Flight Without End

III

Irene had really waited a long time. In the social stratum to which Fraulein Hartmann belonged, there is a conventional loyalty, love founded in convenience, chastity springing from lack of choice and a fastidious taste. Irene’s father, a manufacturer from the period when a man’s honesty was reckoned in terms of the percentage he obtained on his wares, lost his factory as a result of those same scruples to which Irene had almost sacrificed her life. He could not make up his mind to use bad lead, even though the customers were not fussy. There is a mysterious and touching attachment to the quality of one’s own merchandise, whose reliability reflects the character of their manufacturer, a loyalty to the product which resembles to some extent the patriotism of those people who make their own existence depend on the size, beauty and power of their fatherland. This patriotism manufacturers frequently share with the least of their office-workers, like the great patriotism of princes and corporals.

The old gentleman sprang from the period when quality was a matter of determination and money was still earned ethically. He had war contracts but no real notion of military life. Therefore he supplied our soldiers in the field with millions of the very best pencils, pencils which our soldiers used just as little as the wretched products of other war contractors. The manufacturer showed the door to a quartermaster who advised him to be less scrupulous with his products. Others kept their good material for better times.

When peace came the old man was left with only poor material, the value of which had in any case fallen. He disposed of it together with his factory, retired to a country district, made a few short excursions and finally the last long one to the central cemetery.

Irene, like most daughters of impoverished manufacturers, remained in a villa, with a dog and a lady of noble birth who received visits of condolence and sincerely mourned the old man, not because he had been close to her, but because he had died without ever having been so. Her path from housekeeper to mistress had been interrupted by death. Now she possessed the keys to cupboards which did not belong to her. She consoled herself with an exhaustive regard for the suffering Irene.

Moreover, the noble lady had been the go-between in her betrothal to Tunda. Irene had become engaged in order to demonstrate her independence; an engagement was almost the equivalent of coming of age. The fiancée of a serving officer in the war was de facto of age. In all probability the love which had developed on this basis would not have survived the attainment of legal majority, the end of the war, the Revolution, had Tunda returned. But missing persons have an irresistible charm. One may deceive someone who is not missing, a healthy man, a sick man, and under certain circumstances even a dead man. But one waits as long as is necessary for someone who has mysteriously disappeared.

A woman’s love is inspired by various motives. Even waiting is one. She loves her own yearning and the substantial amount of time invested. Every women would despise herself for not loving the man she has waited for. Why, then, did Irene wait? Because the men on the spot are greatly inferior to those who are absent.

Moreover, she was choosy. She belonged to that generation of disillusioned upper middle-class girls whose naturally romantic disposition had been destroyed by the war. During the war these girls were in secondary schools, high schools, so-called finishing schools. In times of peace these are the breeding-grounds of illusions, of ideals and amorousness.

During the war education was neglected. Girls of all classes studied sick-nursing, current heroism and war communiqués in place of iambics. The women of this generation are as cynical as only those with much experience in love are. To them the obtuse, simple and barbaric nature of men is tedious. They already know in advance the despicable, eternal and unchanging modes of masculine courtship.

After the war Irene took a post in an office because by then it had become embarrassing not to work. She was one of those better office workers, who would be summoned by the chief himself rather than by his secretary. Thus one began to imagine that the world was topsy-turvy, that a general equality was now the rule. What had the world come to when the daughters of manufacturers had to reply to ‘yours of the eighteenth inst.’ in order to be able to wear better stockings! Such times were out of joint.

Irene waited (like many thousands of women) morning, noon and night for the postman. From time to time he brought an unimportant letter from the lawyer. Meanwhile she was accompanied by the sighs of the aristocratic lady, whose sympathy resembled a malicious gloating.

Irene was in contact with family friends from Trieste. They were an ancient family who had lived for decades by the manufacture of tiled stoves and plaster casts of classical statues. This family is responsible for most of the discus-throwers which stand under bell-jars on mahogany showcases. A branch of the Trieste family had — probably for business reasons — embraced the Irredentist cause, moved its office to Milan, and split away from that part of the family still loyal to the Hapsburgs. Never again did the two camps exchange wedding telegrams, so profound are the consequences patriotism can engender.

After the war relations were gradually resumed. As victory conduces to magnanimity, the Italian branch of the family began by extending its hand to the Austrian. There was a nephew who came from Milan to Vienna; and it was this man whom Irene eventually married.

He won her by gallantry. In those days this was a rare quality in German men — it still is today. He was unpretentious, lively, businesslike, he made money, and possessed the important and astute capacity of being at once mean and of making a woman unexpected and expensive gifts. His personal taste stood in startling contrast to his profession; his house did not contain a single one of the statues he manufactured.

Irene was delighted when she left the paternal villa and — for the first time in fifteen years — the noble lady.

As the dog accompanied the bridal pair, the housekeeper assumed part of his functions: she snarled at the postman.

Irene did not forget Tunda. Contrary to her good taste, she called her first child — it was a girl — Franziska.