The Vienna Pursuit by Anthea Goddard

Author:Anthea Goddard [Goddard, Anthea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2019-05-09T04:00:00+00:00

PART III

Marienstein

I hardly slept that night. Outside, the wind had increased and strands of Virginia creeper slapped at my window. I kept imagining that I could hear steps moving towards the door, and I cowered under the blankets, feeling cold, but too scared to get up and find an extra cover.

My thoughts chased each other around in my head like buzzing mosquitoes. I realized that my early pondering on heredity had been superficial. My surges of temper, intolerance and selfishness were unimportant. Fritz Eisler’s make-up included more terrible characteristics — ferocity, treachery, inhumanity, amorality, ruthlessness, brutality. He was apparently without pity or remorse. Had I inherited more from him than I could recognize myself? As a man in his circumstances, I might even have behaved as he had done. I’d never been particularly strong in my convictions and always tended to take the easiest way out of a situation. The easy way, in the Germany of the thirties and forties, was to follow blindly the teachings of the strong.

But there had been many who had stood out. Austrians like Peter’s father, who died rather than take part in the blood sports. And Germans. Josef Keller, one of Gaby’s Viennese friends in London, had told us interminably about the night two Gestapo men had arrived at his apartment, accompanied by a German Army doctor. They had looked around and one of them had said to the doctor, ‘This will do. You can move in tomorrow.’ He had nodded, but when the other two left, he had stayed behind and said quickly to Josef, ‘Don’t leave yet. Hide somewhere until I get settled. Then I can help you.’ The next day, Josef had hidden. When the doctor was in the flat, he’d apologized for what he’d had to do. Then he had helped Josef to gather his more valuable possessions, and together they had moved furniture, pictures, ornaments, and silver, into a shallow loft between the ceiling and the roof. Two weeks later, the doctor had helped Josef to leave Austria. When he’d returned after the war, it was as though he had taken a giant step back to 1938, into rooms furnished with only the essentials, but with the belongings that were the fabric of a home still stored, untouched, in the loft. He never knew the doctor’s name, nor what happened to him.

It would have been simpler for me to decide finally, during that long night, to forget the whole thing. The reason I could not, which overrode all others, was that I loved Peter, and, loving him, had to do what I could to prevent him from adding real guilt to the imaginary guilt already implanted by Stefan.

It was imperative that I should reach Eisler first. Huddling in the bed, knees drawn up to my chin, I planned. I would tell him everything. He had spent his life since the war running from avengers, imaginary or otherwise. Now he had to move again. I had little doubt that he would do so.

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