'HundeP
'Scheifie! It's only eight o'clock.' Uriah shook his head.
'The English must be out of their minds,' he said. 'It's not even dark yet.'
The waiters instantly busied themselves at the tables while the head waiter shouted curt orders to the diners.
'Look,' Helena said. 'Soon this restaurant will be in ruins too and all they are interested in is getting customers to settle their bills before they run for cover.'
A man in a dark suit jumped up on to the podium where the orchestra was packing away its instruments.
'Listen!' he shouted. 'All those who have settled their bills are requested to make their way immediately to the nearest shelter, to the underground near Weihburggasse 20. Please be quiet and listen! Turn right when you leave and then walk two hundred metres. Look for the men with red armbands. They'll show you where to go. And stay calm. The planes won't be here for a while yet.'
At that moment they heard the boom of the first bombs falling. The man on the podium tried to say something else, but the voices and screams drowned him out. He gave up, crossed himself, jumped down and made for the shelter.
There was a rush for the exit where a crowd of terrified people had already gathered. A woman was standing in the cloakroom screaming, 'Mein Regenschirm!-my umbrella!' But the cloakroom attendants were nowhere to be seen. More booms, closer this time. Helena looked over at the abandoned table next to them where two half-full glasses of wine rattled against each other as the whole room vibrated in a loud two-part harmony. A couple of young women with a merry walrus-like man in tow were on their way towards the exit. His shirt had ridden up and a beatific smile played around his lips.
Within minutes the restaurant was deserted and an eery silence fell over the place. All they could hear was low sobs from the cloakroom, where the woman had stopped shouting for her umbrella and had rested her forehead on the counter. Half-eaten meals and open bottles were left on the white tablecloths. Uriah was still holding Helena's hand. A new boom made the chandeliers shake and the woman in the cloakroom came to and ran out screaming.
'Alone at last,' Uriah said.
The ground beneath them shook and a fine sprinkling of plaster from the gilt ceiling glittered in the air. Uriah stood up and held out his arm.
'Our best table has just become free, Fraulein. If you wouldn't mind…'
She took his arm, stood up and together they walked to the podium. She barely heard the whistling sound. The crash of the explosion that followed was deafening, the plaster from the walls turned into a sandstorm and the large windows giving on to Weihburggasse were blown in. The lights went out.
Uriah lit the candles in the candelabrum on the table, pulled the chair out for her, held up the folded napkin between thumb and first finger and flipped it open to lay it gently on her lap.
'Hahnchen und Pradikatwein?' he asked, discreedy brushing fragments of glass off the table, the dinner plates and her hair.
Perhaps it was the candles and the golden dust glittering in the air as dark fell outside, perhaps it was the cooling draught from the open windows giving them a breather from the hot Pannonian summer, or perhaps it was simply her own heart, whose blood seemed to be raging through her veins in an attempt to experience these moments more intensely. But she could remember music, and that was not possible as the orchestra had packed up and fled. Was she dreaming it, this music? It was only many years later, before she was about to give birth to a daughter, that she realised what it must have been. Over the new cradle the father of her child had hung a mobile with coloured glass marbles, and one evening she had run her hand through the mobile and had immediately recognised the sound. And knew where it came from. It was the crystal chandelier in Zu den drei Husaren which had played for them. The clear, delicate wind chimes of the chandelier as it swung to the pounding of the ground, and Uriah marching in and out of the kitchen with Salzburger Nockerl and three bottles of Heuriger wine from the cellar, where he had also found one of the chefs sitting in the corner with a bottle. The chef didn't move a muscle to prevent Uriah from taking provisions; on the contrary, he had inclined his head to show his approval when Uriah showed him which wine he had chosen.
Then he placed his forty-odd schillings under the candelabrum, and they went out into the mild June evening. In Weihburggasse it was totally still, but the air was thick with the smell of smoke, dust and earth.
'Let's go for a walk,' Uriah said.
Without either of them saying a word about where to go, they turned right, up Karntner StraBe, and were suddenly standing in front of a darkened, deserted Stephansplatz.
'My God,' Uriah said. The enormous cathedral before them filled the young night sky.
'Stephansdom?' he asked.
'Yes.' Helena leaned her head backwards and her eyes followed the Sudturm, the green-black church spire, up, up towards the sky where the first stars had crept out.
The next thing Helena remembered they were standing inside the cathedral, surrounded by the white faces of the people who had sought refuge there, the sounds of crying children and organ music. They walked towards the altar, arm in arm, or had she only dreamed that? Had it really happened? Had he not suddenly taken her in his arms and said she would be his? Hadn't she whispered, Ja, Ja, Ja, as the void in the church seized her words and flung them up to the vaulted ceiling, the dove and Christ on the cross, where the words were repeated and repeated until it had to be true? Whether it had happened or not, the words were truer than those she had carried with her since her conversation with Andre Brockhard.
'I cannot go with you.'
They were said, but when and where?
She had told her mother the same afternoon, that she wasn't leaving, although she didn't give a reason. Her mother had tried to comfort her, but Helena couldn't stand the sound of her sharp, self-righteous voice and had locked herself in her bedroom. Then Uriah had come, knocked on the door, and she had decided not to think any more, but to let herself fall without any fear, without imagining anything except an eternal abyss. Perhaps he had seen that immediately she opened the door. Perhaps the two of them standing in the doorway had made a tacit agreement to live the rest of their lives in the hours they had before the train left.
'I cannot go with you.'
The name of Andre Brockhard had tasted like gall on her tongue, and she had spat it out. Together with the rest: the surety, the mother who was in danger of being thrown on to the street, the father who didn't want a decent life to return to, Beatrice who had no other family. Yes, all that was said, but when? Had she told him everything in the cathedral? Or after they had run through the streets down to FilharmonikerstraBe? Where the pavement was littered with bricks and shards of glass, and the yellow flames licked out of the windows in the old Konditorei, lighting their way to where they rushed into the opulent but now deserted blacked-out hotel reception, lit a match, arbitrarily took a key from the wall and sprinted up the stairs with carpeting so thick that they made no noise at all, ghosts who flitted along the corridors searching for Room 342. Then they were in each other's arms, tearing off each other's clothes as if they too were on fire, his breath burning against her skin; she scratched him till he bled and put her lips to the cuts afterwards. She repeated the words until it sounded like an incantation: I cannot go with you.'
When the air-raid siren sounded, signalling that the bombing was over for this time, they were lying entwined in the bloody sheets, and she wept and wept.
Afterwards everything merged into a maelstrom of bodies, sleep and dreams. When they had been making love and when she had only dreamed that they were making love, she didn't know. She had awoken in the middle of the night to the sound of rain, and knew instinctively that he was not by her side; she had gone to the window and stared down at the streets below being washed clean of the ash and soil. The water was already running over the edges of the pavement and an opened, ownerless umbrella sailed down the street towards the Danube. Then she had gone back to bed. When she awoke again it was light outside, the streets were dry and he was lying beside her, holding his breath. She looked at the clock on the bedside table. Two hours until the train left. She stroked his forehead.
'Why aren't you breathing?' she whispered.
I've just woken up. You aren't breathing, either.'
