A trip to Vienna with a Legend

Capote’s introduction to a short story comprises the literature as: writing, good writing and the art. He does describe his efforts to reach a higher level in his endeavors. He does not specify how to create the art. In short: writing is like sculpturing, adding or subtracting the material or starting again.

My best friend is Monica. A fair-haired, blue-eyed architecture student with dimples in her cheeks. We’ve known each other since the first grade.

When she suggested a trip to Vienna, I was overjoyed. Onkel Otto W., her dad’s brother lived in Vienna.

We took a train, laughing and giggling the whole way, anyhow, nobody complained since there were only a few passengers in the carriage.

Onkel Otto lived in the Innere Stadt, the I.st District, on the top floor of the edifice, built in the 19.th century. He was a civil engineer and a painter.

His wife, Tante Elsa inherited the apartment from her father, an affluent pharmacist, together with a mansion in Wienerwald, which the family used infrequently due to rather complicated commuting possibilities back then. Besides, a wolf was spotted in the area.

Over the time they managed to buy an adjacent apartment as well, thus owning the whole fourth floor. The rooms were huge, the doors were gilded, the ceilings were five meters high and the apartments were connected by two long hallways.

Onkel Otto hired Frau Gertrude to run the household, a highly efficient, plump, retired accountant; everybody loved the kind Frau Gertrude and the life ran smoothly since then.

Tante Elsa was in her forties and still pretty, a shy, friendly woman, very delicate and highly sensitive. And with a hidden sadness in her eyes. She greeted me warmly and explained that she hasn’t been well lately; no doctor in Vienna could help her; they told her she was simply nervous. She had this skin rash in her elbows and knees, resembling the wounds. The rashes would come and disappear, mostly they were gone when she visited the doctor. And she had these harrowing migraines. She asked me if I knew what the illness was but I didn’t.

They had two daughters. The younger one was Rosie, a five year old doll with golden curls and blue eyes. The older one was Pia, a nine year old blonde, serene girl. Their Mama told them to be good girls and behave; they looked me up searchingly to assess the gravity of the command and relaxed.

I was nineteen that June and I haven’t shrugged off my childhood yet. I was laughing all the time and resembled their cousin Monica in many ways.

The family owned a second home north of Venice and spent every summer over there. My friend Monica vacationed with them and all three girls spoke Italian fluently. I did not speak Italian or German back then.

A corner room with two entrances was allocated to me, one leading to the west hallway where the atelier was and the other opening leading to the east hallway. The entire north wall of the room was covered with the enormous oil painting of Makart, depicting the Siege of Vienna with countless horsemen of Ottoman and Holy Roman Empire. There was a sofa with carved legs and a grand concert piano, a Boesendorfer.

Monica and I set off to conquer Vienna immediately. We bought a Street Map of Vienna with a legend.

The air was mellow, a few white clouds were scattered in the blue sky. There was music in the air: Strauss’s Perpetuum mobile performed on a hand saw and a xylophone.

We dived into the Shopping Malls on Mariahilfer straße, danced into Albertina to admire The Hare and waltzed into the National Museum to inspect the rocks and minerals.

Until this moment, although unaware of it, my entire life revolved around beauty. My parents loved the Beauty. I lived under constant incentive to look out for beauty; to spot the beautiful clouds or to marvel at the stunning foamy waves on the shore of Tunisia. The teachers demanded to improve my handwriting, to write a more beautiful, exciting essay, to paint a beautiful painting for a competition, to play Bach with cantilena and Mozart lightly, almost staccato, because in order to express the beauty of these compositions one has to interpret it in a different way. Even the purpose of cleaning the room and doing the laundry was performed with the aim to render the surroundings more pleasant, more beautiful. At that time I was a freshman in college and did not live with my parents any more. I moved to a different city, however, only to move in with my aunt. And I continued to live in a bubble.

The National Museum of Vienna was a kaleidoscope of interesting artefacts.

Entering a low-lit room I froze with fear and just stared at what was in front of me. Out of a transparent, epoxy casket lurked the most horrible mummy in the world; with sunken eyes and a black hole instead of a nose. There were no lips, only black, decomposing gums with brown, protruding, grinning teeth. Black and gray tissue was peeling off the bald skull. Bony arms, covered with gray skin ended with black fingernails. You could only imagine the smell.

“Gross,” said Monica visibly shaken.

I was frightened. It dawned onto me that all the decisions I have made in my life so far were of no importance at all. The life rolls on, notwithstanding one’s decisions or actions and at the end you die, even if you want to live forever. If you want to, there is one terminal decision to be made. There are three options: when you pass on, you would be stuffed in a coffin, with blue, green puss and maggots oozing out of your nose. Or, if embalmed, you would look like this poor monster in the museum. Or you would be cremated. I have seen the cremation. It took many hours and the corps twitched in the flames. It even lifted for a moment. And even if you don’t want to make this particular decision, someone else is going to decide instead of you. Because people think it’s important. It’s a matter of beauty, the aesthetics.

Now, you could argue that when you die, your soul departs from your mortal fleshy remains which become a trash. I, on the contrary feel that the cocoon of my body will always be a part of ME.

When later my friend Monica entered the Kapuzinergruft, I lagged behind. Now I knew what was laying in these coffins. And I felt that from now on I would always know what is hiding under the surface of all things.

