Around the World With Auntie Mame

by Dennis, Patrick

  Friedl tugged at a moth-eaten old bell cord, and a harried-looking peasant woman of unfathomable age scurried in, gathered up our bags, and labored up the stairs.

  “Follow me, pleece,” Friedl said.

  It was some trip, up stairs, down stairs—no two rooms in the Schloss seemed to be on the same level—and along dank, echoing corridors. The house was an eccentric structure, to say the least, with rooms, wings, and ells added on at random over the centuries. There must have been more than a hundred rooms in Schloss Stinkenbach, although most of them were closed off, locked against everything but icy drafts. Auntie Mame’s room, up on what seemed like the fifteenth floor, was a snug Biedermeier affair. Mine was down the hall, a perfectly circular stone affair in what had possibly once been a defense tower. There was even a sort of battlement running between our two bedrooms—Auntie Mame called it a terrace— providing more fresh air than seemed absolutely necessary and what Auntie Mame referred to as a “panoramic view of the valley.”

  “Isn’t this old storybook castle too incredible, darling?” Auntie Mame said, bursting into my room a few minutes later.

  “It certainly is,” I said. “It puts me in mind of those happy days at Count Dracula’s old place.” I surveyed my round bedroom again, its cold stone walls, the embrasures, the vaulted ceiling. The bed looked like a flamboyant gothic tomb. A sinister carved piece that appeared to be an iron maiden turned out to be a clothes cupboard. It was the sort of chamber where Jan Hus might have been terribly tortured by one of the earlier ecclesiastical Von Hodenloherns—of which there were many—before being put to the stake in Prague. A primitive fresco of some unidentified martyr undergoing a kind of surgery I dread even to think about heightened the effect. I couldn’t help wondering where they’d put poor Ito. But Auntie Mame thought that everything was too perfect for words.

  “Ah, my little love, the centuries of Kultur that have gone into creating this gracious family seat. I hope you realize, Patrick, that we have the honor of being entertained by one of the oldest families in Europe. The Von Hodenloherns are legitimately descended from the Hapsburgs, laterally descended from Barbarosa, and illegitimately descended from the Babenburgs.”

  “Poor bastards,” I said.

  “Why, darling, they’re so blue blooded that the only people fit to associate with them are in the Kapuziner-gruft. You know, Patrick, that tomb in Vienna where all the Hapsburgs are buried.”

  “Well, I’ll bet that tomb’s a lot cozier than Schloss Stinkenbach. Nice for a visit, of course, but I wouldn’t want to live here.”

  “Come dear, we’ll try to find our way down to the salon. And mind your manners. Theirs are so very, very beautiful.”

  After a trip of half an hour or so we finally came to an imposing pair of doors giving into the salon. It was a Maria Theresian folly of the eighteenth century that looked like the rooms in Shönbrunn Palace or the Hofburg, only not as well kept up. The walls were covered with a frayed brocade that hung in tatters in several places. At one end of the room a mildewed tapestry depicted a seventeenth-century Von Hodenlohern (Augustus-Christus, “The Muscular”) singlehandedly destroying the Ottoman Empire. The ceiling, except for some wet brown patches, was covered with an allegorical painting of one of the churchly Von Hodenloherns (Franz-Leopold, Prelate of Pilsen) climbing to heaven with the aid of six cherubs over the mangled corpses of some undressed Protestants whose hash he had presumably just settled. Elsewhere there were about seventy portraits of dead relatives in helmets and breastplates, in velvet and sable, in miters and copes, buckling within their tarnished gilt frames. Across a choppy lagoon of rococo chairs, rickety little tables, pungent oil lamps, and fly-blown vitrines, the brothers Von Hodenlohern and Friedl huddled around a baroque wedding cake of a porcelain stove. It was the color and texture of a very old teapot and gave off just about as much warmth.

  The Von Hodenlohern men were talking. Sitting and talking. I make a point of this because it’s all they ever did. Those three barons had worked sitting-and-talking down to an absolute science. Why they hadn’t saddle sores and laryngitis is beyond me. Yet they seemed to thrive on it.

  Life at Schloss Stinkenbach had settled into a rigid routine that was inactive but not quiet. After nine or ten hours’ sleep they all sat down to a big breakfast to gain strength for the ardors of sitting all day. Then the men sat in separate parts of the house resting up from breakfast. At eleven the three brothers gathered in the Herrenzimmer and talked while Poldi raced in with sausages, beer, cheese, and coffee. That is to say that Maxl and Putzi talked. Hannes mostly sat silently in the window, displaying his better profile as he gazed moodily to the north and flexed his brown thighs in their old Lederhosen. Only when Maxl said something sufficiently explosive about the family’s prewar life—which Hannes was much too young to have remembered—did Hannes come to life and give out with an impassioned telegram in his clipped, rather guttural English.

