by P. G. Glynn
He would, though, go to noon Mass tomorrow. They always used to go and he felt that going would somehow atone for being elsewhere when a vulnerable and exposed Austria needed soldiers to fight for her. He had not absented himself deliberately, of course, and had he fought he could not have affected the outcome of the war. All the same, Mass might help matters. It had helped before.
Hearing the Eucharist sung was always a comfort and had been especially comforting during the post-Lenka trauma. Having loved and trusted her, the discovery of just how misplaced his love and trust had been had for a time all but finished him. It had been a brutal betrayal, both by Lenka and by Fritz Meyer, who had seemed to delight in telling Otto that he numbered himself among the many men from Otto’s regiment Lenka had bedded. Otto had soon dealt with Fritz’s smugness, knocking him out in the process, but the ensuing anguish had taken him to the brink of a breakdown. How hard it had been, dealing with Lenka’s promiscuity and the knowledge that he was a laughingstock! It had not been easy, either, to make love to Marie that first time and find at the height of his rapture that her rhapsody was still with Charles Brodie! There was no true comparison between the two situations, or degrees of pain, since he was confident before long of making Marie wholly his, but all in all Otto was currently in need of his Catholicism.
He had not recently been a practising Catholic. He had been too busy in Africa and too far from a branch of his church in Yorkshire. These were excuses, he knew, and perhaps in fact he had just not been needy. It was bad of him solely to turn to religion when wanting something or needing it but Otto had to admit that that was possibly what he did. As much as anything it was the dearth of his contemporaries that had him now seeking solace. Had they all died – all those young men with so much seemingly ahead of them? Of course they may not be dead. They may simply not be in Vienna. Or they may be here, his path and theirs simply not having crossed yet. This was a big city. People’s paths did not cross willy-nilly. Otto must either actively seek out old friends and companions … or attend Mass, where there were bound to be faces he knew from the old days. Yes, he had found another reason for attending!
“But I’m not a Catholic,” Marie reminded him as they dined at the Sacher on Saturday evening.
“Just as I wasn’t a Baptist when we went to chapel.”
“Don’t remind me of that!”
“Why not?”
“Because … because that whole episode is best forgotten.”
He heard her underlying words but refused to dwell on them. She had been responding to him better and better in bed. There would dawn a day when she remembered their betrothal with pleasure … and when she would be glad to be Frau Otto Berger. He told her: “Half Vienna will be there in St Stephan’s. It will be a good opportunity for you to wear one of your new outfits from Spitzers.”
“That’s true,” Marie agreed pensively. They had made many purchases at the couturiere’s, where the elegant directress had recommended ‘our usual bridal order’ consisting of a dozen of everything. Otto had acted at once, resulting in mannequins parading for their benefit while they selected twelve shifts, nightdresses, day-dresses, evening gowns, coats and hats. Marie had stifled her guilt at such lavish spending with so much poverty outside by bearing her expanding waistline in mind. The resulting wardrobe would see her through her confinement and beyond to when she regained her figure again. “If the temperature drops overnight I could wear my fox-fur, couldn’t I?”
++++++
The temperature had obliged and September’s air held a hint of winter as they travelled by horse-drawn fiacre to Mass. Snug in her ankle-length coat and matching Cossack-style hat, Marie sat back feeling like royalty as they headed for Stephans Platz. As well as being where the Cathedral was situated, that was a favourite meeting-place. Friends tended to meet there before setting off together to sample the pleasures on offer in Vienna, where east met west and blended.
Despite himself, Otto remembered many a rapturous meeting with Lenka. Eastern in influence, the Cathedral itself with its domes, spires and tall steeple was a Viennese landmark that never failed to lift his heart. Perhaps the most impressive feature was its vast roof with a zigzag design on a mosaic background, this more than anything distinguishing it from every other cathedral he had ever seen. Coming to St Stephan’s was in a sense a homecoming.
