Requiem in Vienna (14 page)

It had been, as she reflected on it later that evening, dining at the Alte Schmiede with her friend Rosa Mayreder, a good day’s work. Their conversation quickly turned to the feminist league that Mayreder was then organizing.

All the while, however, Berthe kept in mind the tiny life now forming in her, nearly oblivious of the food in front of her: a succulent mound of
germknödl
, a great white puff of a dumpling filled with plum jam and topped with ground poppy seeds, melted butter, and sugar icing. Its yeasty fragrance, once so appealing to her, now set Berthe’s teeth on edge, and she moved the plate away, an action not unnoticed by her friend.

“I’ve put on a kilo or two since the marriage,” she said by way of explanation. Though hardly a devotee of the physical cult as had been the late empress who traveled nowhere without her exercise machines, Berthe prided herself on maintaining a healthy physical condition.

Rosa smiled at the explanation, but Berthe felt she was not fooled.

Rosa Mayreder was an imposing figure in Vienna, and Berthe felt fortunate to count her among her friends. Author, painter, musician, and feminist, she was a Renaissance woman who was connected to many of the new movements in art and thought in Vienna both through her own work and through that of her husband, the architect Karl Mayreder. It was Rosa’s husband, in fact, who had given the architect and designer Adolf Loos his first job after the young man returned from his American sojourn.

Berthe had met Rosa through her Settlement work; Rosa volunteered to help the children with art projects. Watching her with the children, Berthe had been impressed by how warm and playful she was. She had no children of her own, and now in her forties, it was doubtful she ever would. Partly for that reason Berthe did not mention her own condition; she did not know if her lack of children was a regret or not for Rosa. She never mentioned it and Berthe followed this lead.

“Is that husband of yours involved in anything of interest?” Rosa suddenly asked, as if changing a subject that had remained unspoken.

Berthe brightened. “As a matter of fact, he is.”

She lowered her voice, leaning over the table toward Rosa. The two looked like conspirators as Berthe described their efforts at protecting Mahler.

“My Lord,” Rosa said once Berthe had finished her précis. “One has heard the man’s a martinet at the Hofoper, of course, but to try and do away with him?”

“It could be unrelated to his music,” Berthe said, “but neither Karl nor Dr. Gross believes so.”

“And there’s another martinet, to be sure,” Rosa said, meaning Gross.

Berthe lifted her eyebrows in agreement. “But he can also be a funny old bear.”

“I should like to see that.” Rosa finished her meal, setting the fork and knife together on the plate. “Come to think of it, though, perhaps Mahler’s professional personality is sufficient motive for murder. Think of his shameful treatment of Hugo Wolf.”

Berthe made a tsking sound with her tongue. “That poor man.”

Wolf, a musical genius whose
lieder
compositions alone had ensured his lasting fame, had gone mad in 1897 at the age of only thirty-seven, and was now lodged at the Lower Austrian Landesirrenanstalt, an asylum in the Alsergrund district.

“He visited Mahler just before going into his mental twilight,” Rosa said. “Mahler had promised to produce our opera, but then he went back on his pledge.”

Berthe remembered now: Rosa had written the libretto for Wolf’s opera,
Der Corregidor.
She and Wolf had in fact become fast friends during this collaboration. And when Mahler refused to produce the opera, Wolf became totally unbalanced, declaiming for all to hear in front of the Hofoper that Mahler had been dismissed and that he, Hugo Wolf, was the newly appointed director. Wolf was thereafter confined to a mental asylum by his friends.

“An awful time,” Rosa said, reliving those moments in her mind as well. “It was the sense of betrayal. That is what finally pushed him over the edge. He and Mahler had been such close friends, and then that refusal.”

Berthe did not know of this friendship. “When did they meet?”

“At the conservatory. They were poor struggling students together, even shared a flat for a time. One wonders what other former friends Mahler has angered.”

The offhand comment from Rosa struck home for Berthe. Neither she nor her husband, not even Gross, had considered this possibility before. Despite the presence of the old friend Natalie Bauer-Lechner, they had all overlooked the fact that Mahler had spent the years of 1875 to 1880 in Vienna, training under teachers such as Anton Bruckner and earning an impecunious living as a music teacher to young pupils.

