Empty theatre, p.29
Empty Theatre, page 29
Alfonso refuses, knowing the way he has betrayed the King again and again. “We are not on your deathbed, Your Majesty,” he says.
“I believe we may be,” Ludwig replies. He hands Alfonso his prayer book. “Pray for me.”
* * *
At 12:30 a.m., Ludwig repeatedly declares he’s ready to die.
* * *
A second commission arrives from Munich. Alfonso meets them near the gatehouse and tells them to hurry. He’d rather the King be taken into custody than take his own life.
Dr. Müller feels a particular excitement run through him. He has never seen Ludwig in person.
Alfonso enters the King’s bedroom. “Your Majesty, I’ve found the key to the tower.”
Ludwig kisses the valet on the mouth and grabs the key. He rushes to the stairwell, but Gudden waits there.
“Do you remember we’ve met before? I helped diagnose your brother Otto.”
The King nods. Since having Otto committed all those years ago, he has been waiting for some sort of punishment, and today it has arrived. “How is he?”
Dr. von Gudden is surprised that Ludwig thinks to inquire about his brother in this moment. Or is it that Ludwig doesn’t see how dire the situation is? Perhaps his concern for his brother’s well-being is more evidence of his madness. “We’ve helped find a way to reduce his agitation,” Dr. von Gudden replies, hoping this might be a comfort to Ludwig, “but I come with a purpose, the saddest task of my life. Your Majesty’s case has been appraised by four alienists and, following their pronouncement, Prince Luitpold has assumed the regency. I have the order to accompany Your Majesty to Berg tonight. If it pleases Your Majesty, the carriage will depart at four o’clock.”
The King lets out a siren of a wail. The orderlies each take an arm and Ludwig’s bulky body twists in their grasp. They carry the King, his feet dragging, back to his bedroom. The smell of arrack overwhelms them, and they realize the King must be very drunk.
“How can you declare me insane when you have not examined me?” Ludwig asks.
This stings the doctor, for he can acknowledge, privately, that his actions have not been entirely ethical. Out loud, though, he tells the King that an examination was unnecessary because of the evidence provided by his servants.
Ludwig’s face contorts with disgust. “Those paid lackeys that I have raised from nothing! If Prince Luitpold had told me he wanted to occupy the throne so badly, I would have happily stepped down.” Ludwig hears his speech slur. “How long will it take to ‘cure’ me? If I’m so sick, when do you believe I’ll be well again?”
Dr. von Gudden hedges. “That depends on Your Majesty. It will be necessary for you to submit to my instructions. If you’re dedicated, the process will take at least a year.”
Ludwig slumps. “Take my life instead. It would be easier and no less moral.”
“I won’t respond to that,” Gudden says. “Pack your things. We leave at four o’clock.”
* * *
The doctors, the King, the orderlies, the policemen: all descend to the forecourt to board three carriages in the rain. The King rides alone in the middle carriage, dreaming of jumping out and being trampled by horses and striated by wooden wheels. When he tries the door handles, though, he realizes they’ve been rigged to open only from the outside. The villagers lining the roads raise their hats.
* * *
On June 12th, after an eight-hour journey, the carriages arrive to Berg. It is high noon but dark as evening as the rain pours down.
Ludwig steps out of his carriage and sees his most heimlich home through a new lens. In the past, it had been a place of joy and refuge for him, but now the building looms.
Inside, Ludwig cannot escape the sound of workmen hammering iron bars onto all the windows. Peepholes have been installed in every door. Ludwig’s skin crawls with the thought of being spied on at all times. He lies down on his bed and tries to silence his mind, but the pounding persists. When finally it is quiet, Ludwig asks a guard to please wake him at midnight, but the guard informs him that he’s to keep “normal” hours now that he’s under medical supervision. Ludwig snorts. “What could be normal about this?”
