The Lost Prince

by Selden Edwards

  In the formerly grand city coal and gas were in desperately short supply; citizens burned wood they had torn from park benches and local trees. The stream of railroad cars from the mines in Bohemia and Moravia ceased to appear. The four hundred trains that had come daily to the city only a few years ago were now reduced to four. Electricity was absent most of the time. Hungary stopped sending the flour, pork, fat, poultry, eggs, vegetables, and meat that Vienna had relied on for generations.

  “It is a pity, Frau Burden,” said Franz Jodl, her new guide. “The Viennese are becoming accustomed to eating horse sausages, dried fruits and vegetables, synthetic meat made in part with the pulverized bark of birch trees, along with beet jam, and vile-tasting make-believe chocolate.”

  Chemically produced saccharine had replaced sugar. Cooking and frying was done with fat derived from petroleum residues and plants. Bread was made mostly of cornmeal and more questionable ingredients. Chicory and ground beets were boiled to yield a beverage that served as a very unappealing coffee substitute. Textiles were woven with yarns of nettle fibers and paper. Shoe soles were hydraulically pressed cardboard and sawdust bonded with tar. Some wartime industrialists made fortunes turning out such ersatz products.

  Only the wealthy and profiteers were still able to eat in the old manner, but they had to pay in silver coins or currency from other countries. The once-elegant streets were now populated with throngs of haggard soldiers and ruffians in stolen and ragged uniforms without insignias.

  Eleanor had written her former landlady Fräulein Tatlock of her arrival. The pension had been reduced to subsistence, and the fräulein had aged more in appearance than the twenty years since Eleanor had last seen her. The old pension owner met Eleanor and her young son at the door, her eyes filled with tears, and she knelt down after embracing Eleanor to embrace young Standish. “Oh, how he resembles you, Frau Burden,” she exclaimed. “How marvelously!”

  Eleanor was given her old room at the top of the stairs and suddenly found herself back in the scene of the great loss of her life. She had asked that Standish join her on a small cot, so that neither of them would sleep alone in this strange place, what was for her now a city of ghosts. Still, from the very first moment upon entering her old boardinghouse, Eleanor seemed at first somehow invigorated rather than intimidated by the starkness of the new Vienna. From the start she found herself clearly a New England woman rolling up her sleeves and taking on the tasks of restoration. After settling in upstairs, she had the one heavy trunk moved into the kitchen and asked Fräulein Tatlock to watch as she opened it.

  Upon viewing the contents, eyes wide with amazement at the provisions from Switzerland that only months before would have been considered essential staples for a well-stocked boardinghouse such as hers, Fräulein Tatlock was speechless. When Eleanor came to the small bag of roasted coffee beans, she handed it to her host, who held it up and buried her nose in it, inhaling deeply. “Oh my,” was all she said.

  “We shall set up a modest kitchen,” Eleanor said. “We may invite guests.”

  And when she had unpacked, she came downstairs with Standish and said, “Now, I would like to go out and reestablish my bearings.” She walked with young Standish out to the Ringstrasse, as she had done so many times before, twenty years ago. “We will circle the city,” she said to her son, and he smiled up at her, having no idea what a commitment to walking his mother had just made for both of them. “I want you to see the magnificent Ringstrasse.”

  Detouring to St. Stephen’s Cathedral, she approached the formidable edifice holding her son’s hand. “This is the biggest and grandest building you have ever seen,” she said to him.

  As they entered the vast medieval structure, Standish Burden let out a whoop. “Oh, Mother,” he said loudly. “This is the biggest and grandest!” They stayed inside for almost two hours, examining each bank of stained glass and each statue. Standish seemed inexhaustible in his energy and enthusiasm for the building’s splendor.

  “Look,” said his mother. “There is Joseph in his dungeon, and then telling his dreams to the pharaoh.” Standish had loved being read Bible stories by Eleanor and his older sisters.

