The Vienna Melody (71 page)

The shadow of a smile lurked around his lips. “What do you think you could do with a boss who has been fired?”

“If I only dared to say! But I don't dare,” she said.

He did not want to go back to the house of death. He did not want to look people in the face who had shouted “Heil Hitler!” Every face he looked into was an insult to him. As though every one of them had betrayed him.

She hesitated before she made the suggestion. She had a tiny apartment over in Karolinengasse. “You see, I've moved away from my parents.”

His mother had lived in Karolinengasse when she was a girl.

“It's an awfully little apartment,” she told him. “When I took it I thought to myself: ‘I wonder if he'll ever come to see it?' When was that?”

That day they went to Grinzing—did he remember?—she had asked him if she could go home before she met him. She wanted to change her dress; that was the reason she gave. He had never noticed that she did not change it. But she had dashed over and taken an apartment.

He did not seem to object to her going on with her story. The apartment had belonged to a friend who had moved and who had intended it for someone else, she said. But this friend had told her that if you were in love with a great gentleman you should have a little apartment. That is why she took the apartment in Karolinengasse at the time. Now he would naturally think ill of her?

His thinking was not functioning well. Thoughts came but did not stick. But even when they did hot stick they hurt.

“Would you perhaps like to see the apartment now?” she asked. And when he said “Yes,” she added, overjoyed: “It will be a great honor for me.”

She was a simple Viennese girl.

Since he had been dismissed Hans was, so to speak, a free man. He had all the time he wished to convince himself of the state of things in Vienna.

Spring had come with unheard-of beauty and with a sudden, premature, eruptive power, as though it were intent on burying the swastikas under a flood of blossoms. The Prater chestnut trees paraded an unwonted wealth of foliage; the violets smothered the meadows with their fragrance; the lilac bushes between the equestrian statues of Prince Eugene and Archduke Charles were as luxuriant as if they had never graced Hitler's entry. The more Hans saw of the city on which spring was lavishing her Maytime splendor, the more clearly he came to realize that that entry was an illusion.

Hitler had made his entry. Since then someone had ruled in his name—a man called Burckel, who was born in the Saar and who had never been in Vienna before. The name Austria had been wiped off the map by the Austrian who had freed it. The country, a thousand years old, was now called Ostmark. All this was no illusion.

But Hans was after the truth, and he found it. He had wanted to talk with people, and he did talk with them. “Perhaps you are right; things are not what they seem,” he said to Mitzi, who as usual went to the factory in Wiedner Hauptstrasse every morning and, when she came back towards evening, waited for him to come to her. And when he came her joy was so great that it warmed him in his benumbed state. Slowly, little by little, she helped him back to life.

Not one of the Viennese whom he had seen and with whom he had spoken had been in the cheering crowds which to him, as to all the world, had lent an aspect of jubilation and conclusiveness to the entry of the liberator. This too helped him back to life.

It was people from South Germany who had lined the way of the triumphant march into Vienna, he learned from Ebeseder. Together with Mitzi and Fritz, Ebeseder stood by him. When he was unwilling to believe this, his old friend—he outwardly had reverted to being once more a painter of still life—showed him an order of the Ministry of Propaganda and Public Instruction under the date line of Berlin, March 13, 1938, and signed “Goebbels.” The order read:

 

To Gauleiters in Bavaria, Baden, and Wiirttemberg. It will be the responsibility of the propaganda chiefs to see that, in connection with the entry of our Führer into Vienna on March 14, 1938, district contingents of party comrades are to be dispatched to Vienna. Each district is to provide fifteen thousand party comrades who are to participate in the entry celebration and produce an overwhelming demonstration. The propaganda chiefs must see to it that the Viennese populace, as well as the foreign observers, receive the impression that it is not tourists but native Viennese who are cheering our Führer. Consequently the propaganda chiefs will make it their duty to place in the first three rows of all lanes lining the entrance procession exclusively party comrades from South Germany, whose dialect resembles the Viennese mode of speech. All matters pursuant to the above to be carried out in concert with the leader of the Gestapo in Vienna, party comrade Heydrich. Transportation costs to and from Vienna, as well as maintenance charges while there, to be undertaken by the Ministry. They are not to exceed thirty reichsmarks per person.

 

No government order had ever delighted Hans so much. He read it over until he knew it by heart. Under the Prater trees, in the Volksgarten, in the City Park of his childhood years, where the benches now bore little plates reading “For Aryans only,” he kept repeating to himself: “Must see to it that the Viennese populace receives the impression …”

The longer he looked in the face of the city he knew so well, the more distinct the gigantic hoax to which he and it had fallen victims became to him. A few well-timed special trains and a few thousand paid shouters had overridden them and stopped their mouths.

“I'm not sure that it is wise for you to be seen about so much,” Cousin Peter had said to him. “It reaches my ears that you have been seen in districts where you have no business to go. You talk with people you don't even know. You ask questions which for a piano manufacturer are, to put it mildly, far off the mark. Credit me with my old sympathy for you if I caution you. People like you must be particularly prudent. You not only stood in closest contact with Herr Schuschnigg, but also you maintain strange relationships with Bolshevik circles. It would not be surprising if one day it will be found necessary to secure your person.” This conversation took place before the angel entrance of Number 10; the smashed stone figure was supposed to be repaired, but there were yet no workers to be had for such inessential things.

Hans had let his cousin have his say. Then he asked with a quiet irony, which he was constantly developing these days (together with another even more surprising quality—an almost obsessed straightforwardness): “Tell me, Peter, how about human memory?”

The chief of division, who was on his way to the Ministry carrying his brief-case in his gloved hands, made an inquiring gesture.

“Do people have such miserably poor memories?” Hans went on. “Or do they merely count on the miserable memories of their fellow humans? I myself have a fairly good one and remember a speech you made about taking a ridiculous man seriously. Do you too recall it?”

