The Darts of Cupid: Stories (12 page)

"But how could there be a revolution?" I asked now. "If you have to have canaille for a revolution, where would they come from? Do you have to make them come over from France?"

"You fascinate me," said Uncle Frederick.

"You are being ridiculous," said my mother. "Really, Edith, how can you talk such nonsense?"

"But Mama," I said, "you get your clothes from Paris, too."

"Not all of them," said my mother, her eyes sparkling with annoyance, "but naturally, some. Where else should I get them from? Show me the Patou, show me the Worth, in any other country in the world and I’d be only too glad—I’d be positively thankful, I assure you—but in the meantime—"

"Do you have to tell us, you extravagant goose?" said Uncle Frederick. "We all know your meantime. In the meantime, you could be in Timbuktu, and in the spring the cuckoo would sing, ‘Patoo, patoo,’ and the blackbird would chirp, ‘Worth, worth.’ "

"You are not being funny," said my mother. "Is it fair, I ask you, when ..."

She was now changing from vexation to self-pity, and I knew that the entertainment value of the quarrel was over. I thought how odd it was that even talk about revolution was bound to end in recriminations over my mother’s dress-maker bills.

IN THE EARLY EVENING, about an hour before dinnertime, I sought out my grandmother in the Austrian Room. I knew she would be there, sitting over a game of patience. I wanted to speak to her alone, hoping to get her serious and considered opinion as to the possibility of a revolution. I found her sitting in a basket chair, whose green paint had worn off into lakes and islands, behind a wobbly bamboo table, which matched the other pieces in the room in age and shabbiness. She sat with her back to the window, close to my favorite wall panel—the one with the chamois on top of piled-up rocks, with distant crags veiled by a silvered, white-frothed waterfall. Unfortunately, my mother was standing behind my grandmother, looking at the cards laid out on the table.

As I came in, my grandmother was saying, "Three and four makes seven, and four would make eleven, but I haven’t got a four."

My mother said, "Edith, if I had a neck like yours I wouldn’t show myself till the hour of twilight. Get out of my sight."

I said, "Mama, I’m sorry about what I said about your clothes from Paris. I mean, I know you get some from Madame Rachelle’s in Knightsbridge, too."

"Three and eight makes eleven," said my mother.

"Not so fast," said my grandmother.

"But what I wanted to know," I said, "is where does the canaille come from?"

"It doesn’t have to come from anywhere," said my mother. "It’s here right under your nose. It’s all around us. What did you imagine?"

"Where? How do you mean?" I asked.

"You were right," said my grandmother. "Three and eight makes eleven."

"The village people, of course," said my mother. "Including the elite—I mean, the postmistress and the innkeeper. And the farmhands in the yard who perform with the cows and the pigs. And the peasants on the estate. And even the stationmaster in Celakovice, who salutes so smartly and makes such a fuss over us, and holds up the train for us when there’s a lot of luggage." Turning to my grandmother, she added, "Isn’t that true, Mama?"

"I’m afraid so," said my grandmother. "They’d all add up to a nice rabble, like five and six makes eleven. If you’d let them add up, that is."

"No," I said, "it couldn’t be. They always greet you so nicely when we drive out with Prochazka. There’s no one on the road ever who doesn’t, and on special occasions they fall on their knees and kiss your hand."

"What do you imagine?" said my mother. "Do you think they love us? They’d string us up on the nearest tree if they had the chance."

"On which tree?" I asked. "On the linden tree in the gravel space?"

My mother did not speak.

"But why?" I asked.

"Because we’re in the castle, living the way we do," said my mother.

"Why shouldn’t we be in the castle if my great-grandfather bought it from those ladies Wagner?"

"You are talking utter nonsense," said my mother. "What would they care? They didn’t care in Russia, when the Bolshies came, whose great-grandfather bought what from whom. How do you think I’ve got my manicure woman in London, who’s a grand duchess? Not that I believe her, of course. But still. She’s Russian and she had to run. So there you are."

"But do you really think the villagers here are canaille?" I said.

"Be reasonable, Edith," said my grandmother. "Just take an example. You know the wall round the park—why do you think it’s there? And why do you think the glass splinters are stuck on top of the wall—for decoration? And do you know just how much it costs me to keep this wall in trim, year in, year out—twelve kilometers of it? And apart from that, there’s Kocour with his gun and dog at night. Do you think that’s all for nothing? If they had a chance, the people would break in and wreck the park and steal the timber and carry off the exotic trees, even now in full peacetime. No, I’ll keep the three back—I’ll put it by, and it will work out. So you can imagine what they would do in a revolution, when everything is turned upside down and servants are masters and masters are servants. But I can see no way out now, unless I cheat with the nine and pay it back later."

