by Peter Watson
“I can,” I said. “I don’t want to, but I can.”
She smiled and kissed the statue, making it clear that since Martha was hovering in the house, she couldn’t kiss me. “Don’t be so negative. Don’t you ever enjoy anticipating things? I think that’s half the fun. I shall spend most of the day slowly getting ready for the evening. There are certain things which need to be done—like ironing my dress, washing my hair—at a certain time and in a particular order. I suppose you just comb your hair and slip on your uniform and that’s it. How dreary.”
“Not quite,” I said with a mock grumble. “It took me a week, almost, to earn the money for the tickets.”
“Good,” she laughed. “So you will appreciate it all the more.”
I didn’t go straight back to Salzburg that evening. I took a coffee in the marketplace in Mondsee and visited the church again. Then had an indifferent dinner at the hotel adjoining the café. There was something I had to do in Mondsee that could be done only in the evening.
We had spent such a lovely day together that I hated what I had to do. I parked the car out of the way in a side street in Mondsee, then walked out to the lakeshore. It was very quiet and I saw no one. More important, I was pretty sure no one saw me. Reaching the shore I turned left and walked along the road to Konstanze’s house. I kept to the grass verges so no one should hear my footsteps and twice, when I saw the headlamps of cars approaching, I hid in the bushes.
When I reached Konstanze’s house, I stood for a while just watching. The breeze from the lake, black and silvery behind me, pressed my hair to my head. There were lights in the house—in the sewing room and one of the upstairs rooms. It was 7:45.
I waited for half an hour. Cars passed occasionally and fish sometimes slapped the surface of the water. But otherwise there was no movement or sound.
After half an hour I slowly took off my shoes and crossed the road. I didn’t open the gate; that would have been too noisy. Instead I stepped over the fence. The grass was already wet with dew and my feet were immediately drenched. No matter; I didn’t want to make a sound.
I went round to the side of the house and stood as near as I could to the window of the sewing room. A noise filtered through the curtains and the glass. I edged closer. Closer still. It wasn’t voices, it was music.
I couldn’t see into the room, but I didn’t need to. I waited outside, with wet feet, for forty, maybe fifty, minutes. Then the music stopped. A voice began to announce the end of the concert when the sound was suddenly cut off. Someone moved in the room, a single pair of feet. Then the light went out. The footsteps went upstairs, but I was already beginning my wet journey back across the lawn, over the fence and into the road.
I put on my shoes and, with my socks squelching with each step, walked as briskly as I could back to Mondsee. Konstanze had lied when she said she had someone coming to see her that night. Now I knew why.
On the day of the concert I had spent the daylight hours reconnoitering again, even farther afield. But I also took Konstanze’s advice and enjoyed a leisurely bath, with a glass of wine, and looked forward to the evening.
I had no knots of nervousness as I drove to meet her. Instead, I enjoyed speculating what her dress would be like. I was excited at the prospect of seeing her in something more sophisticated, more revealing than a day dress. The way she dressed tonight, I told myself, would tell me something about the way she felt toward me. Her gown, her makeup, her hair styling would together form a code on the basis of which I might calculate my next move.
I saw Martha first and she was wearing the filthiest scowl on her gray face that I had yet seen. I should not have been surprised. Since she so venomously disapproved of our daytime jaunts, she could be expected to be more vitriolic about any evening activities. Nonetheless, she was clearly under orders to show me into the music room and to offer me a drink. She did this with the grim reluctance of a Christian in ancient Rome being asked to feed the lions. Her chore done, she scampered from the room as fast as her stumpy legs would carry her, slamming the door with an eloquent bang, as if she herself was in mortal danger from my advances.
