by Black Moishe
At last, one morning, the sun came back, and I sobbed with relief. I wept with my eyes full of light. And I realized that it was not the waiting for summer that was wearing me down, but the fear that when summer came I might have lost the ability to enjoy it. I was wrong. I can still enjoy it. Late in the evening, sitting at the open window, looking out at a sky that is still bright, at daylight that still lingers, I am happy. And one pleasure especially is renewed: feeling the softness of the air. But in Vienna, the season of mild air is short-lived. The midsummer period is too hot, storm-filled, and exhausting. Mosquitoes come, indeed all sorts of insects, carrying strange diseases. Something not unlike the muggy spells we had in Versailles can occur here, but in Versailles such spells were accompanied by splendid skies; there is nothing like that in Vienna. Instead, sticky weather means pestilence, the plague commemorated in that monument on the Graben; stealthily, it finds its way in, and kills. I am invited to make a stay at the Prince de Ligne’s house in the mountains, at Kaltenberg, as I do each year. It is a delightful place, like all his residences. Delightful in its gaiety and in the lighthearted pleasure that the Prince brings to whatever he does. And even when he is not doing anything, there is the vibrant feeling that happiness is just moments away. For the coming summer, the Prince has promised me one of his prettiest houses, at any rate my favorite. He owns nine of them: little wooden houses. “My” house is right beside a river (it is called “the Angler’s House,” for an angler fishes with a line, à la Ligne, does he not?). In the middle of each of its shutters, a heart-shaped hole has been cut . . .
I have waited till October, not to come back home, but to pick up my writing again. During my stay at the Prince’s house, there was an accident that distressed me a good deal: a governess in the employ of the Princess de Ligne set fire to her dress. She was very quickly transformed into a human torch. Instead of rendering her assistance, the lackeys that came rushing in thought they were seeing a ghost. They fled, their screams as appalling as those of the unfortunate victim. Nothing else unpleasant occurred to mar our vacation . . . A month in the country, a month of indulging the delusion that we were living in a timeless world, that nothing had taken place, ever . . .The Prince has mastered to perfection the art of forgetting what one does not wish to remember. And the only expression of gratitude he expects from his guests, I believe, is that they follow his example and decree themselves young, heedless, eternally magnificent. I find it difficult.
One afternoon when I was dozing under a tree, he came over and lectured me in the kindliest way: “It is risky to take naps at our age, it gives the Grim Reaper a hold. And that, my dear, is a concession we must never grant him.” He slid his thumb across his front teeth. (Occasionally, the Prince’s manners are atrocious—they are part of his charm! That particular gesture gives him the opportunity to emphasize the fact that he still has teeth.) He moved an armchair and sat down, facing me. “You are about to tell me that you are tired. But you are not, absolutely not! It is all in your mind, I assure you.” When I insisted, he said, “Look at me. Do I look tired?” (He shook the two gold rings he wore in his ears.) “And yet I could easily choose to be old; it’s entirely up to me. Like the others, I have the necessary qualifications.” That he “had the qualifications” was a charming way to put it, I thought.
In the Prince de Ligne’s household, only French is spoken. Life goes on exactly the way it did in France during the reign of Louis XVI. The same habits, the same manners, the same affectations of speech, even the same fashions. The Prince’s current circle of personal acquaintances call him Charlie, just as his close friends had at Versailles. Concessions to the present day are kept to a minimum. When a German expression is inadvertently dropped into the conversation, a shocked silence follows.
“One cannot laugh in German,” said the Prince de Ligne.
“And yet the Queen could laugh. And it was not something she learned to do at Versailles; she learned it here in Vienna, in German.”
