The English Girl (38 page)

‘Is there any news?’ I ask her.

‘They’re saying that Herr Hitler has entered Linz,’ she says.

‘Oh.’

Linz is the capital of Upper Austria. I remember how Frank said that this was where Hitler had lived as a child.

‘He had a triumphant reception, they’re saying. He was welcomed with flowers,’ she tells me.

I sit down beside her, don’t say anything.

Her face is clouded with thought.

‘I saw the things that happened in the street, Fräulein Stella,’ she says. ‘What they did to the Edelsteins.’ Her voice is hollow.

‘Yes.’

‘Those poor poor women, so cruelly treated. And it’s been happening all over our city. Dietrich told me.’ She clasps her hands tight together, so the bones are white through her skin. ‘They aren’t all like that, the Viennese. They aren’t all cruel. You have to believe me, Fräulein Stella. There are good people in this city,’ she says.

‘Then they shouldn’t have let it happen.’

‘Today the good people were frightened,’ she says. ‘They stayed in their houses; they shut their doors and stayed there. Today the good people did nothing. Today they didn’t come out.’

‘
Someone
could have tried to stop it…’

Janika shakes her head slowly.

‘It isn’t always so easy, Fräulein Stella,’ she says. ‘Like when poor Fräulein Verity left. What can you do? You may hate yourself for it, but sometimes you can’t do anything.’

‘Fräulein
Verity
?’ At last, I understand the thing that has puzzled me all these months. ‘She was Jewish? That was why the Krauses sacked her?’

Janika nods.

‘It wasn’t Frau Krause’s doing. Frau Krause was keen she should stay. She said she was such a nice girl, and she loved little Lukas to bits. But Herr Krause said in the present climate they couldn’t keep her,’ she says. ‘And of course Frau Krause did as he wanted.’

‘But how did it happen, Janika? When Verity had been looking after Lukas all that time?’

The frown lines knot between Janika’s brows.

‘They didn’t know she was Jewish, when Frau Krause first employed her. But then her father came to visit her, here in Vienna,’ she says. ‘He’d come to Austria on business, and he came round here to the flat. He was taking her out to dinner, at the Sacher Hotel. Fräulein Verity was excited – she was wearing her very best frock. It’s sad to think back on, Fräulein Stella … And Herr Krause met the man in the hallway, and suspected the man was a Jew.’

‘Oh.’

‘I heard Herr and Frau Krause talking, that night. Herr Krause was very emphatic. The next day, he questioned Fräulein Verity, and he said she had to go. Fräulein Verity was so upset.’

I think of Lukas. How he watched her tears fall onto her quilt; how he wondered who had hurt her.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘She must have been.’

There’s something dark in Janika’s face, a kind of shame, as though she feels complicit in what happened.

‘It seemed so wrong. But how can you stand against it, Fräulein Stella? How can you stop it? Sometimes it isn’t possible, to make a stand,’ she says.

She sits slumped at the table, her head bowed.

I can’t sleep.

The streets are entirely quiet now. The gangs who were roaming the city must have joined the torchlight procession that Rainer was helping to plan, to celebrate Hitler’s coming.

At last I hear the front door closing. Rainer must have come home.

I hear him go to the bathroom, and then along to his study – perhaps to smoke a cigar and sip a brandy, and stretch out his legs in the comforting warmth of the stove. As any man might do, after a busy time out in the world. I think of the story Janika once told me, about the supernatural evil in her village.

What did he look like? What kind of man was he? Was there anything different about him?

She said there was nothing you’d notice. He was just an ordinary man
.

I get up, go to the window. Maria-Treu-Gasse is utterly still. There’s no wind, the flags hang limply, all their colour taken away, so they look black and grey in the chilly moonlight. A little snow is falling, the snowflakes briefly illumined as they fall through the light of the lamps, then settling on the pavement, covering over the slogans that were painted there just a few days ago, in that brief eruption of patriotic fervour. Apart from the flags, the street looks normal. As though none of this had happened; as though the world hadn’t changed.

Sunday morning.

I decide to walk to Dr Zaslavsky’s – I don’t know if the trams will be running. I’ve looked at the map, and Türkenstrasse should only take half an hour. I put my music in my music case, and wrap up warmly. I wear my new coat and my foxfur hat, I tuck my mother’s scarf into the neck of my coat, and I wear two pairs of gloves, to be sure my hands won’t be too chilled to play when I get there.

