by Linda Stift
*
From the very beginning she placed her trust in me. She was surrounded by people who were slavishly loyal to her mother-in-law. She impressed on me that I was to listen only to her and not let anyone tap me for information, which a variety of ladies-in-waiting attempted to do from the outset, in subtle and not so subtle ways. But I told them nothing. Édes szeretett lelkem, I was hers and hers alone. As the emperor’s mother had a keen dislike of Hungary and Hungarians, she naturally loathed me. The Bohemian ladies-in-waiting at the Viennese court, who prided themselves on speaking French and Italian, but could not master Hungarian, seethed with rage whenever we used my mother tongue in their presence. My lovely mistress! What an enchanting accent she had. My rosy petal! How I missed her when we were apart; I thought about her incessantly. Her pretty face. Her proud demeanour. She was herself like a Hungarian. To me she was all the world.
*
We had gone for a walk by the old racecourse, Frau Hohenembs, Ida, the dog and I. The two of them were wearing the same black clothes as the day before, the dog the same rough greyish-brown coat of fur. I was the only one dressed appropriately for the occasion, in jeans and a T-shirt. Frau Hohenembs hastened along in high spirits, with us in tow as if on an imaginary lead. The dog ran ahead, came back, ran off again, came back again, panting and with his tongue hanging out, seemingly in anticipation. Probably of a stick being thrown. Ida was wheezing; she was too fat to keep up with this pace. More critically, she had the wrong shoes on, not practical boots like Frau Hohenembs or trainers like me, but pumps with spiky heels that kept sinking into the grass with every step. She was carrying a wicker basket with picnic things; that morning she had called me on the landline at my flat. I had no idea where she’d got the number from – I was ex-directory – and when I quizzed her about this she just laughed and said it wasn’t difficult, Frau Hohenembs had her connections. Then, on behalf of Frau Hohenembs, she had invited me for a stroll and a picnic in the Prater. I was about to wriggle out of it with an excuse – a walk on a Saturday afternoon with two elderly ladies was not exactly my idea of a weekend outing – but Ida was so pushy that I was left with no choice. She said Frau Hohenembs would be inconsolable if I declined. In the end, and to my astonishment, I accepted, perhaps to spare me further talk, but maybe I was also glad of the opportunity to leave the scene of my debauchery. I was dead tired. I’d erased all the traces: cleared up, swept, hoovered, mopped, washed crockery, polished all the work surfaces, the sink, the loo. This spanking cleanliness and the smell of detergents were a screaming indictment against me. As was the bulging rubbish bag standing beside the door like a self-satisfied, pot-bellied superego. How would I be able to explain this cleaning frenzy to Charlotte, who was well aware of how seldom I clean? I couldn’t have her enter my flat until it showed signs of being lived in again. The evidence of my personal devastation, too, would need time to fade. Swollen lymph glands and a bloodshot right eye. I offered to take the basket from Ida, but she wasn’t having it. Neither of them commented on my eye. Frau Hohenembs kept scuttling ahead and we followed on behind. She was looking for a suitable spot for our picnic, but nowhere seemed good enough. We circled the racecourse several times; by now I was wheezing like Ida, but Frau Hohenembs was in inconceivably good shape: her face registered nothing. Her breathing was calm and regular. The exertion was making me sick. To punish myself, I hadn’t eaten anything since the night before, and had drunk far too little, so now I felt dizzy. I said I couldn’t manage another step without some water and a bite of something to eat. I obstinately remained where I was, the dog howled and Frau Hohenembs looked at me as if we’d never met. Ida, give her some of the broth. Touch wood, it’ll help; it’s good for everything. Ida dropped the basket, reluctantly undid the leather belt tied around the middle, lifted the lid and took out a green Thermos flask and a silver cup, gilded inside. She half-filled it with a dark liquid by holding the flask up as high above the silver vessel as her short arm would allow and letting a thin trickle dribble into the cup. Her fingernails looked even worse than the last time, edged with dried blood. Without looking at me she offered the cup. It was slightly steaming and I drank down the broth in one gulp. It must have been some sort of thickened beef soup and I fancied that I felt myself instantly regaining strength. More! Frau Hohenembs ordered. Don’t be so stingy, and Ida hesitantly poured me another cup, once more filling it just halfway. This time I drank it with small sips and only now did I detect the various flavours. There was an intense taste of beef, carrot and parsley, viscous on the tongue, and I had a slight, not unpleasant feeling of fullness. I could go to sleep now, I thought. Already impatient because of the delay, Frau Hohenembs urged us to move on. We had to circle the racecourse one more time until she finally chose a place, and Ida and I sank into the grass. Frau Hohenembs looked at us both blankly. I’m used to this from Ida; she’s overweight