Vienna Blood (14 page)

“We are to be
married,
” said Clara softly. “If you wanted … I …”

“No,” said Liebermann. “No, it would be inexcusable. I will not take advantage of you. I will
never
take advantage of you.”

Clara nestled closer. Liebermann lifted his chin to accommodate her head. He could feel the hot pulse of her shallow exhalations on his bare neck. It was intolerably exciting. Even so, he did not move. Instead he stood still, gazing over Clara's hat at the locked, frozen world—his consciousness attenuated painfully between polarities of fire and ice.

22

A
NDREAS
O
LBRICHT STOOD IN
the middle of his studio. Condensation had frozen onto the windows, making them opaque and subduing the light. Propped up against the walls were some wooden frames for stretching canvases, some finished paintings, and a large full-length mirror. Olbricht studied his reflected image: a short man, wearing a soft cap and a brown, paint-spattered smock of coarse material. He affected a dignified pose.

The artist embarks upon the act of creation.

His gaze lingered on a smear of vermilion.

Turning, he walked across the bare floorboards to his table, where he examined his array of pigments: ocher, malachite, madder lake, raw sienna. The malachite caught his attention. He tipped some of the emerald powder into the mortar bowl and ground it with a wooden pestle. As he worked, he remembered his conversation with Von Triebenbach about Herr Bolle's commission. What scene from
The Ring
would he choose? The gods engulfed by fire, the ride of the Valkyries, Siegfried's funeral pyre? At that time he had been almost certain that the subject of the commission would be something heroic. Yet, as he worked on the preliminary sketches, another, quite different scene kept entering his mind—the tableau with which
The Ring Cycle
opens: the three Rhine maidens—Woglinde, Wellgunde, and Flosshilde—and the dwarf Alberich. This scene had kept on returning, asserting itself with something close to willfulness.
Eventually he conceded, content to assume that a great work of art was struggling to be born.

Olbricht mixed some linseed oil into the powdered malachite and poured the mixture onto his palette. Then he turned and looked at the large canvas on his easel. The work was in its very early stages. Only the top left-hand corner had been colored with brushstrokes; the rest was still in sketch form. The figures had been executed using a red crayon, and Olbricht congratulated himself that the effect was not unlike a well-known Leonardo da Vinci cartoon.

On the table, next to the pestle and mortar, was a notebook in which he had copied out some of Wagner's original stage directions.

In the depths of the river Rhine.

A greenish twilight, brighter toward the top, darker toward the bottom. The upper part is filled with swirling waters. … In all directions steep rocky reefs rear up from the depths. … There is a reef in the middle of the stage that points a slender finger up into the denser water where the light is brighter. …

Olbricht diluted his malachite with a few more drops of linseed oil and mixed it in with a stiff hog's-hair brush.

He was pleased with his Rhine maidens. They looked like good-natured, big-hearted German girls. Healthy, buxom, and carefree— possessed of an innocent charm. If the same scene had been treated by one of the Secessionists, it would have looked very different indeed. Someone like Klimt (or one of his degenerate associates) would have transformed the Rhine maidens into emaciated, orgiastic water nymphs, naked, with tiny breasts and exposed genitalia. The modernists were incapable of dignifying the female form—they could only degrade it. Their work was obscene.

Herr Bolle was a sensible man—a man who cherished traditional values. He would want his Rhine maidens to be stolid, chaste, and pure.

In a rocky hollow, Olbricht had sketched what would eventually
become a giant nugget of gold. He considered the pigments he would use: lead-tin yellow, lead white, and iron oxide. He imagined how the amber glow would penetrate into the dark green depths. He let his gaze drop and allowed it to settle on the figure of Alberich—the Nibelung dwarf—climbing out of a dark rift in the riverbed.

The Rhine maidens were the guardians of the
Rheingold,
sacred treasure from which might be fashioned a ring that would give the wearer ultimate power. But, so the legend ran, such power could be achieved only by first renouncing love. The Rhine maidens were negligent in the exercise of their duty, because they believed that no thief would be prepared to pay such a high price. Who would possibly forswear the joys of love in exchange for earthly power?

Olbricht took a step closer to the canvas and squatted to look more intently at the dwarf who was clawing his way out of the crevice like a venomous reptile—his bulging-eyed stare fixed on the giant nugget.

