Goodnight vienna, p.1
Goodnight, Vienna, page 1
ALSO BY MARIUS GABRIEL
The Girls in the Attic
The Parisians
The Ocean Liner
The Designer
Take Me to Your Heart Again
Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye
Gabon
The Testament of Marcellus
The Seventh Moon
A House of Many Rooms
The Mask of Time
The Original Sin
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2022 by Marius Gabriel
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542035231
ISBN-10: 1542035236
Cover design by The Brewster Project
To my children
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Prologue
Vienna
You had to be careful where you walked, not just because the pavements were smashed and the streets blocked here and there by tons of rubble that had yet to be bulldozed away, but because the zones of the four Occupying Powers – American, Russian, British and French – were marked only by hand-lettered noticeboards; and it could be dangerous to wander into the wrong zone without the right permit.
The Russians, in particular, were unpredictable. They might give you a swig of vodka, if they were in the mood. They might take you round the back of a bombed building and rape you. There was no way to know.
She had been warned that women who walked alone in Vienna were kidnapped sometimes at checkpoints. They vanished into the cellars and were never seen again, even if the paltry ransom was paid.
But she could not let fear hold her back. She had experienced many years of fear, and she knew that if you gave in to it, you stopped moving altogether. So she let her feet go where they willed.
As in a dream, nothing was the way she remembered it. But things were half-recognised sometimes. You saw a marble statue you had once known, ghostly against the dark ruins; but the horse and rider had both lost their heads, and they now stood among a scattering of cracked masonry, like ice floes in a half-frozen sea. Or you looked down a street that seemed familiar somehow, except there was nothing for the memory to catch hold of, because the buildings you might have known were hollowed out and the coffee shops you might have sat in were empty caverns filled with debris and foul water.
Weeds grew between the heaved-up paving stones, some of them in flower, dirty purple or bloodless white, rank life reclaiming the places where once carefully tended roses had bloomed.
And as in a dream, the streets were deserted. If you did see another person, it was a silhouette that flitted like a shadow at the end of a once grand Hauptstrasse, and was gone; or an old woman plodding with her head down, scavenging for God knew what; or children clambering on the distant hulk of a burned-out tank.
Vienna was a city that belonged to the dead and their ghosts. And to soldiers. The soldiers who congregated in odd places were the only presence that seemed really alive. Russians in fur caps and padded coats, negotiating with women who took to the streets in their nightwear to leave no doubt as to what they were selling; Americans with cameras, photographing everything as though it were not all defaced and despoiled; British and French with hard eyes, sporting the thin moustaches made popular by the film stars of the day.
Otherwise, Vienna was desolate and grey.
She walked along the banks of the Danube, and it was desolate too; no longer blue and rollicking, but a flat wash of lead that ran from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, and no more belonged to Vienna than did the flat, leaden wash of the sky overhead.
She walked the broken streets, remembering, yet not really sure what it was she remembered. It had been so long ago, a lifetime ago, though only a scattered handful of years.
She came at last to St Stephen’s Cathedral. But it was not as she remembered it. The American bombs and the Soviet artillery had seen to that. The rich swathes of stained glass were gone, leaving gaping holes. The wooden trusses of the roof had burned to charcoal. The stone skeleton of the great building was blackened by fire. The ranks of saints and bishops were mutilated. A heavy price had been paid.
She stood looking at it for a long time before she had the will to go in. She picked her way over the rubble and through the doorway.
The bare interior of the cathedral was being cleared by old men with handcarts. But candles had been lit in the heavy wrought-iron candelabra, as though God still lived here, and still cared about such things. Their small flicker led her on.
An old priest made his way towards her, hurrying as fast as his arthritic limbs would allow, his red-rimmed eyes anxious. He took her arm, and pointed a finger upwards to warn her of the danger of falling rubble; men were up there, working on the roof, black spiders against the grey sky. She nodded to show that she understood. He pointed to the wooden collection box. She found a few schillings in her pocket, and dropped them in. They landed inside with a hollow rattle that reverberated around the nave. Gutted as it was, the cathedral conserved its aural space. There was a hush between these walls, an echo that was somehow holy, despite everything. Every sound you made, every cough or scuff of the shoe, was returned to you in a whisper, as though by a legion of phantoms.
She made her way slowly to the altar, trying to remember how she had felt, what it had been like, before the war. She stopped at last and looked up. The Gothic choir stalls were buried in ash. One night before Christmas, long ago, a choir had sung here, jewelled voices supported by the deep hum of an organ. Here she had stood and listened, entranced. She strained her ears now for the ghost of that music. But it had fled.
If she was looking for something, it was no longer here. She would have to find it somewhere else.
