The Exiles Return (8 page)

He had been pretty clever even then, for it was not easy, in those years, to transfer your assets abroad. But he had done it. And from then onwards he had made money, perhaps hundreds of times more money than had Traumüller the second, in spite of his doctorate; and now, instead of a comfortable competence like his father, he owned a really large fortune, even by American standards. Nevertheless, he recognised Traumüller’s endeavour and saluted his success. He would go and see him and find out whether or not he was just the man he needed to find that dream house he had come back to find. He telephoned for an appointment in the afternoon and, after a couple of minutes during which the girl evidently consulted her employer, was given one immediately for the next morning. Obviously, the name Kanakis was as familiar to Traumüller as Traumüller had been to Kanakis.

Kanakis walked from his hotel. The Inner City is so small and compact that distances are negligible, and most of the streets are so narrow that cars are more of an encumbrance than a convenience. At that time there were very few of them about, only military vehicles, staff cars and a few taxis. Kanakis made a negative sign to the driver of one of them, who was obsequiously bowing to him at the kerb in front of the hotel. He remembered the way. Besides, he savoured the unchanged names of the old streets. They were very shabby. Paint was peeling from doors and window frames, many facades were damaged and many windows and shopfronts simply boarded up. Parts of the pavement, too, were broken, the asphalt split, paving stones lying loose.

Kanakis picked his way carefully, looking appraisingly right and left, thinking to himself that after five years of war and, in its aftermath, no money or incentive for repairs, things might have been worse. Ah, here a large building had been completely destroyed, the whole area would have to be re-planned. Kanakis feared that any modern construction would be out of keeping with its surroundings. These old cities, they would be even more spoilt by improvement than by destruction. But one should have no regrets. This was a living organism, not an antiquarian showpiece. Theophil Kanakis had not been in contact with many people in Vienna before he began to sense that the
spiritus loci
, the character and spirit of the place, was going to survive and persist.

Something caught his eye on the other side of the street. He skirted a hole in the asphalt and crossed over. The shop window opposite was covered with weatherboard, except for a small square that had been cut out and glazed; the shop was a confectioner’s, and behind the small window were two trays of iced cakes, glistening with sugar and filled with cream. The price tickets, on the tiny cleft wooden sticks affixed to each row of cakes, quoted a fantastic figure, surely quite out of reach of most passers-by. In fact, nobody stopped to look at them; but Kanakis was interested. By what means had the confectioner succeeded in getting hold of the eggs, the sugar, the cream which had gone into these glamorous products of his skill? For undoubtedly they were the real thing. Kanakis saluted them with a smile. The girl behind the counter – he could only just see her through the narrow opening – looked at him hopefully and smiled back. On an impulse he went in and paid for a trayful without choosing. ‘Eat them,’ he said, ‘take some home to your mother. No, I don’t want any, but they look so good, I have enjoyed buying them.’ And he went out of the shop, leaving the girl dumbfounded.

Kanakis continued on his way with a spring in his step; he was pleased there would be cakes again, that people in Vienna still had the taste for them and were able to make them. People were still the same: they liked cakes – and probably music – and all the other pleasures of the senses. His instinct had been right, the cakes confirmed it.

So it was with a new buoyancy that he went up the stone staircase to the second floor of the old house where a brass plate on the door announced that this was the office of Dr Franz Traumüller, Estate Agent and Valuer, and a cardboard notice underneath asked clients to enter without ringing the bell. The inner sanctum must be well-guarded against intruders, Kanakis thought, but probably only fairly recently – the cardboard notice looked clean.

As he went in, there was a clatter of typewriters, and one of the three girls at work got up to ask his name. She took his card and went out of a side door to announce him, came back at once and preceded him along a passage to a room overlooking the street. This was comfortably and lavishly furnished, with tall bookcases, deep armchairs and a large writing table: more like a successful lawyer’s than an estate agent’s office. Two dark pictures in ponderous gold frames hung on the wall behind the desk where Dr Traumüller was seated. As his visitor entered the room, he rose and came forward with outstretched hand to greet him.

