The Redbreast (23 page)

She took a seat at the back of the Mercedes and, trembling, breathed in deeply as the car door was gently closed behind her. As she was driven down the avenue in Lainz Zoo, she closed her eyes and saw André Brockhard’s stiff figure obscured by the cloud of dust behind them.

34
Vienna. 28 June 1944.

‘G
UTEN
A
BEND, MEINE
H
ERRSCHAFTEN
.’

The small, slim head waiter made a deep bow and Helena tweaked Uriah’s arm as he couldn’t stop laughing. They had been laughing all the way from the hospital because of the commotion they had been causing. It turned out Uriah was a terrible driver and so Helena had told him to stop whenever they met a car on the narrow road down to the Hauptstraße. Instead Uriah had leaned on the horn, with the result that the oncoming cars had driven into the verge or had pulled over. Fortunately there were not that many cars still on the road in Vienna, so they arrived safe and sound at Weihburggasse in the centre before 7.30.

The head waiter glanced at Uriah’s uniform before checking, with a deeply furrowed brow, the reservations book. Helena looked over his shoulder. The buzz of conversation and laughter under the crystal chandeliers hanging from the arched yellow ceilings supported on white Corinthian pillars was only just drowned out by the orchestra.

So this is
Zu den drei Husaren, she mused with pleasure. It was as if the three steps outside had magically led them from a war-ravaged city into a world where bombs and other tribulations were of minor importance. Richard Strauss and Arnold Schönberg must have been regular patrons here, for this was the place where the rich, the cultivated and the free-thinkers of Vienna met. So free-thinking that it had never crossed her father’s mind to take the family there.

The head waiter cleared his throat. Helena realised that he had been unimpressed by Uriah’s rank of
Vizekorporal
and was perhaps puzzled by the strange foreign name in the book.

‘Your table is ready. Please follow me,’ he said with a strained smile, picking up two menus on his way. The restaurant was packed.

‘Here you are.’

Uriah smiled at Helena with resignation. They had been given an unlaid table beside the swing door into the kitchen.

‘Your waiter will be with you in a moment,’ the head waiter said and evaporated into thin air.

Helena looked around and began to chuckle. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘That was our original table.’

Uriah turned. Absolutely right: in front of the orchestra a waiter was already clearing a table set for two.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I think I might have put
Major
before my name when I phoned to book. I was relying on your radiance to outshine my lack of rank.’

She took his hand and at that moment the orchestra struck up a merry Hungarian
Csardas
.

‘They must be playing for us,’ he said. ‘Maybe they are.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘If not, it doesn’t matter. They’re playing gypsy music. It’s wonderful when it’s played by gypsies. Can you see any?’

He shook his head, his eyes intent on studying her face as if it were important he registered every feature, every crease of skin, every strand of hair.

‘They’ve all gone,’ she said. ‘Jews, too. Do you think the rumours are true?’

‘Which rumours?’

‘About the concentration camps.’

He shrugged.

‘There are all sorts of rumours during war. As for myself, I would feel quite safe in Hitler’s captivity.’

The orchestra began to play a song for three voices in a strange language. A couple of people in the audience sang along.

‘What’s that?’ Uriah asked.

‘A
Verbunkos
,’ Helena said. ‘A kind of soldiers’ song, just like the Norwegian one you sang on the train. Songs to recruit young Hungarian men to the Rákóczi war of independence. What are you laughing at?’

‘At all the unusual things you know. Can you understand what they are singing too?’

‘A little. Stop laughing,’ she sniggered. ‘Beatrice is Hungarian, and she used to sing to me. It’s all about forgotten heroes and ideals.’

‘Forgotten.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘As this war will be one day.’

A waiter had arrived unobtrusively at their table and coughed discreetly to signal his presence.

‘
Meine Herrschaften
, are you ready to order?’

‘I think so,’ Uriah said. ‘What would you recommend today?’

‘
Hähnchen
.’

‘Chicken. Sounds good. Could you choose a good wine for us? Helena?’

Helena’s eyes scanned the list.

‘Why are there no prices?’ she asked.

