Invisible Love (13 page)

The ectoplasm was still muttering away beside her. Just as well. This way, she didn't look abandoned. In this glittering society, there was nothing more humiliating than to seem like a loner: if you weren't one already, you soon became one. Vienna could be cruel to those who didn't play her game.

What was he saying? What did it matter? He was neither cold nor aggressive, which at least was something. He was like lukewarm water.

Look! What if she collared that eminent crow over there with his hooked nose and black silk suit? It was said that he organized concerts—and even paid the musicians well.

Yes, she ought to grab him.

Too late. He was gone . . .

It was then that her companion in boredom, the colorless fellow beside her, uttered her name.

“Do you know me?” she said in surprise.

He bowed and expressed his condolences.

“Have we met before?” she exclaimed.

“Your sister, that wonderful singer I had the opportunity to hear in Regensburg, told me of your tragedy earlier. Once again, my condolences.”

What a silly fool I've been!
she thought.
I've been looking for my prey at the other end of the room when he might be standing right next to me.
Who is he? And where does that slight accent come from?

Throwing herself eagerly into the conversation, she learned that he was a diplomat, recently arrived from Copenhagen, and that he had grown very fond of Vienna.

“Do you like music?”

“Passionately.”

She didn't believe him. From having sized him up, she was sure he wasn't passionate about anything. He was trying to pick her up . . .

Amused, she decided to blow her own trumpet. “I sing,” she said. “Oh, not as well as my sister, but not badly at all. Some people say I'm more moving.”

“Is that so?”

“We both had the same teachers. The best there were.”

He pursed his lips in admiration. She had hooked him. She was already thinking of her fee.

“Would you like me to come and sing for Denmark?”

He took her hand. “I'm not sure about Denmark. But I'd definitely like you to sing for me.”

 

*

 

Was it possible she was still attractive?

She stared at herself in the mirror, trying not to linger over her faults. If you omitted the roll of fat on her belly—a legacy of her pregnancies—if you didn't mind broad hips and small breasts, if you were susceptible to tiny, oblong faces, if you called bulging brown eyes “big dark lakes,” if you disregarded the fine lines on her eyelids, she wasn't too bad-looking.

That was a lot of
if
s, wasn't it?

And yet this man, who was no different than any other man—quite the contrary, in fact—was ecstatic over her.

She looked again at her reflection in the mirror. Since he thought of her as a beauty, she tried to see herself through his eyes.

This was so unhoped for! A young widow was already an old woman, but on top of that, a penniless widow with two children to support—well, nobody wanted any part of that! And yet this afternoon he was going to ask her to marry him. She was sure of it.

Maybe she'd soon be able to stop living from hand to mouth. She'd leave this grim one-bedroom apartment she was renting for almost nothing—although it was still too expensive—and move somewhere more suitable.

There was a knock at the door. Was it he? He hadn't been able to wait . . . He had come to pick her up! Luckily, the boys were having lunch at their grandmother's today . . .

She opened the door, but before she had had time to react, the bailiff had stuck his foot between the wall and the door. She held tight to the door handle.

“You're making a mistake, sir!”

“I'm not making any mistake. I recognized you. You can move as much as you like, but I'm on your trail. Pay me.”

“You're harassing a woman who can't even feed her own children!”

“You owe me mortgage installments.”

“My husband owed you, not me.”

“You agreed to the inheritance.”

“I never agreed to starve my children to make rich men fat.”

“Money! Not words! Money!”

Unruffled, sure of his own strength, the bailiff kept pushing. He was going to get in . . . Seizing the wrought-iron hat stand just within her reach, she brought it down on his leather shoe.

The man screamed and instinctively pulled his foot away. She slammed and bolted the door.

“You're not getting out of this so easily!” came his indignant voice. “I'll be back.”

She sighed, relieved that he preferred to come back rather than wait. Otherwise how would she have been able to keep her appointment?

Annoyed at having been reminded of her precarious situation at the very moment she had been dreaming of better prospects, she sat down at her dressing table and untangled and smoothed her long black hair, an activity that always alleviated her worst anxieties.