Peter produced a smile worthy of the Metternich tradition. “Not that I know of.”

“Your father would not have said that.”

“My father was a great man. But he lacked a certain realistic sense, or what we now call ‘flexibility.'”

“Your father was as great or as small as decency,” Hans said. He was holding in his hand the object for which he had gone to his apartment one last time: the gramophone record of Selma's speech from
Saint Joan
which she had recited for Captain Kunsti's program division.

“Are we not going to see you in the house any more?” asked his cousin.

“Oh, yes,” declared Hans, to the other's obvious discomfiture. “I am, of course, no longer a piano manufacturer—you overlooked that unimportant fact in the pressure of your affairs. Nevertheless, we have plans for playing the piano a little.”

The high official inquired who was meant by “we.” He discovered it was Fritz and Hans.

“Fritz?” he said icily.

“We want to get up a little musical celebration in the party rooms. They are empty anyhow. You have no objections, I take it?”

“What kind of celebration?”

“Fritz's boy Raimund is going to be twelve. He sings quite well. We thought it would be nice to give
Bastien and Bastienne
, with children, to celebrate his confirmation. Would your Adelheid care to join in?”

Peter reflected. “When would it be?” he asked.

“In four weeks or so. When we have finished rehearsing.”

The chief of division weighed the considerations. “Although I fear that your, shall we say, predilection for Mozart and aversion to—others is the principal motive in this production, still it really is a nice idea. Perhaps we could invite a few people in to see if you'll hear from me.”

With that they parted.

Their Conversation was the outcome of Hans's long walks in districts where he had no business to go. Ebeseder and Fritz had worked out the plan together. Since Hans had won back Vienna for himself, his desire to restore it to the Viennese had grown into a passion.

Consequently, for the next few weeks the children were rehearsing, in the yellow drawing-room, a one-act opera written by Mozart in his youth. It was the same six-sided, somber room where the housewarming of the newly constructed building had taken place and where the court composer Mozart, mortally ill, had played
The Magic Flute.
The same pearwood piano still stood in the same place; its ivory keys had taken on the yellowed hue of the wood. The yellow damask curtains were still hanging at the windows which were drawn in thick folds when Henriette and Franz were married and Alfred Grünfeld sat at the pearwood piano to play dances for the bridal couple.

Now Fritz and Hans sat at it, attempting to tune the historic instrument themselves rather than entrust it to the hands of strangers. However, they found that they were inadequate to the task, for no one had played on Christopher Alt's first product for a generation, and neglect, coupled with cold and dampness, had, in the course of more than one hundred and seventy years, bereft it of its fine, clear tone. Hans was obliged to call in experts from the factory, several of his former tuners and Bochner, the metal-caster; even they took several days to accomplish their delicate task. Number 10 made no objection to the disturbance. After all, it was the instrument at which Mozart had sat.

Yet in the end the enterprise came to nothing. During the rehearsals Fritz's son Raimund went down with the measles and Aunt Annemarie strictly forbade all contact with him. Sure enough, since the birthday child could not participate in the event, his father, Fritz, cheerfully abandoned the whole party.

After further consideration, and after having talked the matter over with Annemarie, the chief of division looked upon little Raimund's measles as extremely opportune. That time in front of the angel entrance, under the impact of Hans's uncomfortable questions, he had allowed himself to be pushed to a too-hasty agreement. Annemarie of Potsdam, near Berlin, to whom he owed the possibility of continuing in his position, had made it quite clear to him that—with Hans and Fritz as the moving spirits in the affair—one could in any case not have invited anyone of rank or influence to the house. On the contrary, it was pure luck that the whole thing had fallen through. As for little Raimund, with the measles, he recovered with surprising speed and, as soon as he was allowed to appear in public again, looked as blooming as if he had not been sick at all.

The only result of the unsuccessful preparations was that since that time Hans had formed the habit of coming to the second floor and playing the piano for a while. He did not play for long, always the loveliest things which sounded pleasantly to the ears, and anyhow, Number 10 found them far less disturbing than the dissonant modern compositions of the constantly more unbearable Fritz. Nor could they in any case object, since Hans was no longer living in the house and had no piano in his own apartment. After all he, until Henriette's inheritance was settled, was still a co-owner. His new apartment, so Number had heard, lay in the Fourth District near to that of that simpleton, the little secretary, with whom, however, according to reliable information he was not living. As far as women were concerned, Henriette's son had never given evidence of discriminating taste. It was his mother's blood in him, was the verdict of Peter's household.

During the half-hour or so that Hans was in the habit of playing in the yellow drawing room he broadcast the news gathered by Ebeseder and edited by himself. The microphone built into the keyboard of the piano took advantage of the aerials of the Vienna broadcasting station Ravag, only a street away. Whereas Hermann had attempted in vain to establish a contact with it through the cellar of the house, Hans's workmen proved able to do it. It was also to the advantage of the authors of the plan, and they had considered this factor, that no one would guess that in a house where forbidden propaganda had already once been produced, anything similar would again be undertaken.

At first daily, and later on at intervals of two or three days (according to how much or how little caution had to be exercised), the Viennese heard over their radios a voice which called itself “Austrian Freedom Station” and to which they grew accustomed to listening. The broadcast began each time with a woman's inspiring voice. Then a man's voice followed. It, too, was heartening. In the first weeks it quoted over and over again the order which had been the cause of making the Viennese first doubt and then despair of themselves. By means of that order and an untold number of other documentary proofs it destroyed the assumption that Hitler had been welcomed by anyone outside the mercenary partisans and a number of old party adherents. It also made clear that even most of these old Austrian adherents of Hitler had been disillusioned and bitterly disappointed since the Anschluss.