The sun has left the room now. Quite suddenly, it’s twilight, and I get up to switch on the lamp. Spidery shadows reach out to us from the corners of the room, edging across the parquet floor, each minute a little closer.
‘You really can’t tell from the picture,’ I say again. Feeling he needs to know this – that this is an important lesson for life. ‘You can only find out by listening to the story. Sometimes, you can’t tell if somebody’s good or bad till the story ends,’ I say.
But he won’t accept this. He frowns.
‘It shouldn’t be so hard to tell, Fräulein Stella,’ he says.
18
Janika is singing in Hungarian. Her music is quite different to the music I know; this isn’t like Rainer singing Schubert. There’s a wildness in her singing. It makes you think of harsh, far-off places where winter lingers; of the loneliness of voices heard over water, and the note of lamentation you can sometimes hear on the wind.
Heat from the range wraps around me as I go through the kitchen doorway. Janika is at the sink, perched on a high wooden stool. She’s peeling potatoes, now and then dipping her knife in the sink, to sluice away bits of potato skin.
‘Fräulein Stella. Would you like some hot chocolate?’
‘No, thank you, Janika. I just wanted to ask you something.’
‘Ask away, Fräulein Stella.’
‘Lukas talks a lot about Fräulein Verity,’ I say, and hesitate. I have a sudden misgiving, remembering how anxious Janika seemed when we talked about this before. ‘He’s upset that she left so suddenly. That she never sent him a letter after she went…’
Janika glances round sharply at me, but doesn’t stop her potato-peeling.
‘Well, I think she did write, Fräulein Stella. I think she sent several letters, with pictures of London,’ she says.
‘Lukas told me she didn’t.’
Janika looks over my shoulder at something for a long moment.
‘The thing is, Frau Krause decided not to show the letters to Lukas. She talked to me about it.’
Her voice is fragile and hushed.
I’m shocked.
‘So Fräulein Verity wrote to him – and Frau Krause never told him?’
Janika nods.
‘She felt the letters might upset him. That they would just remind him,’ she says.
My mind is full of protest. Marthe should have read Lukas the letters; she shouldn’t have kept them from him.
Janika’s eyes are veiled. There’s a look in her face that’s hard to read: I wonder if it is shame. But I don’t understand why she should feel this – when none of it was her fault.
I long to ask again about the Krauses’ reason for sacking Verity. But I sense that Janika won’t tell me anything more.
We are quiet for a moment. I can hear the flurry of waterdrops from Janika’s knife and her hands. She hums a fragment of song, half under her breath.
‘That song you keep singing, Janika. I was wondering what it’s about…’
Janika turns to face me; her soft brown eyes are veiled.
‘It’s about a young woman who loses her sweetheart,’ she tells me. ‘She dies, and they bury her under a willow tree. There seem to be a lot of songs that tell of something like that.’
‘Yes, there do,’ I say.
‘We used to sing that song in my village.’
‘I’d love to know more about your village, Janika.’
‘What would you like to know?’ she asks me.
‘Tell me what you enjoyed about living there…’
She thinks for a moment. A small smile plays on her face.
‘Well, the storks would come in April,’ she tells me. ‘That was a special moment for us. We’d see their great procession over the sky, their legs as red as sealing wax, and they’d make their nests in our chimney pots. They were birds of good omen to us. We thought they brought us good luck.’
I’m intrigued by omens.
‘What did people believe in, in your village, Janika?’
‘The Good Lord and Our Lady and all the saints,’ she tells me. ‘Everyone went to church on Sundays. Dressed in their very best clothes…’ She thinks for a moment. ‘But people were often frightened. Back in my village, there were so many things to be afraid of,’ she says.
‘Afraid?’
‘People feared the evil eye. If a good thing happened, you wouldn’t boast about it, so as not to attract the evil eye. And we thought it was dangerous to praise a child too highly,’ she says.
I understand this. The fear that a good thing will be snatched from you, if you talk about it too much.
