The Vienna Melody (35 page)

Professor Stein looked at his daughter. His “jubilee year” at the University was imminent, but to look at him no one would have guessed it. His refined and sensitive face was as taut as ever. Between his look and its object he put, as always, a clarifying and intellectualizing perspective. As always, his daughter read what was behind her father's look. The “Have you grown accustomed to it?” of twenty-seven years earlier was now: “So you have not yet grown accustomed to it. But you must still do it.” Between these two, who never put the essentials into words, this had never been said.

“Of course, that was an oversight,” the professor admitted. “In her day I gave your mother the Palazzo Vendramin as a special assignment.”

“Extra edition of the
Neue Freie Presse
!” they heard the newsboys calling in Seilerstätte. “Extra!”

“The
Neue Freie Presse
is issuing an extra edition?” exclaimed Professor Stein with surprise. “There must be some extraordinary reason.”

“It is probably the racing results,” was the opinion of the acting cadet officer, although the leading liberal paper only reluctantly concerned itself with such vanities as racing, or, indeed, such crudities as sports.

“Get the Herr Hofrat a copy of the extra,” Henriette ordered. She hated the way Simmerl never did such matter-of-course things on his own initiative but always had to be asked to do them.

“Right away, madam,” he said, and disappeared.

“And how were the scampi at the Hotel Danieli?” Henriette inquired of her son-in-law. She found it just as difficult to call him by his first name as to feel like a mother-in-law.

“Did we have scampi?” Dr. Baier asked his young wife who was gazing at him with adoring eyes.

“I hope so,” put in Henriette in her daughter's stead. And to Simmerl who had come in with the extra: “You look like Cassandra!” This family gathering was getting on her nerves the longer Hans delayed coming home. Out of consideration for the bride and groom he might have come on time. But no! He must not lose one precious minute with that Fraulein Rosner! Henriette decided to have it out with him that very day.

“Well, give it here,” she said to the butler, who was still standing at the door with the newspaper in his hand.

He gave it to her, stiffly and solemnly.

“The Heir to the Throne and the Duchess of Hohenberg,” read the heavy headlines, and beside them was printed a large black cross under which were the words:

 

S
ARAJEVO,
June 28, 1914: His Imperial and Royal Highness, the Heir to the Throne Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and his Noble Consort, Her Highness the Duchess of Hohenberg, were today the victims of an infamous assault. As Their Highnesses, who were on an inspection tour of the recently annexed provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, were driving to the government building, the Konak, an assassin hidden in the crowds of cheering spectators fired into the imperial vehicle. The bullets struck the archduke and his wife and they succumbed soon afterwards. The murderer is a twenty-year-old Serbian student by the name of Gavrilo Princip. He was arrested on the scene of the crime and confessed that he had committed the deed as an act of revenge because of the annexation …

 

From the right wing of the Ronacher Theater stage came the actor Girardi with hesitating steps. Johann Strauss lifted his baton. From the left wing hurried an unknown gentleman who said: “His Imperial and Royal Highness, the most august Crown Prince Archduke Rudolf …” Henriette had closed her eyes. The past had loomed before her.

“Extra edition of the
Neue Freie Presse
!”

“Extra edition of the
Neues Wiener Tagblatt
!
”

“Extra edition of the
Reichspost
!” came the cries from below. In the living room on the fourth floor no one spoke. The paper passed from hand to hand. The bells of St. Stephen had begun to toll. Henriette knew that those of St. Augustine would follow. And then those of St. Michael.

“Does Your Grace need anything?” It was Simmerl who asked the question.

That too had been said to her in exactly the same words. Everything came back. “No,” she said. Now the bells of St. Augustine were ringing.

“I'll be going along,” said the acting-cadet officer, “I must be back at barracks by six.”

“Do that, Hermann,” Professor Stein agreed. Henriette had never seen her father struggle so to maintain his self-control.

“How frightful for His Majesty,” said the new son-in-law and assistant to the Emperor's personal physician.