  “I see,” the boy said with relish. “And where is the Red Sea parting?”

  “I think it is that one,” his mother said. And she pointed out other stories with which he was familiar.

  “Let’s come back,” he said as they were leaving.

  She arranged for Franz Jodl to meet her at Fräulein Tatlock’s the first morning. “Please dine with us, if you wish,” she said to him, knowing from her preparation that he was a widower whose two sons were lost in the war.

  “That would be possible,” he said without apology or apparent gratitude, intent on his business. He laid out before her in the sitting room all his notes and papers, going through them all with meticulous care, showing exactly how he had found the witnesses and how each had described the scene in which Arnauld Esterhazy had died. He repeated his findings that Arnauld had attained a position of leadership on the Isonzo River and had witnessed a number of the battles there. After the decisive struggle at Caporetto, when the Italians had been routed, he had been assigned a number of captured Italian officers and along with another younger officer, a Czech he had befriended, Arnauld had been moving them to a railroad yard, where they had received a direct hit from a mistakenly fired Austrian artillery shell.

  “The group was torn apart, Frau Burden,” he said with a look of respectful concern. “There is no way any of them could have survived.” He paused to look into her eyes to see that she understood, then, for her benefit, retreated slightly, as he had promised Jung he would. “At least that is how it appeared,” he added.

  Then, as before and afterward, Eleanor stared back at him, signaling her steely ability to hear such realism. “I understand the details, Herr Jodl. You do not need to worry that I do not understand the details.”

  “Shrapnel, Frau Burden,” he said solemnly. “That is what those not familiar with this war do not understand.” And then he stopped, wishing to spare her anything further.

  She knew from confrontation of the facts earlier that the explosion of an artillery shell in this war sent dinner-plate-size fragments of metal flying in all directions, severing limbs and heads where they flew. A direct hit would have been a scene of utter carnage. “There were many witnesses,” Jodl said apologetically, as if to finalize the point. “The outcome was unavoidable. There is absolutely no doubt.”

  Eleanor did not flinch. She paused a moment before speaking. “And yet you know my mission here,” Eleanor said, drawing herself upright to signal a change of mood.

  “I do, Frau Burden.” He did not hesitate.

  “And you will assist me, in spite of the apparent outcome you describe?”

  “We search for the living,” Jodl said. “I will not be the first to abandon that search. You can be assured of that.”

  “I am grateful,” she said, and the subject of uncertainty never came up again.

  The review of details by Jodl, the funereal atmosphere of the city, the scene of people scouring for food and fuel all threatened her great resolve, and suddenly, by surprise, she found herself thinking of Will Honeycutt and what he would have done. “We are going to get control of this situation,” she said to Fräulein Tatlock, who had already begun to look more animated by her new charge of tending to young Standish. She went back to Jodl. “We are going to get control of this situation,” she repeated.

  By nightfall, she had made arrangements to travel by train out into the countryside and meet with a family of farmers to bring back, in exchange for some of her store of coins, a supply of flour, eggs, some meats, and even coffee beans, to stock the modest kitchen of a small boardinghouse. Austrian currency was virtually worthless, but she had been told that American bills or coins worked magic. Then, and for the rest of her stay in Austria, Franz Jodl would be at her side, carrying the supply of American dollars in a briefcase and protecting the treasu
re, it appeared from his constant grip, with his life.

  43

  BERGGASSE 19

  Eleanor had always wondered if she would ever return to Berggasse 19, one of her first stops in Vienna. The place had seemed a part of her destiny. As she climbed the stairs and felt her heart racing, she thought of how much had changed in the twenty years since her last visit here, how much she had learned of the world, how much of it she had seen. She thought also of the Vienna journal’s accounts of visits here, of conversations which she had read about over and over to a point of near memorization. It was from those accounts that she had formed most of her opinions of Sigmund Freud and his theories. She arrived at the top of the stairs and knocked, without giving herself time to pause or retreat, then waited for the maid she knew would answer and allow her in.

