Doctor Criminale

by Malcolm Bradbury

  Now certain memories began coming back to me. Helden-platz, the great square outside the Hofburg; wasn’t this where Adolf Hitler had addressed a cheering Austrian crowd when he dropped his troops, dressed as nuns, into the country in 1938? Well, now it was where all the tourists, mostly Japanese and American, gathered. Their great modern tour buses, equipped with central heating, toilets, kitchens, television sets, a home on wheels, stood lined up in rows. Landau drivers sat waving their whips over their horses and calling for customers. Great tour groups eddied here and there, herded by umbrella-waving female Austrian guides, evidently a formidable breed in their dirndls. ‘Hello, hello, my name is Angelika, do you like it?’ said one in English, steering a party of tired elderly Americans. (A round of applause.) ‘Yes, I think you do. Notice please my pretty dirndl, very typical, do you like it too?’ (More applause from party.) ‘Yes, you do.’

  I stopped to listen. ‘Well, we make very nice tour today, the Hofburg, Schonbrunn, then the Blue Danube, very nice, ja?’ (More applause from party.) ‘I hope you know our Habsburgs, you remember the Empress Maria Theresa? Even if a woman she kept our empire great for many many years.’ (Murmurs of assent from party.) ‘Then, do you know, things went a little wrong for us. You remember the tragedy of Mayerling in 1889?’ (Murmurs of assent from party.) ‘Yes, of course you do, the young Archduke Rudolph and his pretty little Baroness Maria Vetsera, who died with him in his bed at the hunting lodge, ja?’ (Murmurs of sympathy from party.) ‘After this nothing went right for us. And yet you know those were our most brilliant times? And that is what we say about Austrians. The more things went wrong, the more we learned to be so modern and so gay!’ (Loud applause from party.)

  There was a sharp tug at my sleeve. It was Gerstenbacker, and he did not look so modern and so gay. ‘Oh yes, 1889, when we learned to be so modern and so gay!’ he said, walking me off to the entrance to the Hofburg, ‘But I hope a little bit more critical and analytical than this. To be modern is not always so amusing, I think.’ He took me inside, and we went round the great complex of state rooms, the imperial fixtures, the regalia and the treasure chests. ‘The Emperor Franz Josef, he was not so modern,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘Here in the Hofburg he refused most things: the telephone, the toilet, the electricity light. Until he died and his age too, this place was lit only by torches. I will show you the Capuchin crypt where the Habsburgs were buried. Of course first they took out their hearts and put them in another place.’

  ‘Franz Josef was not so gay either,’ said Gerstenbacker, as we went down to the crypt, ‘He lived here in one room and watched his empire fall to pieces. Because you know here was made a great dream of a glorious Europe. Once, you understand of course, we were Europe.’ We had Spain, the Nederland, Italy, the Balkans. All run from here. Not the crypt, of course, upstairs, where is Waldheim now.’ ‘Oh, is he?’ I asked, ‘The great forgetter.’ ‘Well, some things we remember, some we forget,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘Yes, here was the Emperor, the archdukes, the courtiers, the diplomats. The bureauarats, the policemen, the apparatus, the files, the rules of law, and trade, and censorship.’ ‘It all sounds a bit like Brussels now,’ I said. ‘The same,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘The European Community, you know we will join very soon. I believe we have some experiences that would be useful.’ ‘I’m sure you do,’ I said. ‘Good, now you have seen some of our past, next I will show you some of our modern,’ said Gerstenbacker, checking his piece of paper, ‘In fact I will show you everything.’

  And sure enough, over the course of the next hours, Gersten­backer did exactly that. He showed me as much of everything as time and the human frame would permit. He showed me gothic, the church of darkness and mystery, and he showed me baroque, ! the church of light and joy. He showed me Biedermeier, the art of the bourgeois, and he showed mejugendstil, the art of dissent. He showed me Calvinism; he showed me the New Eroticism. He showed me Egon Schiele and he showed me Gustav Klimt; he showed me Salome and he showed me Judith. He showed me the Café Central where Trotsky used to sit and reflect, he showed me a table used by Krafft-Ebing, he showed me the home of Gustav Mahler. He showed me the consulting rooms of Sigmund Freud at Berggasse 19, its contents mostly disappeared, where sex-shocked patients once used to lie among portraits of Minerva and pictures of Troy. He explained to me things that were there, things that had once been there, and even things that had never been visibly there but came nonetheless. For he briefly took me out of the city and into the Vienna Woods, where Freud had once bicycled, and where a plaque among the trees read very simply: ‘Here, on July 24, 1895, the secret of dreams revealed itself to Dr Sigm. Freud.’

