The Silence

Four

Meier led Werthen on an abbreviated tour of the house as they made their way back downstairs and past the famed Musiksaal, where the Wittgensteins held their fabled musical evenings, with everyone from Brahms to Mahler performing for the family and guests. Werthen caught a glimpse of it as they passed, the walls covered in hunting tapestries, the floor an intricate parquet pattern, two Bosendorfer grand pianos situated with keyboard facing keyboard in the center of the room, a large bust of Beethoven standing at one end. But Meier cleared his throat at Werthen playing tourist, and they continued via a large sitting room, its walls covered in paintings from Rudolf von Alt, Segantini, and more from Klimt.

By the time they reached the conservatory, Werthen felt overwhelmed by material wealth. Meier remained quiet throughout their perambulation, and once they arrived at the door to the conservatory, he was obviously prepared to leave Werthen to his business.

‘You are well acquainted with young Hans Wittgenstein, I assume?’ Werthen asked as the servant was about to leave.

Meier cast Werthen a questioning look. ‘I have been with the family for quite some time.’ He was a lean, slight man whose thin calves looked faintly ridiculous in the sheer white stockings he wore.

‘That is not what I asked,’ Werthen said.

‘Yes, I have known Herr Hans since he was a boy.’ But he offered no more.

‘Let us understand one another,’ Werthen said. ‘I have been employed by Herr Wittgenstein to find his oldest son. You can confide in me. The more information I have, the more effective I will be.’

Still the servant remained silent.

‘Is he a happy young man?’ Werthen asked.

A slight trace of amusement passed over Meier’s wax-like face.

‘You find the question somehow humorous?’

‘Happiness is not the primary goal of the Wittgensteins,’ Meier responded in a monotone. ‘But if you are wondering if the young man has been exceedingly despondent of late, I am clearly not the one to ask. I am a servant here, not a familiar. Decorum is exercised. Fraulein Hermine can, I am sure, better aid you in your inquiries.’

With that, Meier abruptly turned and left Werthen to make his own way into the conservatory.

Which he did, meandering through rows of potted palms and giant banana and elephant ear plants, making his way toward brighter light. Eventually he saw a young woman standing at a table under an atrium light well, the stained glass above her an elegant Jugendstil design of geometric shapes and swirls. The table was covered in cut flowers, and the young lady was busy making arrangements of them. She was dressed in a white blouse with a high neck, and a green tweed skirt that reached to the floor. Her brown hair was worn on top of her head.

‘Fraulein Wittgenstein?’ Werthen nodded at her as he approached.

She looked up from the red and white carnations she was arranging and smiled with quiet grace.

‘You’ll be the detective Klimt sent.’

‘Private inquiries agent,’ he said.

‘Comes to the same thing, doesn’t it?’ Another winning smile, but with an edge. Her greenish-blue eyes were flecked with gold.

Werthen did not feel like quibbling. It seemed that even when the Wittgensteins were being friendly, they were difficult.

‘What do you think happened to Hans?’

This abrupt shift did not throw her. She continued clipping flower stems with a pair of ivory-handled secateurs.

‘I think he just needs a little vacation.’

‘He couldn’t wait for August?’

She shook her head, as if gently reprimanding his levity. ‘Hans is a sensitive young man.’

‘Your father mentioned his dreams of a musical career. Might that figure in his disappearance?’

‘He has not disappeared. He is somewhere, we just do not know where.’

‘He said nothing to his other siblings?’

She shook her head, more adamantly this time, and resumed clipping stems.

‘Do you know any of his friends?’ Werthen asked finally.

‘I can’t say I do, Advokat Werthen. If you must know, Hans and I are not all that close. In age, yes, but not in temperament.’ Another shake of the head. ‘I am, in fact, closer to the second group.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Sorry. Family nomenclature. Six of us children were born between 1874 and 1882. Myself, then Hans — actually, Dora next, but she died at birth — Kurt, Lenka — that’s Helene — Rudi, and Gretl. Six years later Pauli was born, and then the next year, Luki — little Ludwig, the baby of the family. The little ones and I are very close.’

‘I see.’ But he did not at all. Or if it had any bearing on the whereabouts of Hans Wittgenstein. No nickname for him, Werthen noted. Or for brother Kurt.

‘Is Hans close with his brothers? Perhaps he mentioned something, anything, that might give us a lead?’

‘You’re free to ask them, of course. We all live at home still. None of us has taken the dreaded marital step. But I doubt it will do you any good. No one seems to know where he is.’

She finished the arrangement of red and white carnations, laid down the secateurs, and took off her white gardening gloves.

‘I expect you will want to see his rooms.’

‘If I may.’

‘It’s back up the stairs again, then. We are a family that believes in exercise.’

She moved off briskly and Werthen trailed behind as she led him on another route, avoiding the main staircase and instead taking a narrow circular flight of stairs to the second floor. He saw the door to Herr Wittgenstein’s study, but they turned the opposite direction, into a maze of hallways that totally disoriented Werthen. Fraulein Hermine finally opened the door to a corner room that was expansive and bright. A grand piano, yet another Bosendorf, sat in one corner. The room was simply appointed with oak furniture, but the walls were almost totally covered with framed posters announcing musical performances.

