Doctor Criminale

‘Franz Josef was not so gay either,’ said Gerstenbacker, as we went down to the crypt, ‘He lived here in one room and watched his empire fall to pieces. Because you know here was made a great dream of a glorious Europe. Once, you understand of course, we were Europe.’ We had Spain, the Nederland, Italy, the Balkans. All run from here. Not the crypt, of course, upstairs, where is Waldheim now.’ ‘Oh, is he?’ I asked, ‘The great forgetter.’ ‘Well, some things we remember, some we forget,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘Yes, here was the Emperor, the archdukes, the courtiers, the diplomats. The bureauarats, the policemen, the apparatus, the files, the rules of law, and trade, and censorship.’ ‘It all sounds a bit like Brussels now,’ I said. ‘The same,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘The European Community, you know we will join very soon. I believe we have some experiences that would be useful.’ ‘I’m sure you do,’ I said. ‘Good, now you have seen some of our past, next I will show you some of our modern,’ said Gerstenbacker, checking his piece of paper, ‘In fact I will show you everything.’

And sure enough, over the course of the next hours, Gersten­backer did exactly that. He showed me as much of everything as time and the human frame would permit. He showed me gothic, the church of darkness and mystery, and he showed me baroque, ! the church of light and joy. He showed me Biedermeier, the art of the bourgeois, and he showed mejugendstil, the art of dissent. He showed me Calvinism; he showed me the New Eroticism. He showed me Egon Schiele and he showed me Gustav Klimt; he showed me Salome and he showed me Judith. He showed me the Café Central where Trotsky used to sit and reflect, he showed me a table used by Krafft-Ebing, he showed me the home of Gustav Mahler. He showed me the consulting rooms of Sigmund Freud at Berggasse 19, its contents mostly disappeared, where sex-shocked patients once used to lie among portraits of Minerva and pictures of Troy. He explained to me things that were there, things that had once been there, and even things that had never been visibly there but came nonetheless. For he briefly took me out of the city and into the Vie

And all the time, as we toured the city, getting on a tram here and taking a taxi there, I tried to encourage perfectly pleasant young Gerstenbacker to talk to me about Bazlo Criminale. There was no obstruction; he seemed totally willing. Yet always, it seemed, there was some absolutely necessary diversion or other. ‘Look, tell me, do you have any idea where Criminale stays or who he sees when he visits Vie

‘It has a cabbage on the top of it.’ ‘Why does it have a cabbage on the top of it?’ I would ask. ‘It has a cabbage on the top of it because of course Josef-Maria Olbrich put it there.’ ‘Who did?’ I asked. ‘Olbrich, don’t you know him? The friend of Otto Wagner? They all wanted to make a great Secession together.’ ‘I see,’ I said, ‘So when Criminale comes to Vie

The building Gerstenbacker took me to was the famous Seces­sion Building (motto: ‘To the age its art, and to art its freedom’); sure enough, it did indeed have a kind of cabbage-shaped metal dome on the top of it. We walked inside, to see the place where, in the 18905, Vie

‘Now please, Gerstenbacker, not Wittgenstein’s father,’ I said sharply, ‘I’m trying to talk to you about Doctor Criminale.’ ‘But how can I tell you these things, really I have no idea,’ said Gerstenbacker i

When we went out into the street outside the Secession Building, Gerstenbacker started again. ‘So now I think you would like to see an opera house with cats.’ ‘What is an opera house with cats?’ I asked. ‘You don’t know cats?’ he asked, ‘Cats are by Andrew Lloyd Webber.’ By now I thought I had taken the point. Gerstenbacker was a perfectly nice young man, but the task assigned to him by Codicil was plainly to get me as far away from Criminale as possible. ‘You’re very kind, Mr Gerstenbacker,’ I said, ‘But really I don’t want to see any more Imperial Vie

So we went on a tram to Nussdorf, where we stood on the end of a decrepit pier and did not see the Blue Danube. For the Blue Danube, as you probably know all too well already, since we live in an age of travel, is not actually blue. That is probably why the Vie