He nods. ‘Good night.’
‘Good night.’
As he slowly goes down the stairs, she calls quietly, ‘Ludwig!’
He turns round inquiringly.
‘Will you come here for breakfast tomorrow?’
‘I certainly will.’
When she has closed the door and put the chain in place, she stands where she is for a while, thinking. He really has grown older. Her former husband looks almost like a real, grown-up man now! Then she puts her head back and goes to keep a maternal watch on his and her two children as they sleep.
An hour later, an elegant young lady is getting out of a car outside a building on the Ringstrasse and negotiating with the grumpy porter.
‘Mr Palfy the Music Director?’ he grunts. ‘Dunno if he’s at home up there, miss.’
‘There’s a light on in the studio apartment,’ she says, ‘so he is at home. Here!’ She presses some money into his hand and hurries past him to the stairs.
The porter looks at the banknote and shuffles back into his lodge.
‘You?’ asks Ludwig Palfy at the doorway upstairs.
‘A good guess!’ remarks Irene Gerlach caustically, walking into the studio. She sits down, lights herself a cigarette, and scrutinizes him expectantly.
He doesn’t say a thing.
‘Why did you get the housekeeper to say you weren’t in when I phoned?’ she asks. ‘Do you think that was a very nice thing to do?’
‘I didn’t get her to say I wasn’t in.’
‘But?’
‘But I wasn’t able to speak to you. I didn’t feel like it. The child was seriously ill.’
‘However, now she’s better, or you would be in Rotenturmstrasse.’
He nods. ‘Yes, she’s better. And moreover my wife is there with her.’
‘Who?’
‘My wife. My divorced wife. She arrived this morning with the other child.’
‘With the other child?’ says the elegant young woman, echoing him.
‘Yes, they’re twins. First it was Luise here with me, and then her sister since the end of the holidays. But I never noticed. I’ve only known since yesterday.’
The young lady is smiling nastily. ‘What an ingenious move on the part of your divorced wife!’
‘She’s only known since yesterday herself,’ he says impatiently.
Irene Gerlach twists her beautifully painted lips ironically. ‘An intriguing situation, don’t you agree? A woman in one apartment to whom you’re no longer married, and a woman in another apartment to whom you’re not yet married!’
He is beginning to lose his temper. ‘There are plenty of women in other apartments to whom I’m not yet married.’
‘Oh, so you can joke about it too?’ She gets to her feet.
‘Excuse me, Irene, this is upsetting me!’
‘Excuse me, Ludwig, this is upsetting me too!’
Crash! The door has slammed, and Irene Gerlach has left.
After Mr Palfy has stared at the door for some time, he wanders over to the Bösendorfer grand piano, leafs through the music of his children’s opera, picks up a sheet of music paper and sits down at the keyboard.
He plays from the music in front of him for a while. It is a stern, plain canon in one of the old, traditional church music modes. Then he modulates it, turning to the key of C minor. Next he moves from C minor to E flat major. And slowly, very slowly, a new melody emerges from the paraphrase. A simple, engaging melody, as if two little girls were singing it in their clear, pure childish voices. In a summer meadow, beside a cool mountain lake reflecting the blue heavens above. The heavens that surpass all understanding, and whose sun warms and shines on all created things, never distinguishing between the good, the bad, and those in between.
Chapter Eleven
A double birthday but a single birthday wish · The parents consult each other · Cross your fingers! · Crowding round the keyhole · Misunderstandings and an understanding
Time, as we know, heals all wounds, and it makes you better when you’ve been ill as well. Lottie is better again. She has gone back to wearing her hair in braids with ribbons at the ends of them. And Luise’s hair is in ringlets as it used to be, and she can toss them back to her heart’s content.
They both help Mummy and Resi with the shopping and the cooking. They play together in their room. They sing together with Lottie or even Daddy sitting at the piano. They visit Mr Gabele in the apartment next door. Or they take Peperl for a walk while Dr Strobl is in his consulting room. The dog has come to terms with the multiplication sum of Luise times two, first by doubling his ability to like little girls, and then by halving the results of the sum. You have to learn these things.