  And all the time, as we toured the city, getting on a tram here and taking a taxi there, I tried to encourage perfectly pleasant young Gerstenbacker to talk to me about Bazlo Criminale. There was no obstruction; he seemed totally willing. Yet always, it seemed, there was some absolutely necessary diversion or other. ‘Look, tell me, do you have any idea where Criminale stays or who he sees when he visits Vienna?’ I would ask. ‘You think he comes to Vienna?’ he would say. ‘Professor Codicil said he comes to Vienna,’ I would say, ‘He said it was one of his homes from home, you remember.’ ‘Homes from home, not home from homes?’ he would say, ‘By the way, do you like to see a building with a cabbage on the top of it?’ ‘Homes from home,’ I would say, ‘What do you mean a building with a cabbage on the top of it?’

  ‘It has a cabbage on the top of it.’ ‘Why does it have a cabbage on the top of it?’ I would ask. ‘It has a cabbage on the top of it because of course Josef-Maria Olbrich put it there.’ ‘Who did?’ I asked. ‘Olbrich, don’t you know him? The friend of Otto Wagner? They all wanted to make a great Secession together.’ ‘I see,’ I said, ‘So when Criminale comes to Vienna, where does he stay?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he would say. ‘Who are his friends?’ I would ask. ‘Does he have some?’ he would say. ‘I expect so,’ I would say, ‘You’ve never met him?’ ‘I, of course not,’ Gerstenbacker would say, ‘I think the Secession was really where the Viennese baroque shook hands with Viennese modernism.’ ‘We’re back to the cabbage, are we?’ ‘Don’t you like to see it? It is very famous.’ ‘All right, Gerstenbacker,’ I said at last, ‘Let’s go and see a building with a cabbage on the top of it.’

  The building Gerstenbacker took me to was the famous Seces­sion Building (motto: ‘To the age its art, and to art its freedom’); sure enough, it did indeed have a kind of cabbage-shaped metal dome on the top of it. We walked inside, to see the place where, in the 18905, Viennese baroque met Viennese modernism, and an art of the new, now already beginning to look like an art of the old, was born. ‘What about Professor Codicil?’ I asked as we looked round, ‘Does he see much of Criminale?’ ‘I think perhaps not any more, I think he no more comes so often,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘Do you like to know who paid for all this?’ ‘Yes, who did?’ I asked. ‘Wittgenstein’s father,’ said Gerstenbacker. ‘So where does he spend most of his time these days?’ ‘In the tomb, I think. He is dead,’ said Gerstenbacker.

  ‘Now please, Gerstenbacker, not Wittgenstein’s father,’ I said sharply, ‘I’m trying to talk to you about Doctor Criminale.’ ‘But how can I tell you these things, really I have no idea,’ said Gerstenbacker innocently, ‘Did you know that Ludwig Wittgenstein and Adolf Hitler went to the same school?’ ‘No idea at all?’ I asked, ‘Wittgenstein and Hitler went to the same school?’ ‘Yes, in Linz,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘If only Adolf Hitler had had a bit better marks, he might today be professor of philosophy at your University of Cambridge.’ ‘That’s quite a thought,’ I said, ‘If Wittgenstein had had worse ones, he could have been up there telling the Nuremberg rallies that the limits of our language are the limits of our world.’ For a moment Gerstenbacker considered this gravely. ‘Perhaps it is theoretically possible,’ he said at last, ‘I do not think it is likely. But he would not have gone to Cambridge and you would have had no Viennese philosophy at all.’

  When we went out
into the street outside the Secession Building, Gerstenbacker started again. ‘So now I think you would like to see an opera house with cats.’ ‘What is an opera house with cats?’ I asked. ‘You don’t know cats?’ he asked, ‘Cats are by Andrew Lloyd Webber.’ By now I thought I had taken the point. Gerstenbacker was a perfectly nice young man, but the task assigned to him by Codicil was plainly to get me as far away from Criminale as possible. ‘You’re very kind, Mr Gerstenbacker,’ I said, ‘But really I don’t want to see any more Imperial Vienna, any more Baroque Vienna, any more Secession Vienna, any more Freudian Vienna. I especially don’t want to see Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Vienna. What I want to see is Criminale’s Vienna.’ ‘But it doesn’t exist,’ he said. ‘No?’ I asked. ‘After the Second World War when he came there really was no Vienna.’ ‘At least you admit he came,’ I said, ‘But what do you mean there was no Vienna?’ ‘Well, there were four Viennas,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘There were four zones, Russian, American, British, French, yes? And now I think you must go to see the Blue Danube.’ ‘It’s not necessary,’ I said. ‘But of course,’ said Gerstenbacker, shocked, ‘You cannot come to Vienna and never see the Blue Danube. We will go to Nussdorf.’