Professor Stein again agreed, “Frightful.” As a historian, he was thinking back to the last extra edition of the
Neue Freie Presse.
Then its heavily leaded headlines read, “Empress Elizabeth,” and beside her name was a large black cross, and underneath it ran the statement:

 

G
ENEVA,
September 10, 1898: Her Majesty, the Empress and Queen, while on her way from the Hotel Beau Rivage to the steamship landing, fell a victim to an infamous assault carried out by an Italian anarchist called Luigi Lucheni, who stabbed the most exalted lady to the heart with a pointed file. The criminal was seized on the spot and confessed his crime, although he was unable to give any reason for it.

 

“Frightful,” Professor Stein repeated. “Three times in one generation!”

“The poor woman,” said the thirteen-year-old girl. Henriette nodded silently and ignored what her father went on to say. As usual, he was speaking of politics.

What did they know! To her it all proved that one does not forget anything, not the smallest atom. No matter how one tried to delude oneself, it was there, it was not allayed, it cut, it pained, it bled as on that first day. The bells! How pitilessly they tolled it all back to her. Now she was running away; now she fell in the snow; now she was in the sleeping-car on her way back to be examined …

“Thank you a thousand times,” the bride and groom were saying. “It was delightful.” They lived in the young physician's official apartment in the Schönbrunn Palace and had a long way to go.

Henriette did not detain them. It was perfect that they had broken away from the habits of the house and, for reasons of the Emperor's health, were unable to take up their residence in Seilerstätte. Besides, Henriette would not have known what to do with them.

She also bade good-bye to her son Hermann. “Come again soon,” she said to him, as to the bridal couple.

“Not before next Sunday,” he told her. “I have to cram for my officer's commission exam.”

“That is really most important,” Professor Stein declared, once more in agreement.

But then all examinations were important to him, for that was his profession, so Henriette's attention strayed off. The bells boomed. St Michael's had joined in, and others too, for they were terrifyingly loud now. They hammered at her head and her heart. She longed to be alone. When her father left he said, “Good-bye, my child. In the case of an elemental event one should maintain an impersonal attitude.” In their fashion of communicating with each other, she interpreted that to mean: “You are thinking too much about yourself.”

Magnanimity! General considerations! Anyone who had not suffered could easily afford to be magnanimous and indulge in general considerations! The child here understood her. She did not offer her any wise precepts, asked no questions, she simply loved her. That is what one craved. Not blame. Not perpetual supervision. Blame and supervision produced no good. One did not even grow up under them. One was always twenty-one, even at forty-nine.

Nevertheless, Henriette blamed her eldest child when he came home. “Your sister and brother-in-law have left long since. The others too. I must say that you show little consideration.”

She noticed an unfamiliar expression around his mouth. “Where were you?” she asked, although she hated to be questioned herself and although she knew only too well how unsympathetic one made oneself by doing it. She no longer cared. Very well, she would make herself unsympathetic. She had done it long before. The people who made themselves sympathetic, grinned at everything, accepted everything, pretending to be likeable, were hypocrites or stupid. You were sympathetic in any case to those who liked you. As for the rest—you paid no attention.

“Where were you?” she repeated when Hans did not answer. “I mean, where were you both? Were you with that person again?”

“Please don't call her ‘that person,'” Hans said, and went over to one of the windows from which there was a view across to the king Boulevard.

“Oh, excuse me,” she replied ironically. “Mono, be an angel and run down to Aunt Pauline's. Ask her to lend me some brown darning silk.”

“Yes, Mummy,” the girl answered. Hugging her big brother, she comforted him with the words, “Don't be so sad, Hans. Everything will turn out all right.”

“Of course,” he said, and kissed her as she left the room.

“Where were you?” Henriette insisted. She was sitting in her favorite tapestry armchair, darning some silk stockings.

“Walking,” he answered curtly. “In Dornbach.”

“Did you have dinner at the Woodcock?”

“Yes.”

“Did the music stop? I mean, when the news came?”

The music had stopped.

