Vienna Secrets

74

“WAS IT ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to tell him about me?”

Gabriel Kusevitsky got up and paced around the room. He was extremely agitated.

Stopping abruptly, he turned to address Anna. “I had nothing to do with that dreadful man Sachs.”

“The inspector only asked you a few questions.”

“Anna, I don’t think you understand. I can’t have the police arriving at the hospital asking questions! How do you think that looks? Professor Kraus was furious. He was convinced I’d been up to no good.”

“Then Professor Kraus must be a rather silly man.”

“Professor Kraus is many things, Anna, but silly is not one of them.”

“Gabriel, what was I supposed to do? Lie?”

“You didn’t have to lie. But you could have been a little more thoughtful, a little more circumspect. You didn’t have to tell the inspector everything.”

Anna looked bemused.

“Inspector Rheinhardt asked me who I had spoken to about Sachs. I told him my parents, and you. I am sorry that the inspector’s arrival at the hospital caused you some embarrassment. But you seem to forget that Jeheil Sachs was murdered. This is a serious matter.”

“Exactly,” said Kusevitsky. “And I have been implicated!”

Anna shook her head. “Gabriel, that is an absurd thing to say.”

More exchanges followed, and their differences of opinion gradually became entrenched.

A silence ensued that possessed the lethal frigidity of a vacuum: the singular deadness that pervades a room after lovers have quarreled. Anna looked up, and her gaze met Gabriel’s; however, there was no softening of his expression, no sign of the expected reconciliatory half smile. In fact, the cast of his face suggested the very opposite. He was not so much looking at her as studying her. He had interposed a “professional” distance, and the narrowness of his stare suggested calculation.

“Anna,” he said coldly, “perhaps we have made a mistake.”

“What do you mean, a mistake?”

“We are both young, and I fear we may have been premature, impulsive”-Gabriel hesitated before adding clumsily-“in our relations.” He then nodded as if agreeing with a concordant response that she had not given. “I must admit, my work has suffered. And I must suppose that you too have neglected your causes.”

His statement seemed to repel Anna, physically. She rocked backward before slowly recovering her original position. Even though Professor Priel’s injunction to respect the Kusevitskys’ fraternal bond was sounding in her head-indeed, perhaps because of it-she found herself saying, “This has something to do with your brother, doesn’t it? He has never liked me.”

Gabriel was about to protest. He raised his arm energetically, but then allowed it to drop. “We have much to do. Not for ourselves, but for the good of our people.” Anna was unsure whether he was referring to himself and his brother or to himself and her. “It was wrong of me to pursue your affection,” Gabriel continued. “The time is not right. I am sorry, Anna. Please forgive me.”

“Am I to understand that you wish to end our…”-she was suddenly lost for words, and ended the sentence with a sterile noun-“association”?

The young doctor nodded.

Anna was not accustomed to being dismissed in such a peremptory fashion. All her other suitors had been rejected by her. The reverse was unthinkable. Her response, therefore, was rage, followed by a show of defensive indifference. “Very well,” she said. “If that is how you feel, you’d better go.”

“Anna…” Gabriel made a few faltering steps toward her.

“Please,” she said. “Do not insult me with an apology.”

Kusevitsky bowed and walked stiffly to the door.

“Oh, and incidentally,” Anna added, “it was I who pursued your affection, not you who pursued mine.”

Kusevitsky accepted this emasculating barb and left the room. Anna listened for the sound of the apartment door, and then allowed herself to burst into tears.

She ran from the parlor, down the hallway, and into her bedroom. Standing by the window, she concealed herself behind the curtain and watched Gabriel’s diminutive figure cross the road below. Something caught in her chest, a more pitiful emotion that made itself known through the maelstrom of anger. She noticed something: a man-who must have been standing in a doorway-emerging and walking after Gabriel. It looked as though he had been waiting for the young doctor to come out. Her thoughts were interrupted by a timid knock on the door.

“Fraulein Anna?” It was the maid. “Fraulein Anna? Are you all right?”

“It’s for the best,” said Asher Kusevitsky, handing his brother the bottle of schnapps. “You did the right thing.”

Gabriel took a swig and wiped his lips on his sleeve. His purple necktie was loose. He pulled it off, examined it for a moment, and then tossed it aside.

“We cannot… must not be distracted,” said Asher

“Yes,” said Gabriel. “Of course.” After a pause, he added, “I dreamed of Mother and Father last night.”

“Did you?” said Asher. “How strange. So did I. The old house?”

“Yes.”

“They came for them… carrying torches… and I watched the house burn. Mother called out to me.” Gabriel bit his lower lip. “‘Leave,’ she said. ‘Run.’”

“It was the same for me too.”

“What? She mentioned Vienna?”

Asher shook his head. “No.”

“I heard her quite distinctly. She said, ‘Run, run… Leave Vienna.’”

The playwright stood up and extended his hand. Gabriel grabbed it and pulled himself up. “We’re not going anywhere,” said Asher. “No more running-ever again. We have work to do. Work will set you free!” he said, quoting the title of an old novel.