Sisi, page 39
“Really?”
“Really.”
Valerie smiled now, relief breaking across her features. “Good. Well, I am happy, Mamma. So very happy.”
“Then I am, as well.” Sisi saw Valerie out, walking her as far as the doorway into the corridor. There, to her shock, she discovered a figure huddled outside her door. “Rudolf? Heavens, you startled me. What…is everything all right?”
Rudolf turned when they spotted him, nodding quickly. His eyes were bloodshot and red rimmed, as if he’d been weeping.
Sisi put a hand to her breast. “What is the matter, Rudolf?”
He didn’t answer his mother. Instead, turning to his sister, he leaned forward, pulling her into an abrupt, rough hug. “Congratulations on your engagement, Valerie,” he gasped out. “I’m sorry that I derided Salvator before.” Valerie caught Sisi’s eye over her brother’s shoulder, her eyebrows arching upward in startled confusion. But Rudolf turned and then, as abruptly as he had done with his sister, he collapsed toward his mother, wrapping her in his embrace. “Happy birthday, Mamma. I love you so.”
Sisi heard how he fought back sobs as he said it. “Why, thank you, dear,” Sisi said, patting her son’s back. He really felt quite thin beneath his officer’s uniform, almost frail.
He choked out his next words. “Mother, I hope you were made happy by receiving—”
“Indeed, I was very happy to receive Valerie’s news.”
“—the Heine gift I gave you.”
At that Rudolf pulled away, his lower lip falling open, but no other words came out. Sisi realized her error too late, and she groaned inwardly as she saw disappointment pull sharply on Rudolf’s already troubled features. He threw his shoulders back, tugging down on the hem of his jacket as he nodded, looking once more at each of the women. And then, turning on his heels, he took off down the corridor, his figure receding deeper into shadow until he appeared to be nothing more than a spectral apparition, not entirely grounded in this world, but not at peace enough to leave it, either.
Sisi’s mind stayed with Rudolf as she completed her evening toilette. As Marie Festetics helped her into her sleeping gown, she recounted the story of the odd exchange in the hallway, omitting only the part about ignoring his gift. Marie listened silently, the ruts in her worn brow deepening as she considered Rudy’s behavior.
Wrapped now in her heavy nightclothes, Sisi crossed the room to the window and pressed her forehead up against the cold, frost-tinged pane. It was nearly midnight. Outside, snow fell across the capital as bundled churchgoers hurried to midnight mass, the bells of St. Stephen’s Cathedral pealing out a summons in the night. Inside millions of homes across her kingdom, parents were tucking giddy children into cozy beds, their minds awhirl with the feasts and celebrations and treats promised for the next day. Sisi remembered what that had felt like—snuggling into bed beside Helene, whispering about what they hoped to find upon waking on Christmas morning. And yet, from where she stood now, Sisi found it hard to summon any of that joy or excitement. “Marie?” The breath steamed out with her words, clouding the window before her. She wiped it with her hand.
“Yes, Empress?” Marie Festetics spoke quietly, stepping toward Sisi’s bed. “Your Majesty will catch cold there. Come away from that window.”
Sisi turned and walked toward her. “Do you think I’ve failed Rudolf?”
Marie Festetics frowned as she considered the question. “Failed the crown prince, Your Majesty?”
Sisi climbed into bed and burrowed into the sheets, Marie having already warmed them with bricks from beside the porcelain stove. Sisi yawned. “Your silence would seem to say so.”
“You’re tired, Empress. Perhaps we can discuss this another time. Certainly Christmas Eve is no time for such sad thoughts.”
“So then, you do. You think I’ve failed Rudolf.”
Marie Festetics fidgeted beside the bed, looking toward the chamber door as if she longed to flee through it. Eventually, she turned back to Sisi, her tone mournful. “Not failed him, Empress. But…I believe that…perhaps you have been more like a beautiful apparition to him than a mother.”
Sisi stared at her attendant, unsure of her meaning. Weariness pulled on Sisi’s body, but her mind spun. “What do you mean by that?”
