in the usual pleasingly expectant state with which she was wont to
approach her shop. As they neared it they saw a dark, stout, ponderous
female dressed in a thick, brown cloth suit, a heavy black hat with
waving ostrich plumes, a long sable scarf hung inelegantly about her
heavy shoulders, projecting herself cumbersomely from a much bebrassed
auto.
"That's one of them," said Mizzi, eagerly, greedily, "it's Frau Fuchs.
You'll die laughing, she doesn't know beans about anything, but that
big bag of hers is full of banknotes."
In a moment, Mizzi, in velvety accents was greeting Frau Fuchs as if
she were a queen. She touched appreciatively the sable scarf, lauded
its beauty, saying, "You certainly get the best of everything." Then
she turned and presented her aunt, Frau Kommerzienrath Stacher, born
von Berg. Mizzi laid it on thick, resting some of her 75 kilos on the
Kommerzienrath, adding the full weight of the others to the "von."
Then she proceeded to show Frau Fuchs a certain red velvet jacket
with a little gold border, and Frau Fuchs had gone into raptures over
it, and had said she must have it, and then her eye had lighted on a
leather hand bag ornamented with Irma's medallion of "petit point."
Though Frau Stacher recognized it, she was somehow not surprised to
hear Mizzi, as she drew attention to its workmanship, say that it had
been made by a certain Archduchess, positively starving, and Frau Fuchs
sniffing up the subtle perfume of royalty that Mizzi's words caused
to rise from the bag, had taken it eagerly. "No, is it true?" she had
cried in ecstasy, and had drawn her glove from her thick, beringed hand
and opened her humpy alligator skin bag with its loud green and gilt
clasp and counted out a sheaf of banknotes. Mizzi herself had wrapped
the bag and the dressing sack up in her finest paper and sent one of
the girls (the one who did the least good work) out to put the parcels
into Frau Fuchs' Mercedes.
"Isn't she awful?" said Mizzi when they were alone, "but without her
and a lot more like her, we'd starve. Her husband is stone-rich, has an
Exchange Bureau in the Kärntnerring. How she used to hate to pay out
the money! But I changed that, she's a bit afraid of me."
There was indeed something awe-inspiring at moments about Mizzi,
something that she could invoke to decide wavering purchasers. Then
still under the charm of Tante Ilde's gentle but quiet appreciation,
also under that of good business dispatched, Mizzi gave her a little
handkerchief. It had a yellow stain on it that they hadn't been able
to get out, still it was a handkerchief and a gift, and Tante Ilde
gratefully receiving the attention for much more than it was worth,
thought perhaps she had misjudged Mizzi.
It hadn't been at all bad going to her for dinner, except for that
terrible depression when she thought of Hermann. No, it hadn't been at
all bad that first time, and she repulsed certain lurking suspicions
that every week might prove too much for Mizzi's longanimity.
Then, too, she had good news to take back to Irma; the bag had been
sold, Mizzi had counted out the money that she had promised Irma for
the medallion, and though it didn't in the slightest correspond to the
price Mizzi had received for the bag, Tante Ilde could be trusted to
keep that hidden in her breast. Indeed Mizzi said it had cost her a
monstrous amount of money to get the bag mounted, that she didn't know
how she could afford to take anything else from Irma, she hadn't made
a kreutzer on that bag, she only did it to help Irma, etc., etc. No,
Tante Ilde didn't repeat from one to the other. Those little households
that day by day were spilling their secrets before her whom they
received in charity,--out of their goodness, out of their pity,--were
sacred to her.
That night, as she lay awake hearing Ferry's hacking little cough, she
was thinking almost entirely of the plight of Manny. Nothing had ever
been too much for Manny, when it came to doing something for some one
else and now.... If the time did come for Manny to be put somewhere,
Mizzi would have money to pay for him, and what she didn't do, why
Fanny, there was always Fanny. Down which ever miserable road of their
misfortunes they looked, Fanny glitteringly stood, Fanny dispensing
benefits generously, easily, not always wisely, after her own special
way. Tante Ilde suddenly felt she didn't understand the first thing
about life, and she had filled the three-score and ten of the allotted
span. When did one begin to understand?
