by Peter Watson
The summer holidays. Dieter didn’t know what was in store for us. Whatever happened, life would be very different for all of us by the summer.
Hartt had still not arrived but I noticed a strip of yellow paper among the mail on his desk. It was the telegram he received every day from his cronies on the stock market in Wall Street. I reached across and picked it up.
Good news at last! Maurice’s shares had slipped by nine points and now stood at $1,064 whereas, at long last, mine had risen, no less than fourteen cents, to $969.12. I scribbled a note on the bottom to Sammy: “Why? These things, like Hobel, are beyond me. Delighted all the same. Walter.”
I didn’t call Saul. I couldn’t face it. He would be understanding but, at some level, he would also be very mad at me for not letting him raid Krumau sooner. I had robbed him of a clean raid, made as a result of his judgment rather than under orders from Hobel. So that took some of the shine off of his achievement. However forgiving he might be, there would be a part of him that blamed me for that.
I went out and got into my car. As I drove over the Market Bridge on my way to Mondsee, I noticed the two nuns I had seen before about to descend on the same greengrocer. They didn’t pay any attention to me, but as I stopped for other traffic, I again envied them their way of life.
Once I got to the village of Mondsee that morning, however, I thought it was a little early for Konstanze. Also, I had things to sort out in my mind. So instead of going straight to the house, I drove down the other side of the lake to Plomberg, where that string of lights glowed at night.
It was pretty in much the same way as Mondsee was pretty: a short stretch of boulevard with cafés at either end. Bicycles were propped against the trees and ducks and other birds outnumbered people at that hour of the day.
I took a coffee at one of the cafés and sat outside. The sun was still rather low and had not yet lifted itself over the Feuerkogel, and so the lake and Plomberg were covered with a pigeon-gray sheen, the sort of light, or half-light, that seems to encourage sound. The lake was still, but that only meant you listened more carefully to whatever noises it was making.
From where I was sitting, I could, in theory, look across to Konstanze’s house. Except that the gray gloom was such that I couldn’t be certain exactly which house Konstanze’s was. I imagined Martha and her moving around, making breakfast, perhaps an omelet. One woman would go out to the garden—how lucky they were—and pick chives or onions. Near me some ducks were splashing and I thought of Dieter in the summerhouse and, in all probability, being as clumsy, as volcanic, as ever, wetting everyone. I smiled to myself. And I imagined Konstanze in a bathing suit, her body wet and shiny in the sun. I imagined her playing the piano, writing to Dieter late at night in the sewing room, where I had first met her. I imagined her walking into the village early on Sunday mornings so that she could prepare the church organ. I imagined her after the service, talking with the solemn priest or laughing with friends from the village. Perhaps, on those mornings, she took a coffee in the market square. Did other men in the village feel about her as I did? They must think it a bit strange that she spent so much time alone. Afterward, would she get a lift home to her house? There would be no shortage of farm workers at the church, and I smiled to myself as I pictured her aboard a tractor, standing on an axle, holding on for all she was worth. Dieter would enjoy that sort of thing far more than she would.
The sun at last climbed over the Feuerkogel. The gray haze huddled across to the other side of the lake, nearer the hills. Where I was, the yellow rays licked the pavement, warmed the paint of the small boats, green and white and black, and splashed onto the café tabletops, making the raw metal smell.
Suddenly I saw Konstanze in America. She was driving a big car across the Golden Gate Bridge and had been living in California long enough to know to have the exact toll money ready. Then she was dressed in a black lace gown, about to sit down for dinner on a paddle steamer plying the Mississippi. In no time she was standing by a bicycle on a university campus. She was waiting for me—I had been lecturing—and all my male students looked on enviously. I saw Dieter, not much older than now, fast asleep on his mother’s swollen stomach. She, in turn, lay in the garden of my house, content and very pregnant.