She waited as Werthen went through the drawers of a writing desk, looking for loose papers, a journal, any clue as to where Hans might have gone. He inspected the books in a glass-fronted bookcase: Schopenhauer, Marx, even the disturbing German Nietzsche was there. Also bound volumes of the plays of Arthur Schnitzler, and surprisingly, several of the red-covered volumes of Karl Kraus’s review of popular culture, Die Fackel. Surprising, because Kraus had pilloried Karl Wittgenstein as a grubbing capitalist on more than one occasion in his review. Or perhaps it was not so unexpected if Hans and his father had little love for one another.

Werthen thought momentarily of his own brother Max, six years Werthen’s junior. He was sensitive, unstable, and despairing of the fact that his parents demanded that he study law at the university rather than attend the Academy of Fine Arts, his fondest wish. Max had written to Werthen, then just beginning his criminal law practice in Graz and less than sympathetic with his younger brother’s dreams of becoming a painter. After all, he himself had entertained dreams of becoming a writer, but ultimately found time for scribbling before and after his day of legal work. Surely Max could balance his dreams with practicality, too.

Early one autumn morning in 1888, while in Vienna with his parents for the university inscription, Max made off from their hotel near the Habsburg summer palace of Schonbrunn, climbed the slope of Maxingstrasse past the home of the Waltz King, Johann Strauss, and soon reached the Hietzing Cemetery. Before leaving Hohelande, the family estate in Upper Austria, Max had taken a revolver out of the gun cabinet. Now, in Vienna, he found the grave of the Austrian playwright Franz Grillparzer. Lying on the damp marble slab, he inserted the cold metal of the gun barrel into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Had Hans sought the same way out? Werthen would need to check with the city morgue for recent corpses. Not something, however, that he would discuss with the family just yet.

After a full half-hour, he was satisfied that there was nothing in the room to provide him with a clue as to the whereabouts of its occupant.

‘You really did not answer my earlier question, Fraulein Wittgenstein.’

‘No? What was that?’

‘About your own theory. A vacation. But any idea where? I assume your family has more than one abode?’

‘Yes. We have a villa on the Neuwaldeggergasse here in Vienna and a summer home at Hochreit, in Bohemia. We of course have inquired at both. The caretakers assure us that Hans has been at neither residence in months.’

‘Very good. And the siblings, are they at home now?’

‘Kurt is surely at the office. I can give you his address and telephone number. But I believe Rudi has come down with a slight grippe. You can find him in his room. Lenka and Gretl are at dance class this morning.’

‘And the second group?’

‘Oh, I hardly see how they can help.’

‘Perhaps you will let me decide that.’

This comment set a muscle twitching spasmodically in her left jaw. Underneath her studied air of calm noblesse oblige, Hermine Wittgenstein seemed to be made of the same hard stuff as her father.

‘Shall we begin with Rudi, then?’ she offered.

The brother’s room was removed by one hallway. She tapped at the door, but did not bother waiting for a response before she opened it to reveal a young man in a black and red silk Chinese robe lounging on a day bed, reading what looked to be the script of a play. The youth peered over the edges of the script and frowned to see his sister and a visitor. The expression made the wispy moustache he sported wrinkle like a troublesome caterpillar.

‘A fellow does like a bit of privacy,’ he said in a rather high voice.

As they drew nearer, Werthen could see a title on the script: Reigen.

He had heard about this privately printed play by Schnitzler. Supposed to be extremely racy, all about the sexual goings on of ten different characters, five men and five women. The pairings go round and round from one character to another like a circle dance. His wife Berthe had been trying to find a pirated copy of the play, but with no luck. Hermine Wittgenstein was clearly oblivious of such things, and Rudi, for his part, seemed to count on this ignorance, for he did not bother to hide the script or its title.

‘You had better not let Father catch you reading such things,’ she said, as if she had read Werthen’s mind and wished to prove him wrong. ‘This gentleman is here to inquire after Hans.’

She made introductions, and Rudi rose from his couch long enough to shake hands limply, exchange names, and then resume his sickbed.

‘Must forgive me, Advokat. It’s bronchitis.’ He coughed theatrically.

‘I thought you told Meier it was grippe,’ Hermine said in a brittle voice.

He waved a delicate hand at the objection. ‘An illness of some sort. You may not want to get too close.’ Then to Werthen, ‘How do you propose to track your man, counselor?’

‘I was hoping you could be of assistance in that.’

‘Me?’ Rudi took great delight in this, cackling until an actual coughing fit overcame him. His sister went to his side, pounding him on the back with enough force to make the young man wince.

‘Jesus, Mining. Never go into nursing. I am not a lump of dough to be pummeled.’

‘Do you have any information that might help Advokat Werthen?’ She said this with not the slightest trace of humor or goodwill.

‘I am afraid I am not my brother’s keeper, Herr Werthen,’ he said, his voice trailing away in a languishing tone.

