“It’s not your music,” said Joan Quigley, who was married to her football captain, now a lawyer in Pittsburgh, and would meet Wheeler clandestinely on the road when she could. “Which has gotten very good, by the way. You are famous for being famous.” That was the public part.
What no one knew, the deep secret part, was that shortly after he left Harvard, an attorney from Boston had tracked Wheeler down at music school and broke the news to him of the family trust. It seems that his grandmother had been an extremely active investor and had invested her own family money with extraordinary shrewdness over the years. “Beginning at the turn of the century, she picked start-up investments in the most prosperous American corporations,” the family attorney said. “Her choices were uncanny.”
The highly secret result was the Hyperion Fund, which she had controlled totally from behind the scenes it seemed, making contributions to civic causes and Harvard University. Her will had made Wheeler Burden along with his two aunts her heirs and directors.
“Mr. Burden,” the attorney said, “you are an extremely wealthy man.”
Wheeler paused for only a moment. “Who knows this?” he said to the lawyer.
“No one,” he said. “That is how Mrs. Burden ran it. She was one of the wealthiest and most secretive investors in Boston. No one knew. Not even her husband, your grandfather, I am told. Our firm held her secret for over sixty years. We are not going to change that now.”
“We’ll keep it that way,” Wheeler said. “Top secret.”
“Absolutely,” the banker from Boston said.
“Fine,” said Wheeler and continued with his study of the guitar.
It was not until some time later that Wheeler noticed a most unusual detail about the Hyperion Fund. Aside from the fact that his grandmother had made a number of uncanny investments over the course of more than fifty years, in the summer of 1929 when stock prices were soaring and investors were speculating and buying wildly with huge margins of credit, Eleanor Burden had withdrawn all the funds from the stock market a few months before the Black Monday crash of October 28, 1929.
19
A Great Weight
Dilly Burden’s discovery of his son had come in two stages. The first was the shocking realization that this man, who approached him in the midst of the chaos of the Language Ordinances riots now wildly running to escape the mounted soldiers charging into their number, was someone who knew him. That could mean only one thing, of course: that this man had experienced the same dislocation in time as Dilly himself. “You must have traveled here in the same manner as I,” Dilly said above the tumult around them.
“I have,” Wheeler said.
“And you knew me at Harvard?” Dilly said.
“I knew of you,” Wheeler said. “Dilly Burden was a hard person not to be aware of.” Wheeler held out his hand. “The name is Harry Truman,” he said.
“Like the senator from Missouri.”
“Exactly,” Wheeler said, “but no relation. And actually, I am from San Francisco, but I have spent a good deal of time in Boston.”
Dilly shook his head. “And you went to Harvard?”
“Actually, I did,” Wheeler said.
“What class?” he said, then realized before Wheeler had to answer that both of them had for the moment disregarded the surging crowd and the melee of rioters running to avoid the sword-wielding horsemen. He looked up to see one of the mounted soldiers, sword raised above his head, charging straight for them. “Look sharp,” he yelled and gave Wheeler a shove and the two of them nearly fell backward into the fray. “We’ve got to get ourselves out of here.”
And both Dilly and Wheeler abandoned their preoccupations with each other and concentrated on weaving through the crowd and off to a side street. “I suggest we find a nice secluded café somewhere far from here,” Dilly said.
Wheeler nodded and followed. “That would seem a good idea.”
After they had retreated for a few blocks, the sound of the melee fading behind them, Wheeler found his new friend and himself in a neighborhood he knew and a workman’s bar where he had eaten once before. “Could you use a meal?” he said, and just for a moment Dilly closed his eyes and said without words that, yes, he could sure use a square meal.
“So you recognized me?”
“You were in the papers. And we attended a few events together.”
“You knew my parents then?” the thirty-year-old Dilly said, once they were seated, acknowledging their difference in age.
“Only indirectly,” Wheeler said, trying to mask his discomfort, then changed the subject. “I believe you played with Benny Goodman’s orchestra. ”
“Only one summer. How did you know that?”
