The Silence

Two

Despite snow flurries that kept most people indoors or on public transport, Advokat Karl Werthen walked to work the morning of February 5, 1900, a daily ritual he tried not to deviate from.

The Habsburgergasse in Vienna’s First District was as void of human activity as if it had been a Sunday and not a Monday. As he approached his office at number four, Werthen could see the profiles of the supporting columns decorating the first-story facade. One of the naked Atlases bore an unfortunate protuberance of snow at just below waist level. These sculptures were a comfort to Werthen; a solid and reassuring presence in the midst of what some days felt to be pure chaos. He did not want to leave this particular Atlas in such disgrace.

Gazing up and down the street, he first made sure no one was about. Then, standing about knee-high to the figure, he took off his felt hat and jumped up, sweeping with the brim to rid the blotch of snow from the statue’s penis. Chill flakes speckled his face, but he was pleased to see that the Atlas now stood in all its original and unadorned splendor.

‘Gruss Gott.’

The greeting gave him a start. Behind him stood the building Portier. She was looking at him with a quizzical expression, but he felt in no mood to explain himself to this elderly woman, long the bane of his existence at Habsburgergasse 4.

He quickly put on his hat, then tipped it to her.

‘Frau Ignatz.’

Bundled in numerous layers of woolen cardigans, most of them out at the elbows, she carried a rag and a bottle of polish.

‘Surely you do not mean to polish the brass on such a day,’ he said, attempting to be cordial, or at least to sound concerned.

Once again, his overtures were strongly rebuffed by the gruff old woman.

‘Some of us have a living to be made.’ She scowled as she spoke. ‘Some snip of a girl is already in your office. Says she belongs there.’

‘Yes,’ Werthen replied. ‘She does. She is my new assistant.’

He glanced for a moment at his own brass plaque outside the house door: Advokat Karl Werthen: Wills and Trusts, Criminal Law, Private Inquiries.

‘And mind you get the edges of the plaque shiny, as well,’ he said, trying to salvage some dignity from the exchange.

As Werthen climbed the flights of stairs to his office, hat in hand, his right knee began to hurt. Injured in a duel, that knee had not bothered him in months, but a chance meeting with Frau Ignatz could resurrect even long-dormant ailments.

The ‘snip of a girl’ was indeed at work when he entered the office. Erika Metzinger tried bravely to look the part of a secretary, wearing a prim white, high-necked blouse with full sleeves, her hair piled atop her head and affixed with several tortoiseshell combs. She’d even installed a typewriting machine and was busy clacking away at it with two forefingers. The little fingers on both her hands pointed quite elegantly upward, as if she were at a tea party.

Fraulein Metzinger, in fact, had the appearance of a Volkstheater actress attempting the role of secretary. Her obvious discomfort came from the fact that she was, in fact, much more than an office dogsbody. After the recent unfortunate loss of his former junior member of chambers, Werthen had been left in the lurch. He was attempting to build his new business as inquiry agent and thus needed a competent assistant.

‘Morgen.’ The young woman greeted him in the languid tones of the West Country, for she hailed from Salzburg. The accent, however, was the only thing Werthen had found to be relaxed about her. She was in fact a veritable dynamo; Werthen had never met someone her age so knowledgeable of the law.

However, because of Austria’s outmoded customs vis-a-vis the education of women, she was denied entrance to the university. Indeed, it was only two years ago that the University of Vienna allowed entrance to its first female students, and those only in the philosophy faculty. There was talk recently of allowing women to study medicine in Vienna, but legal studies were still off limits to women in the Austrian capital and were likely to remain so for decades.

‘Fraulein Metzinger,’ Werthen said in reply to her greeting, nodding his head at her. ‘Murderous weather.’

She looked startled at this comment. He had noticed a tendency toward literalism on her part.

‘The snow,’ he added, showing his snow-speckled hat, and she visibly relaxed.

The daughter and granddaughter of well-known jurists, Fraulein Metzinger might not possess a sense of fantasy or humor, but she had studied law privately and possessed as much legal knowledge as any licensed lawyer. The Austrian feminist Rosa Mayreder, good friends with Werthen’s wife, Berthe, had introduced the young woman to him and vouched for her intelligence and character. Fraulein Metzinger had demonstrated both qualities during their brief interview, and Werthen decided immediately to hire her. Still, she was not a certified lawyer, and though she could do much of the paperwork at the office, Werthen had to be the one to check all her work, sign documents and meet with clients, a small price to pay for having one so capable — and yes, so willing and grateful — in the office.

‘The Kleist file is waiting your signature, Advokat Werthen. It’s on your desk.’

