Chapter 16
Karim came to dine with Edith Hardenberg at her flat in Grinzing that same night. He found his own way out to the suburbs by public transportation, and he brought with him gifts: a pair of aromatically scented candles, which he placed on the small table in the eating alcove and lit; and two bottles of fine wine.
Edith let him in, pink and embarrassed as ever, then returned to fuss over the Wiener schnitzel she was preparing in her tiny kitchen. It had been twenty years since she had prepared a meal for a man; she was finding the ordeal daunting but, to her surprise, exciting.
Karim had greeted her with a chaste peck on the cheek in the doorway, which had made her even more flustered, then found Verdi’s Nabucco in the library of her records and put it on the player.
Soon the aroma of the candles, musk and patchouli, joined the gentle cadences of the “Slaves’ Chorus”
to drift through the apartment.
It was just as he had been told to expect it by the neviot team that had broken in weeks before: very neat, very tidy, extremely clean. The flat of a fussy woman who lived alone.
When the meal was ready, Edith presented it with copious apologies. Karim tried the meat and pronounced it the best he had ever tasted, which made her even more flustered, yet immensely pleased.
They talked as they ate, of things cultural; of their projected visit to the Schönbrunn Palace and to see the fabulous Lipizzaner horses at the Hofreitschule, the Spanish Riding School inside the Hofburg on Josefsplatz.
Edith ate as she did everything else—precisely, like a bird pecking at a morsel. She wore her hair scraped back as always, gripped into a severe bun behind her head.
By the light of the candles, for he had switched off the too-bright lamp above the table, Karim was darkly handsome and courteous as ever. He refilled her wineglass all the time, so that she consumed far more than the occasional glass that she normally permitted herself from time to time.
The effect of the food, the wine, the candles, the music, and the company of her young friend slowly corroded the defenses of her reserve.
Over the empty plates, Karim leaned forward and gazed into her eyes.
“Edith?”
“Yes.”
“May I ask you something?”
“If you wish.”
“Why do you wear your hair drawn back like that?”
It was an impertinent question, personal. She blushed more deeply.
“I ... have always worn it like this.”
No, that was not true. There was a time, she recalled, with Horst, when it had flowed about her shoulders, thick and brown, in the summer of 1970. There was a time when it had blown in the wind on the lake at the Schlosspark in Laxenburg.
Karim rose without a word and walked behind her. She felt a rising panic. This was preposterous.
Skillful fingers eased the big tortoiseshell comb out of her bun. This must stop. She felt the bobby pins withdrawn, her hair coming undone, falling down her back. She sat rigid at her place. The same fingers lifted her hair and drew it forward to fall on either side of her face.
Karim stood beside her, and she looked up. He held out two hands and smiled.
“That’s better. You look ten years younger and prettier. Let’s sit on the sofa. You pick your favorite piece for the record player and I’ll make coffee. Deal?”
Without permission, he took her small hands and lifted her up from her seat. Letting one hand drop, he led her out of the alcove into the sitting room. Then he turned into the kitchen, releasing her other hand as he did so.
Thank God he had done that. She was shaking from head to toe. Theirs was supposed to be a platonic friendship. But then, he had not touched her, not really touched her. She would, of course, never permit that sort of thing .
She caught sight of herself in a mirror on the wall, pink and flushed, hair about her shoulders, covering her ears, framing her face. She thought she caught half a glimpse of a girl she had known twenty years ago.
She took a grip on herself and chose a record. Her beloved Strauss, the waltzes every note of which she knew, “Roses from the South,” “Vienna Woods,” “Skaters,” “Danube” ... Thank goodness he was in the kitchen and did not see her nearly drop it as she placed it on the turntable. He seemed to have great ease in finding the coffee, the water, the filters, the sugar.
She sat at one far end of the sofa when he joined her, knees together, coffee on her lap. She wanted to talk about the concert scheduled for the Musikverein next week, but the words did not come. She sipped her coffee instead.