V
THE EBERHARDTS
_Rallentando_
"Süsses Leben! Schöne, freundliche Gewohnheit des
Daseins und Wirkens! von dir soll ich scheiden!"
Frau Stacher had folded up the light brown camel's hair blanket with
the dark brown Greek border that she had slept under for years and
the sheets with the von B-S monogram and put them, together with the
equally familiar pillow on which her head now so uneasily lay, into
the divan and shut it down. Then she stood up on it and dusted the
flat white and gilt vase under the picture of Haydn leading the young
Mozart by the hand. Finally she pulled back the curtains of the alcove,
which last gesture always seemed to wipe her completely from the room,
somewhat as if she had been carried out in the final box. Her movements
were brisk, with a businesslike dispatch about them. She looked years
younger than when she had stood that afternoon gazing at the trolleys
clanging down Mariahilfer Street, and which, striking out their
noisy, powerful flashes of light, had seemed like heavenly chariots,
conveying certain fortunate ones, strongly, swiftly over immeasurable
cobbly and asphalt stretches to their homes, to their alcoves even, out
of sight and touch of the damp, cold misery of the streets.
She had put on her oldest suit, with the black and white stripes
without once thinking that it had always been a failure.
Business--pleasant business was engaging her attention. But she stood
at the door a moment too long, holding in one hand her umbrella, in the
other a large, brown, string bag. In her worn pocket-book was money to
buy wherewith to fill it. Her eyes were bright; in her cheeks was the
faintest pink. Irma was irritated in spite of herself at the sight of
that brisk fervor. She knew perfectly well the chronically desperate
situation of the Eberhardts, yet to see her sister-in-law stepping
lightly over the threshold with that bag in her hand, going out to
buy food that she, Irma, could well have used for her own children,
provoked an unreasoning envy. Frau Stacher had not dallied in face of
that sombre look, that terrible look, born of the brooding solicitude
about food, food, that seemed to hold but slightly in leash unnamable
things. She fled hastily before it. Only Irma's nerves. But she had
come to know a lot about Irma's nerves in those few days. Irma was
a beast of prey for her children. No one and nothing that came into
conflict with their interests had the slightest chance with her.
Ferry's cough seemed suddenly from one day to the other to get worse.
She had taken him to his Uncle Hermann, and his Uncle Hermann had said
to Irma in the back office, while Ferry turned over a sport journal of
eight years before in the front room:
"What's the use, Irma, he needs milk, eggs, high air."
Had he said pearls, diamonds, rubies, it would have been the same
to Irma. How not to sink to irrecoverable depths with that sinking
population of which they were a part, was Irma's one thought. The rent
was a small matter. For a long time she hadn't paid anything. At least
the "crazy government" prohibited turning families into the streets,
even if they didn't pay. All the government really wanted to know was
that every room of every apartment was filled to overflowing with
samples of the Viennese populace.
In that back office Hermann had further said, tentatively:
"Perhaps ... Fanny would send him away for a while."
Irma had tartly answered: "Fanny, it's always Fanny."
But all the same the suggestion, though annoying, had fallen on
fertile soil. She had been turning over certain possibilities, or
rather methods of approach for twenty-four hours and she was terribly
jumpy, ... if that slender, aging figure had stood a moment longer on
the threshold with that string bag, sign and symbol of marketing....
Nerves, nerves. After a moment Irma had gone on with her petit
point. She was putting the pale brown background around the delicate
moss-roses,--really quite lovely. Mizzi, for all she'd hum and haw,
would take it, but at her own price, Irma was reflecting bitterly. She
pulled the red shawl closer about her and bit off absent-mindedly a
piece of silk on a tooth that needed filling, then miserably, with a
groan, she continued her work. Tante Ilde had said something about her
own teeth that morning,--she had a loose front one that was beginning
to hurt unmercifully every time she took anything hot. But at _that_
age, Irma had thought disdainfully, what did it matter if they all fell
out? Money for a dentist at that age, in such times! Now she was full
of Ferry's need, of plans for him. She hadn't yet decided how to go
about the matter which presented certain undeniably delicate points.