‘Excellent,’ he said. He could think of no higher praise, made almost speechless by her statement, for that file had languished for months, desperately needing reworking, rewording, adjustments, and disentanglements. Werthen himself had tackled it several times, only to retreat with a headache after several hours of sifting through interminable memoranda and cancelled clauses. The Kleist clan, it seemed, had relatives on every continent, each of whom had numerous amendments to the wording of the family trust. Now Fraulein Metzinger, after only a few days on the project, had brought it to fruition.

‘I mean, very excellent.’

You are a dithering fool, he told himself. Just get in your office and sign it.

With the office door closed behind him, Werthen took off his coat and hat, placing them on the mahogany rack, and settled into his chair. As promised, the Kleist file lay on his desk suppliantly.

Wonderful girl, he thought, even if she was deficient in a sense of humor.

He quickly browsed the documents and signed them. Then he settled back to peruse the morning papers, something that he had taken particular pleasure in of late.

For the last five days, Advokat Werthen had kept himself apprised of the Rathaus scandal surrounding the death of Councilman Steinwitz, for the man was a former client of his. He remembered the councilman quite well: a large, florid man who was a blend of Viennese bluff bonhomie and Czech fatalism. Had the Czech blood in the man gotten the upper hand? he wondered. Graft scandal or no, Steinwitz seemed to Werthen the last person in the world to take his own life.

The Viennese newspapers had made an event of the councilman’s suicide. Over the previous days the tragic tale had been featured in every newspaper in the land. The usually staid and conservative Neue Freie Presse was atwitter like a maiden aunt having taken too much elderberry wine. The day of the suicide, the headline of its evening edition attempted to balance itself between decorum and innuendo: ‘Councilman Takes Life, Irregularities Noted.’ Irregularities in the death or in his role as councilman? The eager reader must peruse the article and decide for himself. A feuilletonist for that paper felt called upon to go into great length in his meandering essay on the family history of said Steinwitz: married to Valerie Gutrum, youngest daughter of Colonel Gutrum, a veteran of the Battle of Konigratz during the Austro-Prussian War, and therefore an imperial icon; their two children, Joachim and Helene, ‘distraught at the loss of their beloved Vati.’ The less august Neues Wiener Journal did not bother with suggestion: ‘Steinwitz Kills Self, Subject of Investigation.’ Here the reporter posited a link between a recent City Hall graft investigation and the suicide of the center of that storm, Councilman Steinwitz.

The socialist Arbeiter Zeitung, which had first published the tale of City Hall corruption, also placed the story of Steinwitz’s death on its front page, above the fold. ‘Death of Councilman Laid to Graft Investigation,’ read that paper’s headline, though no such direct connection had, in fact, been made, for there was no suicide note. Facts, however, should never get in the way of a good lead. The anti-Semitic Deutsches Volksblatt put the entire matter — the story of City Hall graft and the subsequent suicide of Steinwitz — down to a Jewish plot to discredit Lueger and his associates. Even the gadfly journalist and social critic Karl Kraus used the councilman’s death as an excuse for an exegesis on suicide, the Viennese sickness — one that, according to the journalist, claimed more lives per year in Vienna than did deaths from other killer diseases, such as tuberculosis and syphilis. Kraus pointed out in his Die Fackel article that between 1888 and 1896, 3,164 Viennese had taken their own lives, an average of about one a day. Men were in the majority, with a four-to-one advantage over female suicides. While hanging was the preferred method, gunshot came in a close second. And, Kraus added, December surprisingly (with all the expectations of the holiday season) proved to be the month with the lowest average number of suicides, while May, with its seemingly uplifting and invigorating weather, was the month with the most, over fifty on average.

Today, Werthen discovered as he glanced at the newspaper in front of him, the architect Otto Wagner had been turned into copy for the hungry dailies.

‘I am a frequent visitor to the Rathaus,’ Wagner told a journalist for the Neue Freie Presse. Werthen knew of and appreciated Wagner’s role as artistic consultant to the municipality in numerous civic projects, including the newly opened Stadtbahn station at Karlsplatz in a Jugendstil design that infuriated many stodgy burghers. The elderly Wagner had also angered many critics among the conservatives with his 1899 membership in Klimt’s Secession. Though he did not necessarily agree with all of Wagner’s theories of urban design, or with his concept of utilitarian design, or Nutzstil, Werthen thought Wagner was a national treasure. As was usual with Vienna, Wagner was more famous in the rest of Europe and even in the United States than he was at home; scores of his designs had been neglected and left unrealized because of politics and rivalries.

Wagner further noted to the journalist, ‘I thought at first it was a motor car exhaust. I cannot imagine why, as it is very unlikely that one would hear such a sound three stories up the Rathaus.’

