The Kindness of Strangers

by Salka Viertel

  The music to “Pierrot Lunaire” demanded a small orchestra. Edward played the piano, the young Dutchman, Hans Kindler (later conductor of the Washington, D.C., Philharmonic Orchestra), the cello; then there were also a flutist and a clarinettist. Schoenberg conducted. The subdued Frau Zehme implored him to make one, single concession: she should be the only performer seen by the audience. Schoenberg invented a special system of screens, which hid him and the instrumentalists, yet made it possible for Frau Zehme to keep her eyes on his baton.

  When she appeared in a Pierrot costume, her painted, frightened face framed by a ruff, her aging ankles in white stockings, she was greeted by an ominous murmur from the audience. One could not help admiring her courage, as she went on from poem to poem, disregarding the hissing, booing and insulting invective shouted at her and Schoenberg. There were also fanatical ovations from the young generation, but the majority were outraged. A well-known virtuoso, his face purple with rage, shouted: “Shoot him. Shoot him,” meaning Schoenberg, not the poor, undaunted Pierrot.

  Fifty years later Edward wrote: “It is usual in artistic events of this kind that when people are confronted with something new, they don’t realize how deeply they have been affected. Though the critics were scandalized, it was exceptional that some acknowledgement of Schoenberg’s genius was not voiced.” We admired Schoenberg’s genius, but with the disrespect of youth, I considered that it was damaged by Frau Zehme’s dilettantism.

  In the summer we went home, where as usual the whole family had gathered. I had a huge success imitating Albertine Zehme and telling about Holofernes’ Easter eggs. Mama laughed until she cried, but I never dared to relate the story in front of my father. Niania outdid herself in cooking our favorite dishes and repeated, beaming, that her “Salusia” had not changed at all. My parents agreed that my sister Rose should continue her studies at the university in Berlin, and at the end of the summer we three took a larger apartment in the west, and started housekeeping. With increasing melancholy Rose went to her lectures on German literature until, alarmed by her evident depression, I forced an admission from her: she had only one longing—the theater. She did not have the heart to write our parents. After long discussions, I arranged an audition for her with Mr. Held, who was the director of Reinhardt’s dramatic school. He found her talented and was much taken by her blond loveliness. To our great astonishment there was no objection from Papa—Mama had long since reconciled herself to the fact that her daughters were not interested in marriage.

  During the performances of Penthesilea I had become acquainted with Ellen Geyer, an actress of great warmth—frail, dark, with an inspired semitic face, and married to a theatrical producer.

  Having watched my progress from “an Amazon” at the bottom of the program to the title role of Penthesilea, Ellen invited me to meet her husband, Dr. Emil Geyer, who was starting his own theater in Vienna. He had seen me on the stage and, deploring Reinhardt’s preoccupation with stars and his absentee leadership, made me an offer to join his Neue Wiener Buehne. He intended to create a literary theater, with an ensemble as closely knit as Stanislawski’s. He and Ellen believed that I would fit into their enterprise, and also that it would be good for me to depart from classical roles for a while. They wanted me to play Vassilissa in Gorki’s Lower Depths, as well as Strindberg, Ibsen and the new dramatists Dr. Geyer hoped to discover. Full of enthusiasm, I decided on the spot to ask for a release from my contract, which still had another year to run, and went to see Edmund Reinhardt. He was sitting at his desk, opposite him Arthur Kahane. His calm, steady gaze made me very nervous, when I blurted out my request. He refused promptly and indignantly: a contract was a contract. Why did I want a release? I said that in the two seasons I had been with the Deutsches Theater I had not yet played a première. Would Professor Reinhardt give me Lady Macbeth in the new production I heard he was planning? “Lady Macbeth?” Edmund stared at me as if I were out of my mind. Dr. Kahane shook his head unbelievingly. “I thought you might ask for Lady MacDuff,” he reprimanded me. I considered this for a second; then courageously said that I was not interested in playing Lady MacDuff. Both were horrified at such blasphemy. Who did I think I was? Then Edmund said, coldly, that it was against his principles to give in to demands of temperamental actresses, and walked out of the office. Dr. Kahane looked sadly at me. “Don’t you think that great, well-established actresses like Lucie Hoeflich or Tilla Durieux have more right to play Lady Macbeth than you, who are just starting?” he said.

