Madensky Square

October

I woke early this morning, the day before my voyage to the sea. The weather has been misty and autumnal, but I don’t mind that — indeed it makes it better. For once you go through the Mallnitz tunnel and come out on the southern slope of the Alps, the sun always shines, Gernot told me that. Just one tunnel and you are among the lemon trees and the blue skies, in the country that the songs are about. ‘Kennst Du Das Land Wo Die Citronen Blühen’ wrote Laura Sultzer’s Goethe, and tomorrow I too shall know it.

At seven thirty I slipped out to the apothecary in the Walter-strasse to fetch the special shampoo that Herr Frieberg mixes for me, for the dress of corn-coloured shantung in which I shall stand like a pillar on a promontory demands the echoing gold of my coiled hair and though Nature has done what she can, Herr Frieberg’s Special Mixture is undoubtedly a help.

When I had washed my hair and buffed my fingernails I wandered peacefully through the shop. Everything is ready for tomorrow’s journey. My hats, nested in tissue, rest in their boxes, my case is dusted, the shoes already packed. The most reliable cab driver in the Albertina Platz will come at five o’clock, a good hour before I need to leave to catch my train, but I love stations and hate rush.

Across the square I could see Jan Kraszinsky come out of the apartment house looking dishevelled and agitated as usual, and hurry off towards Joseph’s café. I haven’t seen Sigismund for days.

‘Let it go well for him tomorrow,’ I prayed — and forgot him.

In the long mirrors I saw myself, my hair loose, my eyes bright, and felt a surge of gratitude to God for letting me have a little longer, still, to summon beauty. He could so easily have smitten me with a spot on the chin, a cold in the nose, but He had seen into my heart and stayed His hand.

Kraszinsky had left the café and was running across the square. He was hatless, his coat-tails flapped — he was coming towards my shop and I was instantly angry. I wanted nothing of the Kraszinskys and their problems on the morning of my waiting day.

‘He’s gone!’ said Kraszinsky almost falling across the threshold. ‘Sigi’s gone!’

‘Nonsense! He’ll have gone out for a stroll.’

‘No, no! He never goes out now, I forbade it because of the boys.’

‘What boys?’

‘Herr Schumacher’s nephew and the other one who sings in the choir. They throw stones at Sigi and shout things.’ Oh God, poor Sigismund. I had known nothing of this. ‘When did you last see him?’

‘In the night. I woke up and I thought I must tell him to change the fingering in the polonaise, so I went in and he was there then.’

‘You woke him in the middle of the night to tell him that?’

‘Yes, yes… Often I have ideas in the night and I tell him. The concert must be a success, it must! I have borrowed so much money! Oh God, what shall I do?’

The man was quite out of control, shaking… a little mad. Did Frau Hinkler not see him go out?’

He shook his head. ‘He must practise still — he must practise! Yesterday he made a mistake in the last movement of the sonata.’

‘I’m not surprised he made a mistake. I’m surprised he can still play at all. Look, you’d better tell the police, but I’m sure he can’t have gone far. He may even be back now; he could have slipped in through the courtyard.’

I almost pushed him out of the door, but my lovely, quiet day of anticipation was shattered. Nini came out of the workroom and I told her what had happened.

‘Poor little scrap; I saw him yesterday at the window and he looked terrible; really ill. No wonder he’s run away.’

‘He hasn’t run away,’ I said crossly. ‘Where would he run to?’

Strange that I never thought of the obvious thing. Even after Nini gave a little squeak and said: ‘Oh! There’s something moving there, under the table,’ even then I didn’t think.

But of course he was there. He must have crept in while I was out at the chemist… come for sanctuary to the ‘little house’ of yellow silk he’d hidden in when he came to be measured for his clothes, and fallen asleep.

For he slept still; he had only stirred briefly. He lay curled up, his arms crossed over his chest. I saw a human embryo once, in a jar in Professor Starsky’s lab; a waxy white, curved little creature with slits for eyes who lay as the boy lay, seeming to protect itself from birth, from life.

We pulled him out, helped him on to the sofa.

