Requiem in Vienna (23 page)

Werthen recognized this
herr ober
. Herr Otto, he was called, a former waiter at the Café Landtmann. It had been some time since Werthen had last seen the man.

Herr Otto, once he had finished serving Hanslick, also recognized Werthen and nodded politely at him as he and Gross approached Hanslick’s table.

“Good day to you, Advokat,” the waiter said, a slight—some might say mischievous—grin on his face.

“And how are you, Herr Otto? Changed locales, I see.”

There was no winter coat for the waiter to hump off his shoulders; instead he waited for Werthen and Gross to dislodge their summer hats, and swept them up in his right hand with a certain reverence.

“Thanks to you, Herr Advokat. Thanks to you.”

“Not returning to the Landtmann, then?”

Herr Otto shook his head vehemently. “Never in this life. No trust, sir. A terrible thing that. As terrible as was the deed you did me good.”

A small thing, actually, Werthen reflected. Herr Otto, the former headwaiter at the Café Landtmann, and something of a local legend, had lost his position, accused of theft. Another waiter, Herr Turnig, had gone to the management claiming that he had seen Otto, on several occasions, taking money out of the till as he did the closing. As Turnig was a cousin of the owner’s wife, his word was respected in the matter. Herr Otto was fired and subsequently, Herr Turnig himself became headwaiter.

Werthen had known Otto for years and when informed of his troubles and assured of the man’s innocence, he had taken it upon himself to clear up matters. This was during the time he was still convalescing from his leg wound and had wanted to keep his hand in with investigations. A simple enough matter, really, for if Herr Otto were innocent of the charges, that meant that Herr
Turnig had fabricated them and had stolen the money himself, for indeed the accounts were off by several thousand crowns. The motive, beyond the money, was obvious: ambition. Herr Otto’s disgrace allowed Turnig to take over his position at the noble Café Landtmann.

Werthen began by investigating the private life of Herr Turnig, and quickly discovered the man was living well beyond his means, residing in a spacious apartment in the First District and keeping a summer chalet in Carinthia.

Confronted with these facts, Herr Turnig quickly folded under Werthen’s questioning. He absconded rather than waiting for the police to arrive at his door, and was reportedly now working as a waiter in Florence, beyond the reach of Austrian authorities.

Herr Otto’s good name was restored and he had become headwaiter at the Frauenhuber, another good reason for Werthen to change his café preferences from the Landtmann to the Frauenhuber.

Herr Otto took Werthen’s hand now, shaking it firmly.

“If you do not mind, sir, a million thanks to you. And from my wife. The usual, I assume, for both you and your friend?”

Werthen nodded.

The exchange had been the matter of but a few instants, yet it had caught the attention of several of the customers, Hanslick among them. Gross, who already knew of Werthen’s assistance to the waiter, focused his attention on the music critic, and Werthen now eyed the man, too.

There was no hint of recognition in Hanslick’s eyes.

“Herr Hanslick?” Gross inquired.

The smallish man half stood, nodding at them.

“At your service, gentlemen. Dr. Gross and Advokat Werthen is it?”

He nodded at them as he spoke their names, indicating them wrongly, but Werthen quickly corrected the confusion as they joined him at table.

Gross then set right to the task at hand.

“I imagine you are wondering at the purpose of our interview, Herr Hanslick.”

The critic allowed a slight smile to cross his lips; he gestured with a small hand—a wave of assent.

“I admit to curiosity. As a functionary of his majesty’s government, however, I bow to official requests.”

“Yes,” Gross said. “The prince said you were a most forthcoming and cooperative servant.”

Werthen knew the criminologist had chosen the word “servant” carefully—its resonance was broad and powerful. Hanslick was the sort of man who needed reminding of his official status.

Herr Otto delivered two coffees for Werthen and Gross, appearing and disappearing with barely a notice.

“I and my colleague, Advokat Werthen, have had a chance to peruse your work,” Gross went on, “especially your informed and excellent
The Beautiful in Music
, and I can say we both think you are the perfect man for the job.”

Hanslick beamed at the praise, but also squinted his eyes in incomprehension.