‘If your child was sick, you would bathe him in coaly water,’ she goes on, ‘and wipe him dry with the hem of your apron, to avert the evil eye.’
‘Oh.’ This fascinates me. ‘Tell me more, Janika.’
She pauses in her potato peeling. In the silence between us, you can hear the shuffle and shifting of coals in the range.
‘There was a story about our village,’ she says then. ‘My grandmother told it to me. Maybe you’d like to hear it?’
‘Oh, please.’
‘Well. There was once an old man in our village who kept himself to himself, who lived on the edge of the forest. My grandmother knew him.’
There’s something secret in her voice. Goosebumps come all over my arms, like when you hear the best fairytales.
‘One winter, a wolf came close to the village and killed a lot of the sheep. It was a great big beast, but cunning: no one could get near it. Then one of the farmers shot it – just catching its paw, just wounding it, so it limped off into the trees. There was a trail of black blood in the snow, there were great black gobbets of blood.’ Her voice has a thrill in it, sending shivers through me. ‘Later, they found the old man in his hut on the edge of the forest. He was dead, he’d bled to death from a terrible wound to his leg. And after that the sheep were safe … My grandmother told this to me.’
‘Oh, goodness me.’
‘So, Fräulein Stella. What do people fear where you come from? Do they fear the werewolf and the evil eye?’
I think to myself, What do people fear in England? What do people fear in Brockenhurst?
‘I don’t think they fear those kinds of things. You know – unseen things. Well, not quite in that way.’ I think for a moment. ‘I think they believe that bad things won’t happen as long as you are reasonable. As long as you are sensible. People believe a lot in common sense, in England,’ I say.
Janika is thoughtful.
‘The world is a strange place, Fräulein Stella. We don’t understand the half of it,’ she says.
‘No, I suppose not.’
But she can hear my hesitation. She can tell I don’t share her sense of the mysteriousness of things.
‘When you’re young and lovely like you,’ she tells me, ‘the world is yours for the taking, and you think you can understand it. But as you get older, the world becomes stranger,’ she says.
I’m still thinking about her story. I don’t believe it, of course. Don’t believe it really happened – not quite in that way. But it still fascinates me.
I think of my conversation with Lukas. It shouldn’t be so hard to tell.
‘The man who was the werewolf, who did all those terrible things. Did your grandmother really know him?’
She nods.
‘What did he look like, Janika? What kind of a man was he? Was there anything different about him?’
She frowns slightly.
‘She said there was nothing you’d notice. He was scruffy, but very polite. He had his dog and his vegetable patch. He liked a pipe and a glass of korte in the evening,’ she says. ‘Korte is our pear brandy.’
‘So there was nothing different at all?’
‘Not so as you’d notice. My grandmother said he was just an ordinary man.’
‘Oh.’
As I get up to go, I’m aware of the way she glances at me, the questioning look in her eyes.
&
nbsp; ‘I was wondering – I hope you don’t mind me asking, Fräulein Stella – but do you have a young man in Vienna? Are you stepping out with someone?’
‘Yes. Yes, I am.’
She smiles: she’s pleased with herself.
‘I thought as much. You’ve got that glow,’ she tells me.
I worry she’ll tell Marthe – and I’m not quite ready for that.
‘The thing is, Janika – I haven’t talked to Frau Krause yet,’ I say.
I see the doubt that shadows her face. I can tell this really worries her.
‘It’s just all so new,’ I tell her hastily. ‘It’s like that thing you told me, about the evil eye. When a good thing happens, sometimes you want to keep it close for a while – to keep it secret.’
Janika nods, as though accepting this. But I can tell she’s still a little anxious; she puts up a hand and fingers the crucifix at her throat.
‘And is he a kind man, your sweetheart?’ she says.
‘Yes. Very kind.’
‘You cherish him, that young man of yours,’ she tells me.
I smile. This seems so obvious.
‘Oh, I do, of course I do.’
I leave her peeling the potatoes and singing her song of lost love.
19
As we climb the stairs to the attic room, the music is still in my mind – Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with its ecstatic choral setting of Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy’. I can hear the high triumphant voices.
