Restitution (8 page)

As he lay there, too tired for sleep to take him immediately, his mother’s image floated into his mind.
What happened to you, Mama? Can your friend Vargá still save you?
He
blew a single plaintive note on the mouth organ, very softly, for company, and stared out of the broken window-pane.

Marie

Vienna, May 1924

The window shattered and glass cascaded to the ground a foot away from the table where Marie and Anton sat eating their lunch. A man rolled through the window.

‘God!’ Anton sprang up, napkin in hand. ‘Are you hurt, Marie?’

‘Perfectly fine.’ She put a hand to her new hat to check it hadn’t been sprayed.

‘My apologies. I believe I aimed myself so as to avoid any danger to you both.’ The man got to his feet and removed a handkerchief from his top pocket, wrapping it round a bleeding
knuckle.

‘Viktor?’ Marie couldn’t resist a smile. ‘What
are
you up to?’

‘Marie?’ His sleepy gaze swept her face and the length of her body, making her blush. ‘I didn’t recognize you in that very elegant but somewhat
concealing
hat. No
doubt essential for keeping your admirers at bay.’

Shouts erupted on the street. ‘There he is!’ someone yelled.

He gave a little bow. ‘Excuse me.’ She looked away, wanting to laugh but conscious of the cold draught of Anton’s disapproval. ‘I don’t think those hoodlums will
bother you if I’m gone.’ With a few strides of his long legs he’d already reached the kitchen doors, pushing a banknote into the waiter’s hand as he passed him.

‘Well.’ Anton blinked. Marie took a sip of her wine. The waiter bustled over and insisted on moving them to another table. Seeing a group of angry uniformed men staring in through
the hole in the window, he waved a silver tray at them and shouted something about his cousin’s husband who was something or other in the town hall and they shuffled away.

‘Political.’ Marie spread butter on a piece of bread. Rehearsals had started early and she’d only grabbed a quick breakfast before leaving for the Academy where she was
studying drama.

‘That was Viktor Vargá, wasn’t it?’ Anton poured her another glass of wine. ‘Have some more of this red. Eva’s friend? He’s the one with the missing
fingertip, isn’t he?’

‘A dog bit the tip off when he was a child.’ Marie sipped her soup, which had hardly cooled during the upheaval.

‘Isn’t he a Communist or something?’

‘Viktor?’ She laughed at the thought. ‘Not really. He just doesn’t like the Heimwehr, says they’re a bunch of over-patriotic thugs.’

‘Which makes him a Communist.’

‘Not necessarily.’ If Anton was going to dwell on the various militia groups and their ideologies she’d forgo pastries and coffee and make her excuses.

‘He’s probably Jewish,’ Anton went on. She looked up at the use of the word. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing.’ She helped herself to another bread roll. ‘I just don’t remember people talking about who was Jewish and who wasn’t when we were growing up.’

‘Well there weren’t so many of them, were there? It was only after the war that they swarmed in from Russia and Poland. And they’ve done very well for themselves.’

Marie blinked. ‘I suppose so. But there are lots of poor Jews. Some of the students at the Academy are Jewish and their families have lived here for generations. They don’t have
money to throw around.’

He made a sweeping gesture with his hand. ‘You’re probably right. I’m no Jew-basher. Remember that old baker back home? He used to give us the misshapen gingerbread at the end
of the day. Besides, this political stuff is no conversation for a day like this.’ He gave that quick smile of his, the one that had disarmed the nuns, and probably disarmed God himself, Lena
always said. Lena had followed her friend to Vienna, finding odd sewing jobs to keep herself afloat (she had a talent for running up imitations of the latest fashions) and using her spare time to
help Marie learn lines or alter costumes.

Anton was watching her now. ‘So how does it feel?’

‘Terrifying.’ The coldness in Marie’s stomach returned and she sipped the wine to try and warm it away, wishing he hadn’t reminded her. Poor Anton, he meant so well. She
was Sonja in
The Lieutenant’s Girl,
a new play about a young woman engaged to an Austrian officer but in love, against her better judgement, with a Croatian nobleman. Sonja reminded
her of herself, a little naïve, perhaps, but capable of great emotion, which jostled uneasily with her dutiful desire to please her family and friends by marrying the worthy young
adjutant.