  All the Von Hodenlohern boys spoke good English and they were so polite that they insisted upon using no other language in my presence. I’d as soon they hadn’t because their conversation might better have been labeled “Remembrance of Things Past” than “Current Events.” But that was mostly the fault of Maxl. As aristocratic as he may have been, he was a real slob—obese, verbose, indolent, and ignorant; a sort of Major Hoople overseas. His monologue was always about the Good Old Days before Woodrow Wilson shot Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo, thus getting the whole world to gang up on the Austro-Hungarian Empire so that the Von Hodenloherns alone had to suffer and watch their rich crown lands given away to that little upstart Jewish republic, Czechoslovakia. Hannes, who couldn’t possibly have known, always agreed with him.

  Putzi, however, seemed to have a little better grasp on reality. He politely pointed out inaccuracies and anachronisms, tactfully corrected Maxl’s facts, and always tried to tip me a comforting wink whenever Maxl said something real outlandish, such as America’s being a refuge for Austrian deserters and embezzlers, inferior in science, money mad, and a pawn of the Rothschilds. Familial as he was, I could understand why Putzi chose to spend as much time as possible away from the discomforts of Schloss Stinkenbach, the jarring verbosity of Maxl, the moody silence of Hannes.

  Auntie Mame was usually awake by lunchtime. In her honor, Maxl always removed his hairnet, placed her on his right, and, with a captive audience, discussed such stimulating new subjects as how lovely everything had been before World War I, when the Von Hodenloherns had lost their town house in Vienna, their Kronlands in Moravia, and had been reduced to living in their old hunting box—Schloss Stinkenbach. Friedl sat at the head of the table, shivering and coughing, totally ignored except when Maxl thought of something for her to tell Poldi to do. It seems incredible, but I honestly believe that Poldi was the only servant in that vast house. At least she was the only person, except for Friedl, I ever saw doing a stroke of work.

  After luncheon Friedl worked, Maxl napped, Hannes faced northward. But Putzi, always lively and charming and gay, generally took Auntie Mame off for a picturesque stroll. Quite often they invited me, too. It was a big day for the village of Stinkenbach-im-Tirol whenever die Amerikanerin , as they called Auntie Mame, appeared. Try as she would to go native in embroidered blouses and dainty dirndls, her make-up, her clattering bracelets, her sheer stockings, her uncut emerald ring, and Ito following in the Rolls to transport any purchases back uphill just didn’t add up to the unspoiled peasant girl. If she’d appeared on a gem-studded litter borne by a dozen naked Nubians, Auntie Mame couldn’t have created more of a stir. That’s the kind of village it was.

  Still, Putzi had a proprietary interest in the place and proudly pointed out some of the fourteenth-century examples. In fact, everything in Stinkenbach was an example—and some of the worst examples I’ve ever seen—from the ghastly gothic church to the kitschig houses, with their daubings of quainty-dainty Tyrolean hearts and flowers. “Sweet” was Auntie Mame’s verdict, and she jumped just in time to avoid a
pail of slops being poured from an upper window. It missed us, but it got the Rolls. I heard Ito squeal.

  Well, the village was a horror, inbred and impoverished, without electricity or radio or the telephone or any commonplace modern convenience to bring in a breath of air from the world outside. I found the village, the villagers, and their unsettling subservience both depressing and embarrassing. But I was fond of Putzi and if he thought Stinkenbach-im-Tirol was okay, I was determined to like it, too. Auntie Mame, of course, was a pushover for any new experience.

  We always got back to the Schloss in time for a kind of afternoon Ka feklatsch in the dark, musty library. Here Maxl, refreshed by his nap, again held court, seated before a dispirited fire, telling Friedl where to place cushions under his big rump, how much whipped cream to ladle onto his coffee, and what was wrong with the pastry. Maxl, seconded by eager nods and grunts from Hannes, talked about die gute alte Zeit until it was time for him to preside over the dinner conversation. In the evenings the salon was opened, lighted, and heated just up to the freezing point, and here, around the stove, the family gathered to sit down and discuss the doings of the day.

  After a couple of days at Schloss Stinkenbach, I was more than ready to move on and amazed that Auntie Mame seemed so content in such a damp, dismal milieu. But on the fourth day I was awakened early by a lot of shouting from the driveway down below and also by Auntie Mame’s voice calling from the battlement outside my room.

  “I said that we were going to the horse fair, Mame dear,” Putzi shouted.

  “I know you did, darling,” Auntie Mame called. “And I said to wait just a second and I’d go along with you boys. I do adore these bucolic romps.”

  I opened the door and stepped out onto the battlement. Auntie Mame, wrapped in a dressing gown, was leaning over the parapet and shouting, “It won’t take me a minute to slip into something appropriate.”

