Madensky Square (24 page)

And then to the grave that would call me back from the furthest corner of the earth.

My mother lies in her own place beneath a tombstone that says only:
Elisabeth Maria Weber 1841-1887
. She
was
the beloved wife of Anton Weber; she was, God knows, the beloved mother of Susanna Maria Weber, but it doesn’t say so. When we buried her, my father and I, we felt no need to state the obvious.

The bells toll and toll always on All Souls’ Day, the solemn chant of the prayers for the dead goes on from dawn to dusk, and there is always a wind. Yet the day I spend with my mother, muffled like those graveyard crones so that the cold won’t drive me away, is never sad.

We talk, you see. We talk and talk, my mother and 1.1 tell her everything that has happened through the year and she listens (God, how that woman listened!) and then she tells me what she thinks. I was twelve when she died but even now there are thoughts that come to me only in her voice.

Mostly she approves of me, she really does. There are certain pettinesses she doesn’t care for, and she thinks there’s no reason for me to carry on the way I do about Chez Jaquetta who also has to live. But my mortal sins – the conception of my daughter without benefit of clergy, my relationship with Gernot – for those, out of her great compassion she forgave me long ago.

But this time she was not entirely pleased with me. She was sorry that the little dog died, sorry that Sigismund had gone without a word and very, very sorry that I had lost Gernot for she knew, if anybody did, how deeply I had loved him – but did I not still have my shop, my work, my friends, the beautiful square in which I lived ? What about the sparrows, my mother wanted to know? What about the autumn leaves? She did not really want a daughter to whom a Hungarian Anarchist felt compelled to bring hot milk in bed.

‘It’s the only bad thing, Sannerl,’ said my mother in her soft, warm dialect. ‘Turning your back on the created world. Not seeing, not touching, not hearing. It’s what we can’t be doing with up here, that kind of waste. You’ve had twelve years of good living. Don’t whine, my darling. Because it is a kind of whining: getting bags under your eyes and not tasting the butter on your bread.’

I listened. I wept a little and I remembered how I’d lost my
Lebensmut
after my daughter was born and how everything goes wrong when you lose courage. Then I gave her the flowers that Old Anna always saves for me to bring to Leek – and went home. And the next morning the letter came.

It was thick, white, with my name typed in black letters and the seal of the House of Habsburg on the back.

I took it with such eagerness. I knew it was from Gernot: he was going to forgive me: he was going to explain Hatschek’s strange behaviour: the nightmare was past!

Then I opened it.

The official language confused me so much that I couldn’t at first take in what I was reading. I had to go through the pompous cold jargon of bureaucracy twice before I understood the contents.

It was not Gernot who had written to me. It was the Hof Minister Willibald Egger.

What I remember next is Nini bending over me asking if I was all right.

‘What is it, Frau Susanna? Has something happened?’

I motioned to the letter on my lap.

‘But he can’t!’ said Nini when she’d read it. ‘He can’t do that. He’s insane!’
^:

‘The Walterstrasse
is
narrow,’ I managed to say.

‘So it’s narrow; that doesn’t mean he can pull down the whole side of the square. He
can’t
! Not your shop and Herr Heller’s and Herr Schnee’s… He can’t!’

‘Ah, but he can, Nini. He can.’

I took the letter from her. The kind man had provided a map to show the extent of his depredations. The chestnuts would come down and General Madensky on his plinth. Joseph would lose his terraces. The new road, veering westwards through the demolished side of the square and the presbytery garden, would leave St Florian’s as an island surrounded by traffic.

‘What does he mean you won’t get any compensation ?’

‘I only rent the shop, you know that – he can give notice without paying me a kreutzer, and he has. April the first. Herr Schnee’s in the same position. Heller owns his shop so I expect they’ll have to pay him something, but it’ll be a pittance; Egger will see to that.’

‘It’s unbelievable. A swine like that, a man with a disgusting Little Habit able to destroy people’s lives…’

Gretl had come through from the workshop and the girls went to make me some coffee. I had begun to see what the loss of the shop would mean to them, but they only thought of comforting me. Then Herr Heller came past the window and knocked on the door of the shop. His white hair was on end; he looked grey with shock. Heller is sixty years old; his shop has been his life.

Helping him to a chair, pouring some coffee, steadied me a little. As he was drinking it, Herr Schnee arrived from the other side.

