Requiem in Vienna (25 page)

It seemed there was more to add, but that Tor was reluctant to proceed.

“But?” Werthen offered him an opening.

“Well, it is hardly for me to say, sir, but it seems he is being unduly harsh vis-à-vis his sister.”

“But that has already been settled, I thought. Emma has been written out of the will.”

“Not Emma, Advokat. It is Justine this time. If she marries Herr Rosé, then Mahler proposes to disinherit her, as well. That was what he wanted to add.”

Werthen had expected as much. It seemed Arnold Rosé would fare no better than his brother Eduard if he married one of the Mahler girls. He wondered at what spite and animus could be involved in such a petty decision on Mahler’s part, but it was hardly for him to judge. He and Tor were only the agents of such decisions, not the perpetrators.

He was about to make this case, when suddenly the outer office door burst open and in marched Alma Schindler in a state of high distress.

“My God, Advokat. It has happened again.”

“Calm yourself, Fräulein,” he said, taking her arm and ushering her into his office for privacy’s sake.

He helped her take a seat by his desk.

“Now what is it. Another attack on Mahler? But that cannot be possible. The police—”

“No, not Mahler,” she all but shrieked. “Zemlinsky this time. Every man I get close to is in danger, it seems.”

She really was in a state; he feared that she might faint.

“Deep breaths, Fräulein Schindler,” he advised, following Berthe’s time-honored recipe. “Deep breaths. Follow my count.”

By the time he reached ten, she had calmed herself enough to tell him what had happened.

The story sent shivers down his spine. Another composer. Another possible target.

______

Alexander Zemlinsky lived with his newly widowed mother and sister Mathilde on Weissgerberstrasse, located in the Third District, but with a view over the canal to the Leopoldstadt, the Jewish quarter, from which they had recently resettled. The family represented the strange mélange of races and creeds that made up much of the population of Vienna. The father, Adolf, who had died earlier in the summer, was the son of Catholic parents but had fallen in love with Clara, the daughter of a Sephardic Jew and a Muslim woman. The entire family converted to Judaism, the religion in which Zemlinsky was raised.

Zemlinsky, so Kraus had once told Werthen, was a composer of promise. Three years Kraus’s senior, he studied at the Vienna Conservatory, won prizes and accolades for his compositions, and this summer had been appointed music director at the Carl Theater, a stunning achievement for a man just turned twenty-eight. It was said that his opera,
Es War Einmal
, was to be staged by Mahler at the Hofoper next winter. Like Mahler, Zemlinsky renounced his Judaism in order to better assimilate.

As Werthen was led into the composer’s room at the family dwelling he could see that the walls of this study-cum-bedroom were covered with all sorts of decorations. Laurel wreaths adorned one entire wall; another was taken up with pictures of composers the young man obviously respected: Johannes Brahms had a place of prominence, for he had been an early champion of Zemlinsky’s work, according to Kraus. Wagner was there as well, represented in a photogravure with a sprig of mistletoe lodged on the top of the frame as if the picture had been a Christmas gift. On the man’s desk stood a bust of Brahms along with a picture of a young and very attractive woman.

Alma Schindler, in point of fact.

And the composer himself, all five feet two inches of him, lay on a daybed, a large plaster on his forehead. Kraus had delighted in shocking Werthen with rumors of this small man’s gargantuan sexual adventures, for despite his stature and a face so ugly that it
was vibrant, Zemlinsky seemed to attract beautiful or at least willing women like a toad draws princesses. His chin was almost nonexistent, his nose large and ungainly, and his eyes bulged so that it seemed they would pop out of his head at any instant.

Tending to him were several people: his sister, Mathilde; a young soprano who was introduced as Melanie Guttmann (whom Werthen later learned was Zemlinsky’s fiancée); and a rather portly young man with a receding hairline, a very intense gaze, and a soft collar—Herr Arnold Schoenberg, a former pupil of Zemlinsky’s and a fellow member of Zemlinsky’s small orchestra, Polyhymnia. By the manner in which Mathilde and Schoenberg exchanged looks during Werthen’s visit, and their hands would inadvertently touch when pulling up the coverlet over the injured Zemlinsky or handing him a glass of water, Werthen assumed they were already courting.

