The Vienna Melody (70 page)

“How dare you speak like that to us! Don't you know who we are?”

“You told me.”

“And you have the impertinence to talk down to us? Do you know what you are?”

“I have known it for seventy-three years and never had occasion to forget it.”

“You're a filthy Jewess! That's what you can know you are!”

Henriette nodded. “I have already heard that once today. I have never felt myself to be a Jewess, although my sainted father was a Jew. But the difference between my father and people like you is so immeasurable that it makes me proud to think of my father.”

The three looked at each other nonplussed. Then they looked at the aged servant, with his hand to his ear so that he could hear better, nodding at nearly every word his mistress said. Then they looked at her, in her champagne-colored gown, her hair perfectly dressed, standing erect.

“Give us the keys to your son's desk,” the young man who was the spokesman said with a Saxon inflection. The Saxon dialect had always seemed comic to the Viennese, and the comedian Girardi had shown them how laughable it was by his imitations.

“I haven't got the keys,” Henriette said. “My son keeps them.”

“And where are the keys to your own desk?”

Now she was mortally alarmed. In her desk were three letters from Rudolf, two from Count Traun, innumerable letters and cards from Franz. Henriette belonged to the women who keep their letters.

“No,” she said, and looked at Simmerl, who was shaking his head. Good, thought Henriette, that's clear. Not even a foolish old creature like Simmerl, who after all was twelve years her senior, would give them the keys.

“Hand over the keys!” ordered the spokesman, and came a step nearer. “We have a house search to execute here! Understand?” This last he bellowed.

Is he going to strike me?
thought Henriette, looking again to Simmerl for counsel. The old man was shaking his head wildly.

“No!” repeated Henriette. It was really remarkable what courage the old man had.

“You know the consequences of this?” asked the Saxon.

Of course she knew them. They would arrest her. Perhaps they would kill her? For an instant Henriette grew cold with fear.

“There's nothing in my desk which could be of interest to you,” she forced herself to say.

“Break it open!” the Saxon ordered the other two.

By then Simmerl was already in the boudoir, where Henriette's little Biedermaier writing desk stood. He threw himself in front of it, stretching both his hands behind him to protect the lock; a second later he was lying on the floor, stabbed. “It would be better for Your Grace—” he was still able to say, but Henriette did not learn what would have been better for her.

Leaning over him and stroking his paling cheeks, she said, “Thank you, Herr Simmerl.” Perhaps he still heard it. Blood flowed from his lips.

Henriette stood up. “To get into this desk you will have to do the same to me,” she said, and followed the old man's example. With both hands blocking the top of her desk, she stood guard over her past.

“Whether one or more croaks is all the same to us,” the young Saxon said in a matter-of-fact tone.

Henriette nodded. “That is the second thing I have learned today. I am a Jewess. I was not aware of it. And you are pitifully poor people who are not even aware of what compassion is.”

Then the other two, at a signal from the Saxon, had hurled themselves on her and seized her by the throat. She screamed.

She still heard something confusedly. She still saw something in a daze. It was the voice and habit of Christl, and she was calling, “Aunt Hetti!”

Aunt Hetti is no longer here
, she thought to herself.
It is pleasant not to be here any longer.

When Hans came home from his aimless wandering Christl was waiting for him. She said that she had been asleep but was awakened in the middle of the night by a piercing scream. It had left her no peace until she could come over from her convent. She had come just in time, she said, and held his hand firmly in hers, to close his mother's eyes. It was a gentle death, without any struggle. He would see for himself when she took him in to her.

She, who had always been with him when the irrevocable happened, led him into the bedroom. On the bed, where she had borne him, lay Henriette. She had on her champagne-colored dress, her gleaming pearls, which hid her bruised neck; her hair was perfectly dressed, and she was beautiful.

