or rather feelings were, as soundlessly, in the narrow confines of the
alcove, she unpacked her few possessions. When those designed for the
lower drawer of the little chest were laid in, it stuck obstinately in
a three cornered way as she tried to close it. The upper one had proved
to be still full of old letters, postcards and photographs. A faded
reminder of Heinie and Irma with knapsacks and alpenstocks off on their
honeymoon in the Dolomites, caught her eye, which was further held by a
likeness of her unsuspecting self staring at her from under an oak in
the Stadtpark at Baden, with Anna's baby, the first-born grandchild on
her knee. And _this_ was to what it was all leading up she thought in
unaccustomed irritation, as she gave another push to the lower drawer,
which went in with a jerk that left her breathless. When she wanted to
hang up her coat she found that she had to stand on the divan to reach
the nail. Her eyes taking in the details of that very evident tent of
a night were at their palest, scarcely a trace of blue left in them.
She was quite alone. Irma waiting impatiently to open the door for
her sister-in-law's belated arrival had almost immediately departed
to engage in the protracted and militant operation of marketing. The
three boys were at school. Irma's welcome had been hasty and without
warmth. The room itself was cold with the insidious chill of a room
in a damp climate that has not had a fire in it since the day before.
The white porcelain stove, as Frau Stacher stepped shiveringly over
to it possessed not even a reminder of heat, though she put her hands
knowingly on certain tiles, hoping possibly to find one still warm from
the previous evening. Irma never lighted the fire till the boys got
back in the afternoon. She herself would sit at her embroidery frame
with a round, grey, stone bottle of hot water, wrapt in a piece of old
flannel, in her lap. Frau Stacher tried to think that the place would
be warmer in many ways when the boys came home.
Then the cuckoo clock struck eleven hollow strokes and hurriedly she
began to lay out her very best things to wear to Liesel's. Liesel
adored good clothes and always noticed what people wore. A large part
of her conversation was about making over old things or the possibility
of getting new ones, and the discussion of what was being worn that
season and might be worn the next could induce in her sensations
bordering on rapture.
Frau Stacher was still wearing for "best" with a measure of decency,
some stancher remnants of the years of plenty. She now proceeded to put
on her black cloth suit with the embroidered black and white lapels,
the last thing she had bought before her "crac," arranging softly
about her neck, which was already encircled by a bit of narrow black
velvet, a certain piece of oft-washed and much-mended old lace that
she had worn for twenty years, pinning it with an oxydized silver bar
pin on which was stamped "Karlsbad," unlosable, valueless relic of a
journey in the happier days. She carefully brushed her black hat, with
its purple velvet knot faded into grey, giving it a few supplementary
pinches and pats before putting it on, instinctively at an angle that
was dignified, even becoming; then she rolled tightly her black cotton
umbrella and drew on her neatly darned black gloves. She paused on
the threshold to give a strange, pale glance about the familiar room
become suddenly not only unfamiliar, but odious. The cold north light
lay whitely upon it, bringing out every thread in the worn spots of the
old rug, by the door, under the table, as you went into the kitchen;
she remembered that Heinie's feet had had their part in wearing them
threadbare, Heinie now seven years in his grave. There by the window
was the unwieldy, red upholstered armchair that he had sat in all
through that last winter of his life, with smooth, shining, dark spots
on the arms and at the top. She shivered again but this time it was
not from the cold of the room. As she passed out, her arms held more
closely than ever to her sides, her head very erect, her little pride
all indeed that she had left to her out of a whole life full of things,
she still looked the Frau Commercial Advisor Stacher, born von Berg.
Her gentility was ineffaceable.
* * * * *
Liesel was busy in the tiny kitchen when her aunt rang gently,
apologetically. As she opened the door an entrancing smell,
unmistakably of fresh noodles in fresh butter, was wafted on the air.
It wasn't the sort of scent that hung around Frau Kerzl's apartment
nor about Irma's. Frau Stacher found herself sniffing it up eagerly,
and certainly Liesel's warm welcome fittingly accompanied it. Where
on earth did Liesel get the butter? she was thinking as she felt her
niece's bright cheek against hers and her soft breast warmly near. Her
spirits began to rise. She was momentarily out of sight and hearing of
the combat for food, enveloped sustainingly in that delightful union of
scents--above lilies and roses--fresh flour, fresh, warm butter! Her
heart was suddenly flooded with an immense gratitude, not alone for the
food, as she returned the soft embrace.