It was the first chance I’d had to look inside the wine and music room and I wasted no time. I poked around. The piano was covered in photographs but none that were of any use. There were also the mementos we had collected—the postcards, the badge, even the feather, neatly put to one side. Wedged on the cushion on the window seat was a large pile of sheet music: Schubert, Brahms, Strauss and Bruckner, inevitably. The wine which lined two of the walls was very obviously a German as opposed to a French collection: whites easily outnumbered the reds. I quickly found what I was searching for: the section devoted to Austrian wines. There were several types: Nussberger, Grinzinger, Neuberger, Sieveringer. Sieveringer came from Kr—
Before I could take in any more, the door barged open and nearly knocked my drink from my hand.
“Did Martha give you something to drink? Walter?… Where are you?”
I was behind the door, trying to recover my balance.
It was a very excited Konstanze who turned to face me. Even I could see that. I could also see why she had wanted half the day to get ready. She had not wasted a minute. As I know I have said before, she looked good enough to eat.
Her hair was up, off her face. It had been washed and brushed—and brushed and brushed. It was blond in all sorts of ways: buttercup, barley, whiskey, hickory—you name it, the color was in there somewhere. Every time I looked at Konstanze’s hair that night, it was ever so slightly different.
Her face had been rouged—I hadn’t seen that before—but what really drew my eye was the light coating of powder that had been brushed over her cheekbones and chin. The effect of this was like that of wind on a beach; all care had been winnowed away, leaving it like porcelain.
Traveling down past her slender white throat, I came to her dress, in black lace with a scalloped neck, so perfectly arranged that it drew the eye from the curves of her shoulders into the swelling of her breasts, a purely involuntary move that would delight and disturb every man who saw her that night. She wore no jewelry but her dress was adorned with a single fold of crimson silk sashed around her waist and knotted over and draped down one side of her thigh. The dress ended well below the knee and this, together with her hair styling and powder, gave Konstanze a definite seventeenth or eighteenth-century look. I felt complimented that she was doing this as a sort of thank you for all the instruction I had given her about that epoch in the previous days.
“Prandtauer could take a few lessons from you,” I said.
She had a glass of wine in her hand and that comforted me too. It suggested she had been drinking while she was getting dressed, genuinely relaxing and not calculating, as had always been the case before. She smiled and drank from the glass now.
She turned her wrist and inspected her watch, the one ungraceful thing she was wearing. It was huge and looked to me as though it had once been the property of the German Army and had been given to her by Rudolf. “We should go?”
I nodded and set down what was left of my drink on the piano. Martha had heard our movements and she brought Konstanze’s coat and that forbidding scowl into the corridor. “Good night Martha,” said Konstanze. “See you in the morning.”
The opera house, where the concert was being held, was a blaze of glittering white light and gold moldings worn thin with age. The lights sent long shadows across the square as people arrived. Those were the days before parking was ever a problem and so Konstanze did not have far to walk in her evening clothes. I was wearing my mess uniform that night, a warm, soft brown that emphasized the tan I was beginning to acquire from having an open car.
There was time for a drink beforehand, so while Konstanze went to check her coat and make last-minute adjustments to her hair, I found the bar. I had said I would introduce her to the delights of the martini, American-style.
The bar was in the foyer on the main level and, as she walked across
it that night, well, although I am this far into my story, I savor that moment as memory number three. Apart from Martha, I had never seen Konstanze in the company of other women, and, therefore, I had never fully realized just how sensationally beautiful she was. I saw her from across the room and realized, as I had not in the music room in Mondsee, just how close-fitting the upper bodice of her dress was. Sexy was a word we did not use then. Alluring sounds forced; ripe, a bit juvenile and pretentious; sumptuous; luscious? She was all those things and more, and every man looked at her. I had escorted many attractive women, but that evening, without a doubt, was the most exciting, the moment when I felt most proud.
I held out her drink as she approached. “If we were at a theatre in America, you would never have reached me. Three men, at least, would have left their wives for you. I feel like I’m on a honeymoon.”
She laughed, pleased at the effect she had created, and tasted the drink. Immediately, her face crinkled.
“Urrgh, Walter! This tastes as though someone has been cooking crayfish in it. May I have some wine, please?”
We both laughed and I ordered her a glass of Riesling.
