[11]


EYES ONLY, PLEASE

LEGAL SECTION

7753RD MILITARY GOVERNMENT DETACHMENT
APO 541

FRENCH TO SLATTERY:

You asked for reports. You are now getting reports!

Herewith Pinckney's endless account of The Great Penicillin Affair, marked for distribution to every headquarters command in central Europe.

In my opinion, if you want it, this is a tempest in a teapot. The boy did everything he could to get other penicillin. The medics at the Field Hospital threw him out. He woke up Colonel Dunbar. Dunbar lectured him about the shortage of penicillin and danger of VD epidemic to the Army.

The O.D. (Tyson) was begged for permission to break open my evidence locker. Tyson passed the buck to Pinckney, who was of course at Garmisch. No telephone circuits open, as you know. Signal Corps people on duty wouldn't turn on the transmitter without authorization from Fitzpatrick, who as usual couldn't be found.

What would you have done? When you were eighteen, I mean. With that girl urging you on.

You may well ask how they got across the border, twice, with no papers of any kind. The Grenzpolizei got the word from Inspector Steinbrenner, I would guess, and they persuaded the MP sergeants. No American officers on either Austrian or Bavarian side. Fasching. Sometimes I wonder who is occupying whom.

I'm sorry the CID (Criminal Investigation Department) are making such a stink about their evidence, but they are wrong and we were right.

Let's forget about it.

23 Feb 47

 
 

Kyrie . . . eleison;
Christe ... eleison,
Kyrie . . . eleison!

The Cathedral was packed full, and so bitterly cold that little clouds formed in front of each face. A kettledrum boomed, and the voices of the choir soared up into the dark vaulted gloom, where tarpaulins under the scaffolding stirred uneasily in the morning drafts. Two years later, sitting beside Caroline Boatwright at a Harvard Glee Club-Radcliffe Choral Society Concert in Sanders Theatre, I discovered that this first and most beautiful mass I had ever heard was Joseph Haydn's Missa in Tempore Belli, the Mass in Time of War; on Ash Wednesday, 1947, I did not know what it was, I did not care what it was; overwhelmed, exhausted and hopelessly in love, I let myself drown in the music.

The sight of Paola von Fyrmian in the vestibule of the Stieglkeller had instantly sobered me, had burned the alcohol from my mind, and had galvanized me into frantic action. All night, amid infuriating battles with duty officers and military policemen and telephone operators, during the hours behind the steering wheel, squinting through the windshield wipers and the blowing snow, I had felt her eyes upon me, and I was grateful -without any sense of guilt- for the turn of fortune that allowed me to see her again and to help her.

At first she had been cool and correct, very much the great lady being gracious to a helpful young soldier. After we were finally released by the crowd of policemen, border officials and Constabulary troopers at the Bavarian entry point, I aimed my headlights west on the trackless snow-covered waste of the Autobahn, the floodlights of the border station disappeared, and for the first time we were really alone.

I drove as fast as I could but I did not want to break a tire chain. The Opel's little engine throbbed behind the dim lights of the dashboard, the chains clanked in the snow, and the wall of black fir trees slid past the windows.

Although we spoke English to each other, she inquired politely about my German, and when she learned about my father her manner changed perceptibly. Later she claimed that she had first noticed me because of the ridiculous Freischütz costume, she had seen the man inside and not just another face in a brown American uniform, but I had felt her change and look at me with different eyes when I mentioned Gustaf Anders. She accepted a cigarette and steadied my hand while I held the lighter for her.

Once her initial reserve disappeared, she talked easily about herself. Her mother was Italian, from Milan. Her father was from Vienna, had inherited a publishing business and a newspaper. He had served in the First World War, had been wounded and captured in Italy, and had met her mother in an Italian military hospital. After the war he had come back to Italy, married his nurse, and returned to Vienna to run the family newspaper. He was a friend of Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, and used his newspaper to support Schuschnigg's struggle against the Austrian and German Nazis. When Hitler invaded Austria in 1938, her father refused to flee, was arrested by the Gestapo, and spent two years in Dachau.