I set off through the quiet Sunday suburbs. It’s cold, and my breath is like smoke. The pavement looks clean as a fresh linen sheet, from the snow that fell overnight. There are no footprints; no one is up. There’s no sign of the gangs of yesterday, who are probably all still asleep, in a drunken stupor. The streets are empty, too empty, even for a Viennese Sunday.

I head towards the city centre. The air begins to throb with sound.

I don’t know where the noise is coming from. I look upwards, but there are no Luftwaffe planes overhead. The sky is grey and empty and has a pewter shine. The noise makes me think of heavy traffic on a distant road. You never hear such traffic in Vienna, early on Sunday morning.

I draw near to Währingerstrasse, one of Vienna’s main highways. I turn the corner, walk into a great wall of sound, a roar of vehicle engines. I come out onto the street. I gasp. Währingerstrasse is full of German army lorries, a vast slow-moving convoy, stretching in either direction as far as you can see. The
Wehrmacht
, the great German war-machine, has come to Vienna.

I stand for a moment and stare, at all this massive, awe-inspiring apparatus of war. The German soldiers, steel-helmeted, sit motionless in their vehicles, their hands on the barrels of their rifles. The air is blue and thick with exhaust fumes that snag in my throat.

A soldier on a motorcycle rides down the inside of the convoy, near the pavement where I’m walking. He slows, raises his hand in greeting.

‘Good morning, fräulein,’ he says.

My voice replying is washed away in the great tsunami of sound.

I have to cross Währingerstrasse to reach Dr Zaslavsky’s apartment; I have to find my way through this solid line of vehicles. I don’t know how to do this; for a moment, I think I will have to give up and go home. But I stand on the kerb and wave and catch the eye of one of the drivers, and to my relief he nods and beckons me over in front of his truck.

At Dr Zaslavsky’s building on Türkenstrasse, the tall street doors are open. I go in under the arch. His apartment is at street level. I ring the bell by his door. The door opens.

‘Ah, Fräulein Whittaker. Excellent. Thank you for coming,’ he says.

He is immaculate, as always, his shirt and wing-collar crisply starched. He ushers me inside. I take off my hat and coat and scarf and he hangs them on the hat stand. The flat is spacious and high-ceilinged, with a long, dim, parquet-floored hall.

He takes me into his drawing room. The first thing I notice is the piano – a magnificent Bösendorfer. But there are many other beautiful things as well – a bronze of a dancer; African carvings; an abstract painting, a giddy gorgeous rush of scarlets and golds. There are shelves full of books with opulent bindings. It looks as though he lives alone, as I’d suspected. There’s no sign of a woman’s touch in the flat; there are no crochet runners or vases of flowers, none of those intricate little arrangements that women seem to favour. Just paintings, carvings, music, wonderful books.

Sometimes I’ve felt almost sorry for him, imagining him to have a rather limited life. I’m embarrassed that I ever thought that. His apartment speaks so eloquently of the rich, full life he has lived.

I sit at the keyboard.

‘So, to work, Fräulein Whittaker. Chopin is your composer, as we know. Today you will play only Chopin for me,’ he says.

This makes me happy.

First, he wants the E flat Nocturne. I play, and he listens in that intent way he has; as though listening is an active thing, engaging the heart and the soul.

Afterwards, I glance at him, trying to guess what he thought, to prepare myself. He frowns a little. Today, his face looks more seamed than ever. In the lemon light of the lamp that stands by the piano, you can see how the years have marked him and worn him away.

‘You must let the music breathe more. You should linger over these phrases, Fräulein Whittaker…’ He points to the page. ‘You should hold onto the music as though you can’t bear to let go.’

We work on the phrasing. I concentrate hard.

You can hear the sound of the great army convoy from here, but only faintly. You feel it rather than hear it; it’s more a vibration than a sound, like the drone of some vast insect. Here in the tranquillity and cloistered peace of this room, you could almost imagine that nothing had happened to Vienna: that Hitler’s vast war machine wasn’t surging through the streets, just a couple of minutes’ walk from here. I wonder how aware Dr Zaslavsky is of what’s happening. There are no newspapers or journals that I can see in his flat, nothing to hint at the fever and chaos in the city outside, at the great events that shake the world.

