The Habsburg Cafe

by Andrew Riemer

  I, however, cannot forget him, for his name entered into a diabolic mythology that was carried over the seas, to the other side of the world, by people like my parents, who had been brushed by his brutal insanity. Here in Hungary I cannot forget his days of power and greatness, even though I was only a child at the time, and only partially aware of the peril in which we stood—and from which we mercifully escaped. For me the history of that time is written into every stone, every paving block of this city. It may be unreasonable to be so conscious of events I had rarely thought about during half a century of life in another part of the world. Yet they colour my every perception, perhaps because, unlike those who stayed here—my cousin for instance—I am encountering them afresh, and with particular force this afternoon in this little black museum.

  The city to which I have returned is for me still the city of 1945, the city in which people spoke proudly that they had been present when Szálasi faced the firing squad. And for that reason the final image in this museum proves to be the most deeply distressing. I cannot say to the people standing around me with that reverential mien one might encounter in front of holy objects or a screen of icons, that it would have been better to have spared this man’s life—not because he didn’t deserve to die, but because it is always better not to kill. To say so would no doubt offend these people and even perhaps cause them to misinterpret my sentiments and aspirations. They might even mistake me for one of those people who daub antisemitic slogans on statues and monuments in squares, avenues and parks all over the city. Nevertheless, this place which records images of a twentieth-century martyrdom should not display images of vengeance as well—even if, possibly, such vengeance should be sanctioned by divine will.

  It also occurs to me that in this room, an infernal camera obscura, images and experiences that have followed my movements around this small country (nominally my homeland, yet one towards which I am able to feel little warmth or love) coalesce in strange and disturbing ways. We tend always to to be moved deeply by memories of the suffering or the persecuted. The puzzled, insouciant or terrified faces displayed around these walls are united by one common and entirely inescapable bond. They were all about to die, and, more importantly, they were all aware—the boulevardier as much as the henchman—that death was near, just behind the camera or just around the corner. Martyrs and monsters, saints and vampires, become indistinguishable in the presence of that obscenity.

  For me, though possibly not for others, Australia is innocent of such obscenity. And that is the answer that I should have given my young cousin when she asked me how I could continue living there. The very absence of the patina that age imposes on the great cultures of Europe is also the absence of those nightmarish images that are represented on the walls of this blackened room. Living in such a vacuum, in a land of innocence for people of my kind, might imply life at lower intensity, an existence cut off from the life-sustaining forces of the culture and art celebrated in Europe’s nostalgic pantheon. It may even reduce potentially dangerous creatures, the fabled vampire of Transylvania, into the risible figure of Tibby Szabo, the podgy sensualist with sharp teeth and a vulgar taste in interior decoration. It may mean, therefore, that the culture in which I live is, and must continue to be, second rate, one incapable of producing resplendent images of saints because it lacks monsters. So it may indeed be cowardice of a kind not to take the risk and plunge myself once more into the world of vampires. Yet all I seem able to do during these seemingly endless weeks in my ‘homeland’ is to count the days until I can board the train for Vienna, on the first leg of my journey home.

  THE LAST CAFÉ

  CHANGE OF PROGRAMME

  A hastily scrawled notice on a large sheet of cardboard propped up against a gilt chair in the foyer of the Budapest Opera House announces a last-minute change of programme. The performance of La Fiamma scheduled for this evening has been cancelled because of illness; it is to be replaced by the Hungarian State Opera’s contribution to the Mozart bicentenary year, The Clemency of Titus. For me at least that piece of news is by no means unwelcome. I had been warned by an acquaintance that La Fiamma is, to put it kindly, undistinguished. If opera tickets in this city were not ridiculously cheap, and if I had not been at a loose end for the last three or four days, I would no doubt have heeded that advice. As things turned out, I am to be spared Respighi’s no doubt dismally unsatisfactory opera. It seems entirely fitting that my last visit to the opera in Budapest should be to attend a performance of one of Mozart’s last major works, written, a few months before his death, for the coronation of Leopold II in the imperial city of Prague.

  My own change of programme came about as a result of a telephone call from the Australian Embassy three days before I was due to leave Budapest for Vienna, intending to spend a few days there before embarking on the long flight to Singapore and Sydney. I was asked whether I would consider saying a few words at a reception for a group of people—engineers, economists, computer experts, teachers—who were about to leave for three months’ study in Australia. The Embassy would appreciate it if I could see my way to staying on for the function: after all, I had a foot in both camps, so to speak, being both Hungarian and Australian. Vanity and curiosity made me accept the invitation, as long as I succeeded (I told them) in altering my travel arrangements—a complicated business in a country which, until recently, did its best to discourage people from making last minute changes of this sort. A telephone call to the airline’s offices in Vienna obtained a changed reservation easily enough. Another informed the proprietor of the small hotel in the building where Mozart composed The Abduction from the Seraglio that, unfortunately, I would be prevented from returning for the few nights they had reserved for me. Only one hurdle, and that the most terrible, remained: to change the booking for the two-and-a-half-hour train journey to Vienna. Securing the existing booking took almost as long as the journey itself: I dreaded having to endure that ordeal again.