"We hardly recognized him when they let him out. He had become a sick old man. He could not concentrate on anything, could not even read a book, could not sleep at night. If there was the slightest disagreement, he would scream at us." In the meantime the Nazis had taken away the newspaper and the publishing company. Paola and her mother had moved to Bad Aussee, a resort in the Salzkammergut where they had a summer house. Paola was sent to school in Salzburg, and there she saw more of Count Rainer Fyrmian, the younger son of an ancient local house. They fell in love. He was a student, interested mainly in mountain climbing and photography, and deeply attached to his family. While the Fyrmians were not Nazis, neither were they enthusiastic about an alliance with penniless outcasts, and it was not until his mother died and his brother was killed in Russia that Rainer was able to marry Paola and install her in the Schloss. By that time he was in the army too, an officer with a German mountain regiment. Their daughter was horn in February 1944, and in August of that year Rainer died under British artillery fire in the hills above Florence.

She found it impossible to maintain the Schloss and was relieved when the Wehrmacht requisitioned it as a convalescent home. She moved with her baby into one of the cottages along the lake. Of the staff, only Aschauer and his wife remained. Paola had vegetable gardens dug into the lawns of the park and the root cellars filled with apples from her orchards. In the spring of 1945 the Americans arrived and took away the wounded German soldiers and the two nurses who had remained with them. Now the Schloss was empty.

We did not talk about her daughter, or the chances of persuading Pinckney to release the penicillin. She talked resolutely about other things, and lost her composure only once. We were coming down a long steep mountain curve beyond Benediktbeuern when I saw, too late, that the opposing lights were on the wrong side of the road. The Opel bucked as I fought against the skid, the headlights blinded me, I heard Paola gasp, a horn sounded, and I threw my left arm out to keep her away from the windshield. The blow, when it came, was not as bad as I expected. The car bounded sharply to the left and came to rest in a snowbank. Paola crouched under my arm, her face in her hands.

"My God," I said, "I'm sorry. Are you hurt?"

She shook her head. "No. But now we can't go on, can we?" She took her hands away and I saw that she was crying.

We had hit a snowplow caterpillar from First Infantry Division's engineers. Two huge black faces appeared at the window, grotesquely framed in Eskimo hoods. "Hey man, you think you driving a tank there?" They helped me push the Opel back on the road, inspected the damage, exchanged credentials, and sent us on our way.

Holding a flashlight upon the map, Paola guided rne through silent sleeping villages: Urfeld, Walchensee, Wallgau. It was hard to see with only one headlight, but the snow had stopped, the wind died down, and a cold tiny winter moon appeared behind the clouds, reflecting itself in the frozen lakes and causing the desolate rolling hills to shine with a faint blue radiance.

The Constabulary patrol at Partenkirchen, meditatively chewing gum beneath their yellow-striped helmet liners, didnt know what to make of us: mashed headlight, mashed fender, no trip ticket, no orders, a corporal who talked like an officer, a Fräulein who talked like no Fräulein they had ever heard "From Sauls-burg?"

Another police station. A blond baby-faced second lieutenant with a crew cut and gleaming new Armored Cavalry pins. "Now go over all that again, would you please, Corporal?" A tired Bavarian policeman with a lined gray face who reacted to Paola's name and her tone of voice. Cigarette smoke and telephone calls. Another fast ride in the snow. Resort hotel. Night clerk. Then the manager, a sleepy, acne-pitted T/5 tucking his shirt into his pants. Major French had gone to Munich for the evening. Pinckney appeared, stubbly-faced and irritated but suddenly becoming the southern cavalier. "If you'll just have a seat right here, ma'am, the Corporal will bring you a cup of coffee and doughnuts while I go consult with some other officers about this matter." An endless wait. I closed my eyes but could not sleep. Paola paced back and forth across the lobby. We drank coffee and went to the bathroom. The German night clerk sighed and sorted meal tickets. The T/5 disappeared again. Finally Pirickney came back with the little silver key. "Be sure the hospital returns the carton and the glass ampules. We'll have to draw up an affidavit. And best of luck to you, ma'am."

We drove back against the dawn, too tired to talk. In the south and east, a sea of mountains -the Kitzbiühler Alps and behind them the Hohe Tauern- began to glow pink against the washed pale blue of the morning.

"Morgenrot," said Paola.

"What?" For an instant I thought I had fallen asleep.