And sometimes, yes, sometimes the sisters look anxiously into each other’s eyes. How is all this going to end?
The twins celebrate their birthday on October 14th. They sit in their children’s room with their parents. They have had two home-made birthday cakes, each with ten candles, and steaming hot chocolate to drink. Daddy has played a lovely Birthday March for Twins. Now he turns round on the piano stool and asks, ‘Why didn’t you want us to give you any birthday presents?’
Lottie takes a deep breath, and says, ‘Because what we want for our birthday can’t be bought in shops.’
‘What do you want, then?’ asks Mummy.
Now it is Luise’s turn to take a deep breath. Then she says, jittery with excitement, ‘For our birthday present, Lottie and I want us all to live together from now on!’ It’s out at last!
Their parents say nothing.
Lottie says, very quietly, ‘And then you won’t ever in your lives have to give us anything else again. Not for any other birthdays. Not for Christmas, never again in the world!’
Their parents still say nothing.
‘You could at least try!’ Luise has tears in her eyes. ‘We’ll try too, even harder than now. And everything will be much, much nicer.’
Lottie nods. ‘We promise you!’
‘Word of honour, cross our hearts and hope to die and all that,’ adds Luise hastily.
Their father gets up from the piano stool. ‘Would you mind, Luiselotte, if we had a word or two with each other in the next room?’
‘That would be fine, Ludwig,’ replies his former wife. And the two of them go into the next room.
‘Cross your fingers!’ whispers Luise excitedly. Four small hands each cross two small fingers and keep them crossed. Lottie is moving her lips silently.
‘Are you saying prayers?’ asks Luise,
Lottie nods.
Luise begins moving her lips too. ‘Holy Jesus meek and mild, look on me a little child …’ she mutters under her breath.
Lottie shakes her braids.
‘I know it’s not the right words,’ whispers Luise, discouraged, ‘but I can’t think of anything else. Holy Jesus meek and mild …’
‘If we disregard our own feelings just for once,’ Mr Palfy is saying in the next room, staring at the floor, ‘I’m sure it would be best for the children not to be separated again.’
‘Definitely,’ says the young woman. ‘We ought never to have separated them in the first place.’
He is still looking at the floor. ‘We have a lot to make up for.’ He clears his throat. ‘So I’d agree if you … if you’d like to have both children with you in Munich.’
She puts her hand to her heart.
‘Perhaps,’ he goes on, ‘you’d let them visit me for four weeks a year?’ When she does not reply, he says, ‘Or three weeks? Or at least two weeks? Because whether you believe me or not, I love both of them very much.’
‘Why wouldn’t I believe you?’ he hears her reply.
He shrugs his shoulders. ‘I haven’t given you much evidence of it.’
‘You have! At Lottie’s bedside when she was ill,’ she says. ‘And how do you know the two of them would be as happy as we both want them to be, growing up without a father?’
‘It would never
work without you!’
‘Oh, Ludwig, haven’t you realized what it is the children want, except that they didn’t dare to say it?’
‘Of course I have!’ He goes over to the window. ‘Of course I know what they want!’ Impatiently, he tugs at the window catch. ‘They want you and me to get back together as well.’
‘Our children want to have a father and a mother. Is that too much to ask?’ the young woman enquires.
‘No, but there are some wishes that just can’t be granted.’
He is standing at the window like a little boy sent to stand in the corner, too defiant to come out of it again.
‘Why not?’
Now he does turn round in surprise. ‘You ask me why not? After everything that’s happened?’
She looks at him seriously and nods, almost imperceptibly. ‘Yes. After everything that happened in the past.’
Luise is standing at the door with one eye pressed to the keyhole. Lottie is standing beside her, holding out both her hands with their crossed fingers.