* * *
Ludwig wakes at 3:00 a.m. He asks the guard if he’s to serve as valet. The guard shakes his head, and Ludwig responds. “Very well. Who’s to fetch my clothes then?”
The guard says, “Your clothes have been taken away. You must go back to sleep.”
Ludwig paces, slapping the walls, until he sees how his behavior might be construed. He waits until 6:00 a.m., when orderlies arrive. “I’d like to attend mass, please.”
The orderlies inform Ludwig that he can’t leave the castle grounds.
“But it’s Whitsunday. Are you telling me I can no longer honor my faith?”
The orderlies don’t have any answers.
Nothing to Be Done
SISI, VISITING POSSENHOFEN, hears of Ludwig’s arrest. She asks to go to him, but she is told it would be too dangerous. Instead, she goes out for a walk on the paths along the lake, trying to dream up a way to help her cousin.
She telegrams Franzl to ask him to intervene, but her husband sides with the commission. Ludwig has not behaved responsibly in a long while. He might not technically be deranged, but if Ludwig will not abdicate the throne and let someone more capable of the duties take over, then a show of force is the last resort.
Sisi writes Ludwig a letter, but she fears rightly that it won’t be delivered. “If you need someone to vouch for you, if you need asylum, if you need a show of force, give some signal. I will come to you. I will house you. I will be your eagle for once.” But poetry and art, which have saved Ludwig many times over, are not enough this time. Metaphors reveal themselves as the empty promises they are.
The King Is Dead
LUDWIG SPENDS HIS MORNING TALKING to the doctors. “I’ll do anything you ask,” Ludwig says, “provided I’m treated with respect.”
Dr. von Gudden tells the King he’ll need to lead a life of moderation. Ludwig must keep diurnal hours and follow the diet and exercise regimens the doctors have designed.
Ludwig thinks of his dinners with imaginary guests and his rides through the starlit skies. “Fine, but might I have my books? I’ll need some entertainment.”
Dr. von Gudden replies, “Some of the fantasies you read are, no doubt, contributing to your illness, Your Majesty. We will consider books on an individual basis.”
* * *
After their morning meeting, Dr. Müller makes an inquiry of his colleague. “Is it possible the King is sane? He seems very cognizant. I am having second thoughts.”
Dr. von Gudden knows if they back down on their diagnosis, their careers will be ruined. “If you are not committed to our decision, then you may leave. The King’s condition is, as stated on record, permanent and incurable.”
Gudden sends a telegram to Prime Minister Lutz: “So far, everything here has gone marvelously.”
* * *
At 11:30 a.m., Dr. von Gudden enters the King’s room. “A walk by the lake, Your Majesty?”
Ludwig likes this idea. He admires the newly clear skies and the calm water until he realizes a man walks about a hundred feet behind them.
Ludwig leans into the doctor. “Gudden, don’t look, but we’re being followed. I worry he might be an assassin.”
Gudden laughs. “Your Majesty, that is an orderly.”
Ludwig sighs, feeling relief for a moment before the sadness returns.
* * *
Ludwig peers out the window all afternoon. Through the eye of his telescope, he can see the Roseninsel in the distance, so close to where he knows Sisi is vacationing now. An unusual number of boats glide across the Würmsee, and Ludwig wonders if they’re villagers trying to catch a glimpse of him. Perhaps tomorrow the water will be quieter and he can swim to Sisi. Ludwig pens a note to his cousin with this possibility and asks an orderly to have it delivered. “How many guards are on duty on the castle grounds?” he asks as casually as he can.
The orderly, without thinking, responds, “Maybe six or eight.”
“Are they armed?” Ludwig asks, but the orderly shakes his head.
Ludwig smiles. “Could you summon Müller for me?”
The orderly nods. Gudden makes Müller promise not to let the King sway him. “He might be out of his mind, but he is the darling of the people for a reason. Be wary.”
The King batters Müller with questions. “What is your medical training exactly? How good is your eyesight? Do you get to read much?”