It was a comfortable little living room into which she then stepped,
crowded with furniture, mostly Biedermayer, that had belonged to Otto's
mother and his grandmother before her. Mellow, pale brown furniture
decorated here and there with a black motif. A writing desk, with high
shelves and glass doors destined for books, now held a mauve and
white tea-set in old Vienna ware. A green porcelain stove stood in one
corner and was beginning to give forth its gentle heat. Liesel lighted
it about an hour before Otto returned and then all day long into the
evening it could be depended on to give out generously its pleasant,
even warmth. Between it and the window were Otto's armchair and his
special stool for his lame leg, near it a little table with a rack for
his pipes, his wallet of tobacco and a box of Trabucos. Otto _had_ to
have his cigar after supper and when luxuriously he had smoked it he
would pull at his pipe and read the _Wiener Journal_ or perhaps get out
his flute. They talked of renting a piano when things got better and
then Liesel could play his accompaniments. After busy days, pleasant
evenings. Liesel's deft fingers were always at work salvaging something
old,--her darning was famous in the family, or smartly fashioning
something new. She had a way of standing in front of him and asking
him if the stripes were more becoming across or up and down, or she
would sit in his lap and ask him if his treasure could wear her dress
as short as _that_, only so much stuff, every centimeter counted, that
enchanted his uxorious soul. He would pinch her ankles and say that
anybody who wore a 35 shoe could do as she liked, or as far up as the
police permitted, and Liesel would be delighted and laugh and laugh.
After hearing what had happened at the Ministry, she would tell of
those even more vitally interesting visits to provision shops, where
evidently the tradespeople liked to see her, and as far as was wise she
would let him into the secret of her ways of ferreting out the little
that was hidden; her ready smile, those two soft dimples and her even
softer brown eyes counting for much in such operations. Once, but that
was in the very beginning, she had started to tell Otto of the quite
fresh remarks of the cheesemonger--a good-looking fellow--but he'd
pouted for two days and though secretly Liesel was gratified by these
signs of jealousy--once in awhile, like that--in the end she wisely
kept the not at all displeasing personal attentions she received while
marketing to herself.
Liesel had no books and never dreamed of opening the
newspaper,--world-events were nothing to her. After supper as she
sewed, Otto would sometimes read her amusing bits under the caption
"Around about the Globe": "A dangerous Don Juan," "The most useful
tree in the world," "The Adonis of the American film world," "Solemn
mourning for a cat," and such like. Liesel adored cats. She wanted a
cat, a piano and a baby; otherwise she had really little left to wish
for.
Occasionally they followed a case through the criminal courts,
especially if it had an amusing side. Liesel loved to laugh and laugh
she often did in the weeping city.... And a jewel robbery made her
eyes shine. But Liesel's real use for newspapers was to soak them in
water, then roll them into tight balls and set them to dry. They made
excellent fuel, one or two, put knowingly into the porcelain stove
with a couple of briquets. There were always a few drying on the
window-ledge in the kitchen.
Otto's own reactions to the problems of the Fatherland as set forth in
the Press were not much more vigorous than his wife's. When he read of
a new difficulty he would in his mind straightway blame some far-off,
unreachable individual or circumstance for the national misfortunes in
general and particular. He had then done all that could be required of
him; effort was ended and he was quits with the situation. He didn't
blame openly the Republic, he got his living and his Liesel's from it
as from the Monarchy, and he rarely used the now familiar expression
"Dos homma von da Republik," (that's the fault of the Republic) but he
thought it. It was, further, a source of evils, that he, Otto Steiner,
could not be expected to purify. What, indeed, could he do about the
Republic, about the Jews, about the Freemasons, about the Exchange?
Nothing, quite evidently nothing, and it let him comfortably out of all
responsibility. He just kept on at his work, came home to his Liesel,
who in turn pursued her agreeable and busy round of making him happy.
