. ‘Yes, I’ve heard. I’m so sorry, it’s such a delightful square. Still, now that I’m here I’d like to see what you’ve got.’

‘There’s a green taffeta and a white silk. I’ll fetch them and —’

She interrupted me. ‘I’d like to see them on the model, please.’

‘Very well.’

I found Nini and told her to put on the green taffeta, and in spite of her troubles she swept into the salon with her beaky nose in the air, handling the rustling train with her old bravura.

‘Yes, I like it. Could it be altered quickly? I leave tomorrow.’

Nini had been revolving in the centre of the room. Now she wheeled round, walked over to the woman in the gilt chair and addressed her with a sudden and most disconcerting rudeness.

‘Did he send you?’ she asked, at her most Magyar and insolent.

She had met her match. The woman in the Chanel dress drew together eyebrows that were only slightly less arrogant than Nini’s.

‘Nobody sends me,’ she said icily. ‘I am here on business.’

‘But you’re his sister, aren’t you?’

The change was remarkable. The woman’s face puckered up in a smile, the eyes shone. ‘Ah, that was beautiful,’ she said appreciatively. ‘I shall dine out on that!’ Her voice now was gentle, she had seen the wretchedness in Nini’s face. ‘I’m his mother, actually.’

‘Oh. How… how is he?’

Frau Frankenheimer shrugged. ‘He’s back in New York and working very hard. His father’s pleased to have him back; he’s put through some useful deals already. So are the eligible girls of our circle. Invitations pour through the letter box…’

She broke off deliberately and, ignoring Nini, said: ‘Actually I didn’t come here primarily to buy a dress and certainly not to talk about my son. I came to ask you about a child who used to live opposite. A pianist, Sigismund Kraszinsky. I was told that you knew him well, that he owes his career to you.’

‘No, not that. But, yes, I know him.’

‘Well, the problem is this. I heard him in Paris a few weeks ago and offered him a place in the school I help to run in New York. It seemed to me that he was exactly the sort of child we want: highly talented but in need of a very thorough grounding in musical techniques. And in need of a stable background in which to develop — the school is residential; any child who enters it is cared for till he’s ready to make his debut. However, the boy refused. He said he had to make money, a great deal of money. He seemed to be obsessed by that.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I see.’

‘So I left it — in any case we have far more applicants than there are places. But a few days ago, just as I was leaving Paris, I had a cable. Apparently the child has changed his mind and he now wants to come. I’ve talked to Van der Velde and he’ll let him go — he knows by the time we’ve finished with him he’ll be worth a fortune and he can take some of the credit. But… I don’t know how to put this without sounding priggish… though we offer a highly technical curriculum, we do try to develop the idea of a talent as a gift from God, something that carries certain obligations. And if there’s something money-grubbing in the child himself — if money is the prime objective, which would be perfectly natural given his background — then I don’t think he’d fit in.’

‘No, no, no!’ I came towards her; I think I was wringing my hands. ‘No, he’s not like that at all! Listen, please listen. Let me tell you why he wanted money.’

Once I began to talk I couldn’t stop. I told her everything about Sigi — our first meeting by the fountain, the day at the Prater, the accident — and the last evening at Sachers. ‘That’s why he wanted money, you see. Not for himself — never for himself.’

When I finished she rose and laid a hand on my arm. ‘I won’t tell you that you are going to be proud of him because I know you are already. I won’t even tell you that the world will hear of him, because you know that too. I’ll just tell you that we’ll look after him as you would have done… you or the red-haired angel.’

Then deliberately shrugging off emotion, she became practical.

‘Now the only question that remains is how to get Sigismund to New York. I’d like him to go at once because term begins next week and I’ve lured Leschetizsky over to take a master class. But I’m not going home yet — I’m on my way to St Petersburg; I still have grandparents there, they’re in their eighties and I’ve promised to visit them before it’s too late.’

‘Sigi’s too young to travel alone,’ I said.

She nodded, holding my eyes.

‘Yes, definitely. Daniel will meet him and take him to the school, but I’ll have to try to find someone to go with him on the boat. The uncle’s going back to Preszowice, and anyway he’s useless. Well, no doubt something can be arranged.’

There was a rustle of taffeta as Nini stirred in the green dress.

