The Elixir of Immortality

by Gabi Gleichmann

  RUDOLF’S PROPOSAL to Arabella was a hard trial for his family. No one could understand how he had allowed himself to fall into the clutches of a common prostitute.

  Clementina, who had remained in deep mourning since Heindrich’s untimely demise and whose eyes were always red with weeping, saw this as a cruel blow of fate. She hoped she could change Rudolf’s mind.

  SHE BEGAN CAUTIOUSLY. “You should be aware that a marriage between people from entirely different classes is rarely happy or long-lasting, no matter how wonderful it may seem at first.”

  “Just drop the subject, Mother,” Rudolf replied, shaking his head.

  She refused to be intimidated and instead continued in an increasingly querulous tone. “Just think of me, of all of us. Can’t you see how much I’m suffering? Don’t you see that this is a disaster? What a disgrace!”

  Her voice stuck in her throat and she had an air of desperation, as if she was bearing all of the sorrows of the world on her delicate shoulders.

  “Suffering? Disaster? Disgrace?” said Rudolf. “Is that what my happiness means to you? Arabella is the best thing that has ever happened to me!”

  Clementina gasped and looked at her son as if he were a complete stranger. She prayed silently to God not to allow such a terrible misfortune to take place. Her eyes filled with tears. She instantly withdrew to her room and stayed there for a long time, racked with tears and sobs.

  ———

  RUDOLF REFUSED to be budged from his belief that he was doing exactly the right thing. He was firmly convinced that the best way to take the measure of a person was to assume the opposite of what was commonly rumored. He knew very well that the regulars of the Salon Rouge described Arabella as a completely depraved and uninhibited woman. He assumed therefore that in reality her character was suffused with virtue, innocence, truthfulness, and tenderness.

  THE PAIR was married by Archbishop of Burgenland August zu Biederstern, who turned to the newlyweds and delivered a wonderfully poetic sermon with accounts of family history, texts from the Bible, and a number of humorous remarks, all of it delivered with a certain frivolous elegance. Almost five hundred people attended the wedding dinner at Castle Biederhof.

  His mother and sisters blushed in humiliation when after the ceremony in the church they were obliged to exchange a few words with the depraved women from the Salon Rouge.

  The archbishop, on the other hand, appeared to be in fine spirits. Out of the hearing of others, he told the women that he would be happy to slip away into sacristy with one of them for a private prayer session.

  With their extravagantly plumed hats and low-cut dresses that invited men to lose themselves in the depths, Arabella’s colleagues attracted a great deal of attention.

  THE MARRIAGE between Rudolf and Arabella was never officially terminated. They remained man and wife until death parted them. But they did not live together for long.

  Since Rudolf could be with Arabella whenever he wished, within a few months of the wedding he discovered that she was completely ordinary. Her pretentious manner and persistent desire to be invited to various social events annoyed him. So did the fact that she regularly ordered outfits in flagrantly bad taste that were commented upon by everyone. Rudolf shared his mother’s somewhat moralistic view that clothes were for wearing, not for display. He was especially resentful that Arabella’s physical passion had cooled so quickly and she went to bed with him less and less often. He could scarcely remember the taste of her pulpy lips.

  One evening, in an attempt to rekindle the passion in their relationship, he staged a melodramatic scene and pretended to believe that Arabella had betrayed him. He complained that he knew little about her earlier life at the Salon Rouge or even what she did on those days when he had to travel to Burgenland on family business. He had imagined that this would make Arabella afraid of losing him, so she would change her attitude and become more devoted and affectionate. More than anything else, he was hoping to reawaken her sexual appetite and rouse the magic powers of her femininity.

  Arabella misread his intentions, however. Instead of begging his forgiveness for the past with beseeching looks and quivering voice, she responded with a remarkably lively account of the exciting life she’d led at the Salon Rouge. She supposed that Rudolf, whom she found to be relatively unimaginative in bed and who had caused her own blood to cool, wanted provocative suggestions about what she most enjoyed in bed.