After the two funerals Hans returned to the factory. Following his mother's burial a service was held for Simmerl, who was interred not far from the Alt family vault. It was Simmerl's widow Hanni who had dressed her mistress and prepared her for her last rest. It was Hanni's words, too, at the graveside which stirred Hans most deeply. “She was a woman who wanted to be happy. And, seeing she couldn't, she wanted to make others happy.” Whether or not she succeeded, Hanni did not say. About her husband she said, “He was a simple man. But true he was, as gold.” The two funerals passed almost unnoticed. Not even all the relatives took part in them.

For that evening Hans made an appointment with Dr. Einried to go through his mother's last will. She had left exact instructions; from the heirs she named and the legacies she left one could see again whom she had liked and whom not. Her pearls she bequeathed, in a codicil to her original will, to Franziska. Her whole wardrobe went to Hanni. Sister Agatha was to have the letters in her desk “so that she will understand why I sinned and because she, of all the people I know, is best fitted to hold her tongue.” The direction to her children to move out of the Seilerstätte house after her death remained unaltered. As Martha Monica was living in Salzburg, in order to protect her compromised husband from the concentration camp, this direction affected only Hans, and he was determined to act in accordance with it. Since he had learned the facts which Christl had concealed from him, the house was unbearable.

The chief clerk Foedermayer, Fräulein Hübner, foreman Czerny, and Bochner, the metal-caster, as spokesmen for the workers, came into the office. They were dressed in black, had taken part in the funeral, and now came as a delegation to express their condolences to their boss.

“Herr Alt,” said the metal-caster Bochner, “we know how you feel. You've been with us since you were a boy. We want to tell you, Herr Alt, that we're all fond of you. Every one of us. And not just the workers and the staff in your business. If there are people who can disprove and overcome prejudices and class conflicts you are one of them.”

Bochner seemed to have prepared a longer speech, for he was obviously on the point of saying more. Then he either would not or could not go on, for he cleared his throat, went over to Hans, and thrust out his hand.

In silence Hans took his hand and shook it. Then he did the same to all the others. But when he took Fräulein Hübner's hand it was even colder than his own.

The delegation was still in Hans's office when some S.A. men walked in unannounced.

Bochner cried, “Watch out!”

There were seven of them, under the command of a superior officer who introduced himself, “Sturmbandführer Esk. I believe you knew my father. Or your mother knew him. My father's pen name was Jarescu.”

“My mother was buried an hour ago,'' Hans said stonily, as he had said and done everything until now.

“We have come in that very connection,” explained Sturmbandführer Esk. He had the same blue-black oiled hair of the man who had borne the name of Jarescu the writer.

“You won't expect me to have any use for the condolences of murderers. Excuse me,” Hans said.

“It is not a case of condolences. I'm here on behalf of Gauleiter Bürckel to take over your firm in the course of the Aryanization of Vienna business enterprise.”

“What did you say?” exploded Foedermayer, usually so reticent.

Foreman Czerny, whose head, like that of the chief clerk, had grown white in the service of the firm, turned as though he suddenly wished to leave the room.

“You remain here!” Esk ordered. Three S.A. men barred the way to the felt-covered door.

The metal-caster Bochner, who years ago had fired on a police lieutenant, did not stir. His hair was gray now. His glance hair was gray how. His glance went back and forth between the Sturmbandführer and Hans. His hands remained in his trousers pokets.

“Our interview will perhaps be lengthy,” said the son of the publisher of the
Vienna Signals
, and he pushed a chair for himself into the middle of the room.

“There is nothing to discuss here,” Hans said. “The firm of Christopher Alt is Aryan and has been since it was founded it was founded. It has existed in this same place for one hundred and seventy-eight years.”

“I regret to state it has not been Aryan since your father was at the head of it. Your grandmother, you may recall, was born a Bergheimstein. You yourself are of Jewish descent on your father's and on your mother's sides. You don't meet with the requirements of the Nuremberg laws.”

Before the eyes of the man saying this hung the paintings of Christopher and Emil Alt, Hans's great-grandfather and grandfather.

Hans too could see the portraits of these Viennese who were not only the founders of a Viennese firm but who were the very embodiment of Vienna life itself. They had never meant much more to him than a dead past. In this instant that past began to live.

