The Vienna Melody (68 page)

The meat was inexcusably tough. Henriette told the waiter so, as considerately as she knew how. This otherwise so attentive person, however, cast a critical look at her.

“There's nothing wrong with that filet,” he remarked, and disappeared.

All right. Perhaps she just had no appetite. It was inconceivable what could be keeping Hans. And who would thank him for what he was doing? He worked day and night, hardly slept any more. The Chancellor (the latest gossip said he was interested in a beautiful woman) would not thank him. If a woman was absorbing the interest of the man there would be little left over for others.

She did not know the people who were talking in such monotonous voices behind her. What was it they were saying? Poor dear Papa had so often been annoyed with her when she did not know big words. I see. A plebiscite meant a popular vote. What was to be voted on? She listened with half an ear and learned that on the following Sunday all Austrians were to vote on whether they wished an independent Austria or a union with Germany. Why should one have to vote on anything as obvious as that? Could it be that anyone here wanted to have things as they were in Germany? Over there they apparently had to ask for permission for every breath they drew!

“What do you say to the poll?” she inquired of the writer Vogl, who was also sitting on the raised platform in the restaurant. People said he wrote interesting books. She, unfortunately, had no longer the leisure to ascertain this for herself. She had begun to reread all her old favorites:
Madame Bovary
, Schnitzer's
Therese
, Tolstoy's
War and Peace.
But naturally one could not say that sort of thing to a modern writer. And they say women are vain. No one is so vain as a writer. When you spoke to them you had to put in at once, “Your last book was another magnificent achievement.” It was lucky that they did not question you further. Vogl replied, “We shall have to await the results.”

The Rothschilds came in. She hadn't changed much—Clarice; still very attractive. Now all heads would be turning and every one would be tumbling over themselves to bow to them, showing off how intimate they were with the Rothschilds. Baron Rothschild bowed and she returned his greeting with a smile.

What were the Kagenecks of Brünn discussing in such an absorbed way? Usually they hardly said a word to each other. “How are you?” Henriette called over to the adjoining table. Her nervousness over Hans had reached a degree where she could not eat anything.

“Thanks, very well,” was the Moravian gentleman's brief response.

“You're a newspaperman. What do you say to the election on Sunday?”

“According to my opinion, we shall have to see what the Führer's attitude towards it will be,” declared the gentleman from Briinn. “In any case, we're not concerned. We're Sudeten Germans.”

Henriette regretted her question. Of course they were not voting. Besides, people from a small city like Brünn used not to like to admit they came from such a place. Was it suddenly the fashion to come from there?

“As good old Edi says quite rightly,” joined in the wife of the sugar refiner and publisher, speaking in a voice that carried beyond Henriette's table, “it's up to Berlin. I really can't see that this plebiscite is a stroke of genius on the part of Dr. Schuschnigg.”

Was Henriette mistaken, or weren't these two only recently raving about Schuschnigg?

“Quite of your opinion, Baroness Maud!” cried Captain Kunsti over Henriette's head. “I subscribe to every word.”

And Vogl, who had published that morning a leading article in the Catholic
Reichspost
entitled “All Austrians behind Schuschnigg,” said, “Count me in absolutely too.”

With whom does he want to be counted in?
thought Henriette, more bewildered than ever. It was a shame how untutored she was in political matters. Since all these people were in agreement, must she not have misunderstood the purpose of the plebiscite? She decided to ask Hans.

The Rothschilds appeared to have a rendezvous with Princess Colalto, who had just come in and who, together with the Van der Straatens was on the point of joining them when a yell was heard, “Out with the Jews!” It came either from the Stephansplatz or the Kartnerstrasse; one could hear it plainly.

“Not such a bad idea!” remarked Captain Kunsti loudly. Frau von Kageneck laughed too and said, “Splendid.”

Henriette grew still more bewildered. The captain's remark was, of course, aimed at the Rothschilds, and nothing sillier could possibly be imagined. You could not find less typical Jews than the Rothschilds anywhere.

“Sieg! Heil! Sieg! Heil! Smash the Jews!
Juda verrecke
!” The people behind Henriette called it a speaking chorus.

So many new inventions, and none of them amounting to anything. I almost make myself think I am like Franz, she thought. I used to be all for the new things and he was not. It seems to me I am getting old.