‘Oh, oh, oh!’ murmurs Luise. ‘Daddy is giving Mummy a kiss!’
Contrary to her usual good manners, Lottie pushes her sister roughly aside, and now it is her turn to look through the keyhole.
‘Well?’ asks Luise. ‘Is he still doing it?’
‘No,’ whispers Lottie, standing up straight with a beaming smile. ‘Now Mummy is giving Daddy a kiss!’
And the twins fall into each other’s arms with shouts of joy!
Chapter Twelve
Mr Grawunder can’t work it out · Mr Kilian’s funny story · Luise and Lottie’s wedding plans · The front page of the Munich Illustrated · A new nameplate on an old door · ‘Here’s to good neighbours, Music Director!’ · Catching up with lost happiness · Children’s laughter and a children’s song · ‘All of them twins!’
Mr Benno Grawunder, an experienced old official in the registry office of Vienna District 1, is conducting a wedding that, routine as it is, now and then rather startles him. The bride is the bridegroom’s divorced wife. The two ten-year-old girls, who are extraordinarily like each other, are the children of the bridal couple. One of the witnesses to the marriage, an artist by the name of Anton Gabele, isn’t wearing a tie. While the other witness, Dr Strobl, has brought a dog with him! And the dog kicked up such a racket in the anteroom, where it was supposed to be waiting, that it had to be let in to take part in the ceremony. A dog as witness to a wedding! Whoever heard of such a thing?
Lottie and Luise sit on their chairs like good little girls and are as happy as the day is long. Not only are they happy, they are also proud, very proud! Because they themselves are responsible for this wonderful, incredible happiness! What would have become of their poor parents if it hadn’t been for the children, may I ask? Well, there you are! And it hadn’t been easy to play the part of Fate on the quiet. Daring, tears, anxiety, lies, desperation, sickness – they had been spared nothing, absolutely nothing!
After the ceremony Mr Gabele whispers to Mr Palfy, and the two of them, artists that they are, wink mysteriously at each other. But why they are whispering and winking, no one but those two gentlemen knows.
Luiselotte Körner, married name Palfy (twice), divorced name Palfy (once), has only heard her former and current lord and master murmuring, ‘Still too early?’ Then, turning to her, he goes on, ‘I have a good idea! I tell you what, the first thing we’ll do is go to the school and register Lottie there!’
‘Lottie? But for weeks Lottie has been … oh, sorry, of course you’re right!’
The Music Director looks lovingly at his wife. ‘I should think so, too.’
Mr Kilian, headteacher of the girls’ school, is genuinely surprised when Music Director Palfy and his wife turn up to register a second daughter who looks exactly like the first. But, as a teacher for many years, he has seen a number of equally remarkable things, and so he quickly recovers his self-control.
After the new pupil’s name has been duly entered in a big book, he leans comfortably back in the armchair at his desk, and says, ‘As a young assistant teacher, I once had an interesting experience, and I must tell you and your two girls about it! I had a new boy in my class one Easter. A boy from a poor family, but clean and neat as a new pin, and, as I soon noticed, a very good student. He did well at school, and soon he was even top of the class in arithmetic. Or rather, he was top of the class sometimes! At first I thought: who knows what the reason may be? Then I thought: but it’s strange! Sometimes he does sums perfectly, without a single mistake, at other times he works much more slowly, and he makes terrible mistakes too!’
The headteacher pauses for effect, and winks benevolently at Luise and Lottie. ‘At last I thought of a way to solve the puzzle. I wrote down the days when the boy was good at arithmetic and the days when he wasn’t in a little notebook. And there was something really odd about it. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays he was good at arithmetic – on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays he was terrible at it.’
‘Fancy that!’ says Mr Palfy. And the two little girls shift about curiously on their chairs.
