by Richard Wake
Gibbs announced me and left. Johanna's mother did not move a muscle in acknowledgment. Johanna looked over her left shoulder at me, but that was it. I was a day late on my scheduled return from Cologne, and I hadn't called or sent a telegram, all of which just frayed things between us even more. I leaned over for a kiss and received the royal cheek, warm from the fire. I sat down and embroidered a story about being late because the Germans had closed the border and the train connections were a mess, but for all of my efforts at lying, Johanna really wasn't listening. So then the three of us sat in the silence broken only by the forgettable music from the radio.
After an eternity, or five minutes, the Baron arrived, shucking off his coach and handing it to Gibbs, who was struggling to keep up. The old man headed straight for the drinks cabinet, pouring himself a whiskey and his wife some port, or something similarly disgusting. The drinks were both in crystal tumblers, and they weren't small.
He plopped on the couch as we all looked at him expectantly. Finally, he said, "It's over. It's...it's just over."
His wife took a big slug. Johanna started to cry. The baron continued. "Look, he used us. That's just the truth of it. He's a goddamn snake, and he used us, and now he's thrown us away."
The Baron stopped. I wasn't sure what he was talking about, so I punctured the silence with a question: "Schuschnigg?" He responded with a cold stare directed not so much at me as at Johanna, as if to ask her, "How could you last so long with this idiot?"
Finally, he said, "Yes, Schuschnigg. He had been telling us for weeks that we were his trump card, that if it all went bad, an appeal to restore the monarchy would be his play. Well, it's all gone to shit, and he won't see us. He won't take a meeting. He won't take a phone call. He just used us."
The baroness took another gulp and then, so quietly: "And we used him, too. And it got us nowhere."
It had been going on for years -- the monarchists supporting the government in general, and lately Schuschnigg in particular, because their only chance at a restoration of the monarchy was if Austria remained free. An Anschluss with Germany, for the monarchists, was the end of their dreams. It was worse than any war. So they needed Austria intact, and Schuschnigg needed the monarchists, mostly because he couldn't count on support from the Nazis and the other nuts on the far right, or the socialists on the left.
So he strung them along, always telling them that a restoration was the long-term play even if it was impossible in the short term. And they strung him along, still feeling in their hearts that Schuschnigg was just their errand boy and that he recognized that an appeal to restore the Hapsburgs was the ultimate hammer, the one that would unite the people against Hitler.
But now, this. The Baron refilled his tumbler, then looked at his pocket watch. "I stopped at the cafe for a drink before I got here." The cafe was a little, dark place on Bankgasse, about a block or so from the Parliament, a gathering spot where the right people were able to stay informed. It didn't have a name over the door, and I don't even know what it was really called.
"I don't know if the radio will announce it now, but Schuschnigg is probably resigning tonight," the Baron said. "That's the talk, anyway. The plebiscite is going to be called off. It's over. They'll be here tomorrow."
They. No explanation necessary.
Johanna let out a noise that was half gasp, half cry. I grabbed her by the elbow. "Come on, we have to talk." She resisted, then relented. We walked across the hall to the sitting room where I usually waited for her.
"I have to leave."
"Of course you do. You just got here."
"I have to leave Austria, tonight."
Then I explained why, the whole truth -- the spying, the plan to kill Vogl, the trial, the escape, all of it. When I got done, I was expecting some acknowledgment of my predicament, and maybe my courage. Instead, she just laughed -- that fake fucking rich person's laugh, like out of a British drawing room comedy.
"You never cared, did you?"
"What are you talking about? I risked my life."
"You never cared about us."
"I could never figure out us. Or you. Your father is a raving anti-Semite, you're not -- except maybe a little. You're all about being a modern, independent woman, but you're also all about this house and whatever old money it still represents."
"And you're a coward who has never come close to getting married and never will. What are you afraid of? I'm committed to my family. I'm committed to this country. I could have been committed to you. What have you ever been committed to? Ever?"
I just stared at her. I was going to ask her if she wanted to come with us, but I didn't -- partly because I didn't want her to come but mostly because Johanna turned and left me standing there with my mouth open, returning to her parents, and the big fireplace, and the radio announcer who might or might not have been spelling out the final details of their doom. But even if I did ask, she was never leaving. I think I always knew that. The three of them were going to sell off their lives, piece by piece, and throw parties for their new overlords, and kiss whatever Nazi asses were presented to them, and do whatever it took to survive. Gibbs was probably downstairs already, fashioning a Nazi armband for the old man out of whatever scraps of old cloth that he could find.
55
Cafe Louvre at 7 p.m. was the same as it had been at 11 a.m., only more so. There still were no regular customers, not one, but even more reporters. They probably hadn't been drinking nonstop for eight hours -- there were some half-empty coffee cups on the tables to go along with the completely-empty schnapps glasses, and the remnants of a couple of picked-over schnitzels -- but they had apparently been drinking plenty. Their clothes were just a bit more disheveled -- neckties looser, shirttails untidier -- and the volume of the place was just louder. It was as loud as I had ever heard it.
Two questions pierced the maelstrom:
"What time is he starting?"
"Where is the fucking radio?"