Even Irma, obsessed by mother-love and mother-fear, was aware of their
delicacy.
* * * * *
The Eberhardts still lived in the apartment they had taken when they
married, on a street in the Alsergrund, near the University. It had
once seemed very big, magnificent even for two people,--now their
handsome, hungry children overflowed it.
The family had been very proud of Kaethe's distinguished young husband;
"a genius" they would always say impressively to less fortunate friends
when speaking of him, and dwell delightedly on Kaethe's relations with
the University and with certain distinguished people who visited Vienna
when the Kaiserstadt was a font of wisdom. Her husband was indeed
well-embarked on a brilliant career, any and all honours were possible;
Privy Counselor certainly, and later perhaps a "von" to his name. When
scientific Congresses met in Vienna, he was always called on to read
papers, and colleagues from other cities were eager to confer with
him. He often used to bring one or the other home with him for coffee,
proud of his smiling, soft-eyed, bright-cheeked wife, of his lovely
babies, his comfortable house. When things began to get bad, Kaethe
would tell the children what she used to have for the "Jause," that
extraordinary, incredible meal that came in the afternoon, _between_
other meals,--coffee and chocolate, with thick whipped cream, (the
now quite legendary "Schlagobers"), apple tarts with butter dough,
the fresh coffee cake, and certain little crescents that would fairly
melt in the mouth. The children were in the habit of asking their
exact color, shape and taste, they seemed quite unrelated to the War
and Peace bread that alone they were acquainted with, and certainly
they never could have sprung from the same harvest field. The real
difference between milk and cream, too, was an absorbing topic, and
they all loved Resl's joke that if it rained milk instead of water she
would be out all the time looking up with her mouth open, though Maxy
invariably reminded her that it would be better to take a pail and
bring a lot home and then everybody could have some. When Lilli learned
at school about the milky way, she taught them a game called living at
number 1 Milk Street. But lately they hadn't talked much of the "Jause"
of the old days, nor made so many little jokes. They were tired when
they got home from school and only errands connected with food had any
interest.
Though all of Herr Bruckner's family were musical in their easy way,
Kaethe had a real talent; she could not only play through by ear the
latest operette, but Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, with a sure yet fiery
touch. Eberhardt had played the 'cello since his boyhood. Sometimes
Kaethe, her fingers tapping out a measure on the table after the piano
went, would think with hot longing of certain quartettes to which those
walls of hers had once resounded. Poor Amsel who led them ... his
songs, written during a protracted period of starvation in a garret,
were now being sung everywhere; but he had been killed on the Eastern
front that very first month of the war,--he'd scarcely had time to
send back a postcard,--and had been buried with his talent and a half
a hundred luckless fellows in a huge mound, that had been promptly
flattened and all trace of it obliterated by a retreating army. And
Koellner, with his Amati violin. Kaethe often hummed a motif of that
Mozart trio and thought of herself at the piano, Koellner swaying
slimly, his eyes closed and the long black lock falling over his
forehead,--they hadn't seen him after the signing of the Peace. As for
Rosetti from Triest who played the viola, he hadn't been heard of since
the day before the mobilization, certain rumors got around about him....
But all these things were really as distant to the Eberhardts as the
Tertiary Period; they themselves had been thrown up by the convulsions
of War and Peace into strangely diversified, completely unrelated
strata.
For a long time, however, those bright days had left the glow of their
setting on the sombre war period. And then wars didn't last forever,
and when over, except for mourning mothers, things would doubtless be
as they had been. No one foresaw the Peace....
It had lasted four years, that first full, happy life, during which
time Kaethe had had three children,--Lilli a pansy-eyed, pale-haired
little girl, now grown too beautiful for safe adolescence, another
clever, dark child, Resl, and Maxy who had been a "sugar baby"
something to eat up, as he lay gurgling and cooing in his mother's arms.