  “I cannot be starting forever,” I cried, and told him about Emil Geyer’s offer. Kahane, who was a friend of the Geyers, immediately changed his attitude. He realized how tempting it was for me to take part in their venture and promised to do his utmost to persuade Edmund to let me go. I was free, but now I was no longer sure that I had done the right thing.

  •

  My mother’s friend Esther was happy to have me back in Vienna—though I had only made the Neue Wiener Buehne and not the Burgtheater. She had rented a pleasant room for me with a separate entrance, in an apartment belonging to an ailing widow. A dear old housekeeper, Agnes, offered to cook my breakfast and any meal I desired. I settled for the breakfast.

  The rehearsals of a new Don Juan play by an Austrian-Polish dramatist, Thadeus Rittner, began as soon as I arrived, with Moissi playing Don Juan. Director Geyer had departed from his original program of creating a “closely knit ensemble,” and had invited the famous star for guest performances. This was hardly consistent with the aim of the new enterprise, but it helped the box office. To me it did not matter very much, as I had an interesting role.

  The play had a limited critical success, but the theater sold out each night. Although Moissi received the lion’s share of the critics’ attention, I was welcomed as a new “feminine,” “charming,” “strong,” “very moving” personality. I was very happy and so were the Geyers and Esther. I could have looked forward to a busy, successful career had it not been for an undefined feeling of longing and emptiness, which I had not experienced in Berlin.

  10

  “THE NEXT BATTLE FOR FREEDOM will be fought against the feudalism of love” (Feudalismus der Liebe), wrote Frank Wedekind sixty years ago. “The old barbaric superstitions, which hunt the whore like a wild animal and make virginity a commodity on the marriage market, belong to the era of witch trials and alchemy.”

  Since then the lot of women has improved enormously. They have acquired the right to toil like men and compete with them in commercial, scientific, communal and artistic professions. Virginity has lost its market value and the whore is not “hunted like a wild animal.” Hers is a freely chosen profession, although still denied social security.

  My own conflict with the then prevailing “feudalism” took the form of falling in love with a married man, twenty years older than myself. He had that self-confidence which had been so irritating in the cavalry officers I had known at home. But this time I was impressed by it. Ellen Geyer began to call me “Titania”—not because she thought my lover was a donkey-headed Bottom, but because I had become blind and deaf to everything around me.

  He was a sculptor, admired by the Viennese bourgeoisie, but without any contact with the new trends in art. His “lonely” position, as he called it, isolated him. Jealous, suspicious and possessive, Andreas resented the freedom of my bohemian life, while he was restricted by family and social considerations. As we could not be seen together we met in the afternoons in my room or in his studio. His wife loyally obeyed the strict orders not to disturb him during his working hours. His evenings belonged to her and their two children.

  We never talked about his wife and rarely about my work in the theater. Often I wondered what kind of person she was, that strange, powerful figure looming over his life. I had met them both at a reception given by the Geyers. She was a handsome woman, a little like a Walkyrie, and they looked well together—he, thin, tall, in well-cut clothes, carefully avoiding any identification as an “artist”
(which I rather liked). She looked at me with her cold, blue eyes, while he complimented me on my performance in the Rittner play. Her silent, critical scrutiny annoyed me.

  Meanwhile, bad attendances had forced Emil Geyer to turn to commercial plays. The first was, oddly enough, Eugene Brieux’s drama about syphilis. Ellen Geyer refused to appear in it and Emil insisted that I take her part. I loathed the play too but I wanted to work. Besides I was sure that it would close in a week. However it turned out to be a hit and had a long run.

