City of Lost Dreams

NINETEEN

Café Bräunerhof was doing a lively business. The whole city was buzzing with talk of the recent death of the Kapellmeister and Nina. Not that Nina was being talked about so much. She was just “das süsse Mädel”—“the sweet girl”—of an important, wealthy man. Who really cared about her? The girl had no family, and what little she had didn’t want to claim her.

Heinrich nodded to a few members of the city’s industrial elite, who were poring over the Financial Times, Il Sole 24 Ore, and the Wall Street Journal. He bit into a Punschkrapfen. His brother would be meeting him soon. They would talk, and they would talk about family, as they always did.

Heinrich and Gottfried’s mother had made the brothers promise on her deathbed that they would do whatever it took to hold on to their inheritance. She had also made them promise that they would employ a surgeon to surgically stab her corpse in the heart before she was put into the ground. (She had the common Viennese fear of waking up in her own coffin.) It had cost three hundred euros. They had done the same thing for their father, too, although the bullet Father had put through his own brain had taken most of his head off.

Their estate had been in their family since Archduke Ferdinand had conferred it on the von Hohenlohes in 1570. Land and an estate that, sending his mother spinning in her grave, would be sold to an American entrepreneur in a matter of months if Heinrich wasn’t able to turn things around. The American entrepreneur had made his fortune in infomercials. According to Fortune magazine, the American was “the Emperor of Infomercials,” a phrase that had made Gottfried apoplectic.

“They call this man an emperor because he has sold collapsible colanders and nose hair clippers?” his brother had fumed.

“They call him an emperor because he has sold a billion collapsible colanders and nose hair clippers,” Heinrich had explained. “Also zirconium jewelry, plus-size swimwear, robotic vacuum cleaners, a device that allows you to hang wallpaper very smoothly, a brassiere that can be inflated or deflated—”

“We are descended from not one but two Grand Masters of the Teutonic Knights,” Gottfried interrupted, lifting his chin. “They fought in the Crusades.”

“And they fought valiantly and well.” Heinrich knew the story went faster when you played along.

“You’ve seen their armor in the Neue Burg, the dents, the scratches. And this is what you propose as our course of action?”

The thought that his own brother looked down on him twisted Heinrich’s stomach, which was already doing battle with a combination of goose liver, Zimtstangerle, and rum-soaked cake frosting.

Gottfried was not only the heir, the scion of their house, but he was the gifted one, the one with brains and talent and charm. Even his epilepsy was considered a sign of his nobility, having been inherited through the Hapsburg line. A line that also carried notable examples of insanity.

Gottfried planned on having children as soon as he found a woman who met his breeding standards, which involved dental records, genealogy, a lengthy questionnaire on Austrian history, and a 5K timed run. And Gottfried intended his eventual sons to inherit the von Hohenlohe estate, as they had, and their father before them. But the estate needed to be saved, first.

Gottfried had become a rider at the Spanish Riding School and Heinrich had taken a job—his forebears would have shuddered at the word—as a consultant with a pharmaceutical company, telling people that his family had a long connection to medical innovation through Philippine Welser. But the truth was neither of the brothers was as interested in Philippine as they had been in their lineage of Teutonic Knights. Heinrich’s contract was to provide “public relations assistance,” but in reality they had hired him for his connections in Austrian society. As a descendant of the old aristocracy who had attended the best schools (where his mediocre marks were interpreted as a sign of patrician restraint, not dimwittedness), he could weasel his way into conversations with high-level Austrians anywhere and sniff out any developments that might be interesting to his employer. They called it “research,” but it was really gossip, which came naturally to Heinrich.

Then the company had come to him, and after praising his discretion and effectiveness, had asked for a very delicate service to be rendered. When they mentioned the sum that they were prepared to remunerate, he had felt his prayers had been answered.

He had agreed to provide such services. There was an EU official to be gently bribed to pass some legislation beneficial to the company, then a little off-the-books banking business in Switzerland. A sensitive negotiation made over a cotoletta at Bice in Milan. Always just gentlemen doing business, of course. As the need for tact and discretion had increased, the rewards had kept pace. But so had the risks.

This latest assignment was not just gentlemen doing business. Since Gottfried was the one so rabid about holding on to their inheritance, Heinrich had damn well asked him to help. Which may have been a mistake. Was certainly a mistake. Yes, things had certainly gotten out of hand. Gottfried’s fantasies had a way of taking over things. Heinrich had some difficult choices to make now.

Heinrich swallowed a second Punschkrapfen, then nervously checked his upper lip for traces of pink frosting, as he saw the slim (damn him!) silhouette of Gottfried making his way into the restaurant. Gottfried got all the women: beautiful, intelligent, sophisticated women who slept (Heinrich imagined) in between silk sheets and whose well-tended bodies were lithe and dexterous and who whispered naughty things in educated voices. Nina had refused to sleep with Heinrich, so the last act of sexual congress he had enjoyed had taken place with a middle-aged Laotian prostitute in a 15th district brothel boasting a selection of “internationally themed” boudoirs. The “America” room had been decorated with chuck wagon wallpaper and gingham upholstery. It had been necessary to keep his eyes tightly shut while he screwed, which defeated the purpose. You kept your eyes closed when you fucked your wife, not your mistress. Not that the prostitute counted as a mistress, but still.

Heinrich’s feelings for his brother were as layered as a Viennese pastry. Love, fear, jealousy, hatred, admiration, and resentment. Heinrich suddenly remembered how Gottfried, as a child, would order a Dobostorte in a café and proceed to dismantle it, casting aside chocolate and buttercream and cake to eat the only part he liked: the slivers of caramel.

Yes. That was what Heinrich had to do now. Turn his mind from all those layers of feelings and focus on the one that was most useful. The one that would get them closer to their goal.

There was work to be done. They would do it together.