The Iron Bridge: Short Stories of 20th Century Dictators as Teenagers (25 page)

Adi touches Gustl’s arm and leads him out of the apartment. “Goodbye, Frau Kubizek,” he calls over his shoulder.

“Bye, Mother,” whispers the pale son as he disappears through the doorway, dragged by his friend.

“Come on,” Adi commands once they’ve descended the stairs and re-emerged on Klammstrasse. They are moving towards the tree-lined Promenade. “If we hurry, we might still catch Stefanie in the Hauptplatz before she’s returned to Urfahr.” While he’s not exactly running, Adi’s walk is so quick and determined that Gustl has to jog just to keep a few feet behind.

Soon they’re back on the Landstrasse, moving north towards Urfahr. Adi slows and begins to measure his steps, casually swinging his ebony stick so as not to seem desperate or excitable. He removes his handkerchief, wipes his brow, and returns his hat to his head. Gustl, huffing through lungs damaged by upholstery dust, at last catches up to his friend and marches by his side.

“Infuriating, this evening,” Adi says as he tugs his handkerchief back into his pocket. They enter the narrow Schmiedtorstrasse, heading north towards the Hauptplatz. “The spirit buzzing between us—charged, tonight, charged—and we would have exchanged a glance—yes, I’m absolutely certain of it—were it not for a nag, of all things, neighing and kicking in the street, distracting Stefanie at the
one moment she needed to keep her wits about her. Poor thing must be crushed. I’m certain she’s thinking that she’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see me again.”

“Mmm,” Gustl says, fighting through the burning pain in his lungs. He has made an effort to make some sound just so his friend will know he’s listening.

“A grey dress tonight,” Adi says. “No doubt the closest thing she could find to white. With her hair tied back as usual, and—hear
this
, Gustl—she had it wrapped up with a golden cord. Gold, like Lohengrin’s chain to his swan boat! And guess what else she’s got in her bun tonight?” Adi is peering at his friend, impatient for the answer, but young Gustl can only shrug. “A flower, yes, of course, always that, always a flower, but that’s not what I mean. Something else. Guess!”

“I don’t know.”

“An oak leaf!” cries Adi. “You see? What tree does Elsa von Brabant stand beneath when Lohengrin arrives to save her that first time?”

“Oak?”

“Yes, of course, oak!” Adi’s yellow and black teeth show themselves in an open smile. “Knows her role, of course. Stefanie has read my mind. No, more than that—we’re thinking the same thoughts!”

“Are you certain it was oak?”

“Yes, yes!” shouts Adi, waving his stick in the air and shaking his other fist. A passing pedestrian pulls a smouldering pipe from his lips, which are hidden beneath a
kaiserbart
, and turns to regard the frothing teenager. “Or,
if not,” qualifies Adi, “the closest thing to it. Oh, she knows
Lohengrin’s
performed tonight. And she knows how important it is, in our brief passing, to harmonize with the master’s spirit. She knows, because she has the same idea as me. Exactly! We are kindred spirits. We can sing our duet without ever exchanging a word!”

They stop before the baroque cathedral at the entrance to the square. Adi stands before the building, his feet straddling its symmetrical line, so that if anyone notices him, it will appear as if the facade’s twin square towers, topped with onion domes of copper, were constructed as mere frames for his figure. Gustl picks persistent furniture dust from the depths of his ear and holds out his fingertip to regard it. Adi searches for Stefanie amongst the strollers in the distance.

“Where is my Elsa?” he wonders out loud. “I absolutely must speak with her.”

Gustl wrinkles his brow in silence, wondering what will happen if Adi finally does speak with his beloved. If he asks her why she chose to wear that particular grey dress, or the golden cord and leaf in her hair, will he fly into a rage, one of his astonishing screaming and shrieking fits, when he discovers that her reasons do not entirely mesh with his? What will he do if he discovers that she is not at all playing the Elsa to his Lohengrin? Gustl is uncertain that Adi could handle such an attack on his convictions. It would be much better if he were at least somewhat prepared for the possibility.

“You know, it is possible,” Gustl whispers, “that Stefanie’s not so interested in Wagner.”

Adi clenches his teeth at his friend, gripping the ivory handle of his stick with such strength that Gustl fears, for a moment, he’s about to whack him with it. “You don’t understand,” Adi whispers. “How could a child like you understand the meaning of our extraordinary love?”

“I’m sorry. Adi, please, I didn’t mean to offend—”

“Didn’t mean to offend?”