"That is a song we have. A very sentimental song. 'Morgenrot, leuchtest mir zum frühen Tod?' You understand what that means?"

"Paola--"

"It is no use any more. I can feel it."

I pressed down hard on the gas pedal and she fell silent again. When we passed the vast frozen expanse of the Chiemsee, I felt her head sagging on my shoulder. The sun was up, blazing and sparkling where the wind had swept the snow from the ice of the lake. There was some traffic on the Autobahn now -a Constabulary jeep out of Bad Reichenhall, boxed top-heavy against the winter, bristling with radio antennae; an army ambulance rushing up toward Munich; wood-burning German trailer trucks, smoking like freighters in the Atlantic. Paola's body pressed against me and I gently eased her down so that her head was on my lap, the blue-black hair cascading over my trousers. I began to worry about my gas, which was running low.

At the Bavarian exit point a line of trucks was stopped behind the barricade. As I applied my brakes, Paola sat up, rubbing her eyes. A border guard came running out of the hut, wildly waving a red flag, signaling me to drive through the other gate, where a helmeted Constabulary sergeant stood, shouting, "Take her through! Take her through!" On the Austrian side it was the same thing: people running, gates opening, flags waving our little Opel through. I held the accelerator down, wondering what would happen if the tank ran dry. The tire chains clattered ominously against the fenders. We passed the Gebirgsjägerkasernen and the airport. The Festung Hohensalzburg came into view. In the suburbs we had to weave among horse-drawn farm wagons, an army tank truck (would my gas hold out?) and the lumbering overloaded buses. At the Residenz I drove past the sentries into the courtyard, jumped out of the car, dashed up three flights of broad marble stairs, ran through the empty offices, fumbled with the lock on the iron door, grabbed the cardboard box. . .

We left the car right at the door of the St. Johann-Spital. Paola ran ahead, carrying the penicillin. The hospital was dark and cavernous and cold; nuns and crucifixes and a faint smell of ether. We followed one of the nuns down a long echoing corridor and turned a corner. Dr. von Mell, wearing a long unbuttoned white coat came out of a room, and when I saw his eyes. magnified through the heavy lenses, I turned around and walked back alone to the door of the little baroque hospital chapel, and waited for her beneath a painted wooden statue of St. Barbara holding a sword.
 

Up in the loft the choir stopped singing, there was a hushed rustling in the Cathedral, and then a single cello began to play, very slowly, a sonorous and inexpressively beautiful melody. After a few bars a man's deep voice joined the song:

Qui tollis, qui tollis
Peccata mundi
Miserere, miserere nobis.

Paola was on her knees, her head upon her arm, her shoulders shaking.

Qui tollis peccata , sang the voice and the cello
Peccata mundi

I bit down on my lip so hard that salty blood ran into my mouth. Or maybe it wasn't blood.

Miserere, miserere nobis, concluded the voice and the cello. Suddenly the full choir began again, very loud, and I could not understand the words until the bass voice joined in again: Miserere, miserere nobis.

When the music stopped, Paola suddenly stood up and faced me with red swollen eyes. "Can you take me out now, please?"

"I don't think it's over--"

"It doesn't matter, it is enough now."

Feeling hundreds of eyes upon us, I followed her up the slushy puddle-covered marble center aisle and out the door. We drove out of the Domplatz, past the Franziskanerkirche, past the Festspielhaus and through the Neutor, the tunnel through the cliffs of the Mönchsberg We drove through the western suburbs in the direction of the Untersberg and then down a long narrow poplar-lined Allee. The sun was shining. It was almost noon. I was lightheaded from lack of sleep and sick from hunger. She pointed, and I turned the car between tall gateposts, topped by marble angels holding violins and wearing caps of snow. We followed the rutted private lane past a long stone wall and a series of yellow stucco houses that fronted upon a small frozen lake. She asked me to stop behind the last house. She looked at me. I could see my reflection in her eyes.

"Can you come in for a moment? I think there is some soup and some bread--"

"I think you want to be alone now."

"No," she said. "That's just the point. I don't want to go in alone."

I followed her through the gate in the wall and across the garden path. The snow-covered lawn sloped down to the lake, and through the bare stringy branches of the weeping willows I had my first glimpse of Schloss Fyrmian.

