Sisi, page 8
Sisi and the children bid farewell to the imperial delegation, waving as the carriages swept the emperor and his retinue through the palace gates and out into the streets, where the crowds hoisted the Austrian flag and called out prayers for a safe journey.
Both Franz Joseph and Andrássy wrote to Sisi throughout the journey, and their letters were as different as they themselves were. Franz Joseph gave Sisi detailed accounts of every day of the trip. Like a dutiful bureaucrat taking notes, he outlined for her the details of the lavish reception given by Turkey’s sultan on the banks of the Bosporus Strait. He explained how the Turks had built their own palaces over the crumbling walls of the ancient Christian city of Constantinople. He wrote of the way the sultan collected women in his harem and horses in his stables. And he boasted proudly of the massive green emerald he had procured for his wife from the sultan’s personal treasury of jewels.
Once safely in Egypt, Franz wrote with boyish pride about how he had climbed the greatest pyramid in Giza in just seventeen minutes. He recorded in detail the thirty courses he had eaten beside Empress Eugénie at the grand opening of the Suez Canal. He proclaimed that thousands of people had turned out in the port city of Suez for the occasion, yet he bemoaned the fact that “the ceremony days were very hot and not at all well organized. We monarchs in attendance were expected to elbow and push our way through the crowded city with the rest of the uncivilized mob.” After that, he listed the many ways that, had the event occurred in Vienna, he might have done things differently, more efficiently.
Andrássy’s letters, by contrast, were pure poetry, his words painting a picture for Sisi of the far and foreign lands that the Austrian delegation visited:
One night during our stay in Jordan’s ancient city of Petra, after all the others in our party had retired, I quit our lodgings and set out alone on foot. I found myself exploring a deserted garden under a low-hanging moon. The night was heavy with that sweet, almost painfully seductive scent of jasmine, and I had nothing but the sound of the gurgling water to accompany my thoughts. Naturally, they turned to you. I sent a prayer up into the night, a wish that, wherever you were and whatever you were doing in that moment, you would know that you were also with me in that fragrant garden, looking up at Petra’s star-strewn sky. I stayed there with you, in that pleasant, trancelike reverie, until the morning prayers were called out from the tower of the nearby mosque, and I knew that my companions would begin to stir and notice my absence. Before leaving the garden, I plucked a small cluster of jasmine and breathed in its fragrance, noting how its beauty, though exquisite, fell far short of yours.
And Andrássy told Sisi about the meandering streets of Jerusalem:
Paths so narrow that I could touch walls on both sides simply by spreading my arms. What dark secrets do you suppose have been whispered on such winding, ancient pathways? What hearts have been broken or delighted down those discreet and darkened lanes? I wondered, and I wished—for perhaps the hundredth time that day—that you had been there to wonder it with me.
He recounted his visit to Constantinople’s ancient Byzantine cathedral, now a mosque called the Hagia Sophia, writing:
The dome soared so high that birds flew overhead beneath the colorfully painted ceiling. This sight, like all the other sights of exquisite beauty, made me long for you—for I knew that its beauty might only have been improved, indeed, perfected, by your presence beside me. I couldn’t help but smile to think of you and what joy you would have derived at each moment of discovery and delight. You would have been particularly amused by the sultan’s menagerie of wild beasts. I say, that colorful collection would have pleased you far more than his treasury of crown jewels.
Sisi delighted in Andrássy’s descriptions, envisioning him on the journey and herself beside him. She found it easy to close her eyes and imagine the sights as she savored his words. In the Holy Land, only Andrássy swam in the Jordan River, the others in the group protesting that the water was too cold in the late autumn. Andrássy did it because the waters there, once the bathing place of the Christ himself, were purported to give the bather miraculous powers. “Miracles, they say. Something both I and my nation could use.”
“Rudy?” Sisi sought out her son one afternoon, having completed the latest letters from both Franz and Andrássy. “Rudy, just wait until you hear what Papa has written today! Would you like to hear about the giant statue they call the Sphinx?” She had gone into her dressing room to read the letters in private, leaving Rudy with his toys in the drawing room and Valerie sleeping in the bedroom. She was like a mamma bird—she would devour the news from the two men and then digest it before delivering the morsels that would be appropriate for the eleven-year-old boy’s ears.