‘I can’t,’ he said, still not quite conscious. ‘I can’t. I don’t remember how it goes any more.’ And then something in Polish which he repeated. ‘Sleep,’ said Sigismund. ‘Please can I sleep?’

I could have murdered Kraszinsky at that moment.

While Nini locked the door and pulled down the blinds, I pushed the hair away from Sigismund’s face and found a bloodied graze on his temple. A stone thrown with venom would have made such a mark.

‘He won’t be able to play, will he?’ whispered Nini. ‘I don’t know.’

With twenty-four hours to go it seemed impossible. Even if they could get him to the hall what kind of performance could be expected from this weary little wreck? But it wasn’t the ruined prodigy I saw in Sigismund’s hollowed cheeks and stricken eyes; it was a sick and ill-treated child.

I sent Nini for some milk and a croissant, and while the boy ate and drank I tried to think what to do. I’d kept the day deliberately free of clients; most of my packing was done. And suddenly I knew…

‘Sigismund,’ I said, ‘we’re going away for a little while. Just you and I. We’re going to play truant.’

He put down his cup. ‘I don’t have to practise any more?’

’No. You don’t have to practise ever again if you don’t want to.’

‘And it doesn’t matter if I screw up my mouth?’

‘It doesn’t matter in the least.’

He was on his feet; he put his hand in mine. He was ready.

I gave Nini her instructions. ‘I’m going to slip out at the back. Give me half an hour, then go and tell Kraszinsky that the boy is safe. I’ll bring him back this afternoon.’

Only when we were in a cab bowling down the Walterstrasse did Sigismund ask: ‘Where are we going?’

And I answered: ‘To the Prater.’

The words were hard to say.

I had not been in the Volksprater — the Wurschtlprater — since I went to try out for my daughter the dappled horses on the roundabouts, the coconut shies, the swings. That day, twelve years ago, when I had been so sure that she and I were about to begin our life together, had been one of the happiest of my life. She was with me all the time in spirit, driving a miniature carriage pulled by white llamas, throwing hoops over bobbing celluloid ducklings, clapping her hands when I won for her a cross-eyed, fluffy dog. And at the end she led me, my lion-hearted daughter, towards the giant wheel with her blonde head tilted to the skies.

So it was not easy now to drive through the gates with this alien child.

Sigismund, as we got down from the cab, stood looking around him in bewilderment. There must have been fairs even in Galicia, but the boy seemed overwhelmed and his cold hand fastened tightly on mine.

But in any case I wasn’t going to let him choose what to do first. I knew. The treasure I’d discovered when I came here with my little phantom daughter was still there: I could see the brightly coloured sign above a clump of bushes. GROTTENBAHN, it said — and I moved resolutely towards it, paid, led the child into the first of the wooden coaches, painted a brilliant red and blue.

‘What is it?’ he whispered.

‘You’ll see.’

Only a few people got in behind us; it was late in the year for the Prater. The bell rang and we lurched forwards into the darkness. There was time to be properly afraid — and then the train stopped.

We were opposite the first of the lighted caves. It showed Cinderella stooping by the embers, her golden hair brushing the hearth. Everything that would later transform her life was there: the pumpkins, the mice… One baby mouse playing beneath the dresser was half the size of the rest, with tiny crooked whiskers. The clock ticked in the corner, hams and salami hung from the rafters. She was utterly forlorn, poor Cinderella, and as we leaned out of the train (which we were not supposed to do) we could see the tears glitter on her cheeks.

‘Who is she?’ whispered the boy beside me, and I realized that he had never heard of Cinderella; never in his life.

Yet he was transfixed, as I was too. For we were entirely in the kitchen, sharing her loneliness, her rejection — but at least I knew the future as did the children in the coaches behind me. That the old woman visible through the window was coming… that as soon as the train moved on she would be there, the fairy godmother under whose cloak one could see the glimmer of silver.

The train surged forwards and beside me Sigismund sighed. It was too soon, always too soon, that jerk of the train, one never had time enough. Another journey into the darkness, and then we stopped once more.