Equally unlikely that one would hear a gunshot there, either, Werthen thought.

Wagner had precious little to add to the tragic tale, but his name usually made good copy. His enemies, and they were legion, might even wonder if he had not pulled the trigger himself. The Viennese loved a scandal and delighted in mixing the names of the famous with such scandals, thereby reducing to their own paltry level whatever great man they selected for the honor.

As Werthen finished the article, he heard the door open to the outer office. There was a mumble of voices; he thought he recognized one. A tapping came at his door, and Fraulein Metzinger, a scarlet blush spreading into her scalp, looked in.

‘Sorry to interrupt. There is a fellow here to see you. He says it is rather urgent.’

Not a ‘gentleman,’ but a ‘fellow.’ And someone who was able, within instants of meeting her, to embarrass Fraulein Metzinger with some wayward statement or glance. That could be only one person.

‘Send Herr Klimt in,’ Werthen said.

She looked at him with amazement, then backed out of the door, to be replaced momentarily by the bulky frame of the artist Gustav Klimt, attired in an Astrakhan wool coat and matching Cossack-style hat. He hardly looked the part of the bete noire of Viennese painters; rather if one saw him for the first time you might think him to be a jumped-up butcher or baker.

‘My lord, Werthen, you have made improvements in this office. That girl’s a wonder. Wherever did you find her?’

‘It is nice to see you, too, Klimt.’

‘Am I being too lax with my politesse once again? Sorry. I hate formalities. But, if you insist. “Greetings, dear Advokat. How hale you and your lovely wife, Frau Berthe?” Is that better?’

‘And daughter,’ Werthen added, going around the desk to shake hands with the artist. His first child, a daughter, had been born on January 19.

‘Well, bravo for you, Werthen. A father. A wonderful institution.’

Klimt should know; for he had fathered numerous children in Vienna by various mistresses.

‘Too kind,’ Werthen said. ‘Now what is it brings you here? It can’t be the bill. I understand from Berthe that was finally settled.’

‘A sore point, Werthen. Shall we move on to other, brighter topics? In fact, I come bearing blessings for you in the form of yet another commission. If this keeps up, I shall take a proper percentage for my troubles.’

Indeed Klimt had been responsible for starting Werthen on the road to inquiry agent when the artist himself was accused of murder two years earlier. And last year he had been good enough to send another client Werthen’s way, the young beauty, Alma Schindler.

‘Do tell, Klimt.’

But Klimt had seemingly lost interest in his errand. Instead he was busily surveying the room’s decor: heavy mahogany furniture, green wallpaper, tasteful yet conservative prints of flowers and animals.

‘Bit stodgy, don’t you think?’ Klimt said, nodding toward a print of a horse and jockey.

‘It’s a lawyer’s office, not a salon,’ Werthen replied.

‘What you need are some paintings from our Secession. I could let you hang them here without a fee. Good for you, good for us. Expose your clientele to the new arts. Turn them into connoisseurs.’

‘They come to me for reassurance, Klimt, not an introduction to aesthetics.’

‘And some of our Werkstatte furniture would do wonders.’

‘What commission, Klimt?’

‘A Kolo Moser bookshelf, perhaps.’

‘The commission, Klimt.’

‘Fatherhood does not seem to be favoring you, Werthen. You are damnably testy today. The little bugger keeping you up at night?’

Werthen shook his head. ‘The “little bugger,” as you so lovingly refer to our Frieda, is a sleeper.’

‘Well, something is chewing at your nerves, then. If you were a dog, you’d be snarling.’ Klimt divested himself of coat and hat, looking about for a place to throw them. Werthen took them, and placed them on a straight-back chair by the wall. He pointed Klimt to an upholstered chair near his desk and returned to the other side of it to his own chair. Sitting down, he let out a sigh.

‘It’s the parents, if you must know.’

‘How do you mean?’

Too late, Werthen remembered Klimt’s devotion to his own mother; she was faultless in his eyes. There would be no sympathy, let alone empathy, from Klimt regarding one’s parents. The artist, despite his many affairs and entanglements, still lived with his aged mother, and his sisters. For many Viennese men, such a living arrangement was not a punishment, but a salvation.

Am I simply an ingrate, or are my parents more difficult than most? Werthen wondered. Estranged since his marriage to Berthe, whom they felt was socially beneath the Werthens, his parents had come back into his orbit once they learned of the advent of a grandchild. This was as it should be, and Werthen was initially happy for the reconciliation. They had taken a suite of rooms for the winter in the Hotel zur Josefstadt in the Langegasse, close to his flat in the Josefstadterstrasse, and were often visitors to Werthen and Berthe.