“Rudy?” Sisi looked for her son as she reentered the large room. But the boy wasn’t there, and her voice rang unanswered throughout the empty space. “Rudy?” she called out again, thinking that perhaps her son was hiding and wanted to be found.
And then she heard a yelp coming from the bedchamber, a jarring, disturbing sound that pierced the closed door and the silence in which Sisi stood. Valerie’s cry, but its tone more urgent—more distressed—than the ordinary whimpers of a baby waking from her nap. Sisi’s heart leapt against her rib cage, and she flew into the bedroom. “Valerie?” Sisi found Rudy standing over the cradle. “Valerie!” Sisi gasped, running toward the baby, her little cries still spilling out high-pitched and shrill. “Rudy, what’s happened to your sister?” In her haste to reach the baby, Sisi pushed the little boy away from the cradle, accidentally sending him tumbling to the floor.
“Ouch, Mamma!” Rudy protested, but Sisi was so preoccupied with reaching into the cradle, pulling her daughter and a fistful of blankets into her arms, that she didn’t acknowledge her son’s fall. She held Valerie close, rocking the baby up and down and wondering where Marie and Ida were. “Hush, my angel. There, there, Mamma is here. What is the matter, my dearest one?”
Still Valerie wailed, and with a shrillness that Sisi had heard only once before, when the baby had fallen over her own unsteady feet and crashed against the jagged edge of a side table.
“My darling, my darling, what ever is the matter?” Sisi examined the baby, peeling away the layers of blankets and her sleeping dress. There, on the bare skin of one of Valerie’s short, chubby legs, Sisi saw the source of the child’s distress. “No!” Sisi gasped, lifting a hand off the child. She examined her own palm, the small drop of blood from the child’s white skin now coloring her own, too. “Good heavens, are you bleeding?” Sisi turned to look at Rudy for the first time, his little frame still in a heap on the floor. He gazed up at his mother and sister through narrowed, sulky eyes.
“Rudy, why is your sister hurt? What happened?” Sisi looked suspiciously into the cradle for some sharp object, sweeping the border of the bed and finding nothing. She turned back to her son. “Rudy? You were in here. Answer me. Did you see how your sister got this cut?”
Rudy shook his head once as he averted his gaze. A feeling of discomfort seeped through Sisi as she sensed, inexplicably, that her son was lying to her. She looked from the boy back to the baby in her arms. Valerie had calmed down, her hushed cries now mere whimpers as she nuzzled into her mother’s embrace.
Sisi examined her baby’s leg more closely. The cut was not deep or severe. Though it bled, it was nothing more than a small scrape, as though she had been pinched by a set of tweezers or a small pair of fingernails. Sisi’s gaze fell once more on her son, her voice trembling. “Rudolf?” She swallowed hard as she clutched her baby girl with a tighter grip. “You are telling Mother the truth? You did not pinch your sister?”
The little boy shook his head again, angling his entire frame away from his mother, like a guilty thief hiding a stolen handful of silver. But it was impossible, Sisi reasoned. This sweet, sensitive boy, himself the victim of torment—he wouldn’t turn around and inflict pain on an innocent toddler. The boy might have been mistreated, but he wasn’t a sadist. Her son couldn’t be capable of malice toward her most precious, most beloved baby. Could he?
The mild autumn weather turned raw, and winter rolled in. Franz Joseph returned to the capital, and the court resumed its customary, unchanging routine. Often throughout that long, cold season, Sisi felt as though she spent more time and effort corresponding with people who were outside of Vienna than she did communicating with people within her own palace. She wrote daily to Andrássy—through Ida—begging him to visit. She wrote home to Bavaria, telling her mother how deeply she longed to leave court for Budapest “where everything was so much more pleasant.”
