A Glove Shop In Vienna (17 page)

The carp’s indifference to his culinary environment was somehow calming. She closed her eyes for a second and had a sudden, momentary glimpse of Christmas as existing
behind all
this if only she could reach it. If she could just be sure that Graziella was all right. And she sighed, for she had never meant to love anyone as much as she loved her only daughter.

Franz von Rittersberg also came to see the carp. A golden-haired, blue-eyed, splendid young man, heir to a coal-mine in Silesia, the purpose of his visit was strictly arithmetical. He measured the carp mentally, divided it by the number of people expected to sit down to dinner, estimated that his portion as the future Mannhaus son-in-law was sure to be drawn from the broader, central regions – and left content.

And escaping from the English governess, scuttling and twittering like mice, white-stockinged, brown-booted, their behinds deliciously humped by layers of petticoat, came the little nieces clutching stolen bread rolls.

‘Ferdinand,’ whispered the youngest ecstatically, balancing on the upturned, rose-encrusted chamber-pot. Her sisters, who could see over the sides of the bath unaided, stood gravely crumbling bread into the water. The fish was a miracle; unaware of them, yet theirs.
Real
.

Each night, when the nursemaid left them, they tumbled out from under the feather bed and marshalled themselves for systematic prayer. ‘Please God, make them give us something that’s
alive
for Christmas,’ they prayed night after night after night.

But it was Graziella, the daughter of the house, who came most frequently of all. Perched on the side of the bath, her dusky curls rioting among the cabbage roses on the wall, she looked with dark, commiserating eyes at the fish. Yet, though she was by far the loveliest of the visitors, Ferdinand’s treatment of her was uncivil. Quite simply, he avoided her. Carp, after all, are
fresh-
water fish, and he had noticed that the drops which fell on him when she was there were most deplorably saline.

She was a girl the gods had truly smiled upon – loving and beloved; gay and kind, and her future as Frau Franz von Rittersberg was rosily assured. And yet each day she seemed to get a little thinner and a little paler, her dark eyes filling with ever-growing bewilderment. For when you have been accustomed all your life to giving, giving, giving, you may wake up one day and find you have given away yourself. And then unless you are a saint (and even, perhaps, if you are) you will spend the nights underneath your pillow, trapped and wretched, licking away the foolish tears.

And so the days drew steadily on, mounting to their climax -Christmas Eve. Snow fell, the tree arrived, the last candle was lit on the Advent ring. The littlest niece, falling from grace, ate the chimney off the gingerbread house. The exchange of hampers became ever more frenzied. The Pfischingers, who still had not sent, invaded Tante Gerda’s dreams…

It was on the morning of the twenty-third that Onkel Ernst and his future son-in-law assembled to perform the sacrificial rites on the Great Carp Ferdinand.

The little nieces had been bundled into coats and leggings and taken to the Prater. Graziella, notoriously tender-hearted, had been sent to Rumpelmayers on an errand. Now, at the foot of the stairs stood the cook, holding a gargantuan earthenware baking dish – to the left of her the housemaids, to the right the kitchen staff. On the landing upstairs, Tante Gerda girded her men – a long-bladed kitchen knife, a seven-pound sledgehammer, an old and slightly rusty sword of the Kaiser’s Imperial Army which someone had left behind at dinner…

In the bathroom, Onkel Ernst looked at the fish and the fish looked at Onkel Ernst. A very slight sensation, a whisper of premonition, nothing more, assailed Onkel Ernst, who felt as though his liver was performing a very small
entrechat
.

‘You shoo him down this end,’ ordered Franz, splendidly off-hand. ‘Then, when he’s up against the end of the bath, I’ll wham him.’

Onkel Ernst shooed. The carp swam. Franz – swinging the hammer over his head – whammed.

The noise was incredible. Chips of enamel flew upwards.

‘Ow, my eye, my
eye
!’ yelled Franz, dropping the hammer. ‘There’s a splinter in it. Get it OUT!’

‘Yes,’ said Onkel Ernst. ‘Yes…’

He put down the sword from the Kaiser’s Imperial Army and climbed carefully on to the side of the bath. Even then he was only about level with Franz’s streaming blue eye. Blindly, Franz thrust his head forward.

The rest really was inevitable. Respectable, middle-aged Viennese solicitors are not acrobats; they don’t pretend to be. The carp, swimming languidly between Onkel Ernst’s ankles found, as he had expected, nothing even mildly edible.

