to worry about me. I don’t want to go and see the thing.”
“No? Why not?”
“Hard to explain. As I said, I did a bit of wandering around town this afternoon, trying to ginger up the memory, I suppose. Looking for things I remembered, things I’d forgotten. It didn’t work. You see, even if the city were exactly the same, even with the same people in the same places, I would still be forty or fifty years older. I have changed, so the way I see it, sense it, that’s changed as well. It’s crazy, I know, but the memories I do have are so different. You lose all the detail, for a start, over the years, you only remember the things that mattered, or still matter. But even the smell of the air, the quality of the light, and the sound . . . My senses have changed. I’m an old man, and there it is. Nothing to be done about it. But somehow I feel that going to that exhibition would be worse, you know? To see a time I lived through stuck in a glass case, like something out of the pyramids.”
“Yes, I know what you mean. I thought it was rather strange, in that way. After all, it’s not that long ago.”
“Long enough. I’m sure most people in Europe think of the time before the war as pre-history. And I don’t suppose many of them remember that Austria had an entirely home-grown fascism that was nothing to do with the Nazis. It was all overshadowed by what happened afterwards.”
“Oh yes. I wouldn’t have known, and neither would Elspeth. Actually there’s something I wanted to ask you, about that exhibition.”
“Yes?”
“There was this mock-up of a building, whopping great thing with an archway in the middle, and balconies up the front, and no explanation attached. It seemed to be important in some way.”
“Oh God yes. The Karl-Marx-Hof. Whopping great thing, as you say. The Karl-Marx-Hof was part of the pride of Viennese socialism, enormous block of workers’ flats, put up after the first war. When I was here first there was a popular myth that the place was bursting with weapons, ready for the coming revolution, comrades. In fact it wasn’t quite like that, although I believe there were a few guns hidden in the walls, and the cellar. Anyway, when the balloon went up that February, a lot of the Schutzbund people holed up in there, and promptly found themselves under siege. Then the other side brought up the artillery, and shelled the place point blank.”
“Bloody hell!”
“Yes, the buggers. Quite unnecessary. The poor sods on the inside were hopelessly outnumbered, under-equipped, cut off, and half of them didn’t want to fight anyway, they just lived there. But it was a symbol, you see, for a lot of them in the Heimwehr, and the government. It stood for the red menace. Well, naming it after Karl Marx was a trifle tactless.”
“And were you involved in that?”
“Not really. I went down there looking for someone, and got knocked flat by something going off behind me, probably just a squib of a home-made bomb. But I had a couple of friends who knew what they were doing, and they bundled me over the border and out. That was it.”
Mickey nodded slowly. The danger had passed, and he decided he had been right to let it go. Although the frustration lingered, he was sure now that he was getting there, bit by bit.
“Well. Another chapter. You’ve never told me about that.”
“Haven’t I? Well, it wasn’t a terribly glorious episode, from my point of view.”
“Still interesting, though, for me.”
“Oh, well I’m glad. All rather gloomy, though, isn’t it? Rather like this place. Shall we leave these people to their seance, and take a walk to the bright lights? I think we’ll find the beer’s the same everywhere.”
“Why not.”
At the door of the café Herbert paused to exchange a few words with the woman who had served them. The man who had followed them there stayed where he was, absorbed in an English language magazine. After a moment, Herbert again joined Mickey in the street, grinning in triumph.
“The next one’s on you,” he said. “They’ve been open three weeks.”
It was dark now, but not cold, and they walked at an easy pace as Herbert led the way down the hill and left, with apparent purpose, into a side street. There were surprisingly few people abroad, and the eye drifted naturally to the darkened heights of the buildings that faced one other intimately from each side. To Mickey the uniform antiquity of the stone frontage was almost oppressive.
“Is it still different?”
His father looked about him briefly, and said;
“No. It’s still the same. And I’m still different.”
“Yes, sorry, that’s really what I meant. It’s not coming back, then.”
“No, I don’t know what could do that, unless I get roaring drunk, and forget how old I am. You know I remember it was like this, once, when I went back to the school for some sort of old boys’ do, maybe, fifteen years after I left. After the war, certainly. Miserable occasion, actually. Half my year seemed to have copped it somewhere along the way. Anyway, I remember standing there in the house room, trying desperately to conjure up, you know, what it had felt like, to be part of the place. I wanted to squeeze into one of those desk and flap-seat combination jobs and pretend I was a boy again. They didn’t have those in your time, did they? But it was all wrong, somehow. Couldn’t do it. Do you go back much?”
“Never.”
“Really? I expect they’ll be trying to screw some cash out of you before long. Funny thing was, though, the last time I was there with you, just before you left, what, ten years ago, I did sort of feel something. You know, all the new blocks were up by then, and they’d got rid of the green paint, and brought in those awful white boards with the felt pens . . . Changed out of all recognition, in other words. But somehow, being there with you, watching you and your friends in the Upper Sixth swanning around as if you owned the place—as one does—it brought it all back. Just for a moment, but strong enough to make me feel that it was all still there, deep down. Very reassuring, that.”
“I’ll have to try it.”
“Would you send a boy of yours to the old place, if you had one?”
“Don’t see why not. It’s still in the first division, academically. And Grandpa’s portrait in Big School would be quite a selling point. If it keeps on growing they’ll probably name a house after you one day.”
“Ah, wouldn’t that be grand!”
Mickey winced. He did not consider his school days to have been the happiest of his life, preferring to hope that those were still to come. Certainly belonging to Christie House would not have improved the experience.
“You’re very chatty this evening,” he said.
“Am I?”
“Yes. Much better than this morning. You seem very relaxed.”
“Ha. Hardly. I’m rather on edge, as a matter of fact. Probably why I’m rabbiting on like this. Ah, there. That looks all right.”
They had emerged now, from another winding gorge of a street, into a broad three-way