I had never had the urge to be a father. My brother had a child, so I was an uncle, but I had few if any avuncular feelings. I wasn’t sure that I felt like becoming a father then, in 1946, at least not consciously, except that I imagined Konstanze pregnant.
The thought of a life growing inside Konstanze, however, had the effect of directing my thoughts back to what Hobel had said earlier that morning. Four people had been killed in Santander. Four families bereaved, four wives or girlfriends left empty. Four women who would not get pregnant again by their chosen man. I flashed back to Konstanze. We were in America and she wasn’t pregnant. We were at the top of the Empire State Building in New York. From the top, using Dieter’s binoculars, we could see the fourteen lakes that surround the Löser.
I stayed in Plomberg for two, maybe three, hours. I must have drunk my weight in coffee. The sun got hotter and hotter. The village came to life around me. Men bicycled out to the fields to work, or puttered off in their boats along the shore. Women, in black or flowered frocks, shuffled by to the shops. Boys played by my car, almost, but not quite, daring to get in. The ducks and other birds washed, dipped for breakfast, stopped by the tables at the café looking for tidbits, then, as the morning sun built up its heat, they lay back to enjoy their lethargy. The rest of the village followed their example. For a whole hour I was the only one in the café.
I began to take stock of what my options were. I knew that day that I did have two courses of action open to me, but which to pursue was unclear. Hobel was taking things out of my hands, but I still had one day.
Part of me wanted Konstanze. Since one o’clock that morning, since we had been together in the summerhouse, I had wanted her more than any woman I had ever known. And I thought that I could have her too. I had dislodged her from Rudolf. When love has been forced into disuse by circumstances, it flowers of its own accord—elsewhere—if the opportunity arises. It happened many times in the war. And that, I think, is what had happened to Konstanze. So, yes, I could have her.
But there were those four deaths and the loss of the ship in Santander. Despite the doubts I had thrown at Hobel, it did begin to seem that some of the leading Nazis were getting away. It was within my power to stop them; it was a heavy responsibility not to. Could I make Konstanze tell me where Rudolf was? Could I use the fact that she had fallen for me, at long last, to cheat it out of her? I thought I could. I thought I knew enough about her now to produce the circumstances under which she would be unable to resist telling me.
But the war was over. Hobel might be successful with his raid on Krumau and find Rudolf there. Was it worth risking Konstanze’s feeling for me, in trying to wheedle Rudolf’s whereabouts from her, when I could let the major do the dirty work for me? Then I could keep her to myself. On the other hand, if I didn’t try and Hobel succeeded, would that so shatter her that she wouldn’t come to America with me anyway?
The sun climbed higher and higher on Plomberg. If I was going to act at all, I had to move. I returned to my car and drove south, around the bottom of the lake, coming to Konstanze’s house from the opposite direction.
She seemed relieved to see me when I knocked on the door. She was dressed in a pale yellow skirt and white shirt.
“You are a little late,” she said innocently. “I was worried that you wouldn’t come, that you were offended by—last night.”
I smiled and shook my head.
“Wait in the garden, I have something for you. It is too nice to come inside. There are some chairs around by the kitchen—and don’t worry,” she said, reading my thoughts, “I’ve sent Martha into the village. She’s not here.”
I went around to where the chairs had been put out and sat down. Whenever I was with Konstanze I was a
mazed at her ability to clear my mind for me. As of then, I knew what I was going to do.
When she appeared from out of the kitchen she was carrying a tray and on it some drinks and what looked like a letter.
She handed me a glass. In it was clear liquid, pale, the color of champagne but without the bubbles. There was a black olive in it.
“What is it?”
“An Austrian martini.”
“Eh?”
She shrugged with her eyebrows. “I couldn’t get any vermouth. So I used white wine. Grinzinger.”
“You mean this is gin and white wine? Are you trying to kill me?”
“There’s not much wine. And I did put an olive in it. Try it.”
I smelled it first. Then took the briefest of sips. Fortunately the taste of the gin completely obliterated the flavor of the wine. “Not bad.”