Was it so remarkable that a creature spurned, taunted, and considered misshapen should have any difficulty making such an exchange? Love for power?

It was not
so
remarkable.

23

H
ERMANN
A
SCHENBRANDT SAT IN
a wicker chair next to the piano, listening intently. The prospective pupil had written to Aschenbrandt after he had heard the composer's
D minor String Quintet
(
“The Invincible”
) performed at the Tonkünstlerverein. The letter had been full of enthusiastic praise, and the young man had expressed a keen desire to begin composition lessons as soon as possible. Aschenbrandt agreed to an initial meeting, but now that his admirer was seated next to him at the piano, Aschenbrandt was not altogether sure that Herr Behn's musical instincts and his own were similar after all. It had been a very misleading letter.

The young man was halfway through his
Fantasia in B-flat Major.
The piece had begun with an improvisatory first movement, vaguely reminiscent of Chopin. But then it had evolved—through some tortured key changes—into a torpid, directionless adagio. The melody meandered over a muddy bass, and its fussy turns and grace notes suggested the east: not the East of the Arabs or the Chinese but the more local east of Hungary, Galicia, and Transylvania. Aschenbrandt was finding it slightly irritating, like a mosquito complaining in his ear.

“Yes, yes …,” he said impatiently, pushing back a fine strand of white-blond hair. “I understand. Perhaps we could now hear the final movement?”

Behn's fingers slowed and he took his hands off the keyboard.

“Oh, there is an interesting modulatory passage—in just a few bars.” He began to turn the sheets of manuscript nervously.

“Herr Behn,” said Aschenbrandt tartly. “The last movement, if you would.”

“Yes,” said the young man. “I'm sorry. Of course.”

Behn found the appropriate page and began playing. Again, the music sounded like Chopin. However, Aschenbrandt could not help noticing how the melody persistently struggled to escape from its harmonic ground. It pitched and tumbled around the very edges of tonality—like the undisciplined and frantic scrapings of a gypsy fiddler! Aschenbrandt made a closer study of Behn's physiognomy.

Behn was a small, thin man, with sloping shoulders. His complexion was definitely swarthy, and those eyebrows … the way they almost touched in the middle. Yes, it was all beginning to make sense.

Aschenbrandt listened for a few more minutes and found that he could no longer tolerate the dissonances. He clapped his hands together.

“Thank you—thank you, Herr Behn!”

The young man stopped playing and, assuming that Aschenbrandt wanted to hear more examples of his work, lifted another score from the pile that he had deposited on the piano.

“Three romantic songs?” he said, his voice rising with expectancy.

Aschenbrandt smiled coldly, and let the clenched fist of his right hand land gently in the cupped palm of his left. Behn realized that his suggestion had not been warmly received and silently replaced the manuscript.

“Tell me, Herr Behn,” said Aschenbrandt slowly. “Which composers do you admire?”

“Well … apart from yourself, Maestro Aschenbrandt, I very much
enjoy the music of Karl Prohaska. I heard his
Fourth String Quartet
last year, performed by the Fitners. I thought it was an excellent piece—so accomplished. And Woss—I adore his symphonic poem
Sakuntala.
”

“But, Herr Behn, these are not, by any stretch of the imagination, significant composers.”

Behn paused for a moment, adjusted his spectacles, and said, “Goldmark, Alexander Zemlinsky, and Director Mahler, of course. His second symphony is surely a masterpiece.”

Yes, the position was becoming increasingly clear.

“I am afraid, Herr Behn, that I must disagree with you on both counts. None of these gentlemen are composers of significance, and I can assure you that the director's second symphony is no masterpiece. If you think so, you are very much mistaken.”

“Oh …,” said Behn.

“It is not a symphony but an incoherent, poorly structured ragbag of ideas linked by an infantile program. As Wagner wisely pointed out, Beethoven took the symphony to its absolute eminence. Only the most stupid—or immodest—individual would seek to advance the symphony beyond Beethoven!”

“I see,” said Behn, tugging nervously at his cuffs.

“Herr Behn,” Aschenbrandt continued, “I must be frank with you. I am not overly impressed by your work. You are a competent musician, and some of your harmonic progressions show ingenuity, but you do not possess that indefinable quality, that vital spark, that
gift,
which distinguishes the true composer, the true artist, from the tunesmith, the dilettante.”