‘You’ll be wonderful as Sonja. Brilliant.’ He remembered something. ‘Shame your father won’t see it.’

She felt her face drop. ‘He just couldn’t afford the train fare.’

‘It’s a scandal, a man like your father left high and dry like that.’

There were problems with Papi’s pension. The town was in a kind of limbo, still not yet properly Italian but no longer really Austrian. It took even longer than normal for complications to
be ironed out. Papi was relying on savings, only they weren’t worth what they should have been, because of the war. And he’d started a new venture.

‘Did I tell you about the little brown cows?’ Perhaps this would will him into a better humour.

‘The what?’

‘Swiss cows. Farmers in the Po Valley love them but they can’t breed them down there. So instead of buying them from Switzerland they’re importing them from the South Tyrol.
Papi’s put some money into a small farm with a man who used to teach at his school.’

Anton put down his soup spoon. ‘Your father’s raising cows? A professional man reduced to that?’

‘I find it rather sweet.’ He’d sent her a photograph of himself with a couple of newborn calves. She kept it on her dressing table and it always made her smile when she looked
at it. Her father was one of the few Austrians of his generation who’d adapted to postwar life with some degree of grace. But she couldn’t say this to Anton.

‘My father’s fruit rotted in the orchards last year.’ Anton’s gaze switched to the bowl of fruit on the pastry counter. ‘We couldn’t sell it in Austria and we
can’t compete with the Italians. Look at those cherries. Before the war they’d have come from our valley.’

He was going to start on the subject of the Treaty of St Germain and its appalling treatment of the South Tyrol. Marie looked round the restaurant for a distraction and couldn’t find
anything suitable. She racked her brains for a change of subject. ‘What are your plans for the summer, Anton?’

He gave her a sharp look, probably knowing what she was up to.

‘Will you do any hiking?’

He scowled. ‘The Italians don’t know how to look after the mountain huts. It makes me sick how they’ve let them fall into disrepair.’ Disgust deepened his voice.
‘This summer I’ll stay this side of the Brenner for my hikes.’

The waiter had finished sweeping up the shards of glass. How unruffled Viktor had appeared as he’d sprung through the window, as though he were diving into a pool for a dip. He’d
probably run down the back alleys behind the kitchen and jumped on the first tram he’d spotted. He would lose himself in one of the big apartment blocks outside the Ring, the wide boulevard
encircling the city. This evening he’d appear for the performance at the theatre because he’d promised them both he would. Viktor was all the things Anton accused him of being but he
kept his word.

But why was she letting Viktor preoccupy her like this? Anton was asking about Eva. ‘She’s nervous, too,’ she told him.

‘Her part’s not nearly as big as yours. What is she, the Croatian’s crazy sister or something?’

‘His cousin.’ Marie shook her head, unable to deny it but almost wishing he’d hide this unnecessary pride in her career. Eva was good, very good in fact, as the jealous and
suspicious girl, giving the role an element of just-controlled hysteria which drew all eyes to her whenever she was on stage.

‘Is her affair with Vargá serious?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure it even is an affair yet.’ Why was she so reluctant to discuss it? Loyalty to Eva? ‘Viktor comes round some afternoons if we haven’t got
rehearsals.’ She realized with a shock that the reason she didn’t want to talk about the relationship was that she didn’t like thinking about Eva and Viktor as a couple. Silly
really, there’d never been any possibility of Viktor looking at
her.
He’d made it clear at that first meeting in the
Heuriger
in the forest that he preferred Eva.
He’d stared at her with those sleepy eyes of his while he sipped his wine. Men generally considered Eva more attractive than Marie, more unusual, more exotic. It wasn’t surprising
Viktor would prefer her. And yet that didn’t stop Marie taking tea with the pair of them, enjoying his teasing and his accounts of his travels. Viktor had seen the world and could talk to
them about Paris, Rome and London.

He liked their apartment, which belonged to a distant cousin of Eva’s. ‘Such porcelain,’ he’d say, holding the cup so that his tipless finger stuck up incongruously.
‘And everything so fashionable and neat.’ He spoke in that slightly clipped German of his which made people say he was Hungarian. Or perhaps Slovakian. Or was it Ruthenian? People were
like rivers, Viktor always said when pressed about his nationality; they assumed, temporarily perhaps, the territory through which they flowed. Calling them German or Austrian was reductive.

