Around the World With Auntie Mame

by Dennis, Patrick

  The first act drew to a thundering finale with a sweet duet between the two stars—whose combined age was just over a hundred and whose combined weight was just under five hundred—that established their love pretty firmly. Although considering their years, sizes, and corseting, I couldn’t imagine how they’d ever be able to consummate it. The Viennese adored it. Auntie Mame pretended to. I didn’t even try.

  “Well, off to the lobby for a good cigar,” Auntie Mame said without too much conviction. She looked awfully pale, but she was still full of the old Viennese spirit. “Isn’t Die Pillangóprinzessin tuneful, darling, and have you ever seen anything so lovely as that sweet butterfly ballet?”

  “Not since the Hippodrome closed,” I said.

  “Pillangó means butterfly in Hungarian,” she said, ostentatiously flourishing her petit-point cigar case.

  “Do tell,” I said. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”

  “Nonsense, Gansel, I never felt better,” she said, lighting up her cigar to the horror of all the dumpy Hausfraus standing nearby. She took a couple of drags and got even paler.

  “What’s the matter, Auntie Mame?” I asked, watching her go from white to yellow to green to gray.

  “N-nothing, Patrick, it’s just that it’s so . . . so very close in here,” she stammered, puffing weakly again at the cigar.

  “I think maybe those cigars are bigger than you are,” I ventured. “Or almost as big.”

  “D-don’t be silly, darling. All the smart Viennese women smoke them. Besides, I love the bouquet of a good . . .” Her eyes rolled heavenward and then Auntie Mame swooned, with a flutter of feathers, into the thick of the crowd. There was quite a lot of commotion and people shouting things I couldn’t understand in German. Then I saw Auntie Mame being carried out to the street in the arms of a tall, handsome young man.

  Pushing my way through the crowd, I got to the pavement just in time to see Auntie Mame being deposited in a taxi. “Achtung!” I called. “Halte!” thus exhausting my German. “ Attendez! Hey, wait a second!”

  Auntie Mame’s savior turned and gave me a charming smile. “You need not worry, sir,” he said, “I speak English.”

  “Oh, that’s nice,” I said. “Well, thank you very much.”

  “At your service,” he said, clicking his heels smartly. I tried to do the same and knocked my ankle bones together most painfully.

  “Well, thanks again,” I said. He didn’t look like the sort of person one would tip, dressed as he was in a faultlesaly tailored English suit. “I’ll just take my aunt back to the hotel.”

  “Please,” he said. “I insist. I shall accompany you. What gentleman could do less?”

  “That’s very nice of you, but I can manage,” I said crowding into the cab beside Auntie Mame’s supine body. “Besides, the operetta isn’t over yet.”

  “Nonsense,” the man said forcefully, getting in behind me. “I am, after all, a Hodenlohern.”

  “W-we’re Americans,” I said.

  “Your address?” he asked, cutting off any further protests.

  BY THE TIME WE GOT BACK TO SACHER’S IN THE Philharmonikerstrasse, Auntie Mame was moaning softly, her eyelids aflutter. I tried to pay off the driver, but Auntie Mame’s knight in armor, flaunting an alligator billfold and a torrent of colloquial German was there ahead of me. “Well, thank you very much again,” I said decisively. “We really can’t ruin your whole evening. I can get my aunt upstairs alone. Thank you very much.”

  “Shut up!” Auntie Mame said out of the corner of her mouth. She gave me a vicious jab with her elbow, then her arm fell limply, and she sighed, “Ach, Gott!” She stepped weakly down from the taxi and then managed another neat faint, right into the arms of her good-looking swain. That just about took care of that. He picked her up and carried her to our suite, where she reposed—all pale languor—in her tufted bonbon box of a sitting room. The picture of limpid frailty was somewhat diminished the three times Auntie Mame scooted off to the bathroom to be sick and when the physician I had summoned told her that the only thing the matter with her was gluttony and cigars. But she managed to keep her cavalier around long enough to change into a filmy peignoir and to send down for a bottle of champagne. Neither of them paid much attention when I excused myself and turned in.

  I awakened the next morning to find Auntie Mame already up. She was doing a pretty hesitation waltz all by herself in the sitting room, humming “ Ich War So Gern Einmal Verliebt” (Kreisler), her nose buried in a huge bouquet. I watched and listened for three asinine bars before she saw me. Flustered, she said good morning and set to work arranging her floral tribute.