***

The next day the sun was shining gold and pink and it was Rosie’s birthday. The apartment smelled on Vanilla and the doves announced with fanfares “birth-day” on the glittering rooftops of Vienna. Rosie turned five and received new rollers as a birthday gift. That happened forty years ago and the roller skates had two pairs of wheels back then. The family planned to celebrate the birthday after lunch and Frau Gertrude ordered a Sachar Torte from Huebler Kaffee-Konditorei. Rosie refused to wait till the afternoon, so the cake was placed on the kitchen table after breakfast, Rosie blew out the candles and we applauded. Then Rosie put on her new rollers and a new dress with floral pattern and started circling through the apartment: down the east hallway, into the corner room, then she would crash into the atelier’s door with a loud bang and continue down the west hallway. Pia followed close behind on her bicycle. She would let the bicycle drop with a rattle to the floor, play a few bars of Diabelli’s Sonatina on Boesendorfer and continue the wild chase. All that accompanied by laughter and loud shrieks. The laughter is contagious and after a while everybody was laughing heartily.

At that moment it happened. She appeared soundless like a ghost in the depths of the hallway. We watched with intense concentration as if in a trance. The Nemesis. A tall, skinny girl with blank expression in her late twenties sailed down the west hallway. She wore a very short black dress and high hills. She glanced in our direction, but didn’t nod. Ignoring the problem would make a problem disappear. She entered the atelier without knocking. Upon her entrance the key turned in the lock.

“Nicolette, a professional model,” sneered Monica with a grunt. We settled on a sofa with Luis Vuitton’s bags and Lacoste’s t-shirts.

Tante Elsa’s pale face with swollen eyelids appeared in the doorway: " I have a headache and need some rest.” She disappeared in her bedroom with the look of a wounded, tortured animal. Poor Tante Elsa, with her bleeding wounds.

Pia and Rosie continued their race. After an hour the gilded studio door unlocked and Nicolette left. Without a look in our direction.

Then Onkel Otto burst excitedly into the kitchen, with earphones dangling down his neck:

“I am going to receive a very respected visitor in a minute. Could you girls be so kind as to wait in the kitchen during the visit and be quiet?”

All four of us nodded solemnly.

The President of Austria announced his visit.

In a few minutes a distant bell ringing was heard and everybody, except Onkel Otto, gathered around the kitchen table and waited silently. Frau Gertrude, the unperturbed Atlas of the Universe, was baking another batch of vanilla cookies, calm as always.

Quite of a sudden the kitchen door opened and a man in a dark suit and black-rimmed glasses entered and pronounced the legendary sentence, remembered by the family for decades afterwards: “Guess Gott! Ich rieche Vanilla Kipferl.” (Hello, I smell Vanilla Cookies.)

We girls turned into marble statues and uttered a barely audible hello. (Children could be seen, but not heard.) Frau Gertrude, the Sun of our Galaxy, on the contrary smiled, returned the greetings, offered a seat, a cake, a cup of coffee and explained to be a housekeeper and we were children and nieces. Then Onkel Otto came running into the kitchen and ushered the visitor away.

Later, when we heard the apartment door closing, we ran to the windows facing the street and looked down into the insurmountable, abyssal distance where a black limousine and two men were waiting.

This whole afternoon Rosie hopped and danced happily. She told the incredulous delivery guy, who brought the groceries, that the president of Austria came to her birthday party today. That birthday changed our perception of the world. The plate of vanilla cookies turned as if by magic into a consecrated food. Even the taste was changed; there was a distinct, most wonderful aroma to these cookies. Our happy, shining eyes could compete with the stars in the evening sky.

***

Monica and I took the train back home next evening. The golden rays of setting sun painted the Semmering’s slopes with vivid red and golden colors and once we passed the Bucklige Welt, we were enveloped by a complete darkness. And than we plunged into the maddening illumination of Utopia.

That summer Onkel Otto traveled with his family to Italy as usual and on the outskirts of Florence they noticed a sign: Studio Medico Dermatologico. They stopped. Tante Elsa, with prominent wounds on her joints once again, asked a young dermatologist if he knew what disease it was and he said it was an atopic dermatitis and that the bleeding wounds could be treated. Everybody rejoiced. The skin doctor, however, couldn’t cure Elsa’s bleeding heart.

***

I have never seen the family again. Onkel Otto continued to be a successful entrepreneur, the girls grew up and in due time got married and started their own families. Monica and I finished our studies, got the jobs and the government put us under constant surveillance in a house prison, albeit for two totally different reasons.

In 2022, a pony, belonging to the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, was devoured by a wolf.

The LEGEND: looking for the recipe to create the piece of art, I stumbled across Furlong’s five criteria; the following postulates should be fulfilled: writing must be truthful, socially relevant, it changes one’s understanding of people and society, the sentences must be flowing and it evokes emotions. I would add the sixth postulate: the author must pour his heart and soul in the writing.

I did not describe lust, love, jealousy, disappointment and sadness, pertaining to this story. It’s between the lines. Neither did I write of despair, pain, hopelessness, isolation and loneliness, which followed in the years after leaving Vienna.

Vienna of my youth, the ephemeral dream of happiness.