The Little Book: A Novel

by Edwards, Selden

  At the time of Wheeler’s visit, the tragedy surrounding Crown Prince Rudolf was still on everyone’s mind, and still cloaked in mystery. The royal family’s efforts at covering up the facts had been successful, or one would say later, had been as successful as anything the royal family had tried to do. Within weeks of the awful tragedy, German newspapers, freed from the yoke of imperial censorship, were beginning to uncover the details, real and imagined. But even nine years after the fateful night in the imperial hunting lodge, fact and romance blended together into a version that the national psyche could accept and endure. The suicide of the heir to the throne seemed to be a metonymy, a part that represented the whole, an event that symbolized what lay deep in the great heart of Vienna and the empire itself: intrigue, enigma, and doom.

  The Haze would tell the whole story, filling in all the details. The tragedy at Mayerling, after all, was a central part of his gospel, the gospel according to the Haze. The crown prince was despondent for a number of reasons. He had contracted a painful, and then incurable, case of venereal disease, the same disease that had driven his mother’s cousin Ludwig of Bavaria to lunacy and suicide only a few years before. He hated the thought of Germany, and perhaps all of Europe, being dominated by his crude bully cousin Wilhelm II. He feared—and justifiably so—that Austria would lose the Balkans to Russia. He had become addicted to opium and alcohol. And he was unhappily married. More than all these, however, the most significant contributor, probably, was the crown prince’s relationship with his father, who had thwarted him at every move and had systematically and cruelly excluded him from all decisions of state.

  For a city and an empire that so associated itself with optimism and gaiety to accept that the heir to the Hapsburg future had killed himself in a fit of temporary derangement was difficult enough; accepting that he was a murderer was nearly impossible.

  In his refusal to let out the truth about Mayerling, it would be said later, the emperor displayed the same hardness of heart that had made him a disaster as a father. The son who had embarrassed him in life shamed him in death. And yet Franz Joseph was unable to share authority with his son, unable to bear the spark of independence the young man possessed, could not bear sharing authority with his offspring and eventual successor.

  The crown prince’s mother, the aloof and beautiful Empress Elisabeth, a concerned and loving mother perhaps but caught in the cold distancing of a patriarchal military society, powerless to intercede between frustrated son and harsh rule-oriented father, could only watch and hope. After that awful night she never again appeared in public except in mourning. Rudolf, her beautiful son, wrote her a good-bye note saying he had not been worthy of her. “In the dawn of the modern age of psychology, born in Vienna,” the Haze would intone, “when mental anguish would be pinned on the doorstep of parents, Franz Joseph and Elisabeth’s was exposed by implication as the prototypical destructive family.” Then he closed the notebook, the storyteller at the end of his story. “Mayerling,” the Haze would say in barely more than a whisper, “dashed hopes and ended the era of optimistic liberalism in Vienna.”

  Wheeler’s personal involvement with the tragedy came about in a peculiar way. On his way back from one of his meetings with Freud one morning, he set his mind on the Imperial Academy of Art and the “Crown Prince’s Album” he had been so impressed with when Emily James showed it to him. It was, by coincidence, the morning he had stopped at the cabinetmaker’s shop and picked up the finished Frisbee. “An object of true elegance,” the cabinetmaker had said to him with a broad satisfied smile, “no matter its function.”

  “Beautifully turned,” Wheeler said, giving the disk an upward flip and catching it. “Light, just as we designed it, and stained and finished like a fine violin.” He had thanked the cabinetmaker, paid him, and told him he would report back after a trial flight in the Prater. “It will do magic. I’ll invite you to come see,” Wheeler said as he left the shop.

  When he entered the museum and climbed the huge marble stairway to the second floor, he ran into a sign that announced that the section was closed. Never one to allow signs and rules to stand in his way, Wheeler looked around to see that he was in the clear of guards and stepped nimbly around the sign and found himself all alone in the collection of watercolors and drawings. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a dark shadow and turned. Standing alone beside him, having appeared from around a corner, stood a woman in black, wearing over her head a thin black veil. She possessed an arresting beauty, ivory skin, dark eyebrows, and deep sad eyes. She took no notice of Wheeler, yet had slid up beside him with quiet grace. “Hello,” he said with a nervous extroversion that belonged neither with this setting nor with this century.

  The woman showed no alarm, but looked over to him with an ethereal calm, her eyes showing first a sad indifference, then seeming to catch something in his face that brought the traces of a distant smile to her lips. “Good day,” she said.

  “These watercolors are exquisite,” Wheeler said, as if he needed to explain why he had intruded in the closed wing. “I’ve come from the American west, from San Francisco, to see them.” For an instant it occurred to Wheeler that perhaps he could pass as some special visitor with privileges and not just the crass interloper that he actually was.

  “I hope they meet your satisfaction.” Her voice was soft and genuine, intended to put him at ease. There was in it nothing to suggest her being impressed or offended by what Wheeler had tried to imply. At that moment a man in elaborate military dress appeared around the corner and, seeing Wheeler, seemed startled. His sudden move toward him was stopped by an almost imperceptible sign from the woman in black. The officer frowned, eyed Wheeler haughtily, then moved to the far end of the room. “They were made lovingly,” she said.