It turns out that the he was Schuschnigg and that the radio was being carried in through the door leading to the kitchen by two of the busboys. We had always thought that waiters spent their time making things just so for the customers when they went through those doors. Now we knew better.
The belief was that Schuschnigg was going to speak at around 7:30, but nobody was exactly sure. What he was going to say was also unknown, although everybody had a guess: that Mr. Plebescite was going to head for the hinterland. Every calculation he had made had been wrong. He thought he could deal with Hitler face-to-face at Berchtesgaden, that he somehow had some leverage over him, and instead ended up wetting his pants. Then he thought he could call the snap plebiscite and show the world that the country wanted independence, and instead ended up giving Hitler no choice but to take the army out for a morning constitutional. And now he was going to quit and run away. Idiot.
I had grabbed a copy of the latest edition of Die Neue Freie Presse and read it while I waited for Henry and Liesl. Leon's story was on the front page, at the top, under the gigantic headline, "Invasion Expected Saturday."
It was a long story that rounded up information from all over the city, including the notion that Schuschnigg had been ordered to resign by the Germans and that Seyss-Inquart would take his place. It included a box near the top listing a half-dozen reporters who contributed. But the byline was Leon's.
I looked up and saw Watson from the Manchester Guardian sitting next to me. He pointed to the byline. "Your friend, he does good work."
"Has anyone else confirmed it?"
"I have, but please keep that between us. And I have a few other details that no one else does, that I will be filing soon. But Leon deserves the credit. Every one of the rest of them will have to credit his paper if the story holds for a few more hours. American deadlines are just about here."
It was as Leon had said, the biggest story of his life. I couldn't help but wonder, for all of their sweat and stress, if anyone outside of this room would even remember at
this time tomorrow.
"What do you expect from Schuschnigg?"
He stopped for a second. "Well, he has surprised us a few times lately, so I'm not sure I would put money on it. But I think he's quitting. He's afraid to fight. I'll never quite understand him -- he's this great Austrian patriot, but I think he's got a German soul. And that conflict -- it's just led to so much confusion."
He got up just as Henry and Liesl arrived. She was calm. Henry was bouncing. "Where's Leon?"
I told him that he promised to be here at 7 and that we had to wait until at least 8. Besides, Schuschnigg was going to be on the radio, and we should listen.
"Fifteen minutes, not a big deal," I said.
"You don't know that. I don't know that."
I looked at Liesl. "Has he been like this all day?"
She smiled. "This is calm. But he's right, we don't know."
"Fifteen minutes."
"Are you sure he's coming with us?"
I hesitated, then admitted that I didn't know. At which point, Henry's bouncing stopped. "If we have to kidnap him, we kidnap him. But you'll have to be the one who knocks him out."
I laughed. Liesl laughed. Henry did not laugh. The awkwardness was saved by a chorus of shushing as the correspondents gathered around the radio, notepads and pencils in hand. We joined on the periphery. It was Schuschnigg.
"The German government today handed to President Miklas an ultimatum, with a time limit, ordering him to nominate as Chancellor a person designated by the German government ... otherwise, German troops would invade Austria."
Leon walked into the cafe, and we made eye contact. Grim did not begin to describe his face. He joined us.
"...I declare before the world that the reports launched in Germany concerning disorders by the workers, the shedding of streams of blood and the creation of a situation beyond the control of the Austrian government are lies from A to Z. President Miklas has asked me to tell the people of Austria that we have yielded to force since we are not prepared even in this terrible hour to shed blood. We have decided to order the troops to offer no resistance."
So that was it. The Germans would waltz in, 1-2-3, 1-2-3. Austria wouldn't even pretend to resist. There was some other stuff, and the reporters were all scribbling with a particular fury. Then came the end:
"...So I take leave of the Austrian people with a German word of farewell, uttered from the depth of my heart: God protect Austria!"
That was it, followed by the national anthem being played over and over. The reporters spent a couple of minutes going over their notes, making sure they had identified the key quotations and that they all had heard them the same way -- especially the ending. Then they flooded out and headed across the street to the telegraph office. The four of us, and the waiters clearing the tables, were the only people left in the place.
Liesl looked at me. "Johanna?"
I shook my head. That would have to do as an explanation because I just didn't have it in me to tell them what happened. Then I looked at Leon.
"So?"
"I wasn't going to leave -- I really wasn't."
"But you are now?"
"About a half-hour ago, I called the office. I was over near the Chancellery, and I didn't have anything much to add, but I was just checking in. I dialed direct to Althauser's office -- he's the editor. You've heard me talk about him. Somebody else answered. I asked for Althauser. He said that he was no longer the editor and that he had been replaced by the guy on the phone. I didn't get his name. He asked me who I was and I hung up.
"Then I called directly to Keil's desk in the newsroom -- he's another reporter. He picked up, and I asked him what was going on. He said Althauser had gone for dinner with his family -- he'd been in the office all day, putting out all of the extras. When he came back to put out the morning edition, they arrested him. Said they were the police, and that they were taking over."
Henry looked confused. "They're not even here yet -- how can they be here?"
Liesl grabbed his hand. "They've always been here."
