by Linda Stift
*
Her habit of entering strangers’ houses and apartments used to rankle with the emperor. It was a quirk she did not develop until later in life. Whenever she needed refreshment on one of her epic walks, she would go into the nearest house and ask for a glass of milk and a sandwich. She was almost always given what she asked for; people mostly failed to recognize the empress and of course she never revealed her identity. Only once was she chased away by a woman who refused to tolerate a stranger entering her house and behaving with such impudence. She preferred making surprise and unannounced visits to the courts of Europe, too, thereby causing extreme embarrassment. On one such occasion she was arrested because a guard did not recognize her and she was not accompanied by any ladies-in-waiting. In her black walking dresses – after Rudolf’s death she wore nothing but black – she did not look particularly elegant, and thus could easily be mistaken for any old peculiar woman. She would sit for hours at the guardhouse until the misunderstanding was cleared up, requiring the intervention of the devastated marshal of the court. My kedvesem loved little performances like this.
*
In the days that followed I sat alone in my flat, alternating between eating and vomiting, and I never answered the landline when it rang. I no longer felt safe in my own home. Anybody who wanted could call me here and embroil me in something. A Frau Savka from the property-management company reached me on my mobile. I didn’t recognize the number and thought it might have been Charlotte using a borrowed phone. Frau Savka asked whether I’d come to a decision about my flat and if I wanted to extend the contract, which expired at the end of the month. I’d totally forgotten that the contract was coming to an end and I told her that I definitely did want to extend it. After she’d hung up I thought that was a mistake. In my current circumstances obviously it would have been better to move out. But I’d got used to the flat; it was the first one I’d found and renovated on my own. I was attached to the place. My right eye had improved; when I looked in the mirror I could only see a scattering of pink spots. The lymph glands were still swollen and my jaw hurt. I’d closed the blinds on the windows facing the street so that no one could watch me from the park. Citing a contagious illness, I’d cancelled the man whose daughter had emigrated to Australia, postponing our appointment indefinitely. He’d sounded desperate and anger had welled up inside me; couldn’t he clear away his rubbish on his own? But the anger was mostly directed towards myself. In spite of the fact that I’d completed my degree, including semesters abroad, it was my job to get rid of other people’s junk, while having to listen to stories about their screwed-up lives. And what’s more the whole thing had been my own idea, after endless employment applications and abortive interviews, whose only purpose was to give the HR bosses a job in which they could savour their ridiculous power. I’d put the receiver down beside the phone and the man’s tirade of misery had turned into a steady drone, interrupted by self-pitying snivelling. After ten minutes, during which I’d tidied and regrouped the objects on my living-room table, I picked up the receiver again and said I had to go now, to the hospital, the isolation unit. Saying goodbye politely, with suppressed hatred, I hung up. What were these people really thinking? Charlotte was clearly hurt and waiting for me to call. Twice someone had come to my door and knocked. Both times I was kneeling by the toilet bowl. I paused what I was doing and hardly dared breathe. I felt like a criminal. The interruption was like a sucker punch to my half-emptied stomach. I could hear the blood rushing to my ears. Although I’d thrown up silently I didn’t move from where I was, afraid that the person outside might detect a creaking or breathing. I dismissed the idea that it could have been Charlotte at the door. After everything I’d done she would never have condescended to that. It took a lot of hard practice to learn how to vomit silently. I began by sticking down my throat toothbrushes, paintbrushes or ostrich plumes, which I’d bought specifically for this purpose having read that these were what the ancient Romans used. I had no success with my fingers as I couldn’t poke them down far enough, to the area where the vomiting reflex begins. I was unable, however, to spare myself the grazed and ultimately scarred knuckles that result from constantly rubbing the roof of one’s mouth, because I tried it over and over again. The handles chafed my throat until it bled, and that always gave me such a shock that I’d interrupt my puking. Which meant that not everything came out. I’d try again with my fingers, which never worked. The ostrich feathers always got dirty after the first attempt, and what’s more they cost the same as three or four food shops and were never easy to get hold of. After once watching our cat crouch on the living-room carpet and retch, throwing up perfectly round balls of grass, accompanied by miserable staccato noises, I tried to copy her and practised gagging. Although my initial attempts made a dreadful racket, by the end I had perfected the art and was no longer audible, which meant I was able at any time, even when my parents were in the neighbouring bathroom, to disgorge the contents of my stomach unassisted. In fact the cat made louder noises with her grass balls than I did. I must not have eaten more than an hour beforehand, however, and I had to drink a lot of liquid, otherwise the retching wouldn’t work. Whenever the cat noticed me throwing up, she would creep under the living-room sofa as if she wanted nothing to do with it, as if she were secretly implicated. Once the footsteps had moved away from my front door I relaxed and emptied my stomach completely. The police would have been more aggressive; I expect the officers would have broken down the door had they entertained suspicions against me. Under the pretext of exigent circumstances they can do whatever they like. After rinsing out my mouth and washing my face with cold water, I opened the door to see if anything had been left for me. There was neither