The Vienna Melody (36 page)

They had gone there. The headwaiter had sized up this excursion couple with a disparaging glance. Selma was in a sports blouse, a checked skirt, green suède cap, and her shoes were dusty. After an endless wait they were given a small table on the extreme edge of the farthest terrace. That was the one good thing about it, for there, at least, they no longer had to run the gauntlet of the eyes of the dining bourgeoisie, who loved nothing so much as to devour a reputation with every morsel of food.

There was a shady linden tree overhead, but alas, there was a band almost at their side, a string orchestra led by Herr Hügel with plaintive, languorous lightness, which every one found so charming.

Nevertheless they had had food, and the band had been playing “Girlie, You're Dancing Just Like My Wife'' with honeyed tones, when Selma noticed that she was being stared at by a lady. It was Eugenie. She was dining with her husband at a table only a short distance from them, and she stared so noticeably that Hans, who had seen her some time before, could not help blushing. “Oh, I see!” Selma had said without his knowing what she meant.

But then she had gone on to ask, “Isn't that a certain lady whom you have always represented to me as
à quantité négligeable
? Did you want to keep up her devotion by a visual lesson? In any case your efforts seem to have met with success. Handsome of you.”

Had it not been for the sudden stopping of the music and the rumor that sped from table to table of some terrible occurrence, Hans would not have known what to do under the cross fire of the two women's looks. In a way the terrible news had come to his rescue, for the questions, exclamations, and horror of the guests who were hurrying away had concealed his dilemma. When finally he and Selma had been passing the Einrieds' table Eugenie had detained him.

“Mr. Alt!” she had called. “I'd like to introduce you to my husband. You know, Mr. Alt was a classmate of our boy,” she had explained to her husband.

“Very pleased, I'm sure,” had been the comment of the baldheaded gentleman whom Hans remembered from that memorable game of tarot in the Café Matschakerhof. “Well, young man,” he had added, “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! Waiter! The bill!”

For the first time in Hans's life someone had used the word ‘war' not as a textbook expression of the past but as a possibility and even a probability of today. Coming from the mouth of this bald-headed, malicious high official, it sounded to Hans like something obscene. He took it for the belated threat of a jealous husband rather than for anything else. People didn't wage war any more. And why should there be war? Because some fanatic had killed an archduke? When Papa killed a count no one so much as lifted a finger, and it had been just as horrible.

“It's a catastrophe,” Eugenie had said to Hans while the waiter was adding up two orders of roast veal with spinach. Hans had realized that she meant Selma, but pretended that she was speaking of the assassination. “Yes, horrible,” he had said.

Then he and Selma had ridden back to town, jammed close together in a tram that was so overcrowded they had had to stand on the steps. And she had looked at him with eyes from which every trace of reproach had vanished, almost as though she were frightened. He knew she was thinking of young men lucky enough to be marching off in a very few days.

There were people in the tramcar who said, “This means war! We can't tolerate it any longer!” What language did they speak? War was a medieval, fiendish word. It had no place in a living language. And what was it they would not tolerate? Papa had shot a man in a violet meadow as nowadays he shot deer. Hans had thought then that it should not be tolerated. Yet they had tolerated it. What was the difference?

Selma and he had parted as usual on the corner, far enough away from Number 10 not to be seen. It was then that Hans had made his decision.

As he stood with his back to his mother and looked down at the excited crowds below, it all had passed in review before his eyes, from start to end. Now he turned abruptly round to her and said: ‘Mother, I want to marry Selma.”

The bells were still booming and reverberating. “I don't think that this is the right moment,” Henriette said slowly.

“I know, Mother. But I have already put it off too long!”

She knew that nothing she might say to him now would change anything. She would lose him. To a girl named Selma. Nevertheless she said: “I've already indicated on many occasions that I'm not in favor of this relationship.”

“You have no reasons,” he replied.

She had the best reason there was. She did not want to lose him. Besides, she had discovered all sorts of things about this Selma. She was vain, egotistical, much too clever. It was not a good idea to marry a girl who is vain, egotistical, and clever. They don't make their husbands happy. Yet this boy should be happy! He should have a better wife than his father had! A thousand times better one! Henriette knew it was in vain. So all she asked of him was: “We'll speak of this another time, Hans. It really isn't the moment now.”

