A Glove Shop In Vienna by Ibbotson Eva

Author:Ibbotson, Eva [Ibbotson, Eva]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult, Romance, Historical, Collections
ISBN: 9780312069834
Amazon: 0312069839
Barnesnoble: 0312069839
Goodreads: 512445
Publisher: St. Martin
Published: 1984-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Great Carp Ferdinand

This is a true story, the story of a Christmas in Vienna in the years before the First World War. Not only is it a true story, it is a most dramatic one, involving love, conflict and (very nearly) death — and this despite the fact that the hero was a fish.

Not any fish, of course: a mighty and formidable fish, the Great Carp Ferdinand. And if you think the story is exaggerated and that no fish, however mighty, could so profoundly affect the lives of a whole family, then you’re wrong. Because I have the facts first-hand from one of the participants, the littlest niece’ in the story, the one whose feet, admittedly, failed to reach even the first rung of the huge leather-backed, silver-buttoned dining-room chairs, but whose eyes cleared the table by a good three inches so that, as she frequently points out, she saw it all. (She came to England, years later, this littlest niece, and became my mother, so I’ve kept tabs on the story and checked it for accuracy time and again.)

The role the Great Carp Ferdinand was to play in the life of the Mannhaus family was simple, though crucial. He was, to put it plainly, the Christmas dinner. For in Vienna, where they celebrate on Christmas Eve and no one, on Holy Night, would dream of eating meat, they relish nothing so much as a richly-marinated, succulently roasted carp. And it is true that until you have tasted fresh carp with all the symphonic accompaniments (sour cream, braised celeriac, dark plum jam) you have not, gustatorily speaking, really lived.

But the accent is on the word fresh. So that when a grateful client with a famous sporting estate in Carinthia presented Onkel Ernst with a live twenty-pounder a week before Christmas, the Mannhaus family was delighted. Onkel Ernst, a small, bandy-legged man whose ironic sympathy enabled him to sustain a flourishing solicitor’s practice, was delighted. Tante Gerda, his plump, affectionate wife, was delighted. Graziella, their adorable and adored eighteen-year-old daughter, was delighted, as was Herr Franz von Rittersberg, Graziella’s ‘intended’, who loved his food. Delighted too, were Tante Gerda’s three little nieces, already installed with their English governess in readiness for the great Mannhaus Christmas, and delighted were the innumerable poor relations and rich godfathers whom motherly Tante Gerda collected every Christmas Eve to light the candles on the great fir tree, open their presents and eat… roast carp.

Accommodation for the fish was not too great a problem. The house in Vienna was massive and the maids, simple country girls accustomed to scrubbing down in wooden tubs, cheerfully surrendered the bathroom previously ascribed to their use.

Here, in a gargantuan mahogany-sided bath with copper taps which gushed like Niagara, the huge, grey fish swam majestically to and fro, fro and to, apparently oblivious both of the glory of his ultimate destiny and the magnificence of his setting. For the bathroom was no ordinary bathroom. French tea roses – marvellous, cabbage-sized blooms

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