What the next table had called a speaking chorus came nearer, and suddenly Hans burst in, his hat on, his coat buttoned askew. He rushed straight over to her, without seeing or bowing to anyone, and said, “Mother, come quickly!”

“Life-saving crew!” Henriette heard the delightful captain remark. The amiable Italian Minister called, “
Cameriere
, my bill!”

Hans did not even give her time to put on her coat. Moreover, her Sacher cake and coffee were standing, still untouched, on the table. Why make such a scene in public? Because of a few shouters?

Hans would not wait a single instant. “Don't you want at least to say good evening to the Kagenecks?” she asked in an attempt to delay him. There had always been mobs and always would be. One ignored them; that was what one should do with mobs.

But Hans took her out into the raucous street and put her into a taxi he had waiting in a side alley. “I don't want you to leave the house until Sunday,” he said as they drove along.

“How absurd!”

“We must wait until Sunday,” he insisted.

She was familiar with this feverish expression of his.

“What for?”

“Look, Mother, there is no sense in asking. All I know is that the Nazis are raising heaven and hell to prevent Sunday's plebiscite from taking place.”

“They have shouted for years and distributed the leaflets Hermann printed,” said Henriette, “and what have they accomplished with all the clamor? Nothing. I often think they should have taken Hermann less seriously, and then he would have caused less tragedy and had less of it himself.”

“Hermann!”

She had never heard Hans speak in such an implacable tone.

The taxi could not drive into Annagasse, it was so full of people, so the chauffeur let his fares get out at the church. “There must be something going on down at Number 5,” he volunteered. “These damned Nazis!”

“That's the first sensible thing I've heard this evening,” declared Henriette, and pushed her way through the crowd who were yelling “Sieg! Heil!” as though they were so many machines.

“I implore you, don't make any remarks!” begged Hans.

“Don't be ridiculous. For so long I was not allowed to say what I wanted to. You're not going to rob me any longer of that pleasure.”

The mob made way before the lady with the uncovered white hair, the regal necklace of pearls, and the commanding manner. “What are you after here?” asked a woman with a Berlin accent, who was leading the shouting.

“I'm going home. I live here,” answered Henriette contemptuously.

“Attention! The Empress of Annagasse!” came the cry from a handful of Viennese, half in earnest. But they let her pass.

It became apparent that the demonstration had been directed against the Freemason Lodge at Number 5. Every window on the front had been smashed, and the mob was still throwing stones.

As mother and son had almost reached Number 10 a cry was heard, “Over there is something Jewish too!” A hail of stones was the reply. It shattered Selma's memorial tablet. The stones also struck the angel with the trumpet overhead.

The body of the angel broke and crashed to the ground. Only the arm, which held the trumpet, remained intact. As ever, since the house was built, it rose above the door.

On Friday evening two days before the plebiscite, the saddest voice Hans had ever heard said over the radio, “Austrians! Chancellor Hitler has threatened that German troops will occupy our land if I do not cancel the plebiscite within one hour's time and withdraw from the Government. In order to avoid the shedding of blood, I bow to force. I take my farewell of you. God protect Austria!”

Hans had recognized the voice and heard the sobbing that accompanied it. Nevertheless, he was not willing to believe that it spoke the truth. But a few minutes later another voice came over the air which made long, embarrassed pauses between the words: “German fellow countrymen! I, Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart, have succeeded Dr. Schuschnigg as Chancellor and am happy to announce to you that German troops have crossed our frontier and taken over the defence of our land.”

Now there was no longer any doubt.

Day and night, night and day, without ceasing, roaring bombers flew low over Vienna. The sound of their motors was unrelenting; it deafened the ears and tore; the nerves to such an extent that one gave up. Anything—but no more of that penetrating, grinding roar! Loudspeakers were set up everywhere. They bellowed forth a speech of Hitler, who had reached the Danube. Night and day, day and night, German troops tramped down Mariahilferstrasse. Their greenish uniforms were unfamiliar to the Viennese, also their helmets, their boots, their marching steps. They set up their camps in the public squares; their field kitchens smoked before the castle; their cannon stood in front of the statue of Mozart; their stacks of arms were polished bright beside the Beethoven monument. On Ring Boulevard you could not see the trees for the red flags with the sprawling black swastikas. On all the advertisement pillars one gigantic placard was displayed. It was an over-lifesize picture of Hitler's face. Wherever you went it was looking at you. Under it were the words, “One people! One country! One Führer!” Inside of a single day and night the aspect of Vienna had changed beyond recognition. Early spring had no glow. Blossoms no space. Lightness no voice. Loveliness no breath.