Müller answers all of these inquiries to Ludwig’s liking.
“Very well,” the King says. “I must tell you: I do not trust Gudden. I don’t believe he knows what he’s doing. To be honest, I worry he might take my life.”
Müller assures the King that they have his best interests at heart, but Ludwig remains unsoothed.
* * *
At 4:30 p.m., Ludwig eats a late lunch alone. He drinks a glass of beer, but then asks to switch to wine instead. The servants fill his glass seven times.
An orderly informs the King his evening walk has been canceled because of rain. The King asks Dr. von Gudden, “Please, might we still go out? It needn’t be long, but I’ll lose my mind if I’m made to stay in this place hour upon hour.”
The doctor bites his tongue and agrees, asking that their overcoats be fetched. At 6:45 p.m., they head out to the lake with hats and umbrellas to walk the same path they had earlier. Dr. von Gudden sees Ludwig notice the orderly behind them again and decides to do the King a service. He shouts back to dismiss the servant.
The policeman on duty, Lauterbach, sees the orderly and asks him why he’s returning so quickly. “Gudden told me they’d be back by eight.” Lauterbach is skeptical. When he sees a policeman named Klier returning to the castle by an upper path, he jogs to meet him. “Please resume your post,” Lauterbach says. “The King and the doctor are still out walking.”
* * *
At 7:15 p.m., Klier returns to Lauterbach. “I can’t locate them.”
“What do you mean? They must be out there. Go out and have another look.”
At 8:30 p.m., Klier returns shaking his head. “Still no sign.”
* * *
At 9:00 p.m., Dr. Müller begins to worry. “Maybe they’ve decided to wait out the rain.” Guards and orderlies set out. Each man takes a lantern and they divide up. An observant guard notes that the King’s friend Hornig lives in a villa at the end of the lake path, and the pair proceed there, hoping for the best, but when the doctor and his aide ask Hornig if he is hiding the King, Hornig blanches. “I wish we were.”
“You wish you were committing a crime?”
“If he is not with us here, then I fear the worst,” Hornig says, and joins their search.
* * *
For over an hour, the hunt turns up nothing.
Klier notices some carriage tracks outside the gates pointed toward Munich, but all of the horses are accounted for.
Dr. Müller panics. He suggests they hunt the lake, as well.
Not long after, a footman shouts, “His hat! His hat! I’ve found the King’s hat!”
The search party convenes near the water’s edge, about a half mile from the castle. The men wade into the water and find Gudden’s coat. One feels something uneven beneath his foot and discovers Gudden’s hat, too, half buried in the mud.
Soon after that, they find the King’s coat on the shore. “It seems this was taken off in a hurry. The jacket is still inside and the sleeves are turned inside out.”
“They’re drenched, though. He must have gone into the water and then taken the coat off? That doesn’t make sense.”
“But it was raining.”
“Not hard, though.”
Another guard shouts from a bench nearby. “There’s an umbrella here!”
Some servants have dragged a rowboat into the water, and Dr. Müller and a guard climb in. Almost immediately they see a shadowy figure floating in the reeds and row closer. They fumble to flip the body over, their eyes trained on the face.
What they see, before the body slips from their grasp, are the whites of Ludwig’s eyes, his mouth stretched into a howl.
The men struggle to haul the King into the boat, his feet stuck in the stones lining the shallow water.
Another orderly calls out. Nearby, fixed in a seated position, his back underwater, but his vacant eyes gazing up at the stars, is Dr. von Gudden.
“What does his watch say?” Müller calls.
The orderly lifts Gudden’s wrist and shouts, “Eight p.m.”
Müller tries to work through what the time could mean, but he can’t focus as the gravity of the event washes over him.
They lay the bodies of the King and his doctor side by side on the shore. The orderlies work to revive the men, but their efforts show no results. At midnight, Müller formally pronounces the King and his doctor dead.