It was just after lunch that Onkel Ernst, dry once more and wearing his English knickerbockers, received in a mild way guidance from above.

It was all so easy, really. No need for all this crude banging and lunging. Simply, one went upstairs, one pulled out the plug, one went out locking the door behind one. And waited…

A few minutes later, perfectly relaxed, Onkel Ernst was back in his study. He was not only holding the newspaper the right way up, he was practically
reading
it.

The house was hushed. Franz, after prolonged ministrations by the women of the family, had gone home. The little nieces were having their afternoon rest. The study, anyway, had baize-lined double doors. Even if there
were
any thuds - thuds such as a great fish lashing in its death agony might make -Onkel Ernst would not hear them.

What he did hear, not very long afterwards, was a scream. A truly fearful scream, the scream of a virtuoso and one he had no difficulty in ascribing to the under-housemaid, whose brother was champion yodeller of Schruns. A second scream joined it and a third. Onkel Ernst dashed out into the hall.

The first impression was that the hall was full of people. His second was that it was wet. Both proved to be correct.

Tante Gerda, trembling on the edge of hysteria, was being soothed by Graziella. The English governess, redoubtable as all her race, had already commandeered a bucket and mop and flung herself into the breach. Maids dabbed and moaned and mopped – and still the water ran steadily down the stairs, past the carved cherubs on the banisters, turning the Turkish carpet into pulp.

The enquiry, when they finally got round to it, was something of a formality since the culprits freely admitted their guilt. There they stood, the little nieces, pale, trembling, terrified — yet somehow not truly repentant-looking. Yes, they had done it. Yes, they had taken the key out from behind the clock; yes, they had unlocked the bathroom door, turned on the taps…

Silent, acquiescent, they waited for punishment. Only the suddenly-descending knicker-leg of the youngest spoke of an almost unbearable tension.

Graziella saved them, as she always saved everything.

‘Please, Mutti? Please, Vati… So near Christmas?’

Midnight struck. In the Mannhaus mansion, silence reigned at last. Worn out, their nightly prayer completed, the little nieces slept. Tante Gerda moaned, dreaming that the Pfischingers had sent a giant hamper full of sauce.

Presently a door opened and Onkel Ernst in his pyjamas crept softly from the smoking room. In his hand was an enormous shotgun – a terrible weapon some thirty years old which had belonged to his father – and in his heart was a bloodlust as violent as it was unexpected.

Relentlessly he climbed the stairs; relentlessly he entered the bathroom and turned the key behind him. Relentlessly he took three paces backwards, peered down the barrel – and then fired.

Graziella, always awake these nights, was the first to reach him.

‘Are you all right, Papa? Are you all right?’

Only another fearful volley of groans issued from behind the bolted door. Tante Gerda rushed up, her grey plait swinging. ‘Ernst,
Ernst
?’ she implored, hammering on the door. ‘
Say
something, Ernst!’

The English governess arrived in her Jaeger dressing-gown, the cook… Together the women strained against the door, but it was hopeless.

‘Phone the doctor, the fire brigade. Send for Franz, quickly,’ Gerda ordered. ‘A man – we need a
man
.’

The governess ran to the telephone. Bur Graziella, desperate, threw her fur cape over her nightdress and ran out into the street.

Thus it was that in the space of half a minute the life of Sebastian Haffner underwent a complete and total revolution. One minute he was free as air, easy-going, a young man devoted to his research work at the University — and seconds later he was a committed, passionate fanatic ready to scale mountains, slay dragons and take out a gigantic mortgage on a house. For no other reason than that Graziella, rushing blindly down the steps into the lamplit street, ran straight into his arms.

Just for a fraction of a second the embrace in which Sebastian held the trembling girl remained protective and fatherly. Then his arms tightened round her and he became not fatherly — not fatherly at all. And Graziella, with snowflakes in her hair, looked up at the stranger’s kind, dark, gentle face and could not – simply could not — look away.

Then she remembered and struggled free. ‘Oh, please come!’ she gabbled, pulling Sebastian by the hand. ‘Quickly. It’s my father… The carp has shot him.’

Instantly Sebastian rearranged his dreams. He would visit her regularly in the asylum, bring her flowers, read to her. Slowly, through his devotion, she would be cured.

‘Hurry, please, please! He was groaning so.’

‘The carp?’ suggested Sebastian, running with her up the steps.

