Eva Ibbotson - Madensky Square

‘If you knew what a saint Rudi was, Sanna. If anything happens to him…’ She blew her nose.

As a matter of fact I did know what a saint Rudi Sultzer was. I’ve never been surprised that this balding, bandy-legged solicitor has for so many years held Alice’s heart. Rudi Sultzer is an Atlas who supports uncomplainingly an enormous, dark and over-staffed flat in the Garnison Gasse, a villa in St Polten to which he never has time to go, and a wife and grown-up daughter who despise him because he reads cowboy stories and likes to play cards.

‘I expect I’m being silly,’ said Alice. ‘Rudi’s only forty-five — he’s absolutely in his prime.’ She shook off her fears. ‘Now listen, Sanna, when you were out front tonight did you see a very fat man with ginger hair sitting in the same row as you?’

‘Yes I did. He got very carried away — in fact I thought he was going to burst into tears.’

‘That’s him. He comes almost every night.’

‘Is he in love with you?’

‘No, no; not at all. He’s a pork butcher from Linz — charcuterie particularly. His name is Ludwig Huber. He came first with the Meat Retailers’ Outing and they came backstage and we got talking. He looks a bit gross but he’s sweet really. And listen, Sanna, because this could be big for you. He’s very rich — owns a whole chain of shops all over Lower Austria. His wife died two years ago and he’s getting married again. And I told him that no one could make the bride’s trousseau except you!’

‘But why is he buying the bride’s trousseau? Is she an orphan or something?’

‘Her family’s very poor. Genteel but without a kreutzer, so he’s offered to see to all that. You can charge him a lot. They say he’s as hard as nails in business but he’s very chivalrous with women. You’ll be able to twist him round your little finger.’

‘What’s the bride like?’

‘I haven’t met her. She’s supposed to be pretty and very young. But listen, that’s not all. Who do you think is going to be the bridesmaid?’

I shook my head.

‘Rudi’s daughter! Edith!’

Alice was very pleased with the effect of this announcement. ‘You mean the Bluestocking? Are you serious?’

‘That’s right. Apparently she and Fräulein Winter were at school together. And I’ve told Herr Huber that the bridesmaid’s dress must be designed together with the bride’s so Edith will be coming to you as well!’

I considered this. ‘If she’s as plain as you say, I’m going to have a problem.’

‘Well she is plain. Very. And the most awful prig. Rudi says she was a taking little thing when she was small but then her mother started making her into a Wunderkind and that was that.’

I had never met Edith but I knew a lot about her. I knew, for example, about the night on which she had been conceived.

In the spring of 1891, a young solicitor named Rudi Sultzer found himself sitting, at a public lecture in the university, next to a high-minded girl named Laura Hartelmann. Nothing would normally have followed from that, but Rudi had that morning finished the last pot of raspberry jam made by his mother before she died. The consumption of jam made by people who subsequently die is a traumatic experience and Rudi had loved his mother, a witty and beautiful woman who troubled him little for she was Czech and preferred to live in Prague. His eyes, during a pause in the discourse, filled with tears and Laura, always impressed by suffering, offered comfort.

They married, and owing to Laura’s passion for Goethe they went to Weimar for their honeymoon. There the bride retired to her bedroom (which overlooked a statue of the poet), put on a calico nightdress and for an hour read from the Master’s Trilogy of Passion while her new husband waited down below. Then she closed the book, opened the door, and in her high, clear voice called out ‘You may approach me now, Rudi!’

Rudi, to his eternal credit, approached her — and nine months later, Edith was born.

Nevertheless the strain of being married to such a high-minded woman began to tell on Rudi quite early on. Coming from a hard day at the office he would find a notice pinned to his wife’s bedroom door. Silence, Frau Schultzer is reading Faust, was the sort of information she liked to convey and while it was meant for the maids rather than for him, Rudi (who was also smaller than his wife and had worldly tastes like food) soon realized that he was not worthy of a woman who not only understood Goethe but also Schopenhauer, Leibnitz and the feuilletons in the Wiener Tageblatt. And when his little daughter also began to quote from Goethe and to give her toys away to the poor, he began to ‘approach’ my dear friend Alice.

‘I think Rudi would be terribly pleased if you could make Edith look nice,’ said Alice, looking at me appealingly. For all she’s been brought up to be such an intellectual snob, he’s fond of her.’

Alice loves the Hof Advokat Herr Doktor Sultzer very much. For the past eight years she’s made for him a secure retreat in her little apartment in the Kohlmarkt and asked only the basic courtesies that any woman has a right to expect from her lover: a new dress now and then, a bracelet. No one in the Sultzer household knew of her existence yet she shared, if anybody did, his life.

‘I’ll do my best,’ I said.

But since the task was clearly going to be a formidable one, we poured our second glass of spritzer in different proportions. Less soda water and much more wine…

The first of May means different things to Nini and myself. For me it means lilies of the valley sold on every street corner in the city, and the certainty of summer to come.

For Nini it means Labour Day. Though Anarchists are not supposed to join organizations, being committed to spontaneity and freedom, she is so anxious for the revolution that she condescends to march with the Marxists. Today this caused a problem.

‘They’ve given me a red flag to carry — quite a big one, but it’s a proper scarlet: well, you know. I was going to wear my rose-pink muslin because it’s so warm, but red and pink… I suppose one can make it work, but it’s tricky. It’ll have to be my damask skirt, I suppose, and the broderie anglaise blouse.’ Her Magyar eyes slid in my direction. ‘I was wondering about your cameo brooch…?’

She never goes off on these jaunts without my feeling a distinct pang. Sometimes the police are idle and quiescent — at other times they suddenly turn fierce.

The newspaper Rip carries each morning to his owner has been full of information about which one tries to be excited: that they have abolished pigtails in China, that Kaiser Wilhelm is displeased with the British, angry with the Russians and not exactly delighted even with us. That the Giant Wheel in the Prater has got stuck again…

But the candles on our five chestnut trees are showing white, the English Miss has left off her tweeds and strides past in smocked Liberty lawn — and the rich cream dress is finished! It’s in my window and it’s a triumph. Sister Bonaventura in the convent made the silken self-coloured rose herself as though she knew the task was too important to be given to a novice, and the luscious cascades of lace foam down the skirt just as they did in my dreams.

Leah Cohen came yesterday and admired it so much that I was afraid she was going to buy it. It is shatteringly expensive, but her husband’s medical practice is flourishing and with the threat of a glorious new life in the Promised Land hanging over her head, she deserves it. I could have sold it to her in a minute, but I didn’t. There’s no one I like better than Leah, but she isn’t the right person for that dress.