by Linda Stift
*
Sometimes she was obliged to spend entire mornings in a chair, her hair divided into strands and hung up on ribbons, because the weight of her plaits gave her headaches. But for her there was nothing worse than having to sit around for so long doing nothing. I’m the slave of my hair, she would often say. The hairdressing procedure used to take at least three hours. During this time I would read her Heine, or she would make conversation in Hungarian or Greek. Her hairdresser, Fanny Feifalik, who had worked styling hair in the theatre, had to show her all the hairs she had combed out on a silver platter. She received a reprimand for each one. In the end Frau Feifalik adopted the ruse of concealing the hairs that had come out with adhesive tape beneath her pinafore. Hair-washing would take place every three weeks; this had absolute priority over everything else. The date for this time-consuming operation was fixed; it occupied an entire day and everything else had to be cancelled. In this, she showed no consideration for her representative duties. Her flowing locks were coated with a mixture of raw egg yolks and cognac, which stayed on for hours. On these days she was especially ungracious. She was utterly dependent on Frau Feifalik; on the one occasion when her hairdresser was ill and a lady-in-waiting had to stand in, the whole day was ruined. Frau Feifalik exploited this dependence to have her shameful requests granted. And she performed another service that made her slightly more indispensable. She would appear as Her Majesty’s doppelgänger whenever we arrived somewhere and the local dignitaries insisted on receiving my szeretett angyalom with great pomp, presenting her with useless objects, from golden keys to enormous bouquets of flowers. Her Majesty hated having attention drawn to herself in public and would send out Fanny, who was of similar build, in one of her dresses. With impeccable poise Frau Feifalik would stride through the crowd, accepting the homage of the mayors as best she could, imitating Her Majesty. In the port of Smyrna she was taken around in a barge and tributes were paid by the city dignitaries. During all of this my rose was able to wander with me through the crowds incognito. If only Frau Feifalik had been around that day in Geneva. Then the Italian would have stabbed her rather than my petal!
*
Frau Hohenembs sat opposite me in the drawing room, in the only chair with armrests; behind her stood Ida, busy arranging the mass of dark hair. Ida had squeezed herself into the white doctor’s coat. Plaintive murmurings of discontent were coming from Frau Hohenembs, which were imitated by the two grey parrots in the corner. One of Frau Hohenembs’s arms dangled down and stroked the huge dog lying on the floor beside her. Ida wasn’t particularly skilled, maybe she didn’t want to be fiddling about with hair. I could empathize with that. I find other people’s hair slightly revolting. But even more revolting are other people’s scalps. I don’t want anything to do with something so sensitive, intimate. Frau Hohenembs had thick brown hair, you couldn’t see any scalp shining through, for which I was most grateful. Eventually Ida twisted the hair into a thick plait, which she fastened at the back of Frau Hohenembs’s head with long hairpins from between her pressed lips. She had the same hairstyle, although her rolled-up plait was thinner and the chestnut-brown colour streaked with grey. There was no hint of scalp on her head either. I sipped a cup of Lady Grey and took a bite of a ham roll. I’d rarely tasted a roll as good as this; it was handmade and the ham exceptionally tender. Unfortunately, the hairdressing had failed to spoil my appetite. I tried my best to avoid looking at the fully laden table and focus instead on my strategy. I was waiting for the most opportune moment to beg Frau Hohenembs to spare me from her machinations. I couldn’t phrase it like that, obviously; I’d prepared something more appropriate to say, but now was the wrong moment. She was still suffering the ordeal of her morning toilette. Lucheni’s head came into my mind again; I hadn’t thought of it since the museum. I became boiling hot and the mouthful of ham roll felt dry against my gums and tasted unpleasantly of animal. I swallowed it without chewing and, with crumbs in my voice, asked Frau Hohenembs where the glass cylinder containing the head had been. In a closet; I didn’t want it in the drawing room. But there’s something quite different I need to talk to you about. The museum has acquired a new exhibit which, just like the duck presses, belongs to me. I’m awfully sorry, but we need to go back and, touch wood, retrieve this object. She said retrieve without any trace of irony. She’d already fixed a date, in seven days’ time, for after that splendid coup with Lucheni’s head she wanted to give us, Ida and me, a few days off. If it were up to her, she’d bring back the object – she didn’t say what it was and I didn’t ask – to where it belonged tomorrow. She understood that she couldn’t expect this of us, even though her fingers were already itching. Now was the worst possible moment to execute my plan; once again I’d waited too long. Noticing my despondency, Frau Hohenembs tried to cheer me up. The media haven’t yet reported on the disappearance of the duck press. Touch wood, it’ll go just as smoothly as it did on the last occasion, she promised. You mustn’t worry about a thing. She appeared intoxicated by the prospect of another theft, and passed a book across the table to me. Look what Ida got for me – wonderful photographs. It was a massive, thousand-page picture book with erotic