Snow White this time, and the glass coffin and the dwarves clustered round in mourning. And how they mourned! They held their heads in their hands, they clutched their handkerchiefs, one lay prostrate among the lilies of the valley on the ground. White doves hung above the bier, white roses sprouted from the earth and she lay with her raven hair streaming across her face.

And again for the other children in the coaches the sadness was almost pleasurable because they knew, as I knew, that the prince would come (one could see his painted horse, his handsome head on a distant hill), the poisoned apple be dislodged, the grief-stricken dwarves rise to their feet and dance.

But not Sigismund. ‘Why is she dead?’ came his hoarse little voice beside me. ‘Who killed her?’

‘I’ll tell you later. But it’s all right. She comes alive again.’

Another plunge into the darkness and the giant Rubezahl, our special Austrian giant and wholly benevolent. He was holding a cow in the hollow of his hand and chiding it for not giving milk while tiny people in the field below looked pleased.

And on again to the Sleeping Beauty. She lay back in a swoon holding her spindle and she had the richest, fattest plait of flaxen hair you have ever seen. A great hedge of thorns grew across the window and all around her lay the palace servants overcome as she was by sudden sleep. There was a sleeping dog, a sleeping chef in a tall hat — and a sleeping kitchen boy still holding aloft the cutlet he had been about to eat.

‘A sleeping chop!’ said Sigismund, pointing, and for the first time since I had known him, I heard him giggle. He had made a joke.

There were twelve stories depicted in the Grottenbahn and Sigismund knew none of them. The Little Mermaid, walking on her sore new feet towards her prince, Mother Holle trying to shake down the sky, Little Red Riding Hood carrying her basket between marvellously spotted toadstools while the great wet tongue of the wolf lolled between the pines…

The last but one of the lighted grottos was almost the best: Thumbelina landing in Africa, held in the beak of her swallow. And what an Africa! Swirling scarlet lilies, fruit hanging from palm trees — and in the petals of a flower as golden as the sun, Thumbelina’s tiny princeling awaiting her.

In the last of the caves, Hansel and Gretel lay asleep in the forest, pillowed on leaves, while above them an arc of angels in white nightdresses with pink bare feet and glittering halos, held out protecting hands.

And here at last Sigismund was able to make a connection through his music, and in his husky voice he hummed the theme of the ‘Angel’s Ballet’ from Humperdinck’s opera.

Then we were out in the daylight, blinking, trying to adjust to the shock of daylight and ordinariness.

The train stopped. The other people got out. Sigismund made no move whatsoever.

‘Where would you like to go next?’ I asked.

A stupid question. He sat absolutely immobile, grasping the rail in front of him.

‘Again,’ he said.

I bought two more tickets. We went round again. Cinderella, Snow White, the great giant Rubezahl… When we got to the Sleeping Beauty he made his joke about the sleeping chop, when we got to Hansel and Gretel he crooned the ballet music from Humperdinck, and each and every time the train moved on, he sighed.

‘What about one of the roundabouts?’ I suggested when we were out once more.

He shook his head. ‘Please, again,’ he said.

You can believe it or not, but we went seven times round the Grottenbahn. Seven baby mice, seven benevolent giants, seven jokes about sleeping chops, seven golden princes waiting for Thumbelina…

Then I struck and pulled him out of the car and we went to look for something to eat.

The sun had pierced the mist. We found a place where we could sit under a chestnut tree, but Sigismund was not very interested in his Wiener wurstl. He wanted to know the stories. All the stories.

‘I can’t tell you all of them, Sigismund. Choose one. I’ll tell you the rest some other time.’

He chose ‘Snow White’.

‘Once upon a time,’ I began, ‘there was a woman who longed and longed for a child. She wanted a daughter more than anything in the world…’

I had stopped, fighting the lump in my throat. But it was she herself who urged me on; the golden-haired phantom who had travelled with us on the Grottenbahn and who is now — perhaps I’d better face this once and for all — old enough to have children of her own.

