Waiting for Sunrise Page 10

* * *

  Lysander wondered why, given his reduced financial resources, he had decided to pay the two-crown supplement to have dinner that night with Frau K and Josef Plischke. Perhaps he just wanted some company, however trying and mediocre. The main course – after the cabbage soup with croutons – was Tafelspitz, a boiled-beef stew of ancient lineage, Lysander thought, concocted days ago and allowed to simmer endlessly on a stove in the invisible kitchen. And still the gravy was watery and the meat sinewy and stringy. Plischke ate with enthusiasm, complimenting Frau K on her cuisine in a tone of leaden sycophancy that drew Frau K’s most pleasant thin smile from her.

  As they chatted, about some aerial demonstration this summer at Aspern with a dozen flying machines, Lysander mentally did his accounts – he had telegraphed his mother two days ago asking for another £20. With luck that should arrive in his bank tomorrow and, with further luck and careful husbandry, that amount should keep him going for another month or two. He decided not to think what might occur beyond that time when his money would run out yet again. Perhaps he should try and find a job himself – maybe teach English to the Viennese? But two months more in Vienna meant two months more of Hettie. He realized, with a small shock of self-awareness, that he was beginning to define his life around her –

  There was a loud banging at the door and he heard Traudl go to answer it. For a second he imagined it might be Wolfram, drunk, come to carry him off to the bordellos of Spittelberg.

  Traudl appeared at the dining-room door, flushed and trembling.

  ‘Madame,’ she said in a small voice. ‘It’s the police.’

  Frau K’s face pinched itself into a rictus of disgust at this violation of her pension’s probity and marched out into the hall. Plischke burrowed in his mouth with a toothpick, searching for shreds of Tafelspitz. Lysander looked at him – that imperturbability was a bit too swiftly donned. What have you been up to, Josef Plischke?

  Frau K reappeared in the doorway.

  ‘They wish to see you, Herr Rief.’

  Lysander made the instant assumption and felt the shock in his gut. His mother. Dead? Fatally ill? He felt sick and threw down his napkin.

  There were three policemen in the hall. Grey uniforms, black leather belts. Shiny, peaked, badged helmets with flat tops. One man wore a short cape and it was he who saluted and introduced himself as Inspector Strolz.

  ‘You are Herr Lysander Rief?’

  ‘Yes. What’s happening? Is there some kind of problem?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ Strolz smiled, apologetically. ‘You are under arrest.’

  Lysander heard Frau K’s shocked gasp from the door to the dining room behind him.

  ‘This is completely ridiculous. What are you arresting me for?’

  ‘Rape.’

  Lysander thought for a second that he might fall over. ‘This is absurd. There’s obviously been some kind of mistake –’

  ‘Please come with us. There will be no need for handcuffs if you do exactly as we say.’

  ‘May I collect a few possessions from my room?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Lysander went to his room, his brain a babbling confusion of supposition and counter-supposition. He stood there frozen – Strolz watching him from the doorway – trying to think what he might need. His overcoat, his hat, his wallet. His notebook? No. He suddenly felt very fearful and alone and had an idea. He rummaged in his desk drawer, finding what he was looking for.

  He went back into the hall, avoiding Frau K’s eye, and asked Strolz if he could be permitted to say a word to his friend, Herr Barth.

  ‘As quickly as possible.’

  Strolz stood behind him as Lysander knocked on Herr Barth’s door and heard him say, ‘One minute,’ then, ‘Come in.’

  Lysander realized that for all the months they had been living next door to each other this was only the second time he had been in Herr Barth’s tiny bedroom. He saw the piled, tottering towers of sheet music, the music stand with his damp woollen combinations draped over it to dry, the huge double bass in its container in the corner by the sagging bed with its embroidered coverlet.

  ‘Did I hear the word “police”, Herr Rief? They’re not after me, are they?’

  ‘No, no. I’m the one who’s been arrested – it’s a ghastly mistake – but I have to go with them. Could you contact this person and say I’ve been arrested? I’d be most grateful. They’ll know what to do.’

  He handed over Alwyn Munro’s card. ‘He’s at the British Embassy.’

  Herr Barth took it, beaming at this deliverance.

  ‘Count on me, Herr Rief. First thing in the morning.’ He glanced over Lysander’s shoulder, spotting Strolz standing there a few paces back, and lowered his voice. ‘They are fools, ignorant fools, the police. Just be extremely polite, that’s all they understand. They’ll be impressed. You’ll be fine.’

