‘Her voice bewitched me. I would force myself to stay awake so I could go on listening. But she would be in a hurry to get away. I would hold her hand tight and beg her: sing more! And she would sing, soft and low close to my ear so as not to disturb the others. Her breath smelled of onions. I don’t know why my poor mother always ate onions. Perhaps they were the only vegetables available in the market at that time. I ate boiled onions too, and I have to say they were excellent. But I couldn’t smell my own breath. I could smell hers. It was sourish and sweet at the same time. Onions and words, onions and fluent notes. I would have happily lived like that for ever. There’s something perverse about growing up, developing strong teeth, hairs on one’s chest, a moustache, corns on one’s feet. Why do we grow? It’s so stupid.’
Hans is no longer looking at her. He is speaking as if alone, eyes half closed, barely moving his lips. Telling of his mother, the sweet Hanna rejected by her own kitchen. The marvellous singing bird, who faced with her oven had no idea what to do. She would forget to stir the stew, add too much salt or too much pepper and overcook the vegetables; in her hands rice became food for chickens and the meat was always scorched. She didn’t even know how to buy at the market. During the war, when food was rationed but you could buy on the black market, she would return home happily to her husband after tracking down two sausages which then turned out to be full of worms, or place on the table a fine melon that was rotten inside. One day she brought some extremely green pears, so hard that neither teeth nor the blade of a knife could penetrate them. Let’s put them on the window ledge till they’re ripe, she said in her soft, musical voice. So they were spread on the balcony and watched. But those spiteful pears, so unerringly chosen by clumsy Hanna, quietly turned from wooden to rotten with nothing in between. Not only that, but they began to leak a stinking liquid and had to be thrown in the dustbin, where not even stray dogs would give them a glance.
Hanna read a lot and her husband Tadeusz teased her for liking modern novels. He himself was a musician of great distinction who for ‘major historical reasons’, in his own words, had failed even before beginning his career as an orchestral conductor. At most he was occasionally allowed to conduct an orchestra of young students at the Vienna Academy. But one morning while they were rehearsing the alarm sounded. He continued conducting as if it was nothing; there were far too many alarms, and in his candid opinion the people who controlled the sirens overdid things. Perplexed, the musicians looked at each other and went on playing. But when they heard hissing sounds followed by explosions, they grabbed their instruments and headed for the shelters. Tadeusz was left alone — well, not entirely alone, because the principal violin stayed with him, a very tall young man with curls on his collar and clear, smiling eyes. They began discussing music: ‘My father has always remembered that morning and that conversation. He says he never talked with more passion, more freedom or more joy with any of his musicians. They scarcely noticed that a bomb had destroyed half the building. But the hall of the Academy had miraculously survived and they had gone on talking about music until someone came in, injured and covered with dust, searching for refuge in the only part of the building that was still intact. Some other musicians were carried in on stretchers, and the entrance hall of the Academy rapidly became an improvised hospital with stretcher-bearers running from one side to the other. The wounded were settled on the floor on the red padded carpets that served for sound insulation during rehearsals, while the dead were piled in the corridor next to the area where the violins, double basses, horns and flutes were stored. Nearly all the musicians who had taken refuge underground were injured. Two were dead: the pianist, a father of three small children, and the timpanist, a sturdy athletic young man whose muscles and ready smile had been envied by all. The others were lying there on the floor, one with a broken arm, one with shattered legs, one with bleeding ears, moaning quietly in childish voices. The conductor, Tadeusz, and the principal violin, Ferenc Bruman, became instant nurses, helping to strip off the orchestra’s clothes and holding them while their injuries were disinfected and bandaged, and helping them to swallow pills administered by medical students who had run over from the nearby School of Medicine after the explosion and collapse of the shelter. These were mere boys who applied to the letter what they had learned from books in their first months at the Schooclass="underline" that splints were needed for broken bones, alcohol for wounds that must first be cleaned with soap and water, and stitches made with needle and suture thread for superficial wounds. But where could they find splints and needles and thread for sutures?
Hans is so engrossed in his story that he doesn’t notice the door behind them beginning to open. Amara jumps up, terrified. Hans goes on talking about his father the conductor and his mother Hanna who died of want in Treblinka concentration camp in 1944. Meanwhile a long head with sparse grey hair looks out and watches them, eyes wide with surprise.
‘Who are you?’
At last Hans is aware of the man. He leaps up and gives an automatic military salute, for no apparent reason clicking his heels and lifting his hand to the peak of his cap.
‘We’re looking for Peter Orenstein.’
‘I am he. What do you want?’
The man doesn’t ask them in. On the contrary, he closes the door behind himself, and looks suspiciously at them. His eyes are puffy and his eyelids wrinkled, and he has one cheek disfigured by a deep hole as if someone has excavated it with a knife; his mouth is drawn tight by mean lips that barely cover little false teeth.
‘What do you want from Peter Orenstein?’
‘The lady you see beside me,’ starts the man with the gazelles in his usual formal manner, putting himself at something of a disadvantage, ‘is an Italian lady, a Signora Maria Amara Sironi, and she has come to Vienna to look for traces of a childhood friend, called Orenstein like yourself.’
‘Emanuele Orenstein,’ adds Amara, looking the man straight in the eye as if to emphasise that they haven’t come to swindle or rob him, but only to find out what they can from someone who might be a relative. But Peter Orenstein seems not to understand. Perhaps he has been asleep. He rolls up his eyes and knits his brows crossly.
‘I know no Emanuele Orenstein,’ he says finally, trying to control a shrill voice that tends to pepper what he says with nervous little cries.
‘Very well, we’ve obviously made a mistake. I’m sorry. Please forgive us for disturbing you.’
‘But why are you trying to find this Emanuele Orenstein?’ says the man, who no longer seems so anxious to get rid of them. Has he grown curious?
‘He was a childhood friend. We used to play together.’
‘Where?’ asks the man, screwing up his eyes.
‘In Florence, Via Alderotti; does Villa Lorenzi mean anything to you?’
‘Come in.’
The man pulls out his keys and opens the door again. Who knows what made him change his mind? He seems more trusting now. He stands aside and welcomes them in. Indoors, there’s a smell of horses. All the windows are fast shut. The house is dark and full of dark heavy furniture. As if made for a larger house then brought here and pushed against the walls so as not to take up too much room. Two faded yellow velvet curtains hang from the high windows of the sitting room, the only light things in that dark house. The sofas may once have been yellow too, but they are now grey and stained.