Leon said, "Keil is Catholic, so he's OK. But he told me not to come back. He said they grabbed every Jew in the newsroom. He's calling Jewish reporters at their homes and telling them to stay away."
Leon was crying. "It's over. It's fucking over."
We all sat, just exhausted. I'm not sure I had ever seen Leon cry. After a minute, Henry looked at his watch. "Look, we have to go now. After what you just said, now more than ever. The car's right outside."
As we got in, an open truck pulled up in front of the telegraph office, and a dozen brownshirts jumped out and ran for the front door. We just kept our heads down. From what Henry had said, Liesl had the one bag in the trunk. The rest of us, friends for 20 years, had each other and the clothes on our backs and nothing else -- except for Leon, who had scooped up the copy of the extra from Die Neue Freie Presse from the table.
56
The car had belonged to Henry's father. It was a massive black Daimler that we used to call "The Love Tank" when we were triple-dating in our 20s -- Henry and whoever up front, Leon and I and our whoevers in back, three couples in all manner of embrace and with room left over besides. Honestly, a family of four could have lived comfortably inside -- and besides that, it was heavy enough that it could have stopped an artillery shell. The glass was double-thick, too. "As Pop said, 'I don't know if it would slow down a .38 from six feet, but maybe 20 feet -- so why not?"
When Henry's father sold off the loan sharking part of the family business, he included the car in the deal. The guy who bought it, Putzi Brandstetter, was one of his father's oldest friends, and he sold him the territory for half of what it was probably worth. So when Henry asked Putzi to borrow the car, there was no hesitation -- he said he'd have somebody pick it up in Bratislava next week: "He said, 'Just leave the keys at Cafe Milos.'" Putzi even restocked the bar in the back.
The drive to Bratislava was about 50 miles, most of it right along the Danube. Not that this was a sightseeing trip, but you could see it off to the left sometimes, or at least the moon reflecting on the water. While we drove, Henry laid out the details of his plan. He didn't think the regular border checkpoint made a lot of sense, and I couldn't disagree. As he said, "Me and Alex could be on a list at this point, and Leon -- every Jew -- is always going to be on a list. But -- oh shit -- Leon, do you even have your passport?"
He didn't, which clinched it. That and the fact that, as we approached the border, a ribbon of red tail lights greeted us. A long ribbon. Henry said, "We're more than a half-mile from the border. Maybe a mile. That could be 200 cars ahead of us. It'll take hours. This is why..."
He stopped and jerked a u-turn -- which was really a three-point turn in the tank -- that sent us heading back toward Vienna. "The turnoff was up there, but I don't want anybody following us. We can get to it another way, from back here."
After about two minutes, Henry made a right turn at a forlorn looking farmhouse, dark and maybe abandoned. No one followed us as he drove us into the black. The fields were still frozen, weeks from planting. That moon -- less than full, more than half -- bathed everything in a soft glow.
This was Henry's plan: Up ahead, after a couple of turns, we would pass another farm that belonged to the guy who has supplied the lamb to Fessler's for as long as Henry's father owned it. On the far side of his land was a little road -- it was on all the maps -- that led into Czechoslovakia. Before the war, when we were all one, big, happy Austria-Hungary, it didn't matter. After Versailles carved us up, though, this was suddenly a border crossing, this road that was about 8 feet wide. So the Austrians and Czechs each dutifully built little guard shacks on either side of the imaginary line and then proceeded to forget about them. The farmer told Henry -- and he checked with him again last week -- that the Czechs staffed their side for about 6 months in 1919 before quitting, and that the Austrians never bothered. The shacks were barely standing, all of their glass broken. The roof of the hut on the Austrian s
ide was gone completely -- at least that's what Henry said.
"The farmer told me that kids have been using it as a back road into Bratislava forever -- it's cheap to drink there -- and the farmers have been using it to avoid customs inspectors and do a little business on the side. It's like their own private pipeline."
So, for the second time in as many nights, I was going to be fleeing the Nazis by sneaking across a border on a darkened back road. The truth was, I was just being carried along at this point. The last decision I had made was to go into that alley in Cologne. Everything since then was just me clinging to a piece of driftwood in a rushing river.
As Henry snaked around the dark farm roads, Leon was getting worried. He was riding shotgun, with Liesl and me in the back. "Are you sure about this? Do you know where you are."
"Calm down. That's our friendly farmer's house on the right -- up there, with the flagpole and the Austrian flag. It's the next left."
The flag, red and white, hung limp as we passed. That's when it really hit me -- he'd have to take it down tomorrow or deal with some officious Nazi in no time.
We made the left turn, and the road really was about eight feet wide. The tank came close to filling it. If somebody came in the other direction, one of us would be in a ditch. We drove for about two minutes, and the farmland gave way to forest, and then Henry warned us, "Hang on -- there's a hairpin turn to the left, right before we get to the guard shacks."
When he turned, two spotlights suddenly flashed on, blinding us. Henry stopped. Quiet curses filled the car. There was no way to turn around. We were maybe 200 feet from the guard shack, and we were paralyzed.
Then, from a bullhorn, "Get out of the car, please, and approach the checkpoint."