  There was a scene in the second act, in which the family doctor explains the symptoms of syphilis, and the actors used to make bets about how many people in the audience would faint, or leave in a great hurry. It was the end of 1913 and Salvarsan was not generally known.

  After the New Year the ensemble was sent on a tour as a patriotic service, sponsored by the government. I enjoyed our traveling, unaware that Austria was preparing for war—I never read the political articles in the papers; they seemed so unimportant, compared to the theatrical news! But we played mostly for garrisons, and seeing only men in uniform in the audience, I began to have an apprehensive feeling. However, war was inconceivable, and it was fascinating to see the Alps for the first time, the old towns like Ljubljana, Klagenfurth, capitals of ancient provinces, and the heterogeneous nationalities of the Hapsburg monarchy. On some days Andreas would appear unexpectedly at one of our stops.

  In Vienna, meanwhile, the theater had been rented to a company playing a musical farce. Their success was so great that Director Geyer decided to end the season with a comedy, in which there was no part for me. However, I had to stay in Vienna as the Brieux drama was still in the repertory.

  Disappointed with Director Geyer’s leadership, preoccupied with my love affair, I was hardly aware that spring had suddenly changed the city into a Riviera resort. Even now, after so many, many years, I remember the carpets of hyacinths, daffodils and narcissuses spread in front of public buildings. The Ring, Volksgarten, Stadtpark and the Prater were steeped in fragrance and color. Andreas would invent excuses, and lie to his wife, to escape with me to the Wienerwald. We went for long hikes, lunched under huge, gnarled trees, and fell asleep in soft green glades. We returned in darkness, through lanes aglow with fireflies.

  •

  It was 1914 and my parents decided to spend the summer in the High Tatra. Dusko had a persistent bronchitis and the doctor said that mountain air would hasten his convalescence. The whole household, with Niania and maid, moved into a rented villa in Zakopane. Rose and Edward arrived from Berlin and I joined the family at the end of June. I had promised Andreas to write every day. We were both addressing our letters to post restante because our mail was censored—his by his wife, mine by Mama’s irrepressible curiosity. She never hesitated to open a letter when the handwriting or a stamp intrigued her. “You don’t have any secrets, do you?” she would ask with a disarming smile.

  She was rosy and radiant because “the children have come home.” For hours she listened to Edward explaining the intricacies of the twelve-tone system, fascinated though not convinced. She was pleased that Rose was looking hopefully toward the next theatrical season, and that I, for once, did not intend to break my contract. As usual, our father remained on the fringe of our activities, never directly taking part in the conversation. He walked slowly up and down in front of the veranda, where we used to sit and talk, apparently not listening; but alone with Mama, his Minister for Domestic and Foreign Affairs, he would reexamine everything we had discussed.

  Dusko, who was the reason for our mass dislocation, was bored stiff with the beauty of the High Tatra. He would have gladly given all the mountains in the world for a good soccer game. The days went by quickly, but the intense well-being which always pervaded me after a Wychylowka summer, the heady suffusion with sun and air, was missing. The forbidding mountains seemed to close in on me and I was cold and depressed. I missed the wide spaces, the fields, the river and my love.

  On June 28, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were killed in Sarajevo and everything, which appeared built for eternity, began to falter. Uninvited, history entered our lives, and our roots were plowed under by tanks and guns. At the moment we were hoping naïvely that little Serbia “would not dare.” Only Niania in her peasant wisdom knew better. “There will be a war,” she said, staring at the huge, rocky Tatra peaks in their red, sunset glow, and she crossed herself.

  All through July we lived between hope and an unpatriotic gloom. “They can’t draft Edward,” Mama comforted herself. “He is too near-sighted.” Niania was thinking of her son, Vassili, my foster brother, and of her brother Fedja, who had just passed his exams to become a high school teacher. Vassili also was preparing to teach. With great sacrifice, and Papa’s help, Niania had put both of them through school.