“I ran into a teacher of yours. We met on the train to New York. He was a very dignified Austrian gentleman, and he seemed quite proud of you.”
“Oh my,” Dilly said. “That would be the Haze, Arnauld Esterhazy. I am sure you heard quite a trip’s worth. We were very close.”
“So now you see how I know so much about you,” Wheeler said, comfortable that he had come up with an acceptable explanation.
“While I was in school, through law school actually, I dabbled in music. I played the clarinet and always wanted to play with John Philip Sousa.”
“Don’t you have to be in the Marine Corps for that?”
Dilly smiled for the first time. “A minor obstacle.”
After lunch they walked out on the Ringstrasse toward the Danube Canal. “How did this happen?” Dilly said suddenly, gesturing out toward the whole city. “I mean, how did we get here? What have you figured out?”
Wheeler shook his head. “I have no idea. I was hoping you would know something.”
Dilly shook his head. “It baffles me. I just woke up here. I was sitting at a table in the Prater. No idea how I got there.”
“Me, I was walking right along here by the canal. I just sort of came to and found myself walking, sort of out of a fog.”
“Mystifying,” Dilly said. “I find myself a little out of touch with Vienna. I suppose it is my weakened condition. I am rehabilitating, I think you would say.”
Wheeler nodded. “Part of it is just traveling, I think. It has taken me a long time to adjust to being here.”
Suddenly Dilly stopped and stared ahead. He pulled on Wheeler’s arm. “Would you mind stepping into this shop?” he said, and pulled Wheeler out of the sidewalk. Once inside, looking out the shop window, Dilly continued. “There is a man I am trying to avoid, and he was heading right toward us. I thought it best if we ducked in here for a moment.” As he finished, a young man, walking briskly, appeared in their view out the store window. Wheeler watched for a moment before recognizing him as the young man in the Hotel Imperial from whom he had stolen the clothes he had on his back.
“Who is he?” Wheeler said.
Dilly looked grim. “Someone with whom I have had some dealings, and whom it would be better to avoid.” Almost without wanting to, Wheeler’s eyes scanned Dilly’s clothes, wondering if perhaps he too had encountered the same problems Wheeler had faced upon entry to Vienna and had victimized the same poor man.
“You didn’t steal from him,” Wheeler said, thinking of the remarkable coincidence he was proposing.
“Oh, goodness no,” Dilly said quickly. “I just don’t want him to see me.”
“Well, he doesn’t look very friendly,” Wheeler said.
“I would just as soon avoid him all together.”
After the man had passed, they continued walking and came to the stone bridge over the Danube Canal. They walked out onto it and stood at the stone railing and looked out to where the river wound around through the city out to the main river.
“You have been by yourself a good deal, I gather.”
Dilly sighed. “Yes. I thought it better as I was recovering. When I first arrived I needed time to myself.”
“How have you been supporting yourself?”
“Not very well, I f
ear. I found that I could do some translating at the university. I found an assignment the first day.”
“You seem to be—” Wheeler paused, wondering if it would be appropriate to bring it up. But holding back had never been one of his fortes. “You seem to be carrying something heavy.”
The remark caught Dilly off guard. He stood up straight and looked at Wheeler, considering walking away at the same time sizing him up as you would an unknown sparring opponent. “What do you mean?”
Wheeler pressed on. “It’s just that you look like someone who is carrying a great weight.”
For just an instant Dilly looked as if he might let down, but then he pulled back. “I have come from a terrible experience.”
Wheeler looked out at the city, as if he was not particularly interested in the conversation, then he looked back into the tortured face beside him. When he spoke, his voice was full of compassion. “This time travel is rough stuff, isn’t it?”
Dilly closed his eyes and leaned back onto the stone railing. He took a deep breath of the canal air. “Yes,” he said finally. “The last thing I remember it was 1944. I was—” Then he stopped.
“You were with the Gestapo?”
Dilly eyed his companion suspiciously. “You know about that?”
“Yes,” Wheeler said. “After the war, we all heard.”