‘I could take him,’ she said gruffly. ‘If you like. Just take him over and maybe stay for a short time, if Frau Susanna can spare me. Just for a visit.’

‘Would you?’ Frau Frankenheimer was entirely matter of fact. ‘That would certainly solve the problem.’

And she began to discuss the alterations to the green dress — but it was at this point that I remembered something Daniel had said. Something about wolverines…

It all happened so quickly after that.

Less than a week after Frau Frankenheimer’s visit, I stood on the platform of the Westbahnof saying goodbye.

Nini was shivering in her cloth coat. She has sold the Russian sable and given the money to the family of the little boy who lost his legs.

‘You’ll be cold on the boat,’ I said. ‘Let me lend you my shawl.’

She shook her head. ‘I’ll wrap a rug round me,’ she said, and I saw her swaggering round the deck, starting a new fashion for steamer-rug cloaks.

‘It’s only a visit,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course.’

‘And anyway you’ll come. It would be a marvellous place to have a shop, New York.’

‘Yes, marvellous.’

We’ve said these things to each other a hundred times since Frau Frankenheimer’s visit. We had to.

The guard came along the platform, calling to the passengers to take their seats.

‘Goodbye, Nini.’

We hugged each other quickly, and then she climbed into the train and waited for the boy.

A stupid, concert-going lady had presented him with an outsize bouquet of hothouse flowers. As I bent down to him, his face was almost hidden by the outsize blooms.

‘We’ll meet again, Sigi. We won’t lose each other. Not you and I.’

He said nothing. This child of all children knew how easily people are lost. As I kissed him I heard for the last time that husky, almost inaudible croak.

‘I hope she comes soon.’

‘Who, Sigi?’

‘Your daughter.’

‘Yes, I hope so too.’

But she could have come running down the platform with outstretched arms and I wouldn’t even have seen her, as I stood watching the train go out and waving, waving…

There were a number of things I needed as I came back from the station: oblivion, a hot bath, a large glass of Gretl’s uncle’s eau de vie — but not, God knows not — Frau Egger pacing dementedly between the packing cases.

‘Oh there you are, Frau Susanna! Thank heavens! I’ve been so distracted… I don’t know what to do. I’m at my wits’ end!’ But this was too much.

‘Frau Egger, your husband has destroyed my livelihood and made a great many people most unhappy — I really cannot discuss any more intimate details of —’

‘No, no. It isn’t that! It’s far worse! I know I shouldn’t come to you, but I have no friends, and it’s all to do with the buttons he says, and now he’s gone completely mad. He’s going to fight a duel!’

‘A duel?’

She nodded. ‘This afternoon, in that meadow by the Danube Bend where they used to fight — except that I think it’s a corporation dump now, but that wouldn’t stop Willibald.’

I sighed and removed my coat. ‘You’d better come upstairs. And try to be calm — just tell me what happened, quietly.’

It had begun just before Christmas, she said, with the arrival of a mysterious stranger late at night asking to see her husband.

‘He didn’t give his name, but he was the kind of person one admitted,’ said Frau Egger.

The man was closeted with Egger for an hour and after he left, the Minister was in a dreadful state, white, shaking, hysterical. And the next day he said he had to go abroad on urgent business.

‘He wouldn’t tell me what it was or why he had to go, but from the way he packed all the valuables, even my pearls, I knew he meant to flee the country.’

‘But what about his work at the Ministry?’

‘I don’t know about that. He went on going to his office, but I don’t know what he did there. He was quite wild all that week — furious and frightened at the same time. And then just before he was due to leave Vienna, something extraordinary happened. We were having lunch and a military parade went by outside the window. It was the Carinthian Jaegers marching with a full band and you know how smart they are.’

‘Yes.’ I had good reason to know that.

‘And Willibald went to the window and suddenly I found he was standing to attention and saluting! And then… he went upstairs to the attic and when he came down he was wearing a military uniform. It was much too small for him — he’s put on weight and he couldn’t get most of the buttons done up, but they were the same buttons I found, with Aggredi on them. And then he saluted again and said: “Herr Lieutenant Willibald Egger at your service!” ’

‘I see. So he had been in the army.’