“You’re right,” says Gustl, who’s even more stooped and submissive now than he was with his mother. “I don’t understand. I don’t see how it works between you and Stefanie. I am beneath extraordinary love. Maybe you can clarify it? Do you communicate your thoughts to her using just your glances?”

Adi hesitates, raises his chin, and touches his cravat. “We are both infused with the same spirit. Don’t expect me to explain it.” Now he pivots and marches back up the Landstrasse, away from the Hauptplatz, away from the possibility of encountering Stefanie again, abandoning Gustl by the cathedral.

Is that it?
wonders Gustl, for what must be the hundredth time in their friendship.
Will I ever speak with Adi again?

“Come on,” Adi shouts back at him, his overcoat swishing and snapping with each step. “We must secure our positions in the theatre.”

Having worked all day, Gustl could use a sausage and a beer, no more than a fifteen-minute stop at the Café Baumgartner, and they certainly have time before the performance begins, but he’s not going to make that request. He probably won’t have a chance to eat until he gets home,
which will be late. Gustl often doesn’t have a meal on his evenings out with Adi, since his friend can’t eat once he’s got worked up. No wonder he’s so skinny, with a nearly concave chest.

Adi rounds the corner onto the Promenade, marching towards the Stadtheatre, Gustl following. The box office is open, but instead of approaching it, Adi stands across the street from the bland structure, which cannot be distinguished from neighbouring apartments, rubbing his chin and contemplating its architectural form. He’s studied this building a thousand times and has offered his opinions of it nearly as often, but still he feels he’s never said enough about it. His face reddens, fury overwhelms him, and Adi is moved to give to Gustl his full critique. He is spitting while talking, and shaking his fist, demanding to know how the idiots in charge of this city could expect anyone to take Linz seriously when this empty and styleless monstrosity remains the home of its culture. “Vienna will always be the greater city,” Adi laments, “even with its bastard Hapsburg buildings, as long as Linz is endowed with this dreadful structure while Vienna’s got the Hof.” Gustl murmurs his agreement, although he’s never himself seen the capital’s great imperial opera house. “No,” says Adi, “we Linzers must resist the urge for Gothic revival. I myself will tear down this blight and, like Theophil Hansen, build the greatest neoclassical opera house in all of Europe.”

“Yes,” says Gustl, “you’ve shown me the plans.”

Adi is pacing now, pointing out the locations for the Ionian columns, the domed ceiling, the twin statues of
Bruckner and Wagner that he’s designed to flank the central staircase. “Statues of actual artists,” he continues, “should be erected in the street as a means of inviting Linzers inside.” Only when the spectators have crossed the great threshold and entered the magic zone of the auditorium, only then will the citizens see Adi’s true, crowning achievement: the hundred statues of notable figures from every German opera of any worth whatsoever. Adi takes off his top hat and laughs, but resists the urge to throw it into the air and catch it. “Come on,” he tells Gustl, waving him forward as he crosses the street. “I’ll show you everything.”

They buy their cheap two-Kronen student tickets and proceed into the auditorium’s Promenade, the standing-room-only section. Fortunately, it is located directly beneath the royal box, an exceptionally good spot to hear and see an opera. The two young men position themselves on either side of a large wooden column, so they can lean on it and rest during the long performance. There are only a handful of other people in the audience thus far. Adi excitedly returns to his designs for the new theatre, describing the romantic flourishes he’s devised for each interior statue. For an hour he catalogues his entire plan, down to the minute details. The theatre gradually fills. Gentlemen escort primped ladies into their seats. Students, in shabby and threadbare suits, crowd into the Promenade. Adi’s rant garners occasional bewildered stares from the students around him, until the lights fade at last and the overture to
Lohengrin
rises out of the orchestra pit.