and short of breath, but a young woman like you? She took a white damask cloth from the basket, unfolded it sloppily on the grass and, without any apparent system, started piling it with cutlery, plates, cups, dishes and terrines of various sizes with lids – everything made of solid silver – until there was no room for any more. Ida, whose job this should have been, lay stretched out on the ground, wheezing with a rattle in her throat. Her large belly rose and fell too quickly. If only I were in Corfu, she sighed. The tall-legged dog stood perplexed beside her, waiting. I poured some mineral water from a plastic bottle and offered a cup to Frau Hohenembs, which she took with gloved fingers, gave one to Ida, then drank two in succession myself. Frau Hohenembs paced up and down impatiently, commenting that Ida had rested long enough. Ida sat up awkwardly, holding on to the dog for support; it didn’t move a muscle. She started unpacking the food and arranging it on the dishes. There were little schnitzels, rice and peas in a ring, rolls of ham, stuffed vine leaves, potato salad, mayonnaise salad, herring salad, shredded pancake, stewed plums and Esterházy cake. Ida poured the soup I’d tasted earlier into two cups, giving one to Frau Hohenembs and keeping one herself; clearly there wasn’t any more for me. The dog lay down beside the blanket, gazing longingly with his canine eyes at the dishes. Frau Hohenembs, who by now had walked around our picnic spot several times, finally sat down in the grass and arranged her skirt, lengthening it by buttoning down the hem. She took off her gloves, had Ida undo the buttons on her sleeves, which were then pushed above her elbows, and held her pale forearms in the sun. Around her right wrist she wore a blood-red velvet armband, tied tightly; in the crook of her right arm were greenish patches and dots that looked like needle punctures. She sat up straight, surveying the dishes and comparing them with a handwritten list on laid paper that Ida had handed to her. Ida waited – no, lurked – until Frau Hohenembs finally started eating, then she slurped down her soup before purposefully embarking on one mouthful after another, chewing and swallowing, mechanically and tenaciously, as if called upon to solve a difficult task. Frau Hohenembs sighed at Ida’s eating habits. She herself ate slowly and only one or two morsels of each dish, as if she were her own personal taster, but was soon finished with her lunch. I ate only a little, one schnitzel and some rice and peas, none of the salads, which were too fatty for me to keep down. If I’d known that once Frau Hohenembs had finished her lunch, which she signalled with a sweeping gesture of the hand, Ida, her mouth full, would immediately pack away the picnic, plates, dishes and all, while secretly stuffing leftovers, I would have eaten more, or at least put something in my pocket. There was just time for tea out of tiny silver cups and a praline each before this hurried picnic had come to an end. How I would have loved to lie on the grass for a while, enjoy a short doze or stare at the sky, but Frau Hohenembs was relentless. She unbuttoned the hem of her skirt, pulled down her sleeves and held out her arms to Ida so that she could fasten the necessary buttons. Then she rounded up Ida and me and directed us to the fairground in the Prater, talking about a performance somewhere around here that we absolutely had to see. I bought a bottle of cola. With each s
ip I could feel it corroding the schnitzel in my stomach and to top it all I got heartburn. We wandered around for a while, the big wheel to our left, then to our right, but nowhere could we find any sign that the performance was taking place. According to Frau Hohenembs, a woman missing her bottom half was going to sing Viennese songs. During our odyssey she said breathily – as if by way of an apology – that she was magnetically drawn to the Prater. She couldn’t help it; it was at a place like this that she had earned her first and only money: coins that she had caught in her skirt after dancing in front of total strangers, as a child, to tunes that her father had plucked on the zither. She still had these coins; she was fortunate never to have been in such precarious circumstances that she’d had to spend them. She chuckled and then slapped her hand over her mouth – it was probably meant as a joke. Ida said that even if she wanted to she wouldn’t be able to spend the coins these days. She’d got them so long ago that they’d been out of circulation for years. I imagined that every few weeks Ida had to polish those coins till they gleamed. Offended, Frau Hohenembs said nothing and pulled at her gloves. Several times we passed the large area where strange creatures made of painted plaster wound their way out of the ground and over it, ossified in their movements, with distorted faces and grotesquely twisted limbs. The backs or bottoms of some of them were formed like seats. Presumably they represented cabaret performers, contortionists, fat men with top hats and tails, grimacing beanpoles wearing trousers that were too short, beneath which their ankles protruded like abnormal swellings, women half-naked or in garish circus leotards. I felt strangely disconcerted by this sight. Almost offended. Perhaps it was the painful body contortions that provoked my disgust, because