  Nothing had changed in the small, wood-paneled foyer. A couch stood against the wall beneath some etchings of classic Greek figures. Eleanor felt a strangely comfortable familiarity as she sat waiting the second time, recalling the first time twenty years before when she had known nothing of the man she was about to meet and nothing of the fame that would descend upon him during the two decades between her visits.

  The door opened suddenly, and she found herself shaking the hand once again of the most famous man in Vienna. “We meet again, Frau Burden,” he said in curt but distinct English. “It is my great pleasure.”

  “As it is mine, Herr Dr. Freud.” He ushered her into his study and gestured to a chair beside his desk.

  Dr. Freud wore a black armband, as she knew he would, the symbol of the loss of his beloved daughter Sophie to the influenza earlier that year. Just as Vienna was beginning to suffer the deprivations from years of war and the breakup of the empire, the dreaded pandemic that would take fifty million lives worldwide between 1918 and 1920 accompanied the hunger and cold. Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and his wife, architect Otto Wagner, and the editor of the Neue Freie Presse were among the well-known Viennese to fall along with Sigmund Freud’s dear Sophie.

  “You have only gained in impressiveness,” he said, once both of them were seated, he behind the desk.

  “You are kind,” she said, pausing. “I am sorry for your great loss. My daughter and I both came down with the dreaded influenza, but somehow we survived it. For a time I thought I had lost her, and my family thought they had lost me.”

  “Some were fortunate,” he said. “And some not. It has been a second war, right here in our homes.”

  “So it is,” she said with a shudder.

  He changed the tone. “I am glad to have this opportunity to thank you, Frau Burden. I learned of your part in my invitation to America in 1909,” he said. “Much about that visit was vexing to me, and it was not until much later that I learned of your role in the creation of that event.”

  “I was able to play a minor one,” she said quickly.

  “Quite the contrary, Frau Burden. I hear that you caused it all to happen, both in its conception and its funding.”

  “That is exaggeration,” she said, “but I am grateful for the recognition of my small part.”

  “Well, you may know that I had less than favorable impressions of your country.”

  “You referred to us as savages, I believe,” she said with a little laugh.

  Dr. Freud looked uncomfortable for a moment. “I overstated. It was not an entirely pleasant experience for me because of stomach problems.”

  “The impressions were nowhere near mutual, as you probably know. Your ideas were very well received. You are now very highly regarded in America.”

  “I am grateful for that.” He paused and let his eyes penetrate. “I was most honored to meet Dr. James. For me, he was the main attraction in going to America in the first place, and the attention he gave me, in spite of his illness, was most appreciated. You were very close to him, I gather.”

  “He was my godfather, and very dear to me.” She had become accustomed to referring to William James in this manner.

  “I wondered, of course, what he thought of my ideas. We had a chance to speak very briefly, but never in much depth, and then, of course, the world lost him.”

  “He was very impressed,” she said quickly, misrepresenting James’s impressions a bit. “He said on many occasions that your ideas were the future, and at the very end he expressed regret that he would not be able to see how those ideas played out.”

  “I sensed that he felt more in agreement with my former colleague Dr. Jung. I know he was interested in the spiritual aspects of our science, what he called parapsychology. I know that he consulted séances.”

  “Yes,” Eleanor said. “The supernatural was always intriguing for him, but never with any certainty. It was always possibilities that intrigued him.”

  “And, as you know, not an interest of mine, a disappointment to Dr. James, I fear.”

  “I think you underestimate the impression you made on him, and on all the guests at Dr. Hall’s conference.”

  “Perhaps,” the great doctor said, then paused, giving his guest an evaluative glance. “And I gather you and my former colleague Dr. Jung have corresponded.” He paused again in such a way as to imply more.

  “We have corresponded,” she began, then paused herself, long enough to match his implication. “We have become friends.”

