The Keeper of Hands

PART THREE
TWENTY-THREE

‘Does it always rain in June here?’ Emile von Werthen was clearly put out by the weather in Laab im Walde. He’d brought along his butterfly net and collecting jars, and now stood like a disappointed child at the window, dressed in breeches and linen smock, watching the puddles forming in the courtyard of ‘the farm’.

He presented a pitiful sight, and Werthen felt a sudden sympathy for his father. For the first time, he recognized that the man was vulnerable, and then Werthen remembered with something of a shock that his father was over sixty. He had taken to combing his thinning hair forward, rather in the style of a Roman senator; the tidy little moustache he sported looked strangely darker than before, obviously dyed. Once so tall and thin, he seemed diminished and had something of a stoop now.

As Emile von Werthen maintained his post at the rain-splattered window, gazing out wanly, butterfly net in hand, Werthen experienced a strange emotion — not dissimilar to the protective love he felt for his little daughter Frieda.

‘The weather will surely clear up later this afternoon,’ Frau von Werthen told her husband. ‘Now come back to the table and eat your boiled egg.’

Emile von Werthen turned towards the breakfast table where Werthen, Berthe, Frieda and Frau von Werthen were seated.

‘My god, I’d rather spend my day with the Lepidoptera than with such a gathering of humanity.’

Saying this, he stomped away from the window in stockinged feet and headed for the guest room at the back of the farmhouse.

Werthen could only shake his head. A hard man to love.

Werthen’s parents had come to visit while their property in the Vienna Woods was being prepared for building work. His father had said he wanted to be there for the laying of the cornerstone. Werthen had given up trying to dissuade them from such a project and relented in his objections to having his parents so close at hand. However, scenes such as the one at the breakfast table made Werthen regret any such emotional weakness on his part.

As it turned out, the afternoon did not bring clear skies; instead, it saw the arrival of more visitors. Herr Meisner, Berthe’s father, who had recently rented a small flat in Vienna, arrived in a covered fiaker. Emile von Werthen, who had returned to his post at the window, was the first to spot him.

‘Well, I’ll be. .’ he said. ‘Looks like your father is coming to tea,’ he called out to Berthe.

Busy in the kitchen making dough for the ravioli which they were to have for dinner, Berthe wiped a floured hand at a strand of hair that had fallen into her face, leaving a smudge of white on her cheek.

‘He was supposed to come next weekend,’ she said.

‘Ah, doing the in-laws in shifts, are we?’

‘Emile!’ his wife, seated at the table doing needlework, gently chided her husband.

‘Well, we have had our differences. .’ he began. And then said in amazement, ‘Good lord, the man’s got a woman in tow.’

Berthe hurried to the window in time to see her father gripping the hand of a tall, heavily cloaked woman descending the last step down from the carriage. Both were dressed for the weather, and put their heads down against a sudden gust of wind as they made their way across the muddy court towards the door.

Berthe had yet to meet her father’s new friend and was amazed that he would bring her unannounced like this. She hurriedly took off her apron, after wiping her hands on it. Flustered, she looked round for some place to put it. Her father-in-law took it from her, smiling, and dabbed at her powdered cheek with a corner of it.

‘A woman should look nice for her father,’ he said with sudden tenderness.

This only served to fluster Berthe more. ‘Could you get Karl?’

He nodded and headed for the study, where Werthen was catching up on some legal work he had brought with him for the weekend.

‘Who is the woman, dear?’ Frau von Werthen asked as Berthe moved to the door.

‘I-’ Berthe said, and then came a rapping at the door.

Berthe opened it to see her father in the company of Frau von Suttner.

‘Oh,’ Berthe said. ‘Hello. How good to see you. . both.’

Werthen, Berthe and Frau von Suttner gathered in the study, leaving the in-laws to fend for themselves.

Herr Meisner was staying at Berthe and Werthen’s flat in Vienna while his own apartment was being readied. He had not given up his home in Linz, but intended to spend more time in Vienna, especially since making the acquaintance of a ‘special friend’.

Frau von Suttner had come to the flat, looking for Berthe. After explaining the reason for her visit to Herr Meisner and receiving plaudits from him — as he was just as enthusiastic a fan of her work as Berthe — the two of them made the journey out to Laab im Walde together.

‘I must apologize for bursting in on you like this,’ Frau von Suttner said, now they were comfortably seated in the study. ‘I just had to thank you.’

She fixed Berthe with her grey eyes, smiling.

