The Hare With Amber Eyes - Edmund de Waal [77]
Gisela is eleven and starts drawing lessons in the morning-room. She is very good. Iggie is nine and is not allowed in. He knows the uniforms of imperial regiments (‘pale blue trousers of the infantry, the blood red fezzes on the heads of the pale blue Bosnians’) and sketches the colours of their tunics in his little leather notebooks tied up with purple silk. In the dressing-room, with the cabinet of netsuke forgotten, Emmy calls him her adviser on dress.
He starts to draw dresses. Furtively.
Iggie writes a story in an octavo Manila book with a boat on the cover. It is February 1916.
Fisherman Jack. A story by I.L.E.
Dedication. To darling Mama this little volume is very lovingly dedicated.
Preface. This story is not perfect in any way, I am sure, but one thing is well done, I think: I have described the characters of the book clearly.
Chap.1. Jack and his life. Jack had not been a fisherman all his short life, at least not until his father died . . .
In March the IKG writes an open letter to the Jews of Vienna: ‘Jewish Fellow Citizens! In fulfilment of their obvious duty, our fathers, brothers and sons devote their blood and their lives as brave soldiers in our glorious army. With similar consciousness of duty, those who remain at home also have happily sacrificed their property on the altar of their beloved fatherland. Thus now again the call of the state should arouse a patriotic echo in all of us!’ The Jews of Vienna contribute another 500,000 crowns to the war loans.
Rumours are endemic. Kraus: ‘What do you say about the rumours?/I’m worried./The rumour circulating in Vienna is that there are rumours circulating in Austria. They’re even going from mouth to mouth, but nobody can tell you.’
In April in Vienna a group of soldiers on leave, survivors of the battle of Uscieczko, appear on the stage of a Viennese theatre and re-enact the events of the battle. Kraus, splenetic at this reduction of real events to spectacle, lets fly with an attack on the increasing theatricality of the war. The problem is: ‘die Sphären fliesen ineinander’ – the spheres have become blurred, flow together. Boundaries are indistinct in Vienna during the war.
This means that there is plenty for the children to see. Their balcony is a splendid vantage point.
On 11th May Elisabeth goes to the Opera to hear Wagner’s Die Meistersinger with her cousin. ‘Heilige Deutsche Kunst’ – ‘sacred German art’ – she writes in her little green book in which she records the concerts and theatres she attends. She patriotically underlines Deutsche.
In July the children are taken by Viktor to the Vienna War Exhibition in the Prater. This has been organised to focus the war effort at home: it will raise morale and money. Best of all is a dog show in which army Dobermanns go through their routines. There are numerous display halls in which the children can see captured artillery pieces. There is a realistic mountain panorama of a battle site, so that they can imagine the boys fighting on the borders with Italy. There are concerts given by soldiers who have lost their limbs, tuba-players with prosthetic legs. As you leave, there is a cigarette room in which you can donate tobacco for the soldiers.
Elisabeth’s opera and theatre notebook, 1916
There is the first showing of a true-to-life trench. It is advertised, notes Kraus acidly, as showing ‘life in the trenches with striking realism’.
On 8th August, staying at Kövesces, Elisabeth is given a dark-green book of poems written by her maternal grandmother Evelina, first published in Vienna in 1907. It is inscribed by her: ‘These old songs have faded away from me. Since they are resonating for you, they also resonate to me again.’
Viktor is doing his bit at the bank, a thankless task in wartime, with most of the young, competent men away at the Front. He is generous and patriotic in his financial support. He buys lots of government War Bonds. Then he buys some more. Though he is advised by Gutmann and other friends at the Wiener Club to move his money to Switzerland, as they are doing, he will not