The small, tangled world of Viennese music and musicians.

Fräulein Schindler made brief introductions, and as Zemlinsky was about to speak, Schoenberg cut him off.

“We told you this was unnecessary, Fräulein Schindler. It was merely a silly accident. Accidents do happen at theaters.”

His voice was surprisingly high, but he spoke with vehemence.

“Poor Zem,” Alma said. “It’s all too dreadful. It was my fault for becoming your student. I am a curse to all those who get too close.”

At this comment, Fräulein Guttmann visibly bristled.

“I am sure there is a logical explanation,” she said. “We should not become overly melodramatic. It serves no purpose.”

“Quiet, all of you,” Zemlinsky said from his sickbed. “Just who is this fellow you have brought, Alma?”

Werthen spoke up before she had a chance to tell them too much about his investigations regarding Mahler.

“A family retainer who has lately taken to private inquiries, as well,” he said. “Fräulein Schindler was fearful that something less, or rather more than accidental had happened to you. I agreed
to accompany her. And I assure you, I do not tend toward melodrama.”

“You speak like a lawyer,” Zemlinsky said with obvious distaste. “Is that what you are?”

“Guilty,” Werthen quipped.

Which brought the semblance of a smile to Zemlinsky’s thin lips.

“Wonderful,” Schoenberg whined. “Now the legal profession is involved. You
would
have to interfere.”

This was directed at Alma Schindler, but she pointedly ignored the remark, instead getting onto her knees at the bedside, taking the composer’s hand in hers, and kissing it.

“Please forgive me, Zem.”

The room went deadly quiet at this performance. Even the volatile Schoenberg was at a loss for words.

Finally Zemlinsky broke the spell of communal embarrassment.

“Nonsense, girl. Up, up. Nothing to forgive. A cigar will set me right.”

Werthen, whose own head still throbbed from his recent attack, doubted the veracity, but appreciated the bravado of this remark.

Alma did as she was told, standing again and looking at the others haughtily.

“And there is really no reason to waste your time, Advokat,” the composer continued. “As Schoenberg here says, accidents do happen at theaters. I am overfond of leaning backward on the podium, that is the long and short of it. The guardrails were not meant to support a man’s weight, merely to remind one of the confines of the space. That is what my stage manager tells me, at least.”

“You mean you fell from your podium?”

Zemlinsky closed his eyes at this, almost ashamed.

“Yes,” he said in a weak voice.

Alma Schindler looked at Werthen meaningfully, as if to remind him of Mahler’s own fall from his conductor’s podium.

“Now,” Schoenberg said, “it really is time for visitors to go. Alex needs his rest. I must insist.”

He spread his thick arms out like a shepherd moving sheep.

As Zemlinsky himself made no countersuggestion, Werthen hardly felt he could intrude longer. But Alma had other ideas.

“Who appointed you major domo, Herr Schoenberg? It is for Zem himself, or his sister, Fräulein Zemlinsky—”

But she was a poor observer of the human condition outside her own needy limits. She had not noticed the connection between Mathilde and Schoenberg, and now, at Alma’s obvious rudeness, the sister came to her friend’s defense.

“I really think it is time for you to leave, Fräulein Schindler, before some native truths are spoken which you would not care to hear.”

Alma threw her shoulders back in defiance before Werthen could intervene.

“Such as?”

“Such as that your attempts at composition are feeble, derivative, and boorish,” Schoenberg said. “Not my opinion, of course.”

Alma looked at Zemlinsky.

“Is that what you think?” she all but cried out. “Is that what you told them? After all we have meant to each other. After all I suffered from my family on your account.”

My God, Werthen thought. The cheek of the girl. Here lay an injured man, and she was only concerned with her own hurt feelings. Were they actually lovers? The beautiful Alma Schindler and this gnome?

“It is time now that you leave,” Fräulein Guttmann said in a measured voice.

Such restraint toward her obvious rival, however, was causing this young woman real pain, Werthen could see. She would much rather be scratching at Alma’s eyes.

“Come,” Werthen said to Fraulein Schindler. “This is to no avail.”

He took her arm, but she shook his hand off, moving on her own toward the door.

“Typical,” she spat out as they were leaving. “You all stick together. You and your kind. And then you wonder why people dislike you.”

