‘My child,’ said she, ‘you alone have the power and the right to decide your fate. You wish to marry before you go to war; I understand this. I am not a man, I have never seen a war and I hardly know a thing about the military. But I do know that war is something dreadful and that perhaps it may kill you. This is the moment when I can speak the truth to you. I cannot bear Elizabeth. Even in other circumstances I would not have prevented you from marrying her. But I would never have told you the truth. Marry and be happy if you get the chance. That is all! Let us talk of other things. When do you join up? And where?’

For the first time in my life I felt disconcerted and diminished in the presence of my mother. I could only answer feebly: ‘I’ll soon be back, mother!’ which even now sounds abominable to my ear.

‘Come to lunch, boy,’ she said, as though nothing in the world were wrong, and in exactly her usual tone, ‘we’re having cutlets and damson dumplings.’

It was to me a remarkable manifestation of the mother’s art: this sudden appearance of the peaceful damson dumplings in the presence of death, so to speak. I was so touched that I could have fallen on my knees, only I was too young in those days not to feel ashamed of showing emotion. And since that hour I have also realised that a man must be quite mature or at least very experienced before he can reveal his feelings without the handicap of shame.

I kissed my mother’s hand as usual. Her hand—and I will never forget it—was delicate, slender and blue-veined.The morning light poured into the room, delicately veiled by dark red silk curtains, as if it were some silent yet ceremonially clad guest. Even the pale hand of my mother shimmered redly, as if it were blushing scarlet, a consecrated hand in a transparent glove of filtered morning light.

And the hesitant autumn chirping of the birds in our garden seemed to me at the same time almost as familiar and almost as strange as the beloved hand of my mother veiled in red.

‘I have no time to lose,’ was all I said.

I went to the father of my beloved Elizabeth.

[XIV]

THE FATHER OF my beloved Elizabeth was at the time a well-known, one might almost say famous, hatter. From being an ordinary Imperial Counsellor he had become a far from extraordinary Hungarian baron. The openly scandalous morality of the old Monarchy ordained from time to time that commercial counsellors of Austrian provenance should become Hungarian barons.

The war came most conveniently for my future father-in-law. He was already too old to be called up, but young enough to develop from a serious manufacturer of hats into a nimble producer of those army caps which bring in so much more and cost so much less than silk hats.

It was noon as I called on him, and the Rathaus clock was striking twelve. He had just returned from a very satisfactory visit to the War Office. He had acquired a contract for half a million soldiers’ uniform caps. In this way, he told me, he—an ageing helpless man—could still be of service to the Fatherland. As he spoke he stroked both sides of his mutton-chop whiskers as if he wished to caress simultaneously both halves of the Monarchy. He was large, powerful and ponderous. He made me think of some kind of sunny beast of burden which had undertaken the task of producing half a million uniform caps and felt the lighter for it rather than heavier. ‘You will be reporting for duty,’ he said in positively cheerful tones,‘I believe I can assume that my daughter will miss you.’

At that moment I felt that I should find it impossible to ask him for his daughter’s hand. Driven by the urge which one has to make the impossible after all possible, and by the haste with which death’s relentless approach demanded that I should enjoy to the utmost the last miserable dregs of my life, I said to the hatter, without courtesy or patience: ‘I have to see the lady, your daughter, at once.’

‘Young friend,’ he replied, ‘I know you have come to ask for her hand. I know that Elizabeth will not say no. So for the moment take my hand and consider yourself my son.’ Upon which he held out his hand—large, soft and much too white. I took it and had the feeling that I was touching some comfortless sort of dough.