The Exiles Return (21 page)

Eighteen

Kanakis searched the telephone directory for the number of the Baroness Simovic. That was where that pretty American girl was staying, the one who had seemed so shy, or rather a little stiff, at his party. She had said the Baroness Simovic was her aunt. The name was not in the book – can’t afford a telephone, poor woman. He would have to find out where she lived and go and call on her, which was a nuisance, but perhaps just as well. She would be all the more benevolent and co-operative if the old-fashioned proprieties were observed. Kanakis called at four o’clock and sent in his card by the elderly woman in a black apron who opened the door. A relic of days gone by, an old factotum, but still – a servant, probably by now almost a companion. At any rate, the Baroness did not have to open the door herself.

He stood in the narrow dimly-lit hall and heard the two women’s voices through the half-open door. The maid’s was emphatic, the Baroness’s a little apprehensive.

‘A very elegant gentleman,’ said the woman.

‘Of course, of course, show him in at once.’

The lady wore black and looked much older than her years, in her seventies rather than her early sixties. The hand she held out to Kanakis was thin and blue veined. She shook her head a little with a slight nervous tic. He bent over her hand and kissed it, actually doing so, not just making the gesture.

‘I believe you will have heard of me, Baroness?’

‘Certainly, certainly – it is most considerate of you to call. I’m afraid my niece is not at home. She works, you know, the girls all do nowadays. She is a secretary.’

‘Is she? I am surprised. I should not have thought so. I believed she was only here on a visit.’

‘Oh, you mean my niece Resi – Marie-Theres I should say. I thought you meant my other niece Hanni Lensveldt. It is she who is a secretary – to the Director of the Modern Art Gallery, Dr Helbling. She has spoken to me about you and about your wonderful parties. I thought, when you were announced, that it was her you wanted to see. But Resi – it’s true, she is also my niece, my youngest sister’s daughter who lives in America. I think she’s out too. I’ll ask Kathi.’ The Baroness half-rose to go to the door, ‘no bells any more,’ she murmured, but Kanakis interrupted her.

‘Please don’t trouble yourself, I came to make myself known to you, so kind of you to receive me.’

‘I’m very pleased…’ and, inconsequently, ‘Resi is such a child.’

Kanakis smiled. She’s thinking: ‘He’s too old for her,’ but he assented: ‘Yes, quite, very young indeed and very lovely.’

‘Hanni, you know, is engaged,’ the Baroness went on, by way of making conversation, ‘to Georg Corvinus – you know him, perhaps? A grandson of General von Corvinus. My husband served under him when he was a young subaltern. In a garrison in Galicia. But you wouldn’t know about that – it was long before your time, Herr von – Kanakis.’ The Baroness had glanced at the card that lay before her, to make sure she got the name right.

‘Indeed, I do know about it, Baroness,’ he smiled, ‘I am of old Viennese stock, you know, strange as it may seem to you. And I happen to know Georg Corvinus too. Come to think of it, he came to my house with both your nieces, the Countess Hanni and Fräulein Marie-Theres. It was he who brought them. I’d made his acquaintance before that through a mutual friend. And now will you permit me to put my request to you, the request I came to make? I have taken a box at the Opera for next Thursday, at the Theater an der Wien of course, as the Opera itself is not rebuilt yet, and I should like to invite Fräulein Marie-Theres, and the Countess Hanni too, if she would care to come. I have a young man also, to keep the young ladies company. I confess that I love young people. They give me the greatest pleasure. I feel like a kind of uncle towards them, old bachelor that I am.’

‘Indeed, it is exceedingly kind of you, Herr von Kanakis, a most generous, rather unusual invitation. I’m sure the girls would be delighted. They don’t often get the chance of going to the theatre. Tickets are so difficult to get – and so expensive. Resi has been taken to the Burgtheater once with her class – her study group I mean, to see a Grillparzer play. She didn’t want to go, she said she didn’t like organised parties, but I persuaded her. I thought she ought to make the most of all her opportunities to educate herself – that is what she is here for – but she didn’t enjoy it. The language was probably too difficult for her.’

‘But you will allow her to come to the Opera with me – with
us
, I mean, won’t you? It’s not a difficult opera. Tchaikovsky. I’m sure she’ll enjoy it, and she’ll be with friends. I’ll chaperone her!’