  Then one ultimatum followed another, and we were stunned that all of Europe was against us. Papa returned to Sambor. A few days later war was declared and the whole family left Zakopane. Neither Rose nor I could think of our careers anymore.

  Our train was constantly delayed by the troops rolling east towards the Russian frontier. Horses and soldiers packed into freight cars and trucks, decorated with flowers and jingoistic inscriptions, endlessly passed us. Italians, Tyrolians, Czechs, Austrians, Poles, Ukrainians, Slovenians, Croatians, and Hungarians, traditionally disunited under the Hapsburg rule, were now singing together “Ich hat’einen Kameraden.” In the evening they would change to their melancholy native songs.

  From the first-class compartments the officers waved to laughing and cheering girls serving refreshments at each station. Wailing and sobbing peasant women were kept back by gendarmes from the platforms as they tried to catch a brief glimpse of their men.

  In Sambor the station was seething with people and we could hardly push through. The town was packed with troops; our house had become the headquarters of an archduke, who commanded the division east of the Dnjestr. His and the staff’s automobiles were parked in the backyard and Dusko could not tear himself away from them. The barn and the stables were filled with soldiers and horses; the orderlies slept on the floor in the hall, bathroom and garret. Our parents and we were crowded into the back rooms. In the kitchen, the maids giggled and shrieked, having great fun with the orderlies. Niania, who slept there, had to enforce a curfew.

  In general the billeted soldiers behaved well. Only the passing troops, especially the Tyrolians and Hungarians, were under the impression that they had already entered enemy land. Our carriage and horses were “requisitioned” on the road by a Hungarian officer brandishing his pistol, and the coachman had to walk home.

  But Rose and I had no transportation problems. At six every morning the General’s auto drove us to the hospital, where we had enrolled as volunteer nurses. The Red Cross had rushed us through a primary course and after two weeks of perfunctory instruction, we took care of the wounded who began to fill the wards.

  According to the war bulletins, the Austrian army, in “planned retreat,” was “adjusting” the front surprisingly close to us. At first the rumbling guns made only the windowpanes shake, then the whole house, until the panes broke and fell out. The archduke disappeared with his staff and the generals only stopped for a few hours, otherwise “everything was proceeding according to plan.”

  As there was nobody to drive us to the hospital anymore, we walked through the strangely empty town. In the first days of September Grandmother and Aunt Bella arrived with their maid and were easily accommodated. We lived by sheer nervous tension as if outside our own selves. Mama and the town ladies had organized a buffet service at the railway station, and saw to it that not only officers, but also the soldiers got some refreshments. Trains from the east, Tarnopol, Stanislawow, Brody, etc., arrived crowded with starved, parched, ill-smelling people, mostly Jews who, with memories of pogroms still in their bones, were fleeing before the advancing Russians.

  One evening, while waiting on the blacked-out station for a transport o
f wounded, I watched the train coming in quietly, then heard piercing screams break the silence, and a young, white-faced woman leaned from the window holding out a naked child. The small body looked like a yellow wax figure. The woman kept up her sharp, inhuman screaming, to which the waxen immobility of the child made a horrifying contrast. I tried to take it from her, but the medic pulled me away. “It’s dead. Don’t you see?” he said. Then the woman and the child disappeared inside, and desolate, half-wailing and half-singing sounds came from the compartment. An old woman near me pointed to the starless sky where a tiny, greenish light was moving directly above us. It was an airplane. The first I had ever seen. Was it Russian or German? The people were whispering that only the Germans had airplanes and that now we would win the war.

  The hospital, a converted school, was crowded, dirty and unprepared for catastrophe. As there was no running water the orderlies lugged heavy jugs from the well in the courtyard all day and heated water on field kitchens. Two of the classrooms were transformed into operating rooms, each equipped with four long tables. Minor and major surgery were simultaneously performed. Putrid sores, gangrened limbs, were operated on right next to “clean” wounds like perforated lungs, stomachs, arms and legs shattered, as some doctors insisted, by dumdum bullets. I don’t remember anyone wearing a surgical mask.