The Longest Winter (37 page)

Mariella told Pia that she would like Major Korvacs to be her best friend. Pia responded by telling Mariella not to be silly.

‘He’s Austrian, remember,’ she said, vigorously reshaping the girl’s pillows.

‘He’s nice,’ said Mariella.

‘He’s arrogant.’

‘He isn’t.’

‘He has beastly cold eyes.’

‘No.’ Mariella’s eyes began to brim. Pia swooped, put her arms around her sister and hugged her.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mariella. There, forgive me, it’s my stupid nerves. He’s quite nice, yes, but it’s no good wanting him for your friend, he’ll be gone soon.’

‘Yes, he’ll go back to the war.’

‘So you see, then?’

‘Why don’t you like him, Pia?’ The young brown eyes were searching.

‘It’s not that. You know what it is. And I don’t like him talking so much with you.’

‘I won’t say anything,’ said Mariella, sinking comfortably back on the puffed-up pillows. The Madonna, pictured in sombre tints except for the glowing halo, looked down on her.

‘Yes, but we had soldiers here once, looking. We don’t want them again, do we?’

‘Oh, no. Can I get up later?’

‘We’ll see,’ smiled Pia.

The day was fine. But Austria was reeling. And to make things worse, the Italians in concert with the British were attacking along the line of the Piave. Some units had crossed the river. The whole of the Tyrol, the southern bastion of the empire, was in jeopardy. At which the Austrians in Oberstein made a typical gesture of gay defiance. An orchestra of regimental musicians took over the town bandstand and in the bright morning sunshine played the popular airs of Vienna. The music drew soldiers and civilians alike. It was splendidly melodious, full of infectious Austrian bravura, and it made the listeners, Austrian and Italian, tap their feet.

Carl, hearing it, strolled into the little square. The bandstand, its octagonal roof shining in the light, was alive with the colour of uniforms, the glitter of instruments and the lilt of music. He stopped on the edge of the crowd to listen. The sky was palely blue, the Alpine sun warm, and the absurdly brave melody was like sparkling light in a world dark with suffering.

He had never consciously dwelt on what the
masters of light music meant to Vienna and Austria. Their compositions had been part of so much else one took for granted. The Strausses were indivisible from everyday Vienna. So had been the imperishable Franz Josef, who had perished, after all. So had been the beauty of the Ringstrasse at night and the loveliness of elegant women.

He stood, he listened and he remembered.

He remembered the extravagant excitement of crowded life, the reckless devouring of days because the years seemed inexhaustible, and the splendour of his parents at a Hofburg ball. The endearing charm of his sisters. It all seemed so long ago. But how permanent in its magnificence had the empire appeared to be then. How merciless now was the Allied desire to destroy it. Only Franz Josef, whose imagination inspired the Ringstrasse, had known how to keep the empire in being. What would follow its disintegration Carl did not know. Nothing that could match it, he thought. He smiled to himself. It was on the cards that if he lived to be an old man he would bore the young with tales of things he had never really noticed when he was young himself.

They were playing ‘Vienna Woods’ now. It was descriptive, it was also sad and bitter-sweet. He had never before realized the haunting quality of Johann Strauss’s music, he supposed he had never really listened to it in the past. It had never been more than a pleasant accompaniment to happenings, to the flirtatious smile in the eyes of a girl or the laughter of his sisters.

Anne and Sophie. He wished them well.

Carl felt an intense desire to start again, to go back, to undo all that had happened since that day in Sarajevo, to have the world as it had been then, for all its faults. But, of course, in that world he had been one of the privileged. In today’s world he was faced by the fact that Austria was losing the war. And whatever the outcome, however intense one’s wish, nothing would ever be the same. He himself would never be the same, and even a mechanical marvel like the Benz would become utilitarian. Millions might benefit from the change, but thousands would be unable to adapt themselves to the new world or cease to regret the demise of the old.

He felt so old, though he was not yet thirty. He had seen so many comrades die, so many enemies fall. One went to war a naive young man and in the first battle became a seared old one. After the first battle one felt there could never be others like it, but there were, and with each battle the body and the mind both grew their armour.

He turned, brushing the arm of a young woman in a dark blue coat and hat. He murmured an apology. She saw his face beneath his cap, his features a finely drawn sadness, his eyes grey with the years he had lost. It made Pia catch her breath a little. And he was looking at her and not even seeing her.

