And now, with everyone safely in position, the household of Herr Doktor Fischer could march forward to the great climax of Christmas Eve. A frenzied last-minute clean-up began, the maids gliding silently up and down the already gleaming parquet with huge brushes strapped to their feet. Carpets were thumped, feather-beds beaten, and in the kitchen… But there are no words to describe what went on in a good Viennese kitchen just before Christmas in those far-off days before the First World War.
Bed-time prayers, for the children, became a laborious and time-consuming business. Vicky, obsessed by her angel, devised long entreaties for his safe conduct through the skies. The twins, on the other hand, produced an inventory which would not have disgraced the mail order catalogue of a good department store. And each and every night their mother got them out of bed again, all three, because they had forgotten to say. ‘And God bless Cousin Poldi.’
Five days before Christmas, the thing happened which meant most of all to Vicky. The tree arrived. A huge tree, all but touching the ceiling of the enormous drawing room, and: ‘It’s the best tree we’ve ever had, the most beautiful,’ said Vicky, as she had said last year and the year before and was to go on saying all her life.
She wanted presents, she wanted presents very much, but this transformation of the still, dark tree — beautiful, but just any tree — into the glittering, beckoning candle-lit vision that they saw when one by one (but always children first) they filed into the room on Christmas Eve… That to her, was the wonder of wonders, the magic that Christmas was all about.
And though no one could accuse the Christ Child of having favourites or anything like that, it did seem to Vicky that when He came down to earth He did the Fischers especially proud. There never did seem to be a tree as wonderful as theirs. The things that were on it, such unbelievably delicate things, could only have been made in Heaven: tiny shimmering angels, dolls as big as a thumb, golden-petalled flowers, sweets of course — oh, every kind of sweet. And candles — perhaps a thousand candles, thought Vicky. Candles which caused her father every year to say, ‘You’ll see if the house doesn’t catch fire, you’ll see!’, and which produced also a light whose softness and radiance had no equal in the world.
The twins grew less seraphic, less placid as the tension grew. ‘Will the angel come tonight?’ demanded Tilda at her prayers.
‘No,’ said Vicky. ‘You’ve got to go to sleep for two more nights.’
‘I want him to come now’ said Rudi, ‘Now.. ’
For the last two days, the time for the young ones passed with unbearable slowness. Even Vicky, clothed in her own mantle of imaginings, grew restless. Only Fritzl, who did not have to bless Cousin Poldi because he was not allowed to say his prayers, retained his cheerfulness, looking at Vicky often with that strange and glinting brightness which she could not understand.
But at last it was the twenty-third and on that night her mother turned the key in the huge double doors which led to the drawing room. And at this sound the chrysalis which had been growing inside Vicky all these days broke open and Christmas, in all its boundless and uncontrollable joy, broke out.
She had not expected to sleep but she must nevertheless have slept, because she didn’t hear Fritzl come in and yet suddenly he was there bending over her in his nightshirt, shaking her.
‘He’s there!’ said Fritzl, his voice hot and eager as it had been in the linen cupboard. ‘Come on, get up. I’ll show him to you.’
‘Who?’ she asked, still stupid from sleep.
‘Who do you think? The Christmas Angel. The Christ Child. The one you’re always going on about. He’s in there, decorating the tree.’
Vicky sat up. Even by the subdued glow of the night-light, Fritzl could see her turn pale. ‘But then… we shouldn’t.’
‘Oh, don’t be so soft. We wouldn’t go in. You can see quite well through the keyhole.’
So Vicky got up and felt for her slippers and crept after Fritzl down the long parquet corridor, careful to make no sound. Her heart was pounding and she felt sick, and this was all because soon now she would see a sight so blinding, so beautiful…
That was why she was afraid. That was the reason. Not that odd glitter in Fritzl’s eyes, not that shrill edge to his voice. Not anything else.
They were up to the door now. Fritzl was right, the key had been taken out, the hole that was left was big enough…
‘Go on, have a look,’ said Fritzl, giving her a push.
Vicky stepped forward.
‘Fritzl! Vicky! How dare you!’
Her mother’s furious voice sounded from behind them; her arm came out and wrenched Vicky away from the door.
But Vicky had already seen.
Seen the step-ladder, the bunched skirt pulled up to reveal, above the dusty button boots, a desperately unfragrant length of stocking. Seen Cousin Poldi, her mouth full of pins, reach up to hang the star on to the tree.
There was little anyone could do. Her father, frightened by her pallor, her stony silence, gave her a white powder; her mother sat by her bed chafing her hands and wishing as she had not wished anything for years, that Vicky would cry, wail, reproach them for lying — anything to show that she was still a child. But Vicky said nothing. Nothing to Fritzl slinking off to his room, nothing to her parents. Nothing to anyone, because there was nothing at all to say.
Even so, she must have slept once more because she was woken by the sound of sobbing. Not the twins’ sobbing, not a child’s sobbing at all, but an ugly tearing sound. A sound which frightened her.
She got up and went on to the landing. Though she’d known really what it was, she stood for a while outside Cousin Poldi’s door as though hoping for a reprieve.
Then she turned the handle and went in.
Cousin Poldi was sitting upright in a chair. Her starved looking plaits hung down on either side of her blotchy face and there was something dreadfully wrong with her mouth. On the table between the glowing, shining things: snippets of silver ribbon, wisps of gossamer lace, lay the hair bracelet, curled like the tail of some old, sick animal.
Vicky took two steps forward and stood still.
‘Your mother is right,’ mumbled Cousin Poldi, her hand over her mouth. ‘I’m an old idiot, fit for nothing. Every year she reminds me to block up the keyhole — and then I forget.’
Vicky said nothing.
‘I get excited, you see… All year I prepare… So many things are wasted in a milliner’s shop, you wouldn’t believe; pieces of stuff, bits of ribbon. I keep them all and then in the evenings I make things for the tree. It’s a bit lonely in Linz, you see… It keeps one busy.’
Vicky took a sudden step back. She had seen the teeth in the glass beside the bed and understood now what was wrong with Cousin Poldi’s mouth.
‘Every year I’ve done the tree for your mother. It was so nice being able to help… she’s so good to me, so beautiful. If it had been her you’d seen…’ She broke off. Then forgetting her naked gums she dropped her hand and looked at Vicky with a last entreaty in her rheumy eyes.
‘I’ve spoilt it for you for ever, haven’t I?’ said Cousin Poldi.
And Vicky, implacable in her wretchedness, said, ‘Yes.’
In every family there is apt to be a child around whom, in a given year, Christmas centres — not, of course, because that child is more greatly loved than the others, but because of something — a readiness, a special capacity for wonder, perhaps just a particular age — which gives that child the power of absolute response.