‘One day she sat beside her window which was framed in darkest ebony; outside the snow was falling and as she sewed she pricked her finger so that three drops of bright red blood fell on to the ground…’

He moved closer and his mouth parted. What had been done to this child, or left undone? Even in a Polish forest, surely, they had heard of Snow White? But of course it is women who tell these stories to their children. There seemed to have been no women in the boy’s short life.

‘I will get you a book, Sigismund,’ I said when I had finished. ‘All the stories are in a book.’

He shook his head. He wanted me to tell them, and of course he is right. The stories are for telling.

We went then to the roundabouts. He chose to ride not on a dappled horse — I had noticed already his dislike of horses — but on a swan. He enjoyed it, but he didn’t want to go round again. It was an experience complete in itself.

Then came the Wurschtlmann. He’s so famous the Prater is named for him and you can see why. A hideous rubber man with a red nose who, for a few kreutzer one can thump and pound and wallop to one’s heart’s content, knowing that he will right himself undamaged and come up for more. Give him a name — that of your mean-minded boss, your bullying commanding officer — and you can punch him insensible and walk away, purged.

‘Would you like to have a go, Sigismund?’

Even before he shook his head I saw him instinctively shield his hands, hiding them behind his back — and that was the first time I remembered the concert.

In the end, though, the Prater is about the ferris wheel whose fame has spread throughout the Empire. It towers over everything else, its carriages take you a hundred metres into the sky. To be up there and look down on the city is to ride with the gods.

So I asked him: ‘What about the giant wheel? Would you like to go on it?’

His hand tightened in mine. A tremor passed over his face. She had not been frightened even at six years old, but the boy was scared.

‘The view is very beautiful from the top. You can see all Vienna.’

He stood still in the middle of the path. He tilted his head and gave a small sniff.

‘I want very much to be brave,’ he said in his low, cracked voice. ‘I very much want it.’

And suddenly it all dissolved — my long antagonism, my restraint, the resentment that I felt at being asked for what belonged only to my daughter. I saw him sitting beside his dead mother in the Polish forest, waiting for her to wake… Saw him wobbling on the Encyclopedia of Art, playing and playing because he could no longer talk. I remembered the silent patience with which he’d endured his uncle’s bullying, saw the graze on his forehead of which he’d said no word.

And I knelt beside him and took him in my arms.

‘You are brave, Sigi. You’re very brave, my darling,’ I said — and kissed him.

So now I can tell you this. They are entirely exact descriptions of what happens, those ones in the fairy tales which tell you what occurs when you kiss an ugly frog, a hairy beast, with proper love.

Sigi didn’t kiss me back or cling to me. He just straightened his shoulders and then in a calm, almost matter-of-fact voice, he said: ‘Now we will go up,’ — and then led me to the brightly painted carriages swaying high above our heads.

It is evening now and I am sitting at the window waiting for my lovely day. Sigi is asleep in the house opposite; he will play tomorrow and play well, I know it. Kraszinsky has had enough of a fright to leave him alone. I went in with him and helped to put him to bed; he was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. And he made no fuss at all when I told him I wouldn’t be at the concert.

‘I have to go on a journey, but I’ll be back on Tuesday and then we’ll go to Demels and have a splendid Jause!

‘Can we eat Indianerkrapfen?’ was all he wanted to know. ‘Yes, Sigi. Lots of Indianerkrapfen.’

All the Indianerkrapfen in the world he shall have when I have been with my lover by the sea.

I haven’t written for over three weeks. I couldn’t. I was too wretched.

It was because of Herr Schnee’s horses that it happened and who could have foreseen that? His nephew, the cornet, kept his promise. At five o’clock on the day of Sigi’s concert and my journey to the sea, he trotted into Madensky Square at the head of his troop. They were splendid horses, cavalry chargers, each ridden by a trooper in full regalia of the Carinthian Jaegers: dolmanyis, shakos, swords…

It was a kind of joke. It is not easy to remember that. A sort of birthday tribute to Herr Schnee — a salute — but a jape really. Horses do not need to be fitted for their harness, but the cornet was very young.

The day was misty, if you remember. Dusk fell early, but the lamps were not yet lit.