  Down below, the three Von Hodenlohern brothers were seated in their ancient Mercedes while poor Poldi was trying to crank it.

  “But, Mame,” Putzi called up, “women aren’t allowed.”

  “What are they showing, Putzi, horses or blue movies? After all, I might be interested in getting a few horses now that . . .”

  “Sorry, darling. No women allowed. I’ll be back in time to take you to the Kirchtag.”

  “But, Putzi, that’s perfectly ridiculous. I could just stay in the car and . . .” Whatever Auntie Mame could do was never heard. With a series of loud explosions, the old Mercedes started up. Poldi, spry for her years, leaped out of the way and handed the crank reverently in to Hannes. There were a lot more pops and bangs, and, above the roar of the motor, Auntie Mame might just as well not have bothered to try to make herself heard. The car lurched down the driveway, Maxl and Hannes staring straight ahead while Putzi turned to wave good-by.

  “Well, I mean really!” Auntie Mame said waspishly. Then she turned and saw me standing out on the battlement. “Oh, good morning, darling. I suppose all that racket woke you up, too. It was enough to . . . Honestly, some of these old-world ideas are just too inane. The boys are going up north to a horse fair and they wouldn’t take me. No women, if you please. Here I have this divine three-piece homespun suit and . . .”

  “Maybe in Europe these horse things are stag affairs.”

  “Nonsense. You can’t pick up a Tatler or a Country Life without seeing pages of the dreariest-looking women all got up like Vesta Tilly to look at a lot of old . . .”

  “Well, this is Austria. What do you care about a lot of horses anyhow?”

  “Oh, nothing actually, Patrick, but they’re just a part of this divine life and as long as I’m . . . I’ll tell you what, darling. Now that we’re up at this ungodly hour, let’s dress and tramp down to the village for breakfast in that quaint little Gasthaus. There are some letters I must post.”

  HALF AN HOUR LATER WE SET OUT, AUNTIE MAME looking like the natural child of William Tell out of Heidi. “Ah, my little love,” Auntie Mame said, breathing deeply of the moist air. “Just look at that view. Miles and miles and miles and miles! Why, on a clear day you can see Germany and Italy.”

  “Well, let’s not wait for a clear day. When are we going to pack up and get going?”

  “Don’t you like it here, darling? The peace? The quiet? The quaint foreign customs?”

  “It’s been different. But I’ve got to be thinking about college and . . .”

  “I’m so glad you mentioned college, Patrick, because I’ve been meaning to speak to you about a European college. It’s very chic to be schooled abroad. Who knows where I mightn’t have sent you but for your Mr. Babcock.”

  “Who knows indeed?”

  “And so I was thinking of the University of Vienna—fourteenth century, just like Stinkenbach. A brilliant school. Famous for Freud and Krafft-Ebing and . . .”

  “And pogroms.”

  “Nonsense, darling. Schuschnigg settled all that Nazi business. Or there’s Budapest or Switzerland. There are loads of good schools near here.”

  “It’s out of the question. I wouldn’t know the language. And who wants to be near here, anyhow?”

  “Well, darling, I told you we were coming for an indefinite stay.”

  “Even so, I hardly think we’d be welcome to linger on through my four years of college. Besides I . . .”

  “Well, Patrick my little love,” she seemed slightly embarrassed, “you may think it odd of me, but I’ve found such serenity here in this little Austrian village tucked up in the hills that I’ve . . .”

  “That you’ve what?”

  “That I’ve bought Schloss Stinkenbach.”

  “You what?”

  “I’ve bought Schloss Stinkenbach. Oh, Putzi had the longest time coaxing Maxl to part with it, but at last . . .”

  “I’ll bet he did—all of five or ten seconds. Are you out of your mind? You mean you’d do a mad thing like buy that crumbling old morgue nobody could give away? No heat, no light. One tin bathtub that leaves your bottom looking like a baboon’s every time you . . .”

  “Oh, but of course, darling, I plan to do the Schloss over entirely. Retain the ancient flavor, naturally, but it’s going to be brought right up to the minute. Central heating. Ten or twenty nice pastel bathrooms—my own in black onyx, I thought—an electric kitchen. Who knows, I might turn it into a very profitable venture for a few select paying guests. I mean so many people are sick of chichi ski resorts like San Moritz and Bad Gastein and Kitzbühel that they might welcome a sweet unspoiled little village like . . .”

  “Unspoiled? How can a town be dead for as long as Stinkenbach and not be rotten. You’ve gone . . .”

  “Well naturally I wouldn’t care to be living high on the hog and let the village continue to wallow in squalor. Without sacrificing any of its quaint charm I’d do that over, too. You know, darling, plumbing, electricity, telephones, medical aid, a decent school, perhaps a branch of Peck and Peck. Oh, I’d look out for my people.”