“But …” Behn's cheeks flushed. “Maestro Aschenbrandt, surely, under your tutelage, I could—”

“No,” Aschenbrandt interrupted coldly. “I cannot accept you as a pupil.” Behn raised his foliate eyebrows. “Please understand, Herr Behn, I would be doing you a great disservice if I encouraged you to
pursue a career in music that was destined to fail. You are at present studying law, and if you apply yourself diligently, I am sure you can look forward to a lucrative career in the Justizpalast. Let music be your pastime, your pleasure. …”

“But music is my
life.
” Behn raised his hands helplessly. “I want to compose.”

“I am sorry, Herr Behn. I cannot accept you as a pupil.”

Behn shook his head and, gathering his scores together, slipped them into his leather briefcase.

Aschenbrandt stood, picked up a small handbell, and rang it loudly.

“Elga will show you to the door.”

A few moments later a serving woman appeared.

“Good-bye, Herr Aschenbrandt. I am—you will understand— very disappointed. But I am also of the opinion that men of talent must be true to their calling. I respect your honesty.”

“Indeed,” said Aschenbrandt.

The rejected pupil walked to the door.

“Herr Behn,” Aschenbrandt called out.

The student stopped and looked back into the room.

“You could always try Zemlinsky. …”

Behn nodded and left the room.

Aschenbrandt wiped the piano stool with his handkerchief, sat down, and began to play the opening chords of a new baritone aria—
Victory shall be ours.
It was to be the main set piece in the first act of
Carnuntum.
When Aschenbrandt lowered his hands, a charm bracelet appeared from beneath the sleeve of his jacket. Among the small objects attached to the silver chain was an effigy of a man in a kaftan suspended from a gibbet. It represented a hanging Jew.

24

C
AFÉ
I
MPERIAL: FRETTING WAITERS
, gesticulating patrons, and the peal and crash of cutlery.

The pianist had just finished playing a Strauss polka, and after a moment's rest he began a breezy popular melody.

“What's this?” asked Mendel.

“The Skaters’ Waltz,”
said Liebermann. “Waldteufel.”

“See?” said Mendel to Jacob Weiss. “He knows them all.”

Liebermann was sitting opposite his father and future father-in-law. Their conversation had briefly touched upon the subject of wedding arrangements—but not for very long. The three men were content to leave such matters in the hands of their wives (and the bride-to-be).

A waiter arrived with a tray full of coffee and cakes: a Viennese walnut-and-apple torte topped with waves of cream and sprinkled with cinnamon and silver pearls, some poppy seed strudel, and a thick spongy wedge of
guglhupf.

“Thank you, Bruno,” said Mendel.

The waiter deposited the order on the table, clicked his heels, and excused himself.

Mendel was soon talking business. “I've been thinking about another factory for some time. Now that our families share a common interest”—he nodded toward his son—”perhaps, Jacob, we should consider a joint venture.”

“Are you still talking to Blomberg?” Jacob asked, digging his fork into a moist pillow of strudel.

“Yes,” said Mendel. “His department store is still doing very well. He's been trying to interest me in a partnership for a while now, but I'm not sure. Redlich says he can't be trusted.”

“Redlich?”

“Owns the sugar refinery in Göding.”

“Oh yes,
that
Redlich!”

“Even so, a department store on Kärntner Strasse couldn't possibly fail—whatever you think of Blomberg.”

Herr Weiss nodded and asked a few questions about ground rent, surcharges, and interest rates.

Liebermann scooped the cream off his torte, tilted his fork, and let the silver pearls catch the light. They were perfect spheres of different sizes and flashed like stars. When he became aware of his father's voice again, he realized that he must have been distracted for some time.

“…A cousin of mine, Selma, married a Pole called Kinsky.” Mendel speared a chunk of
guglhupf
and raised it. “They emigrated eight years ago, to a place in England called Manchester. We still correspond regularly. They have two little boys, Peter and Robert, and their import-export business is thriving. Now, the thing is, they want to expand, and they need a large capital investment. I'm sure I could negotiate favorable terms.” Mendel placed the cake in his mouth and chewed vigorously. “I don't know about you,” he continued, speaking with his mouth full. A few crumbs tumbled into his long beard. “But I'm very keen to get a foothold somewhere else—somewhere less volatile. Every time the politicians mess things up, the people go looking for a scapegoat. …”