  She left out none of the most intimate details, which made Rudolf increasingly ill at ease. He felt the sting of jealousy. Arabella’s animated expression and lively voice made him suspicious, for she seemed to suggest how boring she found their games in bed. Perhaps she was still getting together with men who attracted her.

  At that moment he was struck by an illness that would torment him for a long time and ruin his life.

  RUDOLF COULD NOT GET OUT of his mind the images of his wife as the Queen of the Night in Vienna. Every time admiring men swarmed about her and each time she smiled at a man, Rudolf told himself that Arabella had never stopped consorting with her earlier acquaintances and frequented them still. These notions had not previously occurred to him. Malicious rumors spread by envious tongues seemed to confirm his suspicions. The poison of jealousy gradually consumed him.

  Recurring dreams tormented him every night. He could see unknown men caressing her breasts and stroking her black hair. He awoke confused and in a cold sweat. He could feel himself swelling with indignation, and he struggled to regain control of his emotions. She was as beautiful as an angel as she lay sleeping next to him in bed. Her beauty overwhelmed him. His feelings of desire were mixed with unbearable pain. Her womanly body attracted him, but more and more he despised her deceitful spirit. He wanted the deceiving whore and her tempting sex to burn eternally in hellfire. His mind filled with fantasies of inflicting pain on her. They became more and more vivid. Rudolf’s jealousy grew with every passing day. He hated every man around him and regarded them all as idiots. He stared fixedly at anyone who spoke to Arabella. He regularly misinterpreted innocent situations, completely lost his head and misbehaved, offending everyone who came his way.

  The increasingly odd behavior of the young Prince zu Biederstern did not go unnoticed. People were frightened by his volatile moods and unbridled aggression. Those of the best society began to avoid his company. Soon it became fashionable in the salons to make fun of him behind his back, in the same way that the salons had always buzzed with admiration for his father.

  Rudolf’s terrible reputation even reached the ear of the emperor.

  A FEW BRIEF VISITS to the aristocratic circles of Vienna made it obvious to Clementina that the Biederstern family was no longer as respected as before. She thought that Arabella was to blame, and so she urged Rudolf to move back to Castle Biederhof. She worried that her son would be openly shunned by the highest aristocracy. Rudolf went along with the idea, because he was less and less interested in society.

  An entire wing of the castle was prepared to receive the young couple. The tranquillity of pastoral Burgenland was good for Rudolf’s spirits and filled him with satisfaction. He and Arabella took daily promenades through the castle’s extensive gardens, and he sought to make her appreciate the comforts of country life and to persuade her to turn her back upon the gossip and glitter of the aristocracy.

  Arabella found their existence in the countryside to be a long, chilly, dreary autumn. This was not the life she had dreamed of. She wanted to be in fine company, roam through the world of the salons dressed in her finery, and visit the Burgtheater and the Opera. She wanted to be noticed, admired, surrounded by flattery and a thousand other little attractions, to feel fortunate at her privileged standing and see the appreciation that shone in men’s eyes, to luxuriate in the role of one of the most attractive women in Vienna. She did not want to live like a rural princess among uneducated peasants and foresters stinking of white wine. She longed to return to the capital.

  RUDOLF REPEATEDLY DISMIS
SED her requests to be allowed to return to Vienna. After three months at Biederhof Arabella told him that she had been invited to a soiree and had accepted because she had desperately wanted to escape their seclusion and meet other people. Rudolf wanted her to stay home with him that evening. He wanted her not to go anywhere. He was certain that her claims of a longing for city life were pure deception. Surely the reason she wanted to travel back to Vienna was to cast herself without a backward glance into the arms of other men.

  Arabella felt like a prisoner. She stood with shoulders erect and head high and with insistent determination threatened to leave Rudolf. His eyes met hers, which were fearless. He was at a loss for words and felt cornered by her righteous indignation. A sudden wave of ill temper swept over him, and he lost control. He called her a bitch and all manner of other epithets. He felt his muscles clenching and his whole body surging with a force that concentrated its power in his belly and his sexual organ. He threw himself upon Arabella, tore off her clothing, penetrated her with violent force, and bit her lips so hard that the blood flowed.