Dilly looked too tired to resist. “Oh my,” he said. “You come from after the war then?”
Wheeler nodded. “Quite a while after.”
“It is all very confusing.” He released this time a huge sigh, then he became reflective for a long moment. “I kept thinking about Vienna. My mother had filled my head with stories about all this, as had the teacher you met on the train.”
“Your Mr. Esterhazy. The Haze, I think you called him.”
“Exactly, he knew all about this.” Dilly raised his hands out toward the city. “And I tried to fill my head so full of what it must have been like that I didn’t think of what was happening. I guess as I got weaker and weaker and the thoughts got stronger and stronger something broke loose. However it was, I woke up in a chair in a café in the Prater, listening to waltz music. How I got there, I have no idea, but I much preferred it to where I had been.”
“They were torturing you, weren’t they?” Although he had not dwelled on it, the thought of his father’s torture at SS headquarters in Paris had occupied some of his thinking about what his death must have been like.
“They certainly know how to do that,” Dilly said, repressing a shiver. Then he stopped, with his hands spread out on the stones, pulling himself back to the present. Slowly, he turned his head and eyed Wheeler, an idea beginning to grow in his mind. “How do you know about the Gestapo?”
“It became pretty well-known,” he said, giving his father a shrug and a conciliatory smile. “Dilly Burden worked with the French Resistance.”
“You seem to know an awful lot about me.”
Wheeler looked away for a long moment, deciding. “Look, Dilly,” he said abruptly. “There’s something I’ve got to tell you.” Dilly was silent, waiting, and Wheeler looked over at him. Their eyes met, and Wheeler knew he was going to have to go all the way. “My name isn’t Truman,” he said quickly. “It’s Burden, like you.” Then he paused and let it soak in. “Stan Burden.”
Dilly paused now for a long while, examining Wheeler’s face. “How could that be?” he said curiously, without much clarity, still trying to grasp what he had just been told.
“Because I’m your son,” Wheeler said. “I’m Stan Burden, your son.”
Dilly could only stare. “Stan, my son?” he said in something like a mumble. Then he shook his head, poised between disbelief and acceptance. “Well, I’ll be switched,” he said slowly, letting his eyes run over the man across from him. “Well, I’ll be.” Suddenly, he looked as if he might cry. “You’ll have to pardon me,” he said. “I have been having a hard time with my emotions lately.” He looked at Wheeler and both men’s eyes filled with tears.
“That’s what I kept hoping for,” he said after a long moment, wiping his eyes. “This is an awful lot to absorb.” He shook his head again to clear the cobwebs. “I kept thinking about Vienna and your mother and you.” Then he smiled and gave Wheeler a long appraising look. “Only when I saw you last it was just a few weeks ago.” He stopped and gave Wheeler a long satisfied once-over. “And you were three years old.”
20
Handsome Karl
It should come as no surprise that Dilly had taken to the café scene in Vienna with relish, as if he had been born to it. He and Wheeler had found themselves alone at a table and they were talking together quietly, going over the details of their miraculous arrivals here in this mythical city, comparing notes and becoming acquainted. Dilly, adjusting with remarkable alacrity to the presence of his son twenty years his elder, was clearly stimulated by the environment of the famous Café Central. “Isn’t this capital,” he said with the broadest and most satisfied of grins, looking around at the marbled floors, the partially filled tables, the attentive waiters, and the racks of newspapers. “Absolutely capital.” He took in a deep pleasurable breath, savoring the unique aroma of baked goods and coffee, recalling as Wheeler had the elaborate descriptions of their great mentor, the Venerable Haze. They sat and talked.
Soon the Jung Wien table began to form, and inevitably the two Americans were invited to join. “I am Herbert Hoover,” Dilly said with gusto to the group, without even a twinge of hesitation or self-consciousness.
“We are happy to meet you, Mr. Hoover,” Kleist said, with the patented good-natured acceptance Wheeler had come to expect. “A few days ago we knew no Americans except your famous Mark Twain. Now we know three. I hope you will join us in our discussion.”