Once the bowler-hatted coachman had helped them down the steps from their carriage and Otto had given lumps of sugar to the pair of white horses that had drawn it there, they were quickly caught up in the stream of people entering the Cathedral. Looking around him, Otto felt sure that he would soon see a familiar face or faces. He must do, mustn’t he? The law of averages made any other outcome inconceivable.
Awed by the lavish interior, Marie found herself making mental comparisons with chapel. Where Baptists went in for plainness and utility, Catholics favoured the ornate to a startling degree. Her senses were assaulted by vibrant texture and colour and by candles burning in vast numbers. Gold blazed not just from the altar but also from the ceiling and from niches where statues stood and from the priests’ long, richly embroidered copes. Several priests with tapers were moving to and fro, lighting still more candles until there seemed to be at least a thousand flames creating an unworldly glow. She drank the scene in, asking Otto then: “What else are they burning?”
“Incense,” he said, genuflecting and crossing himself before guiding Marie to a pew near the front where they were soon seated. “Do you like it?”
It weighted the air, but she did. As Mass began she could make no sense of the priests’ incantations in Latin, nor of the movements within the congregation which seemed to follow no discernible pattern as people periodically stood or sat. But she could absorb the beauty of the tableau and of the stained glass windows that she studied as everyone around her sang. She had come far from her childhood chapel. There, she had never belonged. Here – protected as she was from mundanity by sacrament and age-old ritual – Marie had the curious and wholly unexpected feeling that she could belong, should she so want. Wrapped in a beautiful cocoon, she was presently concluding that Mass was over too soon.
Otto had not seen a single person he knew. While the Sanctus and Benedictus had soothed him as they invariably did, he had not remained soothed and was now feeling agitated.
Having chosen to stroll back to the Sacher, the better to show off Marie’s coat and also to work up an appetite for lunch, she asked him as they started along Kaerntnerstrasse: “Aren’t you forgetting how long it is since you were last in Vienna? Seven years on, you can’t expect anything to have stayed as it was. You went, so why are you expecting old friends not to have gone?”
“I went voluntarily,” Otto said heavily, “whereas they would have been sent … possibly to their deaths.”
“It isn’t like you to be so pessimistic,” she told him, slipping her arm through his. “Even if a few of them are, they won’t all be dead. Your best bet, surely, is to call on your old regiment. Wouldn’t the knowing be better than the not-knowing?”
“That depends,” he said, “on what there is to know.”
One could never have told from the voguish shops along Kaerntnerstrasse that post-war poverty gripped Austria by the throat. The latest fashions and designs were displayed with such style that uninformed passers-by might have believed there was nothing wrong with the country’s economy. Otto and Marie strolled in good company since it was traditional after Mass to head to the Sacher for coffee or lunch, resulting in the Hotel always being crowded on Sundays at this hour. Among those heading there were the ladies of licence sauntering in pairs. Aware of them, Otto did not show his awareness and, because he was walking with his wife, they in turn not only ignored him but also expected to be ignored. Were a gentleman in a lady’s company to bow or doff his hat to one of their number, a cocotte would see it as a faux pas. Vienna’s aloof demi-mondaines had their own strict conventions and rigidly abided by them.
“I think I’ll have Wie
nerschnitzel for lunch,” Marie said, attempting to cheer Otto up. “Or is it wrong, so soon after Mass, to be thinking of my stomach?”
“I doubt it’s a cardinal sin,” he told her, smiling. He liked these reminders of his wife’s hearty appetite. He also liked signs that she was adapting to Viennese cuisine. Before too long she would be a true European. “How about following the veal with some Palatschinken?”
“I’ll have to see how I feel,” she grinned, “and don’t think for one minute that you’re fooling me.”
“Fooling you?”
“Yes – by forever bringing new German words into my vocabulary! English is my language and always will be.”
“We’ll see!”
“Bitte,” pleaded a piteous voice and a hand grabbed the hem of Marie’s coat. “Bitte, bitte!”