photos of women from the early twentieth century. I almost knocked over a jug of milk with my outstretched arm, which sank under the weight of the book. The pictures were in black and white, and grainy, like those in the sex museum. I leafed through a few pages; the truly erotic element of the photos was the cheerfulness and levity of the models. Their bodies were unburdened, they hadn’t been starved or laced up or trained in a gym or edited to make them perfect, they weren’t divided into three or four types. It looked playful and harmless; I didn’t know whether the models thought so too, whether they’d had fun with the photographer before, afterwards or during, or whether they’d been forced into doing it and humiliated. But there was no suggestion of coercion in the pictures. Frau Hohenembs had Ida pour her half a cup of coffee; the rest she filled with sugar and single cream. She ate two ham rolls and a curd-cheese pastry. As I looked at the coffee cup I remembered the property-management firm and how I’d planned to ring them early that morning. I’d completely forgotten, which made me furious, and I decided to complain about the behaviour of the agent working on behalf of the firm. Ida had now taken off the white coat for breakfast and she ate curd-cheese pastries, three or four of them – I wasn’t really counting – with which she drank tea, or at any rate poured it down herself as you might water a pot plant after you come back from holiday. I forced myself not to eat any more and tried to persuade myself that the eating habits of the other two disgusted me. As if I hadn’t done far worse myself. Frau Hohenembs stuffed down her rolls in the same way that Ida devoured her pastries; there was none of the restraint I’d seen at the picnic in the Prater. The dog, too, was now agitated; he turned his head from Ida to Frau Hohenembs and back again, but they didn’t give him anything. I became sick through envy. How come these two were allowed to throw everything down their gullets while I had to make do with a single roll? I’d come a long way! Sitting there gawping in envy at two old women eating, together with this emaciated dog. Clicking my fingers and making psst noises, I tried to lure the dog over so I could stroke his head, so the two of us starving ones could band together. But he remained obstinately at Frau Hohenembs’s feet, in the false and stupid hope (typical dog) that he might be allowed a morsel after all. Compared to him I had a distinct advantage: I could take as much from the table as I wanted. And this thought led me on to the next, hideous thought: just one more time. Like a poisonous vine, a complicated network of lies wound its way around this one phrase, the only purpose of which was to conceal the truth that of course it could never just be one more time.
*
At her mother’s in Possenhofen it was normal for dogs to be present at mealtimes. They would sit on the duchess’s lap and were permitted to eat from her plate, which meant that the servants had to keep on replacing them. The duchess’s favourite dogs were white spitzes. There was a
permanent mass of white on her lap and barking in the dining room. She would examine the dogs for fleas and then crush these right on the table. To either side of her the tablecloth would be littered with squashed black and brown fleas, from which seeped ruby-red dog’s blood. With a silver table brush, a lackey would try to sweep the corpses onto a silver pan, but found it hard to make much headway. My kedvesem found all of this rather embarrassing. The ladies at the Viennese court gossiped viciously about it, giving them more fodder for their wicked rumours. They could not get over the fact that this country girl, unburdened by etiquette or Spanish court ceremony, had become their empress. Not only that, she far surpassed them in her natural elegance.
*
After I’d thrown up at home, panicking that it was already too late and that I wouldn’t be able to get it all out – I hadn’t dared try at Frau Hohenembs’s, for fear of the lingering smell as well as the risk of the dog; he might have stood outside the loo door and barked or whined – I had the brilliant idea, still hanging over the toilet bowl, to go on a diet. Even better: I decided to fast. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? What I needed was a transition, a cleansing ritual. Flush out body and soul – a simple calculation! And I’d lose weight too. Over the following seven days I lived off herb and fruit teas; once a day I’d drink a large glass of vegetable juice and a glass of sauerkraut juice. Not eating was so easy, and so wonderful. With great difficulty I managed to weigh myself only twice a day: mornings and evenings. I slowly restored order in the flat. In the first three days my tongue was covered in greenish-white spots, in the summer of the century my face was grey and pimply. But gradually my skin and tongue cleared up, my lymph glands went down, the worst of the toxins were out and I felt light and fresh. I was fortified for my next encounter with Frau Hohenembs; this time I’d finally tell her that she couldn’t boss me about as she did Ida. On the appointed day I stood outside the museum entrance, three kilos lighter, pale, freezing and shivering, waiting for Frau Hohenembs and Ida. I was far too early; when you go on a fast you’ve got a lot of time on your hands. All the time you usually spend shopping, cooking, eating and washing up is now at your disposal in unlimited quantities. Just as scoffing and puking are a time waster, so fasting is a time generator. You don’t know what to do with all that time. I still hadn’t broken my fast; I wanted to hang