‘Well, it was just a silly misunderstanding,’ Berthe said. ‘Anybody could have cleared it up.’

Frau von Suttner shook her head. ‘Please. I am fully grown. There is no need to continue the subterfuge. Arthur. . Baron von Suttner is playing his part quite nicely. He has brought me on a luxury trip to Vienna for the weekend as a birthday celebration. But then of course you must know that.’

That part of it Berthe had not arranged. ‘I assure you, Baroness. .’

‘I have already got a peek at the surprise present. My only concern is that Herr Klimt does not break the bank — we have those roof repairs to think of.’

Berthe’s face reddened, realizing that her ploy had not fooled Frau von Suttner.

‘It was done as a personal favour,’ Berthe said.

‘Yes,’ the Baroness nodded, looking at Werthen. ‘A former client, as I remember.’

‘My first case,’ Werthen said.

‘The portrait is quite beautiful. Who was the original model?’

‘Klimt has his little secrets,’ Berthe replied.

Another smile crossed von Suttner’s face. ‘Don’t be downcast. You have performed a wonderful service. Miracles, however, are not in your line of work. I know Arthur and the girl were carrying on. It tears at my heart, but I accept it. You have made a valiant effort to protect me from the truth, but as you see, I shall survive. I have kept a brave face for the two of them. They think I actually believe the story of them sneaking off to Vienna to have the great painter Klimt create a portrait of Marie for my birthday tomorrow. How clever you are!’

Again, Berthe felt her face grow red. ‘I am sorry.’

‘Do not be. You have done us a great service. You have kept my husband’s indiscretions from damaging the peace movement, from possibly compromising my own whole-hearted involvement in it. That to me is a case successfully concluded. I just had to tell you this personally, from the bottom of my heart. Thank you, dear girl. I also wanted to give this to you.’

She handed Berthe a transcribed and translated version of the letters from Fräulein Mitzi that Werthen had taken from her parent’s house in the Weinviertel.

They could not convince Frau von Suttner or Herr Meisner to stay. The fiaker was still waiting in the courtyard, but the driver had finally taken refuge in the kitchen, and Werthen’s father was busily informing him of the saintly derivation of the name of his carriage.

‘Fiacre was a seventh-century Irish monk, you see, my good man.’

The fiaker driver did not appear to have any saintly qualities, his tell-tale red, venous nose a tribute to Bacchus, not to Irish saints.

‘A healer, in fact, who built a hospice for travelers in France. Later, the Hotel de Saint Fiacre in Paris rented out carriages, so the French gave the saint’s name to rented carriages. And voilà, my good sir, you have the fiaker.’

The cabbie was not listening to this peroration. Instead, he asked Frau von Werthen for another cup of tea.

‘And I wouldn’t say no to a spot of slivowitz in it. Driving a carriage is a cold wet job today.’

After they had left and his parents had gone to their room for a nap (Frieda was just up from hers), Werthen asked Berthe about the one aspect of the case he did not understand. She had obviously charmed Klimt into doing his part, and had gotten Archduke Franz Ferdinand to have the hideous hotel deskman deported to his native Italy with a warning not to return — so the sole witness to the Baron’s assignation with his niece was neatly taken care of. One thing, however, remained unclear to him.

‘How did you convince the Baron to go along with this ruse? An appeal to his better self?’

‘Something like that. But the niece was having none of it.’

Berthe was back to working the dough for the ravioli.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘So I told him the truth. That he was being watched by agents for the state who wanted to embarrass his wife, to destroy the work that she. . they. . had accomplished over many years.’

‘And that did the job?’

‘With him. Not with the girl.’

The kitchen resounded with the thump of pummeled dough.

‘Noodoo!’ Frieda said, delightedly watching her mother work the dough.

‘That’s right, Schatzi,’ Berthe said. ‘Noodle.’

‘And you said. .’

Berthe turned from the dough to Werthen. ‘That I would have the watcher on the street corner outside come up and arrest them for gross indecency if she did not agree. That seemed to get through to her.’

‘Well done!’ Werthen said, bringing a smile to her lips.

Werthen only then remembered the letters Frau von Suttner had brought with her and went back to the study to look at them.

The first one talked about Schnitzler and contained nothing of interest; and most of the second one was filled with flowery lies about the grand life the girl was living in Vienna. He checked the date; it had been sent during her time as a prostitute at the Bower.

But one phrase did stand out. ‘You will all be so proud of me,’ she wrote. ‘I am working in secret but for the good of the country. You might say this is patriotic work!’