When the horses came I was standing outside on the pavement with my suitcase waiting for the cab to take me to the station. I saw how fresh the horses were; how mettlesome. One in particular, a black ridden by the soldier who was next in line to the officer.

The cornet shouted, ‘Halt!’ and dismounted, and gave his reins to the man behind him. Herr Schnee came out, smiling and bowing, and walked along the line of horses which stretched past my shop also, and then he and the cornet went inside.

In the apartment opposite, Sigi and his uncle came out on to the step to wait for Van der Velde’s limousine. I was hidden from him by the horses but I saw how proudly he held himself in his new clothes.

Then…

I know what he saw. I know exactly what he saw in the dusk. He was four years old again in the forest in Preszowice. I know the word he screamed though it was in Polish:

Cossacks! Cossacks!

And he went mad. He raced across the square to the horsemen who had come to kill me as they had killed his mother.

Rip, barking, followed him.

The boy couldn’t see me as I stood pressed against the doorway of the shop. He threw himself at the leader of the troop, he tried — this midget — to wrest the man’s sword from its scabbard, and all the time he screamed abuse in Polish.

The trooper was amused at first. ‘Hey, hey,’ he said, reigning in his horse, controlling the cornet’s charger.

Then Rip arrived. In a paroxysm of barking, he ran between the horse’s legs.

I shouted to Sigi. ‘It’s all right, Sigi. It’s all right!’

He didn’t hear. Still yelling abuse in Polish, caught in his time warp, he started to tug at the bridle.

The soldiers were no longer amused. One of them dismounted and grabbed Sigi. He wriggled free and cut across behind the black charger.

‘You must run, you must run!’ he shouted, tugging at my skirt.

And Rip followed. Sigi after all was a member of his house and he barked defiance at the stamping horses… managed to rise on his vestigial hind legs… to nip the black charger in the fetlock.

Oh God, those seconds that pass so quickly that one cannot believe one cannot call them back and undo the horror they contain.

He was a good horse, the black; there was nothing vicious in him. He only reared up to escape the irritation of the yapping dog — and brought his forelegs down again. Not really very hard, but hard enough. Rip only had time to yelp once, and then he lay still.

There was so much blood — so unbelievably much blood for such a little dog.

The accident changed the soldiers’ mood. Their faces turned ugly, sullen, foreseeing trouble. And all hope of quietening Sigi’s madness vanished.

‘You see! You see how they kill!’

I had pulled Rip’s body clear; I wanted to cover him; I did not think it was fitting that he should lie there so mangled, so… exposed, and I took off my travelling cape and laid it across his body.

Then Van der Velde’s limousine turned into the square. Kraszinsky rushed up to him, and the impresario strode over to the horsemen.

‘Get hold of that boy,’ he ordered. ‘Take him to my car. Hold him down till I come.’

They responded at once to the authoritative voice, the velvet-collared overcoat. Two men dismounted and grabbed Sigi, still clutching my blood-stained skirt, and dragged him away.

Then my cab came. I seized my suitcase. Delivery, the end of the nightmare — Gernot and the sea!

I was pulled back savagely, my arm wrenched behind me. ‘Oh no!’ said Van der Velde. ‘You’re coming too. You landed me with this hysterical little tyke and you’re going to take the consequences.’

‘I can’t. I have to go. I have a train to catch.’

Van der Velde laughed and twisted my arm tighter. He was enjoying himself. ‘You can go when he’s played — because he’s going to play if I have to tie him to the piano stool.’

The soldiers were on his side. I was linked with the boy in blame for the accident. ‘Want any help sir?’ one of them shouted.

Van der Velde marched me across the square, pushed me in beside the child, slammed the door. As he started the engine I saw a misshapen figure in a grotesquely flowered hat come out of the apartment house: Frau Hinkler dressed for the concert. She stood for a moment on the steps, then began to walk towards the soldiers… to run…

I was very quiet in the motor. My suitcase had been left on the pavement, but I still had my purse with the tickets. Nothing else mattered; my blood-stained skirt, my missing cloak… not even the sobbing child on the seat beside me. As soon as the car stopped in a crowded place I would get out and run for a cab. Van der Velde would not dare to pursue me where there were people. There was still time.

