Authors: Malcolm Bradbury
But I’d already learned one thing from the money machine: Vienna was evidently a place where one thing quickly turned into something quite different. As we rode the airport bus down the
autobahn towards the centre, a great black cloud from the not-so-distant Alps suddenly swept across the clear blue skies ahead of us, and deposited over the city of dreams and deceptions a light
crystalline surface of glittering snow. To one side of the road, four seedy gasometers had been transformed, by some gesture of architectural magic, into four great monuments of art nouveau. As we
moved along the city boulevards, fresh flights of architectural theatre stood everywhere. Grim Gothic sat side by side with sprightly Jugendstil, white and gold baroque looked benignly across the
street at pink postmodernism. Gaiety confronted virtue. Over the apartment blocks, if you looked in one direction, you could see the red Ferris wheel of the Prater, suspended still for the
winter’s duration; if you looked in another you could see the spires and jagged zigzag roof of the great Stephansdom. It was towards the Stephansdom we headed when the airport bus deposited
us somewhere just short of the Ringstrasse, the wide boulevard that marks the edges of the central city; we crossed it with our luggage and headed towards comforts and warmth.
It was strange how the city of waltzes and Sachertorte had a look oddly like Chicago in the 1920s; almost everyone you passed on the street was carrying a violin case. Musicians toiled
everywhere. Hurdy-gurdy men with monkeys stood in doorways; down pedestrianized sidestreets entire string quartets stood busking in evening dress, gaily playing the works of Ludwig and Franz and
Johann Sebastian and Gustav, not to mention, of course, Wolfgang Amadeus. Jangling horsedrawn landaus passed us by; each one contained very round Japanese faces hidden by very rectangular Japanese
cameras. Behind them in the street they deposited a rich smell of equine dung that added yet another scented chord to the aromatic feast that was winter Vienna. From the tempting windows of the
coffee houses and delicatessens came the bitter odour of coffee, the sweet smell of baking torte. Inside, eating cakes made of cream, drinking coffee with cream, were the crème de la
crème of the Viennese bourgeoisie.
‘Ah, Demel’s,’ said Lavinia, stopping outside one fine-looking cakeshop, ‘This is where you really see the crème de la crème of the crème de la
crème. Let’s go in.’ ‘Why not, Lavinia,’ I said. ‘Brilliant,’ she said a few moments later, mouth full of cake, waving her fat hand at the human display,
‘I always loved Vienna. Thank God for bloody old Bazlo.’ I stared at her wiping the crumbs from her mouth, and tried her with a question that had been troubling my mind from the moment
I had seen her walking towards me down the plane. ‘Tell me, Lavinia,’ I asked nonchalantly, ‘Where are you actually staying?’ ‘’Scuse me,’ said Lavinia,
wiping her mouth, ‘Staying? Oh, I’m at the Hotel de France on the Schottenring. It’s very famous, actually.’ I felt in my pocket, and inconspicuously checked the contents of
the travel wallet she had handed me at Ros’s small house the night before. ‘Ah, I see I’m somewhere else. The Hotel Von Trapp.’ ‘Yes, I think that’s somewhere
way out in the suburbs, out past the Belvedere Palace,’ said Lavinia, ‘Vienna’s bloody full at the moment. It’s the music season, you see.’ ‘Yes, of
course,’ I said, deeply relieved.
‘It’s cheaper too,’ said Lavinia, ‘But since I’m the producer I thought it was important I should be somewhere close to the main action.’ ‘What main
action?’ I asked. ‘I need to be near the banks and the ministries. And the coffee houses and the opera,’ said Lavinia, ‘But you’ll just be researching. You do
understand?’ ‘Oh, of course, Lavinia,’ I said, ‘Don’t worry.’ ‘You were hoping we’d be in the same hotel,’ said Lavinia, beaming chubbily at
me, ‘You wanted the room next door, didn’t you, Francis?’ ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘It’s just this bloody tight budget, you see, I have to keep an eye on,’
said Lavinia, patting my hand, ‘But I thought I’d get us tickets for the opera tomorrow night. And then you could come back and have a late-night champagne with me. Because we are here
to enjoy ourselves too, aren’t we, Francis?’ ‘Well, yes, I suppose so,’ I said, ‘Remember, I haven’t done this before.’ ‘I’ll teach you
everything I know,’ said Lavinia, giggling, ‘Now what I really need is some more Schlag. Isn’t that what it’s called, darling?’ ‘What what’s called,
Lavinia?’ I asked. ‘Cream, this lovely thick cream,’ said Lavinia, waving over a black-dressed, white-pinafored waitress, ‘More Torte mit Schlag.’ ‘Schlag, meine
Dame, bitte?’ asked the waitress. ‘Cream,’ said Lavinia, ‘Thick thick cream.’ ‘Ah, mit Sahne,’ said the waitress, departing. ‘I thought you spoke
German,’ said Lavinia, looking at me accusingly. ‘No, I don’t actually speak it,’ I said, ‘I just find I can understand some of it when they speak it to me.’