The palace was about two hundred yards away, directly on the other side of the pond, presenting its massive yellowish rococo facade, four rows of thirteen windows each -many with broken panes. Long icicles hung from sagging broken drainpipes along the roof. Great clumps of snow covered the statues on the terrace, weighed down the overgrown hedges in the garden and even bent over some of the smaller trees so that their branches were frozen into the ice of the lake. Directly above the Schloss, but in the distance, rose the gray battlements of the Festung Hohensalzburg.

"Well, what do you think of it?" Paola had followed me down to the edge of the lake.

"It looks like a picture in a storybook."

"Yes," she said. "A picture in a storybook. Every day I can watch it crumbling a little." We looked across the ice, silent for a moment. Then she said, "You know I think you are right, I have to go in alone eventually, it might as well be now. You are so tired you can hardly stand. Go home and get some sleep."

"Yes, all right." I paused. Why not? "But may I come back for dinner? I could bring some eggs--"

"Of course! Why not?" Her eyes blazed. "By all means bring eggs and chocolate and six cartons of Lucky Strikes and perhaps some nylon stockings! That is exactly what I need right now--"

I looked down at the snow.

"I'm sorry." She sighed. "All right, come back around eight o'clock and bring whatever you like, we will have a little supper." She turned and went into the house.
 
 
 
HEADQUARTERS 
7753RD MILITARY GOVERNMENT DETACHMENT 

APO 541 

6 March 1947 
SLATTERY TO FRENCH 

What's all this now? 

I am getting tired of hearing about this Cpl of yours. 

Either ship him out or promote him. 

If he is getting in where our mutual friend did not, perhaps a promotion is deserved. To Major General, presumably. 

In any case, the stuff will have to be returned sofort, otherwise Property Control will be on my back. 

On the subject of Property Control, I am also sending over a more interesting letter, received this week from a man at Harvard University. While this is not your department, judge, I'd be interested in your views. 

WF8

 
 
Herrn Oberstleutnant 
Wendell. F. S L A T T E R Y, junior 
Kommandant U.S. Militärregierung 
Stadt und Land Salzburg 
Residenz 

Very honored Mister Lieutenant-Colonel! 

I am the owner of the Dwelling Haus No. 63 Schwarzstrasse, sometimes called "Villa Redl". This Haus has since 12. June 1945 by troops of the U.S. Army been occupied, under administration of Office of Property Control (Capt. Bednarek). On 12. June 1945 I was by Military Police (Capt. O'Connor) forced to leave the Haus, and I have not been permitted from the Haus to remove my furniture or my personal articles except clothing. With my wife and two daughters have I lived in two rooms without heat on the fourth story above the train tracks by the railroad station. We have in these rooms no heat (central) and no water. 

My Haus has 6 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, livingroom, library, eatingroom, servingroom, and kitchen. In this Haus at the present time is Mr. First Lieutenant Pinckney and Corporal Anders. I do not ask why it is necessary for two single men to live in so large a Haus when many of the best Hotels (Hotel Bristol, Hotel Oesterreichischer Hof) are also under Property Control and have many rooms, where most Amerikan Officers are quartered. 

I ask, but, why it is necessary for Corporal Anders to remove from my Haus one (1) Telefunken Radio-Phonograph and take this Machine to Fyrmian Seegasse No. 1. residenz of Excellenz Countess FYRMIAN? Also, over sixty-five (65) sound plates (records) including complete Operas Mozart "Don Giovanni" "Zauberflöte" -La Nozze di Figaro"; von Weber "Der Freischütz"; J. Strauss "Die Fledermaus" and the following other plates: Mozart Serenade for 13 Wind Instruments (No. 10 B K. 361); Mozart Symphonie No. 33 (K. 319); Mozart Symphonie 29 (K. 201); Haydn Concerto in D for the Hunting Horn; Haydn Concerto in D for the Flute; Mozart Sinfonia Concertante (K. 297 b); Rossini Overtures: Wilhelm Tell, La Cenerentola, La Gazza Ladra. Also many plates of Austrian and German Volkssongs. (Corporal Anders did not take complete set Wagner: "Der Ring des Nibelungen" perhaps because it is in the cellar or perhaps the Countess Fyrmian. does not like Wagner!) 

