The Hare With Amber Eyes - Edmund de Waal [81]
It is hot. Emmy is five months pregnant, with the summer ahead of her. A baby will be loved and cherished, of course – but the bother of it.
August in Kövesces. There are only two old men to tend the gardens, and the roses on the long veranda are unkempt. On 22nd September Gisela, Elisabeth and aunt Gerty go to hear Fidelio at the Opera. On 25th they go to see Hildebrand at the Burgtheater and Elisabeth notes the Archduke in the audience. Brazil declares war on Austria. On 18th October the Czechs seize Prague, renounce the rule of the Hapsburgs and declare independence. On 29th October Austria petitions Italy for an armistice. On 2nd November at ten in the evening there is news that there has been a breakout of violent Italian POWs from an internment camp outside Vienna and that they are swarming into the city. At 10.15 the news becomes more graphic – there are 10,000 or 13,000 of them, and they have been joined by the Russian prisoners. Messengers start appearing in the cafés along the Ringstrasse ordering officers to report to police headquarters. Many do so. Two officers shout to those leaving the Opera to return home and lock their doors. At eleven o’clock the police chief consults with the military about defending Vienna. By midnight the Minister of Interior announces that reports have been greatly exaggerated. By dawn it is admitted that it was another rumour.
On 3rd November the Austro-Hungarian Empire is dissolved. The next day Austria signs the armistice with the Allies. Elisabeth goes to the Burgtheater and sees Antigone with cousin Fritz von Lieben. On 9th November Kaiser Wilhelm abdicates. On 12th November Emperor Karl flees to Switzerland, and Austria becomes a republic. There are crowds surging past the Palais all day, many with red flags and banners, converging on the Parliament.
On 19th November Emmy gives birth to a son.
He is blond and blue-eyed and they call him Rudolf Josef. It is difficult to think of a more elegiac name to give a boy just as the Hapsburg Empire crashes around them.
It is very, very difficult. The influenza is raging, and there is no milk to be had. Emmy is ill: it is twelve years since Iggie was born, eighteen years since her first child. Being pregnant during a war is not easy. Viktor is fifty-eight and surprised by fatherhood again. Amongst all the complexities and the surprise at this little boy being born – and these complexities are manifold – Elisabeth is mortified to find that most people think the baby is hers. She is eighteen after all, and her mother and grandmother had children early. There are rumours. The Ephrussi are keeping up appearances.
In her short memoir of the period she writes of the unrest, ‘I remember very little of the details, only our great anxiety and fear.’
But, ‘Meanwhile,’ she adds in the final, triumphant line, ‘I had registered at the university.’ She had escaped. She had made it from one side of the Ringstrasse to the other.
21. LITERALLY ZERO
It was a particularly cold winter in Vienna in 1918 and the white porcelain stove in the corner of the salon was the only fire that could be kept going all day and night. Everywhere else – the dining-room, library, bedrooms and the dressing-room with the netsuke – was freezing. Acetylene lamps gave off a noxious smell. That winter Viennese were seen cutting trees in the woods for tinder. Rudolf was barely a fortnight old when Die Neue Freie Presse reported that ‘Only the merest shimmer of light can be seen behind some of the windows. The city lies in darkness.’ Almost unthinkably, there was no coffee, ‘only an unnameable mixture tasting of . . . meat extract and liquorice. Tea, milkless and lemon-less, of course, is slightly better if you can accustom yourself to the permanent taste of tin.’ Viktor refused to drink it.
When I try to imagine life in the family in the weeks after the defeat, I see the paper blowing