Thus far Karl and Dr. Gross had been focusing on those people in Mahler’s current life who might have a grudge against him. But what if this was about the past, not the present? Who else had Mahler been friends with during those years?

Hugo Wolf, according to Rosa’s account of the tale, had motive enough to want to do away with Mahler. However, incarcerated in an asylum, he was clearly not a suspect. But who else might bear Mahler a grudge from those years? What other betrayals might earlier acquaintances have experienced, nurturing their hatred for a score of years? After all, one did not become director of the prestigious Hofoper at the tender age of thirty-seven without having stepped on toes or perhaps even dislodging other climbers from the ladder of success.

It was most definitely a new direction for their investigation, and Berthe was anxious to share it with her husband.

“Thank you, Rosa,” she said, reaching across the table and patting her friend’s hand.

Rosa did not ask what the thanks were for; she simply smiled in return.

The next morning Gross reached the newspaper offices of the
Deutsches Volksblatt
at Bäckerstrasse 20, in the First District, eager to move forward with the investigation. Eberhard Hassler was, as the journalist Kraus had opined, a possible suspect because of his vituperative critiques of Mahler.

Gross had had an opportunity to read some of these notices,
and had to admit that they went well beyond the bounds of musical criticism, attacking the man himself and his putative religion-race: “Herr Mahler, it would seem, intends to turn the Hofoper into the Jewish Opera, ridding our fine institution of such voices as Marie Renard and the conductor Hans Richter, and replacing them with Jews, such as the feeble soprano Selma Kurz and the untested conductor Franz Schalk. Where will this end? Is there no man among us who will stop Herr Mahler before he completely disgraces the most noble institution in the empire?”

The last sentence in particular had made Gross ponder; it was as if Hassler were inciting violence upon Mahler. Though he thought little of the malformed journalist Kraus—much too fond of his own voice—Gross did have to allow that he was a keen witness of the Viennese scene. Hassler indeed was a man warranting an interview.

The man’s office was on the third floor of the neoclassical building housing the newspaper, controlled by the anti-Semitic Christian Democratic Party, whose leader, Karl Lueger, had been mayor of Vienna for the past two years. Inside the double doors, Gross pointedly ignored the newly installed electric elevator, opting instead for the stairs that took him up five flights to Hassler’s office. There was no indication of shortness of breath by the time the criminologist—no longer a young man at fifty-two—reached the desired office door.

He had called ahead for an appointment, but Hassler’s secretary told him there were none available.

“Herr Hassler,” the man told him in a rather high and imperious voice, “is not in the habit of being interviewed. Rather, he is the one to conduct such interviews.”

Gross thought of himself as a force of nature. He simply assumed that his fame preceded him wherever he went; that individuals would be eager to help him in whatever investigation he might currently be involved. Thus this callow private secretary’s
rebuke came as something of a shock to him. He would, however, not let it impede his investigation.

Gross was, in addition to being supremely self-confident, also a realist. He did not take the secretary’s reproof personally; it was only an indication of the young man’s impoverished intellect. But it had prompted him, in part, to seek out Prince Montenuovo. Now, armed with a letter from the prince, Gross felt no door would be barred to him in Vienna.

The journalist was guarded, Gross assumed, by the same young private secretary he had spoken to on the telephone. He looked no older than a
matura
student, but then Gross found himself, as he grew older, to be a poor judge of age in others. Gross did not bother addressing the young man; instead he simply handed over his letter from Prince Montenuovo. This had the intended result, for the young man immediately got out of his chair and disappeared into an inner office. Less than a minute later, he returned.

“Herr Hassler will see you now.” It was the same high voice from the phone.

Gross still did not bother exchanging the barest pleasantry with the young man as he was ushered into a large corner office, its walls overflowing with all manner of odd symbolism: a stuffed stag’s head overlooked a diploma from the University of Vienna; English prints of hunting scenes were framed by crossed sabers; the red, gold, and black of the flag of a united Germany was a prominent color scheme in both curtains and wall hangings. Gross thought the decoration was excessive, but that hardly made the man a potential killer.