Although our seats were costly, they were worth it. As we sat down, I looked around; we were about five rows from the conductor. It was mainly a solid, bourgeois Austrian audience but, I guessed, far more knowledgeable about the music than an equivalent American group. One or two people nodded to Konstanze, but no one came up to us. The uniform, I concluded, probably frightened them off. In that part of the world, most people had had enough of uniforms to last them a lifetime. I gave Konstanze her program: another memento.
The lights went out and the concert started. Schubert’s overture to Rosamunde opened the program—lively but subtle, with an insistent beat, like galloping horses. Then came Haydn’s Lamentation Symphony and, after the interval, Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony, the one with the very moving adagio, written immediately after Wagner’s death and therefore very much affected by it. During the music I was conscious, as never before, of Konstanze’s body next to mine. In the darkened theater she seemed even more desirable than in the bright sunshine. That is saying a great deal. She smelled, as ever, of the soap she used. Perfume was almost impossible to get in Austria at that time. But, just as during the day the soap seemed fresh and airy; tonight, with the powder, it seemed altogether more subtle, richer, more sophisticated.
Should I—could I—touch her? It was as easy as changing gears in the BMW to reach across and take her hand. I made excuses to myself. It wasn’t dark enough. It would embarrass her. If she refused, or in some way rebuffed me, I would be embarrassed and it would spoil the rest of the evening. The music meant too much to her, I told myself; she would not appreciate an approach in the theater. Then she would shift in her seat and almost touch me herself. Except that she never did, quite.
Anyway, I did nothing and was immensely relieved when the symphony ended. Walking down the street afterward, I lit a cigarette—a pipe was too sedate for the way I felt and, in any case, took too long to light. Konstanze chattered away about the music and how she had always felt sorry for Bruckner, despite the fact that he was, by all accounts, rather weird. “He never married, as I think I told you. And he grew to be a simple-minded old soul. He would keep falling in love with very young girls, of eighteen or nineteen even when he was ancient. He would propose to them and that, of course, made their mothers extremely angry—it made no difference that he was famous by then. Sad.” She had turned to me, and the light that caught her face picked out the color in her eyes more than at any time since our first meeting. “You know what I like about Bruckner? His clumsiness. His music is clumsy in places, but that makes him more human. Whenever I listen to Bruckner, his music makes me think about men who need women, who are uncomfortable with them, yet can’t do without them.”
The Stubaier, where we ate dinner, was near the railway station and it was full of concertgoers. Those were the days when a black tie was not an unusual sight at a concert, with even the occasional opera cloak on show, and this all added to the gaiety of the evening. An old-fashioned gaiety, of course, formal in its way, that has all but disappeared now.
There was fresh saibling cooked with mushrooms on the menu, which we both decided to have, a far rarer treat then than it is now. For wine we agreed on a bottle of Grinzinger. While we waited for our food Konstanze accepted a cigarette and sat back in her chair looking at me. That moment, that evening in the Stubaier, was the peak of my contentedness. Whenever I hear other people use the word “happy” that evening flashes into my mind. I could not ever imagine, then or now, being bored by Konstanze. Nor could I imagine possessing her, as I had possessed other women. There would always be something unknowable and elusive about her. I realized that, as with a butterfly, to catch her was to destroy her, to remove the center of her. I realized, I suppose, that I had always secretly feared the type of woman Konstanze was, but that night I felt a freedom I hadn’t expected. I loved it and I loved her.
I considered our pact. I cannot remember now whether I had already admitted to myself that she had won, but whether I had or not, it was true. I wouldn’t force the Rudolf issue. The war was over, those other interrogators had failed. Hobel, and Eisenhower, could go to hell. Far more important, as far as I was concerned, was Konstanze herself. She seemed finally to have abandoned her suspicions and now seemed to have reached the point where she just enjoyed being with me. Eventually, and probably very soon, I thought, our relationship would become physical—perhaps that very night. Given the background against which our relationship was evolving, that was a very big step—it would change things considerably. But now that the moment seemed imminent, I felt no need to rush it. That was new for me too.
