The Exiles Return: A Novel by de Waal Elisabeth

Author:de Waal, Elisabeth
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2014-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

The summer waned, it was October and Marie-Theres had been at Wald for nearly four months – was it not time that she went home to America? Had not the purpose of her having been sent abroad been accomplished? Valery and Peter discussed the problem – it was still the same one, namely what was their daughter to do? Valery did not feel they were any nearer a solution. And Marie-Theres herself was reluctant to return. She wrote that Hanni was going to Vienna, she had a new job, she was going to be secretary to the Director of the Gallery of Modern Art, she was going back to live with their aunt, Baroness Josephine Simovic, the Countess Lensveldt’s and Valery’s eldest sister. Couldn’t Resi go there too? She was anxious to see for herself the city her mother used to talk about so much, sometimes with nostalgia, dwelling on the old streets, the old houses, the palaces, the churches, and then in a sudden change of mood, with bitterness for the sentimentality which the mere mention of its name seemed to evoke. Marie-Theres, in her letters, begged to be allowed to go and find out for herself.

So now she was there, sharing with Hanni the one spare bedroom in her Aunt Fini’s flat in the seedier part of the third district. The street and the house were shabby, but the third district was a good address and not very far from the area which housed the Embassies and many important private houses. The Baroness Josephine Simovic, née Princess Altmannsdorf, was the widow of a General in the one-time Imperial Army. She had lost her husband between the two wars and now had to live on her tiny widow’s pension, so that Hanni’s small contribution to the housekeeping budget, and Peter Larsen’s ample provision for his daughter, eschewed by Count Lensveldt on his country estate, was gratefully accepted.

Aunt Fini was a very different person from Aunt Franzi, and when Marie-Theres first saw her she was filled with misgivings. Where Aunt Franzi was all expansive warmth, tall and broad in her person and wearing comfortable, colourful if somewhat faded linen dresses, country-style woollen skirts with large pockets and green or brown silk blouses, Aunt Fini was thin and one would have called her erect rather than tall. She always wore black, mourning for her husband even after all those years, just a touch of white at the neck and a black velvet ribbon round her throat. She also wore a long chain of jet beads with a tiny silver cross at the end. Her face was very pale and deeply-lined, her lips bloodless, her white hands veined with blue. To Marie-Theres, who had never seen an old lady who looked like an old lady, she was a daunting figure indeed, but she smiled at her young niece and her voice was soft as she welcomed her to Vienna and to her home. This was also something the girl had never seen

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