Werthen now had to control his own rage, getting the young woman out of the house and onto the street. But once under the warm summer sun, he could no longer hold himself in.

“Never, never speak like that in front of me again. Or do you forget that I am Jewish, too?”

She was about to strike out at him with more vitriol, but suddenly stopped, assuming a contrite expression.

“No, you are right. I don’t know what came over me. But that Schoenberg. He is such a sponge, such an old lady. Talk about feeble compositions, just listen to his
Verklaerte Nacht.”

Then she cast Werthen a winning smile as she put her arm through his.

“Please forgive me, say you do, please, please.”

Like a schoolgirl instead of the femme fatale she normally liked to play. It was his turn now to shrug her arm off.

“Are you two lovers?”

The question did not seem to surprise her, though there was a slight reddening at her cheeks.

“Advokat, that is not a question one asks a young woman.”

“Fräulein Schindler, you are a young woman in age only. I think there is very little innocent about you and my question is not a matter of prurient interest. Are you his lover?”

“We have had moments of intimacy, yes. Why is it important?”

“You answered that yourself earlier. Everyone close to you seems to be having accidents. ”

Which did not explain Bruckner, Brahms, or Strauss, but did serve to give her something to think about as they rode back into
the Inner City via
fiaker
. He dropped her off at her dressmaker’s on the Seilerstrasse and then continued on to his office at Habsburgergasse 4. The sturdy figures of Atlas decorating the first-story façade gave him a solid, secure feeling as he entered the street door.

Today that door was locked, as it was supposed to be.

Gross and he met for lunch, as planned. Frau Blatschky’s sudden discovery of healthy cuisine had driven Gross from their table; Werthen was happy to join him today at Zum roten Igel, the Sign of the Red Hedgehog, in Wildpretmarkt. The eatery had been a favorite with Brahms, and for good reason: it had perhaps the best inexpensive food in Vienna, solid fare of meat and potatoes, both of which were now in short supply at Werthen’s table. It was a fine day of mild, sunny weather, so Werthen looked for Gross in the garden, but he was sitting instead in the
stube
in the back of the restaurant, a large, dark room with barrel vaulting where the working-class eaters usually gathered at communal tables. Gross had claimed one of these large tables exclusively for himself and Werthen.

“It is where Brahms preferred to eat,” Gross said by way of explanation when Werthen joined him.

Gross continued his homage to Brahms by having Hungarian Tokay with lunch, the very wine the gruff old composer had enjoyed. Werthen meanwhile occupied himself with a
viertel
of tart Nussberger from Krems. Both ordered lavishly as if to celebrate eating once again. For Gross that meant a wooden platter piled high with sausages and sauerkraut, while for Werthen such gustatory opulence included boiled beef with freshly ground horseradish. These were preceded by liver dumpling soup and followed by two plates of apple strudel, its crust flaky and golden.

They spoke little during the meal. Gross was usually talkative at any time, but now, after barely surviving the rigors of Frau
Blatschky’s table, he was reserving whatever sounds he could muster to sensual moans of pleasure at the first bite of each new dish.

“This calls for coffee,” Gross managed after finishing the last of his strudel.

They sat over their mochas and Werthen shared his adventures this morning at Zemlinsky’s. Gross listened carefully and when Werthen had finished, nodded his big head.

“So our killer is moving on to other game? Mahler has proved too difficult a quarry. Instead he chooses this Zemlinsky. As a composer, is he actually of a status of Brahms and Strauss?”

Werthen shrugged. “Kraus seems to think so. He talked about the man once, before all this started. And Zemlinsky
has
been made music director of the Carl Theater.”

“Not the most prestigious of engagements.”

“No,” Werthen allowed, “but he’s not yet thirty. Impressive enough. Brahms thought he had talent. One of his operas won the Luitpold Prize in Munich, I believe.”

Gross made a condescending humph through his nose to show how much he though of German taste in music.

“Well, I suppose this means that we shall have to follow the lead to the Carl Theater,” he said.

Werthen was surprised. He thought Gross would be elated by this latest development. But he seemed almost put out that there was another potential victim—just as Werthen himself was feeling. This new line of investigation really was getting them nowhere, or to too many other destinations.