‘My father. Oh,
cornel’

Maids moaned at the foot of the stairs. Tante Gerda sobbed on the landing.

Sebastian was magnificent. Within seconds he had seized a carved oak chair and begun to batter on the door. Quite quickly, the great door splintered and fell. At Sebastian’s heels they trooped into the bathroom.

Onkel Ernst sat propped against the side of the bath, now groaning, now swearing, his hand on his shoulder which was caked with blood. Round him were fragments of rose-encrusted china and shattered mirror which the lead shot ricocheting from the sides of the bath and grazing Onkel Ernst’s shoulder, had finally shattered. The carp, lurking beneath the water taps, appeared to be asleep.

‘Ernst!” shrieked Tante Gerda and dropped on her knees beside him.

‘Bandages, scissors, lint,’ ordered Sebastian, and Graziella fled like the wind.

It was only a flesh wound and Sebastian, miracle of miracles, was a doctor, though the kind that worked in a lab. Quite soon Onkel Ernst, indisputably the hero of the hour, was propped on a sofa, courageously swallowing cognac, egg yolk with vanilla, raspberry cordial laced with
kirsch
. The family doctor arrived, pronounced Sebastian’s work excellent, stayed for cognac too. The fire brigade, trooping into the kitchen, preferred
slivovitz
.

And upstairs, forgotten, seeing nothing but each other, stood Graziella and Sebastian.

This was it, then, thought Graziella, this wanting to sing and dance and shout and yet feeling so humble and so
good
. This was what she had never felt and so had nearly thrown herself to Franz as one throws a bone to a dog to stop it growling… As if in echo to her thoughts, the bell shrilled yet again and Franz von Rittersberg was admitted. His eye was still swollen and his temper not of the best.

‘This place is turning into a madhouse,’ he said, running up the stairs. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

Graziella did not. Time had stopped when she ran into Sebastian’s arms and years were to pass before she quite caught up with it again.

‘Well, for heaven’s sake let’s finish off this blasted fish and get back to bed,’ he said, shrugging off his coat and taking out a knife and a glass-stoppered bottle. ‘I’ve brought some chloroform.’

‘No!’

Graziella’s voice startled both men by its intensity. ‘In England,’ she said breathlessly, ‘in England, if you hang someone and it doesn’t work… if the rope breaks, you let him live.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Graziella, don’t give us the vapours now,’ snapped Franz. ‘What the devil do you think we’re going to eat tomorrow, anyway?’

He strode into the bathroom. ‘You can help me,’ he threw over his shoulder to Sebastian, who had been standing quietly on the half-lit landing. ‘I’ll pull the plug out and pour this stuff on him. Then you bang his head on the side of the bath.’

‘No,’ Sebastian stepped forward into the light. ‘If Miss… if Graziella does not wish this fish to be killed, then this fish will not be killed.’

Franz put down the bottle. A muscle twitched in his cheek. ‘Why you… you… Who the blazes do you think you are, barging in here and telling me what to do?’

Considering that both men came from good families, the fight which followed was an extraordinarily dirty one. The Queensberry rules, though well-known on the Continent, might never have existed. In a sense of course the outcome was inevitable, for Franz was motivated only by hatred and lust for his Christmas dinner, whereas Sebastian fought for love. But though she was almost certain of Sebastian’s victory, Graziella, sprinkling chloroform on to a bath towel, was happily able to make
sure
.

Dawn broke. The bells of the Stephan’s Kirche pealed out the challenge and the glory of the birth of Christ.

In the Mannhaus mansion, Graziella slept and smiled and slept again. Onkel Ernst, propped on seven goose-feather pillows, opened an eye, reflected happily that today nothing could be asked of him – no carving, no wobbling on step-ladders, no candle-lighting – and closed it again.

But in the kitchen Tante Gerda and the cook, returning from Mass, faced disgrace and ruin. Everything was ready – the chopped herbs (bravely, the cook had agreed to mace), the wine, the cream, the lemon… and upstairs, swimming strongly, was the centrepiece, the
raison d’etre
for days of planning and contriving, who should have been floating in his marinade for hours already.

As though that was not enough, as they sat down to breakfast there was a message from Franz. He was still unwell and would not be coming to dine with them. It took a full minute for the implication of this to reach Tante Gerda and when it did, she put down her head and groaned. ‘Thirteen! We shall be thirteen for dinner! Oh, heavens! Gross-Tante Wilhelmina will never stand for that!’