by Vera Caspary
“Indeed. They stand on the road and take photographs and try to sneak in the gates.”
Joe brought me a mélange. “It is not only historic interest that brings them to Liebhofen. The people here have made them curious about the orgies that take place in your fine castle. Grüss Gott, gnädige Frau.”
“Grüss Gott, Joe. Orgies?”
“I only know what I hear.”
Joe had never been invited to our large parties. Pepe and Sepperl, with whom he played dice, were regular guests, but Joe’s name had only come up when Wolfy suggested that he play piano at the American jazz fete. Since then Hansi had not accepted any of our invitations. Nothing was said about it. I would have liked to ask, but did not want to risk an argument. But I thought about it frequently and was baffled by the nuances of prejudice.
Surely Joe, who played Mozart so brilliantly and had a degree from Yale University, was preferable to some of the stupid young barons and hard-drinking “vons” who were enthusiastically welcomed. And, according to Hansi, the Negro was a cultivated lover.
They were quarreling this morning because he did not come to Altbach as frequently as she wished. She always said that Joe studied at the Mozarteum occasionally but this, Joe retorted, was an expression of her wishes rather than of the fact. To Hansi, Joe said, Salzburg was a place for a manicure; to him a pilgrimage. At night, walking by the Salzbach, he reflected that the rhythms of the river were the same that Mozart had heard as a boy, the very soul of his music.
Hansi listened skeptically. She had heard rumors that it was not so much devotion to his studies as to a certain princess which kept Joe from the dice games and other diversions of her bar. “A princess with a dough face and wrists and ankles that would shame a peasant. What do you see in her, Joe?”
“A princess, genuine, the real stuff, her ancestors captured some duchies and butchered hundreds of Magyars and Bohemians. She lets me drive her motorbike and sits on the back seat with her arms around my middle.” His laughter came from deep inside. “Boy, if the folks at home could see me!”
“Isn’t she at all attractive?” I asked.
“Fair. Fair. Nothing worth writing home about except the princess part. It’s strictly prestige dating. If I was looking around for a girl,” he eyed Hansi mischievously, “it wouldn’t be too hard with the Gretls and Tutzis. You know, before I came here I never believed a girl could be named Mitzi outside of a musical comedy.” This laughter was nearer the surface and louder. “It takes all kinds of intolerance to make a world.”
While he talked Joe stood between our chairs. My dog had leaped up and sat in dignity like a Stammgaste waiting to be served. I asked Joe why he did not sit down. “Excuse me, gnädige Frau,” Joe said and retreated.
“He has great tact,” said Hansi. “It would not please your husband if it was reported that you had been sitting with a Negro.”
“It would be reported?”
Hansi rolled her eyes. “In this town!” She was feeding pretzels to Litzi who loved salty foods. Loud voices and gusts of laughter introduced a group of German tourists. Hansi left the table to greet them graciously, as though her tight trousers were sweeping skirts. A Viennese smile was lavished on these patrons, charm offered as a commodity. She took their orders, transmitted them to the barman, returned to the table.
“What pigs, the people who travel these days. In satin dirndls under raincoats on buses! They try to be chic, they ask for American drinks, cocktails, whiskey on the rocks, at this hour.” Her hands, green-veined and older than her face, rested on the dark oak table. In place of the mammoth diamond she wore an incredible emerald.
“Is it new? I haven’t seen that before.”
“From my first husband. I’ve had it in the safe for years, but why shouldn’t I enjoy it? Another coffee, Leni? Or shall we have a small Slivovitz to keep from catching cold? I have such exciting news for you.”
“Exciting?” I yawned. How spoiled I was, a rich man’s wife who considered it her right to be bored with the books, the flowers, the splendid meals, the car, the idleness.
“There is someone anxious to meet yon. Very exciting. I have made a rendezvous. Are you free this afternoon for tea?”
“I’ll have to ask Gerhard, although I’m sure he’ll be busy.”