The pendulum of Eberhardt's life had swung unvaryingly between that
beloved home and the equally beloved laboratory, where daily he pursued
hotly, closely, certain secrets of nature, always enchantingly about
to be caught; or with a warm note in his vibrant voice and a light in
his grey, speculative eye, communicated to eager students those he had
already seized....
On the 28th of June came the news of the assassinations at Sarajevo.
Unbelievable news; the Dual Monarchy shaken to its foundations. Its
heir, its keystone gone like that, in a foul moment. Still everybody
talked of the Emperor's grief, not dreaming that each, in one way or
another, would partake of that grief. They counted his many sorrows,
scarce one save poverty was missing; the Emperor's sorrows had always
been an absorbing theme; it had got so that there weren't enough
fingers on both hands to record them. This, and this, and this and
still this, had he suffered. Had not his son miserably perished by his
own hand--or another's? Had not his lovely Empress been assassinated?
Had not his brother been put to death in far off Mexico? Had not his
sister-in-law been burned to death in a Charity Bazaar? Had he not been
obliged to exile another brother from his court for nameless sins? Had
not another heir died of a dread disease? And other, other griefs. Now
this last, this fatal blow in his old age, personal, dynastic. Those
catastrophic griefs, heaped high with the years, in a way had become
a matter of pride to happy Austrians, and the unhappy ones because
of them, had a feeling of kinship with their beloved "Franzerl." Who
could have foretold that in five years they would seem remoter, less
interesting than those of some Roman Emperor?...
For a few weeks things seemingly went on just the same. Suddenly Europe
was in flames and from the conflagration no one could flee....
The first two years hadn't been so bad for the Eberhardts. The
Professor had been detailed for laboratory work in Vienna, and things
went on somewhat as they had been going. Two more children were born.
Then unexpectedly, through some tragedy of errors, Eberhardt found
himself in a delousing station on the Eastern front. By that time,
everybody was talking about hygiene as well as victory. But he was only
gone a few months, returning gaunt and white, a startled look in his
once thoughtful eye, and evidently quite unfit for further service.
He had been side-tracked for days with a dozen others, suffering from
dysentery, heaped together in a luggage van. No food, and worst of
all, no water. The whole first week after he had tottered in over the
threshold of his home he had said nothing, except repeat the word
"schrechlich"--terrible. Then, strangely, he got better, even well, and
went to the nearly empty University every day, trying to knot the torn
threads of learning. Then the terrible peace broke out. The war had
been bad enough, but it was war and unless one was killed one knew how
to take it. The peace was quite another matter, a starving, freezing
matter for women and children in city streets. The civilian population
was suddenly plunged into it, up to the neck in it.... That collapse
of the winter of 1919, ... that terrible food-blockade over half
Europe.... There was nothing to hope for, nothing to fight for except
bread, bread, bread, in ever-diminishing quantities. More were going
down in that battle in the windy city than before machine guns. Each
street was a battle-field, heaped mostly with children's bodies or the
bodies of the very old.
* * * * *
The Eberhardt's apartment was far, too, from the Hoher Markt, but not
far like the Mariahilfer street, Frau Stacher kept reminding herself as
she trudged along, her string bag full and her purse empty, and at the
end of the walk there would be darling Kaethe and the lovely, hungry
children.
It had not been easy, buying the most usual things, and the thin soup
of the night before, and the ersatz coffee of the early breakfast had
prepared her but illy for the venture. She had gone into various shops
where unholy prices or empty shelves confronted her, for Vienna had
mostly done its buying for the day when she started forth. It was late
when at last she found herself, quite worn out, hesitating in a certain
provision shop, between rice and lentils. One got a lot more of the
latter, but what were they unless cooked with a bit of bacon or fat
of some kind? And she was further confused by the sudden memory of a
certain smoking dish of lentils, with shining bits of pork laid around
the edge of the platter, that she had often served in the old Baden
days.
There were a good many people in the shop and not much time for
hesitating old ladies to make a final choice. Suddenly, tremblingly,
she decided to take the rice, while it was there to take, for quite
close to her, overtopping her, stood a large, hook-nosed, hard-eyed,
befurred woman who was evidently ready to swoop down upon it all.