they recalled some undefined torture, duress and ultimately death. Even Frau Hohenembs groaned when we passed them. These faces again, and she looked away, whereas Ida and I, despite the repugnance the figures induced in us, eyed them longingly, desperate to sit down and relax on their behinds. At every shooting gallery Ida had to ask where the dubious performance was taking place, but nobody had heard of it. We’d probably got the wrong day, or year, for they, the stallholders, were usually the first to find out about things like that. But Frau Hohenembs refused to give up and in the end we not only went to every shooting gallery and every restaurant, but also asked at the ghost train, in the sex museum and at the flying carpet. At the sex museum a midget had handed us a badly printed brochure which contained information about opening times and the attractions. Ultimately Frau Hohenembs had to admit that she’d been mistaken and suggested we visit the sex museum instead, which would be both educational and entertaining. She would buy the tickets. As we approached the till we noticed that the midget who’d given us the brochure was aiming a shotgun at us. We stopped; he lowered the gun and grinned. He sat on a bar stool in his tin booth, the door of which stood wide open, and waved us over. He had a hump on his back. Frau Hohenembs smiled at him and said, Three, please, then asked whether she might touch the hump as it brought good luck. The midget consented and pursed his lips. She stepped into his booth and removed her right glove. She rubbed her now bare hand up and down his hump, the red armband shimmering faintly, while he very slowly tore three tickets from a roll and then hesitated before offering them to her – a clear indication that this was quite enough hump-rubbing. She reluctantly took the tickets. By her own admission, Frau Hohenembs rarely had cash on her, so Ida paid. She enquired about a cloakroom and the midget said they didn’t have one, but they could leave everything with him, including the dog. Ida put the basket in the booth. What did you do to your eye? he asked casually as he bent down to tie the dog’s lead to his bar stool. Ida and Frau Hohenembs gave me a look of keen interest, as if they’d been waiting all this time for me to explain the state of my eye. I simply said, A burst vein, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The midget nodded and started to stroke the huge canine head, which was now in his lap. He didn’t mention my swollen lymph glands, nor my scarred knuckles, for which I was very grateful, as I’d seen from his expression that he’d definitely noticed both of these, and I didn’t know how I would be able to account for them without exposing myself to ridicule. Painted on the lead sheeting above the entrance to the sex museum was the image of a woman, naked, with orangey-brown skin and long, wafting hair of an indeterminate colour, somewhere between beige and dishwater. Her legs were too short and too small in relation to her upper body. It looked as if she were shrinking from below, or was this a preliminary stage on the way to the woman without a lower half? An allusion to the midget cashier? If you were being kind, you might also say it was the view from a bird’s-eye perspective. But if that had been the intention then it had failed. Perhaps it depicted Alice in Wonderland immediately after she’d taken a sip from the bottle labelled Drink me and had started to shrink. And yet Alice’s shrinking was rather different; she closed up like a telescope. I’d have preferred to come to this place with Charlotte. We were now standing in a corridor lit by dim lamps; on the walls were pictures evidently by the same artist who’d painted the nude above the entrance. They showed a variety of orgy scenes and were definitive proof that the artist had failed to master perspective. In the first room, just as gloomy as the corridor, a sign said: The History of Sexuality. Behind glass hung daguerreotypes from the mid-nineteenth century, the beginnings of erotic photography, gleaming in sepia colours. Girls on their own or in pairs lying on divans, draped with veils or flowers, posing with feather dusters or leaning against trees, wearing happily mischievous expressions, seemingly oblivious to their fat thighs and bellies. This was quite different from the snarling, well-toned models of our era, who offer no more than a frosty smile that is claimed to be seductive. Frau Hohenembs, too, was fascinated by the pictures; she studied each one in detail. Why have these been kept from me for so long? she complained. But in every discount bookshop you can find books full of these sorts of images, filling entire walls of shelves, I said in her direction. She cried theatrically, But back then, back then! Ida! My album of beauty! In fact, where did that get to? These things always mysteriously disappear. Touch wood, you’ll get me one of those books first thing on Monday. Not too expensive, mind! Ida muttered something, the only word of which I could make out was Corfu, and took a closer look at the photos. She had to be short-sighted, her nose almost pressed up against the glass. Those diplomats must have kept these pictures for their own use, sending you only the clothed ladies, she said, seemingly delighted to have solved the problem. Villains! Frau Hohenembs exclaimed. Villains