We came to the busy section by the opera. The car stopped. I reached for the handle of the door.

Van der Velde was in front, but Sigi saw what I was doing. ‘You’ll be all right now,’ I whispered to him. ‘You can see no harm has come to me.’

He didn’t answer. He had stopped sobbing; he made no noise at all, but he had begun to shiver. It was bad that time in the square when his uncle didn’t come home, but this was far, far worse. His whole body shook as if with a frightful fever.

If he had tried to pull me back, or screamed, I’d have made my escape, but he made no attempt at all to stop me. He just sat there, looked at me — and shivered.

So I stayed.

I suppose I must try to describe the concert, but the truth is, I don’t remember much.

In the artist’s room we tried to wash off the blood and tidy ourselves. Van der Velde led me to one of the press seats in the front row. Then he made an announcement: there had been a traffic accident on the way to the hall; he craved the audience’s indulgence for the child.

It was a good move, of course. There were sighs and whispers, a fluttering of programmes: the poor little waif. Then the impresario came down to sit beside me and make sure that I wouldn’t try to escape. The idea was that Sigi would be able to see me and know that I was safe.

What a joke!

He came on to the platform, bowed his concert master’s bow, began to play. He played the Beethoven sonata, the Chopin mazurkas, the waltz in F… There was not one moment, between the pieces, when he even glanced my way. For this child, who an hour ago had been completely mad, nothing existed except the piano.

I could have left in the interval; even Van der Velde saw that the child had forgotten me, but it was too late. The train had gone.

The concert ended in an ovation. There were cries of ‘bravo’ and ‘bis’; he was recalled again and again; a woman in a silver fox plucked a rose from her bosom and threw it on to the stage. My last glimpse of Sigi was of a dark head appearing briefly between the circle of well-wishers that surrounded him — newspaper men, autograph hunters, agents — and then vanishing once more.

That was three weeks ago and I haven’t seen him since. When the Kraszinskys returned to the apartment house, Frau Hinkler screamed such abuse at them, holding Rip’s body in her arms, that Van der Velde took them back to a hotel. He smells money now and is prepared to see the Kraszinskys decently housed. The cheque for Sigi’s concert clothes came through the post and now he is on a concert tour of Germany.

There’s one thing I still don’t know; whether the fuss, the acclaim was because he looked so young and there had been an accident, or whether he has a proper and lasting talent. I didn’t hear him, I was too wretched — and anyway I wouldn’t know.

No, I’m lying. After the encore that Van der Velde had specified, there was a fourth. Sigi chose that: it was the Mozart Rondo in A and I heard that.

I heard his music.

I think I have lost Gernot.

We do not telephone, but this time, for something so important, he would surely have phoned? If he still loved me he could not be so cruel as to deny me a chance to explain. Or he would send me a letter telling me where I could get in touch with him. But in all the weeks since I missed the train there has been no word.

So I think that something was damaged permanently when I failed to come to him. I have never before not kept an assignation, you see. Once I had a broken ankle, but I still came. Once, in a blizzard, I was ten minutes late, but I have always come. And I think that he cannot forgive me. For I have no illusions about myself and Gernot von Lindenberg. In the eyes of God we are equals, and perhaps in bed (where God, so strangely, often seems to be present) but in the eyes of the world we are desperately unequal. There must be a hundred women waiting to step into my shoes.

Alice guesses that something is wrong. ‘Is it the little dog, Sanna? Is that why you’re sad?’ she asked me.

No, it is not the little dog. I miss Rip very much — we all do in the square — but he was ten years old and died in an instant. Each time I look out of the window in the early morning I wait to see him come down the steps to fetch the paper and then remember he is not there — but it is not the little dog. What has happened to my face cannot be laid at Rip’s door. How do the cells in my skin, the follicles of my hair, know that I have lost Gernot? ‘A woman is as old as her elastic tissue,’ a pompous friend of Professor Starsky said once, and my tissue has become profoundly inelastic. Nini has taken to bringing me hot milk at bedtime. Soon, if this goes on I shall be wearing navy blue with touches of white.

