Eva Ibbotson - A Song For Summer

Yet less than a week after their encounter, he found himself in Vienna, having decided to break his journey there on the way to Genoa. The person who had effected this change of plan was not the diva but a quiet, grey-haired, bespectacled man; the head of Universal Editions who had been Marek’s music publishers for the past ten years. Herr Jaeger ran the firm from a dusty office in the Kohlmarkt; a place of hallowed associations for all those who cared for music, and it was his letter to Pettovice which had brought Marek to town.

Marek booked in at the Imperial, feeling in the mood for luxury after his week in the forest, telephoned Herr Jaeger, and went to have his hair cut in the Graben where the barber was displeased with the way his client’s thick, springy hair formed itself into unexpected whorls.

“I don’t know what you’ve been doing to it, sir,” he grumbled. “It looks as though you’ve been sleeping in a hedge.”

Marek did not enlighten him and the conversation turned inevitably to the gala. “You’ll have seen the paper,” said the barber. “She’s threatening to cancel.”

“She?”’ asked Marek, but already he knew. “Seefeld,” said the barber. “She’s fallen out with the conductor: chap called Feuerbach. He’s a stopgap because Weingartner’s abroad.”

“She’s got no business to carry on like that,” said a burly man in working clothes, the driver of a petrol tanker, having a trim in the neighbouring chair. “Tantrums the whole time. They ought to give the role to Baumberger.”

“No, they oughtn’t,” said a fat man with a shiny red face, waiting his turn. He spoke in the thickest of dialects and wore the blue overalls of a meat porter. “Tantrums or not, she’s the best. My mother’s seen every Rosenkavalier they’ve done since 1911 and she swears there’s no one to touch Seefeld.”

“I didn’t say she wasn’t good,” said the lorry driver. “I didn’t say she wasn’t great. But she’s got the whole cast at sixes and sevens, and once you get on the wrong side of the Vienna Philharmonic, God help you.”

“It’s not the orchestra she’s got the wrong side of, it’s Feuerbach, and she’s quite right. I heard him conduct Bruckner’s Seventh in Linz and he was crap,” said the meat porter, wiping his face with a spotted handkerchief.

Marek took the newspaper the barber handed him. That day there had been a massacre in Peking, the city of Bilbao fell to Franco and Moscow had executed another thirty intellectuals on the grounds of “spying”, but the headline of the Wiener Tageblatt said “Seefeld Threatens Cancellation. Gala in Jeopardy.” Coming out into the street, Marek thought with exasperation of the Viennese, to whom nothing mattered except what was going on at their opera house.

And yet… perhaps it was because he knew this was goodbye, because he foresaw much suffering for this absurd city, that he felt himself able to surrender to the sheer beauty of the Biedermeier houses, the compact and companionable streets, the domes of green and gold. If the Viennese fiddled while Rome burnt perhaps there were worse occupations, and when it was over-the catastrophe he saw so clearly-they would still quarrel at the barbers about the high C of some soprano not yet born, or argue over the tessitura of a newly imported tenor.

Herr Jaeger was waiting in his dark little office.

“Herr Altenburg!” he said, rising to shake hands. “This is a pleasure. It was good of you to come in person.”

“Not at all,” said Marek, dropping his hat and gloves on to a bust of Mahler. “I see you share my view of what is to come.”

“I’m afraid I do. We’re transferring our business to London as I told you. We’re hoping to be able to forge some transatlantic links too from there. It was a hard decision-as you know, our traditions go back three hundred years.”

Marek nodded. He had dealt with Universal Editions since his student days; they had proved competent and fair, but it was more than that: under glass in a corner of the office was the facsimile of the Schubert Quartetsatz. The first edition of Berg’s Wozzeck, heavily annotated, lay in another case.

“We were hoping of course that you would stay with us, but—”’

“I have decided to do so. I’m leaving for America very soon, but if you’re setting up links with the United States, London could be a convenient halfway house.”

“I’m very pleased to hear it and my partner will be too. He’s going ahead; he’s Jewish and we feel…”

“Yes, you may feel that.”

“You don’t have anything ready now? To arrive in London with a piece by Altenburg would be a certain triumph.”

“Soon,” said Marek. “I’ve been doing other things.”

“But you’ll be staying for the gala?”’ “I doubt it. I gather there have been ructions.”

Herr Jaeger smiled. “Yes, you could say that. You could certainly say that. Now, as to the contracts; I wonder if you could glance at these…”

Leaving the office, making his way towards the Hofburg, Marek saw a group of tourists outside the Stallburg waiting for the Lipizzaners to be led from the Spanish Riding School back to their princely stable. This was how they had waited-and probably waited still-for Brigitta to come out of her apartment and make her way to the Opera, and that was reasonable enough. She was after all a kind of human Lipizzaner, richly caparisoned, adored and nobly housed, and knowing perhaps at some level that he had meant to do this all along, he made his way past the Augustiner Kirche and the Albertina, and found himself by the small unobtrusive door which said simply: “Zur Bühne.”

Outside, on an upright chair sat an old man, still wearing the uniform of the stage doorkeeper though he had been retired for many years. His son was the doorkeeper now but Josef was an institution, allowed to watch the great and the good come through that small entrance into the opera.

“Good afternoon, Josef.”

The old man looked up, blinked-and recognised him. “Herr Altenburg,” he said. “You’re back in Vienna. Well, well — wait till I tell my son.”

Nothing could stop him getting to his feet and leading Marek into the cluttered office. “Here’s Herr Altenburg, Wenzel; you’ll remember him.”

His son nodded. “There’s a bit of a to-do in there, sir. It’s the gala-they’re doing Act One and well… I expect you’ve heard. No one’s to be admitted, but as it’s you…”

Both father and son could remember the time when Herr Altenburg had accompanied the diva to rehearsals. A golden age, he’d heard it referred to, when she’d behaved herself and sung like an angel.

“They’re in the auditorium, sir. It’s the first rehearsal with the full orchestra.”

Marek nodded, made his way down the familiar corridors, pushed open the heavy door-and stood quietly at the back.

“I shall cancel!” cried Brigitta. “I tell you, I shall cancel. You can go now, you can tell the papers, you can tell anyone! I cannot sing at this tempo, it is an insult to me and an impossibility for my voice. Either you fetch Weingartner or I cancel.”

“Now Brigitta, please…” The voice coach came out of the wings and tried to mollify her. The music director, sitting in the front row, groaned. Nothing but tantrums and tempers from the wretched woman. There was a week to go to the gala and he was sick of it. He didn’t just want her to cancel, he wanted her to be run over by a tram or eaten by rats or both. But who could they get at the last minute? The gala had been set up with her in mind.

“Perhaps we could try again, Herr Feuerbach,” said the director. He detested Brigitta, but it had to be admitted that Feuerbach was a disappointment: an arrogant little man who had got on the wrong side of the orchestra. Once that venerable body of men despised a conductor they were implacable. If the Vienna Philharmonic could ever be said to play badly they were doing it now.