So endless were the combinations and strategies involved in this once
simple matter that she had her hands and time full.
She felt very sorry for her Tante Ilde, losing her money and being
old and alone, for Kaethe and her children, for Irma and the boys,
and sometimes she took them things to eat. Quite often she found her
way to Mizzie's shop where she was always sure of a warm welcome, for
undeniably Liesel understood the niceties of Mizzi's business. She
sometimes even thought of going in with her, but she felt that she
was, momentarily at least, better employed in using Otto's salary
to the fullest advantage, and "with things as they are," (which was
Liesel's nearest approach to intellectual participation in the national
misfortunes) _that_ took all her time and thought. Standing in those
everlasting cues, running as she said, "from Pontius to Pilatus,"
bringing everything home herself, though the aged porter at the corner
of the Kohlmarkt and the Wallnerstrasse always helped when it was a
question of coals, glad to serve once more a handsome woman,--handsome
in the traditional way he so thoroughly understood. Liesel would
listen, quite truly interested, as they walked along to his tales of
other days when gentlemen were "cavaliers" and ladies hard to win; of
whilom young attachés at the not distant Foreign Office, that imposing
Ballplatz, who had been wont to send him with love letters and flowers
and bonbons. The telephone had given the first blow to such romantic
expressions of love; and as for the War and the Peace, they were
equally and finally calamitous....
She could well afford to greet her aunt lovingly, and her "dearest
aunties" and her "how sweet you look" and her "I'm so glad to have
you," came gushingly out of the abundance of her heart. She was so
happy that she could add cheer to her food without the slightest effort.
The table was already spread. Aunt Ilde's involuntary though delicate
glance showed her three places set, just the same for all; three wine
glasses, three plates, three knives even, (on those knife-rests that
she had so fortunately added to the coffee spoons and napkin rings when
Liesel was married,) knives meant meat, but she then and there made up
her mind not to take any--perhaps a little wine. The carafe stood on
the table filled with a Voslauer, a pleasant, light, open wine, gently
quite gently warming to the stomach. It grew on those very slopes about
Baden.
Then she bethought herself cheerfully of the moment, when she would say
to Liesel: "Now you stay with Otto, I'm going to do the dishes, but I
must have an apron."
She had taken her things off and hung them up on one of the pegs in
the little hallway. She had wished even as she did so that she didn't
have to leave them there. They'd be the first things Otto would see and
perhaps ... But such misgivings and some others had given way before
that delicious odor and Liesel's warm welcome. She looked so pretty,
so appetizing, in that big, pink apron. As she went back into the
kitchen her aunt could hear her singing an old waltz from the "Graf von
Luxenburg," "Bist meine liebe, kleine Frau."
Frau Stacher had for a moment the illusion that she was still living at
Baden and that she had only come in for the day. There, too, was her
little inlaid worktable that had belonged to her own mother and that
Liesel had taken for safe-keeping when the house was given up. She'd
always kept her wools and her fine darning in it and Liesel did the
same.
"Can't I help?" she asked, as she continued to look at it, rent by a
sudden, terrible homesickness, that made her voice quite weak.
"No, you just sit quiet and rest. Everything is ready. It's time for
Otto to come, anyway," Liesel answered with a look at her wrist watch.
"He's always to the minute. He only has an hour for dinner and must
find everything ready."
Indeed as she spoke the rattle of a key was heard at the front door.
She flew to it. There were the unmistakable, immemorial sounds of
embracing and then a whispered word from Liesel.
"Ach, yes, yes," Tante Ilde heard him answer.
He had hung up his green plush hat with the little grey feather at the
back on its own invariable peg, had divested himself of his overcoat,
with its rather high, tight belt and hung it up on the next by Tante
Ilde's hat and coat, just as she had known he would, but without the
inhospitable thoughts her humility had attributed to him. As he entered
he was combing his hair and moustache with his little pocket comb and
smiling his somewhat fatuous smile.