  “You despicable cur,” she said in a voice full of loathing, and then she clawed his face.

  She was frightened by the dark animal pulsation that battered her as Rudolf emptied himself deep in her sex. She wanted to hurt him and offend him.

  “Many men better than you have lain with me since we got married, and not one had to use force to have me,” she said calmly and clearly, with the eerie self-control of a wildcat. “Every one says that he has never experienced anything as heavenly as the warmth of my wet sex. That’s what I want to hear, not your wheezing in my ear. And besides, they all please me far more than you’ve ever managed to do.”

  Arabella’s taunt drove Rudolf into even greater fury. He seized her by the throat with both hands. “I’ll choke you,” he threatened her, “until your tongue hangs out of your filthy mouth!”

  An inarticulate gagging sound came from Arabella’s lips.

  Rudolf rose and buttoned his trousers. He lifted Arabella and carried her to an adjacent room. He flung her onto the floor and locked the door.

  ONCE RUDOLF HAD CALMED DOWN, he felt a tinge of regret and thought that perhaps he should apologize. He understood now that it was the fear of losing her that had prompted him to behave so wildly. During his solitary dinner he tried to decide what he could do to placate Arabella and keep her happy at Biederhof. He found no solution. So he decided to sleep on it and wait until the next morning.

  ARABELLA FELT DEEPLY OFFENDED, and she seethed with rage. Rudolf was a real bastard, she thought, cruder than almost all the men she had ever met. She kicked the door and swore he would never again mistreat her like that. She was by God not his possession. After a long struggle she managed to pick the lock with a hairpin. She left that very evening for Vienna.

  RUDOLF’S DISMAY knew no bounds when he discovered early the next morning that Arabella had disappeared. His heart pounded so hard he couldn’t breathe; a cold sweat broke out on his forehead and hands. He didn’t know where to go. The Bohemian servant Bohumil smiled benevolently at him. In all the years that the old retainer had known Rudolf, he had never seen him so devastated. He asked if he could give the prince something to drink. Rudolf asked for a large glass of cognac.

  We all know that masculine self-esteem is a sensitive plant that must be watered or it will wither. Rudolf irrigated it with alcohol. After he had poured a large quantity of wine and cognac down his gullet over the course of a week, he called for his horse and carriage. The coachman sped toward Vienna. Rudolf sprawled against the soft cushions with his eyes closed, imagining Arabella. He felt the love for her welling up within him and was all but decided to bring her back home.

  But nothing would turn out as Rudolf had expected.

  A LIVERIED SERVANT was sent out to locate Arabella. Night had already begun to fall when he returned to the Biederstern mansion. The servant knocked at the door of the salon but heard no response. After a long pause, he hesitantly opened the door and caught sight of two empty wine bottles on the table. The prince was silhouetted in his armchair before the hearth. Smoke rose lazily from the cigar in his right hand. The servant cleared his throat and announced that he had learned from reliable sources that the prince’s wife would be visiting the Burgtheater that evening in the company of Prince Mattias Schwarzenberg.

  Rudolf erupted into a towering rage at this news. The pains of jealousy were a knife stabbing his heart. He was sure that Arabella was Schwarzenberg’s lover. The thought offended him deeply, since for some reason never explained to him, the name Schwarzenberg was deeply despised by his family. He decided to go at once to the theater.

  THAT EVENING’S GALA at the Burgtheater was the event of the season, both socially and artistically. An expectant mood filled the horseshoe-shaped hall. His Majesty Ferdinand was celebrating his fiftieth birthday with a new drama written in honor of the emperor by the popular author Franz Grillparzer.

  MATTIAS SCHWARZENBERG had only recently become a widower, but he still appeared vigorous and youthful, an aristocrat in the best years of his life and by no means a grieving old man. He participated in social life with exuberant energy and never missed an event.

  The Schwarzenberg family had a large box in the first row. It was the envy of everyone in Viennese society, for it was directly adjacent to the emperor’s loge.