I play the Impromptu in A flat. My right hand is muddy, he tells me.

‘This music must sparkle like water,’ he says. ‘It must be clean and clear. It must seem effortless, Fräulein Whittaker. And the pedalling must be crisper.’

I play the first few lines over and over, till he is satisfied.

A clock on the mantelpiece chimes eleven. I expect the lesson to finish now – my lessons always last for one hour. But he doesn’t seem to notice.

I play the F minor Fantaisie.

‘We have talked about this before,’ he says. ‘You need more of a sense of structure. To have a sense of the architecture of the piece, to feel it. Do you remember, when we talked about this?’

‘Yes,’ I say.

I think about what he told me:
The piece must feel like a whole, so the ending will
come at just the right time.
But I’ve never entirely understood how to show this in the playing.

He asks for the Mazurka in A minor.

‘Remember, technically this may be quite simple, but emotionally it is very complex,’ he says.

I play. He frowns a little.

‘The Mazurkas are full of yearning,’ he says. ‘Of homesickness. And strangeness – such strange harmonies. These harmonies seem shockingly modern to us. Here the composer was long before his time. This is Chopin’s simplest music, but also perhaps his finest … You have to feel it in yourself, the longing…’

I play the piece again. I feel all the yearning in me. I play well, very well. It’s one of those moments that any musician lives for – when the music takes flight, when a single phrase of music seems to say all that need ever be said.

Afterwards, he is quiet for a long moment. Then he clears his throat.

‘That is good,’ he says then. ‘Very good.’

I wait, expecting some qualification.

‘This is what I hoped for from you, Fräulein Whittaker. Here we see what you are capable of. And why you will be the finest pianist that it’s been my pleasure to teach.’

This shocks and thrills me. I can’t believe he’s saying this.

The clock chimes twelve. My shoulders are aching, my whole body is aching. I’m desperate for a coffee.

He sees me glance at the clock.

‘You must concentrate,’ he tells me. ‘It’s late, we haven’t got long.’

I play the E major Etude. We work on the difficult middle section, the complex bravura harmonies.

And then he says, ‘And now I would like you to play me the ‘Berceuse’, Fräulein Whittaker.’

I open my music-case, pull out the music. I play it, this loveliest, tenderest of cradle-songs. Though this isn’t really my best playing; I’m exhausted, I’ve been concentrating for nearly three hours now.

When I finish, I expect more teaching, more criticism. For him to pull my technique apart; to point out all my inadequacies. I remember what he told me all those weeks ago, when I first played this piece to him.
There has to be stillness in it. Young
people cannot be still. You have to find that stillness inside yourself
. I remember how I felt like a child, when he said that.

But he leans back in his chair and gives a little sigh.

‘Thank you,’ he says. As though I have given him something. ‘Well, that’s all, my dear.’

He has never called me ‘my dear’ before. There’s a tremor in the corner of my mind, like the flutter of a moth’s wing.

I put my music away, close up my music-case. I may be tired, but Dr Zaslavsky looks far more exhausted than me. His face is the colour of ashes.

‘Remember all those things, Fräulein Whittaker. Will you do that for me?’

His eyes on me. I used to feel that he had a young man’s eyes – ardent, passionate. You wouldn’t think that today. His eyes are weary, and his voice is thin, an old man’s voice.

‘Yes, I will, of course I will. Thank you so much for the lesson.’

He makes a slight gesture, opening out his hands. As though to say this was nothing – that the pleasure was his.

‘So – I’ll be seeing you on Thursday at the Academy?’ I ask him.

He murmurs something I can’t quite catch.

I’m left unsure where I stand – not knowing whether I should still turn up on Thursday. I’ll find out later. For now, I’m tired and hungry and eager to leave. I long for a coffee and a cigarette.

He brings me my coat and my hat, and helps me into my coat. He takes me through to his hallway. As he opens his door, the sound slams into us – the roaring of the massed engines of the
Wehrmacht
. You can smell and taste the petrol fumes on the air. Neither of us makes any comment. He stands there for a moment; I can sense his eyes, how they follow me, as I walk towards the street.