"Don’t, or you’ll be sorry," said my mother.

I looked at both of them, speechless with astonishment at the way they "mixed it up like a Christmas loaf" —life, death, looting, dispossession, and a game of cards tangled in between. I thought of the linden tree in the gravel space, and how it really was the only tree near the castle, and how it was braced with iron girders because it was two hundred years old and charred black down one side, where lightning had struck it. My heart shriveled at the thought of how indifferent they were to it all, how they could talk about the end of everything without even a change of countenance or tone.

"And what then?" I asked. "Will Grandmama run away and become a manicure woman?"

"You should, Edith," said my mother. "You’ll start a new fashion for black-rimmed fingernails, ha, ha."

"I’m stuck with the nine now. It’s hopeless," said my grandmother.

"And the castle?" I said. "Who’ll have it?"

"The rabble, the mob, will have it," said my mother, "and I wish them luck with it, what with no electricity and not a single bath in the place, and only that one flushing lavatory with a chain, because your great-grandfather said the servants needn’t have one or there’d be no difference between them and us."

"Too true," said Uncle Frederick, who had just come into the room. "That’s what is meant by having a social conscience. He had a social conscience, do you understand?"

My mother said, "No, don’t give up, Mama. It may yet come out all right."

"But in that case," I persisted, "as it’s so uncomfortable, perhaps nobody would move into the castle, and the Austrian Room would be saved."

"The panes would break," said my grandmother, "and the doors would rot, and the snow and rain would wash off the Salzburg lakes, or whatever they are. If only I could have shifted the nine."

"That’s not all of it," said my mother, "because the canaille would come in on Sundays, in loving couples, and write things on the walls."

"What would they write?" I asked.

Uncle Frederick said, "Fascinating and original thoughts. ‘Vasek loves Mila,’ and a heart with an arrow. ‘All boys called Ferda are fools.’ That’s the true poetry welling up from the soul of the people, do you understand?"

"I’ve bungled it, and nothing can save me now," said my grandmother.

"Start another, Mama," said my mother.

"I’d rather wait till the lamps are brought in," said my grandmother. "My luck might turn with the light."

"I don’t know about your luck," said my mother, "but I do know about the gnats and midges—they’ll come in with the light, on the dot. They’re the only things you can rely on to perform in this place. And when I tell Kucera to get his men to clear out the lake, because it’s so choked up with dead leaves and duckweed you can’t see a shred of water in it, he goes and plays hide-and-seek in the hothouses and sends impertinent messages. What do I care about his creepy-crawly enormous Calville apples that he grows outsize on that espalier only a foot above the ground, as ridiculous as a dachshund, and how nobody else can do it and Sternborn in Sestajovice never had anything like it? And the lake stays a mess, and we get midges from it, and Prochazka sends us his flies across from the stables, because they are filthy, too, as bad as the lake, but Prochazka isn’t worried, because he’s an inverted camel and can drink for a fortnight without doing a stroke of work. It’s a scandal, Mama, and you know it, and you sit year in, year out, between the impertinence of the garden and the drunken stables and the wasteful kitchen. I don’t know how you can put up with it, Mama. You must be a saint and a martyr."

My grandmother, disdaining, as usual, to reply, stacked the cards and said, "It feels very close. Have a look, Edith, at the sky. Does it look like thunder?"

I stepped to the nearest window and leaned out over the sill, which was mottled like the bark of a plane tree, with the dirty brown paint peeling off in patches. I craned my neck to the right till I could see at least the farthest end of the terrace, where it curved round and where the balustrade gave way to the ivy-clad crenellations, which were as fake as the Gothic library wing itself. "Yes," I said, "it’s black behind the library. But over the park it’s lovely and peculiar. Do look at the sky, Mama."

My mother turned her head and said in a voice still weary from her grievances against the servants, "Yes, it’s nice." Then she added, in a softer and more animated tone, "It’s a good color. I once had a ball gown exactly that shade of green. You never knew it; that was before you were born. With diamanté straps. Frederick will recall it. Utterly and uniquely unusual. Nobody else had anything like it."