An hour later, she joined her admirer in his bachelor apartment on Singerstrasse, which was in a very respectable neighborhood. A table laden with tea things and dozens of cakes welcomed her.

He wasn't rich, but neither was he short of money. He might not have been handsome, but he wasn't repulsive. He looked more like a coarse peasant in his Sunday best than a sophisticated diplomat, but he couldn't take his eyes off her.

“I have something to tell you,” he said in a low voice.

She blushed, delighted that he wasn't wasting any time. Lowering her eyelids, holding her breath, and folding her hands over her right knee, she prepared herself to receive his proposal of marriage.

“I've been in a confused mood lately,” he began, gravely.

She almost replied, “So have I,” but refrained, not wishing to spoil this solemn moment.

“The thing is . . . How to put this? I . . . ”

“Say it.” She smiled at him encouragingly.

He blinked, overawed by the words he was about to utter. “It's . . . it's . . . about your late husband.”

She stiffened. “I beg your pardon?”

“We've never talked about him,” he went on.

“What's there to say, for heaven's sake?”

She immediately regretted this exclamation. What a trap! If she sneered at her late husband, she would appear an ungrateful woman, incapable of respect or affection. If, on the other hand, she spoke too lovingly of him, she would seem unready to embark on a new relationship. She had to wipe out the past, but do so in an elegant way.

“I was very young when I married him. He was amusing, generous, different, and he was mad about me. You're wondering: Did I love him?”

“Go on.”

She risked her all and stated firmly, “Yes. I loved him.”

His face relaxed.

What a relief! She had played the right card. “I loved him,” she repeated. “He was my first love and my only love. One way or another, I'll always love him.”

He made a face, and she panicked. By depicting herself in such a virtuous light, she realized, she was pushing him away. She had to keep the door open at all costs.

“I loved him all the more because I didn't see his faults. At the time, I thought he was brilliant, talented, with a great future ahead of him. He wrote music, you know . . . ”

He heaved a sigh of approval.

She smiled. “Yes, you're right to mock. Composing music isn't a serious profession, not one that leads anywhere. Our society doesn't respect artists. Especially not artists who don't succeed.”

“Society is wrong,” he said.

She stopped for a moment.
Don't forget he loves music.
 

“Anyway,” she went on, in a more conciliatory tone, “he wasted his time running after commissions and giving lessons when he should have been paying the rent. At first I put up with that chaotic life because I thought it was temporary. But after a few years . . . ”

Here she felt like crying out, “ . . . after a few years, I realized that he was a failure, that our life was falling into a rut, and that things would never get any better!” But out of consideration for her interlocutor's tastes, she toned down the anger she felt inside.

“ . . . after a few years I realized he was too proud to be a success in his career. He wasn't a schemer. He wouldn't compromise. When it came to music, he considered himself superior. Superior to anybody else. And he had no qualms about saying it! As if it were self-evident. It was absurd . . . Obviously, he put off the very people who wanted to help him.”

He stood up and circled the table, relieved.

That's it!
she thought.
We've cleared the air. He's calmer now. At last he's going to declare himself.
 

“I . . . ”

How shy he is!

“I . . . ”

“Are you afraid of me?”

He shook his head.

“I'm listening,” she said in his ear.

“I . . . I liked the piece you sang the day before yesterday.”

Music again? She hid her exasperation and replied in the kindest possible tone, “It was by him.”

He went red with enthusiasm. “I was sure of it! I'd recognize his style anywhere.”

She laughed inside.
His style? What style? He didn't have one, he imitated all the styles he came across. That's like saying blotting paper has a style!

This conversation, which hadn't gone as expected, was starting to get her down. The man had something else in mind other than marriage: he wouldn't declare himself either today or tomorrow. How could she have been such a fool as to imagine he would? It must be down to the change of life . . . She had wanted to believe that she was still young, beautiful, desirable, all the things silly women still hope once they're past thirty. What an idiot! And anyway he was starting to bore her, this Dane. Maybe she should leave?