She laid her hand upon mine. “Your constancy is boring, dear. Gerhard doesn’t deserve it, believe me.”
She used my husband’s name with mockery. Of late she had expressed open scorn or asked questions indirectly as though she held back a more important query. Slyness was not Hansi’s nature. In spite of the Viennese smile, the coyness with men, the tilted head, the drooping eyelids, she was by nature forthright, almost harsh in her speech. Often when she expressed opinions on the telephone I suffered at the thought that the operator might be listening. Both of the Altbach operators were middle-aged family men, meek and pious, and the things that Hansi blurted out were of a nature to be whispered in the presence of doctors or priests.
“Your husband is not invited to my tea party. Nor Wolfy.”
“Who is the exciting person that wishes to talk to me, Hansi?”
“You will see.”
At our noon dinner I said that I was going to tea at Hansi’s private apartment. “With your dark-skinned friend?” asked Wolfy. Gerhard sniffed. So Hansi had been right about the swift spread of news in the village. I answered bravely that Joe and I had a most stimulating conversation about Mozart, the aristocracy and prejudices. No comment was made.
Wondering what exciting person wished to meet me, I dressed with care, made my appearance what the American fashion magazines call “casual.” The motions of dressing made me feel important, a special person, the woman of privilege for whom shops and craftsmen, artists and factories exist: the possessor of a sacred body bathed daily in scented water, creamed, perfumed, wrapped in the softest garments. With such luxury come complexities. Anxiety is the fruit of choice. This, Madame, is the perfume for your personality; this angora wool skirt with the two cashmere sweaters whose subtle silver blue is accented by your pearls, is the correct costume for a cup of tea on a rainy afternoon in the country. But is it? Can I be sure that my choice will show the best possible taste? Will I be noticed, talked about, punished if the choice is not the most correct? Such were the problems of my life as reported in my diary on the first day of August.
And how about Hansi? Did her appearance show that she was born an aristocrat, related to an archbishop, bore the title of Baroness, had moved all her life in good society? At the door of her private salon, an elegant chamber all damask and brocade, boule cabinets, fruitwood and satinwood, crystal, Meissen and Sevres figurines on every shelf and table, I looked upon a pole decorated as for some festival. It was Hansi in toreador pants of green velvet, an embroidered jacket of shocking pink, a violet scarf at her neck. Her hair had been dyed platinum, cut extremely short, curled as on the head of a Christmas tree angel.
“Hansi, what a costume!”
She preened at the mirror. “A bit rococo, don’t you think? You are in better taste but you are young enough to be conservative.” She fingered the cashmere of my sweater, approved with a jerk of cherub’s curls. “You’ve got a natural elegance, Leni, how did you ever come by it? One reads in all these psychological studies which everyone accepts like religion nowadays that childhood impressions are the most important. If this is true, how did you with that prison as your first school ever cultivate your taste?”
She had a habit which rather frightened me of touching me lightly with her strong, warm fingers. I bore it because she was fond of me and I did not want to show a shrinking. Happily I was saved by the entrance of her maid announcing that the guests had arrived.
“I have heard so much about you, I have wanted to meet you for a long time.”
“You have heard about me?”
“From Martin Haffner. In Berlin he used to talk about you constantly.”
“Oh! Then you are his brilliant American journalist.�
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Victor Freund cut me off with a laugh. “I’m an American and a writer. The rest of the description is Viennese Schlagobers.”
I laughed. “You remind me of Martin. He was always saying that we cover everything in pastry and smother thought with whipped cream.”
“I’m afraid he got a lot of those ideas from me, I was always attacking him with the American point of view.”
I had thought at first that Victor resembled Martin, but soon saw that it was the other way round. Martin had copied the American mannerisms. Although Victor was born in Vienna he was taken to San Francisco when he was a small child and had acquired the accent and character of an American. He approaches women directly. He disapproves of hand-kisses. Phony is his favorite word.