  Lysander went back into the hall where he saw that the front door was now open. Frau K stood by it, hands clenched together, a look of pure hatred in her eyes directed at the man who had brought this disgrace on her establishment.

  ‘It’s all a terrible mistake,’ Lysander said as he walked past her, followed by the three policemen. ‘I’ve done nothing. I’ll be back tomorrow.’

  But something in him told him he wouldn’t and he knew also that, had there been no witnesses present, Frau K would have spat in his face.

  The policemen took him downstairs to a police van parked at the junction with Mariahilfer Strasse. They opened rear doors and he clambered in. Through the small paneless barred window cut in one side he watched the snowy vistas of Vienna roll by – the opera house, the Hofburg palace, the Hofburg Theatre – all the monuments of this old/new city flashing by like something in a stereoscope – until they arrived at the Polizeidirektion on the Schottenring.

  20. Little Boy or Little Girl?

  The van turned off the Schottenring and drove through a giant archway into a central courtyard and the huge wooden doors swung – slowly, soundlessly – shut behind it. Lysander was led into the building and along a wide passageway to an interview room. There was a smell of disinfectant in the air and the empty corridors were disconcertingly full of the sound of footsteps echoing from elsewhere in the building, as if the place were populated by the ghosts of prisoners past forever being marched to and from their cells.

  Lysander took his seat and faced impassive, efficient Inspector Strolz across a desk. Strolz took down his details, writing in a thick ledger with a dipping-pen and inkpot like a Victorian clerk. Lysander sat there in his overcoat, hat on his knee, trying to keep his mounting sense of outrage – accompanied by flickering undertones of panic – under control. When he was formally charged he decided the time had come to ask a few salient questions.

  ‘Whom, exactly, am I meant to have raped?’

  Strolz consulted his notebook.

  ‘Fräulein Esther Bull. On or around the third of September, last year, 1913.’

  ‘That’s completely impossible.’ He was thinking back. The third of September had to be that first time, that first day he went to the barn. ‘It’s impossible because . . .’ he continued, unable to keep the tremor of offence, of injustice, out of his voice, ‘because Fräulein Bull and I have been engaged in . . .’ He paused. ‘We have been lovers for four months. In these circumstances I don’t understand how she can accuse me of rape. Don’t you see, inspector? You don’t “rape” someone and then enjoy a love affair – a warm, passionate, affectionate love affair – with the victim, subsequently, for many months thereafter. It defies logic and justice.’

  Strolz took this in, nodding. ‘Be that as it may, this information has no relevance here and now, Herr Rief. In a courtroom it may carry more weight.’

  ‘But why would she come up with this rape story?’

  ‘Fräulein Bull is four months pregnant. She alleges that she was raped by you that day, September the third. That was the day the child was conceived, apparently.’

  Lysande
r sat there, wordless, deeply shocked. Conceived? He had seen Hettie a week ago and she’d said nothing . . . Four months pregnant? What was going on?

  ‘If you bring Miss Bull here,’ he finally managed to speak. ‘Then everything will be sorted out. This farce, this farrago will –’

  ‘Unfortunately that won’t be possible. Furthermore, the charge against you is a joint one, brought by Fräulein Bull and her common-law husband . . .’ Strolz looked at his notebook again. ‘Herr Udo Hoff. In fact it was Herr Hoff who contacted the police.’ He closed the ledger and stood up. ‘You’ll be taken to a magistrate’s court tomorrow for the formal arraignment – so tonight you’ll be our guest. Do you have everything you need? Cigarettes? May I have some coffee sent down?’

  Lysander was escorted to his cell down a flight of stairs to the semi-basement area of the building. The door was locked behind him. There was a glassed-in electric bulb recessed in the ceiling, a wooden bed with a straw mattress and a blanket, a sink with a single tap and a tin chamber pot with a hinged lid. In the exterior wall there was a small, high, barred window. Through a slotted vent in the door a voice informed him that the light would be turned off in ten minutes.