"Are you out of your mind?" said Uncle Frederick. "Do you think I can keep track of every blasted rag of yours? But it must have been utterly unique if you had it, because even then you were an utter and unique goose. But a younger goose, do you understand?"

"Do you always have to be offensive?" said my mother. "And do you always have to insult me with my age, when everybody else always thinks that Edith is my sister? Let me tell you, only the other afternoon, when—"

"Edith," said my grandmother, "run downstairs, will you, and tell them to shut all the windows before the rain?"

I left the room reluctantly, because this quarrel promised to be the most entertaining of the day.

II

IT WAS ALMOST four o’clock in the afternoon when I started out on a most familiar way, though this was the first time in my life I was traversing it on foot. It was wind-still and chilly, and it had been drizzling on and off all day. Ahead of me, the park showed only treetops, owing to a dip in the ground, presenting an impenetrable screen as far as the eye could see—a deep, drenched green, fading to a dull blue in the distance. As I reached the turn of the road, where Prochazka had always given the whip to the horses so as to achieve the drive in with an impressive rumble of wheels and clatter of hooves, the wall came into view, and just then the sun broke faintly out of the clouds and sparkled on the glass shards. I halted, choked by rising tears and shaken by a nervous laughter. The park wall, which I had known to be soiled, patched, pitted, and crumbling, was smooth and prosperous-looking, sleekly clothed in a coat of gray paint. I said to myself, Hurry up. It’s no use dawdling. The afternoon coffee will be ready in the Garden Room. But there won’t be equality cake—it’s only the middle of May now, and the first cherries won’t be ripe till June.

Skirting the wall, I reached the entrance of the drive. The gateposts were brilliantly whitewashed, but I refused to be dazzled by their surprising neatness; instead, I peered at them closely, searching in vain for a trace of the pedestals on which the stone poodles had used to sit—a pathetic pair, trying so desperately to look like lions. I might have known, I said to myself.

I turned into the drive, enclosed on one side by the stables and on the other by the garden wall, and picked my way through the soggy mud, between ruts and remnants of paving, barely glancing at the farmyard opening to my left. I followed the bend of the drive and stopped. Ahead of me, beyond the vast, rounded gravel space, stood the castle, its matter-of-fact grandeur belying the absurdity of the fake Gothic wing. With its lion-colored, rough-surfaced stones, it had always looked more durable than neat, but now, to my bewilderment, it had a new, smoothly delicious tidiness, like an old print from which the smudges have been erased. This, I saw, was because of the window frames, which were painted a glossy white. I went across the gravel space, searching for the spot where the linden tree had been, but it had vanished as completely as the poodles. I continued toward the castle and found that the front door had vanished, too; it had been transformed into twin pointed windows enclosed in a pointed arch. But the door to the servants’ entrance stood ajar, and I went in.

I climbed the first flight of the servants’ stairs and walked along one branch of the passage, trying each of the six doors there, knocking each time before attempting to enter. They were all locked. I entered the other branch and tried four more doors, including the last one, which shut off the landing leading to the rooms overlooking the rose parterre and the park. I knew that my last chance now to get into the main part of the castle was to go up to the third floor and descend from there by the iron snail—a harassingly steep iron spiral staircase, which I had hated ever since I could remember, and which still figured in my nightmares. Reluctantly, I started to climb the second flight, and came upon an Irish setter stretched across the whole width of a step. He didn’t even bother to raise his head, and as I skipped over him I began to wonder about the whereabouts of his master. I halted and said over my shoulder, "Bark, will you? Bark and raise a noise."

He still didn’t move, and I called, "Anybody there?"

I heard footsteps above me, and the closing of a door. Then silence. I called, "Anybody there?" There was the creaking of a door hinge, and further silence. I yelled, "Anybody there?" and then I saw a woman above me in the dark, shadowy passage, gripping the rail and bending over. I was choked with astonishment. What on earth is the cook doing up there, messing about in the spare rooms? I said to myself. And not properly dressed, either—slopping about in woollies and skirt and a tiny grubby apron? And since when has she had her hair waved? She does look a sight. Wait till I tell Grandmama.

"What do you want?" she said.

Startled by the indifference in her voice, I awoke from my hallucinatory state of still being Miss Edith. She was not the cook, she certainly could not be the cook; for one thing, she was about forty—much younger than I had ever known the cook to be. She was of a similar build, though, and as tall and heavy-boned. Her hair was dark, too, and the straight, thick Robespierre eyebrows were there, but tidier and more subdued-looking. She had the large-carved, gentle, sorrowing countenance of a Niobe, and lacked the cook’s peppery intelligence.