It was time to go back.
She turned at last, and made her way back through the ruined city to the concert hall.
Chapter 1
In the autumn of 1937, Papa sold the last Fabergé egg.
It wasn’t one of the most extravagant ones. Those, encrusted with pearls and emeralds, had all gone long ago. But it was the one that Papa had treasured most. The Tsar himself had given it to Papa before the Revolution. It was made of engraved platinum, and when you popped it open, there was a silver model of the royal carriage inside. And if you looked in the windows, there were enamelled portraits of the Imperial Family gazing placidly out – the Tsar and the Tsarina, the grand duchesses and the poor little Tsarevich.
When the collector came to pick it up, barely hiding his glee, Papa burst into tears. But then Papa always burst into tears, so Katya wasn’t all that sympathetic. The Romanovs were dead in any case, murdered by the Bolsheviks, as lost as the world they’d once inhabited; and holding on to such things was bad luck.
Besides, the money was needed. Money was always needed. Papa’s ill-conceived business ventures had all failed, one after another. Selling the jewellery they’d smuggled out during the Revolution had barely kept them afloat.
They could have cut back, of course. Lived more economically. But that hadn’t occurred to either Papa or Mama. Living economically wasn’t their style. Their style was grand houses, grand hotels, grand clothes, grand gestures. They still insisted on consorting with dukes and princesses, in whose company such things were de rigueur, as though Lenin and Stalin were figments of the imagination, and any day now they would all go back to St Petersburg and resume the wonderful life they had once had.
Katya had been a child when they’d left Russia. She remembered the panic of their departure, the coachman hoarsely shouting, ‘Quick! Quick! The Reds are coming!’ and the housemaids and footmen staggering down the marble staircase, loaded with valises. She remembered peering out of the back of the carriage at their house, seeing it recede until the whirling snow swallowed it up. She remembered the roads filled with retreating soldiers. And then the long train journey to Paris, and Papa crying all the way, and Mama silent and grim, and her with nothing to do but look out of the window at the snow, or play with Mimi, her little white poodle, who had run away as soon as they reached Paris (or been stolen, Papa said).
Of the life they’d had before that, she remembered only parts, except that she had been happy.
After arriving i
She had been presented to a succession of eligible young men, but either they hadn’t been interested in her, or she hadn’t been interested in them, or in some cases, both.
After a few less than dignified years of being on the shelf, and a period of maturing from girlhood into womanhood, Katya had announced that after all, she didn’t want to be married off to some suitable millionaire – even if such a creature could be found. And when she’d further announced that she had decided to go to university and train to be a doctor, Mama and Papa had been horrified.
‘But Katinka!’ Papa had exclaimed. ‘We’ve already spent so much on your education!’
‘I’m in my twenties, Papa. I can’t sit around forever.’
‘And a doctor, besides,’ Mama had said. ‘Such an unsavoury profession!’
But Katya had stuck to her guns, had gained entry to medical school in Glasgow, and had passed her first year, and then her second, with flying colours. She was home for the holidays now, in time to see Papa part with the last Fabergé egg.
The egg, however, hatched trouble.
‘We’ve got you a position,’ Papa said, by way of opening the discussion.
‘What sort of position?’ Katya asked, looking up from her textbook of anatomy.
‘A job,’ Mama clarified.
‘As what?’
‘A governess.’
‘A governess! But I’m starting my third year in a few weeks!’
‘There isn’t money for that,’ Mama said bluntly.
‘I can work in the mortuary. They need assistants there. I’ll pay my own fees.’
‘That doesn’t help us,’ Mama said, even more bluntly.
Papa, who had a gentler way of doing things, interceded. ‘We’re in debt, my dear. Head over heels.’
‘But the egg—’
‘The egg didn’t even pay off what we owe. The staff. Friends who’ve lent us money. The wine merchant, the tailors – we still owe them all.’
‘Wine merchants and tailors!’ Katya exclaimed.
‘It’s all been arranged,’ Mama said.
‘And,’ Papa added persuasively, ‘it’s almost like being a doctor.’
Katya threw her hands up in the air. ‘I don’t believe what I’m hearing! What have you two done?’
‘He’s a widower,’ Mama said, ‘with one child. A sickly little girl. You’ll manage easily.’
‘And he’s very rich,’ Papa put in, before Katya could reply. ‘He’s paying very highly. Enough to get us out of debt – and more besides. We’ll be secure at last.’ He took Katya’s hands. She tried to pull them away, but he held on tight. ‘Katinka! This is a wonderful opportunity. It’s the answer to our prayers.’
‘It’s not the answer to my prayers,’ Katya said in a tense voice. ‘How could you ask this of me?’