‘Major Korvacs?’

Yes, that was his name. He had contrived to drop the use of ‘von’.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said, recognizing her.

‘You were dreaming,’ said Pia, who looked a warm glow of wideawake life herself.

‘Not of anything important.’ His smile was polite. ‘Will you listen to that? They’re finishing with the Radetzky March.’

He laughed. There they were, the empire’s bandsmen, with Austria almost on her knees, playing the march composed by Strauss the father in honour of Marshal Radetzky for his great victory over Italy in 1849. That was the final trumpet note of defiance by Austria in this Italian-dominated region of the Tyrol.

It upset Pia. It upset her because it was so futile, because he was able to laugh with defeat staring him in the face and she could not, despite the promise of Italian victory.

‘You are laughing at nothing,’ she said.

‘We’re still sitting on our side of the pass. That’s not nothing. Are you shopping, signorina?’

He had come round to calling her that and not fräulein, she noticed.

‘No.’ She had no bag so could not say she was. Her outing had no real purpose to it. She had left the house because she was so restless. ‘There’s not much to shop for, is there?’

‘Ah,’ said Carl as he stood in the sunshine with her, ‘but when Italy takes over an abundance of goods and riches will fill the shops, and who knows, everything may even be free. Only to good Italians, of course.’

The music was behind them as they moved out of the square, the last notes of the march
hanging in the air. Pia, flushed with anger, said, ‘Please spare me your burning arrows, you are not the only one to have found war cruel and unkind.’

‘Oh, it isn’t over yet,’ said Carl, ‘we may yet confound the Jeremiahs. Since you aren’t shopping, Signorina Amaraldi, will you join me in a cognac?’

‘Do you wish to drink with someone you dislike so much?’ she asked bitterly.

‘I’m afraid you are suffering from my bad manners,’ said Carl, ‘I’ve forgotten how to be civilized. I don’t ask you to forgive me but to take no notice. A man sorry for himself should have his self-pity ignored. It’s the best way to bring him out of it. You’re not a person anyone could dislike. There, that is a respectable café and we might have a cognac there. Signorina?’

She did not answer, though she walked with him to the café and sat down with him in the sunshine. The vista of mountains and sky was washed in white and blue, and the snow-capped roofs of the houses were brilliant. Carl ordered cognac, then asked Pia if that was what she wanted.

‘I should not dare to say no,’ she said stiffly, ‘I don’t like having my head bitten off.’

‘Don’t exaggerate,’ said Carl. ‘You and I have a frank understanding of each other. We established our clearly divided relationship on the day we met. You have been rude to me and I—’

‘I have not!’ She was so angry that it almost shocked her.

‘Very well, signorina.’ Carl regarded her thoughtfully. Her temper made her eyes look fiercely luminous. Her blue fur hat had a ridiculous feather stuck in it. Her mouth was moistly mutinous. Ready to spit? She was not like Anne or Sophie. She was lushly, smoulderingly Italian. He supposed some men liked that type. ‘Shall we simply accept that we’ve been a little intolerant of each other and that we’ll set the world a good example by leaving it at that? Signorina, a feather in a fur hat, that’s the fashion now?’

Furious, she flushed, ‘How dare you!’ To be ridiculed on top of everything else was too much.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Carl.

‘What is wrong with it?’

‘Wrong? Nothing,’ said Carl, ‘the feather makes the hat look delicious. Quite the thing when everything else is so dire. Ah, the cognac.’ The waiter set the glasses down. Pia, fury reduced to confusion, stared helplessly into Carl’s eyes as he said, ‘What shall we drink to, signorina?’

‘I don’t drink cognac in public,’ said Pia.

Carl called the waiter back. Pia asked for a glass of white wine. Carl tipped the unwanted brandy into his own glass.

‘Why didn’t you say so before?’ he asked.

‘You gave me no chance. You were too busy cutting me down.’

‘What a miserable devil I am,’ said Carl, but she thought for once that his bleak eyes held a glint of amusement. The light was on his face.
And Pia felt a sense of shock at her reaction. She dropped her eyes, her gloved hands clasped tightly in her lap. The wine came. She took it up. Her body felt heated. The wine danced palely and pictures shimmered on its surface. She realized her hand was trembling.