Is it necessary for the Familie Redl to give musical entertainment to the Familie von Fyrmian? I beg of you! Many other itemes have been taken from my Haus by Amerikan Soldiers, but never before have personal properties been removed to the Haus of another Austrian Citizen! Especially is it not necessary to bring expensive Radio and Phonograph, and sound plates that can never be replaced, to this Familie. This Familie has been rich in Austria for 300 years and can obtain radios and sound record collections without help from young Amerikan soldiers! 

I have been told that my Haus was requisitioned for my activities with the N.S.D.A.P. (Nationalsozialist German Workers Party). It has been explained many times, first to C.I.C. (Mr. Spingard, Lt. Kuhn) and to Spruchkammer Salzburg No. III (Local De-Nazification Tribunal) that the circumstances under which I was forced to join the N.S.D.A.P. in my position as manager of the Salzburg branches of the Deutsche Bank A.G. It would not have been possible for me to remain in this position without membership in N.S.D.A.P. but I personally was never in sympathie with the opinions of Adolf Hitler, especially on the Jewish Question. It is also korrect that my son (now in Russia a prisoner) was an officer in the SS, but it was testified by my wife and daughters, I did advise my son to join the Wehrmacht in 1942 and he maintained to join the SS. As to the accusation that I was in charge of the liquidation of private bank Speyer & Co. in 1939, this has been fully answered in documents showing my orders from the Central Bank in Berlin. 

I hope that this full letter of explanations will have the effect of restoring the Telefunken Radio-Phonograph and sound plates to Villa Redl. I did personally this request direct at First Lieutenant Pinckney. I explained to First Lieutenant Pinckney that German troops in Occupied Countries were strictly forbidden to remove any personal properties from private Hauses. This conduct is in violation of the Geneva Conventions. First Lieutenant Pinckney became angry and it was not possible to talk on Oflicer-to-Officer level, but I express high hope that Lieutenant-Colonel Slattery will understand the injustice here involved. 

With highest respect! 

Doktor Friederich Redl


 
 
 

Lowell House E-12 
Harvard University 
Cambridge 38, Massachusetts 

February 23, 1947 

Lieutenant Colonel Wendell F. Slattery, Jr. 
Commanding Officer 
7753rd Military Government Detachment 
A.P.O. 54I c/o Postmaster, New York, N.Y. 

Dear Colonel Slattery: 

I am writing to you at the suggestion of Professor Boswell Hyde, who developed a high regard for you when he was political adviser to the U.S. High Commissioner in Vienna. 

I am a graduate student in the Department of History and Literature here at Harvard, serving as a tutor in Lowell House, and am a member of a committee which has been formed to establish an American study group for European students this summer. The members of our committee are graduate students and undergraduates who have served in the European Theater during the war or have traveled on the Continent since the end of the war. We have been appalled at the conditions now prevailing at most universities in Europe -demolished buildings, scattered and disorganized facilities, and students who have a hard time staying alive, much less pursuing active courses of study. 

At the same time, we have noticed a great hunger for information about the United States at these universities -not so much a hunger for political doctrine as for cultural contacts. As a practical matter, students and teachers, writers and journalists in these countries have been cut off from American influences since 1940, and earlier in Germany and Austria. 

Our plan is to collect a small faculty of outstanding American scholars -including Professor Hyde- to assemble an adequate library, and then to invite selected interested young people from most countries in western Europe. (We will also try to get some from the eastern side, but you know better than I what difficulties we will encounter there.) This group would spend a few weeks of the coming summer under one roof, participating in lectures and seminars dealing with various aspects of American history and culture. We hope you agree that such a gathering would be a good thing for Europe and the United States in this difficult year. 

Of course we will need a base, a large house in an attractive centrally located spot. We think that the American zone of Austria might be the best location, being on one hand under U.S. civil control and on the other hand maybe not as unpalatable as Germany to students from France and Holland and Norway. Some of the war veterans in our group are generally familiar with the Salzburg area under your command; their feeling is that you have a number of vacant palaces and castles, one of which might do for our purpose. We would of course be prepared to finance any necessary repairs and to pay a reasonable rental to the owners. We also understand that we would have to import all of the supplies, such as food, for the students and faculty. 