‘Yes. And after that he became quite different: calm and almost dignified and yet… sort of mad. He said things about dying for his regiment and bringing down the traitor who had betrayed him and so on. I really feared for his reason and I began to… spy on him and to ask the servants to watch him.’ She flushed. ‘They aren’t very fond of Willibald and they’re always ready to listen at keyholes and so on.’

Two days after he had put on his uniform, Egger had driven to a secret destination and when he returned he was more exalted than ever. He fetched his sabres from the attic and he began to make telephone calls to his acquaintances.

‘I heard him talk to Heinrid on the phone — that’s his deputy at the Ministry — to ask if he’d act for him, but Heinrid hates Willibald — he’s opposed him all the time over the plans for the square, and he wouldn’t. But the chiropodist said he would.’

‘I can’t believe this, Frau Egger. No one fights duels anymore.’

‘It’s true, Frau Susanna. I know it’s true. And then yesterday afternoon Willibald made me… you know… come up to the bedroom. And it wasn’t Tuesday or Friday which is when he does it. Well, you know… it was Wednesday. And he kept saying he forgave me.’

‘Forgave you for what?’

‘I don’t know — the buttons perhaps — but he forgave me and he said he’d left me well provided for — though actually the money comes from my side of the family. And why I know it’s serious is because of… The Habit. He didn’t try it once, he didn’t even think of it, he was so lit up. And I’m terrified, Frau Susanna; I don’t know what to do! I don’t want him to be killed. I wish he’d never been born but I don’t want him to be killed and I certainly don’t want him to kill anyone else. He’s a good fencer in spite of his stomach — he goes to the salle d’armes once a week…’

‘It will be just some harmless quarrel from his student days, perhaps.’

‘No, no, you don’t understand. It’s a Field Marshal he’s challenged.’

I didn’t hear any more, but I wasn’t hysterical, I promise you. I put on my coat, but before I left the house I went down to the workroom and cut off a double length of black veiling which I fixed under my hat so as to conceal my face. It was only then that I ran into the street to find a cab.

It was not the corporation dump — on the contrary. There was a notice saying It is Forbidden to Leave Litter and a smell of gas from a nearby gasometer.

But the rest of it was the exact landscape of the nightmare I’d had when I lay in Gernot’s arms and he’d joked about challenging the man with the camels: the birches, the snow, the carriages of the seconds drawn up by the road — and I knew for certain that the creeping wretchedness of the last weeks had led me to this moment: to Gernot lying dead, his blood staining the ground.

Yet I managed to walk (or rather to stumble, for my double layer of veiling made it almost as difficult to see as to be seen) as far as a tree to which I clung.

At the end of the field on which I stood was a narrow belt of birches, then a meadow beside the river. It was there that they were assembled. I could make out two men in uniform — Gernot’s seconds — and a little round man in a brown overcoat, the chiropodist, perhaps. Another, a tall man in a frock coat and top hat, was bending over a black bag: the doctor. The principals were further off. I just caught a glimmer of Gernot’s scarlet and blue and then it was gone.

I’d intended to throw myself between the combatants, to scream, to threaten to call the police — God knows what I’d intended, but it didn’t matter because all I was able to do was hold on to the tree. Then one of Gernot’s seconds caught sight of me and hurried across: a Captain of Dragoons.

‘Frau Egger! This is terrible. You must leave at once — at once! This is no place for a woman.’

‘I… can’t.’

‘My dear lady, I assure you there’s nothing to be anxious about. It’s just a routine matter. The duel was forced on… the gentleman for whom I’m acting but he has everything under control. They’re only fighting to first blood — the most your husband will receive is a scratch on the cheek. Now please return to your carriage.’

He left me. I heard someone counting out the paces, heard a word of command. The tree to which I clung was an oak; they’re strong trees, neither of us fell down. I couldn’t see the combatants, but I could hear… Hear the clash of the sabres going on and on… then an oath… a scream…

The doctor, his coat tails flapping, began to run.

I didn’t faint. I would have liked to, but I didn’t, and when they brought the stretcher through the birches, I saw that the blanket shrouding the still figure covered also the face.

It was the little fat man they sent to tell me.

‘Madam, we have the gravest news. You must be brave. Your husband is dead.’

