Empty theatre, p.22
Empty Theatre, page 22
Party Crashers
“THIS IS ELISABETH MARIE,” Gisela tells her mother, trying to hand her the baby, hoping she might be won over by the name, but even this doesn’t do the trick
“Don’t start calling her Sisi, whatever you do. We needn’t draw more attention to the fact that I’m old enough to have a grandchild,” the thirty-six-year-old Sisi responds.
Sisi writes to sixteen-year-old Rudolf, “The baby is extraordinarily ugly, but very lively, like Gisela.”
* * *
Sisi waits for King Ludwig in the dim audience chamber on a visit to Berg. She is confused by the shape and stature of the human she sees enter the room.
“Sisi!” the person says in her cousin’s voice.
“Ludwig!” Sisi, consumed by appearances, cannot help but wonder how Ludwig has allowed himself to deteriorate in this way, but she is genteel enough to withhold this thought, and beyond that, she is so happy to see the cousin who made her laugh so hard she peed her petticoats at the orphanage. “Tell me how I can help! Shall I do a jig to cheer you?”
“You might as well, but it will make no difference. It’s more of the same. I hate to bore you.”
“A burden does not get lighter the longer you carry it,” Sisi says. “We should go for a ride and you might scatter your troubles behind you on the fields!”
Ludwig shakes his head at her gravely. “I don’t ride anymore. I’ve grown afraid. I don’t trust myself.”
Sisi’s brows knit together. This is not like him. “A walk then. Nature will do you good.”
“Sit here with me for a moment.”
A servant enters with a platter. “Cake?”
Sisi, though, does not eat cake. “Maybe a thimbleful of orange juice.”
“Of course, whatever you like,” Ludwig says, nodding at the servant.
A pitcher, freshly squeezed, is brought out, but Sisi drinks only the tiniest sip.
“Don’t you like it?” Ludwig asks.
“Delicious,” she says.
Sisi sees that Ludwig cannot sit still. He paces the room but declines every invitation to move themselves outdoors. He rambles on about his worries, and Sisi watches his to-ing and fro-ing for hours. Finally she manages to say, “Ludwig, I must visit your mother today, as well. Perhaps you’d like to accompany me?”
“There’s nothing I’d like less,” he says. “I just saw Mother days ago, and I haven’t recovered. Steel yourself. She is a banshee.”
Sisi hugs her cousin and makes him promise that he will write. “And get some air. Full lungs, clear mind,” she says.
Ludwig nods, miserable.
She watches him scratch at a scab on his hand and places her fingers on his. “Let it heal.”
* * *
Queen Marie greets Sisi amiably before they settle in to catch up. “What else will you do while you’re in Munich?” she asks her niece.
“I was at the cholera hospital yesterday, and I hope to visit … the asylum tomorrow.” Sisi pauses, worrying she might upset the Queen given the state of Otto.
The Queen, having noticed the hitch in her niece’s voice, asks if she might join her.
“Oh, you needn’t do that,” Sisi says, trying to give the Queen an out.
Queen Marie’s face grows somber. “No, I’d be interested to see what it’s like inside such a place.”
“Very well. We’ll pick you up.”
* * *
At the asylum, Sisi listens intently to each of the men, while the Queen sits in a chair at the edge of the room, chatting with the director. “Some of these people seem almost normal.” She waits to be contradicted, but she is not.
On the carriage ride back, the Queen asks Sisi what she’s after in making such visits.
“What I’m after? Why, I’m after nothing at all beyond providing an understanding ear.”
“And why the men’s asylums?” the Queen asks.
Sisi has not allowed herself to dwell on this question for very long, but she knows the answer. If she attends the women’s asylums, she will see more of the people being kept for reasons with which she is personally all too familiar: women paralyzed with grief at having lost a child, women stumbling under the pressures laid on them, women broken by the violence done to them. Sisi knows those troubles all too well. Instead she says, “I have always gotten along with men better than women.”
