Brief Encounters With Che Guevara_ Stories - Ben Fountain [94]
THURSDAY 18 JANUARY
Anna detached, quite removed from the outer chaos. What Kornblau, Leo, everyone fears most is a phase—Puchel looks to be on the verge of a stroke, so great is his anxiety—but it doesn’t occur to any of them that a phase might be the most normal response to all of this.
And yet she carries on—meals, lessons, study, practice, all in the coolest way imaginable. A method of storing up energy, I suppose. Tonight I played Soirées de Vienne for her after dinner, then read Goethe aloud, Italian Journey.
“I will be at your side, every step,” I told her, which she acknowledged with a grave nod. “God bless you, Hugo.”
“God bless you”—the truly blessed would get her out of here, had he the slightest scrap of courage.
For the performance she chose a black, full-skirted gown with dark brocade roses, a shirred waist, and a high collar of mousseline de soie. A light snow was falling that evening as she and her entourage departed the Salesianergasse, the flakes fine and dry as ash, forming brilliant silver aureoles around the street lamps. Approaching the theater they began to pass mounted Hussars at the street corners, the soldiers magnificent in their blue capes with sable trim, their crested helmets and gold-edged riding boots. Soon the streets were filled with carriages all moving in a thick yet peaceable flow toward the theater. As the pan-Germans had vowed, the virtuoso experienced difficulty in reaching her destination, but it was this mass of coaches, rather than virile nationalism, which proved to be her sole hindrance—Anna was delayed by her own traffic jam, in effect.
Frau von Schonerer received her at an obscure side entrance to the theater, along with a captain of the Hussars, six uniformed police, the theater superintendent, and three muscular assistants, as well as two plainclothes agents from the Emperor’s secret police. Anna was escorted first to her dressing room to remove her cloak, then to a basement rehearsal space where a Bösendorfer grand stood waiting for her final warmup. Puchel entered with Anna and shut the door, leaving the others to endure the chilly hall while Anna ran through fragments of her repertoire, the glorious bursts of notes and supple noodlings followed by Puchel’s muffled voice as he delivered last-minute instructions.
“So small,” the Hussar captain later remarked, describing Anna as she left the rehearsal room. “So frail and small, it seemed impossible that this delicate girl could be the cause of so much furor.” With the theater superintendent and police in the lead, Puchel and Frau von Schonerer on either side, Anna walked amid a vast entourage back to her dressing room, thirty or more people snaking with her through the backstage labyrinth. The captain was close at her heels, then her parents, her uncles, Hugo and several other cousins, Kornblau and his mistress, then a trailing flotsam of stagehands and well-connected journalists. For twenty minutes Anna sat in a corner of the dressing room while this crowd was allowed to mingle about, sampling the sumptuous buffet of meats and cheeses and admiring the flowers and telegrams sent by well-wishers. Hermine and Kornblau, still in mortal dread of a phase, sought to distract the young pianist with trivial chatter. Hugo positioned himself nearby, saying nothing, while Frau von Schonerer furnished periodic updates on the size and eminence of the audience.
“She seemed to withdraw into herself,” Hugo wrote later, “to seek some deep, unfathomable place within her soul, a refuge from this ridiculous melee.” Finally, at ten minutes to eight, Anna announced that she wished to be alone. Her parents and managers protested, fearing a collapse,