William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

“Mr Rief?”

Lysander jumped unconsciously. A tall man, lean hard face, neat dark moustache.

“Didn’t mean to surprise you. How d’you do? Alwyn Munro.”

“Sorry — dreaming.” They shook hands. “Of course. We met at Dr Bensimon’s. Coincidence,” Lysander said.

“If you come to the Café Central you’ll meet everyone in Vienna, eventually,” Munro said. “How are you enjoying your stay?”

Lysander didn’t want to make small talk.

“Are you a patient of Dr Bensimon?” he asked.

“John? No. He’s a friend. We were at varsity together. I pick his brains sometimes. Very clever man.” He seemed to sense Lysander’s reluctance to continue the acquaintance. “You’re in a rush, I can see. I’ll let you get on.” He fished in his pocket for a card. Handed it over. “I’m at the Embassy here, if you ever need anything. Good to see you.”

He touched the brim of his bowler with a forefinger and stepped into the café.

Lysander strolled back to Mariahilfer Strasse, enjoying the sun. He took his jacket off and slung it over his shoulder. The Tyrol, he thought, yes — real mountains. Then, as he was about to cross the Opernring he saw another of the defaced, ripped posters. This time the head of the monster was left — some kind of dragon-crocodile amalgam — and the composer’s full name: Gottlieb Toller. He thought he might ask Herr Barth if he knew anything about him. He heard the sound of a band playing a militarized version of a Strauss waltz and he adjusted his pace to keep in step with the thump of the bass drum. He thought of Blanche’s beautiful long face, her thin, bony wrists rattling with bangles, her tall slim frame. He did love her and he wanted to marry her, he told himself — it wasn’t pretence or social convention. He owed it to her to try and become well again, to be a normal man happily married to a wonderful woman. He had to see this through.

He crossed the Ring with due caution and as he did so the band altered its tune to a quickstep or a polka. He felt his spirits lift with the rhythm as he ambled up Mariahilfer Strasse, the music fading slowly behind him, merging with the traffic noise, as the band marched off to its barracks, civic duty done, the good people of Vienna entertained for an hour or so. Lysander felt the sun warm his shoulders and a curious congregation of emotions assail him — pride in what he had done for himself, seeking his cure on his own terms, pleasure in strolling the now familiar streets of this foreign city and, as a muted undertone, a thin enjoyable melancholy at being so far from Blanche and her all-knowing, understanding eyes.

“What about masturbation?” bensimon asked.

“Well, it usually works. Nine times out of ten, let’s say. No real problems there.”

“Ah. The primal addiction.”

“Sorry?”

“Dr Freud’s expression…” Bensimon held his pen poised. “What’s your stimulus?”

“It varies.” Lysander cleared his throat. “I, ah, tend to think of people — women — that I’ve been attracted to in the past and then imagine a — ” he paused. Now he understood why it was useful not to be facing one’s interlocutor. “I imagine a situation in which everything goes well.”

“Of course, that’s a hypothesis. The hypothesized perfect world. Reality’s far more complicated.”

“Yes, I do know it’s a fantasy,” he said, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. Sometimes Bensimon was so literal-minded.

“But that’s useful, that’s useful,” Bensimon said. “Have you heard of ‘Parallelism?’”

“No. Should I?”

“No, not at all. It’s a theory I’ve developed myself as a kind of adjunct to the main line of Dr Freud’s psychoanalysis. Maybe we’ll come back to it later.”

Silence. He could hear Dr Bensimon making little popping noises with his lips. Pop-pop-pop. Annoying.

“Is your mother alive?”

“Very much so.”

“Tell me about her. What age is she?”

“She’s forty-nine.”

“Describe her.”

“She’s Austrian. Speaks fluent English with hardly any accent. She’s very elegant. Very fashionably smart.”

“Beautiful?”

“I suppose so. She was a very beautiful young woman. I’ve seen photographs.”

“What’s her name?”

“Anneliese. Most people call her Anna.”

“Mrs Anneliese Rief.”

“No. Lady Faulkner. After my father died she married again to a Lord Faulkner.”

“How do you get along with your stepfather?”

“Very well. Crickmay Faulkner’s older than my mother — considerably older. He’s in his seventies.”

“Ah.” Lysander could hear the pen scratching.

“Do you ever think about your mother in a sexual way?”

Lysander managed to suppress his weary sigh. He had expected better from Bensimon, really.

“No,” he said. “Not at all. Never. Ever. No.”

Lysander looked at Wolfram in astonishment. He was standing in the hallway in full military uniform, his sabre dragging on the floor, shako under his arm, spurred black boots with knee guards. He looked huge and magnificent.

“My god,” Lysander said, admiringly. “Are you going on parade?”

“No,” Wolfram said, a little gloomily. “My tribunal is today.”

Lysander walked round him. The uniform was black with heavy gold frogging, like writhing snakes, on the plastron front. A furred dolman jacket hung from one shoulder. His shako had a red plume matching the red facings on the jacket collar and the stripes down the side of his trousers.

“Dragoons?” Lysander guessed.

“Hussar. Have you got anything to drink, Lysander? Something strong? I must confess to having some nervousness.”

“I’ve got some Scotch whisky, if you like.”

“ Perfekt .”

Wolfram came into his room and sat down, his sabre clinking. Lysander poured him some whisky into a tooth glass that he knocked back with one gulp and held out at once for a refill.

“Very good whisky — I think.”

“You don’t want to have whisky on your breath at the tribunal.”

“I’ll smoke a cigar before I go in.”

Lysander sat down, looking at this Ruritanian ideal of a dashing cavalry officer. When he puts his shako on, Lysander reckoned, he’ll be seven feet tall.

“What’s the tribunal about?” he asked. He felt he could reasonably try to ascertain what was the cause of Wolfram’s limbo in Pension Kriwanek, now judgement day had arrived.

“A question of missing funds in the officers’ mess,” Wolfram said, equably. He explained: the Colonel of the regiment was retiring and officers had contributed to a fund to buy him a splendid present. Donations were made anonymously, money being slipped into the slot of a locked cashbox set on a dresser in the mess dining room. When the box was finally opened they found only enough money to buy the colonel “a medium-sized box of Trabuco cigars, or a couple of bottles of Hungarian champagne,” Wolfram said. “Clearly we either gave very little money to our beloved Colonel or someone had been pilfering.”

“Who had the key to the box?”

“Whoever was on the rota to be supervisory officer of the mess each week. The box was there for three months. Three months equals twelve weeks, which equals twelve suspects. Any one of whom had plenty of time to make a copy of the key and take the money. I was one of those twelve supervisory officers.”

“But why do they suspect you?” Lysander felt a stir of outrage on Wolfram’s behalf.

“Because I’m a Slovene in a German regiment. German-speaking Austrians, I mean. There’s a couple of Czechs but the German officers will always suspect the Slovene — so I spent six months here while they decided what to do with me.”