Konstanze seemed in a hurry that day, as if she had made up her mind. “Last night, Walter, I asked you to take me somewhere special today. Have you thought?”
She seemed eager—anxious?—to re-create the mood of the previous night. As if she, too, wanted to recapture the intimacy, the physical nearness.
“Yes,” I said. “Somewhere very special.”
“Where?”
“Wait.”
“Yes. It’s better as a mystery.” She took up the letter on the tray. “This came from Dieter. Have you heard?”
I nodded, fished out my note and we exchanged pieces of paper. Dieter’s letter was flattering: “The professor,” he had written, “is too nice to be a soldier. But I hope he sees the buffalo in America soon. We did them the other day in geography. And they are ever so interesting.” There were no references to his father. I was pleased but could not quite shake from my mind the feeling that this had been a calculating move on Konstanze’s part. But perhaps it was just my paranoia.
“We should go,” I said, giving her back her letter. “It’s quite a way.”
She wanted to drive and I was happy to let her. I could think better.
I told her to head east, to Linz. And that I would take over from there as our destination was secret. As she drove she talked. That day, I remember, she talked for the first time as a lover. She was full of Dieter’s doings at school, she was flattering to me, she made several caustic comments about Martha and all sorts of references to America. For the first time she shut out the rest of the world; there were just the two of us, plus Dieter and, maybe, the car. It was as if she had made up her mind: she wanted me.
“Walter,” she said at one point, negotiating the car through a herd of sheep crossing from one field to another. “The letters. Were they … did they give you pleasure?” She looked away from the road in my direction as the car—now free of the sheep—picked up speed again.
I lit two cigarettes and offered her one. “They were wonderful letters, Konstanze. Every one.”
“You have stamina, I’ll admit. There are a lot of them.”
“I … I should never have even considered reading them—believe me, please. I really feel that now. But … once I had started … I couldn’t stop.” I tried to sound not too heavy. “I read through two entire nights without sleep. That’s how good they are.” I pulled on my cigarette. “That’s why I was half in love with you before ever we met. Not everyone can come alive in their letters like you did. Like you do.”
She drove on without speaking. Her hair was swept back by the wind we were creating. She enjoyed speed as much as Dieter, as much as Bruno.
“Bruno’s accid—” I began, but she stopped me.
“Don’t!” Then, more softly, “Don’t.”
We drove on in silence—but it was an easy peace. She wasn’t angry or upset. “Today is the best yet, Walter. Don’t look back.”
“Don’t look back.” I repeated her words in my head. To think of Rudolf was looking back. Did that mean …?
We came to a small lake with what to me seemed a murderously high diving board. It was much too early in the year for anyone to swim in an alpine lake, but two ducks, or birds of some sort, squatted on the board in the sun. Konstanze blared the horn of the car three or four times, trying to startle the birds.
“That’s what Dieter would have done,” she said, looking at me and grinning. But though the birds turned our way, they sat where they were and were soon lost to view.
“He is very lively, Dieter,” I said. “I like him.”
“But you are wrong. He is much more active when you are here, Walter. He has lived with women too long. He needs a father, soon.”
“Soon.” Now I repeated that word to myself. That was looking forward.
We had reached a stretch of unusually straight road. Konstanze looked at me, a touch of flint in her eyes—but it was a long way from the sharp shrapnel glare she had given me on the day we met.
“How brave are you, soldier?” she said mockingly. “Let’s see.”
And she put her foot down. Christ, did she put her foot down! In those days 60 m.p.h. was a perfectly respectable speed. She did 80. Nowadays, in European vehicles anyway, you see 140 m.p.h. on the clock, but the cars don’t do anything like that. The BMW’s clock only went up to 80 and Konstanze all but hit the needle.
Was I frightened? She was after all still an apprentice driver. But Konstanze was a quick learner, as I have said, so no, I wasn’t scared. In fact we were both exhilarated—if silently thankful that we hadn’t come across any more sheep.