‘Herr von Kanakis, this is indeed a pleasure. I shan’t ask you whether you remember me because I believe we have never met, but I imagine you have come because you know who I am – as I know who you are.’

‘Certainly, that is so, Herr Doktor. And I am glad to find that I was not mistaken in your identity when I found your name in the register.’

‘Ah, that is how you found me! I was wondering. We have come a long way, have we not, Herr von Kanakis? But do please sit down. I mean,’ he added as he saw Kanakis glance round the room, ‘I mean,
I
have come a long way, as you see. Whereas you, of course – but your fame has preceded you.’

‘My fame, Herr Doktor? I am not aware of being famous.’

‘Well, your reputation, then. Of course, your late father – whom I well remember, having seen him on certain occasions when I was a small boy – was a man of considerable wealth. I got out my father’s old files, just for curiosity’s sake, after you telephoned yesterday – the files dealing with his house property. Yes, it was a substantial fortune in those days, here in Vienna. But
you
, Herr von Kanakis, well, there is no comparison, is there? American dimensions are on a different scale. I am told that everything in America is much bigger – the buildings, the distances, the rivers, even the birds, they say, are larger editions of our own, and we have only got to look at the cars. Still, I’m quite pleased with my own modest competence. May I offer you a drink? Enzian schnapps? You may not know it, I don’t think it was much in evidence at the time you left us. I’m sorry I have no Scotch.’

‘Thanks, I never drink in the morning, although Enzian sounds most enticing. I only know the flower – such a beautiful blue!’ Kanakis leant back in his chair and looked straight at Traumüller. ‘But how is it you know anything at all about me – however exaggerated your information may be – except what we both know about each other: we are our fathers’ sons?’

‘Well, Herr von Kanakis, Vienna is still a very small place, you know. People talk. I know a man who knows a man who … etc etc. Isn’t that how things get about? There are so many sources of information. I must have heard about you almost the day after you arrived. We are, in a manner of speaking, in the same line of business, if I may dare to compare a molehill to a mountain, Herr von Kanakis.’

‘I see.’

Herr Traumüller began fiddling with a paperknife. So far he had done all the talking, and that was not his usual method of conducting an interview. Usually he invited his client to talk, to state his business, say what he wanted to buy or sell, or any other transaction he might have in mind, and then he, Traumüller, could mention the market, the current difficulties, the high interest rates. Then, when the client had reluctantly admitted the truth of these preliminaries, Traumüller would be able to suggest tactfully that he, indeed, was the man, perhaps the only man, to overcome such obstacles. He wouldn’t boast – nothing as crude as that! – but would acknowledge gratefully, almost humbly, that thanks to his connections, his reputation and, if he might say so, his expertise, his client’s wishes could be met.

But this interview was not conforming to the usual pattern. Something in Kanakis’s appearance, in the ease of his posture as he reclined in the deep armchair, his elegance and his tranquillity, intimidated Traumüller and inhibited him from asking Kanakis why he had come to see him. Ever since the appointment had been made the previous afternoon, Traumüller had been asking himself this question. There might be great opportunities for him here. For why had Kanakis come back to Vienna at this particular moment, after an absence of so many years? Did he plan to invest on a large scale in the rebuilding of the city? There was so much property for sale, so many building sites, so many houses whose owners would be only too glad to dispose of them if they could obtain a tempting price. And surely, if such were Kanakis’s intentions, he would not want to handle this business himself? He would want a man on the spot who had all the local knowledge. But meanwhile Dr Traumüller was not at all sure how this matter ought to be approached. He knew himself to be shrewd, but possible this dark-browed man with the heavy black moustache and the blue-shadowed cheeks might be even shrewder. Or was it only the aura of wealth about him which gave him something intimidating? In spite of all the altered circumstances, his education and professional standing, Dr Traumüller felt almost as obsequious towards Theophil Kanakis as the elder Traumüller had felt towards his father.

