Free The Exiles Return by Elisabeth de Waal Page A

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