  It was only then that Wheeler realized why the floor had been closed and the profound pretension of his being there. “I am sorry to have intruded, ” he said, stepping back.

  “No, no,” the woman said, raising her hand gently. “I enjoy the company. These works are to be enjoyed. And we would not want to discourage someone who had come from as far as San Francisco.”

  “He was very handsome,” Wheeler said, looking at the watercolor and wanting to acknowledge that he understood the extraordinary circumstance chance had laid before him.

  Again, her sad eyes took him in slowly, showing for just a moment a deep satisfaction. “You share some of his traits,” she said. The words had a timeless ring to them; they came out of a place in the soul many layers below joy or sadness, where distinctions between monarchy and peasantry no longer mattered. Her eyes shifted to the wooden disk in his hand, and Wheeler noticed it.

  “It is a saucer,” Wheeler said tentatively, lifting the disk as if to show that it was not some sort of harmful device. “It is designed from a pie plate.”

  The woman looked amused. “And its purpose?”

  “Recreation. It’s for throwing,” Wheeler said to fill the silence. He flipped it a few inches out of his hand and caught it. The woman watched it and smiled. “I brought the idea with me, but it was crafted in Vienna.” She nodded. “It is thrown across open space, thirty meters sometimes, and it soars and floats, lighter than the wind. People in my country like it because it gives them, regardless of station, the illusion of flight.”

  The woman in black was charmed. The thought occurred to Wheeler that maybe for the first time in years she had felt in her heart something at least in the proximity of joy. “If we weren’t inside,” he said, “I would show you.” He looked around the room of watercolors and down toward the officer, who still frowned and still pretended to be examining the drawings in front of him. He would have made a terrible Frisbee partner.

  The woman smiled, full and open, and in that moment Wheeler saw what no mortal had seen for almost a decade and none would be likely to see again, the most beautiful face of the nineteenth century in a full and warm smile. “You have a captivating manner,” she said. If the remark and the loo
k had come from across wineglasses in a dark corner of a café, its recipient would have inferred rich connotations.

  “Only to match an extraordinary presence.” Wheeler bowed slightly and lifted the wooden object with both hands. “I would like you to have this.” He offered it to her. Her two pale hands came forward away from the black silk in which they had shrouded themselves, and it was only then that Wheeler could see their extraordinary beauty. They lifted the object from him ever so gently and held it out for a moment. “Always imagine it soaring.”

  “I shall,” she said in little more than a whisper. “I shall picture it soaring. ”

  “Good day,” Wheeler said, this time bowing deeply and moving to leave, and then pausing a moment before walking toward the giant stairway to the Ringstrasse. “And thank you for sharing with me this brief moment honoring your beautiful son.”

  31

  A Mesmerizing Spectacle

  His friend Kleist took such a keen interest in Wheeler’s first trip to the opera that one might have thought it was to be his own. He arranged to borrow a formal suit of clothes from a young medical student who was Wheeler’s exact size, then he told Wheeler how to hire for modest expense the most elegant cab, and finally he showed his American guest how to carry himself like a Viennese gentleman. “The arts in Vienna are the common ground of the classes,” Kleist told him. “Your intention here is to make all stations think you are one of them. Harry von Truman,” he said with a flourish. “Or Truman the scrivener.”

  Wheeler called at Pension Tatlock at six o’clock precisely. Fraulein Tatlock greeted him with her usual enthusiasm. “My,” she said, “how like young nobility you are looking tonight, Herr Truman.”

  “I have come to take my new friend to the opera,” Wheeler said, bowing.

  They both turned to watch her come down the stairs. She was wearing an evening dress of coral-colored lace with a low neckline and a white shawl around her shoulders. She seemed to float down the stairs with a joyful glow. “Isn’t she radiant, Herr Truman?” said Fraulein Tatlock in her best broken English. “Does she not light up the room?”

  For a moment Wheeler found himself unable to speak. She had pulled her hair up and fastened it with a jeweled brooch, and her cheeks seemed redder, her eyes a darker blue, her lips almost crimson. She was in that moment a woman of stunning beauty.

  “I am so excited to be showing you the opera,” she said in the cab, leaning toward him in the leather-upholstered seat. “It is one of the spectacles of the modern world. My Viennese friends have grown up with this city. They do not realize how splendid it is. And—” She leaned into his ear. “You are looking very handsome. All the young men who have been watching me for the past few months will be insanely jealous and will want to know immediately the identity of my dashing escort.”

  “I think more than likely their eyes will be fixed on you.”

  The Opern-Ring teemed with people, all heading toward the broad steps before the magnificent Renaissance façade of the Hofoper, the imperial opera house, the jewel of the Ringstrasse. They joined the elegantly dressed company and passed through the huge archways into the building. The vast interior was a riot of interconnected arches, gilded details, sculpture, and bright frescoes. The floors were marble tiled, the doorway arches decorated with ornate columns, and up in the parapets stood huge Greek statues. The foyer was richly embellished with scenes from operas and busts of famous composers.