“Dr. Gross. A pleasure to meet you.”

The man addressing him neatly fit into the excessively symbolic surroundings: a dueling scar etched the left side of his face from eyebrow to chin, his short black hair was all but glued to his head by heavy pomade, while a stub of a mustache bristled underneath his ample nose. In contrast, his subtle brown suit was well tailored, and partially concealed the paunch forming at his midriff.

Gross sat in the leather upholstered straight-back chair Hassler motioned him to. A cumbersome typewriter resided on the desk between them, so that Gross had to adjust his chair to have a clear view of his interlocutor.

“You have powerful friends,” Hassler began.

“An employer rather than a personal friend. But yes, powerful,” Gross allowed.

“Then it is court business you have come about? I am not sure how I can be of help in that regard.” Hassler smiled amiably, rippling the scar at the side of his face.

“Court Opera business, in specific,” Gross said.

Hassler’s amiability quickly disappeared. “And they’ve sent a criminologist to discuss that. What crime have I committed then?”

Before Gross had a chance to reply, Hassler surged on: “They have sent their polite requests on the emperor’s embossed stationery no less. As if that should impress me. As if that will still my pen. And now they presume to frighten me off with a criminologist. Outrageous!” He slammed his meaty fist on the desk, shaking the keys of his typewriter.

“Herr Hassler, I haven’t the least idea of what you are talking about.”

“I am talking about nothing less than freedom of the press. I know that may ring hollow in this land of open governmental censorship, when white space occurs daily in front-page stories suppressed at the last moment because the authorities deem them too sensitive. But to take such censorship to the cultural pages is an outrage. Blasphemy.”

Gross began to understand the lay of the land. Apparently Montenuovo’s office had attempted to tone down Hassler’s criticism of Mahler, and thus the journalist took him, Gross, for one more envoy from the count. He decided not to disabuse the blustery reporter of this assumption. The longer he could keep his actual purpose hidden, the more information he might be able to squeeze out of the volatile man.

“You must admit, Herr Hassler, that some of your columns have sailed rather close to the wind. There are libel laws in effect, after all.”

As Gross hoped, this intensified Hassler’s ire.

“Libel! Every word I print is the truth. You prove otherwise. Mahler is destroying the Hofoper, and that is attested to by any number of musicians and singers.”

“It is one thing to critique his musicality, quite another to impugn his race.”

“But he is a Jew. No matter that he converted just so he could be appointed to the position. Once a Jew always a Jew.”

“If not libel, defamation, then,” Gross said.

“You are saying he is not a Jew?” Hassler smiled cunningly, as if he had just scored a point in a trial.

Gross allowed him this small victory, indeed made a gift of it in order to make Hassler feel in control of the conversation. He thereby might become reckless.

“You do not like Herr Mahler on a personal basis, is that so?” Gross asked.

“I do not know him on such a basis, nor would I care to.”

“You’ve never met him? Never been to a rehearsal then?”

“I see what you’re about,” Hassler said, leaning back in his chair and nodding his head at Gross. “Trying to make it appear I have no inside knowledge about Mahler and his regime. That I am writing a pack of innuendo and opinion. But let me tell you, Dr. Gross, I have my sources. I also attend numerous rehearsals, so that I know what goes on behind the scenes. I have witnessed Mahler browbeating his singers, his musicians.”

“As with the unfortunate Fräulein Kaspar? I assume you must have been at the rehearsal where she was accidentally killed. Your subsequent article supplied so much information that I imagine you witnessed the incident yourself.”

Hassler ran a forefinger down his scar. “A most unfortunate affair, to be sure. But no, I was not personally present. My information
came from one of my opera sources, himself an eyewitness to the tragedy. But that does not mean my information is not one hundred percent accurate. I cannot be in all places at once. That day I had a meeting to attend in Graz.”

Gross said nothing, hoping Hassler would offer more information, something that would verify his absence.

“So get on with it,” Hassler said. “Give me your dire warning from the lord chamberlain and let me proceed with my work. Or is that why you’ve come at all? What really is your business, Dr. Gross? Why the curiosity about my attendance at rehearsals?”