He and I were immediately sensitive to each other. His personality commands attention. Every nuance of feeling influences his lively face, every passing thought is reflected in gray eyes that look out critically from behind dark-rimmed spectacles. His mouth is narrow but when the satirical lips part over splendid teeth, the smile is irresistible. His nose is aquiline, assertive, too prominent…like the noses of Dante and Voltaire in the sculptured heads…in short, a Jewish nose.
Before Hitler the Freunds were prominent newspaper publishers in Vienna. Their paper had reported frankly about the persecutions in Germany, had warned against Austrian capitulation, had quit publication the day of the Anschluss. Victor’s parents had escaped with their children and the daughter of his father’s older brother, the editor of the paper, who had been taken by the Nazis. This uncle’s wife, a Catholic lady, had waited like my mother for her Jewish husband, hopelessly, as he was killed at Auschwitz. She was captured, too, but survived the camp at Theresienstadt, and at the end of the war married another prisoner. Dr. Nemecek, who now practiced medicine in Salzburg. Now Victor was paying his aunt a visit, and they had driven to Altbach to call on Hansi and meet me.
I liked Frau Nemecek on sight. Her handclasp was firm, her eyes serene. She was dressed simply in a Loden costume of gray with green edges and silver buttons, a white blouse, her only ornaments a wristwatch and wedding ring. Among all the countesses and princesses I had met none had a more aristocratic bearing than this lady who came from a mere schoolmaster’s family. She was proud of her American nephew and began at once to tell us about his work. The subject was not new to me as Martin, when he was assisting in the researches of his brilliant American friend, had preached interminably about the dangers of the new Nazis. When I asked about the work on which Martin had collaborated, it was not Victor but Frau Nemecek who replied that her nephew’s work had been enormously successful in America, both as a series in an important weekly magazine, also as a book, “a best seller in the shops and circulated by one of those huge American book clubs. He has become so famous that…”
“Tante Renata, please! You brag more than Mama.”
“Who wouldn’t be happy to talk about such a brilliant boy? And now Vicki is back here to gather more facts for another important series…”
“Tante, please don’t call me Vicki. In America that’s a girl’s name. My friends call me Vic.”
His embarrassment and our laughter broke the tension. Hansi maneuvered so that the young man and I were together on the divan. Frau Nemecek’s boasting of her nephew was modest in comparison with Hansi’s talk about my achievements. “To think, Frau Nemecek, this clever child, so well-mannered and educated, without a governess, without ever having gone to a proper school…” like a mother showing off an unmarried daughter. “We must speak English so you can hear Leni’s vocabulary…”
She would have gone on forever if the maid had not brought in tea. A splendid Jause, tea instead of ordinary afternoon coffee, thin English sandwiches and the full glory of Austria in the cakes. I tried to turn the conversation to a less personal subject, but Hansi insisted that Herr Freund had come especially to hear my story.
“But it is not so interesting, Hansi. And besides I am sure he heard enough of it from Martin Haffner.” I offered a flirtatious coffeehouse smile.
“But he must be interested in you,” said Hansi, “since he is writing stories about Nazi victims…”
“Victims!” I seized the word. It did not fit my present status in the least. My pearls were real, my hand had been kissed by many titled gentlemen. “I was once a victim but now I live like a princess.”
“Name one princess who lives so well,” Hansi remarked. “And you must realize that Leni owes it to no one but herself. She has achieved it all by her own efforts.”
To have achieved wealth and position by one’s own efforts was to Hansi a sign of genius in a girl. Her pride in me was embarrassing. “Please, Hansi, let’s not talk about that. It cannot seem so remarkable to Herr Freund. It was all so long ago, and so much has been written. He is surely looking for more recent developments.”
This turned the conversation to Vic’s latest task. His researches were not so different from the earlier work with which Martin had been associated. The new series of articles would be about Nazi officials in government posts, of recent acts against Jews, anti-Semitic propaganda and the desecration of synagogues.