Between Schwanenstadt and Lambach we passed a bank of gentian, blue as smoke, pale as dust. On impulse she pulled the car to the side of the road, got out and fell into the flowers. She lay quietly among them.
“Konstanze!” I called out, smiling. “We have a long way to go.”
She did not come back empty-handed. I had never been given a flower for my buttonhole before, nor have I been given one since. That is another vivid memory.
At Linz we swapped seats. Forty minutes later, about half-past two, I nosed the BMW up the narrow main street of a tiny village about twelve or fourteen kilometers south of Linz. It was a village approached across a small but very tidy plain, with dark, spongy loam, crisscrossed with barley, potatoes and swatches of trees. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a small hill appeared and it was on this that we could see the beautiful monastery of St. Florian.
2
It was and is, in my view, the best example of baroque architecture in the world. Better than Melk, better than Wilhering, better than Kremsmünster. It was graceful and also more feminine than the others. A large, essentially white building, the monastery was comprised of a church with two high-domed spires, and two sets of cloisters, set around two courtyards. The success of St. Florian, for me, was that the architects had avoided the use of too much gold. White remained the dominant color for the walls, the ceilings, the staircases, the fountains, even for the stuccowork. So there was nothing forbidding about St. Florian. There were no secrets. You felt welcome.
The one exception was the graveyard, which, for a reason I never discovered, boasted hundreds of headstones in black, shiny marble. But that only made the white of the monastery itself seem cleaner still.
Konstanze had been startled by her first sight of the monastery from across the plain. She had asked me to stop the car so that she could take in the view. The village was empty as we drove the car up the narrow street, the only street, to the gate in the wall. All was quiet.
We entered by the Prandtauer gate. Konstanze was now able to recognize the great man’s work. It was an elaborate construction, in stone, of partially clothed figures, complicated balconies and architraves. The gate opened into the large courtyard where, on the right, could be seen the great staircase. Its whiteness and its grace were striking as it rose in three regular installments with a balustrade of gleaming marble carved in curves and curls. Yew trees and fountains of stone fish occupied the center of the courtyard. We stood there staring at the splendor surrounding us. I could see already that Konstanze was moved.
“It’s bea
utiful, Walter. So friendly.”
“Yes. It’s proportions have a lot to do with that. Compared with other buildings, St. Florian is low and long, more like an American building than a European one. I love it.”
We mounted the great staircase, passing through some black, complicated wrought-iron gates on our way up to a light, white gallery with white stucco everywhere and frescoes in yellow and pale green on the ceiling. The gallery ran the entire length of one side of the courtyard and, at the end, led to a balcony overlooking the main hall of the monastery, the Kaisersaal. Facing south, this hall was suffused in an extraordinary light, thanks to a large window made up of hundreds of tiny green-yellow and purple patches. Even on an April day the room had the air of a glade, deep in a forest, in autumn. It was cool, the colors suited the silence, perfect for prayer.
St. Florian is famous for its library. It has a wonderful collection of literature, mainly Christian, of course, but not entirely. This was one area of religion in which I was more knowledgeable than Konstanze and I was able to introduce her to a number of Crusade stories which took her interest and to which, I knew, she would return as soon as she got the chance.
Finally, we came to the church itself. This, too, was white, except for an elaborate cornice of gold running around the entire building high, high up. The ceiling of the church, including its saucer dome, was covered in frescoes predominantly in yellow. “Rottmayr,” said Konstanze, spotting his style straightaway.
The flowers on the altar were white and red and yellow, and if flowers could glow that’s how these appeared. Konstanze seemed about to pray. Before she could do so, however, I said in a loud, clear voice (I no longer whispered in churches), “Turn around, look above, behind you.”
She did. The enormous black gate, like the lace on the dress she had worn to the concert, stood out at the back of the nave against the natural cream of the stone. It was highlighted in gold here and there but otherwise was like an enormous cobweb woven by an inspired spider.