Indeed, she was looking about her with an unmistakable look that could
only come from money, a lot of it, in her pocket, as if, indeed, she
could buy everybody as well as everything. No eggs, no butter, no fats
of any kind were in that shop, but as Frau Stacher was paying for the
rice, she suddenly saw on a lower shelf behind the counter an object
that, had it been set in gold, could not have been more attractive:
a tin of Nestlé's milk. She stammeringly asked for it, but as the
man, placing his hand almost affectionately on it named the exorbitant
price, and as trembling with excitement she was about to take it, the
large, befurred female cried out harshly:
"I'll give you double what the old woman is paying!"
The man,--what decency could be left in that fight for food, for
existence?--took it out of Frau Stacher's unresisting hand. A murmur
went up from those watching the unseemly operation. But the shop-keeper
only shrugged his shoulders, muttered something about the "pig" war,
the still piggier peace, and the stout woman, hastily paying for it,
departed to unmistakable allusions to "pig profiteers." That was the
kind of world gentle Frau Stacher was living in. It would have been a
frightening experience for her, but she, too, was armoured in that grim
determination to get food. The great city's fight was for food, not
against the enemy at the gates, but for the food that was at the gates,
and shoulder to shoulder in serried lines, they fought for it against
each other. She, Frau Stacher, once "rentier" in Baden, was fighting
for it. She was lucky to have got even the rice. Leaving the shop
she espied on the street corner a small fruit stand. Some shrivelled
apples, so evidently grown in the four winds, were being offered in
little piles of five, by a raw-boned peasant woman, whose hands were
wrapped under her small, three-cornered grey shawl, while she stamped
from foot to foot.
Frau Stacher remembered longingly the beautiful Tirolese fruit that had
filled the Vienna markets in the days of plenty. Corinne had lately
had a letter from the adopted daughter Jella, married to her tall,
blue-eyed, yellow-haired, square-headed Tiroler, now Italian, saying
that the fruit that autumn had lain rotting on the ground. There was no
way of getting it over the frontiers, those invisible but none-the-less
impregnable walls that had been suddenly built up around Vienna, north,
south, east and west. Fruit and grain, sugar and fats could not pass
over them nor get through them.
Now those little apples, even on that raw day, had a strange
fascination for Frau Stacher, out of all proportion to their merits.
They certainly resembled in no way the full, rosy-cheeked specimens she
had been wont to pass out to visiting nieces and nephews and into which
white teeth would promptly, juicily crunch, but they were a reminder, a
symbol of them. She longed foolishly once more to see white teeth dig
into apples. She bought hesitatingly a little pile, obviously she had
lost her nerve about shopping for food since it had become a matter of
life or death; in the old days she had been a lavish provider.... Not
much more than a mouthful in each apple, and certainly they wouldn't
be nourishing, but Frau Stacher was of a sentimental nature, and the
pale, innocent eye she turned upon the fruit grew bluer, softer in
expression. The woman, saving her crumpled bits of newspaper, dropped
the apples into the string bag and quickly put her hands, swollen with
chilblains, again under her shawl.
Then Frau Stacher began to think anxiously of little Carli, the next
to the last of Kaethe's children, beautiful, smiling, little Carli who
had no strength in his legs and whose face was alabaster. Fanny did
send condensed milk for Carli, but there was always an urgent reason
why one or the other of the children, with a cold or a sore throat or
a stomach-ache, should have some of it. She wanted above all things
to get a can of milk for Carli. Thinking desperately "Saint Anthony
_must_ help me," she found herself outside a small grocery shop. Few
of the usual articles for sale in such shops were visible in the dusty
window,--varnish, boot-blacking, washing-soda and other inedibles
safely showed themselves behind the grimy panes. Somewhat dizzily she
went in and asked for the milk. She wanted that can of milk more than
she had ever wanted anything, wanted it enough it seemed, to create
it out of empty air. The man, to her relief rather than her surprise,
reluctantly reached down under the counter and passed it silently out
to her, doubtless thinking of his own undernourished children.