“Splendid,” Dilly exuded. “We will do our best to keep up. I hear there is a robustness to these conversations.”
Karl Claus, the writer, let out a burst of laughter. “I don’t know that the word robustness has ever been used on us before.”
“How then would you describe our deliberations?” said Schluessler, the scientist.
“Candid and honest,” added von Tscharner, the architect. “We simply express our opinions in a candid and honest fashion.”
“And the results,” Kleist said, completing the circle, “just happen to be robustness.”
“So there you have it,” Claus said. “We have now been categorized, and we must live up to it. Does anyone have anything especially robust to begin with?”
“The Language Ordinance riots,” Dilly said quickly. “Let’s start there. My friend and I were just in the middle of them and nearly got our skulls bashed in. What are we to make of these?”
“Oh my,” Claus said acerbically. “Now you are asking us to notice the current political realities of our little empire. Don’t you know that the first lesson of denial is to stay in the café here, head in the sand, and not notice anything in the street outside?”
Von Tscharner, the pragmatist, jumped in. “Mr. Hoover is asking for an interpretation, Karl, not your gloomy message that we are all dancing on the edge of the precipice. This is an interesting time to be in Vienna, but it deserves thoughtful interpreting observation and not raw cynicism. ”
“All right,” Claus said, too quickly to register any offense. “I’ll give our guests something thoughtful. We are living in the capital city of an empire that is looking very much like one on its last legs. Our emperor is a tired old man, an anachronism. Our Parliament is cacophonous and disruptive beyond repair. Our army, in spite of its grandly colorful uniforms, has not won a battle, let alone a war, in this century. Our borders keep shrinking. We have built a splendid boulevard of gaudy marble façades, but we cannot house or care for our lower classes. We have huge uncontrolled debt, and no one with a clue how to reduce it. All the nationalities, our dear Slavic countrymen, are dangerously restive, clamoring for attention and independence. And all we Viennese want to do is drink our coffee mitt sch
lagg, listen to operettas, meet our sweet girls, and waltz ourselves silly to the strains of Strauss the younger. Let us not call it ‘dancing on the precipice,’ heavens no, that would be cynical. Let us look at the rosy hues only.”
“There is much to be done. I grant you that,” von Tscharner cut in. “And we are the group to do it, or haven’t you been noticing that either, Karl? We are Secessionists.”
“Ah, the Secession,” said Claus. “That is going to quiet the political chaos and right the ship of state.”
“The Secession is the movement we are all part of,” Kleist said, looking at Dilly and Wheeler, as if they needed explanation, but Dilly nodded to let him know he was following. Truth be told, Dilly knew exactly what they were talking about, and was loving this. “It is a group of artists who are fighting against the establishment and blazing a new trail. Very exciting. ” And again Dilly nodded his understanding, the Secession and the creation of the modernist movement in fin-de-siècle Vienna being one of the Haze’s favorite subjects.
“We have the power to do something, to redesign politics, art, and the buildings of the city,” von Tscharner said.
“You and our mayor Handsome Karl,” Schluessler said. “There is a brighter tomorrow.”
“Mayor Lueger, he means,” Kleist interrupted again, helping his American guests, and again Dilly nodded.
“Handsome Karl is fine,” Claus chipped in, his lip curling his contempt as he spoke. “If you don’t happen to be Jewish.”
“I think you Jews can take care of yourselves,” Schluessler said. “Last time I looked you were running everything. Jews dominate Vienna’s public life, the banks, the press, theater, literature, social events. Everything is in the hands of the Jews.”
“I will have to agree with Herr Schluessler there. Just look around,” said Kleist good-naturedly. “In the famous Viennese arts, it is the Jews who are the real audience. Without them we’d all perish: they fill the theaters and concerts, they buy the books and pictures, visit the exhibitions. Being newcomers to aesthetics, they have a more flexible way of looking at things, less burdened by tradition. That is why they have become everywhere the champions and sponsors of everything that is new.”
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