  “Feeling better?” I asked.

  “Oh, divine, my little love,” she said, humming away. “And aren’t these flowers lovely? The Zimmermädchen just brought them up.”

  A card fluttered out of the bouquet. I picked it up. It read simply: Freiherr Werner von Hodenlohern.

  “Who’s this?” I asked, flashing the card.

  “Why, dear, that’s Baron von Hodenlohern, the charming gallant who rescued me at the Volksoper last night.”

  “My God, is he expecting you to die?”

  “Certainly not! But isn’t he nice? So handsome and so polished. Bursting with healthy youth and yet so weltlich.”

  “So what?”

  “Worldly. I really haven’t met a man who interested me so since . . . well, since . . .”

  “Since last week?” I said.

  “Oh, this is nothing like that. But last night’s chance meeting with Putzi . . .”

  “With what?”

  “Putzi. That’s Werner’s . . . I mean the baron’s nickname.”

  “I see. Go on.”

  “Oh, well, it’s nothing really, Patrick. But I do find it so interesting to get to know people from other lands—I mean really well. That is, I mean to say . . .” The telephone interrupted her. “Oh!” she said into the mouthpiece. “Oh, yes! Do come up.”

  “Who was that? The doctor again?”

  “No, Patrick, it’s Putzi. I mean Baron von Hodenlohern. He’s asked me to luncheon at the Kursalon. Keep him entertained while I make myself presentable.” For a sick woman, she moved awfully fast toward her bedroom, and I could hear her singing just as there was a rapping on the door.

  Putzi—I can think of him by no other name—clicked his heels smartly and marched in, a symphony in browns from his Homburg right down to his suède shoes. On a lesser man the outfit might have been considered foppish, but Baron von Hodenlohern was so natural, carried himself with such a relaxed military bearing that the total effect was very pleasant.

  “My aunt will be ready in just a few minutes,” I said. “Please sit down.”

  He seated himself elegantly on one of the little Maria Theresa chairs, smiled, and offered me a cigarette from an alligator case.

  A little hard put for any common subject of conversation except Auntie Mame’s cigar smoking, I said, “Do you go to the Volksoper often?”

  “Oh, yes,” Putzi said charmingly. “Whenever I’m in Vienna I try to go. I’m very fond of music.” Well, after that there was no need to try to make conversation. Putzi told me all about his favorite operas at the Staatsoper, his favorite operettas at the Volksoper, his favorite Heurige singers at Grinzing, how he had organized a glee club as a young cadet in the Theresianum, how he and his brothers had always sung back home, and how he never missed the music at Christmas Eve mass in the Church of St. Maria am Gestade. That was the nice thing about him, you didn’t have to work to keep a conversation going—just throw Putzi a line and he was on. I’ve probably made him sound like a windbag, but he wasn’t. Everything he said was interesting and it was always said with great warmth and friendliness.

  “You certainly speak English well,” I said.

  “Oh, thank you. But I should. When we were very little, my brothers and I had an English governess on our estate and, until the war broke out, I had a few years in an English boarding school. Of course I
was very young then but . . .”

  Auntie Mame’s door opened and she sailed out in a clatter of violet taffeta, her middle tightly cinched. “Gut’ Morgen, mein Kavalier!” she said with a coquettish wag of the finger that recalled all the operettas I’d seen that week.

  “Gnädige Frau,” Putzi said, clicking his heels smartly and kissing her hand.

  “Aug Wiedersehen, Liebchen,” she said to me with a maddening wave of her scented hankie. Then they were off.

  I spent the day combing Vienna for a cup of coffee that wasn’t hidden under whipped cream. When I returned, defeated, there was no sign of Auntie Mame. It was after six when she rustled in.

  “That must have been some lunch,” I said. “What was it today, Hühnerleber mit Speck und Reis under Schlagober ? I thought the doctor told . . .”

  “Not now, my little love,” Auntie Mame sang. “Putzi’s asked me to dinner and the opera and I’ve simply got to tear into my clothes.” With that she disappeared and I could hear her singing the great love duet from Die Pillangóprinzessin.