“But those synagogues that were attacked were in Germany, not here,” I said. “There are so few Jews in Austria that I doubt that there are synagogues.”
“Several in Vienna and in all of the D.P. camps.” Frau Nemecek seemed well informed about such things. “But even in towns where there are no Jews there is propaganda against them. They will tell you about the tricks and the profits of the Jews in the next town. Germany has paid great sums in restitution, but the Austrians have formed organizations to fight this movement, and the poor people in the D.P. camps who are supported by foreign help and spend that foreign money here are considered pariahs by our citizens, although I doubt that any Austrian ever contributed a schilling to their support.”
Victor laughed. “You sound like a foreign critic, Tante Renata.”
“I’m Austrian to the bone for many generations, but I cannot bear the tradition of hypocrisy. Both in politics and manners.”
“Are all Austrians so bad?” I wanted to tell them about Herr Mayr who could never show penitence enough for having joined the Party in order to play the flute and support his family. “I’ve met many who are friends of the Jews. Among aristocrats especially. Many of them know and use expressions of the Jewish jargon.”
“Many of them have Jewish blood. Scratch a Viennese aristocrat and you will find the strain somewhere. How many of our proudest families have intermarried?” asked Hansi, who once married a wealthy Jew.
“Do not defend the Viennese to me,” said Frau Nemecek in her calm voice, but sadly. “Once we considered ourselves the most civilized city in the world. But what of the welcome Vienna gave Hitler? Where else were there such loud Heils, so many flowers cast in his path, so much happy drinking in the winehouses, so much bowing and praise? And our Prince Bishop, Cardinal Doctor Innitzer,” said this lady who never missed a Sunday in the Catholic Church, “was the first prelate to pay tribute with a visit to the high and holy Adolf.”
“Wolfy’s father marched at the head of the parade,” Hansi reminded me.
“Who is Wolfy?” asked Vic.
“My husband’s secretary.”
Hansi added, “Son of the late Baron, General von Schamberg.”
“And what are his politics today?”
“We never talk about such things.”
“Never?”
I became uncomfortable. I had quit talking about such things when Gerhard accused me of getting hysterical about unimportant items in newspapers and begged me not to embarrass Wolfy with such conversations. Wolfy, Gerhard explained, was extremely sensitive; he had not chosen to be the son of General von Schamberg any more than I had chosen a Jew for my father. Deprived of the right to express my opinions in my home, I had felt isolated and tried not to think about such things. In Altbach, I had no one for discussions of the sort I had enjoyed with Martin and
his friends. My only friend was Hansi who did not care about impersonal and abstract things, although she wished now to show Victor and his aunt that she (and I, too) had serious interests.
Frau Nemecek reminded us of recent riots in nearby Austrian towns over a movie that showed Nazi cruelties. In Germany this film had been a success, people had considered the sins of their fathers. In Austria where manners are gentler, where people show off kindness like new clothes, where hearts are carved into the window shutters and angels painted on the walls, they refused to acknowledge the past. Young men in white knee socks strutted before the theatres, threatened and mocked those who wished to go in. New Nazi boys, never reprimanded, their names not recorded. Better to forget, said good Austrians, and retreated to their comfortable coffeehouses.
Through all of this solemn talk there was an under-current of sexual excitement between Victor and me. Hansi watched us shrewdly, occasionally caught my eye to ask with a nod or smile if I did not find the young man attractive. Before they left she drew Frau Nemecek into conversation, about gardens and the weather, so that Victor and I could talk privately.
“I’d like to see you again.”
“Tomorrow?” I asked boldly. He nodded and I named a meeting place. Tomorrow seemed centuries away. When he and his aunt left I wished to go home, too, but Hansi held my arm firmly and announced that she wished to talk to me.
“You’ve arranged a rendezvous?”
She was pleased that we were to meet so soon, but warned me against arguments of a serious nature. “A man does not want to talk politics to a pretty girl, he would rather flirt with her.”