‘I went on recording this for six weeks,’ the old gentleman goes on. ‘It never changed. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday the boy was good at arithmetic – on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday he wasn’t! One fine evening I went to see his parents at their home and told them about my strange observation. They looked at each other half embarrassed, half amused, and then the husband said, “There’s certainly something in what the teacher says!” He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. And two boys came running out of the next room. Two of them, the same size and just like each other in every way. “They’re twins,” said his wife. “Sepp is the one who can do sums, and Anton is – well, the other one!” After I had to some extent recovered from my surprise, I asked, “But why don’t you send them both to school?” And their father told me, “We’re poor people, sir, and the two boys have just one good suit between them!”’
Mr and Mrs Palfy laugh. Mr Killian smiles. Luise cries, ‘That’s a good idea! We could do it too!’
Mr Kilian wags his finger at them. ‘Don’t you dare! Miss Gstettner and Miss Bruckbaur will have a hard enough time telling you two apart anyway!’
‘Especially,’ says Luise enthusiastically, ‘if we do our hair exactly the same way and change places at our desks!’
The headteacher claps his hands together above his head and acts as if he were near despair. ‘Terrible!’ he says. ‘And what will it be like later when you’re young ladies and someone wants to marry you?’
‘Because we look alike,’ says Lottie thoughtfully, ‘I expect one and the same man will like us both!’
‘And we’ll both like one and the same man, that’s for sure,’ cries Luise. ‘So we’ll just both marry him. That will be the best thing to do. I’ll be his wife on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and it will be Lottie’s turn on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays!’
‘And if it doesn’t occur to him to get you to do sums, he won’t even notice that he has two wives,’ says the Music Director, laughing.
Mr Kilian the headteacher gets to his feet. ‘Poor fellow!’ he says sympathetically.
Mrs Palfy smiles. ‘But there’s one good thing about sharing him. He’ll get Sundays off!’
When the newly married couple, or rather the newly remarried couple, cross the school playground with the twins on their way home, it is mid-morning break. Hundreds of little girls come crowding over, pushing and shoving. They all stare incredulously at Luise and Lottie.
Finally Trude, using her sharp elbows, makes her way through the throng. Breathing heavily, she looks from one twin to the other. ‘Well, I ask you!’ she says. Then she turns to Luise, looking offended. ‘First you tell me not to say anything about it here at school, and now the pair of you simply turn up!’
‘I was the one who told you not to say anything,’ says Lottie.
‘But now you can tell everyone,’ says Luise graciously, ‘be
cause from tomorrow onwards we’re both coming to this school!’
Then Mr Palfy makes his way through the crowd like an icebreaker, piloting his family through the school gate. Trude is now the centre of general interest. She is hoisted up on the branch of a rowan tree, and from this vantage point she tells the listening crowd of girls everything she knows.
A bell rings. Break is over. Or at least, so you might expect.
The teachers go into their classrooms. The classrooms are empty. The teachers go to the classroom windows and stare out indignantly at the school playground. The school playground is crammed with girls. The teachers make their way to the headteacher’s study to complain in chorus.
‘Sit down, ladies, sit down!’ he says. ‘The caretaker has just brought me the latest number of the Munich Illustrated. The front page is very interesting for our school. May I, Miss Bruckbaur?’ He hands her the illustrated weekly newspaper.
And now the teachers themselves, like the little girls in the school playground, forget that break ended ages ago.
Miss Irene Gerlach is standing near the Opera House, as elegant as ever, staring in consternation at the front page of the Munich Illustrated, which shows a picture of two little girls with their hair in braids. When she looks up, she stares in even more consternation. Because a taxi is drawing up to wait at the traffic junction, and two little girls are sitting in the taxi with a gentleman she has known well and a lady she never wanted to know at all!
Lottie pinches her sister. ‘Look over there!’
‘Ouch! What is it?’
Lottie whispers, almost inaudibly, ‘Miss Gerlach.’
‘Where?’
‘On the right! The lady with the big hat and the newspaper in her hand!’
Luise squints at the elegant lady. She feels like putting out her tongue in triumph.
The Parent Trap Page 9