  With a clicking of patent-leather heels, Putzi reappeared, this time in flawless evening clothes and so handsome and aristocratic looking that even I was a little startled. Instead of being the thick-necked, shaven-skulled, dueling-scarred, yellow-haired type I’d always associated with the Teutonic peoples, Putzi was tall, dark, and rather romantic looking. He had beautiful manners and an easy laugh. While he awaited Auntie Mame he told me about the boyhood he and his brothers had spent on the family estates in Mähren, which I gathered was Moravia, before it was turned into Czechoslovakia. Now, it seemed, they were on a much smaller estate in the Tirol. It was all very romantic—just as romantic as Putzi. He was beginning to recount his cadet days at the Theresianum when Auntie Mame sallied forth, looking just like a Winter-halter portrait. “Auf Wiedersehen, my little love,” she said, kissing the top of my head. “Baron von Hodenlohern and I are off to dinner and the Staatsoper, but I’ve left our tickets for the Volksoper for you. I know you’ll adore it. It’s by Kalman or Lehar.”

  “Or Romberg or Friml or Straus or Strauss. It won’t make any difference,” I said.

  She swept up a sweet nosegay of Parma violets, gave her girdle a surreptitious tug, and they were off. “That dear Patrick,” she said to Putzi, “such a lover of gay, Viennese music.” I took the tickets and flushed them down the toilet.

  IT WAS FIVE-THIRTY BY THE LITTLE TRAVELING clock on my bedstand when I heard Auntie Mame let herself in.

  “My God,” I called, “did you sit through the complete works of Wagner?”

  “Still awake, Patrick darling?” Auntie Mame said as she drifted into my room. She sat dreamily on the foot of my bed and gazed at her crushed violets as though she were a very hungry cow about to devour them. “Oh no, my little love, it was only Der Rosenkavalier. We left after the second act.”

  “Well, it took you a hell of a long time to get back across the street.”

  “Ah, my little love, Putzi hired a carriage and we went out through the Vienna Woods to a dear little outdoor café where the gypsies serenaded us and we had Gespritzenes. Too divine.”

  She looked as though she’d had a lot more than that, but I didn’t say anything. She hummed a few bars of some dismal tzigane dirge and then she said, “How was the operetta, darling?”

  “Oh, it was just keen,” I said acidly. “It was about a lovely Balkan empress who disguises herself as a shepherdess and . . .”

  “Isn’t that nice,” Auntie Mame said dreamily. “I wish I’d seen that. Go on, my little love.” She hummed again and I knew she wasn’t paying any attention at all. From there on I improvised.

  “Well, it’s called Die Krankenhauskaiserin. The sheep all come down with anthrax and die, so little Stigmata—that’s her name—and the villain, Baron Charlus, change clothes with each other and run off to Vienna where she gets a job selling contraceptives at Walgreen’s-im-Prater and falls in love with a homely corporal who’s disguised as a Balkan archduke, and she, little realizing that the Moxie which the wicked sorceress, Dichotomy, gives her to drink has turned her into a hopeless Lesbian . . . damn it,” I roared, fetching her a boot with my foot that sent her sprawling onto the floor, “you’re not even listening !”

  “Oh, I was, Patrick, really I was,” she said, blushing prettily. “It’s just that . . . well, I mean I . . . Patrick, pack your things. We’re leaving Vienna just as soon as Ito gets here with the car.”

  “Leaving? For where? New York?”

  “No, Patrick, for Stinkenbach-im-Tirol.”

  “For where?”

  “We’re going to Putzi’s old family place—Schloss Stinkenbach—for a little visit.”

  TWO DAYS LATER WE ROLLED INTO THE VILLAGE OF Stinkenbach-im-Tirol. Stinkenbach was about three hours’ drive from Salzburg, from Innsbruck, and from Bad Gastein, but proximity to more attractive places had not caused it to thrive. It was halfway up and halfway down an alp and situated just so that it was neither above nor below the clouds, but always in them. I mean it was humid.

  The Rolls lurched into the church square just as mass was letting out, and all I could think of was the opening number of every operetta I’d seen since we hit Austria. The jolly peasantry—a thousand strong—were promenading the Kirchenplatzall dirndls and Lederhosen and apple cheeks. Bells were ringing in the hideous old gothic church and there was even a genial old lush with drooping mustaches hefting a seidel of beer in front of the local inn. I almost expected them to burst into song.