‘We’ve never asked you for anything before,’ Mama said sharply. ‘We educated you without regard for the expense.’
‘Sending me to piano lessons and finishing school wasn’t exactly an education, Mama.’
Mama shrugged. ‘Perhaps if you’d been prettier, you’d have caught the eye of a suitable husband. But you are twenty-six years old, Katya. It’s too late for that. This is your chance to make something of yourself.’
‘I was making something of myself!’
‘You mean you were throwing yourself away.’ They had been over this argument a hundred times when Katya had first announced her intention to go to medical school, and she was too disheartened to face it again. In Mama’s mind, medicine was a nasty profession, and no real lady would ever enter it. As for working in the poorer city areas – which had been Katya’s aspiration – hadn’t exactly such people, led by the monster Lenin, stolen everything from them? Why should Katya want to help such canaille? ‘People don’t trust women doctors, and that’s a fact.’
Katya rolled her eyes. ‘We’re in the nineteen-thirties, not the eighteen-thirties, Mama.’
‘Nobody will ever go to a woman doctor unless it’s positively the last resort.’
‘In any case, one never knows what might happen,’ Papa said encouragingly. ‘In Vienna, in the house of a wealthy man – who knows what opportunities will present themselves?’
‘Vienna!’
‘Yes, Vienna.’
‘But – there’s a civil war in Austria!’
‘Oh, pooh.’ Papa waved that away. ‘That was three years ago. A small uprising of communists, swiftly dealt with by the government. All over now.’
‘A small uprising of communists? They said that about the Bolsheviks, Papa.’
‘Not the same thing at all. A few broken heads, and the rest ran away when the troops arrived. It’s the most peaceful city in Europe now. And the most beautiful. The concert halls! The opera! The art galleries!’
Katya pulled her hand away from Papa and folded her arms. ‘I’m not going.’
‘Do you want to ruin us?’ Mama demanded, her eyes flashing. ‘Is this the gratitude we get?’
‘Of course I don’t want to ruin you,’ Katya retorted. ‘If it comes to that, you’ve ruined yourselves. Just wait until I’m qualified as a doctor! I’ll support you then, I promise!’
‘We can’t wait that long, Katinka.’ Papa managed to secure her hand again. He squeezed it. He had tears in his eyes now. ‘Our creditors are ruthless. It’s the end for us. You’re our only hope.’
‘We owe six months’ rent on this place,’ Mama added. ‘We’ll be out on the street.’
Katya looked around the drawing room where they were sitting. It was beautifully furnished and hung with fine paintings. The house was a regal residence in Kensington, and visitors were always impressed, but unfortunately, Mama and Papa didn’t own any of it. They rented everything: the house, the furniture, the paintings, the carpets, even the kitchen things. They’d always lived in houses like this, rented in the best parts of London or Paris, with butlers and maids to attend to them. And it had always been far beyond their means.
They’d managed to stay one step ahead of their creditors for years. Usually, selling a Fabergé egg, or some other piece of jewellery, had granted them a reprieve. But Katya could tell that this time was different. Mama’s handsome face was haggard. And although Papa was prone to tears, this time they were not elegant sniffs, disposed of with a silk handkerchief, but the noisy gulps of a child who had fallen down the stairs.
‘You’re serious,’ she said.
‘Of course we’re serious,’ Mama said. ‘Come.’
She led Katya to the window and pushed the curtain aside. Three burly men were standing on the pavement with their hands in their pockets, staring at the house. They looked rough, threatening. ‘Who’re they?’ Katya asked.
‘The bailiffs,’ Mama said. ‘They’re waiting to hear what you decide. If you refuse, they’ve got orders to come in and take away the furniture. And then we’ll be bankrupted. We’ll lose everything. All our friends. The roof over our heads. Everything. You can’t get out of this, Katerina. Not without betraying us.’
There was a silence. An ultimatum had been delivered. Katya looked from her mother to her father, biting her lip. ‘You’d better tell me about it,’ she said at last.
‘You’ve met him,’ Papa said. ‘Thorwald Bachmann.’
‘I don’t know any Thorwald Bachmann,’ Katya protested. ‘When did I meet him?’
‘When you came down at the end of the winter term. He was at the party we gave.’
‘That party?’ Katya groaned. She could barely recall it. She’d arrived from Glasgow on a Friday evening, exhausted after a particularly gruelling term, having caught a cold that made her groggy, to find that her parents were throwing one of their glittering cocktail parties. The house had been full of noise and people. A glass of champagne had been thrust into her hand. She’d stumbled, only half-sensible, through an hour or so of chatter with strangers before her cold, her tiredness and the champagne had overwhelmed her, and she’d crept away to bed.