The Baroness laughed. ‘You – a chaperone, Herr von Kanakis, I can’t see you in that capacity. A young man like you! But still, if you are going to be a party – although I don’t know about Hanni – I agree, of course. Besides, I have no illusions, girls do very much as they like nowadays – Hanni went out with Georg long before they were engaged – I don’t imagine that my approval or disapproval of what they do makes much difference. But Resi is so young and so far away from her parents. You see, I am responsible for her, I
feel
responsible.’

‘No harm will come to her, Baroness, you may rest assured. I’ll call for her, and the other young lady, if she wants to come, on Thursday then. And please don’t wait up for them. We shall want to have something to eat after the performance and I’ll see that they get home safely.’

*   *   *

The four people gathered in the box on the first tier of the Theater an der Wien looked a well-composed, perfectly attuned quartet. The broad-shouldered, swarthy-complexioned man of forty, in a discreet dark suit of unquestionable perfection, was obviously the host and the dominant personality. His note was power and restraint. The one highlight in his appearance was the very large black pearl which he wore in his grey tie. He sat well back in the box on a slightly higher chair, which allowed him to see over the heads of those in front.

Immediately in front of him, with her arm resting on the red velvet ledge of the box, was a young woman with dark hair looped in a thick bang across her forehead and gathered in a heavy bun at the nape of her neck. Her complexion was dark, and one might have been tempted to look for some resemblance with the man above and behind her, until one noticed that an indefinable luminosity in her eyes and a sweetness around her mouth set her off from him as being of an entirely different breed. It would have taken a more prolonged and concentrated study of her face to discover the beauty of those features, but no observer’s glance would have lingered long enough for that discovery because the two other people in the front of the box would immediately have claimed all his attention. Next to the dark girl sat the enchanting figure of a young faun, a boy of the same colouring and texture as his sister, but in his case sparkling with darting gleams of fire, the embodiment of the laughter dancing in his eyes. And next to him, tall and upright, sat a golden girl, her Nordic fairness enhanced by the dark trio of her companions, the light blue she was wearing reflecting the colour of her eyes, a blush on her cheeks from the excitement of her surroundings.

A truly remarkable quartet even to the casual onlooker, if such a person happened to be present amongst the audience that crammed the theatre tier upon tier and row behind row for what promised to be a dazzling performance of
Eugene Onegin.
While the great Opera House on the Ringstrasse was still being rebuilt, this old theatre, which had been the scene for generations of innumerable operettas, was giving a temporary home to grand opera, and doing so with the charm of a famous soubrette long retired and grown old, receiving with unpretentious but becoming adornment, and a dignity all her own, the visit of a great noble lady calling on her in state and wearing all her diamonds. The sense of this meeting of ranks, and the perfectly self-possessed ease with which both parties carried themselves, gave to an opera performance in these surroundings the peculiarly festive atmosphere of a special occasion which was very touching. The audience obviously responded to it with emotion, into which the release from years of fear, and delight in the revival of this most beloved art of musical drama, also flowed and swelled. Of the four members of our quartet, Kanakis was the most consciously and sensitively aware of this. He studied the people in the stalls below him with fascination. Most of the women were wearing a new dress, or one they had refashioned for just such an evening as this, and one could see that both they and their men had groomed and prepared themselves to be at their best. And when the music began they were all rapt in concentration.

Nina Grein, the girl in the dark dress, her thick eyebrows almost meeting over her nose, the one feature that obtruded itself in her face and distracted the beholder from recognising the beauty of her eyes and mouth, was the one most totally absorbed and most deeply moved by the coming together of music, audience and theatre. She was too poor, too sad and too lonely, since the disappearance of her parents, even to attempt to buy a ticket, or even to wish to do so, and too fearful also, had she been offered one (as had occasionally happened), of coming into contact with some black-uniformed, jack-booted SS officer who might be among the audience; also, because of her name, she had of necessity lived as inconspicuously as possible, continuing her work, her religion and her devotion to her young brother, for whom she had tried to make a home. She had given him her all, but felt it was too little, or rather, unacceptable. Had their beautiful mother and their resplendent father lived, Lorenzo would have been overshadowed by their personalities and have taken his measure from their standards. But she was only an awkward older sister to whom he had no reason to look up, too young for respect, too old and too severe for intimacy. All he gave her was a rather condescending affection which both touched and hurt her at the same time.