Otto Steiner was the son of a small government official, the grandson
of one. He had gone into the Ministry of Agriculture when he was
eighteen, and had been there seven years, when at a certain hour the
war found him, in a certain room, at a certain desk, bending over
a certain big ledger. And out of that secure and dusty routine, as
natural to him as breathing, he had been thrown to the Russian front,
then to the French front where he had been wounded. He had been healed
and thrown to the Italian front, every nerve in his body making its
agonized appeal against going through certain perfectly definite
horrors again. He was thankful when his knee, which was supposed to
be quite cured, began once more to stiffen and swell, when in a short
time quite certainly he wouldn't be able to get about and they'd have
to send him home. Then before he could be demobilized he had been taken
prisoner and put in that Italian camp where his feet had frozen. Such
strange things to happen to one who found his pleasure as well as his
daily bread in those dusty ledgers, and whose conversation was largely
made up of references to "Das Ministerium." It was one of the first
words he remembered from his childhood days, as familiar as "guten
Morgen."
Now after all the agonies, the incredible agonies, it had been
granted to him, out of so many who had been heaped in nameless graves
everywhere in Europe, to be coming into his own home from that very
same Ministry, greeted by that delightful odor of food, prepared by a
beloved, loving and lovely wife. "I'm certainly lucky," he often said
to himself and asked no further grace of heaven than to grow old in the
Ministry, moving slowly, as his forbears had moved, up through various
rooms, indicative of various grades.
He was pale and wore eye-glasses. His face was the somewhat
round-cheeked face of the average Viennese, with rather small nose and
rather full lips under a brown moustache. Unmistakably a government
employee who would set no river on fire but could be depended on to go
his serviceable little way, hour by hour, day by day, year by year ...
the traditional "rond de cuir."
There were always rumors of reducing the number of employees, but
Steiner's work was so exact, his handwriting and figures so beautifully
neat, that he was as safe as anybody in those unsafe days. He could,
furthermore, answer any question put to him by any superior, even
the strange questions of new men, who, momentarily "protected," came
into the Ministry in the upper grades, passing in and then out. The
administration was fairly snowed under by employees. It was reckoned
often, (not, however, by those employed, they kept such statistics as
much as possible to themselves) that 750,000 out of the 2,500,000 lived
on and by the different departments of government. But mostly their
positions were no more secure than yellowing leaves in Autumn. A gust
of zeal on the part of some one high up and they fell in showers from
the governmental tree, disappearing into the dark, wet, windy streets
of hyemal Vienna. The question with each and every one was how to hang
on....
Hydrocephalous Austria, with that terrible will to live! A mangled
trunk supported its great head, Vienna. The members through which the
blood should have circulated had been lopped off, the head was growing
bigger, sicker....
But Otto Steiner wasn't thinking of any of these things as he greeted
his aunt Ilde. He saluted her affectionately; some not very urgent
realization that she "had had it hard" put an additional cordiality
into his voice. He was further melted by the odor of those fresh
noodles and hot butter just as she had been.
A sizzling sound, like sweetest music, coming from the kitchen, next
fell on their ears. Liesel disappeared anxiously.
"What have you got today?" he cried through the door, "do I really
smell noodles and butter? I'm just dying of hunger!"
A moment after, Liesel, divested of her pink apron, in the neatest
one-piece dark blue dress, a red leather belt holding it snugly about
her waist, appeared rosily bearing a smoking black and white checkered
soup tureen. Little tendrils of dark hair lay softly, damply about her
brow, her dimples were very deep, her eyes very bright. She was sure of
that soup, cunningly made of left-over crusts of black bread, roasted
crisply in the oven and then ground up with a bountiful seasoning of
onions and various other more discreetly sustaining herbs. On that dark
January day it put heart into them all. Their spoons clicked joyously.
Then those shining noodles! Liesel had strewn over them the crispest
little heaps of fried crumbs. A very, very small golden-brown veal
cutlet was put closely, significantly by Otto's plate. Generally he and
Liesel halved their small bits of meat, but today she set the example
of taking none. It was plainly fitting that the wage-earner, the master
should have it all and more especially in those days when nourishment
was the first need, the last preoccupation. Above saving one's soul for
eternity was that of saving one's body for a span.
When the pale wine was poured out Liesel said sweetly:
"We must drink to Tante Ilde's health!" and Otto cried promptly,
"Prosit" looking at her affectionately through his pince-nez, across
the brim of his glass.
