LDV100

BEATRICE BERRUT 25 Beset by her torment, she does not immediately see the figure of the man who is slowly walking towards her, hands behind his back, looking slightly embarrassed. He is stocky, and has the somewhat inscrutable expression of people who are intransigent with themselves, but his dark eyes glow with a blazing fire when he lays them on her. What his posture tries to hide, his gaze expresses, and his desire for her hovers around him without his being aware of it. Surprised, she turns her head towards him. Her brother Alexander has invited him to spend the holidays with them in Payerbach. The young fellow is one of his students, a cellist he met at a Polyhymnia rehearsal. She recalls with a vague smile what her brother had said at the time: that he had no special talent for the cello. But it is becoming increasingly clear that he is a composer with a bright future and a bold approach. She herself met him briefly at one of the Champagner-Gilde soirées some time before. Even surrounded by all the most revolutionary artists in Vienna, he did not seem to depart from his usual seriousness. Yet she has heard Richard Specht say that this discreet, rather strange man is one of ‘the most compelling, problematic and unsettling protagonists’ of the young Viennese milieu. As she sees him stop beside her, the idea of fire beneath ice flashes through her mind, and she quivers. He is silent, but the light breeze that caresses the ripe fields around them, the rippling of the waters at their feet, speak for him.