“Nonsense,” the Queen responds.
* * *
When Sisi wants to misbehave, she asks Ida’s opinion. When she wants to be talked out of bad behavior she asks anyone else. “Ida, officially, I have stated that I am not well enough to attend Carnivale, but really, I just can’t bear for my hand to be kissed by a thousand germy mouths,” she says, shivering. “But! If I sneak out while everyone else is at the celebrations, that might be fun.”
It’s possible that what Sisi has always seen as Ida’s agreeability has actually been indifference to any cause except that of Hungary. But now that the Hungarian matter is mostly settled, Ida must find a new reason to go on. If the Empress remains as well-behaved as is expected of her, Ida’s life will be dull and uneventful. If she goes along with Sisi’s schemes, then at least there will be some excitement in her life. Ida has abandoned the idea that anyone will find her marriageable at the advanced age of thirty-five, and so what is there to do but cause a bit of trouble? Ida agrees that smuggling themselves into Carnivale is a splendid plan.
Sisi has heard of the fragrant doughnuts and chestnuts sold in stalls, the colored paper strung between the trees of the avenue leading to the Wurstelprater, the puppet shows satirizing the chilly romance between Emperor and Empress, the way the guises allow the common people to mix with the pedigreed. She ties her mask tight around her eyes and drapes the hood of the domino cape she’s borrowed from Ida so that only her tight-lipped mouth is visible.
On Shrove Tuesday, she and Ida sneak out to the Musikverein ball.
Sisi spots her riding companion, Nicolas Esterházy, talking with a woman she doesn’t know, and jealousy floods her. She has the urge to seek revenge for a fidelity Nicolas is unaware of having betrayed. “Ida, find me a suitor.” Sisi sends Ida away so she can approach Nicolas alone.
Esterházy clears his throat. “Fräulein…” he says, smirking at the pleasure of addressing Her Majesty with such familiarity.
Sisi completes his thought: “Hildegarde.”
“Of Bingen, no doubt, with such music in your voice.” Esterházy’s date excuses herself: usurped, offended.
Her goal accomplished, Sisi doesn’t linger. “If you’ll excuse me, I believe I’m about to have a vision.” She spies Ida talking to a dark and stormy young man on the other side of the room, and proceeds to the arcade outside the ballroom, leaving Esterházy speechless.
* * *
Ida must grasp Fritz Pacher’s arm to keep him from running away. “Sir, I beg your pardon. I don’t seek your attentions for myself, but for a beautiful friend of mine who is too shy to approach you on her own.” Fritz doesn’t move, silently consenting to hear more of what this little fairy godmother has to say. “She’s out in the gallery.”
“I’m not a member of court. I have no pedigree,” Herr Pacher says.
“All the better,” Ida replies. “Neither does my lady. She is beautiful, but of simple origin.”
Ida leads Fritz to Sisi, standing just out of the direct light.
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Fritz says, speaking formally because he can tell—by the way that her mask has been made, by the pale smoothness of her jawline, by her delicate gloves—that she is a woman of nobility, playing at being common.
“My name is Gabrielle,” Sisi says. He notes the way her mouth barely moves.
“An angel.” He watches the tiniest smile play on her lips. “I am Fritz.”
“I will call you Fritzl.”
The way she commands this, without asking, causes Fritz to examine her more closely.
“I wonder if the Empress is at the ball tonight,” Sisi says, playing with danger.
“What would she be doing here with us?” Fritzl replies, believing he has cracked a code.
“She might have wanted to escape the confines of her duties, to feel the thrill everyone else does on a night like tonight.” Sisi speaks so softly that Fritzl is happy he must lean in.
Ida stands at the door, watching so that no one else comes in.
“Doesn’t the Empress experience thrills all her own?” Fritzl brushes Sisi’s wrist.
“I think she must be watched so closely, it is hard for her to take risks.”