‘War,
Fräulein
. They vary from day to day.’

‘And what does
Hähnchen
cost?’

‘Fifty schillings.’

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Uriah blanch.

‘Goulash soup,’ she said. ‘We have already eaten today, and I hear that your Hungarian dishes are very good. Wouldn’t you like to try it too, Uriah? Two dinners in one day is not healthy.’

‘I . . . ,’ Uriah began.

‘And a light wine,’ Helena said.

‘Two goulash soups and a light wine?’ the waiter asked with a raised eyebrow.

‘I’m sure you understand what I mean,’ she gave him the menu and a beaming smile, ‘waiter.’

She and Uriah held each other’s gaze until the waiter had disappeared behind the kitchen door, then they began to giggle.

‘You’re crazy,’ he laughed.

‘Me? It wasn’t me who booked
Zu den drei Husaren
with less than fifty schillings in my pocket!’

He pulled out a handkerchief and leaned across the table. ‘Do you know what, Fräulein Lang?’ he said while drying her tears of laughter. ‘I love you. I really do.’

At that moment the air-raid siren sounded.

When Helena thought back to that evening she always had to ask herself how accurately she remembered it; whether the bombs fell as close as she recalled, whether everyone had turned round as they walked up the aisle in the Stephansdom. Even though their last night in Vienna remained veiled in unreality, on cold days it didn’t stop her warming her heart on the memory. And she could think about the same tiny moment that summer’s night and one day it would evoke laughter and the next tears, without her ever understanding why.

When the air-raid siren sounded, all other sounds died. For a second the whole restaurant seemed to be frozen in time, then the first curses resounded beneath the gilt vaulted ceiling.

‘
Hunde!
’

‘
Scheiße!
It’s only eight o’clock.’

Uriah shook his head.

‘The English must be out of their minds,’ he said. ‘It’s not even dark yet.’

The waiters instantly busied themselves at the tables while the head waiter shouted curt orders to the diners.

‘Look,’ Helena said. ‘Soon this restaurant will be in ruins too and all they are interested in is getting customers to settle their bills before they run for cover.’

A man in a dark suit jumped up on to the podium where the orchestra was packing away its instruments.

‘Listen!’ he shouted. ‘All those who have settled their bills are requested to make their way immediately to the nearest shelter, to the underground near Weihburggasse 20. Please be quiet and listen! Turn right when you leave and then walk two hundred metres. Look for the men with red armbands. They’ll show you where to go. And stay calm. The planes won’t be here for a while yet.’

At that moment they heard the boom of the first bombs falling. The man on the podium tried to say something else, but the voices and screams drowned him out. He gave up, crossed himself, jumped down and made for the shelter.

There was a rush for the exit where a crowd of terrified people had already gathered. A woman was standing in the cloakroom screaming, ‘
Mein Regenschirm!
– my umbrella!’ But the cloakroom attendants were nowhere to be seen. More booms, closer this time. Helena looked over at the abandoned table next to them where two half-full glasses of wine rattled against each other as the whole room vibrated in a loud two-part harmony. A couple of young women with a merry walrus-like man in tow were on their way towards the exit. His shirt had ridden up and a beatific smile played around his lips.

Within minutes the restaurant was deserted and an eery silence fell over the place. All they could hear was low sobs from the cloakroom, where the woman had stopped shouting for her umbrella and had rested her forehead on the counter. Half-eaten meals and open bottles were left on the white tablecloths. Uriah was still holding Helena’s hand. A new boom made the chandeliers shake and the woman in the cloakroom came to and ran out screaming.

‘Alone at last,’ Uriah said.

The ground beneath them shook and a fine sprinkling of plaster from the gilt ceiling glittered in the air. Uriah stood up and held out his arm.

‘Our best table has just become free,
Fräulein
. If you wouldn’t mind . . .’

She took his arm, stood up and together they walked to the podium. She barely heard the whistling sound. The crash of the explosion that followed was deafening, the plaster from the walls turned into a sand-storm and the large windows giving on to Weihburggasse were blown in. The lights went out.