on for another day or two, maybe I could lose another two kilos, which would mean I’d lost five in total. I totally failed to see that yet again I was caught in the fatal weight spiral. As soon as you’ve reached your weight-loss target, you set yourself another one. The ideal weight is adjusted downwards, an even number, an odd number, two more kilos then you’re at forty-five instead of forty-seven; if you’re forty-five, two kilos less is ideal, then you’ve got a cushion (a negative one!) in case you do put weight on again. If you finally get down to forty-three, you think why not forty, that’s such a nice round number (in truth the number 4 already shows the bones sticking out all over the place), but then thirty-eight would be even better! Then you could put on another kilo or two without having to worry. Of course you don’t put weight on again if you’re thirty-eight or thirty-seven kilos (all of a sudden it starts going down as if by itself) – why should you gamble this hard-won weight loss? I finished at thirty-five kilos; I didn’t manage to get any lower than that. I wasn’t one of those anorexics who exhibit an extraordinary will not to eat or to eat the minutest quantities. I hated myself for not being able to achieve it, for being so undisciplined and gluttonous, lacking all self-control. Anorexics were my goddesses. I was revolting, unrestrained, perverted. They were clean, disciplined, light. I would never scale that Olympus. I couldn’t maintain my thirty-five kilos. I was too weak, my willpower not strong enough, I had problems with my circulation, problems with my concentration. I was so proud when I felt dizzy, because this meant I was thin. I wanted to be absent, I wanted to disappear. All of a sudden I felt very fragile and not up to a meeting with the two of them. I considered going away again, but then I saw them approaching me with their billowing skirts. This time the dog was with them. As usual, Frau Hohenembs simply began talking, without any sort of hello, while Ida shifted from one foot to the other. Perhaps her legs were aching in this heat; no real surprise given how large she was. You wait outside with the dog. Ida and I will go in and fetch the object. If you see someone following us when we come out, stop them – do something with the dog. If no one is following us then you follow us, but at a distance! She handed me the lead and joined the ticket queue with Ida. The dog was pulling on the lead. He wasn’t wearing a muzzle. It wasn’t until Ida had awkwardly squeezed through the turnstile after Frau Hohenembs – the turnstile got stuck twice and a member of the museum staff had to turn it by hand – and the two of them were out of sight that the dog relented and allowed me to walk him to a bench. Out of sight, out of mind – so this was true of dogs too. I sat down; he lay at my feet and didn’t make another peep. He didn’t seem to be particularly agitated. I was freezing even though I was wearing a long-sleeve jumper. My thoughts turned again to my diet and I decided that rather than fasting for just another day or two I’d keep going until the end of the week. I wasn’t feeling hungry and I was convinced that I could lose another three to four kilograms, perhaps even five. After that my normal life would begin – without Frau Hohenembs and Ida! On top of that I’d be thinner. I wondered what Charlotte would think. She’d never bothered about my weight. Nor her own. For her fifty kilos were the same as sixty; figures like that were irrelevant as far as she was concerned. I was disappointed that Frau Hohenembs hadn’t remarked on my weight. Another reason to delay breaking my fast. I gave a start when the dog leaped up and dashed towards the museum entrance until the lead whipped back. Frau Hohenembs and Ida were fleeing the museum, Frau Hohenembs holding a large syringe, behind them two attendants shouting something I couldn’t understand. I let the dog off its leash and he rushed at one of the pursuers. The other stopped and tried to wrench the dog by its collar away from his colleague. The dog had bitten an ankle. Ida and Frau Hohenembs reached the Ringstrasse and motioned to the taxis. A pink, cab-like taxi advertising Manner wafers stopped. This had to be the most conspicuous car in the whole of Vienna. I waited till they’d driven off, then went over to the museum attendants, put the dog back on his lead and made my apologies for the animal, who’d never done anything like that before. The man who’d been bitten was sitting on the ground, cursing. He took off his shoe and sock, I could see faint teeth marks, red dots on the surface; fortunately, the dog had just held on to the ankle rather than biting it. The other man was talking on a mobile, calling the police and an ambulance. I had to stay and accompany them to the police station, where they took my statement. Thank goodness the museum employee declined to press charges; the wound wasn’t particularly deep and, for him, the far greater catastrophe was the theft, which he’d been unable to prevent. It was the newest exhibit: Empress Sissi’s personal cocaine syringe, which had only recently entered the museum’s possession from a private collection in Switzerland. The attendant was treated on the spot. He was given a tetanus injection and a snow-white plaster. The worst thing was that the police now had my personal details and the dog’s licence number with a false name I’d made up because I didn’t know what he was called. They let me go once I’d signed the transcript, but with a warning that the dog would be put down by a police vet if it ever harmed anybody again. This would be at my cost, with a hefty fine to boot.