  It seemed, however, that I was meant to stay on for that function. Just as I was about to devote the best part of the day to queuing at the reservations desk of the principal railway station, waiting once more while the official behind the counter dealt with her customers in a maddeningly lackadaisical, enervated manner, in between prolonged telephone conversations discussing the state of her nerves, health and finances, a message from one of my acquaintances in Szeged arrived, saying that her husband would be driving to Vienna, and would be happy to give me a lift. I rang the Embassy to confirm my acceptance, and bought a ticket for La Fiamma. ‘You’ll hate it,’ my knowledgeable acquaintance said, ‘it’s frightful.’ I didn’t have the courage to tell him that having paid the equivalent of five dollars for a good seat in the stalls, leaving at interval would not be an irresponsible act. And anyway it was better than spending the evening watching satellite television in my hotel room.

  And now I am greeted by a pleasant surprise: the prospect of attending a performance of The Clemency of Titus, an opera I have never seen, one that is said to be among the least satisfactory of Mozart’s mature works, yet one surely worth ‘collecting’ in this bicentenary year. The performance is about to start by the time I find my seat—except that here everything seems to start about ten minutes after the advertised time. For that reason the theatre is still half-empty, though it is filling rapidly as people at last begin to heed the hortatory bells that have been shrilling in the foyers for the last minute or two. There is the usual flurry as the confusing method of numbering rows and seats in Hungarian theatres defeats the endeavours of a large number of foreign visitors to find their places.

  My seat, at least, is secure—I have made sure that I am in the right place, remembering the embarrassment that led to my introduction to the pharmacist of Glebe. I suspect that the well dressed Americans who have just sat down beside me are in the wrong place, judging by the tentative and puzzled way they matched the directions on their limp pink tickets with the seats they are now occupying. That suspicion is confirmed
as soon as the houselights begin to go down. Two dumpy ladies, their white hair neatly arranged in buns, wearing dark dresses and silk stoles, arrive and begin, with great politeness, to claim their seats. For an instant I entertain the fear that I shall have to act again as an impromptu interpreter. I am, however, saved when it turns out that one of the ladies is able to resolve the confusion in surprisingly confident English. The Americans scurry off in search of their seats on the other side of the auditorium. With some shuffling and arranging of handbags and stoles, the two ladies settle into their rightful seats just as the orchestra strikes up the first notes of Mozart’s overture. My neighbour, seemingly the elder of the two, gives a little start and, after a hurried consultation with her companion, leans over to me and asks whether I know what opera is being performed this evening.

  She turns to me again as soon as the curtain falls on the first act. Would I be kind enough to tell her how I knew about the change of programme? I mention the sheet of cardboard in the foyer. Ah, they didn’t notice it—they were running terribly late, the buses are so unrealiable these days. So I didn’t receive notification either? I look blankly at her. Well, she reminds me, they usually notify subscribers if the programme has to be changed. I explain that I am not a subscriber, at which she seems greatly surprised. Surely I was sitting here last time, and the time before that—she and her cousin have changed subscriptions this year, and she would swear that they had sat beside me on the other occasions. This is the moment for me to produce the line I have been obliged to produce time after time during the previous few weeks: I am a visitor; I’ve lived most of my life in Australia; I am indeed about to return home.

  Thus we fall into conversation during the long interval separating the two acts of Mozart’s homage to imperial (Roman and Austrian) clemency. There is something very pleasant about the behaviour of these elderly ladies sitting beside me in the plush-padded stalls of the Budapest Opera House. Their appearance is neat, with a modest and understated style quite unlike the highly-coloured glitz of Budapest’s very nouveaux riches in this, the second year of freedom and liberty. My neighbour is wearing a black dress covered in white dots. Her feet are shod in sensible lace-up shoes. A small silver ornament is pinned to her breast. It strikes me that, but for the shoes, this lady resembles my grandmother, the owner of the Ferris wheel. She wore every day of her life—at least in the years I knew her—such a dress, in warm wool during the long winter months, cotton in the summer and silk for the few occasions that she left her small, overfurnished apartment in an unfashionable part of town to spend an evening with relatives or close friends. As for shoes—though she must have owned some during the course of her life, had worn them no doubt when dancing with my grandfather during the years of their engagement and married life (before he defected to enter a scandalous liaison with a woman in Prague)—when I knew her (before she vanished from the face of the earth, together with most of my father’s family, in 1944) she always wore calf-length boots which were ceremoniously laced up with a silver-handled hook.

  I continue chatting with these ladies in the empty auditorium where only a few people remain through this long interval. In the orchestra pit a lone oboist is practising an elaborate semiquaver run. The odd thump behind the curtain indicates that some adjustment is being made to the minimal scenery in front of which Mozart’s opera is being performed. I tell my companions about the purpose of my visit; I mention the weeks I have spent in Szeged, the lectures I have given here in Budapest. They are fascinated, delighted. The lady sitting next to me says that she used to teach French, while her cousin is a teacher of English—well, she has actually retired, but still works part time to make ends meet in these difficult times.