“Which job would that be, gentlemen?”

“Prince Montenuovo has conceived of a project to educate the young of our empire in its cultural assets. To that end, he wishes to prepare several school primers in the arts, from music to painting to sculpture and design. Each tome shall be written by the absolute authority in the field. When it came to music, your name, Herr Hanslick, was, of course, at the very top of the list.”

“A primer?”

Gross shook his head. “An ill-chosen term, perhaps. A book, indeed, to share the musical wealth of this great land of ours. To fill the young with the wonders of our composers. And who better situated than you to do so?”

Gross smiled unctuously at the critic. It really was a good performance, Werthen had to admit. He almost believed that such
a project actually existed. This time, however, unlike their supposed commission from Mahler to Frau Strauss, Werthen and Gross had cleared the ruse with Prince Montenuovo first. If Hanslick were to check on the authenticity of this supposed primer at the office of the lord chamberlain, he would be reassured. Then, of course, after the passage of some time, the same office would regretfully announce that the project had been postponed.

“Well, I am pleased,” Hanslick began.

“Excellent, excellent,” Gross enthused. “We have come, however, to ensure that the full breadth of compositional skills will be included in such a work. We are, naturally, aware of your position in the so-called War of the Romantics.”

Hanslick raised a hand at this; his small, blunt fingers tapped at them, as if playing the piano.

“Please, not that old baggage.”

“Old baggage, sir?” Gross said.

Hanslick took a sip from is coffee. “The musical quibbles of decades ago. High time to let all that matter rest.”

“We had rather thought that you had strong opinions regarding certain of our composers,” Werthen said delicately.

“Strong opinions, to be sure. I assume you are fearful that I shall give short shrift to those such as Bruckner or Strauss who veered too much to the emotional in music?”

“Well,” Werthen went on, “it had crossed our minds. I believe you referred to the ‘muddled hangover style’ of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony in your notice of its premiere.”

“My critics, I fear, do not always understand me. Or perhaps they do and simply misrepresent what I really say. Some would indicate that I have drawn the line in the sand: whether a musical composition can be regarded as an intellectual or emotional content embodied in tones, or can be regarded as nothing but a contentless tonal structure. My critics—some might say enemies—claim I do the latter to the detriment of the former. However, I believe I have built a rational argument in my tract,
The Beautiful in Music
,
between these two extremes. It is true I found and continue to find Bruckner’s work tedious. The Eighth, as other Bruckner symphonies, was interesting in detail but strange as a whole and even repugnant. The nature of the work consists basically in applying Wagner’s dramatic style to the symphonic form.”

“And Wagner’s work is . . .” Gross searched for the proper word.

“Overly dramatic?” Hanslick supplied for him. “Do not misunderstand me. I was quite a fan of Wagner in my youth, and I still enjoy much of his music. However, it is the theory behind it to which I take exception. Yes, I once wrote that the prelude to
Tristan und Isolde
reminds me of an old Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are slowly unwound from his body on a reel. But that is not the entire oeuvre of the man, nor my entire estimation. For Wagner, music was a means for presenting drama, for evoking emotion. But music should not be understood in terms of emotion. It is not essential to music to possess emotions, arouse emotions, express emotions, or even represent emotions. No, gentlemen, the true value of music lies within the formal aesthetics of music itself, not in the expression of extramusical feelings.”

Werthen watched Hanslick closely as he spoke with what Werthen could only describe as restrained enthusiasm or muted emotion. Such must be his lectures at the university. From what Mahler had told him (for Mahler, as a student at the university had taken Hanslick’s class), the critic stood at a lectern and read into his moustache from scripted notes, in a nearly inaudible, high-pitched monotone, “soporific but not displeasing” as Mahler put it. At the piano, his small hands and fingers moved quickly and economically over the keys while he swayed to the music and kept time with a tapping foot, playing always from memory. Mahler felt these lectures were comical to behold, but not unmusical.

Werthen also remembered that Hanslick was, first of all, a trained lawyer. He did present a convincing argument.

“If you have read my eulogy to Strauss, then you could hardly count me an enemy to his music, either,” Hanslick said. “My notice in the
Neue Freie Presse
grieved his death as the loss of our most original musical talent.”