‘It was his own choice.’ The Captain of Dragoons who had followed spoke tersely. ‘There’s no doubt about it. Both parties are agreed.’

The little fat man nodded. I was sure he was the chiropodist: he looked kind, like someone acquainted with ailing feet. ‘Herr Egger impaled himself on the Marshal’s sword.’

‘Nonsense,’ snapped the Captain. ‘If he’d done that the Marshal would have been able to pull back. He deliberately failed to beat off an intended feint attack that was only meant to keep him at a distance. It was not the action of a gentleman.’

The chiropodist looked shocked. ‘Frau Egger, your husband died a glorious death by his own will. You must accept his choice.’

‘Yes… thank you. And the Marshal?’

‘Very distressed,’ said the Captain. ‘Naturally.’

Gernot von Lindenberg now appeared between the trees. He did not look distressed. He looked tired, angry — and alive!

‘This is a bad business,’ he said. He pulled back a corner of the blanket, let it drop. ‘You’d best take him straight to the mortuary.’

‘But sir, if we are going to hush this up —’

‘It no longer amuses me to hush things up, Captain. I shall make my report direct to the Kaiser.’ And to the chiropodist and Egger’s other second, who had just been sick behind a tree: ‘This matter is entirely my responsibility, gentlemen. Your names need not appear.’ Then he caught sight of me, approached, bent over my hand. ‘Madame, I am sincerely desolated. I did everything to avoid the conflict and everything to avoid serious bloodshed, but your husband was a skilful fencer. If I’d guessed his intention I could have thwarted it, but it never occurred to me. I trust you will allow me to see you safely home?’

I bent my head, allowing it. We walked some way in silence, his hand under my arm. When we were out of earshot he dropped my arm abruptly and turned me round to face him.

‘Are you mad, Susanna? Are you absolutely out of your mind? What do you mean by coming here? I’ve spent three interminable months keeping away from you so that I could tie this business up without involving you and now you come here like a madwoman in a novel and —’

‘I’m veiled,’ I said crossly. ‘How did you know me?’

‘How did I know you? How did I know you? Dear God grant me patience!’

We had reached his carriage. The man in the driving seat jumped down, saluted — and grinned at me. Another person undeceived by my disguise.

‘Hatschek,’ I said, ‘oh, Hatschek.’

The carriage was closed and snug. Gernot drew the curtains and we drove slowly back towards the city.

‘It was bad when you didn’t come, Susanna,’ he said quietly. ‘It was very bad.’

‘Oh God, darling, it was bad for me too — you can’t imagine how bad — but I couldn’t help it.’ And I told him about Sigi and the accident.

‘Yes. I know. I trusted you. I knew you’d come if you could.’

I hung my head. I hadn’t trusted him. ‘I thought that you no longer… that because I had failed you… you didn’t want…

‘You thought what?’ he said furiously. ‘You were capable of that… meanness… after twelve years of knowing me? My God, don’t we have enough difficulties in our life without that kind of rubbish? Every meeting is like wading through shifting sand to an oasis. Don’t you ever do that again, Susanna. Don’t you ever dare to doubt me!’

Then he told me what he had been doing.

From Trieste he’d been sent straight to Potsdam for another useless conference with Wilhelm’s lackeys. It was the end of October before he got back to Vienna, to find that Egger had got his way about Madensky Square at last.

‘And I just saw red. That swine isn’t going to lay hands on her shop, I thought. I’d suspected there was something disreputable in his past ever since you showed me that button, so I planned a quixotic little enterprise: confronting Egger, offering him a chance to cancel his plans and leave the country, or face exposure and ruin.’

‘Blackmail you mean?’

‘What words you use! Anyway if I’d known what was to come I’d have let your shop go hang and set you up in a villa in Hitzing like all good mistresses. First of all I had to get evidence that he was the man I thought he was and that meant going off to Moravia and searching the records in the barracks, and tracking down people who might have known him. I’d never have done it without the Countess von Metz. Her brother was Colonel in Chief there and she was indefatigable. Incidentally I wish you could have seen Elise trying to get the name of her dressmaker out of the Countess! You’d have enjoyed that.