  Perhaps it is the gilt-and-plush surroundings of this elaborately decorated theatre—tiers of boxes rising to the domed, frescoed ceiling, couchant sphinxes everywhere—that make these ladies, who are intoning the by now familiar litany of hardships, seem less crass or less obsessed than those people who had spoken similar words to me in the past few weeks: my cousin, eyes ablaze as she worked herself into a lather of distress; the custodian of the keep at Visegrád; the green-eyed proprietor of the little hotel in the Buda hills. Whatever the reason, these women seem less intense, much more civilised. They show a nicely ironic detachment from the ills and confusions of this society. They had seen it all before, their demeanour seems to suggest, and, given that both must be well into their seventies, it is obvious that they have experienced several changes of régime, several brave new worlds come into being in this unstable country.

  I find to my surprise that this polite, desultory conversation in a near-empty theatre is a very pleasant experience. Trying to understand why that should be so, the thought occurs to me that (through some sort of regression into childhood) the fleeting resemblance of these ladies to my long-dead grandmother, whom I can only remember as a featureless image in a polka-dot dress, has brought me to a partial and probably temporary reconciliation with this world. Other forces must also be operating here; the civilising influence of art—even if it should be something as fundamentally trivial as opera is in the opinion of many people—may have converted something that would seem, outside the privileged confines of the golden enclosure of this theatre, crass and even neurotic. Or is it, I ask myself, that in these weeks of moving around the country, listening, observing, heeding chance encounters, I have been isolated from the better, more refined, at any event less hectic, elements of this society, ones which one may encounter only on an occasion like this?

  This sense of ease, of not being on one’s guard, helps me to face with reasonable equanimity the question I knew was coming, a question that cannot be avoided in such conversations. What is it like being back in Hungary? my neighbour asks—and I realise, as I am about to launch into my well-prepared standard reply, that she has not used the word ‘home’. Both nod knowingly when I say that it’s nice to be back, even though it is strange to visit a place you hadn’t lived in for almost fifty years. I am about to proceed to the platitudes I consider fitting in such circumstances—how hospitable everyone seems to be, how this may be a better world than the one I left etcetera—when my neighbour’s cousin leans across her companion and touches my sleeve. It must be very painful, she says, to have to come face to face with memories, to remember all sorts of things that I had forgotten or hadn’t wanted to remember. There must be great distress in such recognitions. And then she says something that has occurred to me several times during these weeks and, of course, even more poignantly, a year ago, when I returned to this world for the first time after all those years of absence. The past, she says, with a faint smile of self-consciousness, is another country—she knows it’s a banal thing to say, yet it’s true.

  The moment marks something strange, inexplicable but—or so I am convinced—very significant. The barriers of suspicion and reticence are lifting. Why is it, I ask myself with some bitterness, that I am able to experience some sense of community, of a shared understanding, with total strangers, to whom I would probably not have spoken had there not been a last-minute change of programme at the opera, when with others, even with my cousin, I keep myself aloof, reluctant to allow them to come too close? I cannot, I realise (as I notice that the audience is beginning to trickle back into the auditorium) account for this curious change of attitude, and perhaps I should not seek explanations—perhaps these moments of insight and even reconciliation must come like this, unexpected, mysterious and fleeting.

  I think that my companions have also recognised that something significant has occurred—something which they are probably as incapable of putting a name to as I am, yet something which (judging by our silence) has touched them too. Then, since such moments cannot and perhaps should not last, my neighbour begins to chat about tonight’s performance. What do I think of it? Of course the standard is not very high, she knows that. What can you expect, though? The singers are paid next to nothing, so it stands to reason that if they get the offer of
an engagement abroad they’re off like a shot. Didn’t I know, she asks with a smile, that that is why so many performances are cancelled because of indisposition? Some years ago the authorities relaxed the rule that all operas must be performed in Hungarian. Singers are now able to learn the more popular works in their original languages—German, Italian, French. So that if a singer suddenly cancels a performance in Graz or Linz, or even in Vienna, someone gets on the telephone and—pouff! the opera in Budapest is off. You can’t blame them, she remarks; poor things, they work so hard, yet they scarcely know where the next meal will come from. And, of course, some never come back.

  I tell them, again with greater candour than usual, that my visits to the opera throughout these months have been more sentimental and mythological than musical. Pointing to one of the boxes on our left, now occupied by a pair of extremely bored-looking people, I begin to speak about those months in 1946 when, as a gesture of farewell to the world we were about to leave, my parents brought me to this theatre most Wednesday nights, to sit in that box and witness spectacles which have come to stand, throughout the many intervening years, as shining images of the old life, the life that had been poisoned for us by hatred and barbarity, yet a life we yearned after in our exile. I describe for them some of my memories of those nights long ago; I speak about the way those probably pedestrian performances enchanted an impressionable and undiscriminating child. But the lady in the spotted dress interrupts me: no, she remembers that year, some of the performances were surprisingly accomplished, given the appalling circumstances. Had I, she asks, ever heard of Otto Klemperer?—and I tell her that I do indeed remember him conducting performances in this theatre, and that furthermore, many years later, when I was living in London, I used to attend concerts given by the then famous and practically crippled musician, and that I used always to remember how my parents would mention his name whenever he took his post at the podium here in 1946.