He closes the door to the room behind us.
Today, I am bolder. I go to him and start to unbutton his shirt, push it off his shoulders. When I press my face to his neck, I breathe in his scent of cedar and the musk of his skin. I move my hand down his body, and feel him harden as I encircle him with my hand. I hear his breathing quicken, and this delights me.
He pulls me down onto the mattress. He rests his hand between my thighs; he flutters his fingers, startling me. I feel the thrill go through me. My back suddenly arches; I hear my voice crying out. He moves on top of me, moves gently in me; this time, there’s only the faintest thread of pain. I feel fluid, open, part of him.
Afterwards, he says, ‘Did you enjoy that, darling? I think you enjoyed it…’
I murmur something. I can’t quite speak yet.
I lie with my head against him, feeling the slowing beat of his heart, as though his heart is my heart. Above us, just the night sky. Tonight, we don’t talk about Dr Freud; we don’t talk at all for a while. It’s cold, the sky is clear; the stars seem nearer, so big and so bright. My life astonishes me; that I am here in Vienna, here with my love, in this bed beneath the high windows, with above us all the constellations sliding through the sky. The ‘Ode to Joy’ sings on in me, and I have the sensation that this room is floating away, like a cloud; that we’re not tethered to the world here. As though all the bad things in the world – the wars, the rumours of wars – all those things are way beneath us. As though those things can’t reach us here.
We hear Harri’s family coming home.
Later, when we go down, there’s a little girl at the dining table. The table-lamp is lit, and she sits in a pool of tangerine light. She’s drawing with wax crayons.
Harri goes to the kitchen to talk to Eva. The little girl looks up; her face is bright with curiosity.
‘Are you Stella?’ she says.
She has soft black hair, the kind of hair that makes corkscrew curls in the wet, and her eyes are dark, like Harri’s. Her gaze is very direct.
‘Yes. And you must be Lotte.’
‘They let me stay up late, so I could meet you,’ she says.
‘Well, I’m glad.’
‘You’re going out with my brother,’ she says.
‘Yes.’
I sit beside her, to look at her drawing. It’s exactly the kind of picture I used to do at her age – girls in elaborate clothes, with complicated hairstyles.
‘That’s a very good drawing,’ I tell her. ‘Especially this lady. Look at her fancy shoes.’
Lotte considers her picture.
‘They’re all right, I suppose. But they’re not as good as Gabi’s. Gabi can draw much better shoes than me. And horses. Gabi draws brilliant horses,’ she says.
‘Is Gabi your very best friend?’
Lotte nods.
‘Gabi can do cartwheels. And once she brought a spider to school in a jar, to frighten the boys.’ Her voice is full of admiration.
‘Did it work? Were they frightened?’
She has an enchanting smile, like Harri’s.
‘She took the spider out and they all ran away.’
‘Did she get in trouble?’ I ask.
‘She got the cane but she didn’t cry. And she wrote a bad word on the blackboard when the teacher was out of the room…’ Lotte’s voice fattens with pride.
‘Gabi sounds good fun,’ I tell her.
I feel a rush of affection for this luminous little girl, who looks so like my lover. Tonight, everything delights me.
She gives me a quizzical look.
‘Does my brother love you?’ she asks me.
I don’t know how to answer.
‘You’ve gone all red,’ she tells me.
‘Oh dear.’ I put my hand to my face.
‘Don’t worry. I think he does. I think he does love you,’ she says.
‘Well…’
‘I’m sure he does. Why wouldn’t he? You’re much nicer than his last girlfriend was,’ she tells me limpidly.
All the questions I could ask her are rushing into my mind. Who was she? What did she look like? How much did Harri love her? But I try to push them away from me. I don’t know if I’d like Lotte’s answers. I refuse to think about something so troubling, on this perfect day.
20
I work so hard at my piano-playing. And I know my playing is improving, that now I play more expressively – as if being in love with Harri has freed me in some way. Though Dr Zaslavsky gives me scarcely any encouragement.