Stopped in her tracks, she looked down. The grabber was crouched in a shop doorway, his long, grey hair matted, his clothing filthy rags. A putrid stench rose from him, assaulting her nostrils and making her want to vomit. As she involuntarily tried to snatch her coat back it occurred to her that he was probably crawling with bugs. Emaciated though the beggar was, his grip on her hem was surprisingly strong and to her horror she felt herself drawn towards him. “Otto,” she beseeched, “do something!”
He could do nothing. Immobilised, he tried to pull himself together and rescue Marie but could not seem to gather his wits. There was something vaguely familiar about this old man with ravaged limbs and with bones where flesh should have been … yet there couldn’t be. Otto could not know him, could he? Those eyes, though, wild as they were and dark with hunger, struck some distant chord that echoed disturbingly. Then the fellow said: “Wie geht’s, Otto Berger?”
Reaching him from another era, the voice belonged to someone much younger … someone with a permanent chip on his shoulder. But young skin could not have withered like this … dark hair could not have turned virtually white in so short a time … the man crouched here like some alien creature could not possibly be … “Fritz?” Otto said tentatively. “Du bist … Fritz Meyer?”
“Doch! Why the surprise? I look no different, do I?”
The words were spoken in German but Marie had deciphered the gist. She asked Otto: “You know him?”
He knew and now, in a state of shocked bewilderment, saw no tatterdemalion but a tall, proud man astride his horse: a man resplendent in uniform. He saw the man he had known and found no comprehension for his altered state … his seeming great age. How had it happened? How exactly had Fritz gone in the space of seven years from youthful cavalry officer to … to aged beggar? Austria had obviously lost more in the war than Otto had grasped as yet. “Yes,” he said. “I know Fritz from the life I once led. We served in the same regiment.”
“Impossible as that obviously is to believe,” the beggar said in halting English. Then, in German: “Well, Otto, old friend – where are your manners? Or am I, by virtue of my lowlier status in life, no longer fit to hobnob with the high and mighty?”
Experiencing a curious mixture of guilt and revulsion, Otto made the introductions, noting as he did so that Marie shook Fritz’s hand almost as if accustomed to meetings such as this one. Certainly she showed none of the distaste upon contact that she might have been expected to show. He had married a marvel and must remember to tell her so. After Fritz Meyer had censured men who, instead of fighting for their country, went off and wedded the enemy, Otto said: “Let us help you up … and take you to lunch.”
“That will salve your conscience?”
“No … but you look as if some food and drink wouldn’t come amiss.”
“A wash, too, I think.”
At Otto’s insistence the Sacher opened its doors to Fritz – and by the time the little trio reached the second-floor suite a chambermaid had run a hot bath for him. As she requested his clothing for laundering, he laughed asking: “For burning, don’t you mean? While I, as a guest of my fine friend, might gain admission to all this luxury, I cannot expect a similar welcome for my bugs. So burn them along with the tat by all means and listen to their screams. May they haunt your dreams as mine have been haunted recently. I have no doubt that Herr Berger will share his rather better clothes with me. Knowing him and his unerring habit of falling on his feet, he’s bound to have plenty to spare … and since he and his British bride are staying here at the Sacher he clearly isn’t short of money, either.”
Fritz needed help getting into the thigh-high marble bath and, while helping him, Otto tried not to think about the deprivation that had created a body as cavernous as his. The man was little more than a skeleton and seemed to be half the height he had been. Small wonder that he was bitter and twisted! And what was wrong with his buttocks? Otto’s glimpse of the deformity before Fritz sank into the water was the stuff of nightmares. “How you must have suffered!” he said, soaping his old companion’s back for him. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Yes,” Fritz said, “but over luncheon, when your wife is present. She reminds me of someone. Ah yes, I’ve remembered! I’m sure there are conclusions to be drawn from your having married a girl who looks just like Lenka. How is your lovely sister-in-law?”
“I have no idea.”
“You do not hear from your brother?”
“Not often. Ludwig and I, we have … little in common.”
“Except the woman you wanted, who is now his.”
“He’s more than welcome to her.”
