Viennese Romance by David Vogel

Author:David Vogel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000, FIC027000, FIC014000
Publisher: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Published: 2013-05-27T00:00:00+00:00

10

George Shtift cultivated a thin moustache, composed of wisps of honey-coloured hair on his long face, and smoked short, fat Cuban cigars. All was well with Herr George Shtift. The business — thank God! — was doing well. The rest too. Gertrude and Erna — no complaints. As for the little peccadillo that had given him a few pleasant hours — the painted woman in the Ritz Hotel in Klagenfurt — a harmless distraction, no more. Such things only strengthened the ties between husband and wife. Hadn’t someone already said that family life needed to be aired every now and then to prevent it from growing stale, ha ha. George Shtift leaned back at his ease and dwelled pleasantly on the details of that episode in Klagenfurt. He puffed on his cigar.

Her head on her hand, Erna looked down at the book lying unread on the table in front of her. From time to time she cast a penetrating glace at Rost and her mother, who were making conversation in indifferent, insincere tones about some public scandal that had recently been chewed over ad nauseam in the press. The real relations between them were kept under lock and key in another room in the house, and did not infiltrate this banal conversation by so much as a single glance.

George Shtift removed himself from the room in the Ritz Hotel and the arms of the woman in question, and spared a magnanimous thought for Rost. Not a disagreeable young man, and wise beyond his years in the ways of the world.

‘What do you have in mind to study, Herr Rost, if I may be permitted to ask?’

‘I haven’t decided yet.’

‘I myself studied law. Five semesters, and then I fell in love, isn’t that so, Trudy?’ He smiled at his wife. ‘I didn’t want to wait. I did not have unlimited means at my disposal, and then by a lucky chance I was offered a good job. I can tell you that I have never regretted it. In your case, I take it, the question of means presents no problems.’

‘No problems.’

‘And you are not about to fall in love.’

‘Why do you think that I’m not about to fall in love?’

‘In the first place, there is only one Trudy in the world, and she is already taken. Full stop. And secondly, you don’t look like someone who loses his head easily. Aren’t I right, Trudy?’

‘Please stop making tedious jokes.’

‘This time you’ve missed your aim, Herr Shtift,’ said Rost, half in earnest and half in jest, looking at the unlit cigarette in his hand, ‘because I am already in love, and precisely with that woman who has no equal in the world.’

Herr Shtift laughed loudly and complacently. ‘In that case, my dear young man, I pity you, for all your aspirations in that direction are doomed to fail.’

‘And I pity myself too.’

‘Let me tell you something, my friend — since you have only just started to take your first steps in life, allow a man of some experience to give you a word of advice.

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