“Don't pull such a long face,” she said. “It is quite proper that you should feel patriotic, but after all, it does not concern you. You have often said that you were not enthusiastic about Francis Ferdinand.”

Years ago someone had said the same thing to her on a similar occasion: “After all, it does not concern us. We are no archdukes.” She was unaware that she was now speaking with the accents of Number 10; if anyone had pointed this out to her she would have denied it.

Hans thought it might concern him. Besides, he had decided, in view of the other occurrences of that Sunday, finally to settle the question of Selma with his mother.

As he stood at the window, staring down at the crowds now excitedly thronging the thoroughfares, usually so deserted on a Sunday evening, the day just past came back to him, from its bright beginning to its bitter conclusion. “Well, young man, aren't you happy? This may well mean war! I envy you. If you're lucky you'll be wearing our Emperor's colors and marching against the Serb bandits within a very few days!”

Early that Sunday he had fetched Selma. They had ridden out to Heiligenstadt and from there had strolled for hours along the roads they both enjoyed so much. It had been lovelier than ever. Each time it seemed to them exciting and wonderful that Beethoven had walked there, that those very linden trees had afforded him shade. He had kissed her; she had let him do it; he had told her how deeply he loved her, and she had returned his kiss. But when she had suggested going to Nussdorf he had had the unhappy idea of celebrating her kiss by suggesting “something better” the Golden Woodcock at Dornbach, a society rendezvous, then the height of fashion. To be sure, his only intention was to take her somewhere else than to one of the cheap small restaurants in which they usually concealed themselves. But she had remarked, “Is that the place where smart young men go with their lady-loves?”

That had made him indignant. “I don't see why we should always be in hiding,” he had replied.

“I was not the one to begin this game of hiding,” she had said. “All these months no place was sufficiently out of sight for you.” Again it had been that tone of reproach which enraged him.
I, the poor girl. You, the patrician
.

“Selma,” he had insisted, “you must finally give up that sort of thing. You know exactly how much you mean to me.”

“How should I?” she had asked. “Because you have made me declarations of love? How often had you done that before me? How often will you do it after me? I'll tell you. One day after I have done what you want of me. Or perhaps three months? I am generous.”

“That is disgusting of you!” he had said.

“But right. Why should two people like us go on indefinitely lying to one another? You're a dear, but you are like all of your kind. [“Well, young man, if you are lucky you will be marching within a very few days!”] I mean as much to you as any liaison means to any fashionable young man,” Selma had told him. “In all this time you have never even introduced me to your parents. Whenever we come into the neighborhood of Seilerstätte you grow nervous. The very mention of your father's name or even that of your pompous lawyer uncle is something you carefully avoid. Do you think I'm deaf?” “You're infinitely unjust,” he had replied. “You don't know Seilerstätte.”

“I can imagine it,” she had said. “I trust you have not for a single second inferred that I'm interested in your family out of regard for my future? You don't know me! We've been having a flirtation. If you had your way it would be more than that, but naturally never anything more than an affair. I don't deny that I sometimes have inclinations that way myself. Why the emphasis? How is it that Schnitzer puts it: ‘Who in May ever thinks of August?' We are in June. Let's stick to today.” [“Well, young man, within a very few days.”]

This was not the first time that there had been this bitter resignation underneath her cynical superiority. But this time he had lost his patience. “And you don't know me!” he had hurled back her own words. “When I'm convinced that someone is wrong I refuse to give in. Not a single syllable of yours is true! Between your future and mine there is no difference. It's our future. And you know it!” [“Well, young man, aren't you happy?”]

“Consequently we are going to the Golden Woodcock and exhibit ourselves,” Selma had replied with her ironic logic. “It will raise the prestige of the junior Alt when society hears that he has a girl.”

The only thing to do would have been to give in, to remain under the spell of simple, green Heiligenstadt or quiet, lovable little Nussdorf instead of exchanging them for a sophisticated place, especially on a double holiday week-end. But Hans had his father's flaring temper as well as his mother's obstinacy. “Yes, we're going to the Woodcock,” he had insisted.