‘It was December before I had what I wanted — and all the time I kept away from you — it only needed Egger to connect my interest in the square with you and I lost any leverage I had. He’d have dragged you into the mud in no time. Anyway, I went at night to confront him and it all seemed perfectly straightforward. He was obviously terrified and he said he’d rescind his plans and go. And then a week later he suddenly arrived and challenged me. I thought he’d gone completely mad, but there was no way of shaking him off. I suppose in his way he loved the army and preferred death to dishonour.’

‘But what had Egger done? What did you find out?’

Gernot opened his cigar case.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘and I’ll tell you.’

In the year 1882 the Pressburg Fusiliers were stationed at Gratzislek, in Eastern Moravia. There was only one other detachment stationed there: the 19th Imperial Uhlans under the command of Colonel von Metz, the Countess’s brother who was a martinet and unpopular with his men. Nor was the social life of the garrison town exactly scintillating. There was one café, one hotel… and as far as the eye could see, flat country which in summer became a dust bowl, and in winter a desert of ice.

Into this unprepossessing place there moved a merchant who had acquired the local schloss, a run-down gabled monstrosity in which he proposed, by painstaking bribery, to ennoble himself and his wife.

The wife, who was pretty, was even more bored than the soldiers. The merchant was frequently away in Prague or Budapest or Vienna, and she began to flirt her way through the garrison’s officers. Most of the men seemed to have taken her measure, but one fell seriously for the lady and a proper liaison began.

‘You can guess who it was, can’t you?’

‘Egger?’

Gernot nodded. ‘Only he had a different name then.’

The lady was expensive. She didn’t so much want furs or jewels as to get out of Gratzislek as far and as fast and as often as she could. Lieutenant Egger spent his free time wining and dining her, ran out of money… saw a rival begin to gain on him. Even then, it seems, he had a head for figures. He was in charge of the mess funds… he began to borrow money. A little at first, then more and more.

‘It’s an old story. It happens in every mess at some point. One minor crook. They’re found out, sometimes they shoot themselves, sometimes there’s a duel. Mostly they’re just removed one night, stripped of their rank, not seen again. But Egger was cunning. He managed to frame his corporal, the chap who helped him with his accounts. The man he accused was a poor devil — a Jew from some obscure place in Ruthenia who lived for the army, but was never really accepted — oh, read the Dreyfus case; it’s all in there. The corporal was confronted with his crime and went back to his hut and cut his throat. Which of course was seen as proof of guilt. Everything would have gone on as before, but the lady came to see the Colonel. She knew Egger had been borrowing money and the corporal had been engaged to one of her servants. There was an investigation but before he could be brought to trial, Egger vanished. A couple of years later the regiment was disbanded and no one heard of him until he reappeared under a different name, married a wealthy woman and started to crawl his way up the Ministry.’

‘I see. And you got proof of this?’

‘I and the Countess. She remembered a man in her brother’s regiment who’d known him and we managed to track him down. It’s to her you’ll owe your shop, Susanna, as much as to anyone.’

‘Are you sure Egger’s plans will be cancelled? Will the square really be safe?’

He nodded. ‘Heinrid will leap at the chance. There’ll be some kind of face-saving manoeuvre about unexpected expense and so on, but it’ll be all right, you’ll see.’

‘And the duel? Will it mean trouble for you?’

Gernot shrugged. ‘I may have to resign.’

‘Oh, no!’

He took my hand, decided I didn’t need my glove, removed it.

‘There’s no need to look like that, my love. I can live without the army. If I’m right about what’s coming I’d a great deal rather be in Uferding planting trees than sending men half my age out to be slaughtered. And it would be easier for us to meet.’

We jolted on towards the lights of the town. ‘You know, Susanna,’ he said, ‘it isn’t warm, passionate women like you who make the Great Lovers of this world. It’s cold-hearted devils like me who are generally bored or discontented and frequently both. When it all stops for us, the ennui, the frustration… when we find a place of sanctuary, then we’re totally caught. Yes, we’re the ones to watch where loving is concerned.’ He leant his head against the back of the seat and I saw the weariness in his face. ‘It isn’t every day I kill someone,’ he murmured. ‘One loses the habit.’

‘You could sleep, Gernot. Close your eyes. I’ll wake you when we’re there.’

His head turned. He frowned.

Try not to be stupid,’ he said — and took me in his arms.