Eva Ibbotson - Madensky Square

He hadn’t been gone for more than an hour when Jan Kraszinsky appeared in the shop and asked me to make the boy’s concert clothes.

‘I don’t do boy’s clothes, I’m afraid,’ I explained. But he didn’t go, just stood there in his fusty black suit and looked at me.

‘Sigismund expects it. It was what he said first when Herr van der Velde said we must get some clothes. “She will make me some new trousers and I will see inside her shop!”

‘I’m sorry.’

He took a step towards me. ‘Herr van der Velde said it was you who told him about Sigismund.’

‘I mentioned the boy, that’s all.’

He moved forward, tried to take my hand to kiss it, and I retreated behind my desk.

‘Sigismund must have… shining knickers,’ said Kraszinsky, his German not quite up to his vision. ‘And a blouse… with rufflets.’ He sketched a frenzied cascade of frills with his unwashed hands.

‘No! Absolutely not! Your nephew must not be dressed up like a little monkey.’ (Oh, why couldn’t I keep out of it? Why couldn’t I be quiet?)

‘But Herr van der Velde said that Sigi must look young. He must look like a very small boy so that people think he has even more talent.’

‘The child is small enough as he is; you need no tricks. Sigismund is a serious child; he must be dressed with dignity. Look, I’ll send you to a friend of mine — a man I worked for for three years. He speaks Polish too.’

I wrote down Jacob Jacobson’s address and still Kraszinsky stood there exuding his particular brand of obstinate despair. Will you make me a drawing?’

‘All right. It’s an informal concert so you don’t need velvet. Black grosgrain trousers — not shorts on any account. A white high-necked blouse — not satin: raw silk. The neck of the blouse and the sleeves piped in black.’

I sketched as I spoke. A miniature Peter-the-Great-as-Shipbuilder emerged, and did not please Kraszinsky.

‘But that is how the peasants dress in Preszowice.’

‘Yes. You want that look. You mustn’t try to turn him into a pretty Viennese boy — you can’t do it anyway. Be proud of where you come from.’

He took the sketch.

‘Will he want money now, this Herr Jacobson? Will he wait till after the concert?’

I was silent, remembering my years with Jacob, the warmth, the jokes. What if the concert was not a success, what if nobody came? Perhaps it would not be the best way to repay my debt to Jasha, to leave him with an unpaid bill.

‘Oh, all right,’ I said irritably. ‘Bring the boy in the morning and I’ll see what I can do.’

He was outside the door as I opened the shop.

‘Grüss Gott, Sigismund.’

He bowed his concert master’s bow, entered; stood in the centre of the room, looking… At the white daisies in the alabaster bowls, at the swathed mirrors, at the fans and ostrich feathers in a glass case. His nose wrinkled as he drank in the smells: the phlox in a silver tankard on my desk; my own scent which a little man in the Graben mixes for me, Nini’s shampoo… Best of all he liked the low round table covered in a floor-length cloth of yellow silk to match the curtains. In hands which bore evidence of recent energetic scrubbing, he picked up the material and looked underneath.

‘It is like a house.’

‘Yes.’

I told him about the Countess von Metz’s Pekinese who’d liked to hide there and make puddles, and took him off to be measured.

‘God, he’s thin,’ said Nini.

His legs were like sticks; a tide mark at the base of the skinny neck showed where the washing had stopped abruptly.

I showed him the design for the concert clothes. ‘That’s the silk for your blouse; and that’s the material for your trousers. It’s called grosgrain.’

He nodded and repeated ‘Grosgrain,’ frowning with concentration. ‘And what is this?’

‘That’s muslin.’

‘And what is this?’

‘That’s velvet.’

He walked beside me along the bales of cloth, asking the name of each, almost touching, but not quite. Sometimes he repeated a word. ‘Taffeta,’ he said in his husky voice, and ‘Crêpe de Chine.’

Back in the salon he lingered again by the low table covered in yellow silk. Then suddenly he crouched down, crawled underneath it, and let the cloth fall again.

‘Can you see me?’

‘No, I can’t. You’re completely hidden.’

It’s the first time I’ve seen him behave like a child, this future Paderewski. The next time he comes I’m going to put him in the bath.

The effect of Van der Velde’s visit has been extraordinary. Frau Hinkler now tells everyone that it is only her kindness and care that saved the Kraszinskys from starvation. A man came from the piano firm, extending the period of hire till after the concert and offering unlimited credit in exchange for a mention in the programme.

‘I always knew the boy would make it,’ says Joseph, who now offers Kraszinsky cups of coffee on the house.

I cannot say that I have ever heard Joseph know anything of the sort, but never mind.

The Schumachers are genuinely delighted. Mitzi and Franzi and Steffi are to be allowed to go to the concert, but not the mercurial Resi.

‘Mama thinks she would wriggle too much and fall off her chair,’ said Mitzi.

Even Augustin Heller has decided to go and hear the boy. Herr Schnee is too busy, he says. The state harness for the cavalry of the Carinthian Jaegers is to be collected the same week as the concert — but he comes out occasionally to stand on the pavement and listens to Sigismund practising.

‘He’s really getting it,’ says Herr Schnee, as Sigismund explodes into a bravura passage.

For we have become musical connoisseurs, all of a sudden, in Madensky Square. We all know Sigismund’s programme: the Moonlight Sonata, three Chopin mazurkas, polonaises, the Waltz in F Major… We even know his encores (if there are any): a piece by Schumann, a Brahms impromptu… Joseph, who can’t even hum ‘O Du Lieber Augustin’, can be heard discussing Sigismund’s interpretations with Herr Schumacher as he serves the wine. And in her attic, Nini leans out with shining eyes.

‘Listen!’ she says, ‘he’s playing the Revolutionary Prelude!’ For it is this agitating piece that Van der Velde, that astute showman, has chosen for Sigismund’s last encore.

Nearly all my clients are back, following the Kaiser who returned last week to endure his birthday celebrations. Poor man, he’s eighty-one and tries hard to enjoy the processions and garden parties and firework displays in his honour. Last year he bent down to a little girl who was presenting a bouquet and had to be righted by his aides: something had seized up in the small of his back. This year a shower of pink tissue-paper hearts descended on him from a balcony and got caught in his moustaches, but he endures it all.

Professor Starsky called in to greet me. He is a modest man, but he feels that his lecture on the ‘Epineuria of the Rainbow Snake’ was well received in Reykjavik — and the English Miss strides past again behind her lovely dog.

I’ve made it clear to everyone who comes to the shop that they must buy a ticket for Sigismund’s recital if I’m to get paid for his trousers. For Leah Cohen this is no hardship — she is musical and has promised to bring the whole family. Things look bad for her; her husband’s emigration papers have come through and there is nothing now between her and the Promised Land. ‘And what’s so awful is to think that Miriam is staying behind and lording it in Vienna — bringing up her children and her grandchildren here while poor little Benjamin has to grub about making holes in the desert.’

But of course poor little Benjamin is delighted.