Fritzl sighs his understanding and runs his hand up to her shoulder.
“What do you think of the Empress?” Sisi asks.
Fritzl wishes that they might change the subject, but Sisi seems insistent on walking this fine line. “Her Majesty is gloriously beautiful, but it is sad she is so averse to the public.”
“She must have good reasons,” Sisi says.
Fritzl hears a defensiveness in her voice. He almost calls her “Your Majesty,” but stops himself. “My lady, you’ve pulled me away from the party. I suspect that permits me to ask a favor. May I remove one of your gloves so that I might kiss your hand before I say goodbye?”
“Why must you say goodbye?” Sisi asks.
“I think we both know it is best if I leave your company now,” Fritzl says.
“Follow me,” Sisi replies, and casts a look at Ida, commanding her to stay where she is.
Ida frets when she realizes Fritzl has identified the Empress. It is much easier to decide to become adventurous than it is to actually become adventurous. Ida, though, remains in place, as lookout.
The Empress leads Fritzl by the hand back into the ballroom, and now that Fritzl knows whose arm is tucked in his, he can’t help but expect the faces of the crowd to recognize her. The glide of her step, the way her head inclines, all scream that this is a woman they’ve seen before, even at a distance. But no one notices.
In the ballroom, they join a circle of people watching some mummers perform their battle. Sisi smiles, lips clamped to her teeth, and, against the quiet of the crowd, he can hear a sound deep in her throat that he recognizes as laughter.
When the show is over, Sisi asks Fritzl where he lives.
“Why? Are you going to drop in for a visit?” he asks.
“One never knows,” she says.
“And where might I find you?” he asks, putting her on the spot.
“I’m always somewhere else,” she says slyly.
“So I’m unlikely to see you again.”
“It’s possible we might arrange to meet in Stuttgart or even Munich.”
“But not here,” he says.
“But not here.” Sisi looks away, as disappointed as Fritzl is in this response, and catches the eye of Nicolas Esterházy. His glare guarantees that he has seen her little performance, and after this night, he no longer responds to her invitations to go riding.
Ida tugs the Empress’s sleeve. “Your … Gabrielle, I believe it is best we leave.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Fritzl says, scanning for one of the royal carriages, but Ida has hired an unmarked fiacre for the ride home. Fritzl moves to slide Sisi’s hood down. If he sees the long plaits of hair winding around the crown of her head, he will be sure.
The tension bottled up inside Ida is shaken, though, and she flings herself between them. She tugs the hood back into place on Sisi’s head. “We really must be going.”
“Farewell,” Sisi says.
“Farewell, fair maid,” Fritzl says, and shuts the door.
The driver signals the horses into motion.
Sisi squeals.
Ida sobs.
Victorian England
UP AT 4:00 A.M. from his iron bed, bathed in a tub by a servant who shnockers himself into staying awake all night rather than waking up so early, fed by 5:00 a.m., at his desk soon after, audiences starting at 8:00 a.m.—often over a hundred people a day, each ended by an incline of his head, lunch at noon at his desk, more meetings until dinner. In bed by 9:00 p.m.
Sisi wishes for a sharp instrument each time she thinks of Franzl’s schedule. A note from her sister Sophie inviting Sisi to vacation with her in England proves a welcome break.
Sisi sends a troupe of attendants on ahead: a chaplain, a smattering of governesses and nurses for Valerie, Sisi’s hairdresser and her masseuse, chefs, fitness coaches, grooms, and a florist. The horde arrives at Steephill Castle and prepares it for the Empress.
A day later, dressed plainly, posing as a family of sisters, using the pseudonym “the Countesses Hohenembs,” Sisi, Valerie, and Ida arrive at the castle undetected.
Sisi makes the rounds: Bathrooms have been remodeled. The enormous billiards table has been moved out of the billiard room to make space for her exercise equipment: trapezes hung from the ceiling, a vault placed with a springboard on one side and soft mattresses on the other for easy landings.