  So we went on a tram to Nussdorf, where we stood on the end of a decrepit pier and did not see the Blue Danube. For the Blue Danube, as you probably know all too well already, since we live in an age of travel, is not actually blue. That is probably why the Viennese, quite some time ago, considerately moved the Danube right out of the city altogether and put it in a concrete cutting in a far suburb, where it would not constantly be checked, and they could go on singing about it without embarrassment. We stood on the pier and stared down at a dirty brown flow as it passed nervelessly by; nearby a group of dispirited Japanese tourists refused even to uncap their cameras, despite the urgings of their dirndled guide. ‘It’s brown,’ I said, ‘It’s brown and muddy.’ ‘Yes,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘But it is also going blue in certain lights.’ ‘Gerstenbacker,’ I said, as we turned and walked back into Nussdorf, ‘have you ever actually seen the Blue Danube when it was blue?’ ‘No, but I come from Graz,’ said Gerstenbacker. ‘Have any of your friends or relatives seen the Blue Danube when it was blue?’ I asked. ‘No,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘But in Vienna we know it is blue.’

  ‘You mean it’s blue for the tourists,’ I suggested. ‘No, it is blue for us also,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘And now I think you would like to try the Heurige, the new wine. I know a very good place in Heiligen where we can try some special growths.’ ‘Gerstenbacker,’ I said, as we got into a taxi, ‘am I right in thinking that one of your jobs as a great professor’s small assistant is to make sure I find out nothing at all about Doctor Criminale?’ ‘It’s possible,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘Now I know you will like this place very much and after we have tasted some wines I will explain if you like why the Blue Danube is blue.’ ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Oh by the way, this wine is quite strong,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘Really we should eat a little pig with it, if your religion permits it.’ I looked at him. ‘My religion?’ I asked, ‘Oh, you mean the Jane Fonda diet? Yes, I’m allowed to eat pig.’ ‘Good,’ he said, ‘I think we will have a very nice evening.’

  Gerstenbacker was quite right. In Heiligen we went into one of those large village inns where they advertise the new wines have arrived with a bunch of twigs outside; we sat down on hard wooden benches in a vast, folksy winehall, where a peasant band in leather knickerbockers drew music from a strange array of tubas, trumpets, logs and woodsaws; Gerstenbacker called over the apple-cheeked waitress, her purse hung like an economic pregnancy beneath her apron, and gave her a list of vintages. In wine as all else (except the matter of Bazlo Criminale), young Gerstenbacker was a fountain of knowledge; he talked of villages and vineyards and varieties, making me take a glass of this, share a flagon of that, and the more we tasted, the more expansive grew his talk. ‘Yes, why the Blue Danube is blue,’ he said, ‘Perhaps you don’t know it, but when Strauss wrote that music we had just lost a battle with Germans and our power was in decline. So for us the Danube became blue.’ ‘I see,’ I said. ‘Then was Sarajevo when the Archduke was shot by Princip, then 1918, when we lost our empire, our borders, our pride. You will understand this very well, I think, because you are British.’ ‘Yes, we do share some things in common,’ I said. ‘But it was not really the same,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘We lost everything, our meaning, our history, our reality. All we had was music, dreams, illusions.’ ‘And the Blue Danube became even bluer,’ I said. Gersteribacker nodded. ‘Then there was 1945, we had lost again,’ he said, ‘Now we were nothing at all, an occupied country. We had to forget war, forget history. The Blue Danube is blue because we say it is blue. In Vienna, after what happened, do not expect too much reality. Now there is another wine we must try.’

  After a further half-hour, Gerstenbacker’s wing collar had come awry, he wore his spectacles at an angle, and he had grown wildly talkative. ‘Tell me please, do you know this place Castle Howard?’ I nodded. ‘It is very nice, yes? I would really like to go there, for my thesis. Also Penshurst, Garsington, Charleston, Cliveden, where there was a set.’ ‘Very nice,’ I said, ‘It sounds a splendid subject for a thesis.’ ‘You see, most of your great philosophers were aristocrats, Earl of Russell, G.E. Moore and so on,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘That is why they had time for strange questions, do I mean what I say when I say what I mean, is the moon made of green cheese, and so on. Wittgenstein loved this.’ ‘And you do too,’ I said, ‘Well, if you want any help in arranging a visit . . .’ ‘It’s possible, you think so?’ asked Gerstenbacker, staring at me eagerly through his twisted spectacles, ‘Maybe you will speak to your Ambassador when you see him at a party?’ ‘Maybe not the Ambassador,’ I said, ‘I don’t move that much in diplomatic circles. But we could probably get you over on this television project. If you were able to give us some leads on Bazlo Criminale.’

