The End of Days

INTERMEZZO

But if, for example, the child’s mother or father had thrust open the window in the middle of the night, had scooped a handful of snow from the sill, and put it under the baby’s shirt, perhaps the child would suddenly have started breathing again, possibly cried again as well, in any case its heart might have gone back to beating, its skin would have grown warm and the snow melted on its chest. Possibly something like divine inspiration was required, although where such inspiration might come from was something neither mother nor father knew. One glance out the night-dark window at the shimmering snow, or even just the creaking of the window frame contracting in the cold, a sound made by the cold window at precisely the moment the child fell silent, might have sufficed for inspiration, instead of the same sound occurring just half an hour afterward when it was too late. In secondary school, the child’s mother had learned that the Pythia had answered the question posed by Croesus, king of Lydia, with If you cross the Halys, you will destroy a great empire. But what the Pythia did with all the answers no one requested is something the infant’s mother wouldn’t have been able to say, nor the father either. Probably the eternal oracle sat eternally above the pneuma rising from the earth’s interior and watched as her own silence grew in size, attaining inhuman proportions. If an inspiration had come to these parents, the child’s survival would have become just that. The weave of life in its entirety — containing all knowledge of snow, all glances out the window, all listening to sounds made by the cold or damp wood — would have severed one truth from the other for all time. Only the blue tinge of the girl’s skin — above all around her mouth and chin — would have stayed with the parents, an uncomfortable memory. A memory that would have returned to them uninvited now and then, and neither would have mentioned it to the other, for fear of tempting fate. And so fate would have kept quiet, and this first moment when the child might have died would have passed without further ado.

The little girl would have learned to walk holding her mother’s hand, her first steps taking her from the wardrobe to the chest; her great-grandmother would have braided her hair, singing a little song about a man who makes a coat out of an old piece of cloth, then when it’s gotten tattered he makes a vest out of the coat, then makes a scarf from the tattered vest, a cap from the tattered scarf, a button from the tattered cap, a nothing at all from the button, and in the end he makes this song out of the nothing at all, but by then the braids would have been finished; and the girl’s grandmother would have brought her store-bought sweets or homemade challah. Four years later, her little sister would have been born, but her father would still have remained in the eleventh pay-grade, by now he would have known every last one of the larger trees along his section of rail that had ever dropped a branch on the tracks, and her mother, since they were unable to afford a maid or laundress, would have run the household all on her own, washing their laundry herself in a big pot in her kitchen so that no one would see. In the evenings, she would have fallen asleep over a book she was trying to read, still holding it in her hand. The girl’s grandmother, seeing her daughter struggle, would sometimes have slipped her a little money, and on the occasion of her daughter’s seventh wedding anniversary in 1908, she’d have given the young family a trip to Vienna for the Corpus Christi procession, where, with a little luck, one might catch a glimpse of the old Kaiser walking as an ordinary sinner behind his canopy Heaven. Her daughter would have hesitated to accept the gift, but in the end, the father would have applied for a certificate of domicile for himself, his wife, and his two girls. Proudly they would have traveled together for the first time over the rails for which the father was responsible, passing all the large trees that had dropped branches during storms over the last several years, this leg of the journey took an hour and twenty minutes, but the trip as a whole was seventeen hours.

In Vienna then, in the middle of the crowd lining the streets all the way from St. Stephen’s to the Hofburg, the child’s father would have run into a former classmate, who was meanwhile employed at the Viennese Imperial and Royal Central Institution for Meteorology; the men would have embraced and launched into tales of how their lives had unfolded since they last parted; her father would have said all sorts of things, but not this one: Just imagine, my wife took a handful of snow and saved our daughter’s life. He would have kept silent on this score, not wanting to challenge fate. The two men would have reminisced about what a wonderful time they’d had studying in Vienna, how they’d been “bed lodgers” for a while, actually sharing the bed of a shift worker who was never there at night: one of them would sleep in the bed for four hours, from ten at night until two in the morning, then the other one would sleep from two until six, and when one of them fell asleep during the morning lecture, the other would prop a few books under his head to keep him comfortable. They would have also remembered how on winter weekends they often went for walks along the snowy trails of the Vienna Woods and on one occasion they noticed the difference in the prints they were leaving behind. Deep in conversation, they stopped walking and happened to turn around, and there was the serpentine track left by his companion, while his own prints formed a perfectly straight line. At the time they’d been surprised and asked themselves what this could mean. Even today they don’t know the answer. Each of them would have assured the other how extraordinary it was that they still felt so close, even though more than eight years had passed since they’d last seen each other and they hadn’t even kept in touch by letter, indeed they’d practically forgotten one another, if truth be told. A friendship sealed up like a jar of preserves, her father would have said, and his former classmate would have laughed and, when he was done laughing, he would have remarked how long it had been since he had laughed like that. Then they would have spoken of their jobs, of the envious colleagues, the resentments, the vagaries of the Confidential Qualification, and his friend would have said how different things used to be — as a student, he would never have believed how closely one had to watch what one said, making it almost impossible to find true friends later in life. Her father would have nodded, saying that he, too, had been lonely these past eight years, excepting of course his relationship with his wife — and here he would have tightened his grip on his wife’s arm, without mentioning, to be sure, her religious affiliation. His university friend would now have looked at the woman more closely and then remarked that the joys of family life had unfortunately not yet been granted him, but, well, at least he was lucky at cards, by which he meant to say: in his career, of course, well, you can’t have it all, then he said “well” again, not following it with any further observation. The father would have been unsure what to say next, but his former classmate would have gone on to inform him that at the moment the Institution for Meteorology was looking for someone who could perform various writing tasks, and probably it wasn’t any better a job than the one he already had, as it was also an eleventh pay-grade position, but there were bonuses, and at least it was in Vienna — Vienna! — and he could certainly try to be of service to his friend, assuming of course that he really did want to live in Vienna — Vienna! — though to be sure the city did not come cheap, especially for a family, there would have to be some tightening of belts, alas: Vienna! So think it over. my goodness, I’d be truly. don’t mention it. if you could, I don’t know how I, etc. The younger daughter would have been showing signs of impatience all this time, finally tugging more firmly on her father’s hand, asking him to lift her up on his shoulders. He would have lifted her up and then several times warmly thanked his rediscovered friend, who wouldn’t have wanted to accept the thanks, after all he had no idea whether he could really, but he’d make an effort, and possibly. Right after this, the Kaiser would have appeared, walking behind his heavenly canopy, an ordinary sinner, and the family from the provinces would have cheered like all the rest, and already no one would have been able to distinguish them from actual Viennese. As soon as they arrived back at the rooming house where they were staying, her father would have written an official letter of application and mailed it off that very evening.

His colleagues in Brody — above all his immediate superior, Chief Inspector First Class of the Eighth Rank Vinzenz Knorr — would have been quite astonished to hear of his transfer several weeks later. The grandmother would have accompanied the family to the station for their second and now final departure for Vienna, and waving goodbye, she would have been fully conscious of the fact that, along with her daughter, all her questions about her missing father were now traveling away, and that this was no doubt for the best.