The Emperor Waltz Read Free Page A

1890s.

4.
    In Weimar, Christian came downstairs from his room, not changed from the Norfolk jacket he had travelled in, but washed and refreshed. He stood for a moment in the hallway with the illuminated light falling through the stairway, then entered the room with the door slightly ajar. In there was a man standing at the window, looking out at the parkland. His head was severe in expression, with large, round glasses, and his hair cut in an abrupt round manner that had nothing to do with the shape of his cranium, as if a bowl had been placed on his head before the scissors had been run about. The room was light and comfortable, with a pair of sofas and an upholstered window-seat where the man stood, and some chairs about the table where tea sat. A number of wasps were buzzing about the room.
    ‘Good afternoon,’ the man said, in a strong Leipzig accent. ‘You must be our new arrival.’
    ‘How do you do?’ Christian said, and introduced himself.
    ‘I am Franz Neddermeyer,’ the man said. ‘Also a guest of Frau Scherbatsky. How do you find your room?’
    ‘Very nice,’ Christian said. ‘I am from Berlin.’
    ‘I did not ask you that, although I am pleased to know it,’ Herr Neddermeyer said. ‘This is my house, and also Frau Scherbatsky’s house, although we are not connected through marriage or otherwise and only one of us owns it. How do you make that out?’
    ‘I think Frau Scherbatsky told me that you are the architect of the house,’ Christian said. ‘Although both the owner and the tenant of a house could talk about it being their house, so that is also a possibility.’
    ‘Ah,’ Neddermeyer said. He seemed disappointed at the failure of his conundrum. He walked away from the window, where he had left a book lying face down on the window-seat, and about the room, running his finger over the piano keyboard, covered with a crocheted shawl, the top of a bookcase, the wooden back of one of the sofas. As he came up to the chairs at the tea table, he minutely but decisively shifted one a couple of degrees; stepped back; inspected the change; shifted it back again. Christian thought of Aunt Luise as he looked at the middle-aged man – no, the old man: his skin was crêpy and drawn in a diagonal underneath his chin.
    ‘I had always lived in the house my father built,’ Neddermeyer said. ‘He, too, was an architect, here in Weimar. How do you come to know Frau Scherbatsky?’
    ‘I do not know her,’ Christian said. ‘My father is a lawyer, and he made enquiries about lodgings in Weimar from a professional associate here, and the professional associate came back with Frau Scherbatsky as a suggestion. His name was Anhalt.’
    ‘Ah, Lawyer Anhalt,’ Neddermeyer said. ‘His recommendation – well, he is a friend of old of our “landlady”.’ The word was rendered in a comic tone, as if he was amused by the idea that anyone would offer Frau Scherbatsky money to sleep in a part of her property. ‘Would you care for some tea? I don’t know what has happened to Frau Scherbatsky. Herr Wolff, the other guest here, is on business of some sort in Erfurt today, I know.’
    This seemed to put an end to Neddermeyer’s curiosity about Christian’s life, and while he was busying himself with the tea, Christian went about the room. On the bookshelf was a small porcelain or perhaps enamel model of an exotic vegetable, an aubergine. Christian picked it up, and just as he did so, a wasp came buzzing at him. He raised one hand to flap it away, and somehow tipped the aubergine to one side. The stalk and cap of the aubergine actually formed the lid of what it was, a jar, and as Christian tipped it sideways, it fell to the polished wooden flooring and broke. Neddermeyer looked up from the teapot.
    ‘Oh dear,’ he said.
    Christian was crimson – he looked at Neddermeyer with horror. ‘I didn’t realize—’ he said. ‘I didn’t realize it had a lid. I just turned it to one side.’
    ‘Well, that is