She began to feel herself a new woman. Food, youth, love, happiness,
the taste, the sight, the feeling of it all! Paradise in some way
regained. She forgot that she was there as a poor old relative, who
for decency's sake, had to have her breath kept yet awhile in her body
by the efforts and sacrifices of those of her blood; no, she was again
Tante Ilde of Baden who would soon say:
"Well, children, are you coming out to me for dinner on Sunday, and
will you have an Apfelstrudel or an apricot tart?"
Then Otto began to tell about the hard case of his friend, Karl
Schober, who though a war-cripple had been inexplicably dismissed
that very day. There were four cripples in Otto's room, for that is
where,--in the rooms of some Ministry, with a little "protection,"
they mostly and justly landed. After they had called it a shame, and
unbelievable, and had given a shudder, (being dismissed in those times
was like being condemned to death without the preliminary security of
prison) insensibly they fell to talking of other days. Tante Ilde, who
had forgotten nothing that had ever happened to any of the children,
began to tell the most interesting things about Liesel when she was
little. How she had fallen from the apple tree in the garden of the
Baden house and broken her wrist, and how Tante Ilde had held her other
hand when the doctor was setting the bone and that Liesel had been so
brave and hadn't cried, at which Otto leaned over and gave his wife
a pat on the arm. And the time she had taken Liesel to the races so
conveniently near; Liesel remembered that well, that was the day she
had first put her hair up and wore the lovely wine-colored dress with
little pleated ruffles and had gone out with her aunt Ilde as Fräulein
Bruckner instead of "die Liesel." They had put money on a certain Herr
Hafner's four year-old and Liesel had actually won 20 Krones!
Otto listened with his somewhat full lips parted, entranced by these
tales of his treasure's earliest youth, and all of a sudden they found
they had eaten everything there was on the table and drunk every drop
of wine, but they continued to sit for a while longer, pleasantly
engaged in picking their teeth and sucking in their tongues. Liesel
always did things well and kept the two little blue glass toothpick
holders filled. They had been given by Mizzi, who went so far and no
further in the matter of presents, even to some one she liked, on the
occasion of Liesel's marriage. When shown to the various members of the
family they had, one and all, wondered how Mizzi had had the face....
Then when Otto lighted his Trabuco, Tante Ilde found herself saying
just as she had planned:
"I'm going to do the dishes. You stay with Otto, but I must have an
apron."
Liesel had been very dear and had said:
"But no, Tante Ilde, you mustn't work when you come to us."
Suddenly her aunt's eyes had filled with tears:
"It would make me so truly happy," she entreated. Then Otto had cried:
"But yes, little goose, let Tante Ilde do as she will!"
So Liesel stayed with Otto and as Tante Ilde went in and out she could
hear them talking as if they hadn't seen each other for a week, trying
to decide if they would go, that very evening, to a cosy little cabaret
in the Annagasse, a stone's throw from their house and Liesel wear her
new pink dress; or whether they would go to the Circus Busch movie in
the Prater Stern, where it didn't matter what you wore and where they
were giving a wonderful moral drama in six acts called "Sinful Blood,"
and where they would hold hands in the dark just as if they weren't
going to spend the night together.
Tante Ilde herself even began to hum that waltz tune from the Graf von
Luxenburg, though she had long been nobody's "dear little wife."
When she was putting tenderly away in the tiny cupboard the white
plates with the gold "S" that Liesel was also "keeping" for her, she
got suddenly a quite unexpected whiff of the once familiar salami,
proceeding irrepressibly from a tightly-tied up little package.
"Sausage for Otto's supper!" she murmured to herself, and then wondered
if she were mistaken, though Liesel _was_ equal to anything ... but
all without any envy. She'd had a good meal, flavored with love and
happiness, and suddenly a thousand other thoughts and feelings pressed
in upon her that she'd forgotten existed. She was increasingly glad of
Liesel's youth and love, that out of the starving, mourning city she
had grasped her comfortable joy....
Finally Otto saying warmly, "auf Wiedersehen, Auntie," had given her a
sounding kiss on both cheeks, and placing several on Liesel's red lips
had contentedly limped off to the Ministry.