‘Signorina, what then shall we drink to?’ His voice re-engaged her consciousness.

‘Major Korvacs, please let us be friends.’

‘We are friends, then,’ said Carl, ‘let us drink to that.’

He sipped his cognac, she her wine.

‘Your family, they live in Vienna?’ she asked.

‘My family?’

‘Your wife?’ she said, eyes on her glass.

‘My wife?’ He seemed curious. ‘You’re interested in my wife?’

‘She is someone to talk about, isn’t she?’ said Pia, wondering why she felt pangs.

‘Is she?’ said Carl. ‘Well, she’s a very unknown quality. I’ve never met her myself. I have parents and sisters, but no wife.’

‘Oh,’ said Pia and the pangs went away.

‘I also have a Benz. In these days that’s not such a worry as a wife.’

‘A Benz?’ said Pia.

‘Motor car,’ said Carl, and thought about the Benz and James and his sisters.

‘Please don’t go dreaming again, that isn’t very flattering,’ said Pia, then wondered what was happening to her that she could say something so silly.

‘Do you wish to be flattered, signorina? No, I
think not.’ Carl was ironic. ‘That sort of thing is, in fact, unwelcome to modern women, isn’t it? In the world that’s coming all words must be practical, all actions useful.’

Agitated, Pia said, ‘You have no right to say things like that to me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Carl and they sat in silence for a while. It did not seem to worry him. He had his cognac for warm company. She sipped her wine, grateful that it enabled her to keep her eyes lowered.

‘How long do you have before they send you back to the pass again?’ she asked when she was calmer.

‘Do you mean how long before I’m out of your house?’

He was unbreakably hard. She had not meant that at all.

‘I think perhaps you don’t really wish us to be friends,’ she said.

‘But I speak Italian with you. Isn’t that friendly?’

‘Yes. Yes, I suppose so.’ It was ridiculous, the things that were suddenly important to her. ‘But how long do you have? You see, Mariella wishes you to be her best friend, and I should like to tell her you will at least not be gone by tomorrow.’

‘You must know, signorina, that we are usually only out of the line for short spells. But Mariella?’ Carl smiled. It diminished his bleakness and set Pia’s emotions dangerously on edge again. She was alarmed at what was happening to her. ‘We
need say nothing to Mariella about going,’ he said.

‘I must get back,’ said Pia. She did not have to, not immediately, but she felt she needed sanctuary and the reassurance of her mirror. Her mirror would tell her she was still resolutely Italian, wouldn’t it?

‘May I walk with you?’ asked Carl.

Her sense of immediate pleasure was such that she was not sure if she would look into her mirror at all.

She said lightly, ‘Oh, now I am flattered.’

It was only ten minutes to the house. She did not hurry and he measured his pace with hers. She asked him what his interests were and whether he would like to talk about them.

Was she off her head? thought Carl. What interests did she think he could have except in staying alive?

‘I’ve few interests at the moment,’ he said. ‘What are yours?’

‘Oh, I just have my family,’ she said, and it did not occur to her that her omission of separatism represented to him a large hole in her answer.

‘The English,’ he said, ‘always talk about the weather when they can find nothing else to discuss.’

‘That must be very dull. They are dull too, I suppose.’

‘Should you say that about your friends?’

‘My friends?’ Pia refused to concede. ‘The English aren’t my friends.’

‘They’re your allies, they’re on your side, fighting for your Italy.’

Pia felt a rush of unhappiness.

‘I am an Austrian subject, you have told me so yourself.’

‘But I am quite aware you’re an unwilling one,’ said Carl. ‘I don’t think we should discuss that again. I met someone from England just before the war.’

‘I’m sure she wasn’t dull,’ said Pia.

‘She?’ he said, and Pia felt herself the hapless victim of the set thought patterns peculiar to a woman becoming far too interested in a particular man.

‘He?’ she suggested.

‘Well, he or she,’ said Carl drily, ‘he wasn’t dull. He nearly broke my sister Sophie’s heart. No dull man could have done that—’

‘Oh, what happened?’ Pia felt suddenly and intensely curious.

‘What happened? The war,’ said Carl.

‘But,’ she began, and then she said, ‘Oh. I see. Oh, how sad.’ She paused. ‘I want you to know,’ she said, ‘that my mother sometimes says I’m a great donkey.’