The Hare With Amber Eyes - Edmund de Waal [79]
Viktor remembers the Makart spectacle with all the floppy hats with plumes, thirty-seven years before; his father being ennobled, forty-six years previously. It is a generation since Franz Josef opened the Ringstrasse, the Votivkirche, the Parliament, the Opera House, the City Hall, the Burgtheater.
The children think about all the other processions that the Emperor has taken part in, the countless times they have seen him in his carriage in Vienna and in Bad Ischl. They remember him riding with Mrs Schratt, his companion, when she waved to them, a small discreet wave from a gloved right hand. They remember the family joke to be repeated after visiting grim great-aunt Anna von Hertzenreid, the witch. When you have got safely away from her and her questioning, you have to repeat the Emperor’s old saying ‘Es war sehr schön, es hat mich sehr gefreut’ – It has been very nice, I’ve enjoyed myself – before anyone else can say it.
In early December there is a serious meeting in the dressing-room. Elisabeth is to be allowed to choose the style of her own dress for the first time. She has had many dresses made for her before, but this is the first time she is allowed to make the decisions. This is a moment that has been much anticipated by Emmy and Gisela and Iggie, all of whom love clothes, and by Anna, who looks after them. In the dressing-room on the dressing-table is a book of swatches of fabrics and Elisabeth comes up with an idea for a dress that has a spider’s-web pattern over the bodice.
Iggie is absolutely appalled. Seventy years later in Tokyo he recounts how there was complete silence when she described what she wanted: ‘She simply had no taste at all.’
On 17th January 1917 there is a new edict, which states that the names of convicted profiteers will be printed in a list in the newspaper and on notice-boards in home districts. There has been some pressure to bring back the stocks. There are many names for profiteer, but increasingly they elide: hoarder, usurer, Ostjude, Galician, Jew.
In March Emperor Karl institutes a new school holiday to be held on 21st November to commemorate the passing of Franz Josef and his own ascension to the throne.
In April Emmy goes to a reception at the Schönbrunn given for a committee of women who organise something to do with widows of soldiers who have fallen in defence of the Empire. It is unclear to me exactly what is going on. But there is a splendid photograph of this gathering of a hundred women in their best in the State Ballroom, a great arc of hats under the rococo plasterwork and mirrors.
In May there is an exhibition of 180,000 toy soldiers in Vienna. All summer everything in the city is helden, heroic. All year there are white spaces in the newspapers where the censors have struck out information or comment.
The corridor between Emmy’s dressing-room, the room with the netsuke, and Viktor’s dressing-room seems to get longer and longer. Sometimes Emmy does not appear at the dining-table at one o’clock and her place has to be removed by a maid while everyone pretends not to notice. Sometimes it is removed again at eight o’clock.
Food is an increasing problem. There have been queues for bread and milk and potatoes for two years, but there are now queues for cabbage and plums and beer. Housewives are exhorted to use their imaginations. Kraus pictures an efficient Teutonic wife: ‘Today we were well provided for . . . There were all kinds of things. We had a wholesome broth made with the Excelsior brand of Hindenburg cocoa-cream soup cubes, a tasty ersatz false hare with ersatz kohlrabi, potato pancakes made of paraffin . . .’
Coins change. Before the war, gold krone were minted, or silver ones. After three years of war they are copper. This summer they are iron.
Emperor Karl receives fervent acclaim in the Jewish press. The Jews, says Bloch’s Wochenschrift, are ‘not only the most loyal supporters of his empire, but the only unconditional Austrians’.
In the summer of 1917 Elisabeth stays in Alt-Ausee at the country house of Baroness Oppenheimer with her best friend Fanny.