  Ten minutes later, he lay in his bed, in the dark, in his overcoat, smoking, trying to work out a possible sequence of events. Importunate questions gabbled in his head. When had Hettie discovered she was pregnant? Why did she tell Hoff? She must have decided to – for some unimaginable personal reason, he supposed – at which point the scandalized Hoff went to the police. Then Hettie must have lied, he reasoned on, in order to save herself and concocted this story about his visit to the studio during which, at some time in the afternoon, he – Lysander – had sexually assaulted her. She couldn’t have confessed to the subsequent affair, obviously. But why not, when she knew she was pregnant? But how could she be pregnant? She had told him she was infertile – she claimed her menses came, if at all, months apart, and she hardly noticed them. Consequently he had never used a prophylactic. Had she been lying? Had she wanted to trap him, somehow?

  Then for a minute or two he experienced a kind of incoherent rage at Hettie; a sense of injustice being done to him that made him almost breathless at the effrontery, the crazy malice that was involved. He sat up, gasping physically for his breath, as though he had been stifled somehow, and ordered himself to calm down. He felt light-headed, almost dizzy and began to worry about his blood pressure. There was nothing to be gained by allowing his feelings to surge so tumultuously out of control. Clear logical thought was his best weapon – making himself ill would gain him nothing.

  He calmed himself, yet he grew increasingly worried as the night wore on and as he went over the different narratives and options again and again. It became clear to him that his only defence was to expose the affair – to let the world (and Hoff) know the precise details of the liaison. And what could Hoff say in the face of that evidence? Nothing. The case would be thrown out, surely?

  He lay in the dark and periodically paced around his small cell. He finished his pack of cigarettes, waiting for sunrise, unable to sleep or rest, his mind frenetically, pulsatingly active. There was only this one course of action – to destroy Hettie’s preposterous story and expose her as a liar. He thought of her gift of the Andromeda libretto and its cryptic message on the title page. It was her pre-emptive confession to him, he now saw, and he wondered also if she had meant it to serve as a warning.

  The van took him and two other shabby villains to a magistrate’s court early in the morning. At 8.10 a.m. Lysander found himself facing a sleepy presiding judge who had a fragment of egg-white lodged in the bristles of his wide tobacco-stained moustache. Lysander was formally charged with rape, bail was denied – bail was not permitted in cases of rape, he was told by the judge – and the date for his trial was established as May 17 1914. He had no lawyer, and so was taken back to the central police station and re-deposited in his small cell. At ten o’clock he was given a bowl of carrot soup and a hunk of black bread. He asked if he could speak to Inspector Strolz but was told that Inspector Strolz had left on a fortnight’s leave.

  Lysander began to experience a form of creeping terror at his impotence that he recognized as the beginnings of despair. How could he possibly find a lawyer? He supposed the court would appoint one for his trial in May. The trial was over three months away. Was he going to be kept in this cell until then or transferred to a prison? He began to curse Hettie for this hideous, ridiculous lie. Why not tell Hoff the simple truth? What did she think would be achieved by this god-awful nightmare of a mess that she had landed him in?

  He banged on the door until someone came and he asked for paper and pencil and was refused.

  He urinated in his chamber pot.

  He washed his hands and face in the sink and dried them on the lining of his greatcoat.

  He lay down and managed to doze for an hour.

  He took off his coat and tie and did some basic gymnastic exercises – press-ups, star-jumps, running on the spot until he was breathless.

  He urinated in his chamber pot.

  He sat on his bed and forced his brain into activity, trying to recall the sequence and detail of the affair. Dates, times, places. He remembered the names of all the hotels they had stayed in – every fact that made the affair concrete and irrefutable. Then he found his thoughts straying to Hettie herself and the unignorable new fact that she was carrying his child. He almost wept. He sniffed, coughed, inhaled and willed himself to anger, stirred by the thought that the foetus would almost certainly be aborted, another ghastly consequence of this hideous predicament she had created. Hoff would see to that, oh yes. Boy or girl, he found himself wondering? Little boy or little girl? . . .

  He was given a thick slice of cold fatty sausage, a chunk of cheese with black bread and a lukewarm mug of coffee.

  He looked at his wristwatch. It was 2.30 in the afternoon.

  The day seemed to take a week of subjective time to crawl to its conclusion. He watched the small rectangle of sky that was visible through his cell window darken as the sun began to set. A little vermilion touched the cloud base. The aural sub-current of the cell wing continued without change as the hours maundered by. Clangs, shouts, footsteps, the rumble of trolley wheels, the occasional laugh, the rasping of a stiff-bristled brush sweeping the corridor outside again and again.