‘Isn’t there anything we can do,’ said poor Heller. ‘An appeal? A petition?’

‘Waste of time,’ said Herr Schnee tersely. ‘No one can do anything to stop Egger. Heinrid’s been trying for years: he’ll have opposed this scheme, with his family buried in St Florian’s, but he’s only the second-in-command and Egger’s got them all in his power. You’ll see – this place’ll end up as the Eggerstrasse with motors hooting down it all day long and clouds of dust and fumes. That’s probably why he’s bricking up the fountain: to make a place for his statue.’

We looked at the plans again. What was left of the square would be a travesty, that was certain. Joseph came next from the cafe.

‘I told you… I told you. No one believed me. They’re all in league against us, the bureaucrats.’

‘At least you’ll still have a roof over your head,’ said Herr Schnee. ‘You can still run your cafe.’

‘What’s the use of that? It’s the terraces that brought the custom. My mother’s taken to her bed.’

All morning people came. Frau Schumacher hurried across and took me in her arms and cried.

‘I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it if you go! Albert says he won’t stay, not in what will be left of the place. And poor Father Anselm – when you think how he struggled to make a garden in spite of the boys. He’s gone to see the Church Commissioners, but they’ll never find a place like this.’

Then my clients began to arrive. Egger’s plans had been published in the morning papers. There was no way of keeping the news from them.

Frau Hutte-Klopstock tried to hearten me. ‘You’ll find somewhere else, Frau Susanna. You won’t be beaten.’

I don’t know. I don’t think I can do it again; not what I made here.

Leah Cohen arrived without an appointment and with a hamper which she unpacked on my yellow table, urging me to keep up my strength and eat.

‘When I think that Egger came to Heini only last month about his insomnia… I could so easily have told Heini to kill him with a little morphia – not that he ever listens to me!’

In the afternoon an extraordinary thing happened. The English Miss halted, tied the setter to the lamp post – and came in to the shop. Close to, the long-legged, high-breasted Amazon was a shy woman with gentle eyes the colour of her blue-green misty tweeds.

‘I wished to say how sorry I am,’ she said in excellent German. ‘It has been such a pleasure walking past here each day… it was like a garden – always something interesting and right for the season.’

She is not the daughter of a lord with horses in Rotten Row as I’d imagined. Her name is Norah Potts and she’s a paid companion.

Professor Starsky called with a bunch of roses. I was alone when he came and stupidly inattentive, for when I came out of my thoughts I found that he was again offering me, in my homeless state, his hand and heart. Well, who knows, perhaps I shall come to it. There may be worse things than being a Frau Professorin with access to herpetology conferences in Reykjavik.

Old Anna’s visit was almost the hardest to bear. She came with her basket as she’d come that spring morning when I decided to keep this journal, and there were tears in her eyes.

‘They want to take away everything that’s good, don’t they?

They want to destroy everything that’s quiet and belongs to the past. Thirty years I’ve sat under those trees…’

‘Oh, Anna, you’ll find somewhere else. We can’t do without you.’

‘No, I’m through. I’ll have to go down and stay with my son. He doesn’t want me – no one wants an old woman – but he’ll have to put up with me. It doesn’t matter; my life is past. But it’s you. Such a lovely place you’ve made; it’s like a fairy story in here, the light and the prettiness of it all! And the way you’ve taken that wild Hungarian girl and given her a home. Oh, I could spit!’

I went to bed at the usual time, but of course I couldn’t sleep. Hour after hour the anxieties ran round in my head. How could I get my stock cleared and my orders fulfilled in so short a time ? What was to become of Nini ? Where could

I go?

I got up and stood for a while looking down at the moonlit square. Each of those five chestnut trees were like people to me; entirely distinct. General Madensky had been cleaned only a few weeks before; his domed head was devoid of pigeon droppings and we had all admired him.

How could one man with a few pieces of paper destroy all this? Presently I put on my cloak and let myself out through the workroom and into the courtyard. It was very cold but my pear tree stood proudly in the light of the full moon. This time next year it would be gone, its roots covered in asphalt.

‘Whom the gods love die young,’ I said to the little tree, and touched its bark.

Then I looked more closely. The light was very bright; I could see the branches clearly.