Oh God, no. Not that. Gernot will write, he will phone, he will send Hatschek. I cannot have to live without him!

Meanwhile I’m not the only person with problems. Gretl’s fiance, who is now in charge of his own fire engine, has given her an ultimatum: marriage within six months or the engagement is off. Gustav Schumacher has jammed the master switch in the saw shed and fused the electricity supply to two apartment houses and a laundry, and Leah Cohen’s husband has bought the tickets for the Holy Land.

‘Promise you won’t dress Miriam when I’ve gone, promise me,’ she begged. ‘That’s the only thing I can’t stand, the idea of Miriam swanning about in your lovely clothes.’

Edith Sultzer has just telephoned to say she wants to see me.

She arrived with her briefcase so full that the lock did not shut and she had to hold it under her arm.

‘Goodness, Edith, what have you got in there?’

The Bluestocking threw me an agitated glance. ‘Could I come through into the workshop?’

‘Of course.’

The cutting-out table was clear. Edith asked for some newspaper which Nini brought. Then she opened the case. Plaited into four strands, fastened by twine, the lengths of white-blonde hair tumbled out in incredible profusion. ‘Good God — what is it?’

‘It’s Magdalena’s hair. I told you it belonged to The Christ. She’s cut it right off and she wants to sell it. She said one could get a better price if one sold it privately. Only I don’t at all know where to go.’

I ran my fingers along the marvellous silky stuff, feeling quite shaken at this heroic butchery.

‘You’ve found her then? But where? Where is she?’

‘She’s in the Convent of the Sacred Heart. She’s going to be a nun. That’s why she wants me to sell her hair; to get money for the order.’

‘I see. And the man I saw her with?’

‘He’s a Jesuit priest — Father Benedictus. He was her confessor when she was being confirmed. She went to ask him if she could be released from her engagement — she went several times, but he wouldn’t let her. He said to be offered a pure marriage and a chance to help the church financially was a fine opportunity. They’re very practical, these Jesuits. But of course when Herr Huber broke his side of the bargain, Magdalena felt free… and she ran away and took refuge with the nuns.’

‘How did you find her, Edith? Did she send you a message?’

Edith shook her head. ‘I packed some toilet things and went round to all the convents saying I’d brought some things for her and would they give them to her. In the first three they said she wasn’t there, but in the fourth they just took them and asked if I’d like to see her. She’s only a postulant still, she’s not walled up.’

‘You seem to have been very resourceful.’

Edith shook her head. ‘I just remembered what she said when she was little. Again and again she said it. “I’m going to be a nun because I love Jesus more than anyone else in the world.” I think he was so real to her she couldn’t bear anyone else even to touch her. She wanted to make the sacrifice for her family, but she just couldn’t.’

Then she asked if I would come with her to the convent. ‘She looks so different — it isn’t just the hair, it’s everything. You know how dreamy she was; not quite in the world. Well that’s all changed. And if you saw her, Frau Susanna, you could help me to tell Herr Huber.’

‘He doesn’t know yet?’

Edith shook her head. ‘I told her family, but they just weep and wail though Herr Huber gave them quite a big sum of money even after she ran away. You’re so good at making people feel better, and I don’t know how to say things… only in essays, not to real people.’ She gave a little sniff. ‘I’m going to miss Magdalena. We were both misfits — she was too beautiful and I was too ugly.’

So I went with her to the Convent of the Sacred Heart. There was no difficulty about seeing Magdalena. The woman who admitted us was Sister Bonaventura who had made the silken rose on the rich cream dress I wore to the Bristol, and we are friends.

The convent adjoins a group of almshouses with a small hospital, and the nuns are responsible for this.

It was there that we found Magdalena. She wore an apron and a cap over her shorn hair, and was swabbing down, methodically and carefully, the stomach of an ancient lady who lay on an iron bed. Nothing could have been further than the image I had had of Magdalena rapt in prayer and communicating with her saints. Rather she looked — as she dried the old lady and rolled her over like a strudel — like a satisfied housewife attending to her daily tasks. And it occurred to me that Magdalena’s love affair had ended rather better than Alice’s or Nini’s — or mine: in a busy and contented marriage.