Without trying to put the Military Government into the real estate business, I am taking the liberty of inquiring whether your office has any houses to suggest. In any event, we could not and would not establish such a project in occupied territory without approval from the local military governor, and we hope you will consider this letter our request for such approval. 

We have submitted this proposal to the War Department and the Department of State. Assistant Secretary of War Leffingwell has been helpful to us, and has taken the matter up with the U.S. High Commissioner in Vienna. If you indicate that suitable quarters for our project are available in the Salzburg area you will, I hope, be hearing about us "through channels," and in that case we will have a representative on the scene promptly. 

In closing, I should like to add that while all of us are students at Harvard, the project is an entirely private matter and has no official connection with the University. We have raised the money ourselves, from our families, and from two foundation grants. 

We do hope that our plan interests you and that your reply will allow us to proceed quickly to the next step. We have no illusions about the difficulty of putting the plan into effect this summer. 

Sincerely yours, 

Peter Devereaux


 

The drawing showed the kind of automobile camps they had in the 1930s, with tents and trailers and parked cars. Two pup tents are side by side. Two wide-eyed girls are peeping out of one tent, two grinning men out of the other. One of the men says. "Armbruster here has what I think is a marvelous suggestion."

Paola giggled. She had enormous dimples, running from the corners of her mouth nearly to her eyes. I watched her, and tumed the page.

An elderly lady explorer and two men explorers, all in pith helmets, are crouched on a mountain ledge, peering through a magnifying glass at a nest with four gigantic eggs. One of the men is saying: "In the interests of science, Miss Mellish, I'm going to make a rather strange request of you."

Paola leaned back and laughed out loud. "Oh, Graham . . . they . . . they want her to sit on the . . . Oh . . . look at her expression!" She was laughing so hard that I thought she might really be crying again. She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. "Oh, Graham, I should not be -you should not make me laugh now!"

"My not?" I poured more wine into her glass and turned the page. I had found the book a week before, in the USO Library. I had always loved the world of Peter Arno, the vacant-faced pneumatic blondes, the imperious ramrod-backed doormen, butlers, and headwaiters, the lecherous old clubmen with their hawk noses and white moustaches, the cross-eyed drunks with ties askew . . . the whole cheerful dotty slightly out-of-focus picture of a world that now seemed as far away as the other side of the moon. This evening I had noticed the book lying on my bedside table; on impulse, quite thoughtlessly, I had slipped the book into the basket Heinie had prepared for me: a bottle of wine, a little steak, two eggs, a grapefruit, and a jar of Nescafe.

Peter Arno had finally done the trick. Or maybe the food, or the wine. Or maybe my company. I had been there every night for a week. The first night I found her alone. The house was cold and dark. She was lying on the couch in the living room, covered with a blanket.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I really don't want to see anybody, or to talk-"

"Well, you don't have to talk but you shouldn't be alone all the time."

"I am alone. I am completely alone now. My mother is dead and my father is dead and my husband is dead, and now my baby is dead. So why should I not be dead too?"

I switched on the floor lamp. She rolled over to face the wall. The living room was large, but it was so crammed with books and furniture and paintings that it looked like an attic. I made a fire with some sticks and a copy of the Salzburger Nachrichten. Then I found the kitchen, but I could not make the gas range work. so I brought a pan back to the living room and attempted to fry two eggs and some corned beef hash in the fireplace.

A moment later the fireplace was belching smoke, and some of the corned beef had fallen into the flames. "Um Gottes Wiilen, what are you doing there?" She came across the room, took the pan away from me and went into the kitchen.

I moved two portraits of eighteenth century archbishops from the table, pulled the table in front of the fireplace and brought two straight-backed chairs from the dining room. Then I opened the bottle of wine I had brought, using the corkscrew on my pocketknife. The scene called for some music, but I could find neither a radio nor a phonograph. I turned on more lights so that I could see the books that filled all the shelves and lay in stacks on the floor, on the tables, and in cardboard packing boxes -mostly leatherbound sets; Goethe and Schiller, Lessing, Rilke, Shakespeare, Maupassant, BaIzac; some other sets that could not have been on the shelves between 1938 and 1945; Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Zweig, Zuckmayer. Two slim volumes, not leatherbound: Gustaf Anders, Gesammelte Werke. Fat dusty tomes about the history of civilization. Almanach de Gotha. Knauer's Konversationslexicon. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf;Margaret Mitchell, Vom Winde Verweht; Dorothy Sayers, The Nine Tailors. . . .