  When it was quite dark the electric light was switched on. He did some more press-ups, wondering where this fitness urge had sprung from. With the edge of a button he scored a dash in the plaster of the cell wall. Day one. He managed an ironic smile at this melodramatic gesture. Why had he smoked all his cigarettes last night?

  The door was unlocked and a policeman looked in.

  ‘Follow me,’ he said.

  Lysander duly followed him up the stairs and into another corridor, where he was shown into a windowless room with a table and two chairs. He sat down, keeping his mind empty. Could this be Hettie, decided to rescue him? Two minutes later Alwyn Munro entered the room.

  Lysander felt like embracing him. Herr Barth had done what he had promised – wonderful, salt-of-the-earth, true friend Herr Barth. How he loved that man! He shook Munro’s hand warmly.

  ‘Bit of a pickle, eh?’ Munro said, jocularly, sitting down and offering him a cigarette.

  ‘It’s not true. All lies. I’ve been having an affair with her for months.’ Lysander drew on his cigarette so avidly his head reeled.

  Munro slid a business card across the table.

  ‘This is your lawyer. A very good man. He couldn’t make them set bail, I’m afraid. That’s the problem with rape cases. Luckily for you it seems Miss Bull has suddenly altered the charge to “assault”. The bail for assault is very high – ten thousand crowns.’

  ‘But that’s absurd!’ Lysander complained. ‘Assault? I’m meant to have “assaulted” Miss Bull? I’m not a criminal. How is one meant to lay one’s hands on that kind of money? Why’s it been set so high?’

&nb
sp; ‘It seems Hoff’s father was a very respected District Commissioner. Friends in high places. Ministers, senior civil servants, judges . . . Does seem a bit punitive.’

  ‘I can’t raise that amount – who do they think I am?’

  ‘Don’t worry – we’ve paid it.’ Munro smiled. ‘Consider it a loan – but not interest-free, alas.’

  Lysander experienced a jolt of elation. He swallowed. His hands were shaking.

  ‘My god . . . I’m incredibly grateful. Does this mean I can go?’

  ‘Not exactly. There are special conditions.’ Munro leaned back in his chair as if to gain a more objective view. ‘You’re to be confined to the grounds of the British Embassy until your trial. Actually, it’s not the embassy but the temporary consulate where we attachés work.’ He smiled. ‘A little bit of Grossbritannien in Vienna, all the same.’

  ‘Why keep me there?’

  ‘They obviously think you’ll make a run for it rather than stand trial. And as we’ve put up the bail they’re making us responsible for seeing that you don’t escape.’

  Lysander’s elation began to drain away.

  ‘So I’m swapping an Austrian cell for a British one.’

  ‘I think you’ll be much more comfortable.’ Munro shrugged. ‘Best we could do. They’re very serious here about crimes like rape, sex-murders, assaults and so on.’

  ‘I haven’t raped or assaulted anyone.’

  ‘Of course. I’m just explaining why they’ve demanded these conditions. We’ve got a little place for you out at the back. Small garden. You won’t be locked up but you can’t leave the premises.’ Munro stood. ‘Shall we go?’

  21. A Small Villa in the Classical Style

  The temporary consulate building was in fact a small villa in the classical style, somewhat dilapidated, some three streets away from the embassy itself in Metternichgasse, opposite the botanical gardens. Lysander’s ‘prison’ was a two-storey, octagonal stone summerhouse at the end of a high-walled parterre that ran from the rear terrace of the villa. He had an octagonal bedroom on the top floor and an octagonal sitting room on the ground floor with a small fireplace. No lavatory and no bathroom but it was comfortable enough, he had to admit. He could walk the gravelled, weedy pathways of the neglected parterre whenever he felt like fresh air or needed exercise. Food was brought to him on a tray from a nearby restaurant three times a day, his fire was lit, a jug of hot water provided every morning for his ablutions, his laundry was collected and returned (he had sent for his clothes and belongings from the Pension Kriwanek) and his chamber pot was discreetly emptied and replaced by a variety of embassy servants who seemed to change almost daily. He rarely saw the same face more than twice. He had been told that he would be charged for food and laundry services. All costs accrued would be added to the 10,000 crowns already owed to His Majesty’s Government – not to mention his steadily accumulating legal fees.