  That evening Arabella was wearing a tight-fitting long red dress cut daringly low so that it generously displayed her ample bosom. She sat next to the prince, sipping a glass of champagne, pleased that the young gentlemen in the rows above were staring at her in fascination. She loved for men to strip her naked with their imaginations.

  The play was a fine one in agreeably melodious verse. A young man in a strange costume killed another one onstage. An older woman wept, another fell to her knees. The actors gestured wildly. Arabella sat there entranced by the action. Mattias Schwarzenberg was in pain, however, because he had injured his back in a serious hunting accident.

  Arabella leaned toward her host to whisper a comment about the play. The gentle curve of her breasts swayed very close to the prince.

  Just at that moment Rudolf erupted into the loge. He thought they were being extremely intimate with each other. He had absolutely no doubt that he had caught Schwarzenberg in the act of caressing Arabella’s breast. Rudolf shook with fury and began screaming like a madman.

  Onstage one of the leading actors was in the middle of declaiming a poetical line about the sweetness of the morning air. He choked on his words and stood there petrified with his mouth half open. Everyone in the theater, actors and audience, turned their attention to the box adjacent to that of the emperor.

  For a fraction of a second Rudolf and Arabella stared into each other’s eyes. She knew instinctively that her most effective response would be to break into tears, using the weapon of all women since time immemorial. She rose, her eyes brimming, and embraced her husband. She assured him that she loved and respected him, that he was the closest thing to her heart. Rudolf would not yield. Arabella’s words and tears made no impression upon him. He didn’t want tears from her; he wanted her to confirm the error of her ways, whether her conscience was clear or guilt-ridden.

  He felt duped and humiliated before everyone in the hall. It suddenly seemed to him that he had been granted a glimpse into a life of lies and crimes that exceeded anything he could have imagined. He violently thrust Arabella back into her chair, almost turning it over, and screamed that her declarations of love were lies, cheap theatrics, and she was nothing but a whore.

  Schwarzenberg stepped between them. He admonished the young prince for behaving like a child, in a manner hardly appropriate for the heir of such a highborn family.

  Full of spite, Rudolf threw himself at the prince. He struck him in the face several times and then kicked him in the groin. Schwarzenberg was completely overwhelmed. He doubled up and sprawled against the wall, gasping for breath. His mouth tasted of blood, his wig hung
awry, and his left ear was filled with a roaring that seemed to pierce his head. He clasped his hands to his face and found that his lip had been split open. The signet ring gleaming on his little finger was covered with blood. Rudolf disappeared from the box before Schwarzenberg could catch his breath sufficiently to issue a challenge to a duel.

  ENORMOUS CONSTERNATION filled the Burgtheater. The ambassador from the Court of St. James, Lord Hickenbottom, was so alarmed that he suffered a massive heart attack, fell into a coma, and died early the next morning. Several ladies fainted. Everyone fell silent in terrible distress. One after another, spectators lowered their eyes and pretended to be somewhere else. The theater was deathly silent. Even those sitting in the farthest reaches of the hall could hear that the emperor was upset, for his hand shook uncontrollably as he unwrapped a chocolate praline from Sacher’s pastry shop.

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING Rudolf received a note written in childishly sprawling script upon Prince Schwarzenberg’s personal stationery. Arabella declared that as far as she was concerned, their marriage was ended.

  Rudolf’s first thought was that she wanted to be free to indulge in all of her vices, everything that she had been kept from doing by their stay in the countryside. He fell into a black mood and visualized unbearably graphic images of how he suspected she would be using her freedom.

  Before he could sink any deeper into those painful fantasies, a new message arrived, this one from the Hofburg Palace. The emperor was getting involved in the matter. Rudolf was summoned to the court to account for his behavior at the Burgtheater.

  “IN EARLIER TIMES young princes were not so quick to mistreat distinguished older princes,” His Majesty stated. And he asked sternly, “Does this unacceptable attitude have something to do with your personality, young Biederstern? I have heard of a number of other distasteful incidents.”