Adi grows silent, his breathing slows, and his eyes widen.
His expression slackens, and the rigidity in his arms and legs softens. He looks like a child. He rests his walking stick against the column. He lays his top hat on the floor between his legs. He forgets Gustl, forgets the building, forgets his grand plan to rebuild everything. Although the sets are wooden and poorly painted, and the singing is at best passable (“provincial,” he would say), it’s still Wagner’s world being created before him, with Elsa, sweet Elsa, his very own Elsa, appearing in white just as the music softens. She’s come to answer the terrible accusation against her, to bow her head and pray for a Christian salvation, and to call forth a mysterious saviour.
I am your saving knight
, thinks Adi.
And you are my Stefanie
. The trumpets blast, followed by a charged silence, and then Lohengrin appears
in splendour shining
, as the stage directions—which Adi has read many times—instruct.
A knight of glorious mien
. Adi gasps. Nothing feels more real to him than this moment. His inner world has been made concrete on stage. He is witnessing everything he believes in and feels, everything he cares about. Tears are streaming down his cheeks. Lohengrin’s swan is papery and fake, but his armour is silver and radiant, and he carries a glittering shield. As he sings for Elsa’s hand in marriage, Adi’s lips move along with the singer’s and his throat fights an urge to sing the tune.
My guardian, my defender!
sings Elsa in reply. Adi is sure that someday Stefanie will say the same to him. And now comes Lohengrin’s dire warning: she must never ask whence he comes, or what his name is.
Yes, it should be like that
, thinks Adi,
no need to discuss my history, no need to discuss my past, not with the spirit of victory propelling me
forward
. Adi hums audibly. When Lohengrin and Frederick fight, Adi moves his hand back and forth as if he himself were wielding the sword. A student standing beside him gives him a nasty glare.

Adi is too exhausted to wander into the lobby during the long first intermission. Instead, he leans against the wooden column. Gustl asks his opinion of the production, but Adi, with his yellow teeth bared and his hands waving in annoyance, shuts him up. When the opera continues, Adi continues to live each gesture on stage, suffering all the twists and turns of Wagner’s world as his own. The second intermission is worse than the first. Adi keeps his eyes closed so he won’t have his bliss interrupted by Gustl’s stupid questions or by the idiotic expression of some dolt in the Promenade.

Adi hungrily absorbs the wedding description that begins act three, since he plans to reproduce it in detail when he marries his beloved. Under a brilliant moon, Elsa and Lohengrin’s duet brings tears to his eyes, and he whispers, along with the knight, his favourite passage in the opera:
Say
,
does thou breathe the incense sweet of flowers?
When Elsa asks the forbidden question and Adi, enraptured, feels the tragic fall of the eternal couple, his already damp hair saturates like a mop. Will Stefanie betray him? Do all women ultimately betray their men? Lohengrin is stepping onto his boat and leaving his beloved forever. Yes, a fitting end. Adi quietly sobs. The lights come up to applause and flowers, to five or six ovations, before the audience filters out of the auditorium. Adi remains motionless, staring vacantly at the fallen curtain,
until long after everyone has departed. Gustl waits for his friend by the door to the Promenade, his hands cupped before him.

They are well out of the Stadtheatre when Adi finally speaks. “Let’s go for a walk in Urfahr,” he says. “I want to see 2 Kirchengasse.”

Gustl stutters the first syllables of a refusal but decides to suck his protest back. It’s nearly midnight and he’s exhausted. He’ll have to rise early in the morning to upholster with his father, but any excuse would be read at best as a meaningless annoyance and at worst as a grave insult.

“Come on,” Adi says, pointing his ebony stick at the suburb and swishing his overcoat behind him. He marches north towards the iron bridge. Gustl abandons resistance and follows in his wake.

Now Adi has sufficient distance to discuss the production. “Several of the singers were miscast,” he begins. Gustl, who readily agrees, is eager to delve into the criticism with his friend, as he has harsh words of his own about the woman playing Ortrud, but just as he’s opening his mouth to speak, Adi starts to rant. “In Vienna,” Adi says, waving his walking stick in the air, “Anna von Mildenburg was near perfect as Ortrud. And Erik Schmedes was a genius who put our town’s Lohengrin to shame. And until I hear my dear Stefanie’s voice—which, I can assure you, Gustl, will have the right ring to it—there will be no singer worthy of Elsa other than Frau Lucy Weidt.” Gustl murmurs tepid agreements and follows him onto the bridge, envious of Adi’s glamorous stay in the
capital but not eager to hear about it. Other than a couple, walking arm in arm in the distance, they’re alone.

The Danube flows black beneath them. Were it not for the river’s gurgling, and the nutty-sweet scent of the cowslips sprouting along the banks, it would feel as if they were traversing a bottomless pit. There are several lit windows and bright street lamps on the other side, but otherwise Urfahr is darker than Linz. Adi lowers his stick. His voice loses its screech. He releases the tension in his shoulders and stops talking about the production. “Yes,” he says, his voice quiet and calm. “It’s good, out here, in the open.” They cross the midpoint of the bridge. “It’s better over here.”