Marie Festetics exhaled audibly. “You’ve been to him like a fairy. You come in, and then you go, and then you come back, and then you’re gone again. Leaving, always, before you might do any of your much-needed magic.”
Sisi collapsed into the soft goose down of her mattress, staring up at the bed hangings as she thought these words over. Perhaps Marie was right; perhaps that was how it had been. And perhaps the only thing that might save them all now was a bit of magic.
XV
We live in a slow, rotten time. Who knows how much longer it will last. Each passing year makes me older, less keen and fit….And this eternal living-in-preparation, this eternal waiting for great times of reform, weakens one’s best powers.
—CROWN PRINCE RUDOLF OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
CHAPTER 15
Vienna
January 1889
The New Year was only days old, the good luck punch only just sipped and the social season only just under way, and yet its high point was already upon Vienna. Outside the Hofburg, the weather had turned unseasonably mild. Rather than snow, a blanket of balmy, thick fog hovered over the capital, drawing residents away from their hearths and into the streets to enjoy this rare respite from winter’s icy clutches.
The crowds on the café terraces and inside the restaurants and dance halls all discussed one topic: opening night of the new Court Theater building. The entire city teemed with anticipatory predictions and chatter. Newspapers across the continent were already heralding the new Court Theater, known to the Viennese as the Burgtheater, as the finest performance hall in any European capital. Every blue-blooded aristocrat, bourgeois businessman, and aspiring artist sought a ticket for opening night, hoping to be in the crowd along with the imperial family and, still more, to win the right to brag about such elect status in the days prior to this inaugural performance. Those fortunate enough to have secured seasonal boxes already seemed to walk the streets with their chins angled slightly upward, their eyes twinkling with the irrefutable surety of their own superiority.
A young artist in his twenties, a man by the name of Gustav Klimt, had been commissioned for the remodeling of the theater’s interior. Franz Joseph had hired Klimt for a sweeping mural that would be called The Chariot of Thespis, depicting the first actor from ancient Greece. As Klimt’s deadline loomed, bookies and theatergoers across the city placed bets as to whether the artist’s paint would dry in time, and the papers reported that the young Klimt was now spending both day and night strapped to the ceiling, color dripping into his hair and speckling his face as he raced to complete his imperial commission.
For a city that relished gossip the way Vienna did, there was much to discuss when it came to the upcoming opening night, and the capital’s residents took up the task with admirable gusto. They debated the appropriate wardrobe choices for the attendees, the selection of shows to be put on that season, opinions on the design of the new interior, as well as the roster of actors selected for the various roles. And yet, one matter alone consumed the vast majority of all discussions that January; one morsel of gossip proved particularly ubiquitous at dinner parties and at high-society salons, on the Burgplatz and in the beer gardens off of the Ringstrasse. It had nothing to do with Gustav Klimt’s mural, or with the theater’s neo-Renaissance façade hiding under the scaffolding, waiting to be unveiled. It was not the controversy over the odd new buzz of thousands of electric lights that would illuminate the hall’s interior, nor was it the topic of the sumptuously dressed audience members. It wasn’t even the fact that the emperor’s “friend,” Katharina Schratt, would be performing for both emperor and empress on opening night. No, all of Vienna was eager for opening night at the new Court Theater for one reason: everyone hoped to catch a glimpse of the lady who now occupied center stage in Crown Prince Rudolf’s life.
While the actors and actresses would take their places for their performances, one lady alone would be the true star in the city’s most salacious drama that evening. Baroness Mary Vetsera, the journals reported, had taken a parterre box in the theater for the opening night performance. She could afford it, being a member of the nouveau riche, even though she wasn’t an accepted constituent of the old aristocracy.
The capital’s entire population, it seemed, had gathered outside of the building by midday on the date that the Court Theater’s doors were scheduled to open; even those not fortunate enough to have secured tickets of entry still showed up to witness the show that would be performed outside the doors. Men and women alike had been reading about the pretty socialite for months. Her name filled the capital’s fashion and society columns while at the same time her famous figure was apparently filling the crown prince’s notoriously restless arms.