  “Dr. Jung talked about his Putnam Camp conversations with you on our sea voyage home from New York. Of all the influences that caused him to drift away, I believe, that afternoon with you was the greatest.”

  “Oh my,” Eleanor said. “I hope that is not so.”

  “Dr. Jung is very impressionable. You are a very compelling conversationalist, I gather. I think he was quite influenced, smitten even. He reflected a number of times on our return trip that you were kindred spirits.”

  “All of us Americans were quite taken by both of you. You made a powerful impression with your visit, as you no doubt heard.”

  “Dr. Jung is very compelling in his intensity,” Dr. Freud said, refusing to be distracted, and she could hear the hint of irritation in his voice. “He is drawn to intimacies beyond what his former colleagues were drawn to. I gather that the two of you have become quite close.”

  “We have corresponded.” The great doctor could most likely hear a defensiveness in her voice. “That is all.”

  “You need not worry, Frau Burden. I am not one to judge. You are both adults,” he said with an attempt at the cold dispassion for which he was famous.

  “Our intimacies have been limited to correspondence,” she said, now with a bit of irritation in her voice.

  “I wish neither to imply nor to pry,” he then offered, and she let it lie.

  “We are here to talk about Herr Esterhazy,” she said. Eleanor had written him as soon as she arrived in Vienna. She wanted to make use of his experience and great deductive capacity.

  “That is right,” the great doctor acknowledged.

  “You are kind to receive me.”

  “I wish to help. Herr Esterhazy is dead in the war. I am terribly sorry to hear that. We have suffered greatly as a country and as a city. And I fear that our own folly in enthusiastically rushing to war has brought great suffering upon ourselves and upon the world.”

  “You had much support in that folly.”

  “I suppose we did. Anyway, many many young men are dead, your Arnauld Esterhazy included.”

  “I do not believe him dead. You know that.”

  Freud took a long look at her, measuring exactly how he was going to approach this. “As is your assigned role,” Freud said, referring for the first time, she deduced, to his knowledge of her past in Vienna twenty years ago, and the journal. “But you must know that there are numerous very reliable reports and witnesses, too many to be dismissed.”

  “Yes, I do know that,” she said. “And yet I have reason to believe that he is still alive.”

  For a moment he said nothing.

  “Of course. I understand,” he said, accepting the stal
emate. “Your faith is strong. That causes us to revisit our very basic difference from the former time.” He had his reasons to believe the man was dead, and she had hers to believe he was alive. They had accepted this stalemate and armistice twenty years ago, neither venturing to try to persuade the other, each fully invested in believing a contrary version of reality. “You have lived your life according to your faith,” he said.

  “And you according to yours,” she said.

  “Nothing has happened to shake either of us from our convictions.”

  “Oh, you can be assured that I have had quite a bit of shaking,” she said pointedly. “There have been predicted events, granted, ones requiring research and execution.” She avoided mentioning the one enormous one. “It has not been without considerable complexity and struggle.”

  “You have carried out your assigned tasks, I assume.”

  “Yes, the predictions have come to pass, and I have benefited greatly. I have created a fund, as instructed.”

  “I understand that,” he said without emotion, the closest he came to admitting that he had indeed done some research about her and her visit.

  “And what you have seen unfold in the world has not caused you to reconsider your original skepticism?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “And what then of the events you heard predicted,” she said, pressing him, “the ones you have seen come to pass?” She looked into his serious implacable face. “What do you make of the epic tragedies, the Titanic sinking and the advent of the great world war? They were both foretold.”

  “Life is full of coincidences,” he said, more as a scientific observation than a defense. “Awful tragedy and coincidence.” He paused to gather his thoughts, then continued. “When I was in medical school, on one of the wards there was a mental patient who was so convinced that he was king of Prussia that he convinced others, and he was so persuasive in his claim for a particular investment that one of the interns put a good deal of money into it and made a small bundle. There are coincidences,” the great doctor concluded.