Sisi heard from home as well. There it seemed that Sophie-Charlotte’s initial euphoria at her engagement to their cousin King Ludwig had been replaced with first a low-grade anxiety and now an outright panic. Months had passed, and still Ludwig would not answer his future father-in-law, Duke Max, when pushed to select a wedding date. Sophie-Charlotte complained to Sisi in her letters:
People are beginning to gossip—I know they are. I believe it is envy that causes them to whisper about my relationship with King Ludwig. Oh, the vile things they say! They point out how the king proposed marriage to me but then refused to set a date for the wedding when Papa pressed him. They whisper about the fact that our closeness arose, initially, out of our shared passion for and admiration of the music of the composer Richard Wagner. They say that Ludwig has spent his entire fortune on his fantastic castles and on financing the musical endeavors of Herr Wagner. They say that Ludwig will have me spend my days playing Wagner’s music on the pianoforte while Ludwig busies himself professing his love to Wagner in the next room. Can you imagine anyone saying anything so vile and malicious? So what if my fiancé has a close friendship with Herr Wagner? I am not jealous of it, so why should they be?
Ludwig possesses a brilliant mind and deeply sensitive soul; of course he would surround himself with other individuals of brilliance and depth. Doesn’t Herr Wagner top that list? And yet, there’s little old me, somehow deemed worthy to stand beside Ludwig—my marvelous Ludwig—even though I am so much less brilliant than he is, and so much less sophisticated!
And so, I try to be patient with him. I write, and I beg Ludwig to end my embarrassment and sadness by simply setting a date for our marriage. And yet my letters to my fiancé often go unanswered. Worse still, my latest offers to visit him at his palace in Munich or his estate near Possenhofen have been declined. The one time I did see him, at a recent ball in Munich, Ludwig fled suddenly in the middle of a waltz, leaving me standing alone on the dance floor for all to witness my shame and utter bewilderment. Sisi, what am I to do?
Ludwig wrote to Vienna instead of to Possenhofen, and Sisi took it as an even more troubling sign that not once did he mention the name of her sister, his fiancée. Instead he wrote at length about his dear friend Richard Wagner. About the composer’s genius, about how the two men had teamed up once more, and that Wagner was working on yet another opera. Ludwig offered no details, just outlandish hints: “This project, if we succeed, shall change the course of music forever. In fact, it shall alter the entire course of history.”
That was Ludwig: always impassioned, always full of big dreams and giddy, extravagant language with which to express his hopes. Flattering and fulsome with his loved ones and his plans for the future. Except, it seemed, when it came to his future domestic life with his bride.
The other source of Ludwig’s joy, Sisi learned from his letters, was his new castle. He’d undertaken his latest profligate building project atop the cliffs of Bavaria. He planned to call the castle Neuschwanstein, or “New Swan Stone.” Ludwig wrote to Sisi: “The spot is one of the most beautiful places that one could ever find. It is sacred and out of reach, touched only by celestial breezes and the steep heights. It shall be a worthy temple to him. I hope he will come to me here to work and never leave.” Sisi did not need to ask for the name of the male figure to whom Ludwig referred.
It was not just Sophie-Charlotte who struggled in Possi. Néné continued to wrestle with melancholy and physical weakness. The sister who had early in life sought the nunnery now lived like a novitiate in the secluded setting of her parents’ countryside castle. And Sisi’s other sister, Marie, was in even worse trouble. This sister, who had once seemed so happy in her own marital match, was now besieged in Rome with her half-witted husband, the deposed king of Naples. Sisi had learned from Marie’s letters that the royal pair had been formally exiled from their kingdom in the south by revolutionaries who were calling for a free and unified Italy. Even the pope himself seemed under siege by Victor Emmanuel and Giuseppe Garibaldi and the lawless rabble that had spread across the Italian peninsula.
Sisi would look up from her letters and around her room, sighing as her eyes feasted on the gilt-framed oil paintings of long-dead Habsburg relatives, the polished mahogany that glistened under the candles of her crystal chandelier, and the porcelain clock that kept the time of her tedious days; she’d pace her imperial rooms, a suite that she dared not leave—fearful of what she would confront in the halls—and she would think that perhaps being royal was not the privilege that others might believe it to be.