  Inside, the auditorium space felt cavernous, all richly gilded and painted, holding easily two thousand seats, on the main floor and in the balcony and boxes. Wheeler, who had played in Carnegie Hall and Symphony Hall in Boston with Shadow Self, had been in more than his share of renowned music halls but had never seen anything to match this. “It is absolutely astounding,” he said, as they moved toward their seats.

  “This is an apex,” she said. “There are even two curtains. This one, a scene showing Orpheus descending into Hades, is for tragedy. There is another one they use when they are playing a comedy.” Her eyes shown with an excitement Wheeler had never seen before.

  “This is a musician’s dream.”

  “I have been dreaming of it for months now,” she said, looking over at him, her face glowing with the delight of having someone to share this spectacle with. “The people in Vienna take this for granted. They think this is all part of the normal flow of life. You have to come from another country to appreciate it.” She scrunched her shoulders in a gesture of delight. “I am so happy you are here to see it.”

  The opera itself, Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, was exactly what Wheeler imagined as fitting for the setting. It was long, serious, and beautifully melodic. The staging was spectacular, with magnificent, colorful sets that took the breath away with each opening of the giant curtains. And, of course, Mahler’s dramatic entry was riveting. He swept in and rose to the podium with an energy that was breathtaking.

  “I can see why he mesmerizes people,” Wheeler whispered, himself the perpetrator of grand entrances in another time. “If he is that magnetic in a space this size, I can only imagine what he would be like alone in a small room.”

  “Overwhelming would be an adequate word for it,” she said.

  At the first intermission, she took hold of Wheeler’s arm and nudged him toward one of the exits. “This part is almost as good as the music,” she said. “We get to mix with the Viennese, except those—” They were passing under the overhanging boxes of the first tier. She gestured upward. “They are the patrons—titled families and the very rich—who own boxes. They do not have to move for their refreshment. It is brought to them.” They passed through the door into the vestibule. “But they miss out on all the spectacle down here.”

  The crowd had begun to form. Elegantly dressed military officers and mustached gentlemen stood in groups, talking with beautiful ladies in richly laced dresses. The room buzzed with animated conversation as they drifted through toward the champagne, where Wheeler found his friend Kleist.

  “This is Miss Emily James,” he said with a flair, and Kleist took her hand and kissed it dramatically.

  “I am impressed by your elegant taste in women,” Kleist—with a reputation for dalliances with a “sweet girl” or two—said, loudly enough for her to hear.

  “Kleist is a painter, a friend of Klimt,” Wheeler said. “One of the regulars at the Café Central.”

  “Where at this very moment,” she said with a touch of irony and a charming smile, “the problems of the world are being solved.”

  “If not being solved,” Kleist retorted, his champagne glass at his lips, “they are certainly being flogged to death. You are also an American, Fraulein James?”

  “I am from Massachusetts,” she said.

  “And you are living in Vienna?”

  “I am in Vienna studying music.”

  “Ah,” said Kleist. “You are a musician?”

  “A music theorist,” she said. “My playing is not up to the standards of this city. I have been sent to write something of significance.”

  “You should meet Schoenberg then. He is one of our crew at the Café Central. He could introduce you to Herr Mahler and a host of other of our luminaries.”

  “I have already had the honor of meeting Herr Mahler,” she said, looking down at her hands. “I was introduced by Herr Felsch and went to his studio for an interview—”

  Kleist was caught by surprise. “You met Herr Mahler in his studio?” he said, obviously impressed

  “Alone in his studio,” she said forthrightly. “And I fainted dead away, I am afraid to say.”

  Kleist was eager for the details. “Most of us would die to talk music with Herr Mahler,” Kleist had said after listening intently to her story, “and you have already fainted in his arms.”

  “It was hardly that romantic. I dropped like a stone onto the hardwood floor beside his piano. He summoned his maid to revive me. It was terribly embarrassing, and I did not go back to complete my interview.”

&
nbsp; The chime sounded, calling them back to their seats. She moved forward and Kleist stayed behind. “What an absolutely charming young woman,” he said to Wheeler when she was safely beyond hearing. “She has such an unusual combination of savoir-faire and—” He paused, not wanting to appear either catty or disrespectful. “Openness. I would find her quite disarming.” He watched her walking away. “Quite disarming indeed.”

  Back in their seats, she turned to him. “You speak German excellently, Mr. Truman.”

  “Not as well as you, Miss James.” It was true. He loved listening to the gentle tones she drew from the language from which he seemed to extract nothing but harsh edges. As the lights dimmed, Wheeler leaned toward her bare neck. “Kleist was quite smitten,” he said into her ear. “That does not happen easily.”

  “Viennese gentlemen,” she snapped back matter-of-factly, “are hopeless flirts.”