“My co-workers,” he said, “will confirm the fact that I've never cut the figure of a head here. I came into the firm, at the request of my father, as he had done at the request of my grandfather. My grandfather did it at the request of my great-grandfather. The Alt firm, Herr Esk—I believe you come from Romania and therefore may not know it—has not only been a Christian firm since its founding, but—and this to my mind is much more decisive—has been a truly Viennese firm. It is unbecoming to me to emphasize the merits of the firm, to the reputation of which I personally have contributed so little. But every Viennese, by which I mean every true Viennese, will be of the opinion that the pianos on which Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms composed have more significance for Vienna than Herr Gauleiter Bürckel can ever have. Now please leave me. As I said before. I've just come from a funeral.”

“You will turn over to me whatever is requisite to the co-ordination and further conduct of the firm,” Jarescu's son said. “Understand?”

Hans's eyes fell on Bochner, the metal-caster. In one bound he was at his side and holding him tightly, by the hand. “Yes,” he said, pressing the hand which was gripping a revolver. “But first I should like to say good-bye to my fellow workers.” Shaking the metal-caster's hand, he said to him, “Adieu, Bochner. We'll go on helping each other as before, shan't we?”

“Yes, Herr Alt,” the man said, bringing the words out with difficulty.

“Adieu, Herr Foedermayer,” Hans said to the chief clerk. “I think you're not losing much of a boss. I never did anything except what you taught me. But I hope you'll carry on in the same way to the best interests of the arm under my pure Aryan successor.” Then he stretched out his hand to Czerny, but the old man kissed him on both cheeks. “I've never called you Hans,” he said. “It wouldn't have been proper between boss and workman. But now it is—good-bye, Hans. Much luck to you, and may we meet soon!”

Now only Fräulein Hübner was left. She was so pale that even Hans noticed it. “I'm going with you,” she said as he put out his hand to say good-bye. “I'm not going to leave you alone now.”

“Look after him, Fraulein Mitzi,” said Bochner, “so that he doesn't do anything rash. People do, sometimes.”

“I give you my word,” the girl answered.

“Is this touching private interview at an end? I shall expect your lawyer at the earliest possible moment to arrange for an absolutely legal transfer,” said the new boss.

Hans laid the keys on the desk and left.

The noise of dip cabinet-makers, the metal-casters, the tuners faded. Then it was gone entirely.

“I don't care. I know you don't love me. You don't need me. But you need some human being. You cannot drive me away,” said the girl who had followed him.

You cannot possibly refuse the hand of a friend. Who had said that? In Hans everything had turned to stone. He was so frozen, so rigid, that he could not speak.

“Things are not as bad as they seem to you now,” the girl went on desperately. And since she could not think of any other words she repeated, “They really aren't!”

She loved the man beside her with a power which to her was stronger than his unhappiness. She knew nothing of accounting for her actions, nor had she any plan. If this man had said to her, “Let us, go and jump into the Danube,” she would have gone with him unquestioningly.

“If Czerny was allowed to call you Hans may I too call you Hans?” she asked.

She had already called him that. Was it in Grinzing?

She had wiped that evening out of her life, although it was the most beautiful one of all, she said. And also the saddest. But at the time, and since then, he had not noticed this. He had not noticed her much at all. She found that only natural.

His dislike of exaggeration was roused. She was making of him a man he had never been. “Fräulein Hübner,” he said, “you couldn't find anyone who is more bankrupt more shattered in every respect, than I am.”

“Would it be quite impossible for you to call me Mitzi?” she said. “I've been for long—I'd better not say for how long—in love with you. But every time you call me ‘Fräulein Hübner' it goes right through me like a knife.”

“All right, Mitzi,” he said.

She stopped still in Wiedner Hauptstrasse, as though he had made her a present. “I'm very silly,” she said in excusing herself. “And I know you had a wife who was a genius—forgive me for speaking of it. I think it's magnificent of you not to forget her. But between not forgetting and not even seeing anyone else—isn't there a difference?”