Eva had thrown one of the butter-yellow cushions at him. ‘How dare you imply my apartment is bourgeois!’ He caught the cushion with one hand, easy and graceful. Did Viktor ever
appear off-balance?

The concierge’s cat had wandered in again – Eva always forgot to close the door – and strolled into the room with a proprietorial air. Marie and Eva each put down a hand and
made encouraging noises with their tongues. The cat ignored them both and leaped onto Viktor’s lap, rubbing her black head against his jacket. Eva watched the animal, perhaps wondering what
it would be like to be so close to him.

He stroked it in a single long movement from its ears to the tip of its tail, his face losing its easy expression for a second and showing pleasure. Eva had told Marie that Viktor liked visiting
the Zoo. And he’d once kept a monkey in his apartment. The cat on his lap curled up and purred. ‘When I was a lad I used to help my father with the cats and dogs he looked after,’
he said.

It was unusual for Viktor to volunteer information about his childhood.

‘Was your father a veterinary surgeon?’ Marie asked.

He nodded and continued to murmur nonsense at the cat.

‘What rubbish are you muttering to that animal?’ Eva asked.

‘Not rubbish at all. It’s a bit of English poetry, exclaiming at feline beauty.’

Eva looked confused. Her English wasn’t good. Marie’s lips twitched. Viktor looked at her with approval. Perhaps there was still a chance that he and Eva weren’t. . . ? That he
might yet prefer
her
?

Anton was saying something to her across the table.

‘I’m sorry.’ She blinked.

‘Be careful, Maria.’

She forced herself back to the present, her napkin crumpled on the table, her half-full wineglass.

‘Vargá moves among disreputable people. Your career is just beginning, you can’t afford to be associated with the wrong sort.’

‘I’ll be careful.’ But mention of the ‘wrong sort’ of people had made her recall Viktor’s impersonation of a Communist concierge forced to hold open a door
for a countess and her poodle. ‘But don’t worry about Vargá,’ she added. ‘He’s harmless.’ She shivered suddenly, recalling how Viktor had gazed at Eva
when she’d come into the sitting room wearing a backless gown on her way out to a restaurant. His casual air had disappeared and he’d looked like a wolf, longing to consume Eva.
She’d seen him often enough waiting for women by the Goethe statue in the Burggarten. Always a different girl, some of them fellow students from the Academy. But come to think of it, she
hadn’t spotted him there in the last weeks. Which probably meant he really
had
fallen in love with Eva.

Anton must have been struggling with his mood because he suddenly produced one of those dazzling smiles. If only she could find it in herself to desire this handsome and athletic young man like
all the shopgirls and flowersellers did. She’d seen how his presence caused them to fiddle with their hair and look up at him through lowered eyelashes. ‘I’ll settle up with the
waiter so you can be back in the theatre in good time.’

Her stomach turned a somersault at the thought of what was to come. ‘Oh Anton, suppose I forget my lines? Or where I’m supposed to stand? Sometimes I go wrong in lighting rehearsals.
My mind just goes blank. Or what if—?’

‘I promise, you won’t forget your lines.’ His dark blue eyes burned. ‘Or where to stand. And you won’t trip over, either. Your Sonja will be wonderful, Maria, just
wonderful. You’re doing it for us, for the old place, for our little town, for your family and friends.’

And she’d felt just as she had when they were kindergarten children and he’d cajoled her down a steep slope on his toboggan, assuring her she’d be fine.

He looked at her glass. ‘You’ve hardly touched your wine!’

She drank a mouthful. ‘Delicious.’

‘From the Burgenland.’ He’d probably ordered a bottle more expensive than he could afford. Dear Anton.

They smiled at each other over the glasses.

Alix

Pomerania, February 1945

Gregor finished telling Alix about the abandoned town on the river Bug from where Eva had vanished. For the last half an hour he’d pulled her out of this kitchen with its
familiar blue tiles and range and its sense of imminent danger. She’d travelled to that Warsaw family with him and Eva, felt his bewilderment when his mother had vanished. Alexandra von Matke
no longer feared Gregor Fischer, uniform or no uniform.

He stood and helped himself to glasses from the kitchen dresser, pouring shots of the vodka he’d removed from his jacket pocket. ‘Here.’

Alix took a glass from him. ‘So your mother trusted this Vargá to get her to safety.’