There was not enough room to hang all of the pictures. Most of them were propped up against the walls, on tables or on the long red Turkish carpet that covered the floor: dark primitive oil portraits of scowling self-important men in uniforms or ecelesiastical robes, a whole series of sketches and paintings of masked figures in harlequin costumes, delicate little engravings of the Cathedral and the Festung and the big fountain in the Residenzplatz -and Schloss Fyrmian as seen behind reeds and water lilies on a summer day in 1822.

When she came back with corned beef and eggs crackling in the pan she looked at the table and said, "Oh, you have arranged a chambre separee, I see."

"I don't know what that is."

"It is a separate room in a restaurant, where a gentleman takes a lady to have dinner alone. There is always a couch in it, too." She put some corned beef and an egg on each plate, and I poured the wine.

"I'm sorry," she said as she sat down. "It is very nice of you to bring me this dinner, it is the best I have had in a long time."

"It's just corned beef," I said. "It was the only thing the cook would give me this evening, but they'll get more stuff from the Commissary tomorrow."

"Oh, you are planning to eat here tomorrow?"

"If you'll let me. Is there anything in particular I could get you?"

She ate the fried corned beef and the egg slowly, carefully finishing every bit and wiping her plate with a slice of black bread. Then she said, "I tell you what I would really like, but I am almost ashamed to tell you."

I waited and watched her finish the glass of white wine.

"I would like to go somewhere and take a long bath in a big bathtub, with a lot of hot water and soap."

"Come to the Villa Redl."

"Yes. Like that awful girl from the Landestheater."

"Nella? How do you know about her?"

Paola shrugged. "In this town everybody knows everything. Can you bring me when she will not be there?"
 
 

"I should be honored!" said Nella Paulsen in the darkness. "Oh, go to sleep," mumbled Pinckney.

"Just think, I am allowed to wash my Popo in the same bathtub as Her Highness Paola Gräfin Fyrmian. She thinks she is so wonderful with her Schloss out there, drives around only with generals, but now she comes to Villa Redl and lets a corporal give her a bath!"

"Shut up and go to sleep, sugar. Heinie told me he sat downstairs and read the paper. He didn't give her a bath."

"You know why she can't take a bath out there? Because now she lives in one of the little houses they used for servants, and servants did not have to have nice hot and cold water bathrooms, they can wash themselves in a zinc tub, you see."

"Listen, is that door shut?"

"What do I care if the door is shut? Is he allowed to bring that woman here to use our bathroom?"

"Well . . . sugar, you use it, don't you?"

"But he is only an enlisted man--"

"Please go to sleep, sugar. I'm so tired."
 
 

"What are these pictures supposed to be?" I asked.

She was lying on the couch, looking at the Peter Arno book. We had finished dinner. The fire had burned down, and I was wandering around the room, drinking my Cognac, looking at her things.

"Which pictures?"

"These little ones over here, all these clowns or whatever they are, with masks--"

"Oh, they are Venetian, from the eighteenth century. Those are actors in commedia dell'arte. I don't know what you call that in English, they were street actors, you know, they put on shows in the street, they made up the words as they performed, but they were always the same characters. They have a harlequin and they have a captain -I don't remember what the others are called. That picture you are holding, that is supposed to be a Guardi, but I don't think it really is. Graham, why don't you put on a nice record now?"

I walked over to the long refectory table and opened one of the heavy record albums. "What would you like to hear?"

"I don't know. Something gay. Please come here and explain this joke to me."

I switched on the record player and placed the overture to Die Fledermaus on the turntable. Then I walked across the room and looked over her shoulder.

A man and woman are in bed. The woman is trying to grab some papers which the man, a little fellow with a big moustache, is desperately trying to keep out of her reach: "I'm not supposed to let anybody see my Consumers Research Bulletins!"

I stood behind the couch and she looked up, smiling. "What is Consumers Research Bulletins?" and for one tiny fraction of a second I wondered how I could possibly explain, but then I leaned down and kissed her very softly on the lips.