When Sisi says she is thirsty, her servants know this is a test. They set before her a glass of oxblood-and-chicken broth. Sisi smiles and tastes it, feigning her thirst quenched. “And what has been done with the steaks from which the blood was pressed?”
“Discarded,” the maid confirms, but in the kitchen a pot of stew boils to feed the servants.
* * *
It doesn’t take long for the town of Ventnor on the Isle of Wight to catch on that the Austrian Empress is in their midst. The tourists on the cliff above the castle spy through binoculars, trying to pick out the Empress from the clan of people bathing in the ocean.
“I have a solution,” the Empress says. She asks for a bathing cap for herself and a wig for a servant. “You’ll go out into the water accompanied by the guards. I’ll follow soon after alone. They’ll assume you are me. They won’t be able to tell our bodies apart from such a distance. You’re not so much fatter than me,” Sisi says, and the servant accepts this statement with grace. In the water, the weight of the wig almost pulls the servant under. The hairdresser grimaces at the seaweed trapped in the yard-long locks of the dummy wig she must comb each day.
* * *
Sisi walks Valerie around the garden and points to the sprays of pollen-tipped starbursts. “Myrtle,” Sisi says.
“Myrtle,” the child repeats.
Sisi indicates the blousy white blossoms, shadowed in pink: “Magnolia.”
“Magnolia.”
She aims a finger at the baroquely petaled camellias, and Valerie knows this one on her own. “Camellia.” Sisi lifts her child to assault her with kisses. She believes Valerie to be so much cleverer than any of her other children. It’s not true, but Sisi never got to know the others like this, at this age.
* * *
After a stultifying visit with Queen Victoria, Sisi spends twenty-four hours in London, where she falls in love with a Dalmatian-spotted leopard Appaloosa and tells the breeder to hold him for her until she receives Franzl’s permission. “The one I like costs twenty-five thousand gulden, so it is naturally out of the question,” Sisi writes.
“Buy whatever you like,” Franzl writes back.
Sisi returns to the island with her new horse, affectionately christened “Errand Boy,” before she has even received the reply. In his company are Avolo, a Welsh pony, and Bravo, a Hungarian Leutstetten. It is the time of year to start hunting the fox cubs, and Sisi rises at dawn and stays out all day, testing the endurance of her male companions.
“I do like it here,” Sisi says to Ida, “but great caution is necessary, for the English are clever people—intelligent and rich, but no one knows exactly where they come from.”
* * *
In June 1875, the former Emperor Ferdinand dies, leaving Franzl his fortune after having handed him the throne twenty-seven years prior. The only change Franzl makes is to triple Sisi’s allowance. Sisi uses it to build a new state asylum.
Confession
AFTER A YEAR OF CELIBACY, Ludwig befriends Count Alfred von Dürckheim-Montmartin, an army officer acting as aide to Prince Otto. A beefcake with a ruddy complexion, Dürckheim flirts with the King, and Ludwig can’t resist the flattery.
Despite remaining officially committed to Otto’s service, Dürckheim travels with Ludwig to Linderhof, still under construction, where they stay in the Schachen hunting lodge.
At night, in the lodge, they can pretend that every time is the first time. Dürckheim can happen upon Ludwig undressing. Ludwig can ask Dürckheim to inspect a scrape on his back. Ludwig’s skin bears no flaw, but Dürckheim can place the flat of his hand on his skin, letting his fingers crawl forward, looking for what Ludwig refers to. They purposely neglect the fire, because only in the dark is Ludwig able to permit himself what he truly wants. Dürckheim urges the King to act sooner, struggling to restrain himself, but Ludwig pretends he doesn’t understand to what the aide refers. When the embers of the fire are dim enough, Dürckheim takes the King roughly, as punishment for his hesitancy. In the morning, being served breakfast, Dürckheim flirts with one of the maids, and Ludwig’s ego blisters.