My pear had gone. Only two days ago I had seen it hanging securely from its bough. I’d made a resolution to pick it on Sunday, it was already absurdly late.

I bent down and searched the paving stones. There was no sign of it. I fetched a lantern to look more thoroughly, and now I noticed that the stem holding the pear had been cut. There was no doubt about it; it was severed cleanly in a way that could only have been done by scissors or a knife.

And this suddenly was too much: this shoddy and pointless theft. I had lost Gernot, I had lost my livelihood and still kept some measure of control. Yet now, standing there in my nightclothes, I sobbed like a child because of a tiny, unripe and probably uneatable pear.

If only people weren’t so kind it would be easier.

Actually I’m lying; everyone hasn’t been kind. I met Chez Jaquetta in the Kartnerstrasse, all dyed lovelocks and battleship
poitrine
, and there’s no doubt about it – she smirked.

But everyone else…

Herr Huber called in his motor and said he’d heard of a shop in the Graben three doors down from him which was becoming vacant. I went with him to inquire, but the rent was way above anything I could reasonably afford.

I’ve just managed to stop Nini from going to Ungerer to ask for her old job back (‘Only in the evening, just to help out a bit with money,’) and Gretl is threatening to postpone her wedding yet again. She’s told her fiance that she must stay and help me pack, as though seeing her safely settled isn’t the thing I need most.

Peter Konrad has offered me the job of running the dress department in his store. This is a serious possibility and I must think it over carefully. The salary is good, I’d have a chance to travel – he even said he’d take Nini. It’s not what I want: I want to make dresses not buy them for other people, and I’d find it hard to work for someone else after being on my own for so long – I’m really very opinionated. But I don’t think things will ever come together again for me the way they’ve done here: the shop, the square, the people.

And Alice…

I’d left a note for her and as soon as she was back from Switzerland she hurried round. She wore the kind of pretty, silly hat she hadn’t worn since Rudi died and she was almost her old self, but her first concern was for me.

‘Your lovely, lovely shop – it’s insufferable. Only listen, Sanna, you know there’s room in my flat for both of us, don’t you ? Lots and lots of room now that Rudi doesn’t come any more. You could stay as long as you like – for ever if you wanted to. And there’s nothing to pay – it doesn’t cost me any more to have you there.’

I hugged her and thanked her, but it wouldn’t work. We’re not girls any more; those times are past.

Then she told me why they’d asked her to come to Zurich.

‘It was because of Rudi, Sanna. He’s left me some money. Quite a lot of money!’

‘Oh, Alice, I’m so glad!’

‘It isn’t just the money,’ said Alice. ‘Well, it’s that too, of course - but mainly it’s knowing that he thought of me. And all that time! Ever since we were first together he’s put some away each month into the bank in Zurich. It’s so like him -thinking it out so that it wouldn’t upset his family, doing it so quietly. And do you know what was so marvellous? Being there in the National Bank talking to the manager and… being known as belonging to him. Being able to admit to a total stranger how much I loved him and everyone treating me like… his wife.’ She broke off and dabbed her eyes. ‘It was so lovely, Sanna, being able to hold up my head and… sort of declare myself. All those pieces of paper to sign, linking me with Rudi.’

Then last night I had supper at the Schumachers’.

I didn’t want to go, I wasn’t in the mood, but Mitzi told me the occasion was special, there was to be a surprise, and at the last minute – I don’t know why – I put on the rich cream dress with the self-coloured rose. It wasn’t easy to take it out of the cupboard and it was slightly too grand for the occasion, but some instinct prompted me and I was right for the little girls clustered round me full of compliments – and still with this slight air of mystery. Maia was there too, spending the night with Mitzi, and Gustav growing even fatter and more vacant-looking. The saga of his disasters at the timber works is becoming quite Homeric.

It was necessary, of course, to admire Donatella, holding court in her cot, and Kati and Gisi who were too young to be allowed to stay up for supper, and then we sat down to one of Helene’s excellent meals: mushroom soup, roast goose… Then Lisl came in with the desert. I have never been particularly fond of knodels: it seems sad to me that fresh fruit should be covered in potato dough, rolled in breadcrumbs, fried… But it was clear that the knodel that was to be served to me was special. Mitzi and Maia took it from Lisl, it was on a Meissen plate all on its own, liberally doused in vanilla sugar – and a slightly unexpected shape.