That response came from me. It was uttered impulsively and at once regretted, for I do not like to vex the Prince. While I was speaking, I seemed to hear the Queen. She was very close by, and she was laughing. The Prince was reclining on a lounge chair, his eyes blinking up at the sun. “How exquisite is the scent of the linden blossoms,” he sighed. A servant girl leaned over to raise the cushion at my back. That was when I noticed the Prince’s emaciated, crooked legs in their twisted, ill-fitting white stockings. Above the red-heeled shoes that he was surely the last remaining person in the whole world to persist in wearing, there were unwanted folds of stocking. He did indeed have the qualifications. A wave of fatigue swept over me. I continued to hear the Queen’s laughter in my ear, mingled with the buzzing of the bees among the lindens. The Prince de Ligne’s voice had become inaudible to me. And behind him, the French-style grounds, the broad path leading down to the houses on the river, simply ceased to be real. Christine, the Prince de Ligne’s daughter, succeeded in piercing the fog, but only for a moment; then she, too, was incorporated into the ghostly horizon that was blurring the outlines of summer. Cherries: suddenly I had a violent craving for cherries. And I wondered: “Where can I get some? Who can I ask to get them for me?” And, as though summoned up by my question, the personages of the Grand Stairway appeared. The men were wearing Court dress of the seventeenth century. Their perukes covered them from their heads to halfway down their backs. The women had huge panniered dresses. The steps shone brightly. They were new, of white marble. As on previous occasions, what fascinated me about this dream was the motionless stance of the courtiers and the intervals rigorously maintained between one and the next. Also their faces, faces I knew without ever being able to put a definite name to any of them . . . As though they turned up in my life only to hold aloof. And then, at the topmost point on the stairway, the Queen appeared and came running down the great marble steps. No one turned, no one gave a curtsy or bow as she passed. Eyes remained vacant. In contrast, there was something irrepressible about the Queen’s vitality. She was not satisfied merely to run: she leapt. And with each leap, from step to step, the cherries she wore as earrings threatened to fly off. A man, a minuscule judge, virtually cloaked in his full-bottomed peruke, offered this observation as she sped by: “The Queen has the bitter taste of a tribade.”
Who can prompt such dreams? Have we, then, no respite from the Devil?
I must say, to the Prince’s credit, that though he rejects the past, he makes an exception for the Queen. He is the only person here who speaks her name. Also, the only person who regularly goes and meditates at the grave of Gabrielle de Polignac, who died of grief on December 5, 1793, in Vienna. When we are together, and he wants to talk about the Queen, he always starts with: “Do you remember?” I don’t have to answer. Both of us saw a great deal of the Queen, he in ways reflecting his position, I according to my station. His world and mine did not communicate. It would be vulgar of me even to pretend that I am trying to remember. There was, however, one occasion when the Prince evoked something that I, too, could recall. I did not say so, but while he was telling about it, I was picturing the scene very precisely, for I was there. It was a long time ago, at the very beginning of the Queen’s friendship with Gabrielle. They were playing the game they called “watching the fans floating.” They would go and stand on a little bridge in the Trianon Hamlet and lean over the water, which, they claimed, was covered with fans. They would describe the colors and lovely attributes of all these fans. Silk ones or paper ones, they floated, fully open. The two friends were always very sad when the fans gradually sank beneath the surface. Following their lead, the Ladies-in-Waiting, the Ladies of the Bedchamber, the crowd of Ladies of the Château, and the courtiers, pushing to get closer, would look searchingly into the water.
There is a tray of figs on my night table. They are set on leaves, unbelievably sweet-smelling. My Castle of Solitude, my Theater of Memory, has closed around me. “Do you remember? . . . ”
IN THE QUE
EN’S PRIVATE APARTMENTS
(one o’clock in the afternoon).
I AM UNWILLINGLY PRESENT AT A MEETING
BETWEEN THE QUEEN AND HER FAVORITE.
“Indeed, Madam, I had envisioned a rather different welcome, attended by different circumstances.”
The Queen indicated a trunk, a chest, some half-open bags. These things made it virtually impossible to move around, for the rooms were tiny, windproofed with curtains and rugs, filled with bits of furniture. These in turn were covered with portraits, boxes, vases, knickknacks, baskets of flowers done in mother-of-pearl, ivory, ebony, porcelain, feathers, and silk. But Gabrielle de Polignac, slender and supple, had no difficulty picking her way among the pieces of luggage, luggage that would not be needed after all. In the Queen’s eyes it was doubly unwanted, because it was a cruel reminder of her failure. Gabrielle, pale-complexioned, hair hanging loosely around her shoulders, was wearing a green dress. A wide belt accentuated her waist. She was a petite young woman, all soft curves. And it was her softness, her equable temperament that had charmed the Queen. The favorite possessed a natural beauty, as well as a freshness of complexion that took on surprising luster in such a setting as Versailles, where makeup and sophisticated lighting prevailed. Compared with her, the other women at Court were like automatons, gesturing stiffly, walking mechanically, speaking sharply and imperiously. Her voice, in contrast, was soft, and her bearing did not impose. Everyone noticed her, precisely because she made no effort to be noticed. Her light-colored eyes did not linger on any one person. There was about Gabrielle a characteristic elusive quality, and the paleness of those eyes—made paler still in the contrast with her dark hair—enhanced this “indefinable” effect.
Her curtsy was so weightless and quick that it was more like the opening measure of a dance. She was about to begin another, but the Queen stood up and took her in her arms. At that moment, everything in the Queen’s demeanor made her seem tremulous, as though she might crumble at a touch. The brief lifting of the clouds, the moment of serenity produced by my reading, had passed.