“You’ll all be living together, in Schloss Berger? What fun: two brothers living in disharmony, side-by-side with their identical wives! What is Rudolf’s wife like?”
Otto thought of Anna, who was fat and homely, bringing the phrase country-bumpkin to mind. He said abruptly: “For all your suffering, I can’t fault your memory. Fancy you remembering Rudolf’s name, when you never even met him! Having met Ludwig, you would remember his. Who could ever forget someone so grotesque?”
“Such brotherly love!” observed Fritz. “And it’s mutual, as I understand it.”
“From Ludwig?”
“Correct,” Fritz said from beneath a cascade of white foam as Otto massaged his scalp with soap. “You may or may not know that while you were living it up among our aggressors we fought together. Natuerlich, being a Berger, your dear brother fared better from our war than I did. Those born with silver spoons in their gobs lead charmed lives while the rest of us are left to lump it. But things won’t always be one-sided. There’ll dawn a day of reckoning when I can cock a snook at your sort … and, believe me, I’ll delight in so doing.”
Otto believed him, remembering how different Fritz Meyer’s background had been from his. The man had from the first been something of an enigma, seldom behaving in an appropriate or gentlemanly manner and never popular. Otto had always heartily disliked him but, with Fritz so unexpectedly in his bath, liking was not an issue at present. He said: “Pending the day of your revenge you seem to need my help. How galling that must be for you! I’ll leave you to complete your ablutions while I find you a suit.”
They had been roughly the same size once, but when Fritz finally emerged from the bathroom his appearance verged on the burlesque. Otto’s dark grey jacket and trousers hung on him as on a scarecrow and now that his hair was washed and brushed it hung too, limply over his shoulders in lifeless wisps. The trousers were hoisted high with braces and the jacket sleeves had been turned back, but there was no disguising the fact that there was too much suit and too little man. Flapping his arms for Marie’s benefit as he and Otto joined her in the suite’s salon, he observed: “As you can see, nourishment is needed … and plenty of it!”
“We can dine up here, if you prefer,” Otto told him.
“That might be your preference, but it isn’t mine. I’d like to dine downstairs where I can see others of your kind and be seen. I am not averse to pity – especially when it benefits me. So lead on, old chum, to where there’s plenty of spare money … and let’s eat!”
Ensconced
in the dining room Fritz ate with the hunger of years, starting with Griessnockerl soup and single-mindedly emptying the big tureen. He barely spoke until he was tucking into his second helping of Tafelspitz, Geroesteten and Apfelkren, during the guzzling of which – while loudly breaking wind – he said: “If my manners aren’t all they might be, try not to take offence. Living like an animal one tends to pick up an animal’s habits. Should polite society view me as being a lesser man than those who came through the war virtually unscathed, then society stinks.” After shovelling more food into his mouth and gobbling it down, he continued in German: “You asked earlier for my story. My English is rusty but for the sake of your British bride I’ll do my best with a mishmash of both languages. I wouldn’t want her to miss too much of this.”
Belching and directing his first words to Marie he said: “I won’t apologise for the sound of food reaching an empty belly – and nor shall I spare your stomachs as I describe the war I fought for Austria. Why should I? If a man first deserts his country in its hour of need and then marries the enemy he becomes the enemy, effectively. I’m taking your charity because it’s my right to take from those who escaped scot-free, but don’t expect me to feel gratitude or be concerned with your feelings. Where shall I begin?”
He forked some potato into his mouth. “With Galicia, I think. It was where my horse and I parted company. He was badly wounded, you see, and I had to shoot him, poor thing. Starving, I then ate some of him before leaving the rest for the vultures and heading off to join the infantry. A tsarist attack had separated me from my regiment and I was quite alone, facing dangers such as you’d never believe. While still alone and on foot I reached a clearing in the woods where ten stakes had been driven into the cold ground. Oh, Otto, I wish you could have been with me to see why they were there. I’d have given much for your company and for an eyeful of your shudders. Up in your bathroom you averted your eyes, didn’t you, from the sorry sight of my buttocks?”