the lot of them. They always intrigued against me. Always! She fell silent and stared, her mouth agape, at a series of ethnographic photographs, showing black women wearing necklaces or naked without any jewellery. Some were painted or ornately scarified, most had their heads shaved; the hair of only a few was braided into little strands, entwined with string or decorated with pearls. Moors, she whispered, female Moors. They’re black Africans, you don’t say Moors these days, or Negroes, Ida instructed her. Really? Whatever takes your fancy. Are there books with black African women too? she asked me, pausing deliberately before uttering the word black. Of course, I said. There are books on everything. But they’re called black women. How do you know they’re from Africa? Excellent! Capital! Ida, on Monday you’re going to go and buy some books with Negro women in them. Ida didn’t answer; she was already in the next room. Frau Hohenembs could not tear herself away from the pictures of what probably were black African women after all, for where would these photos have been taken if not in Africa, by white ethnologists under the hazy pretext of the male spirit of research? The next section exhibited what were purported to be the first ever sex magazines, from the 1950s to the 1990s. It was scarcely conceivable that they hadn’t existed before then. As the decades passed the women got thinner and fitter. Whereas in the 50s they had cellulite on their thighs and powerful upper arms with dimples, and the beginnings of a tummy (be it small or large), they slimmed down in the 60s and even more dramatically in the 70s; in the
80s and 90s they became muscular and toned, which spoiled the eroticism. Men first made occasional appearances in the plush setting of the 80s, standing sheepishly with shining, pumped-up torsos beside women to whom they offered their stiff members like gifts, or stuck them straight into their mouths, vaginas or anuses. Masks ought to have been put on these men, for their inane expressions were anything but arousing. A wooden flight of steps led into the next room, which was devoted to Perversions; it looked more like the showroom of a sex shop. A skinny golden whip stood on a faux-marble pedestal, and in a cupboard beside it, were large handcuffs and leg irons, beneath them a sign saying: Middle Ages. A glass case had been placed in one corner, containing tack, stirrups and spurs, all thrown together, as if two horses had been unharnessed in a great hurry. In the opposite corner was a display of latex penises, in various colours as well as transparent ones, sorted by size as if they were the children of a Protestant pastor, the final and largest one in the row measuring fifty centimetres. I gave the latex penises a thorough examination: some were crafted realistically, others with pronounced veins or covered in warts and tassels. I compared the different bumps and grooves, but it didn’t do anything for me. Not my thing, Frau Hohenembs said behind me, brushing my shoulder with her gloved hand. I hadn’t heard her coming. She was making for the riding tack and whip, but they didn’t seem to please her either. Ida was already in the next room, dedicated to rubber and leather fetishes. Had there been a sign, it ought to have read: Bizarre. There were photographs of women from all continents and of almost all ages, laced in the most diverse ways into rubber and leather suits, with zips or cut-outs for the genitals. Some were wearing gas masks or had golf balls between their teeth. Others were strapped together or tied up like packages. There were no men at all. Frau Hohenembs stood by a photograph of a wet, naked woman whose dark, likewise wet hair practically reached down to the floor, and who was tied with coarse twisted rope to a ship’s mast. The ship was clearly in a storm, everything blurred and drenched by sheets of rain. Frau Hohenembs’s back was straight and stiff; she looked at the picture with intense concentration. I noticed that, apart from the buttons on her hem and sleeves, there were no other buttons or zips to be seen, nor any laces or other fittings such as hooks and eyes, with which you might normally fasten and unfasten clothes. She looked as if she’d been sewn into a case. The picture that Frau Hohenembs was studying so carefully didn’t belong in this gallery; it looked far more like a still from a film. The woman’s facial expression was not anxious or contorted with pain, but expectant. A female Odysseus resisting the Sirens. In the centre of the room stood a mannequin with a bright-red, screaming mouth, dressed in a black diver’s outfit and a diving mask on her head of blonde hair. Please touch, it said on a cardboard sign. With two fingers I stroked her thigh and placed my palm on her rubber-covered belly. It wasn’t a smooth rubber, but a slightly porous material or foam rubber. I would have preferred it to be smooth; a smooth rubber would have given stronger emphasis to the fetishism. Although it was exciting to put my hand between the mannequin’s legs, I found it embarrassing in front of Ida and Frau Hohenembs. The latter was gazing avidly at the photographs again and calling for Ida. Take a good look at this; there’ll be books with this in too, she said. Ida strolled down the photo gallery, pulled a small jotter from her ill-fitting dress and made notes.