I leaned forward to pour more wine. As if she could read my mind, Konstanze said, “Tell me about America, again, Walter. I like hearing about it. Tell me about your favorite places.”
I took my time.
“America is about appetites,” I told her, “and I love that. There are many European jokes, carping at the American tendency to have the biggest, the best, the most extraordinary this or that, but I don’t mind. In fact, I find it endearing and I think the Europeans who make those jokes miss the point of America. The thing to understand about the country is that, although it is full of Europeans, they are, in many ways, ex-Europeans who want to be non-Europeans or even anti-Europeans. After all, most of them left Europe for a reason and they want to keep America separate from Europe in all sorts of ways. Since, by definition, they can’t honor the past in America, it makes very good sense for them to dwell on the present and the future. Hence the biggest this, the most expensive that, and so forth. So, if I may, I’ll be very American and not answer your question but tell you what I want to tell you about America.”
I took a sip of wine.
“You are going to hate this, Konstanze, but I like—I love—the waste.”
She had looked up then, her food halfway to her mouth.
“Yes, it’s true. Go into an ordinary restaurant in America—a coffee shop, I mean, not a fancy place—and order any dish. It will arrive garnished with all sorts of things—bread, lettuce, pickle, potatoes—that you didn’t order. It is as much as you can do to finish your meal and clear your plate. Buy a car in Europe and, unless you are a millionaire, you will get a cramped metal box with every accessory designed to save space and cost and to avoid excess. In America the car will be twice as long as the engineering warrants and there will be far more room than you need. Instead of being designed to save money and space, the car is there to spoil you, to provide the maximum pleasure possible. The car says to you, ‘Everyone can have luxuries, there’s enough to go around, and plenty left over.’ The car in America is not just a different machine, it’s a different attitude. And it’s the same with roads, beaches, beds and buildings—they are bigger, longer, above all, more generous.
“I admire the churches we have been visiting, not least for the fact that th
ey represent an ideal quite different from most architecture in America. Churches here are built vertically; everyone from the architects to the congregation had their eyes on heaven. In America, outside of confined city centers, which are a special case, buildings are designed horizontally. Even skyscrapers are a series of horizontal buildings, one on top of the other. My own house is a good example; it is on one floor, but it sprawls all over the land, like a capital letter that has yet to be invented, somewhere between the E and the X. We are all very proud of having two feet firmly on the ground; so our houses must cover as much of that ground as possible.”
I took my program and drew a plan of my house for Konstanze to see. She was interested but again, I noticed, more taken with my pen. I gave the drawing to her. She could keep that as a memento, if she wanted.
I continued. “Plenty has a curious effect on psychology. Strangely, it doesn’t corrupt, as you might expect. At least, not in any obvious sense. Rather, it makes people naive. It is as if, not having to scramble for the basics in life—food, space, privacy, warmth—one comes to the other things less wily, less contaminated. One has less need of sophistication.”
From the way Konstanze looked at me as I spoke, I couldn’t tell whether she believed me or not. I can remember feeling a surge of affection for America and a twinge of guilt about the way I had, since leaving Fort Bragg, slipped back into many of my old European ways.
“America is a foreign country and not just because the predominant language is English. It’s foreign to English speakers as well, because it isn’t home to anyone. Travel around Europe—to Rome, London, Paris or Berlin. Different languages, yes, but if you know one city you know the others. The layouts will be similar; there will be a palace, a park, the railway station area will have a certain kind of feel; there will be a market, a cathedral. These are recognizable irrespective of which country you are in and which languages you speak. Not in America. Cities feel different, each one is different. Buildings are functional, not decorative or spiritual. They are there to be pulled down once they have served their purpose. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, quite the opposite, but as Europeans we are not used to it. We think of history as important. But America is founded on the very idea of starting over, of leaving behind a history that produced exiles, refugees, persecution and poverty.