By early evening the crowd on the sidewalks had swollen to the thousands, and guards were called in to place barricades outside the theater and manage the throngs. Mounted police officers shouted out for order, determined not to allow the mob to disturb or in any way inconvenience the procession of gilded carriages that was expected or the noble cargo that would soon step out of them. The scaffolding had only just been removed, revealing the new façade for the first time, and as sunlight faded, thousands of electric lights popped to attention, illuminating the glorious neo-Renaissance exterior.
The carriages began to roll up to the theater just before six o’clock. Each arrival whipped the crowds into a further frenzy of gossiping and elbowing and neck craning. Sisi and Franz and the rest of the imperial family, their journey from the adjacent Hofburg to the Burgtheater only minutes long, traveled by an incognito coach that dropped them outside a private side entrance. From there they were whisked through an exclusive passageway that fed right into a private lobby, reserved only for the emperor, his family, and their attendants. There, undetected and unbothered, they made their way to the imperial box.
If their journey had been a well-guarded secret, their entrance into the imperial box attracted the notice of the entire theater. The audience members, busy a moment ago with exchanging greetings and stealing appraising glances at one another’s wardrobe selections, turned in unison when their host and hostess arrived. Thousands of necks stretched as hands broke into applause and lips cried out shouts of support and greeting.
“Emperor Franz Joseph!”
“Empress Elisabeth!”
“Crown Prince Rudolf!”
Sisi stood between Rudolf, who was looking incredibly handsome in his infantry officer’s uniform, and Franz, clad in his red-and-white cavalry attire. She wore a snug-fitting gown of gold brocade trimmed in crystal and lace. Franz, Rudolf, and Stéphanie offered waves to the crowd as Sisi, Valerie, and Larisch crossed the box and took their seats with demure smiles and nods.
The electric lights that had replaced flickering candles bathed the room in an unnatural brightness, making snooping and spying that much easier. As Sisi settled into her place, she noted how Rudolf raised his theater binoculars and fixed his gaze to the lower left side of the theater. There, in a parterre box, sat two impeccably well-dressed women. One appeared older—an attractive lady of middle age—and Sisi recognized her wide, smiling face as vaguely familiar. But it was the second, younger woman who drew Sisi’s attention now. She sat in a gown of white tulle, her plunging neckline ornamented by her ample feminine curves as well as a thick choker of diamonds. A headpiece of diamonds—appearing almost like a crown, Sisi noted—glittered in her thick black hair. She tossed her head back now in laughter, either unaware of or disinterested in both the crown prince’s and the empress’s observation. But it wasn’t just the two of them, Sisi noticed, who were staring at this dark young beauty—everyone else in the theater was doing the same. Most of the men even mimicked the crown prince in angling their theater binoculars toward her.
“Larisch?” Sisi pulled her gaze from the distant box. “Isn’t Mary Vetsera the middle-aged woman in that box down there to the left? The unsavory woman who hosts salons in her mansion on Salesianergasse?” For once Sisi was happy to have the gossipy Larisch beside her, to clear up her confusion.
Her attendant leaned close now to answer. “You’re not far off, Empress. The Baroness Helene Vetsera is down there, and you’ve met her. She is the middle-aged widow known for her…hospitality…with the gentlemen of Vienna. But Mary Vetsera sits beside her. Mary is her daughter.”
Sisi’s chest seized as she looked back toward the two women, the younger one sheathed in tight-fitting white tulle, her thickly lashed eyes darting about the theater, as if brazenly meeting—even inviting—all of the stares that so hungrily admired her curves. “Her daughter?” Sisi repeated.
Larisch nodded.
Sisi spoke low so that Stéphanie and Rudolf, seated on the other side of the box, wouldn’t hear. “The woman with whom Rudy professes to be in love…is that pretty girl there in white? The daughter?”
“Yes, the younger one.”
Sisi stared at the distant box, understanding now the cause of the girl’s dark-eyed self-importance and preening. “How old is she, this Mary Vetsera?”
“I believe she’s eighteen, Your Majesty.”