a private letter nor any official communication, nothing suggesting any action on behalf of the authorities. There were no reports on telly or the radio of a theft in the Hofburg. I couldn’t find anything in the online newspapers either. I hadn’t dared to search for ‘duck press’ directly, for fear of leaving a trail. Even clicking on one or a few articles about it would have been risky. And I didn’t want to go to an internet café. Was it really possible that nobody had noticed? Who would remember exactly whether three or four of the things were under the glass, especially as there were only three labels? Three or four, I don’t know, I never counted them, definitely more than two, that’s all I can say for sure. I had to hand it to Frau Hohenembs, removing the fourth label had been a masterstroke. There must be inventories somewhere. But I bet they weren’t checked on a daily basis; they probably never were, that’s assuming they could be found in the first place. Perhaps a duck press like that wasn’t spectacular enough for the newspapers; after all, it was only a hundred-year-old kitchen gadget, not a work of art. But it was a curio. Or had the theft not been made public deliberately, to lure the culprits into a false sense of security? Pedlars, people checking TV licences or Jehovah’s Witnesses – I mustn’t drive myself mad. How long could I hunker down in the flat? I was gradually running out of food, and from upstairs came an alarming din again. This time it was dark bass tones droning through the walls and rattling the doors, as if a dance café had opened above me. On my way to the loo I noticed a folded white piece of paper that had been slid under my front door. I recalled the anonymous notes or those with fake signatures that were slipped to me under the desk in class at primary school, or which I found in my coat pocket or school bag. Full of shame, my head burning, I would go to the loo to read these secret messages in a locked cubicle, and keep them at home in a scratched plastic Benco bottle with a faded label. This showed a three-part comic strip extolling Benco’s power of invigoration, similar to the effect that tinned spinach had on Popeye the Sailor Man. I would regularly dip into the bottle and pull out a note, as if picking a raffle winner. Then I’d attempt to recognize the clumsily disguised handwriting and thereby identify the real writer. Some words I didn’t understand, but when I tried to look them up I couldn’t find them in any dictionary or encyclopedia. Either that or
they told me nothing if I did find them (for example, ‘hump’) because the one definition needed to decipher the message wasn’t given, and I couldn’t infer anything from the other meanings. All I suspected was that they described something inaccessible to me, but at that age I found them more exciting than anything else. I’d spend hours with these well-thumbed letters, and afterwards felt fresh and invigorated, as if I’d just drunk a glass of milk with powdered chocolate or eaten a can of spinach. It was a great disappointment if I came home without a cryptic message or a burning head. My first impulse was to push the note back out of my flat. Then I ignored it for two visits to the loo, but finally curiosity won out. If only I’d flushed it away immediately! This piece of paper contained no secret erotic message, which would have been worth decoding, nor did it invigorate me in the slightest. On the contrary, it only left me despondent. Please call 55 60 600 as soon as possible. Yours, Frau Hohenembs. I anticipated that this brazenly requested conversation would be about the duck press. Of course, I should have guessed that it was Ida creeping round my door, irresponsibly putting me in danger. I had no intention of calling. But I suspected Frau Hohenembs would not give up; she’d probably make Ida camp outside my flat until we’d spoken. Carefully adjusting one of the venetian blinds, I peered through the horizontal slats at the park over the road, but didn’t see anything suspicious. Only that the blinds urgently needed cleaning. A young woman was sitting on a bench with several supermarket shopping bags. She was looking vacantly up at my windows. Either she seemed to be pondering something or she was just staring into thin air, as people put it so nicely. I had the unpleasant impression that she looked similar to me, even though she was too far away for me to be able to see her features properly. There was something in the way she sat that unsettled me; it could have been me sitting there like that. Otherwise the usual mothers with their usual children and the usual homeless people with their usual bottle of wine were going about their usual business. Ida was nowhere to be seen.
*
My first glimpse of the new statue in Vienna’s Volksgarten was a shock. Now the Viennese had finally got what they had always wanted – to nail down my proud gull to the city and force her to sit there quietly and wait as events unfolded. They retaliated to her journeying by rail and boat with this stone statue, which is the very opposite of her. As if those responsible had been deliberating for years as to how they could best disconcert my poor petal. They could have at least chiselled her a horse to sit on; that would have been an acceptable compromise. What must have annoyed them most of all was that she never had chairs in her vicinity. Sitting around for hours, as the Viennese love to do, in coffee houses, in wine taverns or on window seats, to watch people and the world go by, was not her thing. The three hours a day she was stuck on a chair during the laborious procedure of dressing her hair was enough for one day. Moreover, this sculpture is a pale imitation of the Maria Theresia statue. Although she is seated too, in her matronly posture the old mother of the people nonetheless manages to execute a movement, and her figure as a whole exhibits a keen sense of vitality, whereas my édes lelkem sits there cowed, hands in her lap, with a book by her knees, utterly passive, almost curled up into herself, her hair a crude jumble on her head – poor Fanny Feifalik, that is no crown braid! – her dress preposterous, and with the most boring facial features you could possibly imagine. My sweet, sweet petal, she did not deserve that.