When the roar of the bombers, the bellowing of the loudspeakers, the goose-stepping tramp of marching soldiers was smothered by a deafening hurricane of shouts of “Heil!” Hitler had come. He stood in an open car which was driven at a snail's pace down Mariahilferstrasse and the Ring. Hans saw what his eyes refused to look upon. The tears flooding them veiled what he did not want to see. As never before, he prayed for a miracle. Would it be given to this man, whose ugliness could not be mitigated even by a smile, to ride in triumph past that academy which had rejected him because of his absolute lack of talent? Hans stood on the steps of that academy and saw the gaze of the defeated candidate burn with hatred as it fell on the scene of his defeat. He stretched his hand out at an angle; a contemptuous expression made his vulgar mouth even more vulgar as he cried, “I greet my Viennese!”

Did no one see the hideous vulgarity of this man?

It cannot be that I am the only one to see it!
thought Hans.
Among these thousands there must be thousands who see it as I do! Haven't the Viennese for hundreds of years lived by their eyes? Isn't this man too hideous for them?
And he listened anxiously to hear the crowd say the manifest thing.

But the crowd did not say it. Their eyes followed the repulsive, triumphant man as if enthralled; their arms were stretched out to him in friendly greeting, and even after he had passed they stood there for a while, motionless. The miracle, which in Hans's eyes would have been natural, did not occur. No shot was fired; not one of the tens of thousands who only the day before yesterday were crying, “Heil Schuschnigg!” now cried anything but, “Heil Hitler!”

I did not fire a shot either
, said Hans to himself, attempting to defend the Viennese. But he gave it up at once, when he thought that they had not, like him, wondered all their lives whether men were allowed to shoot at each other. Only the man whose name they were still shouting the day before yesterday, and which today they had already forgotten, had not been willing to shoot. He was not willing to face the reproaches again which he had made to himself because of shooting at the working men. That was why he was now a prisoner and this other man was riding in triumph.

The procession had reached the Opera House; the acclamation of the crowds grew more tempestuous. Shortly thereafter a voice made even more metallic by the loud-speaker was heard: “People of Vienna! This is the proudest day of my life! For I, an Austrian, was chosen by Providence to fulfil your century-old longing and to lead you home into the German Reich!”

Home in the German Reich. Home in a most bitterly alien land. Never, whether they cried “Heil Hitler!” or not, whether, enthralled, they turned their eyes and arms to him or not, did any of these people here ever have the desire to become German. They had laughed at things German, or hated them, or tolerated them, with resistance. Hans had seen this too often during the war and afterwards not to know that. Whatever had come over them to make them stand there now and shout for joy, they had never for a single hour looked upon Germany as their homeland. For their home and that of their ancestors had for a thousand years been here; it was this Austrian city of Vienna, which had been made to mask its springtime trees under garish red banners, and through the beautiful streets of which goose-stepping feet tramped in a way to pierce one's very heart.

The miracle did not happen. The thing which should have been manifest failed to materialize. Hans stood on the steps of the Academy of Arts, opposite which the Goethe monument was now covered by three gigantic swastikas. Behind him stood Christopher Alt, his great-grandfather, who had to thank Maria Theresa for his start in life; his grandfather, Emil Alt, who was responsible for making the product of the C. Alt Firm achieve the distinction of being named the “melody of Vienna”; his father, Franz Alt, whom Francis Joseph made Purveyor to the Court; his uncle, Otto Eberhard, who had served Francis Joseph. These dead Austrians of the house of Number 10 Seilerstätte stood behind the living one who had to live through the agony of seeing Vienna no longer Austrian. He and those cheering were strangers in their homeland. The one thing to which he had still clung with passion was now lost to him. And when he admitted that his last hope was being buried under all the triumphant shouting he was so overwhelmed by despair that he no longer attempted to conceal it. He wept openly.