Younger than Valerie, by years. And a social climber of the nouveau-riche class rather than a lady of noble birth. But neither of those facts was nearly as troubling as the fact that Rudolf was already known to have had romantic liaisons with the mother and now professed to be in love with the daughter. And perhaps most bizarre of all was that Mary Vetsera sat beside that same mother, the older woman looking like a proud Pandarus, all too willing to offer her girl up for the pleasure of the married crown prince and the scrutiny of their ruthless aristocratic society.
Sisi shut her eyes, her head suddenly dizzy, made so not by the droning buzz of the electric lights or the explosive riot of hundreds of bright dresses and jewels. When she opened her eyes a moment later, blinking them back into focus, Sisi noticed that the girl, Mary Vetsera, sat with an unashamed smile, her gaze pointed squarely at Rudolf where he sat between his ashen wife and his tight-jawed father.
“My goodness,” Sisi said, taking Larisch’s hand in her own. “The girl seems, rather than to shrink from the gossip and notoriety, to blossom from it!”
“Oh, yes, Empress. Neither the little baroness nor her mother is new to gossip or social intrigue. They seem, rather, to court it. In fact, the only thing they seem to chase harder than the companionship of wealthy men is scandal.”
“I would imagine that the two often come in tandem,” Sisi said, throwing a discomfited glance at her son. She noted, with dismay, that his eyes returned Mary Vetsera’s brazen stare.
As the rest of the crowd filed in, filling the last few empty seats, the musicians began to tune up. Sisi turned away from Mary Vetsera and gazed at the glittering splendor all around her, at the immaculate dresses and tuxedos adorning the nobles and nouveaux riches, at the theatergoers who seemed far more concerned with the intrigue and wanton dramas in which they and their neighbors participated than with the art that was to unfold on the stage. Sisi couldn’t help but think—as her eyes feasted on the decadent scene—of a banquet of splendid fruit. A bouquet of fresh-clipped roses. Even a bottle of a vintner’s finest wine. Here sat Vienna’s—perhaps even Europe’s—wealthiest men and most refined ladies. This was the choicest arrangement of the capital’s prized harvest. This, here, was the pinnacle of society gathered in the city’s most luxurious setting. Years of progress in the arts and of architectural advances and of human sophistication had all led to this moment and this gathering. Franz presided over what was surely a golden age, Sisi reflected.
And yet, if nature was their guide, what could they expect to come next? How did it go in nature? In nature, beauty matured, growing ever more lovely. Flowers bloomed; fruit ripened. Then what? If they had, here, achieved the perfection of ripeness, what was to follow? Ripeness itself was a state of fleeting and precarious fragility; fruit and wine and flowers, once aged to perfection, began their inevitable decline. Fruit spoiled, turning bruised and sodden. Flowers shriveled, their pleasing aromas becoming the breath of noxious decay. Wine turned, its taste suddenly becoming that of sour vinegar.
Where, then, was Vienna? Was Vienna teetering on some fleeting, ephemeral brink? Was the entire empire hovering in that fragile moment—beautiful and ripe and glorious, yet about to become overripe and spoiled? Did the attainment of perfection always lead to inevitable decline? If so, would Sisi see it in her lifetime? Would her children? Her grandchildren? She wondered who would pay the price for such splendor and decadence and frivolous abandon; just who would be standing ready when the forces of inevitability came to collect?
But her troubling reverie was cut short as, all around her, the electric lights dimmed in a perfectly orchestrated instant. The conductor took his place in the pit to the sound of applause, and as he raised his hands, the musicians readied their instruments. And then, the final curtain of the night lifted, and the eyes turned from Sisi and Franz and Rudolf and Mary Vetsera to the actual performers in the hall.
The opening of the Court Theater was declared an unmitigated success. The next day’s papers applauded Franz Joseph as a visionary for remaking such a significant theater, applauded the performers for their skills, applauded Master Klimt for his artistry. And yet, inside the Hofburg, the mood was uneasy.
Sisi sat in her study following breakfast, perusing the news journals. The lead story was, unsurprisingly, a meticulous account of the Burgtheater’s opening night. She read the description of her own clothing and complexion, as well as the dissection of Valerie’s and Stéphanie’s appearances. Right after that came the ode to Mary Vetsera’s beauty. Sisi growled and turned to the next story.