“Oh, yes, Mother,” he said. “They say there may be war.”

“No!” she cried. “No!” Then, controlling herself: “Do you believe that?”

They heard Mono coming back.

“No,” he said. “I can't imagine human beings waging war in 1914.”

The bells grew louder, drowning out the steps and voices outside.

“Nor I,” Henriette said, her eyes open wide.

Henriette sat on a bench in the garden of her Ischl villa and read her letters while she waited for a long-distance call from Vienna. Through the trees it was possible to glimpse the green heights of Mount Jainzen, the green waters of the Traun, and a bit of the yellow Imperial villa. She had sat there a year earlier, after the war had broken out, when Franz, despite his age, had resumed his old rank of first lieutenant in the reserve and gone to headquarters in Teschen, and Hermann, newly commissioned as a second lieutenant, had left for Serbia, and Hans, as a volunteer in the Hoch-und-Deutschmeister Fourth Regiment, had been sent to the Rennweg Barracks to be trained.

Exactly a year ago the air had been filled day and night with triumphant singing: “Prince Eugene, of men most knightly, laid a bridge across the river, led his men victorious ever, to the fortress Belgerad”; “Staunch stands and true the watch, the watch on the Rhine”; “In our homeland, in our homeland, you and I will meet again!” Singing, strewn with flowers, with oak-leaves on the shakos of their dress uniforms, the enthusiastic troops marched away between lines of enthusiastic crowds. “See you at Christmas!” and they had yelled back: “In September!”

In September, before the leaves fell, the general staff had published the communiqué: “Lemberg is still in our hands.”

In September, when school opened, Henriette and Martha Monica had returned to Vienna. It was war. They were obliged to adapt themselves to that obsolete word which to their generations of security had had so little meaning. It was an adjustment even more difficult for Henriette than for many others, brought up as she had been in the atmosphere of Professor Stein's steadfast faith in the humane powers of liberalism, tolerance, and progress. But it was war, and it was not over in three weeks like the campaign of 1866. The house in Seilerstätte grew emptier. Fritz and Otto Drauffer too were called up. The men left in the house were Otto Eberhard, his son Peter, brother-in-law Drauffer, Herr Simmerl, the janitor Pawlik, and the stationer. From time to time Hans came over from the barracks. He grew constantly thinner, the Emperor's colors did not suit him. Once Selma came with him. They were engaged. Before Hans, now a corporal, went to Serbia he had insisted on getting married. His father had refused his consent, for Hans was not quite twenty-four, and any soldier who was not of legal age in Austria was obliged to have the consent of his father or his mother. His mother gave hers, but his father knew nothing about that.

Henriette's mail consisted really of just one card from the field. For the two letters she held in her hand had already arrived some days earlier. Yet she read them over and over.

On the card was written:

 

Teschen, August
17, 1915

D
EAR
H
ETTI,

On this first anniversary of our separation I am thinking of you with especial affection. I am extremely well and trust you are the same. I sent you a basket of eggs and four kilograms of butter. I trust you will receive the same safely. I am glad Martha Monica gets such good reports in school. Please tell her that from me. The splendid news from the front must help us through this time of separation. Tomorrow, on the occasion of His Majesty's birthday, I shall drink to your health. Write soon.

Love and greetings.

YOUR FRANZ

 

She pressed her lips together. He still wrote in the style of business letters. Still with the copybook precise up-and-down strokes differentiating the Gothic letters and the elaborate loop with the signature “Franz” exactly in the center. Once upon a time when she was young and still nourished the absurd hope of moulding Franz a little she had plucked up the courage to speak to him about the dryness of his personal letters. His reply had been “Nonsense!” But shortly afterwards he had brought her—goodness only knows where he procured it—a copy of a letter from a certain Count Hohenembs to the Empress Elizabeth in Corfu, on the subject of the roses in the private gardens of the Schönbrunn Palace, and it was couched in the style of a bookkeeper. She could still recall one sentence from it: “And I cut the same as soon as they bloom profusely.” Count Hohenembs, however, was the pseudonym under which Francis Joseph corresponded with his wife when she was travelling abroad, and Franz's opinion was, “What is good enough for the Empress should not be too bad for you!” To which she had replied, “But you are not the Emperor.”