  Gerstenbacker’s face visibly fell. ‘I am sorry, it is really true,’ he said, ‘Even if Codicil did let me help you, I know nothing about Bazlo Criminale.’ I knew I had better press home my advantage. ‘You’re the great professor’s assistant,’ I said. ‘Only his assistant,’ he said. ‘But you work closely with him,’ I said. ‘Well, a bit,’ he said. ‘So what does an assistant actually do?’ I asked. ‘Well, I examine Professor Codicil’s students and mark their papers,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘When he is not there, I teach his classes.’ ‘How often is that?’ I asked. ‘Quite often, because he is not there quite often,’ he said, ‘Naturally an important professor must travel abroad in many places. Sometimes I give his lectures, sometimes I write his books . . .’ I stared at him in amazement. ‘You write his books’?’ I said, surprised. Gerstenbacker stared back owlishly through his L. spectacles, clearly surprised by my surprise. ‘Professor Codicil is a very busy man,’ he explained, ‘He has to advise ministers, travel to many foreign congresses, sit on many very important committees. He does not have so very much time to write his books.’

  In the background, the peasant band was reaching a point of over-stimulation. Its members were hitting logs with axes; next they turned to slapping themselves and then each other, in a form of syncopated grievous bodily harm. ‘Oh, listen, this is very typical,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘Not all our music is Mozart and Strauss.’ ‘So I see,’ I said, getting excited myself, ‘So what you’re telling me is that you write the books, and Codicil signs them?’ ‘Only if he agrees with them,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘If not I would have to begin all over again. Sometimes I review them for the newspapers also.’ ‘Isn’t it rather an odd system?’ I asked, ‘You do all the work and he takes all the credit?’ ‘Oh no,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘Because one day I will myself receive a call and become an important professor. Then I will have many assistants, and they will write my books for me.’ ‘It all works out in the end,’ I said. ‘Of course,’ he said, looking round for the waitress, ‘Now I remember another very good wine you must try . . .’ ‘No
, just a minute,’ I said, ‘One more very important question. Did you happen to write the book on Bazlo Criminale?’

  ‘Did I?’ asked Gerstenbacker, surprised, ‘No, of course not. As-I told, I know nothing of Criminale. The book of his I write is on British . . .’ ‘Empirical Philosophy and the English Country House,’ I said, ‘I know. So who did write the book on Criminale?’ ‘I don’t imagine,’ he said. ‘Well, guess,’ I said, ‘Was it Codicil himself?’ ‘Oh, no, I don’t think so,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘I don’t think Codicil ever wrote any of his books.’ ‘Another assistant?’ I asked, ‘Does he have a lot of assistants?’ ‘Quite a few,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘But that book was five years ago. Five years ago I was still in Graz.’ And probably, I thought, still in short trousers; young Gerstenbacker, his formal clothes now looking more like a fancy dress costume at a bad party, was growing younger before my eyes by the minute. ‘But this could explain everything,’ I said. ‘Codicil’s book isn’t by Codicil at all. That’s why he’s not giving me his help with the Criminale project. He doesn’t want me to find out.’

  Gerstenbacker looked puzzled. ‘Find out what? The book is his. It has his name on it. Also it was written by his assistant to his instructions, in his office with his files, using only his approach and his methods, and following his advice and corrections. This is not why he will not help you.’ ‘Why won’t he help me, then?’ I asked. ‘He will not help you because you are too young and too English, and he thinks you cannot possibly understand such a man as Bazlo Criminale. Beside he does not believe in the light of publicity. Also many bad things are said about Austria these days. We have attacks on our President for his past, and so on.’ ‘Yes, I see,’ I said, ‘I can’t possibly understand why the Blue Danube is blue.’ Gerstenbacker looked at me, smiled, and nodded. ‘You cannot understand how it was here, because you were not here. Your country has been lucky, your lives have been simple, you have not suffered from our history, lived with our politics and philosophies. Codicil cannot even understand why the British should be interested in such a man as Criminale. He is not at all in your tradition of do I mean what I say when I say what I mean.’