The Vienna Melody (65 page)

She told him about her girlhood, which was that of a poor Viennese girl. Her father had been in the World War, then an official in a bank, then ‘let out,' and unemployed. Her mother did typing for a Government office. There were three children; she was the eldest. How old did he think she was? she asked him. “Twenty?” he ventured.

That made her proud. She was only nineteen.

“How often in love?” he asked.

“Twice. You said there was no sense in lying.”

“Was it wonderful?”

She nodded. “But nothing came of it.”

He asked why.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Probably because they didn't care enough.” The fried chicken with cucumber salad which he had ordered was brought, and she ate it with relish. The new wine came in a bulging, open carafe and was placed on the table before her. After drinking it and trying some of it on her tongue she said, “This is an old one!”

“You are a connoisseur!”

She took that seriously. “In local wines I'm an expert. And in French and English correspondence. And in nothing else.”

“And in giving pleasure.”

She laid her hand shyly on his. “
Prosit
, Herr Alt!”

“
Prosit
, Fräulein Hübner!”

The musicians had returned from an intermission. Now they began to play: “
Ich möcht' wieder einmal in Grinzing sein
…”

“
Beside a glass of wine
,” she joined in the refrain of the popular song. “Lovely here, isn't it, Herr Alt?”

He nodded.

“Now I have told you about myself. Suppose you tell me about yourself. Will you?”

“There's nothing to tell.”

“Oh, yes, there is. Why are you so unhappy?”

The wine made the question easy and the answer not hard. “I have had little happiness in my life. I have never accomplished much in life either,” he said.

“Do you know what I wish?” asked the girl, moving closer to him, almost as close as the other girls who were sitting with the men they loved. “I wish you were happy. I'm a bit tipsy now, so I dare say it. But if you think I shouldn't say it I'd better not.”

“Go on and say it!”

“I liked you from the first moment. I even think I understood you. I am uneducated, but I understand people well.”

He drew her to him.

“You I understand,” she said. Then she was silent and clung to him. After a while she looked up at him and asked, “There are lots of things you can't stand, aren't there?”

“For example?”

“Injustice, for example.”

“Who told you that?”

“Do you know that you have a great friend in one of our workmen?”

“Czerny?”

“Bochner. I am not even sure you know him.”

He recalled Bochner, the metal-caster. He was the man who shot at a police lieutenant. “I have known him twenty-five years. Or even longer than that.”

“You haven't changed since then. You undoubtedly looked just the same as a boy!”

“It's good to have you here, Fräulein Hübner.”

“Please say that again!”

He repeated it.

Arm in arm they sat there. The musicians at the table with the candles played other songs. The sky was full of stars. From all sides, from the inn gardens on the right and on the left, from the courtyards above and below, the whole length of the gentle slopes, came the sound of foolish little songs. They sang of happiness. The linden trees in the courtyards shielded the couples sitting under them from other eyes and from the present.

When it was time to go she wanted to walk a little way up the hill before they took a taxi at the foot of it. It was so beautiful to climb arm in arm, aimless beneath the stars, and listening to the foolish little songs. Suddenly he stood still. Then he changed their direction.

“Are we lost?”

“No,” he said. His voice had changed, and when she could see his face that too had changed.

In the dark they came to a high gateway. He let go of her arm. She did not know where they were.

“Please wait here for me,” he requested in his altered voice.

He went through the gateway alone. By the light of the stars he could distinguish the name and the flowers on the graves of the dead in the Grinzing cemetery. Lying amid the vineyards, the Grinzing cemetery sloped uphill to the Vienna Woods.

He stopped before a white marble slab. A name was inscribed on it in letters of gold. Lower down in one corner were the words: “You live—until I die.” The stars lighted up the letters. He stood before it and was ashamed.

In the main square they took a taxi back to town.

“Forgive me,” she said as they drove along.

“It was just that you had a wrong idea of me, Fräulein Hübner,” he answered. “I'm like all the rest. Just as selfish. Grief is selfishness.”

