Brief Encounters With Che Guevara_ Stories - Ben Fountain [89]
Commentators have noted in this eccentricity all the characteristics of a neurotic symptom. Without doubt, the compulsively veiled hand, as well as the “phases” during which she retreated from the outside world, indicate significant stress in the girl’s life. Some have portrayed these symptoms as a response to her treatment by the pan-German press, which, in the course of advocating the union of Austria’s German-speaking regions with the Reich, had begun to review her performances in the manner of anti-Semitic diatribes. Others surmise that these were a sensitive girl’s reactions to the more general malaise hanging over the city, although the pursuit of art, with its constant, debilitating risk of failure, not to mention the solitude and unwholesome narcissism that sustained concentration necessarily entails, is, even in the best of circumstances, enough to induce the entire range of psychopathy. That Anna was merciless with herself, and suffered accordingly, is evident from her cousin Hugo’s diaries. For instance, in the entry dated 11 November 1898, we find Anna telling Hugo:
“It’s only when I’m with you that I’m allowed not to work.”
And on 5 December, in response to Hugo’s entreaties not to strain herself:
She looked down at her shoes and smiled to herself, as if I were a rather dense little boy who’d asked her to make the river stand still.
“To play well—I suppose I’ve always assumed that it’s a matter of life and death.”
It was Hugo to whom the family turned when Anna lapsed into one of her phases. Hugo Kuhl was destined to become a minor ce lebrity of the age, an ironic, deliciously blasé feuilletonist for the liberal press and the author of a number of drawing-room plays, of which The Escape Artist and Dinner with Strangers are still known to scholars. But at the time in question, Hugo was merely a literary-minded student at the University, known to his circle as a stylish, handsome wit of no defined vocational goal, also an accomplished amateur pianist with a sec touch. It seems that he alone, out of all of Anna’s siblings and numerous cousins, could give some organizing principle to the drift of her phases, during which Anna managed to dress and feed herself, but little else.
21 MARCH
To Uncle Leo’s flat in the p.m.
Anna listless, almost catatonic, Hermine tearing around like a fishwife, railing at her to practice—
“Shame on you Anna, for shame! Herr Puchel will be so furious!”
Anna silent, tears in her eyes; I could have cheerfully throttled dear Aunt at that moment. Chose instead to move A into the afternoon sun, onto the cut-velvet sofa by the window. Sat for a peaceful hour while I read Tantchen Rosmarin aloud, A’s head on my shoulder. For me, a perfect hour. For her, I imagine that existence was almost tolerable.
In fact Hugo was basically helpless when confronted with a phase, and admitted as much in his diaries. His therapy seemed to consist of taking her out for long walks on the Ringstrasse, or among the earthier amusements and shops of the Prater. The two cousins were often seen strolling arm in arm, a strikingly handsome, fashionably dressed young couple, and yet mismatched for all their good looks and evident wealth: Hugo obviously too old to be Anna’s suitor, Anna clearly too young to be Hugo’s wife. Even so, some have suggested that their devotion to one another surpassed the usual bond of sympathetic cousins, and, indeed, there are aspects of the diaries that imply infatuation. Hugo notes even their most casual physical contact, as when Anna places her arm on his, or their legs happen to brush while riding in a carriage. He remarks frequently on her beauty, variously describing it as “radiant,” “precocious,” and “disabling,” and once comparing her,