‘My God,’ said Lavinia, ‘What happens if old man Codicil doesn’t speak any English?’ ‘I expect we’ll get along,’ I said, ‘Between the two of
us.’ ‘
I’m
not going to see him,’ said Lavinia, ‘You do the research and I’ll recce the locations.’ ‘What locations?’ I asked, ‘We
don’t have any locations.’ ‘Local colour. I think I’ll start with Schönbrunn and the Kunsthistorisches Museum,’ said Lavinia, ‘And then one of us is going
to have to go and fight for tickets for the opera. But I suppose that’s what we poor producers get our salaries for. Now remember, you’re an investigative journalist. You’re
looking for a really big story, love and lusts and everything. Get old Codicil to pour his heart out. Ah, lovely, Torte mit Schlag. Oh, Fräulein, can I have more chocolato on the top?’
‘Chocolato, meine Dame?’ asked the waitress. ‘The brown stuff, darling,’ said Lavinia, ‘Oh God, this is what I love about Vienna. It’s just so bloody
cultured.’
Lavinia was still spooning in the delights of Viennese culture when, a little later, I took a cream-coloured Mercedes taxi and set off for the Hotel Von Trapp. It proved to be a good way out
past the Belvedere Palace, well into the suburbs and not all that far from the railway marshalling yards. It was, nonetheless, grand in its own way. Henry James – I suddenly recalled from my
random literary education – had once described England as having rather too much of the superfluous and not enough of the necessary. The Old Master had clearly never seen the Hotel Von Trapp.
In its vast and imperial lobby, where Japanese tourists were chittering and chattering like Papageno and Papagena over the endless line of suitcases that were pouring off their coach, it took four
serious black-jacketed desk clerks to check me in, as they passed ledgers and paperwork, passports and keys back and forth amongst themselves, much as their ancestors must have done in the
red-taped heyday of the Habsburg Empire. Then it took me several minutes to walk across the lobby towards the Secession ironwork elevator, and even longer to ascend upward, ever upward, to my
room.
The room, I discovered, somehow lay beyond the scope of imperial elegance, and had doubtless been intended for someone’s hapless maidservant in grander times. High in the mansard roof, it
was tiny, and so was the bed in the corner. Behind the rough plasterboard door was a notice that said: ‘In the happening of fire, ask for helps the fireman at the window. Do not evacuate in
the lift.’ I sat on the bed (there was no chair) and unpacked the modest airport luggage, the knickers from Knickerbox, shirts from Shirt Factory, that I hoped would last me for the next
couple of days. I took a quick shower (the ceiling of the shower box was so low you had to crouch in it) and then returned, re-robed, and set to work to look for the telephone directory. I found it
at last, confusingly cased in an embroidered cloth cover with a portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven, not famous, especially given his deafness, for his association with the telephone, on the front of
it. I scuffed through the pages, hunting for the number of Professor Doktor Otto Codicil.
I found nothing, and then realized that the professor was probably far too important to be listed. So I tried the number of directory enquiries, and had somewhat better fortune. Apparently, like
most of the good professors of Vienna, his telephone was indeed ex-directory, but if I cared to say who I was and what I wanted, the switchboard would contact him and, if he was willing to talk to
me, he would ring me back. I sat in the room for some time; the telephone failed to ring. Then it came to me that of course in the middle of the afternoon the good professor wouldn’t be at
home anyway; he would be in the university about his academic business, giving lectures, examining students, marking essays, reading his learned journals, doing the things that good professors
professorially do. He would not be at home until the evening, so I might as well go for a walk. I went downstairs and out into suburban Vienna, duly finding my way to the cemetery of Saint Marx
– where I discovered that there was a tomb to, naturally, Mozart, though, confusingly, he was not actually buried in it. As evening came, I returned to the Hotel Von Trapp, made my way to the
enormous dining room (‘Der Feinschmecker’), took an early dinner (‘Tafelspitz an Vhichy-Karotten and Petersilienkartoffeln’) in a spacious ambience where the waiters
outnumbered the eaters by about three to one, then returned to my rooftop eyrie to await a call from Professor Doktor Otto Codicil.
