In Search of Love and Beauty by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

“Don’t you like it?” And he began to sing the words as far as he remembered them: “Parrot,” he sang, “why only Pretty Polly dear, what’s wrong with sweetheart love and sugar bun—” and forgetting the rest, he supplemented it with la-la-la and swaying and smiling, encouraging Marietta to join in with him. When she shut the piano, wedging his hands under the lid, he left them there and looked bewildered. “What did you do that for?” he said. “Open it, or I can’t go on playing.” He was so drunk he no longer knew what was going on, or why he had come, or anything. He waited for her to reopen the piano lid, and when she wouldn’t, he did it by himself. He went on playing; at least it drowned out the baby’s crying. But he stopped before Natasha did and slumped over the keys, bringing out a fearful sound that almost matched hers. He was asleep and muttered when Marietta tried to wake him. So she left him and returned to the bedroom she shared with Mark. She lay next to him—how peacefully he slept—and pressed herself against him and hid her face in his sweet warm hair.
    The Old Vienna first opened its doors in the thirties at the time when they all arrived in New York as refugees. In the beginning they laughed at it for the crudity of its effects—the deep-blue buttoned banquettes, the velvet curtains with gold-fringed valances over panels of white lace, the chandeliers hanging down as thick and fast as paper lanterns. But the place turned out to be so comfortable, the service so good, the management was so affable, not to speak of the Viennese specialties—the coffee with whipped cream, the strudel,nockerln, and all the rest of it—that everyone just kept coming, and it was crowded from the time it opened at noon till it shut at two in the morning. Louise and Regi often went there, either for a tête-à-tête or to meet other friends in their circle; and it was they who first brought Leo at a time when he couldn’t have afforded to come on his own. Afterward of course he became almost the reigning deity of the place.
    Louise and Regi had their first quarrel about Leo in the Old Vienna. It was their habit to meet there at least once a week for afternoon coffee and “to talk things over.” What they talked over on that occasion was Leo’s classes which were about to begin. They were his first experiments in a lifelong series of training programs and workshops—his trials and errors, as he called them, toward the evolution of a life-philosophy (though he hated that word) which in the end culminated in The Point.
    The point at issue between Louise and Regi on that afternoon was where these classes were to be held. At first he had agreed to hold them at Regi’s and she was annoyed that the venue had been changed to Louise and Bruno’s apartment where he was then living.
    â€œBut Regi, darling,” Louise tried to soothe her, “it wouldn’t be convenient for you. . . . You know you like to sleep late. And what when you have to sort your laundry?” she said, smiling on this last, for it was one of their private jokes, Regi sorting her laundry meaning Regi having a lover in.
    But Regi continued to pout. Pouting rather suited her, she had that sort of mouth; also, ever since the age of thirty she had been a redhead, and redheads were expected to be sulky. “He isn’t going to hold classes all day, is he? We could arrange about the times.”
    â€œCan you honestly see Leo arranging with anyone about his times? You know what he’s like, what sort of a tornado, ” Louise said, and laughed out loud.
    â€œWell, of course, with you spoiling him. He doesn’t have it so easy with me, I can tell you.” Regi tossed her head and looked more sulky. She and Louise were always somewhat on display at the Old Vienna. They were perched on little chairs at one of the round