“Oh, but I wanted us to leave! Never have I wanted anything so much, with all my might, and I did not get what I wanted. There is no precedent for the mortification I have suffered.”
She was on the verge of giving way to anger once again, but the presence of her friend so softened her mood that affection and sadness came to the fore instead.
“If the King had agreed, you and I would have been saved. And on our return, I can assure you, the libelous rumors would have ceased and with them the madness that is overtaking the people of France. The French do not know. They do not understand what is happening to them. They hear others howling, and before they have had a chance to consider, the cry is already inside them, issuing from them. A single cry for the whole country. But a cry of what, exactly?”
Gabrielle de Polignac had no answer, and she made no effort to find one. She glanced briefly at a mirror, saw their two faces together, or perhaps just her own, and lightly touched a rose pinned in her hair. She moved her head to be sure that the flower was firmly in place. It was a very slight movement. It was enough, from the Queen’s point of view, to break the chain of cares besetting her and dissipate the threat of the outside world. The luggage did not matter now; at most, it was the lingering trace of a passing whim.
The Queen seated her friend at her side on a chair the same height as her own, an armchair previously used only by the King when he visited that room. She leaned over toward Gabrielle.
“Oh my dear heart . . . I was so worried . . . I feared they might prevent you from coming to see me, that perhaps you were imprisoned or ill. Terrible imaginings came to my troubled mind. But you are here, and radiant! . . . How beautiful you are in that green dress, that pale green dress—sea green? lime green?”
“I cannot say, Majesty. I have no aptitude for recognizing shades of color.”
Her dancing eyes, the mock primness of her mouth, and the suggestion of a dimple in her left cheek, made it quite clear that she did not care two pins about shades of color, and in fact, to be more accurate, that she did not care two pins about anything. But she continued in the same vein, playfully secure in the knowledge that the Queen rarely pursued a single topic of conversation for any length of time, so that there was little danger of the joke being carried too far. Moreover, though she did not share the Queen’s passion for fabrics, Gabrielle did enjoy discussing fashions. As for the Queen, she threw herself wholeheartedly into these frivolous exchanges.
“Is my dress almond green, bamboo-shoot green, jade green, or young-crocodile green?”
“You are quite mistaken, my girl”—the Queen laughed—“it is as far from young-crocodile green as it is from spinach green or acid green . . . ”
“Or envy green, which is a hideous green.”
“Vile.”
“A color not to be trusted.”
“And a sentiment, my gentle dove, that has never come anywhere near your heart. That is why having you at my side is so precious.” (She leaned even closer and stroked Gabrielle’s cheek, the one with the suggestion of a dimple.)
“Truly,” the Queen went on, “it seems to me that envy is the emotion most frequently encountered. Each person spends all his time coveting the position above the one he holds, and all his actions are driven by that single sentiment. People strive unceasingly to appease their envious desire, but the coveted place is no sooner attained than they become aware of the place above it. Naturally, this casts a shadow over their joy, and so once again they have to sally forth and mount a fresh attack. What a torment it must be, this perpetual need to strive, and the instant spoiling of any satisfaction! But the ambition of courtiers was familiar to me; what I had never given any thought to was the ambition of the people.”
“A whole new avenue of thought, indeed . . . ,” Gabrielle replied, in a tone of total unconcern.
“Our subjects claim the right to choose who shall lead them. What a strange notion! And they think they will love the leader they have chosen . . . but how can one love a master one has not known as a child? King Louis XV once described for me a scene from his childhood. It was during the Regency of Philippe d’Orléans, and he was living in the Tuileries Palace. Whenever he went to play on a balcony above the gardens, word would immediately spread, and the Parisians would come flocking. There they would stay for hours, craning their necks in the hope that they might catch a glimpse of their little king at play. The Parisians . . . How they have changed! You, Madam, are not envious in the least, and yet your childhood was not happy. Orphaned very young, with no resources, you had ample cause to envy others their good fortune.”
“Did I? I have not really thought about it,” said Gabrielle de Polignac. (And she brushed aside a lock of hair that hid her forehead, below the rose she wore.)
“Talk to me. The truth is, I hardly know you. And if one day we were to be . . .Tell me more, my dear,” requested the Queen, as though her lips were pressed to this bubbling wellspring of candor, and she could never drink her fill.
“Majesty, I am perfectly satisfied with my lot. I believe it was ever thus. It is a trait of my character. But thanks to His Majesty’s generosity, my contentment is now beyond measure.”