"I’d like to see the castle," I said.

"Well, you can’t," she said down the stairwell. "The curator’s gone, and I haven’t got the keys."

"But look here," I said. "I’ve come over here specially to see the castle."

"Then you must come another time, when the curator’s here," she said. "Because he’s gone and he’s got the keys."

"When will he be back?" I asked.

"Not today anymore," she said. "Didn’t you meet him on your way up from the village?"

"No," I said. "But when will he be in?"

"Can’t say," she said. "Sometimes he’s in and sometime’s he’s out."

"Charming," I said. "In that case, I suppose I’d better apply to him in writing, don’t you think? And maybe he’ll reply? That is, if he’s in the mood?"

"You could try," she said.

She really is like the cook, I thought. Completely insensitive to sarcasm. Still craning up the stairs at her, I said, "I’ve come all the way from London to see the castle."

"Have you?" she said, without a sparkle of curiosity or a glimmer of doubt. "What am I to do? You could go and walk through the park. That’s all right. You go and have a look at the park."

I knew I had lost, but forgot myself. It was like being slightly drunk, listening to myself talking, being perfectly aware of what I was saying, and yet being unable to stop myself saying it. "Blast you, woman," I said. "I’ve lived in this place on and off for years. My great-grandfather bought it, and my grandmother lived in it, and we managed without the blasted curator and his blasted keys!"

It was the worst possible thing I could have said. Everybody had told me, everybody had warned me, whatever I did, not to let on that my family had once owned the castle.

Now I watched her in dismay as she placed her hands on her hips.

"For heaven’s sake," she said.

I’d better trot off, I thought. What if she calls the police? I’ve insulted her and the curator, and she and the curator are part of the people, and the people make up the People’s Republic, which means I’ve insulted the state. I turned my back on her and descended the stairs; the dog was not there anymore.

"For heaven’s sake, where are you off to?" I heard her calling.

I stopped and looked up.

"And why couldn’t you say straightaway that you belong to the family?" she cried. "What do you imagine—how am I to recognize you, if you please, with all due respect, if I’ve been here only the last four years? Hold on, will you? I shan’t keep you waiting. I’ll only fetch the keys. I shan’t be a minute."

She joined me on the stairs, clasping the keys to her waist. "You will excuse me, won’t you?" she said. "I did hear a movement and someone calling, but I was cleaning upstairs, and I didn’t expect— We don’t want any of the people nosing around here. After all, it’s a castle, isn’t it? And there you were standing—I still don’t know exactly who you are."

"I’m Edith," I said.

"Ah!" she cried, striking her forehead. "So you are little Edith. Miss Edith. The curator’s got a photograph of madam your mother and your uncle Frederick when they were small, as lad and lassie in Austrian dress."

"I know the picture," I said. "I had it, too, and I’ve lost it. My mother holding a rake, God knows why, and Uncle Frederick with a spade, and edelweiss on his braces."

She nodded. "We’ve got a picture of the old gentry, too— your great-grandparents. But nothing of madam your grandmother. I’ve often wondered—"

"Don’t ask me," I said. We were walking now toward the last door at the end of the passage. "What’s happened to the stone poodles?" I asked.

"The poodles, yes. I never knew them, worse luck," she said. "They got smashed up before my time—willfully and nastily, you can bet. They say it was the Germans during the war, but if you ask me it was our own people. You don’t know what they’re like. They are proper fiends down in the village, and the farmyard persons are no better, either." She unlocked the door and stepped aside for me.

"My great-grandmother couldn’t stand dogs," I said. "She used to point to the poodles and say, ‘These are the only dogs I like.’ "

"I must tell this to the curator," she said.

"I remember my great-grandmother, you know," I said. "I remember kissing her hand when I was four years old, and she was sitting on the bench that went round the linden tree—on the gravel space. She had disgusting hands, yellow and crinkled, and I loathed her. What’s become of the tree? It was two hundred years old."

"I don’t know again," she said. "That was before my time."

We were now on the main landing. She unlocked the second door and flung it open. "That’s what you’ve come to see, isn’t it?" she said. "The Austrian Room."