Kanakis was taking his time. ‘I see,’ he said again, adding nothing to this non-commital remark, while his eyes seemed to wander dreamily round the room, feeling their way up and down the tall ebony bookcases, appraising the leather-bound volumes half-hidden by the reflecting glass of their sliding doors, caressing, as it were, the velvety surface of the tobacco-coloured suede upholstery of the two large armchairs, in one of which he was sitting. His left foot shifted a little as he settled himself more comfortably in its embrace: the slight movement might have been a testing of the quality of the Persian carpet. ‘I see,’ he said a third time into the silence, which seemed to Traumüller to have lasted interminably, though only a few seconds had ticked away on the big clock in its mahogany casing framed in intricate volutes of burnished bronze. These repeated ‘I see’s’ appeared, in the end, to have a more literal application and to refer to what Kanakis was actually seeing of his surroundings rather than to the remarks Traumüller had been making about his sources of information. At any rate, their repetition, and their ambiguity, were making Traumüller more and more nervous.

At last Kanakis’s eyes came to rest on the two dark, heavily-framed pictures hanging on the wall opposite his chair, and a faint smile creased his eyelids.

‘Do you really recognise those pictures?’ Dr Traumüller exclaimed, unable to bear this silent scrutiny any longer, and immediately cursing himself inwardly for this unwarranted suggestion. For a very unpleasant thought had entered his mind. What if Kanakis had returned to Vienna not to deal in real estate, but to recover some of the property which had been confiscated by the German Secret Police or their agents when the owners had been deported, ‘liquidated’ or had simply fled, abandoning all they possessed? A quick appraisal reassured him that nothing in this room could have belonged to the Kanakis family who, in fact, were not Jews, and should not have suffered confiscation, except perhaps by mistake, for the rich Jewish and the rich Greek families had been very close to each other.

‘Recognise them?’ Kanakis repeated with a hint of astonishment, real or simulated, in his voice. He had divined Traumüller’s suspicion. ‘Why? Ought I to recognise them? Did you expect me to do so? Do you mean that I must have seen them before, somewhere else?’

‘No, no, of course not, it’s most unlikely you would have seen them – or remembered them if you had. They are in no way outstanding or really valuable – a minor nineteenth century artist. I just thought they furnished the room, gave it a certain cachet, within the limits of what I could afford. They did in fact belong to a gentleman who was surely an acquaintance of your family, Baron E—. You might possibly have seen them at his house. Baron E— unfortunately died abroad, in England, I believe. His heirs, after they had recovered what could be traced of his property, had it all sold at auction; having no use for this old-fashioned stuff in their modern homes, I suppose. I acquired the pictures in the auction rooms, as well as most of the things you see here. All quite openly, publicly and legally, you understand. There is no great demand for this period,’ he added deprecatingly, ‘and there is so much of it about. But the material is magnificent and it suits my purpose.’

‘There is no need to apologise, Herr Doktor,’ Kanakis said, smiling broadly. ‘I can only congratulate you on your bargains.’

Traumüller opened his mouth: I didn’t apologise, he was going to say. How dare he insult me with such an insinuation! But he shut it again promptly. From a very rich man many things have to be accepted.

And Kanakis, sensing and enjoying this suppressed exclamation of protest, continued soothingly: ‘You have most sensibly done what many, quite illustrious people have done before you: taken advantage of the reversals of fortune, shall we say, that have befallen some people of substance during recent historical events – you have purchased judiciously, and to suit your requirements. Who could possibly blame you for that? As I said, you could invoke noble precedents. Do you know that in the French Revolution, even during the Reign of Terror, the heads of several great English houses sent their agents over to Paris to acquire some fine pieces of craftsmanship for which their owners, sadly, had no further use? Most of the beautiful French furniture in England dates from those timely forays. At least it went where it was appreciated – as the contents of this room are appreciated by you, Herr Doktor.’ Kanakis inclined his head towards Traumüller, as if making a little bow. ‘Personally, I am not interested in the ponderous riches of our late bourgeoisie.
My
tastes, Herr Doktor, are rather narrowly defined – the eighteenth century, Maria Theresa you would say here in Vienna, and a little before and after, the Louis Quinze and Louis Seize in France. I’m afraid this taste is very widely shared, there is much demand for that period and prices are high. But I am glad to say that I can compete. There are certain advantages in being able to compete, Herr Doktor, because it means that one can usually, if not always, obtain what one likes.’