“What are you doing right now?” he asked, sitting down beside her with such animation he almost bumped her off the bench. “You must come to my house and play the piano for my parents. Will you? They are classical music enthusiasts, especially interested in the piano. It’s an obsession of theirs. My mother plays, she has all her life, but nowhere near as well as you. They’ll be your biggest fans. Will you come? Please? You can call your mother and tell her where you are as soon as we’re home. And my father’s driver will see you back to your apartment. Do you live near the school?”
“I live on Berggasse. Right near Sigmund Freud,” said Emi. Besides her home in Tokyo, it was the most beautiful place she’d ever lived, big and light with four large bedrooms, though they only needed two. Her mother had pointed out that a two-bedroom apartment wouldn’t have enough living spaces for entertaining on a diplomat’s level. They were on the third floor of a soft limestone building and the elevator to reach it was an ornate moving cage of wrought iron. Emi often took trips on it, up and down, just to amuse herself.
“Now he’s an interesting man,” said Leo. “Freud. My parents have known him for years. But you don’t need any psychoanalysis today, do you? You should come play for my parents instead. It will be much more fun. I’ll come, too, of course. I won’t just kick you off with some strange driver to be taken around the city. He’s Hungarian on top of it. A very solemn fellow who’s missing a finger on his right hand,” said Leo, lifting up his hand and hiding one of his fingers. “But he’s a good driver.”
Leo made a steering motion with his fingers on a fake wheel, his dark hair flopping forward. “Please say yes.”
“If you would like me to, I will,” Emi answered, delighted. Having started school later than the rest, she’d worried she would find it hard to make friends. And in her new school, she knew, she was the only non-Austrian and would indeed stick out.
Leo slung Emi’s bag across his shoulders and showed her the shortcut to the front of the building through the chapel. It was still as hot outside as it had been when Emi walked to school that morning, but they didn’t have far to go. Leo’s nine-fingered chauffeur was waiting outside the front door in his black driver’s suit and matching brimmed hat. He opened the door of the expensive car for Emi and they got in on either side. Leo made small talk with him as they pulled away from the school. Then he turned and made a clownish frown at Emi. “You’ll see,” he whispered, “a very solemn man.” And it was true. The only words the driver uttered the rest of the ride home were a string of expletives when a young woman tried to cross illegally in front of the shiny black Mercedes, its long, elegant frame curved like a slide over the wheels.
“This is quite a car,” said Emi, leaning back into the beige leather seat.
“It’s a little too much for a ride from school,” said Leo. “But my father insists. He is almost as passionate about cars as he is about music. Race cars, chauffeured cars, boxcars, all of them.”
“Boxcars?” asked Emi, confused.
“Don’t worry about boxcars,” said Leo. “They’re not very relevant to your lifestyle.”
When they arrived at Leo’s, Emi quickly understood that the Hartmann family did not own just a floor of a townhouse apartment like the one her family was living in on Berggasse Strasse, but the entire building. This did not much surprise her after the chauffeured Mercedes.
Leo’s glamorous mother greeted them at the door and managed to hide most of her surprise when she saw her son emerge from the car with a teenage Japanese girl with a hole in her blouse.
“This is Emi,” Leo explained, as Emi moved her hair over her shoulder to cover the hole. “She just started at the school today. Her father is a diplomat from Japan—the consul general. I barged in on Emi playing a Chopin piece in the music room this afternoon. The very same one you’ve been playing for years. étude number something. The sad one.”
“étude number three!” exclaimed Hani Hartmann. She clasped her hands, diamond rings on four out of her ten fingers, and started to hum the melody, reaching out for her son’s hands and doing a few waltz steps, though the piece wasn’t a waltz. Emi liked the way her curls bounced around her face, just like Leo’s, though hers were a dark red and very coiffed.
“She speaks perfect German,” said Leo. “Don’t let appearances fool you. But we Hartmanns would never be so mindless as to be surprised by a foreigner speaking German, would we?” he said, winking at Emi.
Looking from son to mother, Emi was sure she had never met two more charming people in all of her life. The Hartmanns, she could tell from the start, were going to be wonderful.
“Of course she speaks perfect German,” said Hani, ushering Emi into her house. “A diplomat’s daughter. Such a pleasure for the afternoon. I am of course Hani Hartmann, Leo’s mother,” she went on, kissing Emi on both cheeks and squeezing her thin shoulders as if they’d been acquainted for years. “And you are most welcome in our home. Come with us, right here and up the stairs,” she said as Emi and Leo followed her up the marble staircase into the expansive foyer, the ceiling as high as the two-centuries-old ones in the school classrooms.
“The piano is just through there,” said Hani in a happy singsong voice as they made their way along the hall. She gestured down another long hallway, the walls expertly hung with ornate oil paintings. “But you must both be hungry—thirsty? Let me just ask Zsofia to prepare you something appropriate to eat in this unseasonably hot weather. It’s just too warm to eat cooked food.”
“Zsofia. Also Hungarian,” Leo whispered to Emi. She turned to look at him and he executed another silly frown, which made her lips twitch.
“What Emi needs to do is call home and tell her family where she is,” said Leo, gesturing to the phone in the hallway. “You don’t want me to have kidnapped her, do you?”
When Emi had told her amah where she was and assured her that she was safe, relaying the Hartmanns’ phone number and address and promising to be home for dinner, Leo asked her if she was ready to play for his mother.
“Mein Froschi!” said Hani. “How rude! She hasn’t even eaten or had a drink of water. Come to the sitting room, both of you, and have some refreshments first.”
“Froschi?” Emi asked, curiously, wondering why his mother had called him a little frog.
“Leo!” Mrs. Hartmann clarified, laughing and putting her hands over her small mouth, unable to hide her smile, all red lipstick and white teeth. “Of course, Leo. Forgive me,” she said, turning to her son. “I call him Froschi,” she explained to Emi, “but he told me I was forbidden to use that embarrassing name in front of his friends. What a bad mother I am,” she said, putting her freckled arm around her son affectionately.
“Please excuse her,” said Leo, not seeming a bit embarrassed. “She has an affliction, you see. She still thinks I’m five years old and that this handsome, manly body is just an evolutionary mistake.”