Winding west and south instead of east to the tram stop downhill he took in the houses on the long avenue of the quarter, ornamented with towers and oriel windows, pinnacles with weathervanes shaped like pennants that bore the year of their construction. 1906. MCMII. 1918. The last throes of an empire that couldn’t hear its own death rales. When the best fancied they were a suburb of old Vienna. Windows too occluded to see the end of the street lined with weeping cherries naked to the weather, the bark with its black eruptions, mortal with grief or winter.
Hands in pockets he walked, his breath scouting before him, his old leather case slung from his shoulder beating at his hip the time of his strides. Houses painted yellow or gray, green and white plaster, glimpses between them of the bare trees on the hills to east and west that formed the valley, snow powdered on the forest floors.
At the corner he crossed and kept to the curving grounds of the cancer hospital. Through the iron fencerailshe could see a patient in a white robe limping along the shoveled path, taking the cold air, a coatbound helper there to guide by the elbow. Men or women he could not tell. No nurses to be seen. At the bottom of the hill he waited to cross again, an old man stooped in his loose clothes beside him, looking the wrong way.
Sir? Sir? Now you should first look left for the traffic.
Why did they have to change everything? the man said under his visible breath, under the drooping eyelids. Even that? A steaming sigh.
Trn smiled and nodded. The wattles of the man’s neck shook as he looked the wrong way again, his foot searching from the curb. Trn watched him shuffle across the street as if his legs were shackled.
Not many waited for the tram. A mother cooing into a blanket, a sturdy woman with her shopping netted in each hand, two men with silent eyes behind their hat brims. A young woman on the bench, knees together, high heels together. A nose unfortunately heavy and over it she watched the pavement. Through the bare trees on its long ridge the dark mass of the castle spying out, its flag, its keep. A number twelve drew up and Trn shouldered his case again, allowed the woman with her shopping to pass toward the arriving door. The young woman remained. Trn’s fingers tapped the case and unshouldered it and he took the space at the other end of the bench. There might be perfume but in this cold who could say. Then an eleven rattled down the line squealing on the rails and Trn stood when she did, stood directly behind as the queue formed, took the steps after her. Aboard at the back he could watch the face, the gloved hands holding the bench, the coat hiding all detail. The two men behind their hat brims stood together in the aisle not talking and the mother whispered to her baby crying from the blanket until a man stood and she sat heavily down beside a woman with a round hat angled over her hair, a single fan of chestnut across the shoulder of her coat. He could see nothing of her face, not the curve of her ear or the profiled cheek but the hair was lustrous, washed today, this morning. Dried before the fire, swung limp and wet to be treated to the rough towel while she wore her slip. The tram lurched and Trn waited for the interference of passengers and when the tram lurched again an old man and an old woman folded themselves into the seat behind the chestnut. The old man was tall and taller still in his hat. When the tram swayed at the bend Trn stepped to the other side of the aisle but the line of sight was no better there. A man with black eyes scowled at him above a black toothbrush mustache. Now you couldn’t pass a day in the streets and not collide with a tribute trimmed just so. The young woman glanced over her nose, glanced away. He gazed on and they sought the gritted floor and then the tram squealed, and the door folded and she took the steps to the street without a glance back and when he looked forward the chestnut was drifting down the steps through the door that closed after her and the jolting tram left them both behind. He would have a long extra block to the library but he had time.
***