* * *
In the lamplight of the main hall, the examiners can see that Gudden’s face shows several scratches and a sizable bruise over his right eye. A deep gash on his forehead weeps a gluey scarlet. Dr. Müller scans slowly down the body looking for evidence of what might have happened. When he arrives at Gudden’s right hand, he finds a nail nearly torn off.
On Ludwig, though, he finds no clues whatsoever. The King’s body is unmarred. The pocket watch in Ludwig’s waistcoat pocket reads 6:54, an hour earlier than Gudden’s.
Müller fills out the death certificates. On Gudden’s he writes that the doctor drowned. On the King’s, he leaves the cause of death blank. A death mask and a cast of the King’s hands are made before they lay him out in his bedroom.
Insult to Injury
SISI’S OLDER DAUGHTER, Gisela, arrives to breakfast. Her usually sunny face is bloated. Sisi’s stomach drops. Valerie sets down her fork.
“I must see you alone, Mama,” Gisela says.
“Ludwig is dead,” Sisi replies. There is no other reason for Gisela to be there. “Your father-in-law inherits the throne then. Luitpold? And your Leopold is then heir apparent. You’ll be a queen after all. Are you crying tears of happiness?”
Gisela collapses into a chair, heaving.
Only Sisi could manage such coldness in this moment.
A Shadow
A CARRIAGE TRANSPORTS LUDWIG’S BODY to Munich. As it moves through town, the people of Berg toss flowers and wreaths in its path as tribute. Their shoulders ache from having spent the day before rowing around the lake, trying to make sure that their King wasn’t being mistreated, ready to risk everything and whisk him away to their cottages, if that’s what he asked of them.
The carriage passes Fürstenried, where Otto watches from a window.
He has been informed of his brother’s death and of the way his rule has been passed onto Luitpold, but neither piece of news appears to have any effect on him.
* * *
On the evening of Whitmonday, Ludwig’s heart is removed and sent to the Chapel of the Miraculous Image in Altötting, the “heart of Bavaria,” where it’s placed in a silver vase alongside twenty-seven other urns containing Wittelsbach hearts. His body is dressed in his most formal uniform: the costume of the Knights of Saint Hubertus. He is laid into a casket for viewing in the Old Chapel, housed in the Residenz. His left hand is placed on the handle of his sword. A bouquet of jasmine from Sisi is nestled into his right. The casket lies on a frame covered in lush ermine robes. Servants drape the chapel walls in black as they did the pianos when Wagner died, just three years before.
The visitors lean in to get a look at their King as they say their goodbyes. One man says to another, “He doesn’t look like any drowned man I’ve ever seen.”
Another: “Time has made the King nearly unrecognizable.”
Flags fly at half-mast. Church bells toll, reminding people to pray for Ludwig’s soul.
* * *
On Saturday, June 19th, eight white horses pull Ludwig’s hearse through the sunny streets. People flock the route to the church as Ludwig’s favorite horse follows close behind, outfitted in its own mourning costume. Behind the horse walks Prince Luitpold, anxious and unwelcome.
The service at St. Michael’s is brief. Monks carry the casket down the stone stairs to the crypt below the nave.
The Queen has a wooden cross installed in the lake to mark the spot where Ludwig breathed his last.
* * *
A week after Ludwig’s death, 250,000 marks are mysteriously withdrawn from Bismarck’s Reptile Fund.
Familiar Phantoms Rise Again
SISI TELLS HER NIECE Marie that Ludwig visited her in the night. “The moonlight made the room bright as day. I watched as the door slowly opened and Ludwig came in. His clothes were heavy with water, dripping little pools on the parquet floor. His wet hair was plastered round his white face, but it was clearly Ludwig, just as he had looked when he was alive. We stared at one another in silence and then the King said, ‘Are you afraid of me, Sisi?’
“‘No, Ludwig, I’m not afraid.’
“He sighed. ‘Death has brought me no rest, Sisi.’
“‘How am I to know that I am not dreaming?’ I asked him.
