Outside they sang somewhere the song Anne had heard for the first time from Grandfather Jörg’s shop. In the kitchen Netti was beating cream to its rhythm. And in the evening, just as on any other day, the lamps on the boat-bridge were lit, not excepting the one on which a man had died that day. Its light was just as calm as the other’s. The streets spoke no more of what had happened. In the darkness the Danube washed the city’s bloody hand.
CHAPTER VI
On Saturday a letter came from Baroness Geramb. There would be no more dancing classes.
All the light seemed to go from Christopher’s eyes.
“But why?” said he, and hung his head sadly.
“Dancing is unbecoming when there is a war on.”
“So it is true? The war has come,” thought Anne, but still it seemed to her unreal, distant. Just as if one had read about it in a book. A book whose one-page chapters were stuck up every morning on the walls of the houses.
It was after Christmas. The Danube was invisible. A dense, sticky fog moved on the window panes. Christopher ran out shivering into the dark morning. As usual, he was late; he had to leave his breakfast and eat his bread and butter in the street. He had no idea of his lesson. Behind him Florian carried a lantern. On winter mornings he always lit the boy’s way till he reached the paved streets.
On the pavement of the inner town a bandy-legged old man got in front of Christopher. On one arm he had a large bundle of grimy papers while a pot of glue dangled from the other. People in silent crowds waited at the corners of the streets for him; when they had read the fresh posters they walked away silent, dejected.
“What is happening? What do they want with us?” they asked.