I am always nervous going to my lesson. I will play what I have prepared; he’ll listen, immaculate in his formal, old-fashioned clothes, his body crooked with arthritis, and hunched, as though he feels all the weight of his years.
Afterwards, he’ll be silent for a moment, his frown deepening. My heart will thud, as I wait for his judgement.
Then he’ll tell me what I did wrong.
‘The melodic line here is lumpy, Fräulein Whittaker. The notes sound like separate things.’
I’m upset. I don’t want to be lumpy.
‘The notes must meld together, must all be one,’ he says.
He reaches out to the keyboard, plays a short phrase. I know this action must hurt him. But his phrasing is ravishing – the way he lingers over the music, as though he’s caressing the notes.
He leans back, slightly breathless. In the clear light through the window of the studio, I can see all the lines on his face, where life has eroded him and worn him away, like a river washing over stones. And his eyes, darkly gleaming.
‘This is the mystery of what we do,’ he tells me. ‘A piano is nothing but an assemblage of hammers. Yet we take this percussive instrument, and make it sing,’ he says.
Another time, he tells me, ‘The phrasing is lazy here, Fräulein Whittaker.’
How can he call me lazy, when I’ve worked so hard on this piece, practising for hours in the Rose Room?
‘People think because it is Chopin, they can distort the phrasing and pull it around anyhow. They think they can be lax. But there must still be precision. Passion can never be expressed with sloppy phrasing,’ he tells me.
I’m curious, when he talks about passion; I wonder what passion he has known. He never talks about anything but music: his students are everything to him. Are there other people in his life – perhaps a wife, a child? Did he bring a woman from Odessa with him? I think not. There’s something so self-possessed about him – he seems at heart a solitary man.
Sometimes I’m angry
with him. Can’t he give me just a little praise? But at least he’s setting me wonderful music, not just the Czerny studies. I learn lots of Chopin – the F minor Fantaisie, the A flat Impromptu, and some Mazurkas; the ‘Suite Bergamasque’ by Debussy; the mellifluous Liszt Etude that is called ‘Un Sospiro’, A Sigh.
I learn the Chopin ‘Berceuse’, that tenderest of cradle-songs. The left-hand part is so simple, the same in every bar; it has the lilt of a cradle, gently rocking. While the right-hand part is all ornament, like water that shimmers and ripples on a night of full moon, an exquisite glimmery surface over depth on depth of dark.
I practise conscientiously; and in my lesson, I’m so sure I’ve played it well.
He frowns.
‘There’s something lacking, Fräulein Whittaker,’ he says.
Well, of course there would be.
‘You see – perhaps this piece is hard to play, when you are young,’ he says. ‘There has to be stillness in it. Young people cannot be still. You have to find that stillness inside yourself.’
I feel like a child, when he says this. I try to understand it, but I don’t really know what he means.
I play the Chopin Fantaisie, and he gives me a little cautious praise.
‘This playing was technically much improved, Fräulein Whittaker.’
I have a moment of guarded satisfaction.
But of course it’s still not good enough.
‘You need a sense of the architecture of the piece, to hold its shape in your mind. Music is one of the temporal arts. And as with all art that exists in time, nothing matters more than the ending. The piece must feel like a whole, so the ending will come at just the right time.’
But this is too difficult for me.
21
Every weekend, Harri takes me out.
‘I’m going to show you my city,’ he says.
We take the tram to Schönbrunn Palace, and wander in its grounds, across immaculate lawns, between clipped formal hedges. There’s a little zoo, and a Palm House. Harri shows me the spring of water from which the place takes its name, watched over by a marble nymph; she has a demure expression, but her clothes are falling from her.
He takes me into the Palm House, which smells of sweet pollens and wet rotting things. There are orchids, their blooms like gaping mouths, and fleshy arum lilies. Parrots whistle in an aviary, and water drips into a pool. It’s like entering a different country. It makes me think of the Cranach painting in the Kunsthistorisches Museum – the Garden of Eden with all its lavish fruits and birds.
The English Girl Page 10