But from his initial joy at having his parents back in his life, Werthen had begun to dread their visits.

‘You’ll put the wet nurses of the empire out of work, at this rate,’ his father joked having learned that Berthe had decided to breastfeed her child herself. ‘Simple division of labor.’

And his mother engaged in endless wrangling with Werthen’s housekeeper and cook, Frau Blatschky, over the proper foods to prepare for a young mother. Frau Blatschky, happy that Berthe’s interminable morning sickness was done with, relished the preparation of all the richest food in the Austrian culinary canon, for a feeding mother should be able to indulge herself.

‘All that lovely mother’s milk does not come from eating crusts,’ Frau Blatschky intoned, as if Berthe had hitherto been subsisting on a convict’s diet.

Werthen’s mother, however, was worried lest her daughter-in-law lose her shapely figure. A mere week after the birth she said to Berthe with sweet insouciance, ‘You don’t want Karlchen to be harnessed to a dray horse, now do you, dear?’

Werthen hoped — he had long given up on praying — that his parents would finally pack their bags and go back to their estate in Upper Austria. Reconciliation be damned; he wanted his domestic peace once again.

‘Werthen? Are you quite all right?’

Klimt’s voice brought him out of his thoughts. ‘Sorry, Klimt. Forget I mentioned the parents. As you say, put it down to lack of sleep.’

Klimt rubbed a thick hand through his short, disheveled hair. ‘It’s a case of missing persons. Well, one missing person.’

Werthen, accustomed to the painter’s extreme egoism and narcissism, was not caught amiss by this seeming non sequitur.

‘That’s not really my line,’ he said.

‘Nonsense, Werthen,’ Klimt spluttered. ‘Anything is your line as long as it has to do with private inquiries. And this is very private, I assure you. My patron, Karl Wittgenstein-’

‘He’s gone missing?’

‘His oldest son and heir.’

Werthen nodded judiciously at this information. Karl Wittgenstein, the powerful industrialist, dubbed the Carnegie of Austria, was indeed a commission of worth. The man was one of the wealthiest in the empire if not in all of Europe, and had recently retired, turning his interests to art. Among his other projects, he had helped fund Klimt’s exhibition hall, the Secession.

‘I thought you might be interested,’ Klimt went on. ‘The young man’s name is Hans. Just turned twenty-three. He’s been missing for the better part of a week.’

‘What do the police say?’

Klimt leaned back in his chair. ‘I don’t suppose that wonderful young woman out there might find a cup of coffee for me?’

‘No, I don’t suppose she will. I can offer you a slivowitz, though.’

Klimt grinned like a fellow conspirator. ‘The cold, you know. One could do with a bit of lubrication.’

Werthen kept a bottle of ten-year-old plum brandy in a massive sideboard that took up one wall of his office. Moving to the sideboard, he secured the bottle and two glasses. To be polite, he poured himself one, too, though it was far too early for such indulgences.

‘Your good health,’ he said, handing one of the shot-size crystal glasses to Klimt, who did not bother with preliminary sniffs or appreciation. Remaining seated, he downed the fiery liquor in one swift gulp.

Klimt handed back the empty glass. ‘No police involved. Herr Wittgenstein is rather prickly about publicity, you see. He has had a bellyful of it lately regarding his monopolies in steel and iron. Besides, he tells me he believes the boy is simply off on a lark. It’s the wife, you see, who is worried.’

‘A week is a longish lark,’ Werthen said, resuming his seat. ‘I assume there has been no note, no communication asking for ransom.’

‘None.’

‘A family of such wealth, kidnapping cannot be ruled out.’

‘But a week and no note. .’

‘Yes, to be sure.’ Werthen did not mention other possibilities swirling in his mind. Not only were the Wittgensteins one of the wealthiest in the empire, but they were also the most prominent Jewish family, assimilated or not. Perhaps some anti-Semite had a hand in the disappearance. There was any number of possibilities. Interesting, however, that the father should think the son had simply run off for a final fling.

‘Has the son gone missing before?’

‘That, my friend,’ said Klimt as he rose from the chair, ‘is something you must ask Herr Wittgenstein. He has reserved a ten o’clock appointment for you. Meanwhile, I have a lady waiting for me at my studio.’

Werthen raised an eyebrow.

Klimt shook his head at this. ‘She’s fat and fifty, but the family is well endowed.’ Klimt laughed. ‘I shall make her look like a sylph. No one will recognize her. And please don’t be late. Herr Wittgenstein keeps the wurst on my table. The Alleegasse, just behind Karlskirche.’

Redundant information, as everyone in Vienna knew the location of the Palais Wittgenstein.