She looked down to the yellow wall of the Imperial villa with the green wooden shutters, whence the one word “yes” could have freed her from her painful unrest. This summer, as every year, Francis Joseph had arrived there before his birthday. “And you are not the Empress,” Franz had said to her. With a sigh she laid the card down beside her. How absurd of Franz to take as usual for his pattern a person who never had the slightest care for human beings! Her freckled son-in-law had recently told her how His Majesty had had the “greatness” not to pause even for a second in his daily round of obligations when Franz Ferdinand died. The same was said of him when his brother Maximilian was shot in Mexico, when his son committed suicide, and when his wife was murdered. How could anyone call that greatness? He was simply a man without a heart. Otherwise he never could have borne it all. Such men had no reason to be surprised when they received no happiness. They gave none.

As if to confirm this, Henriette took up one of the two letters. It was dated August 4, carried a field-post-office-stamp number, without further identification of origin, and read:

 

D
EAR
M
OTHER,

Just a few lines to thank you for your sweet letter and to let you know that I am in grand shape. You probably know directly from Hans that he has now been assigned to my company since he says he wrote you. It is really funny to have my “elder brother” under me. If you do not hear from me in the near future the reason will be only that we are going to be somewhat busier shooting up these Serbian swine. No one can imagine what a tricky, filthy, lousy lot they are! But shoulder to shoulder with our German brothers in arms we shall soon clean up this mess! Best regards to all.

YOUR HERMANN, Lieutenant

 

Your Hermann, Lieutenant!

“Miss Mono on the telephone,” Herr Simmerl announced. “She sends word that the mixed doubles will not begin until one and to please not wait luncheon for her. Is that all right?”

“I'll go myself,” Henriette said. “Is she phoning from Strobl?” “She did phone,” replied the tall butler.

“You drive me crazy with your way of speech, Simmerl. Why didn't you say in the first place that she had telephoned?”

“Sorry, Your Grace,” Simmerl, deprived of the “Herr,” excused himself. “Miss Mono had said she was telephoning from Strobl and it costs money if you have to wait on a long-distance call. But on the next occasion I shall not fail to advise Your Ladyship.”

“That will be kind of you, Simmerl,” Henriette told him. “I happen to be waiting for a call.”

“Very good, madam,” responded the butler with injured feelings, and withdrew.

For a moment she reflected about whether she ought to leave Martha Monica alone over in Strobl at the tournament. Then she noticed that it was already almost noon. How long it took to get a call through from Vienna today!

Nervously she read the second letter which she knew by heart, syllable for syllable. It carried the same army-post-office-stamp number, was not dated, and had been cancelled a week earlier. The square stamp of the “Imperial and Royal Supreme Military Command Censor” was below the address.

 

My dear Mother
 
[it ran], I am now here, bag and baggage, but I may not tell you where. It is more refreshing and instructive than I had ever imagined. You see and experience a lot. On the march down here, for instance, I saw my first dead horses. They whinny so strangely before they die. As though they knew. I have also seen people hanging on gallows; it makes quite an impression when they sway in the wind. They were all criminals, Serbs of course, who had met with their just deserts. The first gunfire is also an experience which I should not like to have missed. When you suddenly hear the whizzing sound in the air, made by the bullets, which Hermann so aptly calls “blue beans,” as they fly at you, at least you know why you were born! Partly to serve as a target for these whistling beans, and partly to plant them in someone else. That it is in a human body you are supposed to plant them is perhaps the greatest experience of all in these great days, for which Hermann has another apt expression: he calls them a steel shower. You aim at men whose faces you hardly ever see, and, unless you are a criminally poor shot, you have the incomparable satisfaction of seeing their bodies tumble like so many sacks on the faces you never saw. My one regret is that I still do not shoot well enough.