Standing at the threshold, I saw an expanse of clean but unpolished parquet floor and, beyond it, the three windows in their glossy white frames. My heart tightened. I thought, First the poodles and then the linden tree. And now what? I drew a deep breath and went inside. My deepest longing, my heart’s desire, closed around me, enfolding me with its splendor. "Magnificent," I said.

"Yes, that’s what it is. It’s magnificent."

"It’s overwhelming," I said. "But it wasn’t like this. I didn’t remember it like this. It was ..." I paused, searching for words. The landscapes, especially the lakeside scenes, had a full shimmer, a melancholy and seductive depth, a surface serenity with an underlying hint of despair, which I had never known. "I can’t understand it," I said. "It’s so rich and so sad now. And it used to be more wishy-washy. Shallower and more gay. I suppose I used to be more wishy-washy myself, and more shallow and more gay."

"No fear," she said. "It’s not you; it’s the room. First they studied it and then they cleaned it."

"Who?"

"The professors from Prague," she said. "And they’ve written a book about it, too. About the painted rooms in the castle."

"Oh, God," I said.

"Didn’t you know?" she asked. "They still keep coming out to study it. They are crazy about Navratil."

"Who is Navratil?"

"The finest painter in Bohemia, of that time," she said. "Didn’t you know?"

"I never knew," I said.

"You were a little girl at the time," she said. "So you were not told."

"Nonsense," I said. "If I wasn’t told, it wasn’t for the lack of pestering. Nobody knew. And my grandmother, with her eternal ‘Difficult to say. It’s just a pleasant accident’—all because the two old maids, when they sold the castle, never told my great-grandfather. And the walls were plastered up, completely covered."

"That’s right," she said, nodding her head. "The two Baronesses Wagner. And they had every blessed wall in this room plastered up because it irked them."

"What on earth?"

"Everything’s been found out," she said. "They were leading a wild life, full of scandal, and never getting married, and traveling all the time, always on the move. First getting these paintings done to remind them of it, and then hiding them away to hide their past. Every panel is a real place, of course."

"Is it?" I said. "Nobody ever took it seriously."

"It’s all been studied," she said. "Let me tell you. This is the Gmunden Lake, with the town of Gmunden behind it. This is the Dachstein."

I followed her, incredulous and bewildered, listening to this stranger, this pseudocook, who was taking me on a guided tour through the Austrian Room, and who knew the answers to questions that had haunted me for a lifetime.

"This here," she said, "is the Gastein waterfall."

"Oh, God, my favorite," I said. "With the chamois on top of the rocks."

"And these here," she continued, "are the two ladies Wagner, we think." She pointed at a couple of figures crouched on a mossy border at the foot of the cascade, white-robed and strikingly graceful, like ballerinas resting in the wings.

"But these are new," I said.

"That’s right. They only came up two years ago. They had been painted out. And now, as I’m looking at you, I can see it could be you. Perhaps it is you. With madam your mother."

I thought, She really is like the cook. No sense of time— the only time she knows is when the cake is ready to be taken out of the oven. Then, growing serious at her reproachful stare, I said, "Please, go on."

"This here," she said, moving to the hilly meadows peopled with shepherds and shepherdesses, "is by the Wolfgang Lake, above St. Gilgen. Do you want a light on it? You’ve brought such dull, miserable weather with you."

"That’s all right," I said. "It’s so much bother bringing in the lamps."

"We’ve got electric light," she said.

"My grandmother could never afford it. But who is ‘we,’ anyway? Who’s got the place now?"

"The place belongs to the workers, of course," she said, "and it’s being cared for by the Academy of Arts and Sciences. We’ve got nothing to do with the estate and the farm in the yard yonder. In the beginning, the farm people cast an eye on the castle, but heaven forbid! They would have used it as a pigsty. I mean it, because they’ve gone in for pigs now—one thousand pigs—and in the summer, when the wind turns! Just imagine what it would be like to get the farmhands swarming about in here. Beauty means nothing to them. They’d demolish the place. They are hellhounds, the folk round here; they are fiends and monsters. They’d burn and tear down everything they could lay hands on. Do you know what the park suffered since the gentry’s days? What they’ve stolen and carried away in timber? You wouldn’t know at first glance, of course, because the park is so immense, and thank heaven it’s getting restored now— not that you won’t weep over it when you see it, but we’ll get it up to scratch again. We’ll tackle the rose parterre first and get the fountain going—the boy with the goose and the boy on the dolphin, one above the other, and the water coming down."