  “Your people? Who do you think you are, Mrs. God? I think you’ve lost your mind, and I’m getting out of this pest hole before I go just as mad as you have. Of all the soft-headed old middle-aged fools . . .”

  “Shut your mouth, you bumptious little squirt. If you don’t like it here you can get out. As for me . . .”

  “That’s just what I’m going to do. I’m going back to New York today and I don’t care if I have to swim.” With that I ran back to the house, now called, I suppose, Schloss Burnside, and raced up the stairs to my cold, stone cell of a room.

  But if I’d counted on being alone, I was mistaken. I had banged open the door of my room with such force that it caught poor Friedl just as she was changing my bed. The impact had been enough to send her sprawling to the floor, where she lay coughing terribly.

  “G-gee, I’m sorry, Baroness. I didn’t know you were . . .” For a moment I was afraid I’d killed her. She was quite blue, and coughing like Violetta. Auntie Mame’s motto—along with the Hennessy c
ognac people—has always been “Keep a little brandy handy.” I snatched the big leather traveling flask from my suitcase, helped Friedl up to a chair, and tipped the bottle to her lips. It stopped the coughing. Then I poured quite a lot of brandy into a glass and offered it to her. “Here. Try some of this. Are you . . . are you all right?”

  “Oh, thank you,” Friedl gasped, choking slightly on the brandy. “Iss nothing. Chust a little coldt.” She sipped again, this time more slowly. “Ach! Iss strong. But goodt. It makes me varm again.” She held out the empty glass and I poured some more brandy into it. “How nice to be varm again.” Her eyes looked glassy and I was still afraid that she might pass out on me. “Here iss alvace coldt—vinter, summer, alvace. Almost I candt remember how it iss to be varm. Not since Wien. You know Wien? Vienne?” She sipped again, rather elegantly.

  “Vienna? Oh yes. Very pretty, Vienna.”

  “Ja! There was alvace varm. You know the Herrengasse? The chentlemen’s street? Iss there I lived in Pappa’s house. Such a big house, andt varm. Alvace it vas varm.” Her eyes began to shine, her cheeks grew pink. With another sip poor Friedl looked almost young again. “Ach dot house in the Herrengasse! Andt Mama’s jours! You understand the jour? Très Viennoise, le jour.”

  I understood that all Viennese with any faint pretense to fashion used a French word wherever it was possible or impossible to do so. “You mean a big tea party?” I said.

  “Ja! Exactement! Chust so! Mama’s jours. Every month the same day—second Saturday, Mama vas. Ach! The Delikatesse! Three kinds Bäckerei . . .” Her voice trailed off. She drained her glass and held it out again to be refilled. “Every month all Wien—Vienne—came to Mama’s lovely party. Iss there I met Maxl, at Mama’s jour. He vass young then and handsome. Not fat like now, but like Putzi—you know, schlank? How you say élancé?”

  “You mean thin, slim, slender?” I said, refueling her tank.

  “Ja! Chust so. Schlank. In the Vorld Var. Maxl vass Kapitän. Uniform . . . so stilvoll . . . qui a du style . . . adel . . . aristocratique. You understand?” I nodded, figuring that Maxl had once looked more like one of the family portraits and less like a tub of pure lard. And from a discreet glance at Friedl, I also wondered if there was a branch of A.A. at Stinkenbach-im-Tirol. The brandy had hit her hard and fast, but as she lost her inhibitions, she also was picking up what English she had learned, as well as the French affectations of her Viennese girlhood. “I vas so young. Pretty. My family . . . ve vere not aristocratique, but how you say haute bourgeoise. Pappa owned bank—Privatbankgeschäft. Private, you know? I had the biggest Mitgift in Wien. You know, Mitgift?” I didn’t and it sounded faintly dirty, but from her delvings into other languages, I understood that it meant the dowry her father paid over as Friedl’s price of admission into this noble family. The rest of the story, as I understood it, was pretty much history: the defeat of Austria, the collapse of the economy, the end of Pappa’s family bank; and the dissolution of the Von Hodenlohern estates. Friedl was thus left—her dowry squandered on Maxl’s debts and hairnets—old and cold, cheerless and childless as the mistress and servant of Schloss Stinkenbach, scorned as a commoner and despised as a pauper by her husband and his brothers. I wondered fleetingly how Auntie Mame would fare as mistress of this house if Bache and Company were ever to undergo such a sea change. But I was too annoyed with my eccentric relative to care. All I wanted to do was to get out, and the quickest way to do that was to get rid of Friedl. “Well,” I said, briskly throwing some shirts into a suitcase, “I guess I’ll be gone by the time the men get back from the horse fair. Please say good-by for . . .”