*
Ida was carrying a blue rucksack, which she laid at the base of the Empress Elisabeth statue in the Volksgarten. She’d slipped another three notes under my door, each bearing the same message and telephone number; I tore them all up and flushed them down the loo. Then I’d heard a scratching sound outside, a dragging and pushing, a creaking then a sigh, finally a flapping, like someone idly leafing through a magazine. As I put my ear to the door and listened to the noise, I could also hear rustling. After a while I opened up and there lay Ida on a camp bed, beside her an open bag, out of the top of which poked a Thermos flask and some rolls wrapped in cling film. The smell of schnitzel hung in the air. Her legs were wrapped in a blanket and on her tummy was an opened bar of chocolate. She told me she’d been instructed to wait here until I’d rung Frau Hohenembs. I slammed the door shut. As far as I was concerned she could lie there till kingdom come. But I didn’t have any peace; Ida’s presence outside my front door made me nervous, and who could tell what the neighbours might think or whether one of them would call the police? In any case, she would cause a stir by being there, a most unseemly state of affairs. I paced up and down my flat in despair. Eventually I felt worn out and rang Frau Hohenembs. She picked up after two rings. The conversation was as brief as it was unpleasant. I could hear the dog whining in the background, or was it the parrots? I was nervous, and when I’m nervous or agitated I’m practically incapable of communicating. If everything’s all right I speak in a nice voice like a professional radio presenter; if not I stutter so badly it’s as if I can’t even speak my own language. At university I was once asked whether I was a foreigner, because I didn’t express myself quickly enough or with the appropriate words for the situation. Falteringly, I asked Frau Hohenembs not to call me again; in her mellifluous Frau Professor German, which had a slight Bavarian twang, she replied that she only wanted to invite me for the occasional walk or museum visit. These were minor, very manageable obligations and I shouldn’t worry about being entirely owned by her, that was out of the question. If I refused she would inform the relevant authorities. The expression being entirely owned by her shocked me, even if it was out of the question. The idea would never have occurred to me; coming from her, it sounded perfectly natural and made me fear the worst. When I countered that I could just as easily call the police too, she said tersely that, unlike me, she knew what to do. She and Ida were highly unlikely to be prosecuted, especially in Austria. She didn’t think I was able to say that about myself. Furthermore, she couldn’t imagine that I’d prefer a spell in prison to the occasional hour in her company. The idea was so ludicrous it could never happen, touch wood. She said all this in such a calm voice that I slammed down the receiver, ran out of the room and would have fled from the flat – from the whole world, ideally – if the phone hadn’t rung again seconds later. I ran back into the room, grabbed the receiver and heard Frau Hohenembs speak again. Touch wood, it shan’t be to your disadvantage; I have a most lucrative offer for you. She hung up. Outside my door, a mobile rang. I heard a final rustling, squeaking and dragging and a Goodbye! from Ida. She’d obviously been given the order to strike camp.
Frau Hohenembs walked twice around the stepped site, examined the two stone dogs that lay on either side at the feet of the statue of Empress Elisabeth, and shook her head. The dogs are far too small and the dress – if you can even call it a dress – is impossible, she exclaimed in our direction. Dogs as large as I would like just don’t exist. The dress of the Austrian empress, who in her time secured the reputation as an iconic beauty, with painstaking routines for her hair and clothes, was indeed disappointing, a simple loose-fitting garment, held together at the waist by a sort of sash, almost like a tunic, with no decoration or pattern. It could have easily been a linen sheet with sleeves. We stood slightly to one side, Ida picked a few flowers from the border and sang ‘White Roses of Corfu’ to herself. There were no locals or tourists around, the statue was on the perimeter of the Volksgarten; perhaps it wasn’t marked in tourist guides. A narcotic heat shrouded the small area, which seemed removed from time; an indeterminate buzzing pervaded the air, crickets or bees or hummingbirds, and then I heard Frau Hohenembs speak, as if from far away: Give me the fuses, let me do it. The scratching sound of Velcro being opened and then the bang of an explosion. A moment later the statue was a pile of rubble and dust. Standing beside me, Ida took my arm, we dashed out onto the Ringstrasse and just managed to catch a passing tram. A passenger who’d watched us running for the stop was kind enough to press the door button from the inside.
*
If Lucheni had known how great her desire was for death, perhaps he would not have chosen her as his victim. Moreover, she did not match his image of the royal enemy, but he could not have known that either. It had always been her conviction that we had overreached ourselves, that we no longer fitted in with the world, that it was just a question of time until humanity finally sent us packing with nothing but rags. Those rags she would have wrapped around her hips in the evening, soaked in cold vinegar because this was purported to tauten the thighs. To begin with she failed to notice that she was mortally wounded. She thought the man had simply knocked her over because she was in his way, even though he had in fact rushed at both of them, Countess Sztáray and her. She even went onto the boat. It was only on board that she sensed something was wrong, terribly wrong.