“Do you mind if I go now? I haven't been feeling well since this morning.”

“Oh, what a pity, I've taken quite a fancy to you, and I was about to suggest that we live together.”

 

*

 

All right, so he hadn't married her, but it was “as good as.” They shared a comfortable apartment on Judenstrasse—rent paid by him—they ate together, slept together, and took care of the two boys—their education consisting essentially of sending them to a boarding school, which suited her to a T.

Did she have any reason to complain?

“What are you doing?” she shouted. “Are you coming?”

From the corridor, he replied with an indistinct murmur.

She shuffled the playing cards impatiently. She liked her Dane. Yes, he had lots of merits, and she appreciated them. Not any particular one, but all of them together. An anthology of merits. A volume of virtues. That set her mind at rest. His predecessor had displayed more faults than merits. Or rather, he'd had huge faults and intense merits. A rose covered in thorns. And what was this one? A big peony . . . No smell and merely a fleeting beauty . . .

She laughed. Poor man! She was always making fun of him. But not out of cruelty, out of affection. He was so industrious, so serious, so accomplished, so respectful, you just had to laugh, otherwise . . .

She stopped.

Otherwise what?

Behave
, she told herself.
Don't spoil what you have.
 

With the previous one, she hadn't needed to appear perfect, because he wasn't. With this one, she had to watch her step, restrain herself, hide from him the fact that she could behave like a nuisance, a strumpet, even a bitch—he wouldn't have understood, he wouldn't have found it funny. For the sake of this Dane, she had drawn a veil over whole areas of her personality. A widow's veil?

She chuckled.

He approached and kissed her hand. “Why are you laughing?”

“I don't know. Maybe because I'm happy.”

“I love your mischievous temperament,” he sighed.

“What was keeping you so long? Diplomatic dispatches?”

She hadn't the faintest idea what a diplomatic dispatch was but she had grown excessively fond of the term.

“No, I was sorting through scores.”

“I'm sorry?”

“I was listing and dating your husband's scores.”

She scowled.
What! Not again
. . . He was devoting all this time to the man she'd had such a difficult life with.

“My dear, you seem upset.”

She put on a sulky expression. “For our sakes, I've forgotten the past. Whereas you keep reminding me about my husband.”

“I'm not interested in your husband, but in the composer. He was a genius!”

Not that! Now he's as mad as the first one was! He was always praising himself to the skies! Why's this one doing the same?

“I'm jealous.”

“What?”

“Yes, I'm jealous that you devote so much time to him, even though you're so overworked.”

“Oh, come now, how can you be jealous of my relationship with your first husband? He's dead, and I never even knew him!”

“Why do you say ‘first' husband? Do I have a second one?”

She looked at him witheringly, awaiting a response. He bowed his head, shamefaced, but said nothing.

In tears, she ran and shut herself in her room.

 

*

 

“You seem carefree,” cried her sister.

“Oh, I am. Do you realize that before him I was living on charity? My composer left me with nothing but debts. He never held on to a job long enough for me to be entitled to a widow's pension! Incredible, isn't it? Not a penny.”

“Well, when you think of the kind of man he was . . . ”

“Now, thanks to my Dane, I manage to make a bit of money here and there. And he doesn't care how I use it.”

Her Dane, as she called him, had found a way to earn her some money. After gathering together all the scores and making an inventory of them, he had set about trying to sell them. Amazing! When she thought that the manuscripts used to be lying about all over the place, under the piano, in the bed, in the kitchen, behind the cushions on the armchairs . . . But her Dane had gotten it into his head that they might be valuable, and he kept pestering publishers about them. The most surprising thing was that from time to time he succeeded! Right now, he even had two of them competing with each other. He was turning out to be a really good merchant, this
chargé d'affaires
at the Danish legation. And he was able to use legal language in such a way as to deliver rock-solid contracts. Besides, he was the one who carried out negotiations by appropriating her identity—she had unhesitatingly allowed him to use her signature. Sometimes, when she read over his shoulder the letters he was writing, she would double over with laughter seeing him mention his “dear dead husband.”