In our house the custom at mealtimes was to praise the food, even if it was badly cooked, and not to talk about anything else. Nor should the praise be perfunctory or banal, a certain extravagance was de rigueur. So I would say for instance that the meat reminded me of an occasion some six or eight years ago, also a Tuesday, and the cabbage with dill, today as then, was a match made in heaven for the boiled beef. When faced with the plum dumplings I was affected by utter speechlessness. “Please, more of the same, just like these, the moment I’m back!” I said to Jacques. “As you say, sir!” replied the old fellow. My mother rose, even before coffee, which was most unusual. She took out of her armoire two dark red morocco leather boxes which I had often had occasion to see and admire and puzzle over, but never dared to ask her about. I had always been curious, but at the same time delighted that there were two sealed mysteries in my proximity.
Now all would be revealed. The smaller box contained an enamel miniature of my father, framed in a thin circlet of gold. His big moustaches, his dark, gleaming, almost fanatical eyes, the heavy, carefully and intricately knotted tie round the strikingly high wing collar made him strange to me. Perhaps that was how he looked before I was born. That was how he was alive and dear and familiar to my mother. I am blond and blue-eyed, my eyes were always sceptical, sad, knowing eyes, never the fanatical eyes of a believer. But my mother said: “You’re exactly like him, take his picture with you!” I thanked her and took it. My mother was a clever, clear-sighted woman. Now it became clear to me that she had never seen me properly. Certainly, she loved me deeply. But she was a woman; she loved the son of her husband, not her child. I was the progeny of her beloved: decisively sprung from his loins; and in some secondary way, the fruit of her womb as well.
She opened the second box. There, bedded on snow white velvet lay a large hexagonal amethyst, clasped in a delicately braided gold chain, which made the stone look coarse, almost crude. It wasn’t that it was on a chain, more as though it had got the chain into its possession, and dragged it around everywhere like a weak and submissive female slave. “For your bride!” said my mother. “Give it to her today!” I kissed my mother’s hand, and slipped the second box into my pocket as well.
Just then our manservant announced visitors, my father-in-law and Elisabeth. “In the drawing-room,” decreed my mother. “My mirror!” Jacques brought her the oval hand-mirror. She studied her face in it for a long time, impassively. The women of that time did not need to adjust their dress, complexions or hair by means of make-up, powder, combs, or even by running their fingers through their hair. It was as though my mother was using the mirror to command everything she saw in it — hair, face, dress — to the most punctilious discipline. Without her having raised a finger, all intimacy and closeness suddenly disappeared, and I felt almost like the guest of an elderly lady I didn’t know very well. “Come!” she said. “My cane!” Her cane, a thin wand of ebony, leaned against her chair. She needed it not for support but as a prop for her dignity.
My father-in-law in a morning-coat and not so much wearing gloves as issued with them, Elisabeth in a high-necked silver-grey dress, a diamond cross on her bosom, looking taller than usual, and as pale as the dull silver clasp at her left hip, were both standing almost rigidly upright as we entered. My father-in-law bowed, Elisabeth performed a slight curtsey. Unbothered, I kissed her. The war rendered all ceremonial obligations superfluous. “Forgive the ambush!” said my father-in-law. “You mean the pleasant surprise,” my mother corrected him. She was eyeing Elisabeth as she spoke. Well, in a couple of weeks, I’d be home again, joked my father-in-law. My mother sat bolt upright on a hard, narrow rococo chair. “People,” she said, “sometimes know when they’re leaving. They never know when they’re returning.” She eyed Elisabeth. She ordered coffee, cognac and liqueurs. Not for a second did she smile. At a certain moment she looked hard at my tunic pocket, where I had stashed the box with the amethyst. I understood. Without a word, I looped the chain round Elisabeth’s neck. The stone hung over the cross. Elisabeth smiled, walked over to the mirror, and my mother nodded
at her; Elisabeth took off the cross. The crude purple amethyst shimmered on her silver-grey dress. It looked like frozen blood on frozen ground. I turned away.
We rose. My mother embraced Elisabeth without kissing her. “Leave now with our visitors!” she told me. “Come back tonight!” she added. “I want to know when the wedding is to be. We’re having trout, bleu!” She waved her hand, as crowned heads wave with their fans. She left the room.
Downstairs, in the car (my father-in-law told me the make, I forgot it), I learned that everything in the Döbling church was ready. The hour was not yet fixed, but would probably be ten o’clock. Our witnesses were Zelinsky and Heidegger. Simple ceremony. “Martial,” said my father-in-law.
That evening, while we slowly and carefully ate our trout, bleu, my mother, probably for the first time since she had taken over the household, started to talk of so-called serious subjects during a meal. I was just launching into praise of the trout. She interrupted me. “Perhaps this is the last time we will sit together!” she said. Nothing more. “You’ll be going out tonight to say your goodbyes?” “Yes, Mama!” “Till tomorrow, then!” She left without turning round.
Yes, I went out to say my goodbyes. Or rather, I wandered around, trying to. Here and there I ran into someone I knew. The people on the pavements blurted out incomprehensible cries. It took me some time before I had understood what they were saying. Bands were playing the Radetzky March, the Deutschmeister March, or Heil du, mein Österreich! There were gypsy bands, Heurigen bands, in bourgeois establishments. People were drinking beer. Wherever I walked in, a couple of NCOs would get to their feet to salute, and civilians would wave their beer mugs in my direction. I had the feeling I was the only sober man in the whole city, and that made me feel odd. Yes, my city was withdrawing from me, moving away from me, further with each passing minute, and the streets and lanes and gardens, however noisy and crowded they were, seemed to me to have died out, just as I would see them later, after the war and after coming home. I wandered around into the small hours, took a room in the old Bristol, had a couple of hours’ sleep, wrestling the while with plans and thoughts and memories, went to the War Ministry, received my confirmation, drove to our old barracks on the Landstrasser Hauptstrasse, said goodbye to Major Pauli our commanding officer, received “open orders” telling me to join the Thirty-Fifth, hurried to Döbling, heard that I was to be married at half past ten, returned to my mother to give her the news, and then to Elisabeth.
We let it be known that Elisabeth would accompany me a ways. My mother kissed me, as per usual, on the forehead, got into her cab quick and cold and brisk, in spite of her slow air. It was a sealed carriage. Even before it started to move, I could see her hurriedly pull down the blinds in the little window in the back. And I knew that within, in the gloom of the little compartment, she was just starting to cry. My father-in-law kissed both of us blithely and cheerily. He had dozens of platitudes for the occasion, and they came tumbling out of him, and, like smells, were quickly dispelled. We left him, somewhat brusquely. “I’ll just let you get on with it, then!” he called out after us.