‘Which means Uncle Hieronymus did not alert the parents of her departure,’ Gross said. ‘One assumes that he actually was an uncle, and it was not simply a term of affection. If so, why would he not write to the parents and tell them?’
‘I intend to find that out tomorrow,’ Werthen said. ‘When I take the train to Buchberg.’
NINE
The next morning the Nordbahn was slower than usual. It followed the course of the Danube for a time, through Klosterneuburg and past the castle of Greifenstein. Just beyond that castle lay the village of Altenberg an der Donau. It was from this place that the writer Peter Altenberg had taken his pen name. The story, well-known in literary circles, was indicative of Altenberg’s proclivities and sentimentality.
A school friend — son of the publisher of the Neue Freie Presse at the time (an edition of which Werthen had purchased at the station before departure) — had invited the young Richard Engländer to the family home in Altenberg during the summer break. The family had three sons and four daughters. The girls were all younger than the boys and suffered the nicknames their brothers saddled them with. The youngest of these girls — an adolescent with thick auburn braids — was jokingly called Peter. Altenberg’s sympathies were with the young girls, whom the older brothers treated like servants, expecting them to fetch their shoes and bring them food.
Thus was born Peter Altenberg.
Although the train rumbled slowly through the countryside, Werthen was comfortable enough, ensconced in a first-class compartment that he did not need to share. The commission he had received from Frau Mutzenbacher was handsome enough for him to afford the little luxury of first class. He turned his attention to his newspaper and discovered he had been cheated by the vendor at the train station. This was yesterday’s edition. No matter. He avoided the news articles and instead read a feuilleton by the Hungarian-born playwright and critic Rudolf Lothar entitled From India to the Planet Mars. This piqued Werthen’s interest, as it was the title of a book by the Swiss professor Flournoy recounting, and mildly debunking, the claims of the French-speaking Swiss psychic Hélène Smith. She held that in séance she was able to communicate with Martians and, using the process of automatic writing, had written out bits of hieroglyphic-like Martian language which she later translated into French. Mademoiselle Smith — born Catherine-Elise Muller — further claimed she was able to communicate with Victor Hugo and averred that she was the reincarnation of a Hindu princess and also of Marie Antoinette. Flournoy’s book, published the year before, was a huge success and had stirred interest in the occult around the world.
Without ever stooping to mockery, Lothar managed a searing indictment of such paranormal fluff, making the French psychic appear a well-meaning spiritual naïf. Reading the lengthy feuilleton took Werthen all the way to Tulln, where the train crossed the Danube, heading directly north into the Weinviertel.
Now they were passing into a region of gently rolling hills, with strips of vineyard laid out like a chessboard. As the name suggested, it was a wine region, and the vines were in full leaf now, glistening green under a high spring sun. Hollabrunn was the next large stop, and Werthen found himself growing hungry; breakfast of coffee and a Kipferl was not sufficiently sustaining. He treated himself to the guilty pleasure of a wurst Semmel, purchased from a vendor on the platform at Hollabrunn.
The train jerked out of the station and in another half hour had reached the small town of Haugsdorf. Werthen gathered his paper and briefcase from the overhead rack and descended to the deserted platform. The smell of the country struck him at once, a mix of damp earth and manure. He inquired with the stationmaster — a tall rail of a man with a continual snuffle — about finding transport to take him the several kilometers to the village of Buchberg. The man stared open-mouthed at Werthen, as if not hearing him, and sniffed several times.
‘A cart, a trap, perhaps a fiaker?’ Werthen repeated.
‘You must be from Tulln,’ the stationmaster finally said, in an accent that sounded as if it might have come from the Mars of Hélène Smith.
‘From Vienna, actually,’ Werthen said and instantly regretted it.
His interlocutor squinted at him, for Werthen was now a frightening and potentially dangerous emissary from the cosmopolitan capital.
‘That explains it then,’ the man said. ‘You know, people work around here. We’ve got no time for such things.’
‘I could pay a fair rate.’
At this, the man’s expression immediately changed. He was full of sudden goodwill and bonhomie.
‘Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? Follow me. I’ve got a little rig by the side of the station.’
‘You’re going to take me?’
‘You want to go to Buchberg or not?’
‘But the station. .’
The man waved away this suggestion. ‘Ach, there’s not another train through here for four hours.’
Thus Werthen arranged for the stationmaster — Herr Platt the man’s name was, as he discovered during the course of the uncomfortable ride — to take him to Buchberg and wait there for the return journey. The train in four hours’ time would be just right for going back to Vienna.
‘What business brings you to the Weinviertel, if you don’t mind my asking?’ Platt said as they plodded along the dirt track.
‘No, I don’t mind the question,’ said Werthen, as he sat next to the man on the board seat of the trap, pulled by one emaciated pony. ‘I’m looking for a family.’
Platt laughed at this. ‘Got plenty of those around here and that’s a fact.’
‘This particular family would have a daughter in service in Vienna and would also have an interest in universal languages.’
‘Oh, you mean Jakob Moos. Locals say he’s a nutter with that language of his. Always saying “Glidis” instead of good day. He’s a good enough man, though.’
Platt thought a moment. ‘Their daughter.’ He shook his head. ‘No good will come of that, you’ll see. Sent off to Vienna like she was. Pardon my saying so, but that city’s a sin hole. Father Bernard says so. And the girl was a handful here already, I can tell you.’
Werthen did nothing to encourage Platt’s loquaciousness.
‘There were stories about that one.’
Werthen could imagine. Any beautiful young girl such as Fräulein Mitzi would be considered, a priori, loose in the conservative environs of a place like this.
Finally noticing Werthen’s silence on that issue, Platt took another direction.
‘What business do you have with Jakob?’
‘It’s a private matter. Do you know where they live?’
‘Well I guess I should. I worked for Moos when I first came to this district from the Waldviertel. Looking for opportunities. Always looking to better myself. Moos, he’s got a few hectares and needed help at harvest time. I lived in one of their outbuildings, but took my meals with the family. Four daughters. Each prettier than the other.’
He flicked the reins at the pony, which had slowed to chew milkweed at the side of the narrow rutted track.
‘They would talk with one another that funny way. At first I just thought it was Weinviertel dialect, me coming from the Waldviertel. But nobody else around here talks like that. Still Jakob Moos is a hard worker, an honest man, always pays on time and goes to mass like clockwork — though, once in a while, he does go on about Marx and workers’ rights. I got the feeling, though, that Frau Moos didn’t really approve of all that language or political stuff. She comes from a real religious family. Brother’s a priest and all. Strange what love makes us do.’
Werthen looked sideways at Platt. He hadn’t taken him for a philosopher.