Nothing came. I waited for an hour or so, then called directory enquiries again and persuaded the girl there to try the number once more, in case my message had gone astray. Less than five
minutes later, the telephone by my bedside suddenly rang. The person on the other end was clearly not Codicil; it could well have been a maid, or just possibly a very subservient wife, but it was
plainly his emissary. In German she enquired what I wanted; in slow English I explained I needed to speak to the professor on an urgent intellectual matter. There was a moment of silence, then the
sound of footsteps skittering nervously away across parquet. After a few seconds, new, much heavier footsteps returned, then a very deep voice came on the telephone and said ‘Professor Doktor
Otto Codicil, ja, bitte?’ I briefly introduced myself and made a small, considered speech explaining that I represented a leading British television company that wished to make a serious
programme devoted to the life, the thought, the times, the influence, and indeed the general philosophical importance of that great man of distinction, Doctor Bazlo Criminale. There was another
very long silence at the other end, and I began to think that Professor Doktor Otto Codicil did not speak any English at all.
I could not, I found a second later, have been more wrong. ‘My dear good sir, you really plan to make such a programme for the television?’ asked Codicil, ‘No, I really think
you do not.’ ‘But we do,’ I said. ‘Then may I say to you in all total candour that for the very life of me I do not see the need for such a thing,’ said Codicil.
‘I’m sure you know British television is very good at this kind of show,’ I said, ‘We always like to keep our audiences abreast of the latest directions of contemporary
European thought.’ ‘I can assure you, my dear sir, that all that can be said of or about our good Doktor Criminale is what that selfsame Doktor Criminale has already said of or about
himself.’ ‘Yes, of course,’ I said, ‘But what we want to do is introduce him and his work to a more general audience.’ ‘There is no general audience that could
possibly understand Criminale,’ said Codicil definitively, ‘To those who are blind, all things are obscure. So it is, and so it should remain. You know it is not so polite to try to
telephone me like this. Out of the blues and with no letter or introduction. Please now may we terminate this call, which I am paying for, by the way?’
‘Just one more moment,’ I said quickly, ‘We were counting on your help.’ ‘My help, why my help?’ he asked. ‘Because you’re the great authority on
Criminale’s work,’ I said. ‘No,’ he said, ‘The great authority on Criminale’s work – it is obvious, of course, but I see I must inform you – is
Criminale himself. You have talked to him?’ ‘Not yet,’ I said, ‘I came to you because you wrote the important book on him.’ There was another lengthy pause, and then
Codicil said, ‘My dear fellow, I know very well if my book is important or not. Of course it is important, I would not have written it otherwise. Just one moment, please.’ Codicil then
shouted several imperative things in German down a very long corridor, and there was more skittering on the parquet. Then he returned to the telephone. ‘Ja, bitte?’ he asked.
‘Professor Codicil,’ I said, ‘This is going to be a very important programme. We were hoping that you would consent to contribute to it.’ ‘I, contribute, how?’
asked Codicil. ‘We thought you might speak on the programme about Criminale,’ I said. ‘You wish to employ my own presence in this programme?’ ‘Yes,’ I said,
‘You’d be a very valued contributor.’ Codicil was silent again. Then he said, ‘No, really, that will not be possible. I hope you do not think I am some flighty little
starling who likes nothing better than to preen on the television.’
‘Of course not, Professor Codicil,’ I said, ‘But can we possibly talk about it?’ ‘To my own estimation, that is exactly what we are doing at this moment,’
said Codicil. ‘I mean, can we meet somewhere and discuss this properly,’ I said. ‘My good fellow,’ said Codicil, ‘It may have escaped your notices that I am quite an
important man. I lead an exceedingly busy public life and I have many affairs. Also in Austria we do not have the habit of inviting the utter passing stranger into the pristine quiet of our homes.
I know you come from an informal country, but here, even in these difficult days, we like to preserve a certain formality, with proper introductions and so on.’ ‘I understand
that,’ I said, ‘But I’m not asking to come to your home.’ ‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Codicil, ‘Naturally you would not be welcome.’ ‘But
can’t we meet in your office, perhaps?’ ‘I see that like so many people in the newspapers you have really no idea of the harsh and unremitting demands of modern academic
life,’ said Codicil, ‘May I suggest to you that you simply forget about your programme, and allow me to take my dinner.’ ‘I can’t forget all about it,’ I said,
‘The project’s already started. It will be on television next autumn. I hoped you’d want to make sure that everything the programme said was completely fair and
accurate.’