“Can't you get over her death?” she asked after a long interval of silence.

He answered softly, as though he were begging both the living and the dead woman for forgiveness, “No. Death ends nothing.”

Where did the cry come from? First it sounded near by and earthly: “Everyman!”—then farther away, but still earthly: “Everyman!” And finally from a distance and no longer as if it were a human voice. Yet ever from the same direction, from above the Salzburg Cathedral Square. Did it come from the cathedral? Or from the fortress Hohen-Salzburg, which towered in proud and jagged lines against the reddening evening sky? Then all at once, while the mortal Everyman, the main character of the play, sank to his knees on the high wooden stage built in front of the cathedral, and implored God for help in his desperate distress, the cry came from every side. From the terrace of the palace, from the fortress, from Capuzinerberg, from Mönchsberg; high, near, far, everywhere, with its terrifying warning: “Everyman!”

It sounded like the call to Judgment Day, and the bells pealed in reply. The bells of the cathedral, of St. Francis, of St. Peter. Henriette, who was seeing the play for the first time, was frightened. Would the clangour of bells pursue her everywhere? She had fled from the haunted house, for Hans had insisted that she spend the summer here with her daughter Franziska and enjoy the Festival, with which two members of the family were connected: Fritz, whose symphony was being given, and Hans, who had organized an exhibition of Alt pianos.

“Everyman! Everyman! E—very—man!” Mournfully, accusingly. And the bells which called back memories and remorse.

The longer the stirring cries continued, the greater the uneasiness which began to spread among the spectators in the Cathedral Square, formed by the cathedral itself and the palace of the Prince Archbishop. The priest in the front row, who wore the violet biretta of a cardinal, looked smilingly round and then whispered to his neighbor, a man in the dark gray peasant costume of Salzburg. The priest was the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. In the years since the morality play of
Everyman
had been given here, he had never missed a performance, despite the bitter accusations levelled against him of sacrilege as well as for having allowed the Salzburg Cathedral to serve the wicked purposes of a mundane play. His neighbor was the Chancellor of Austria.

It is only a worldly sound, was the indication of the expert's smile.

But with the appearance of faith, embodied in the actress Helene Thimig, coming from the cathedral doors and floating down to the despairing Everyman by means of steps invisible from below, the sense of the otherworldliness of the action deepened. The floating movement, the averted, pregnant look, the attitude of one fleeing the world as she drew her sky-blue veil protectingly close around her—all was un­earthly. Nevertheless, and perhaps even because of it, she gave the impression of infinite protection. The weird cries ceased; the sun went down; the pigeons, returning to their nests in the crannies of the cathedral, fluttered overhead as though, like messengers from above, they were taking part in the play. And Everyman, at last aware of his lifelong sins, sank to his knees to say the Lord's Prayer, which he had forgotten how to speak.

Then came a shrill cry.

At first it was barely perceptible, then one could distinguish two words. They came from the Residence Square, bordering on the Cathedral Square into which one could see through a flying-buttress archway.

Yet no one could see the man crying, “Heil Hitler!”

On the stage Everyman was fervently reciting his prayer. As he said, “Hallowed be Thy name,” there resounded: “Heil Hitler!”

“Thy kingdom come …”

“Heil Hitler!”

“Thy will be done …”

“Heil Hitler!”

When the prayer came to an end: “… but deliver us from evil …” like the whistling of bullets came the words, “Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!”

The cardinal in the first row had risen to his feet. His fine old face was glowing with anger.

But the play went on, with the angels appearing from the cathedral, and it ended in harmony with the powerfully resonant organ.

“What were they yelling?” inquired an elderly lady of another elderly lady. For the challenging cry had not been indicated in the French text of the play from which she had scarcely raised her eyes during the whole performance. The lady of whom the inquiry had been made answered in French that she supposed it was one of Monsieur Reinhardt's production tricks. Nor did she recognize the name that was shouted.

After the performance Hans waited for his mother by the stone archway.

“To think that such things are allowed!” Henriette said.

