The Redbreast(70)

had rested her forehead on the counter. Half-eaten

meals and open bottles were left on the white

tablecloths. Uriah was still holding Helena’s hand.

A new boom made the chandeliers shake and the

woman in the cloakroom came to and ran out

screaming.

‘Alone at last,’ Uriah said.

The ground beneath them shook and a fine

sprinkling of plaster from the gilt ceiling glittered

in the air. Uriah stood up and held out his arm.

‘Our best table has just become free, Fräulein. If

you wouldn’t mind . . .’

She took his arm, stood up and together they

walked to the podium. She barely heard the

whistling sound. The crash of the explosion that

followed was deafening, the plaster from the walls

turned into a sand-storm and the large windows

giving on to Weihburggasse were blown in. The

lights went out.

Uriah lit the candles in the candelabrum on the

table, pulled the chair out for her, held up the

folded napkin between thumb and first finger and

flipped it open to lay it gently on her lap.

‘ Hähnchen und Prädikatwein? ’ he asked,

discreetly brushing fragments of glass off the table,

the dinner plates and her hair.

Perhaps it was the candles and the golden dust

glittering in the air as dark fell outside, perhaps it

was the cooling draught from the open windows

giving them a breather from the hot Pannonian

summer, or perhaps it was simply her own heart,

whose blood seemed to be raging through her veins

in an attempt to experience these moments more

intensely. But she could remember music, and that

was not possible as the orchestra had packed up

and fled. Was she dreaming it, this music? It was

only many years later, before she was about to give

birth to a daughter, that she realised what it must

have been. Over the new cradle the father of her

child had hung a mobile with coloured glass

marbles, and one evening she had run her hand

through the mobile and had immediately

recognised the sound. And knew where it came

from. It was the crystal chandelier in Zu den drei

Husaren which had played for them. The clear,

delicate wind chimes of the chandelier as it swung

to the pounding of the ground, and Uriah marching

in and out of the kitchen with Salzburger Nockerl

and three bottles of Heuriger wine from the cellar,

where he had also found one of the chefs sitting in

the corner with a bottle. The chef didn’t move a

muscle to prevent Uriah from taking provisions; on

the contrary, he had inclined his head to show his

approval when Uriah showed him which wine he

had chosen.

Then he placed his forty-odd schillings under the

candelabrum, and they went out into the mild June

evening. In Weihburggasse it was totally still, but

the air was thick with the smell of smoke, dust and

earth.

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ Uriah said.

Without either of them saying a word about where

to go, they turned right, up Kärntner Straße, and

were suddenly standing in front of a darkened,

deserted Stephansplatz.

‘My God,’ Uriah said. The enormous cathedral

before them filled the young night sky.

‘Stephansdom?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ Helena leaned her head backwards and her

eyes followed the Südturm, the green-black church

spire, up, up towards the sky where the first stars

had crept out.

The next thing Helena remembered they were

standing inside the cathedral, surrounded by the

white faces of the people who had sought refuge

there, the sounds of crying children and organ

music. They walked towards the altar, arm in arm,

or had she only dreamed that? Had it really

happened? Had he not suddenly taken her in his

arms and said she would be his? Hadn’t she

whispered, Ja, Ja, Ja, as the void in the church

seized her words and flung them up to the vaulted

ceiling, the dove and Christ on the cross, where the

words were repeated and repeated until it had to

be true? Whether it had happened or not, the words

were truer than those she had carried with her

since her conversation with André Brockhard.

‘I cannot go with you.’

They were said, but when and where?

She had told her mother the same afternoon, that

she wasn’t leaving, although she didn’t give a

reason. Her mother had tried to comfort her, but

Helena couldn’t stand the sound of her sharp, self-

righteous voice and had locked herself in her

bedroom. Then Uriah had come, knocked on the

door, and she had decided not to think any more,

but to let herself fall without any fear, without

imagining anything except an eternal abyss.

Perhaps he had seen that immediately she opened

the door. Perhaps the two of them standing in the

doorway had made a tacit agreement to live the