She moved her head a little and closed her eyes. I kissed her ear and said, "Paola, I love you so much, I've never loved anybody--"

"All right," she said quietly.

"What do you mean 'All right'?"

"All right, I will go to bed with you. Go upstairs, I must take these things out first."

"You mean right now? Just like that?"

She stood up, put her hands on my shoulders and smiled a little sadly. "Are you disappointed? You want me to struggle a little so you can conquer me? Oh, Graham, you are trembling, my dear. Don't you want to?"

"Do I want to? Jesus, Paola--" I had to take a breath. "Isn't Frau Aschauer coming to wash the dishes tonight?

"Yes, she will come later."

"Well, won't she know?"

"Yes, she will know."

"Well, gee--"

"Oh, Graham." She smiled and shook her head. `You are a very naive boy, you know that? Frau Aschauer assumes that I have been sleeping with you for a week, and so does everybody else in Salzburg -including your officers, I'm sure. American soldiers don't share their rations and their evenings with Austrian girls just to listen to phonograph records."

"Well, you don't have to, you know."

She suddenly stopped smiling. "Has it occurred to you that I might want to go to bed with you? Now stop talking so much and go upstairs before I change my mind!"



Source of music sample
Joseph Haydn, Missa in Tempore Belli, Kyrie: "Haydn: Missa Brevis No.7 In B Major, St. Joannis De Deo; Missa In Tempore Belli No.9 In C Major", Vienna State Opera Orchestra And Choir, Hans Gillesberger conductor, Classical, emusic
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Map
Summary

Preface

BOOK I
1961 - A Point of View
[1] The annual meeting of the stockholders of the Boatwright Corporation
[2] What are you going to do about Boatwright and what are you going to do about yourself?
[3] Have we learned anything this evening, Doctor?
[4] Producing results?
[5] Alexander's Feast
[6] How'd you like to go over to Salzburg for a month with me?

BOOK II
1947 - An Island
[7] You're not going to Berlin. You're staying here.
[8] All right, we're the Military Government.
[9] The Americans are teaching us to be democratic instead of fascistic.
[10] Well, this is Fasching.
>[11] Letters after Ash Wednesday
[12] Say Boris is at Schloss Fyrmian.
[13] THE AMERICAN ACADEMY IN EUROPE - Prospectus for the First Session
[14] Learn to think of people as individuals.
[15] Parlez-moi d'amour, redites-moi des choses tendres.
[16] Not one thing left to show that you've ever been on earth? -"Sources of Soviet Conduct"
[17] A Countess, a Prussian Officer and a Ländler
[18] Now this part of your life is over and I'm sending you home.
[19] A father who's too busy to watch his son die. - The Spring of 1961
[20] I cannot sell Schloss Fyrmian to the Academy.

BOOK III
1961 - A Change of Air
[21] The first thing I saw was the Festung Hohensalzburg far in the distance, silhouetted against the shadowy curtain of the high mountains.
[22] Next day at the Academy we got to work - Graham, you know what Fleischer did?
[23] Im weißen Rößl am Wolfgangsee
[24] Brockaw writing a thesis on Austrian baroque architecture? - Boatwright Corporation and Boris Fleischer, plaintiffs
[25] You know there a Mr. Devereaux? Mr. Armistead Devereaux?
[26] I think always of Peter Devereaux.
[27] It sounds like an act of desperation, and it won't hold up in court.
[28] In those Oklahoma Hills WHERE AH WAS BOW-AHHHN!
[29] ... that we should meet again like this . . . I think perhaps there is a reason.
[30] "Is there here an American by name of Brockaw?"
[31] This is Boris Fleischer!
[32] "Does Hans work for Gehlen?" Paola shook her head. "More the other way around."
[33] Won't you please come home? Everybody needs you, I most of all.
[34] With this Waffenstillstand you have time now.
[35] You're going to regret this for the rest of your life!
[36] We Europeans would not do it. None of us. - People think you need medical attention.
[37] Will they trust you?
[38] Some things about the U.S.A. are perhaps rather important, and to us impressive.
[39] You're going to need a good lawyer.


version: March 2, 2004
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Arthur R.G. Solmssen, Joachim Gruber