“They will not be allowed for long,
gnädige Frau
” put in the gentleman in the Salzburg costume, who was on the point of entering his car.

“It's about time!” exclaimed Henriette, and noticed too late that she was speaking to the Chancellor. Moreover, the fact that he was the successor of Dollfuss upset her so that she did not say another word all the way home.

Later that evening she sat in the hall of the famous Hotel d'Europe and drank a cocktail to change the current of her thoughts. During the summer Number 10 was being renovated, freshly painted, and provided with a heating system which it had needed for generations, Henriette had laid all this down as counter-conditions to the relatives, who had insisted on observing the literal interpretation of that absurd will. Yet all this renovation would not drive away the spirit of the house. Henriette did not dare to say: the ghosts.

She sat ensconced in a deep, comfortable chair covered in a gaily flowered chintz, a sample of which she had in mind to get from the manager before she left: she wanted to use it on the fourth floor. Slowly she sipped the enlivening drink. All she had needed was the advice of her freckled son-in-law Dr. Baier! No coffee, no alcohol, no cigarettes! As often as possible she slipped away to the hotel. In the morning a cup of coffee; that made you feel fresh and gave you a sense of curiosity about the day. Before dinner a cocktail; that drove away fatigue and gave you an interest in the evening. And cigarettes were good for your health at any hour. What do doctors know!

“How about another cocktail?” asked Martha Monica.

“Excellent idea,” agreed Henriette, but did not order one. “Is my face flushed?”

“You look wonderful! Like the Empress!” answered Martha Monica, who meanwhile had become Baroness Waldstetten and had come over from nearby St. Gilgen, where she was spending the summer, to see
Everyman.

An entirely superfluous remark, and too loud as well, thought Henriette. “How are you these days?” she asked, leaning back in her bright-colored armchair.

She learned that Mono was in splendid health. If her eye did not deceive her a baby was on the way. “Are you happy?” she asked her beautiful daughter once more.

“Blissfully,” replied Martha Monica. From a distance, like a minuet, came the sound of the baroque chimes in the Residence Square. At any rate, those were bells which one could enjoy.

Henriette wished that Hans had had something of Mono's temperament. Of course it was fine of him to be so exclusively absorbed in serious and important things, and in the course of time he had become something of a politician. Like Father Stein, she thought. In any case, the Chancellor seemed to think well of him, didn't he? But unfortunately he was another man who did not know how to live his life. He too had lost his wife and mourned her exactly as Hans did. No one could convince Henriette that the whole trouble with Hans was anything but this abnormal mourning! She too mourned her dead, only God knew how deeply. But what was it that that woman had said to her in St. Augustine's? “It hurts the dead for you to cry.” It was so wrong to live in the shadow of the dead and to live their life instead of your own; your own life is much too short for that, even if you live to be a hundred, which is to be hoped.

She got Martha Monica to tell her who the people were who came and went, filling the hotel hall with all the languages of the world. Did she know who that ancient lady in black was? Of course she knew her; that was the daughter of Meyerbeer. The gentleman with the silk-lined cape was Sacha Guitry. Did Americans always go in bunches and make so much noise over their cocktails?

“It's just that they are jolly,” Martha Monica said.

Then they were right, Henriette decided, and was on the point of saying so. But she did not say it. Looking at the flowery material, which pleased her so, and at the jolly people who seemed to her to be so right, she recalled something which had made an impression on her that afternoon during the performance, and which had been driven out of her mind by the shouts from the Residence Square. It was the Lord's question to Everyman: “What have you accomplished and done down here?” She had felt that had the question been put to her she would have had to make the same reply as Everyman: “Nothing, Lord. Or at least so little.” What had she accomplished or done? How could she give advice to Hans on how to live his own life? To him it consisted of being concerned with the life of others, not of some four or five people. With many, with all. Was that the right way? She had sat all her life in armchairs like these. They had scarcely ever had such a jolly look to them, but they were upholstered, comfortable armchairs. When you sat in one you acquired a sense of importance to yourself. So did four or five other people. That was all.