William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

Lysander went to the door and opened it for them. He knew exactly what was expected of him, now.

“Most interesting,” he said. “Thanks.”

“See you tomorrow,” Munro said. Fyfe-Miller gave a smart salute and Lysander watched them stride briskly back to the consulate through the falling snow.

At the end of the afternoon, the snow having abated, leaving the low box-hedges of the parterre with an inch of white icing, Lysander went for a stroll around the garden, thinking hard. He had the money in his pocket, Munro and Fyfe-Miller had outlined the best route out of Austria. Once he was in Trieste he would be safe — Italians outnumbered Austrians there twenty-to-one. Some tramp-steamer or cargo ship would take him to Italy for a few crowns. Then his eye was caught by something unfamiliar — a glint, a gleam of light. He wandered over.

In the lock of the small door in the back wall was a new brass key, bright and untarnished, shining in the weak afternoon sun. Lysander slipped it in his pocket. So, that was it — tomorrow afternoon, after lunch, he thought. The dash for freedom.

Lysander deliberately left half his lunch — stewed pork with horseradish — uneaten. He told the surly fellow with buck teeth who came to take it away that he wasn’t feeling well and was going to bed. As soon as he was alone again he slipped on his coat, gathered up a few essential belongings that could be distributed amongst his various pockets, lifted his hat off the hook on the back of the door and stepped outside.

It was a breezy day of scudding clouds and almost all the snow had melted. He took a turn around the garden to make it seem he was on his usual post-prandial walk and, as he reached the small door in the back wall, unlocked it and was through in a second, pulling it to and locking it again from the outside. He threw the key back over the wall into the garden. He looked around him — an anonymous side street in the Landstrasse district, not a part of Vienna he was familiar with. He walked up to a main road and saw that it was named Rennweg — now his bearings returned. He was about five minutes walk from the South Railway Station where he could catch his train to Trieste — but he knew he had to use his ingenuity, first. He saw two cabs waiting outside the State Printing Works and ran across Rennweg to hail one.

He was at Mariahilfer Strasse in fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes was the start that Munro and Fyfe-Miller said he should allow himself. He could be sitting in the Südbahnhof now with a ticket to Trieste in his hand. Was he making a mistake? Use your ingenuity, Munro had said. It wasn’t so much advice as a warning, he thought.

Lysander rang the bell at the landing door of the Pension Kriwanek, saying a small prayer. Let Frau K be out (she was usually out after lunch, shopping or visiting) and let Herr Barth be in.

The door opened and Traudl stood there — her face rapidly pantomiming surprise and shock. Her blush rose to her hairline.

“Oh my god!” she said. “Herr Rief! No!”

“Hello, Traudl. Yes, it’s me. Is Frau Kriwanek in?”

“No. Please, what are you doing here, sir?”

“Is Herr Barth in?”

“No, he’s not in, either.”

Good and damn, Lysander said to himself and gently pushed his way past Traudl into the hall. There were the two bergères and the stuffed owl under its glass dome, relics of his former happy life, Lysander thought, feeling a spasm of anger that he’d been forced to relinquish it.

“Would you open Herr Barth’s room, please, Traudl?”

“I don’t have a key, sir.”

“Of course you have a key.”

Meekly, she turned and headed down the corridor to Herr Barth’s room, removing the bunch of house keys from her apron pocket, and unlocked the door.

“Don’t tell anyone I was here, Traudl. Understand? I’ll explain everything to Herr Barth later — but you mustn’t say a word to anyone else.”

“Frau Kriwanek will know, Herr Rief. She knows everything.”

“She doesn’t know everything. She doesn’t know about you and Lieutenant Rozman…”

Traudl hung her head.

“I would hate to have to tell Frau Kriwanek what you and the lieutenant got up to.”

“Thank you, Herr Rief. I would be most grateful for your silence on this matter.”

“And remember you owe me twenty crowns, Traudl.”

“I’ll tell no one. Not a soul. I swear.”

Lysander gestured for Traudl to enter Herr Barth’s little room. “After you,” he said, and followed her in.

Lysander sat looking out of the window of the Graz express, watching the early morning sunlight glance and shimmer off the Golfo di Trieste as he caught glimpses of the sea in between the numerous tunnels the train barrelled through on its descent to the coast and the city. These vistas of the Adriatic and its rocky coastline were symbolic of his salvation, he told himself; he should store them away in his memory-archive. Here he was, arriving at the very edge of Austria-Hungary and he would be leaving it for ever in a matter of hours. He was hungry — he hadn’t eaten since his abandoned lunch the day before and he promised himself a decent breakfast at the station restaurant as soon as they arrived. He had just over 100 crowns left, more than enough to book passage on a steamer to Ancona — no need to go as far south as Bari. Once in Ancona he would go to Florence and have money wired to him there, then he would make his way home through France. Now he was almost in Trieste all these plans seemed entirely feasible and logical.

With complaining groans of braking metal the Graz express slowed to a halt at Trieste’s Stazione Meridionale and Lysander stepped out on to the platform. Seeing signs in Italian was already enough for him. He had made it, he was free –

“Rief?”

He turned very slowly to see Jack Fyfe-Miller stepping down from the first-class carriage with a small leather grip in his hand.

Lysander felt his bowels ease with this small deliverance.

“Bravo,” Fyfe-Miller said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Bet you’re hungry. Let me buy you breakfast.”

They went to the Café Orientale in the Lloyds building on the Piazza Grande where Lysander ordered and ate a six-egg omelette with a ham steak and consumed many small sweet bread rolls. Fyfe-Miller drank a spritzer and smoked a cigarette.

“We were very impressed,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Munro and I were there at the Südbahnhof looking out for you. We thought you were never coming, I must say — thought you’d left it too late. They had the police there very quickly. We were beginning to get worried — then along you came, swearing in Italian, carrying a double bass.”

“I was using my ingenuity, as instructed.”

Lysander had stuffed a pillow from Herr Barth’s bed under his shirt and buttoned his overcoat around this new pot-belly. He had taken Herr Barth’s ancient hard-felt top hat and punched a dent in it. The big double bass in its leather container was surprisingly light, though bulky. He had locked Traudl in Herr Barth’s room and had hailed a cab on Mariahilfer Strasse for the station. Once there, he bought his ticket for Trieste (third class) and with many a “ Mi scusi ”, “ Attenzione ” and “ Lasciami passare ” had made his way noisily to the platform. People looked round, he saw children smiling and pointing, policemen glanced at him. A station porter helped him heave the double bass on board. No one was looking for a plump Italian double-bass player in a greasy topper. He found a seat by the window and waited, as calmly as he could, for the whistle-blast announcing their departure.