We exchanged a few words, but Magdalena had started on a second patient, cutting the toenails on a pair of gnarled and yellow feet, and we soon took our leave.

There seemed to be no point in delaying over breaking the news to Herr Huber. On the way to his shop in the Graben, we called for Alice. She was packing for her journey to Switzerland but she agreed to come with us. The butcher has a special fondness for her and I felt we needed help.

We found Herr Huber supervising a display of knackwurst, and the way he looked when we told him that Magdalena was safe — the relief, the tenderness on his face, the sudden hope we had at once to extinguish — is best forgotten.

‘She was on her knees as when I first saw her?’ he asked eagerly. ‘She was in prayer?’

‘No. She was swabbing down an old lady’s stomach,’ I said firmly.

‘And she has cut her hair,’ said Edith. ‘She has given it to The Christ.’

‘Like Cosima Wagner,’ put in Alice.

Herr Huber’s bewildered round eyes went from one to the other of us. ‘Did Frau Wagner give her hair to The Christ?’

‘No. To Wagner. She cut it off and put it in his grave. He was The Christ to her. Well, God… ’

But poor Herr Huber was quite unable to deal with a shorn Magdalena swabbing the abdomens of ancient ladies. We carried him off to lunch at the Landtmann, but he was a broken man, able to swallow only a couple of schnitzels and a slab of oblaten torte.

‘I’m giving up my room at the Astoria,’ he told us. ‘And I’m putting a manager into the shop here. There’s nothing in Vienna for me now.’ He brightened for a moment. ‘Fortunately I’ve had a good offer for the villa. A very good offer.’

I didn’t ask if the bald Saint Proscutea was included in the fittings.

‘You’ll be living in the old house by the river, then?’ said Edith, and Herr Huber nodded.

I suggested that Magdalena’s trousseau should be sent to her convent for the nuns to sell, and he agreed to that.

‘Of course I shall be coming to say goodbye. You have been such good friends to me.’ He dabbed his eyes. ‘And everyone is welcome in Linz. My sisters would be so happy.’

‘How soon are you leaving?’ asked Edith.

‘In about three weeks. Earlier perhaps.’

Edith put down her knife and fork. ‘Really?’ she said. `So soon?’

I have told myself that I have lost Gernot and I have believed it. Yet deep down there has been a glimmer of hope. After all it is not sense to think that one broken assignation — even such an important one — could have such consequences. My fears could have been due to the time of year, the shortening of the days, the cold which so easily extinguishes hope.

But now I know that it is true. I have to live without him. I know because of Hatschek.

This is what happened.

The Baroness Lefevre, the one who got tired of sitting on ortolans, lives in a grace and favour apartment in the Hofburg. She’s had influenza and I said I would call and fit her for her skating costume.

I was walking through the gate from the Michaeler Platz into the first of the palace courtyards when I saw Hatschek coming out of a door on the far side.

He saw me. There was not the slightest doubt about it. He was coming directly towards me and when he caught sight of me, he smiled his slow, stupid smile and touched his cap.

Then he must have remembered his instructions for he flushed a fiery red and turned on his heel.

It was absolutely unmistakable: the recognition and the rebuff, but I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t take it in — and I called to him and hurried after him. I was quite without pride; all I wanted was just a few seconds to explain — just a few seconds, nothing more.

He increased his pace — then, just as I was catching up with him, he veered to the right and turned in through the archway where the Swiss Guards stand on duty.

That part of the Palace is sealed off to everyone who does not have business there. Hatschek knew the password; some of the offices of the Ministry of War are there, and they let him through, but not me of course — not a distraught woman carrying a cardboard box — and I stood there waiting helplessly while he hurried down a flight of steps and vanished.

So it’s true, you see. It’s over. Hatschek has been forbidden to speak to me. I’m like Serbia now, and Macedonia — bad for his master.

I must have loved Hatschek too, just a little bit, for somewhere in the agony of losing Gernot is this other foolish grief for the Bohemian Corporal who was my friend.