Uriah lit the candles in the candelabrum on the table, pulled the chair out for her, held up the folded napkin between thumb and first finger and flipped it open to lay it gently on her lap.

‘
Hähnchen und Prädikatwein?
’ he asked, discreetly brushing fragments of glass off the table, the dinner plates and her hair.

Perhaps it was the candles and the golden dust glittering in the air as dark fell outside, perhaps it was the cooling draught from the open windows giving them a breather from the hot Pannonian summer, or perhaps it was simply her own heart, whose blood seemed to be raging through her veins in an attempt to experience these moments more intensely. But she could remember music, and that was not possible as the orchestra had packed up and fled. Was she dreaming it, this music? It was only many years later, before she was about to give birth to a daughter, that she realised what it must have been. Over the new cradle the father of her child had hung a mobile with coloured glass marbles, and one evening she had run her hand through the mobile and had immediately recognised the sound. And knew where it came from. It was the crystal chandelier in
Zu den drei Husaren
which had played for them. The clear, delicate wind chimes of the chandelier as it swung to the pounding of the ground, and Uriah marching in and out of the kitchen with
Salzburger Nockerl
and three bottles of Heuriger wine from the cellar, where he had also found one of the chefs sitting in the corner with a bottle. The chef didn’t move a muscle to prevent Uriah from taking provisions; on the contrary, he had inclined his head to show his approval when Uriah showed him which wine he had chosen.

Then he placed his forty-odd schillings under the candelabrum, and they went out into the mild June evening. In Weihburggasse it was totally still, but the air was thick with the smell of smoke, dust and earth.

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ Uriah said.

Without either of them saying a word about where to go, they turned right, up Kärntner Straße, and were suddenly standing in front of a darkened, deserted Stephansplatz.

‘My God,’ Uriah said. The enormous cathedral before them filled the young night sky.

‘Stephansdom?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ Helena leaned her head backwards and her eyes followed the
Südturm
, the green-black church spire, up, up towards the sky where the first stars had crept out.

The next thing Helena remembered they were standing inside the cathedral, surrounded by the white faces of the people who had sought refuge there, the sounds of crying children and organ music. They walked towards the altar, arm in arm, or had she only dreamed that? Had it really happened? Had he not suddenly taken her in his arms and said she would be his? Hadn’t she whispered,
Ja, Ja, Ja
, as the void in the church seized her words and flung them up to the vaulted ceiling, the dove and Christ on the cross, where the words were repeated and repeated until it had to be true? Whether it had happened or not, the words were truer than those she had carried with her since her conversation with André Brockhard.

‘I cannot go with you.’

They were said, but when and where?

She had told her mother the same afternoon, that she wasn’t leaving, although she didn’t give a reason. Her mother had tried to comfort her, but Helena couldn’t stand the sound of her sharp, self-righteous voice and had locked herself in her bedroom. Then Uriah had come, knocked on the door, and she had decided not to think any more, but to let herself fall without any fear, without imagining anything except an eternal abyss. Perhaps he had seen that immediately she opened the door. Perhaps the two of them standing in the doorway had made a tacit agreement to live the rest of their lives in the hours they had before the train left.

‘I cannot go with you.’

The name of André Brockhard had tasted like gall on her tongue, and she had spat it out. Together with the rest: the surety, the mother who was in danger of being thrown on to the street, the father who didn’t want a decent life to return to, Beatrice who had no other family. Yes, all that was said, but when? Had she told him everything in the cathedral? Or after they had run through the streets down to Filharmonikerstraße? Where the pavement was littered with bricks and shards of glass, and the yellow flames licked out of the windows in the old
Konditorei
, lighting their way to where they rushed into the opulent but now deserted blacked-out hotel reception, lit a match, arbitrarily took a key from the wall and sprinted up the stairs with carpeting so thick that they made no noise at all, ghosts who flitted along the corridors searching for Room 342. Then they were in each other’s arms, tearing off each other’s clothes as if they too were on fire, his breath burning against her skin; she scratched him till he bled and put her lips to the cuts afterwards. She repeated the words until it sounded like an incantation: ‘I cannot go with you.’