John Wray - The Lost Time Accidents

ON SEPTEMBER 13, 1905—three days after Waldemar’s midnight proposition — Sonja celebrated Kaspar’s return by taking him to a musical evening at the Alleegasse salon of Karl Wittgenstein, a schoolmate of her father’s and one of the wealthiest men in the empire. Professor Silbermann had only the vaguest of notions that his assistant and his daughter were acquainted, and was amused by the coincidence of their arriving simultaneously; he never relinquished the belief, in later years, that their romance had begun at the Wittgensteins’, and no one took the trouble to correct him.

When the two of them entered, the professor was sitting on a cowhide divan, smoking a pungent cheroot; he looked back and forth between them in bewilderment, then ushered Gretl Stonborough — née Wittgenstein — over to make introductions. “I think I ought to know your daughter , Herr Professor,” she laughed, extending a gloved hand to Kaspar, then kissing Sonja warmly on both cheeks.

All eight of the Wittgenstein children were brilliant — they were famous for it even then, when most of them were barely out of school — but Gretl was judged the most brilliant of all. She was long-limbed and thin, almost gaunt, with the dark-lidded eyes set far back in the skull that the Wittgensteins all had in common. She had a seriousness about her that Kaspar had never encountered in a woman of twenty-four, but she grinned whenever she caught Sonja’s eye, as though they shared some confidential joke between them.

“So this is the Herr Professor’s assistant,” Gretl said solemnly. “I hear you’ve become indispensable.”

“Professor Silbermann could dispense with me at any time,” Kaspar said, feeling his face go hot. That hadn’t been what he’d meant to say at all.

Gretl patted him on the arm and turned to Sonja. “I have a surprise for you, darling. The maestro is here.”

Now it was Sonja’s turn to redden. “Where is he?”

“In the Chinese room with Hermine, making utter mincemeat of her latest portraits.”

Kaspar looked from one girl to the other. Gretl was scrutinizing him thoroughly, which made it difficult to think; Sonja was fidgeting with the hem of her gown. “I didn’t expect to see him here, Gretl. I should have, I suppose, but I didn’t.” She hesitated. “I’m not wearing that smock of his, you see.”

That smock of his ? Kaspar thought.

“Hermine isn’t wearing hers, either,” Gretl said, giving Kaspar a wink. “Come along now, both of you. If we ask nicely, His Eminence may grant us an audience.”

Kaspar followed the girls sheepishly through those splendid apartments, through music rooms and reading rooms and chintz-swaddled rococo parlors, until they arrived at an octagonal chamber with paint-spattered bedsheets thrown over chinoiserie tile. A woman with the same arched nose as Gretl was standing with her hand on the shoulder of a black-bearded bear of a man, bobbing her small dark head in rhythm with his voice. The man spoke softly, with his hands primly folded; the shapeless muslin tunic he wore would have dumbfounded Kaspar if he hadn’t seen it many times already. Catching sight of Sonja, he clapped and whistled like an organ grinder.

“Dovecote!” the man bellowed, seizing Sonja by the arms. “Such a surprise! Such a shock! I barely recognize you in that uniform.”

“It’s not a uniform, maestro,” said Sonja, more red-faced than ever. “It’s only a dress.”

“It’s an exquisite dress.” He lifted Sonja’s right hand to his lips. “And it’s also a uniform, as you know very well.” He turned to Gretl. “Thank you for delivering my dovecote to me, fräulein.”

“I’ve also delivered the dovecote’s companion, maestro, as you may have noticed.”

“So you did. Pleased to meet you, Herr—?”

“Kaspar Toula, Herr Klimt.” Kaspar didn’t feel jealous, as such — only painfully conscious of his disadvantage. “I’m to blame for Fräulein Silbermann’s uniform, I’m afraid.”

“Ah!” The maestro squinted searchingly into Kaspar’s face, as though he’d misplaced his pince-nez. “Fräulein Silbermann has told you, no doubt, about this hobbyhorse of mine.” He hooked a thumb inside the collar of his tunic. “I simply believe that contemporary fashion imprisons a woman, and disfigures her shape — which is splendid enough, in my opinion, without our interference.”

“I certainly can’t argue with—”

“Clothing,” the maestro continued, “should be worn only when necessary, and gotten out of as quickly as possible. This capuchinette I have on, for example—”

“Gustav,” warned Gretl.

The maestro laughed and let his collar loose. “Not to worry, my dear. I haven’t forgotten my place. But you’re lucky we’re not in my atelier!” He turned back to Kaspar. “I must tell you, Herr Törless—”

“Toula,” said Kaspar.

“—that Fräulein Silbermann is the most gifted of my models.”

“The most gifted of your former models, maestro,” Sonja murmured.

But the maestro was still taking Kaspar’s measure. “What’s your trade, sir, if I may presume to ask?”

“Herr Toula is a physicist,” Gretl put in graciously.

“Is that so,” said the maestro, scratching his beard. “I must confess, I took you for some sort of—”

“A physicist!” Hermine exclaimed. “In that case, Herr Toula, you must join the discussion that Papa is having with Professor Borofsky, from Göttingen. The professor is giving a lecture tomorrow, if I’m not mistaken, on the mathematics of the velocity of light.”

“I’ve studied Professor Borofsky’s work,” Kaspar stammered. “Where did you say—”

“In the smoking room,” Gretl cut in, shooing them off. “Sonja can take you. It’s a private meeting, but since you’re a student of physics…”

“You behaved very well, Kasparchen,” Sonja whispered to him as they retraced their steps. “Thank you for that.”

“No need to thank me,” said Kaspar, though he was secretly pleased with his show of restraint. “What’s a dovecote, exactly?”

“A birdhouse for pigeons,” she said, drawing him closer. “Please don’t ask me why he calls me that.”

Kaspar considered this a moment, then kissed her lightly just behind the ear. Somehow the nickname seemed appropriate.

* * *

They found Borofsky on a chaise longue in the smoking room, with Karl Wittgenstein on one side and Sonja’s father on the other, each of them clutching an unlit cigar. “The very boy we want!” Professor Silbermann bellowed, with a heartiness that took Kaspar aback. “ Fire , Herr Toula, if you’d be so kind! A touch of the primordial spark!”

Kaspar obliged them with trembling fingers, thanking chance — and fate, and even Providence, for the sake of comprehensiveness — that he’d brought his matches along. His encounter with the maestro hadn’t shaken him unduly, but Karl Wittgenstein intimidated even his own children, and Hermann Borofsky was known far and wide as a wunderkind. He’d won the Paris Prize for mathematics at the age of eighteen, and now, in his thirties, was rumored to be testing the spatial implications of the Michelson-Morley experiment in a specially light- and soundproofed chamber beneath the Physikhalle in Göttingen. After lighting the cigars, Kaspar hovered a half step behind Silbermann’s armchair, making clear, as politely as possible, that he had no intention of leaving.

They were discussing a young man from the provinces — a difficult and eccentric physics prodigy — who’d developed a preposterous new theory. Kaspar’s legs began to buckle as he listened. A curious certainty took hold of him: a sensation akin to clairvoyance. He had no need to hear the young man’s name.