As if even with her extravagant wardrobe she intended to emphasize the semi-official character of her visit.
Count Svoy, the protocol chief of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, in a private conversation had given her to understand what was expected of her.
The count had most unpleasant-smelling breath and, in addition, the bad habit of leaning too close to his interlocutor to emphasize the confidential nature of his words. His country will not restrict its own freedom or relinquish its spiritual independence because of the two nations’ allied relationship or because of charming Madame Göhring. A statement that the countess, leaning back almost more than was possible in her armchair, understood well and endorsed wholeheartedly. Or at least, we preserve appearances in tune with our own foreign-policy interests. Now, peering out from under her mauve straw hat decorated with gently fluttering plumes, impudently pulled down on her brow, she followed Schuer’s daring gesture with lively interest and some repugnance.
The familiarity revealed to her more of the two persons’ tense and complicated relationship than they would have wanted to know or let the outside world notice. After such a moving sermon, continued Schuer in a much lower tone, in a voice adjusted to the intimacy of the gesture, one no doubt feels the urge to unburden one’s soul.
I’m sure this is understandable, he added.
Then again he interrupted his own apparently polite but rather absentminded sentence with a peremptory wave of his hand to indicate that he expected both women for lunch and hastily turned his back to join his family, which had been swept to the margins of the throng.
Daring, daring, stirring, an enthralling man, Countess Auenberg remarked, not without an edge to her voice, while with their gloved hands they both waved cordial good-byes over people’s heads to Baroness Erika, Schuer’s wife.
I guess you never know where you stand with him.
The sky above Berlin that day was brilliantly and cloudlessly blue.
No doubt, replied Baroness Thum with a slightly exaggerated severity, he is a stirring and unpredictable man, that’s true, but it would not be advisable to forget for even a moment that above all he is a wonderful scientist with a clear, brilliant mind, and therefore one can forgive him for many things.
And before they started off together on the shady street fragrant with the smell of pines, the baroness stole one more fleeting glance at the countess’s face shining with youth and health, to see whether Schuer’s rude manners had insulted her guest. It had been rumored that the Horthy boy, Mihály, would be elected Hungary’s king, and then this young friend, who was also best friends with Geraldine, queen of Albania, and because of that friendship already a frequent visitor in European courts, would herself become a queen.
And you know, she said with a small, raspy laugh, which resonated both with self-mockery and with admiration bordering on hatred for her boss, I can’t help myself, his manly beauty never fails to move me.
I could not help noticing that it affected you too, she added cautiously.
From under her hat Countess Auenberg gave her a rather inquiring glance, for she had unerringly caught the jealous edge and intention of the remark.
How can you say such a thing, how can you even think such a thing, she replied reproachfully, though not without some self-irony or defiance.
I don’t want to know what you think.
Oh, please forgive me. I’ve been carried away by my own lack of restraint.
Lack of restraint was a delicate subject for many reasons, and just as frequently as they managed to avoid it, they also fell into its trap. The two women were deeply devoted to each other, the girl to the grown woman and, oddly, the mature woman to the younger one. Which they both felt was unusual, and which they accounted for by the great difference in their ages and experiences. On the one hand Countess Auenberg and her two sisters had been small children when their pitiless mother left them; she’d run away with a trickster and they never saw her again; she and the trickster were allegedly living somewhere abroad in very modest circumstances. And on the other hand Karla Baroness von Thum zu Wolkenstein had been blessed with a son conceived in a very early love affair, and ever since the little boy’s birth had been living in strict scientific seclusion, as if in continual penitence; she always found a place for the child, never giving up hope that one day her family would forgive her. For these reasons, neither of them thought silly and pointless sentiments were permissible, and naturally they did not speak of them — although there wasn’t much they could do about them. From the first moment of their friendship they had a secret language, and in their quiet, persistent rebellions, which they indulged in as a counter to their lack of restraint, they revealed much to each other in this language.
If I may be candid with you, Countess Imola said quietly.
I count on nothing but, said Baroness Karla dryly.
All right, his physique is pleasing, his mouth is beautiful, I grant you, and there’s something disarming in his facial expression too, as if he were looking into your depths and seeing your little feminine thoughts, but his nose, if I may put it this way, must cause alarm in everyone, in me it was real panic.
The baroness gave her a look. His nose of all features, his nose.
To be honest, I don’t understand your enthusiasm.
Of all his features you object to his nose, I’m very surprised, Imola — why deny it, I’m astounded. And how peculiar you are about the nose of your betrothed, my God, what do you want with all this. Yesterday, how thoroughly you described to me your future father-in-law’s snub nose. Involuntarily she thought of the red of the Boîte and the pretty little ivory godemiché; a mysterious good friend had made this his parting gift, as if to say that from now on she’d have to worry about her pleasures on her own.
He had vanished from her life the same way he had suddenly appeared in it.
Papa Miklós has a kindly nose, yes.
In that case, I must have misunderstood your annoyance.
It’s possible, obviously. That must have been it.
It sounds strange, it sounds more suspicious with every word. You’re acting very strangely today.
Deep in their own oppressive thoughts, a little bruised by each other, they walked on, silent against the pattering of their high heels.
She kept the little Chinese godemiché, shiny with centuries of use, in her bedroom, in the Chinese writing cabinet that could be locked.
But the association of ideas confused her, because compared to the angelic being clip-clopping next to her, who was obviously rushing unstoppably to her doom, she thought of herself as a deeply depraved person.
Someone looking back from the far side of the abyss of fateful things.
Don’t take this amiss now, said the countess, her voice both passionate and calculating, it’s as if he had not a nose but a trunk, a beak. It grows straight out of his forehead, she said, blustering because she was struggling with real emotions. She had to overcome her attraction to him at all cost so as not to endanger others’ attraction to her, which was more important to her than anything.
As if it were the beak of a marabou, he’s ready to stick it in you, or of a penguin, certainly not a human nose.