III
Geneva, Switzerland
September 1898
HE ARRIVES IN GENEVA, HIS cheeks chapped by the early-autumn sun, his feet rubbed raw and aching from the dusty road. As he has no money with which to pay for a lodging, he plans to spend the night on the lakeside quay. Not so bad, he tells himself, his view overlooking Lake Geneva and the spikes of the Alps that enfold it. It’s still warm at night this time of year, but he pulls his threadbare jacket close as he watches the cruise boats gliding off across the lake, their wealthy passengers tucked neatly belowdeck, enjoying candlelight and violin music and spreads of dinner and champagne laid out for them on linen-covered tables. Not even realizing how hungry the man is who sits, watching, from the darkened shore. Not even knowing he exists.
He settles in on a wooden bench, listening to the waves that lap the landing berths just feet away. A sudden noise, a plop, interrupts their regular rhythm. A fish jumping. There are fish in this water—loads of perch. If only he could get at one now, he’d take it in his dirty hands and eat it raw, in two bites. That is how much his stomach burns with hunger.
He looks up at the starry Swiss sky wanting to cry out in frustration and anger. In hunger. In desperation and ravaged surrender. But then his fingers touch the edge of his coat pocket and find the blade—the small, hidden blade. The tool that will deliver him from this solitary, starved obscurity. The tool that will help him make sense of it all.
It won’t be long now, he reminds himself, feeling the small flicker of purpose ignite once more in his empty belly. Once he has done the Great Deed, he won’t be thinking about money or food or sleeping out under a sky of Swiss stars. Once he has done the Great Deed, he will be immortal. And she, a mortal, will be no more.
CHAPTER 3
Schönbrunn Summer Palace, Vienna
Summer 1871
“But why can’t I go with you?” Rudy’s lip quivered, and though Sisi regretted to see her son so upset, it was promising, at least, that the boy felt comfortable enough to express normal childish emotions once more.
“My darling boy, come here.” Sisi pulled her son into her arms, her heavy travel cloak making it hard to bend down to him. Behind her, Marie Festetics struggled to keep Valerie from fussing while, outside, Ida oversaw the loading of their luggage into the imperial coaches. “I won’t be gone long. Mamma must make a quick trip to Bavaria to see her family about a most urgent matter. Grandmamma Ludovika has some toys for you—shall I bring you back a toy from Possenhofen?”
“But why does she get to go with you, and not me?” Rudy looked accusingly at the toddler in Marie’s arms, and the heartbreak apparent on his face pierced Sisi; she felt her resolve momentarily weaken.
Sisi sighed, straightening back up. “Because, my darling boy, Valerie is a little girl. You are the crown prince; you must stay here and continue your lessons with Colonel Latour. You like Colonel Latour, don’t you?”
“But I want to be with you, Mamma.”
Sisi couldn’t explain the rest of the truth to her son: That Valerie was the only child over whom she had direct authority. That she would have given her own life rather than risk leaving Vienna without Valerie, thereby allowing Sophie to gain control of her baby. That Rudy, the heir to the Habsburg dynasty, would always have to accept certain obligations to which his baby sister would not be bound. That life was always going to be more difficult for him, requiring more sacrifice and awarding less freedom. Instead, she sighed and prepared to take her leave. “Farewell, my darling boy.” Sisi put her hand once more to his soft cheek. “I shall write to you from Bavaria.”
“Farewell, Mamma,” Rudy answered, his hazel eyes drifting to the floor. And then, as Sisi turned to leave him, she was halted in her steps by his parting words, by the sudden woodenness that came over his tone as he said, “I shall try my best to be brave. And to keep Papa company while you are gone.” Now the boy stood tall, his chin jutting out in a posture of forced stoicism entirely unlike the vulnerability of a moment earlier.
Sisi stared at him, marveling. My word, she thought. A little boy clearly her own son in the depth of his emotions, but already so well trained at how to suppress those feelings. How to speak like a Habsburg. A small, sensitive boy who felt a perfectly natural attachment to his mother, but already seemed to understand, to accept, how things were done.
