Viennese Waltz: A Child's Story
Alex hadn't been kidding about his garret room: it really was small. Perched in the attic of a huge, groaning old mansion - long since subdivided into apartments - in the middle of a run-down, artsy district, the room was divided in two by virtue of the back half of the floor being raised two steps above the front, an oddity introduced by differences in the ceiling levels below. A very large mattress was simply laid on the raised floor and covered with a wildly mismatching assortment of pillows and blankets; the resulting bed doing double duty as a couch during the daytime. An old wooden door, propped across sawhorses and set against the back wall, served as Alex's desk, while a massive, beat-up old wardrobe for his few belongings, a Welsh dresser standing in for a dry stoveless "kitchen", and a small, square table with two mismatched chairs completed the furnishings. The closest bathroom was two floors below, shared between several apartments.
It was a private, heavenly retreat, up away from the noisy street far below. Two curtainless gable windows, one in each section, showing a view mostly of rooftops, treetops, and – further away – the taller monuments and buildings scattered throughout the city, also let the afternoon sun stream across the room in lazy beams. The house had benefited from the ongoing electrification of Vienna a few years earlier, and the garret boasted both an overhead light and a lamp on the desk, although Alex still kept candles around for the evening, finding the new electric bulbs too harsh for the end of the day. One night making love by candlelight turned Rose into a True Believer.
The next morning Alex introduced her to the routine of a poor Viennese writer. He took a large basket lined with a dish cloth down from the Welsh dresser, laid two huge empty ceramic mugs inside, and led her down the stairs to the street below (making a pit stop on the way). The cafe on the corner filled both mugs with fragrant Viennese coffee, and the basket with a couple of pieces of fruit and a pair of flaky croissants, which, it being a beautiful sunny day, they consumed a block away in the city park. Then they visited the market, reloading the basket with fruit, cheese, greens, smoked sausages, and freshly-baked bread, picked up a couple of bottles of wine and some local newspapers, then returned to the garret.
There, Alex turned to her, apologetically. He did need to work, after all, and planned to write up a story about the festival in Sarajevo which the attempted assassination had only briefly interrupted for one of the magazines. As he did all of his writing right there at his desk, he wouldn't be leaving her alone, but could she entertain herself quietly for a few hours?
"Of course!" she laughed. Between the newspapers and the dozens of books lining the edges of the room where the floor met each wall, most of them in German, she would be quite content. (Later on, she would let herself quietly out the door and explore the nearby neighborhoods of Vienna on foot.) That established the pattern for the coming weeks: breakfast at the park, the cafe, or back in the garret as weather or whim dictated; a few hours for Alex to write; then they would eat the morning's finds from the market before venturing out for the evening.
^..^
The first day, Alex leaned back in his chair after filling up several sheets of paper with his neat handwriting and stretched hugely, joints cracking – almost tipping over backward. He jerked upright again, catching the chair and causing the front legs to land on the floor again with a sharp crack, a motion that looked suspiciously practiced, then turned his head and smiled at Rose on the bed.
"There. Finished. Would you like to read it?"
She would. And it was an amazing piece of journalism, for any time: pulling the reader in with vivid descriptions of the town, the festival, the several meanings behind it, and some of the people caught up in the celebration. Rose stood up with it again when she'd finished and stepped over to the desk to hand it back. "That was incredible, Alex. You really are a very, very talented writer!"
He grinned up at her for the praise, stretching his neck up to ask for a kiss, which she shyly gave him. Then, as he took the papers back to fold them up and tuck them into a pouch, she reached for another pile sitting on one end of the desk, curious. "What is this?"
"Oh..." he replied, shrugging nonchalantly. "It's nothing. Just a silly little project I've been working on. But I can't seem to get it to come out right."
"What is it? What kind of project?"
He glanced up at her as if to check her reaction. "It's a child's story book." Shaking his head deprecatingly, he added, "Just a fairy tale. It's not very good."
"May I read it?"
"Suit yourself," he shrugged again, pretending not to care. "Maybe you can tell me where I'm going wrong."
She took the papers back to the bed and settled in again, starting at the beginning. The first words leapt out at her: "The Tale of Little Wolf". As she read the first few pages, she got more and more confused.
"This is the story of Bad Wolf!" Glancing up, she looked at Alex across the room, setting out their cold afternoon meal on the table. And that's when it hit her, swimming up from her own childhood memories. She gasped. "Alexander Toller. The creator of Bad Wolf."
The gasp attracted his attention, and he looked over his shoulder at her, bewildered in turn. "What?"
"Uh..." she floundered, then recovered. "Think how great that will sound, when they call you that!"
"But it's Little Wolf, not Bad Wolf."
"That's what I mean!" she shot back, surer now. "Bad Wolf is catchier. Anybody can write a story about a Little Wolf, and nobody will remember it. But they'll all remember Bad Wolf!"
"But she's not bad, she's good!" He wasn't getting it.
"But that's the whole point! That's the inside joke, the secret!"
He scoffed. "Not much of a secret, if it's right there in a book that everybody can read."
She shook her head. "You don't understand how kids' minds work, Alex. You give them a secret in a book or a..." Oops. She'd almost said 'TV show', and had to recover. "... a fairy tale, and they'll think they're the only ones in the world who know it – or one of the few. They'll become members of an exclusive club."
Alex had stopped fiddling at the table, standing up straight and staring at her. "Really?"
"Trust me." She bit her lips to hide a knowing smile, full of amusement at seeing – helping – the birth of the most famous fairy tale in her world.
He stepped over to the bed, holding out his hand for the papers, which she handed to him. He scanned the first couple of pages, thinking hard. "Bad Wolf?" he checked with her, and she nodded, smiling that supernova smile.
"Now you're getting it."
Lost in the story, planning out the hundred ideas that blossomed instantly in his creative mind, he turned wordlessly back to his desk, sitting down and reaching for a fresh sheet of paper without looking. Within seconds, he was once again hard at work, writing furiously, chasing the inspiration she'd given him.
Rose laid back and smiled dreamily, drifting off to sleep to the sound of his pen scratching across the paper.