Both Gross and Werthen showed even more amazement at this.

“Oh, I know,” Hanslick said, seeing their astonishment. “Everyone likes to quote me about how his melodies made people unfit for serious music. What they seem to be unaware of is that admonition was made against his father, and was said when I was a very young and irascible sort of critic, out to make a name for myself. But I mourned the death of Johan Strauss the Elder as well, writing that Vienna had lost its most talented composer with his death. For the son, Johann the Younger, I had great admiration. His rhythms pulsated with animated variety, the sources of his melodic invention were as fine as they were inexhaustible. He was a noble gentleman. One of the last great symbols of a pleasant time now coming abruptly to an end. We are, I am sure you are aware, on the very cusp of the twentieth century. Only months left to this elegant century to which we all belong. And who knows what horrors await us on the other side of midnight, December 31, 1899?”

“What indeed?” Gross agreed.

“But I am not trying to ‘sell myself’ as the Americans say,” Hanslick continued. “I should indeed be honored to add my thoughts to the prince’s project. Yet I tell you all this not out of a desire to curry favor; instead, I dislike intensely being misunderstood and misquoted.”

He drained his coffee cup, then adjusted the bottom edges of his mustache with his right forefinger.

“And now, gentlemen, I must take my leave of you. I have a lecture to prepare for this afternoon.”

As he left, Hanslick looked Werthen closely in the eye.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance again, sir, under more favorable circumstances.”

He left before the shocked Werthen had a chance to reply.

“You know, Gross,” Werthen said after Hanslick had left the café. “I do not believe that fellow was one bit taken in by our little tale of a school primer.”

“I agree, Werthen. A very astute judge of character, I should say.”

“Then why continue with the farce?”

“Hardly a farce, dear Werthen. Our story may have been fabricated, but there is nothing false about our credentials from Prince Montenuovo. One can be sure that he checked our bona fides before agreeing to this little talk. No, Herr Hanslick is not a fool. He clearly saw our real intentions—gathering information about his relations with Bruckner and Strauss—and wisely delivered the information we were seeking.”

“But can we believe him?”

“Your investigation, Werthen.”

“Damn, Gross, must you be forever contentious?”

The criminologist merely raised his eyebrows.

“All right,” Werthen said. “Yes, I think we can trust him. Partisan he may be, but I also felt a note of sincerity in how he felt, above all, about Strauss.”

Gross nodded. “And we can also check his obituary notice in the
Neue Freie Presse.
But I do not sense that he was lying.”

“We may, in fact, be able to check him off our list of suspects,” Werthen added. “Provisionally.”

Herr Otto delivered a pair of glasses of water, nodding solemnly as he did so.

“Herr Hanslick is something of a legend,” Otto offered.

“He comes in here regularly?” Werthen asked.

Herr Otto slightly nodded his head. “Generally at this table. And often in the company of his colleague, Herr Kalbeck.”

Meaning Max Kalbeck, Werthen thought. The music critic for the
Neues Wiener Tagblatt
and the friend of Brahms whom Kraus had mentioned as the source of his story about how Brahms had disliked Hanslick’s musical tract.

“Colleagues, you say?”

Another slight nod from Herr Otto. “They meet at least three or four times each week here. Often they share remarks on texts they have written. Herr Kalbeck was here in fact just minutes before you gentlemen arrived. No texts today, though. The two of them were sat hunched together speaking in whispers like conspirators. When I delivered their coffee, they broke off the conversation and only started again once I was out of earshot.”

Which might or might not have something to do with their meeting with Hanslick, Werthen thought.

“Tell me, Advokat. Are you working on another case? Is that what brings you here? Something involving Herr Hanslick, perhaps?”

Werthen was amazed at the seeming pleasure Herr Otto took in such questions.

“Just like that English gentleman, eh?” Otto said. “Always smoking his pipe, playing his violin, and catching the culprit.”

Which comment brought an angry clearing of the throat from Gross, who continued to claim that Arthur Conan Doyle had stolen from his own early writings in the creation of his character, Sherlock Holmes.