  “Ach!” Auntie Mame cried, “so gemütlich . Just as Putzi said, fourteenth century—the whole village—and doesn’t it have flavor!”

  Indeed it had. From a glance and a sniff I realized that Stinkenbach-im-Tirol had no plumbing and no sewage system.

  Then all the picturesque burghers parted and there, at the wheel of an antique Mercedes touring car, was Putzi. After an affectionate but restrained greeting, he loaded us into his automobile and started us out on the final lap of our journey to the fourteenth-century seat of the Von Hodenloherns.

  “And now we start upward to Schloss Stinkenbach,” Putzi said, throwing his old car into low gear.

  “Heavens,” Auntie Mame said, “is all this land yours?”

  “My family’s,” Putzi said with proud modesty.

  Well, it was quite a lot of land. The only thing wrong was that it was all perpendicular. Way, way up over us loomed the ruins of an old fortress. That was the original Schloss Stinkenbach. Somewhat below that stood a huge Frankenstein’s castle kind of place, so grim that, at first sight, it had an imposing grandeur. Putzi’s Mercedes whined up the mountain, with Ito following. Finally we came to a ramshackle stone hovel with a pair of decrepit gates permanently rusted ajar. An old gaffer in Lederhosen came hobbling out and actually did tug his forelock. What I took to be his wife bustled after him, shooing a lot of chickens off the roadway. “Here we are,” Putzi said genially. We drove on past some rickety outbuildings and the car stopped before a hodgepodge of masonry, plaster, timber, arches, eaves, beams, buttresses, battlements, and turrets. It was Schloss Stinkenbach.

  When the huge, iron-clad door swung open we were in a lofty stone hall, sparsely furnished with ugly carved wooden pieces, black with age. The plaster walls, painted with mottoes and family arms, were bristling with antlers. A towering tile oven in one corner gave off a wistful warmth. Otherwise it was chillier than it was outside. Beneath the feeble, unflattering glow of an iron chandelier stood two men and a woman. They were Putzi’s brothers and his sister-in-law.

  “Ah,” Putzi shouted merrily, “the reception committee! Mrs. Burnside, Mr. Dennis. Here is my family—all of it—the last of the Von Hodenloherns. My elder brother Maximilian, my younger brother Johannes, and Maximilian’s wife, Frieda. Maxl, Hannes, Friedl.”

  I noticed that, as in everything at Schloss Stinkenbach, Friedl, the reigning baroness and hostess came in last. She was a weary, washed-out blonde whose Dresden prettiness had long since faded as
she faced menopause and melancholia with a grim, unhappy resolve. Friedl seemed always to have a cold—not that I blamed her in that house. She wore a dingy white cardigan over her unbecoming peacock blue “best” dress as she stood hugging her elbows and shivering in the drafty hall. I did the Austrian bit, clicked my heels somewhat more successfully than usual, and kissed her cold, red hand.

  “Enchanté,” Friedl said between chattering teeth.

  Maxl, the head of the family, was dark like Putzi, but far less attractive, being fifty pounds heavier and ten years older. He wore English-style country clothes that were much too tight and a hairnet. Hannes, the baby of the family, was only a few years older than I. He was one of those Teutonic-god types, lean and muscular with azure eyes and golden curls. He would have been the handsomest of the lot save for the total absence of any animation or warmth in his chiseled face and his frosty eyes. Taciturn to the point of muteness, his social repartee consisted mainly of jerky little bows and nods. Not that his manners left anything to be desired; it was simply that Hannes always made me feel that I was in the company of a very well-bred robot.

  “Did you open the salon, Friedl, as I asked you to?” Putzi said.

  “Ja! Yes, Putzi. Poldi did the Kamin—uh, the, er . . .” Friedl, whose English was not as good as that of the Von Hodenlohern brothers, groped for a word.

  “Stove,” Putzi translated. Then he turned to us with a winning grin. “As you probably know, central heating is not popular in Austria. All over we are heated by our beautiful old porcelain stoves.”

  “How charming,” Auntie Mame said, beaming at the family.

  “Now please to ring for Poldi, Friedl, and you can show our guests to their rooms.”