However, it was to him that she owed her presence this evening, through the invitation of his new friend Theophil Kanakis, although she had at first hesitated to accept, as she could not quite make out what had prompted it. Bimbo had been seeing a lot of this Kanakis recently, for whom he had been buying antiques. Why shouldn’t she accept his invitation, he had asked impatiently: Kanakis liked going to the opera and to the theatre, but he didn’t like going alone. He liked taking boxes and inviting people; he could very well afford it, so why shouldn’t he do what gave him pleasure? And then Bimbo mentioned that he had also invited Marie-Theres Larsen, that half-American girl who was staying at her aunt’s, the old Baroness Simovic. Ah, Nina thought, now she understood. That was the girl she had met last summer at Wald. Of course, it was now obvious to her that she was being asked to make up a foursome. Once I should have been called a chaperone, Nina remarked wryly to herself, thirty-four and elderly, because I am unmarried. And that girl is only a child. Nina wondered for whose sake she was being asked to chaperone her – not Bimbo’s surely since he could have taken her out by himself if he wanted to, but not like this, to the Opera, which he could not afford. Kanakis himself? She had not met him, but she was puzzled that a man of his age should be interested in an empty-headed little girl however lovely to look at. But then – all men were alike, a fair face was what attracted them, nothing else mattered.

Then the lights went out and the curtain parted and was swept up on either side of the stage. The girls in the garden sang. Suddenly Nina’s eyes were brimming. Some protective armour she had been unconsciously wearing round her heart had been breached and she knew herself to be vulnerable again; as she had not been for many years. Life was not only work, austerity, self-denial; there was also music, the magic of an opera house, there was opera. She laid both her arms on the ledge of the box and bowed her head over them to hide her tears. Kanakis leaned forward and whispered in her ear, ‘Are you all right? Are you not feeling well?’ She had thought that in the darkness no one would notice her moment of weakness, and she quickly sat up and turned to look at him. He was evidently not engrossed in what was happening on the stage; for him the performance was a mere setting for the little company he had gathered in his box and it was them he was watching rather than the singers. Her own over-dramatic gesture of self-abandonment had drawn his attention to herself; he would not have noticed it if his eyes had been on the brightly-lit garden scene.

‘I’m quite well, thank you,’ she whispered in return. ‘It was the music – I am enjoying it so much.’ And she turned again, replacing her hands stiffly in her lap. But now her attention, too, was deflected to the other occupants of the box. Resi’s face was in profile, her exquisite nose outlined against the summer sunlit sky, her lips parted in a smile of utter bliss, as from time to time she glanced sideways at Bimbo sitting beside and slightly further back from her to make room for his legs, which he had crossed, his hands clasping his knee at the level of the box’s velvet ledge. His lips were pursed as if he were whistling the melody to the accompaniment of the orchestra, but though his whistling was soundless, he glanced mischievously right and left, inwardly enjoying his own performance and challenging everyone near him to detect his unwarranted contribution to the score. In fact, two or three people sitting in the stalls just in front of him did notice his antics and frowned, at which he grinned and winked at them, then resumed his pretended whistling. But he did not respond to Resi’s obviously adoring glances; not once did Nina observe his eyes meeting hers; he was quite pointedly ignoring her. Several times Resi tried with inconspicuous gestures to attract his attention, brushing against his hand as she smoothed her dress, bending forward so as to obscure his view of the stage, and then quickly straightening up again and sitting back, apologising with a smile for the unintentional inconvenience she had caused.

Onegin and Tatiana, Olga and Lenski, were walking in the garden, Olga and Lenski accepted lovers, Tatiana proceeding ceremoniously, listening intently to the interesting conversation of the stranger from a world beyond her experience. Onegin was politely indifferent to the looks cast in his direction. So was Bimbo. That, to Nina, was not surprising; undoubtedly he would later report to her laughingly how the ‘new’ girl had made eyes at him all through the opera.