Thereafter Werthen quickly ascertained that there was little information to be gotten from Rudi. He was much too immersed in his own human drama to notice what was happening with his older brother.

‘I told you so,’ Fraulein Wittgenstein said as she closed the door behind them. ‘Hans kept to himself.’ A beat. ‘Keeps to himself,’ she corrected.

Of the younger brothers, Werthen was only able to speak with Ludwig, for Paul was at a piano lesson with the well-known blind composer and pianist, Joseph Labor. Ludwig, or Luki, was in his room on the same floor — all the children had their own rooms, spacious enough for sleeping and work space. The somewhat chubby youngster was dressed in a navy suit and short pants and was busy at a woodworking table when Werthen and Hermine entered.

‘About finished?’ she asked.

‘Oh yes,’ the ten-year-old bubbled. ‘And it is going to work, you’ll see.’

‘I am sure it will.’ His older sister beamed at him. Then to Werthen, ‘He’s making an exact copy of a Singer sewing machine. In wood.’

‘A working copy,’ the boy emphasized.

There was a tapping at the door. Meier was standing outside the room when Hermine opened the door.

‘There you are, Fraulein,’ the servant said, sounding relieved. ‘It’s your mother. She’s been asking for you. I think she needs more drops.’

Hermine Wittgenstein seemed upset by this at first, but quickly covered her irritation.

‘I will be back shortly, Advokat. And Luki, see if you can help this gentleman track down your wandering brother Hans.’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ Ludwig said earnestly to her retreating back.

‘You’re an engineer, then,’ Werthen said once the sister was gone.

‘Like my father,’ the boy said. ‘The others play music. I build. Well, that’s not exactly true. Gretl is quite pitiful at the piano. Mother is always telling her how she has no sense of rhythm at all.’

‘No instruments for you, then?’ Werthen took a liking to the boy, obviously intelligent but not obnoxiously precocious.

‘I play around with the violin, but no, not really. Not like Hans or Paul. They have real talent. Hans could play the violin and piano when he was still a toddler. By four he was composing. Me, I could still barely speak when I was four.’

He stated this astounding fact with a real sense of pride.

‘Maybe you did not have anything to say.’

Ludwig smiled brightly. ‘That’s exactly what Mining says. Father calls her a brick. What do you think, Advokat?’

‘Solid as the Parthenon.’

‘Yes.’ The boy affixed one last piece of wood to his model, and then wound up a spring. Soon the contraption was humming along like an actual sewing machine.

‘See. I told you. A working model.’

‘Can you help me at all about your brother?’

Ludwig looked up from his masterpiece and shook his head. ‘I wish I could. I miss him.’ The spring wore down and the machine stopped.

‘Did he ever mention having a room somewhere?’

‘His room is here,’ the young boy said. ‘He was a child prodigy, you know. Another Mozart. All the teachers said so. But Father wants him to go into the business. Father usually gets his way.’

Suddenly the young boy looked intently at Werthen: ‘I do not think Vati will demand my assistance in the company, do you, Advokat Werthen?’ And then, without waiting for an answer, ‘You really must find him. Hans is the best of us. He is special. And different. In many ways.’

Hermine Wittgenstein returned at that moment, reminding Luki it was time for his Latin lesson. The boy rolled his eyes, demonstrated his model for her, and then was off to the schoolroom.

Leaving the boy’s room, Werthen had Fraulein Wittgenstein give him the business address and phone number of brother Kurt, as well as a description of the missing man: about five foot ten inches and one hundred and fifty pounds. Dark hair, brown eyes, clean shaven and close-cropped hair, which had recently become the mode for the artistic types. They descended the main staircase and after much prodding, Hermine went to a sitting room and removed a framed photograph from an end table. It was a recent photograph of Hans, decked out in summer white linen, from a family portrait taken the previous August at their Neuwaldeggergasse villa. Back row, third from the right.

Hans was most definitely not a carbon copy of his bullish father; instead, he had the ascetic look of a monk on his face. He was staring off into the distance as the other members of the family were saying ‘bitte’ into the camera.

‘I would like the photograph returned when you are finished,’ Fraulein Wittgenstein said without emotion. Then, as Werthen was about to leave, ‘I suppose you will need it at the city morgue. For identification purposes.’

‘It hasn’t come to that yet,’ he said. A half-lie. ‘It helps to have visual identification when interviewing people. A name means little to people, a face much more.’

Then, after a quick salutation from Fraulein Hermine and an admonition to please find her brother ‘for mother’s sake,’ Werthen was on his way.

Out on the street, it had warmed even more and the snow had almost completely melted, making for a slushy and quite miserable walk. As he picked his way along the sidewalk he thought of the youngest brother, Ludwig, and his final comment about his brother Hans being different in many ways.

It was a strange comment, Werthen thought, and piqued his curiosity about the missing Wittgenstein. After not speaking for the first four years of his life, young Ludwig obviously picked his words carefully.

So Hans was not simply different because of his musical skill and dreams, his desire to be an artist in a family of business people. Different how?