The Emperor has finished polishing his spectacles. The starchy faces of the highest state dignitaries come back to life. Not a trace of sclerosis now.
The Emperor is speaking. In a dull tone of voice, he is thanking them for something or other. What his dear Count Berchtold spoke about yesterday had greatly saddened him. If he was not mistaken, that meant—if his memory served him correctly—Belgrade? He was happy to acknowledge that feelings were growing strong among his beloved peoples, who were demanding, demanding…
The Emperor could not recall what it was that the beloved peoples were demanding.
So they began explaining to him. There was something the Emperor, despite everything, was still unwilling to understand at any price, apparently. At first, they explained matters to him patiently, like a mother to her child, but eventually they lost their composure and started gesticulating. When the light finally dawned, they began bargaining with him. The Emperor went on the defensive for some time, resisting, hesitating, coughing, and recalling the murdered Empress Elisabeth. At one point he even stood up unassisted, striking the table so forcibly with his silver-handled cane that the two statuesque guardsmen flinched and Maria Theresa’s eyes sparkled.
Archduke Friedrich, the grandson of the one of Aspern fame, leapt to his feet. He approached His Majesty and bent over the pink ear from which wads of grey cotton wool protruded. At some length, he poured certain weighty words into that ear. As he bent over, the two Golden Fleeces on the Habsburgs’ chests found one another and for a few moments they swung in unison. Then the Emperor conceded. He yielded to the will of his beloved peoples.
He had just one wish; let them display the traditional oak leaves on their helmets. And they must sing. Here the monarch was interrupted again by Archduke Friedrich, who spoke up to remind him that in the twentieth century his soldiers no longer wore helmets, only soft caps. The Emperor apologized; he hadn’t been on manoeuvres for such a long time. He was visualizing the old heads of veterans of Novara, Mortara and Solferino, the Pandours, Radetzky… Shamefacedly, he turned to the Minister for War as a pupil to his teacher.
“Perhaps Your Excellency will be so good as to remind me how many troops I have?”
“Thirty-eight divisions in peacetime, not counting the Landwehr or the Honvéds.”
“Thank you. I have thirty-eight divisions!”
Thirty-eight divisions! Franz Joseph relished in his imagination every division individually, delighting in the multitude and the diversity of colours represented by these numbers, sworn to serve him in life and death. He conjured up in his mind the last parades at which he had been present, the last simulated battles, in which the enemy’s soldiers were identified by red ribbons in their caps. On that occasion he had personally, on horseback, led one of the warring armies, and his adversary had been none other than Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne, murdered four weeks earlier. His memory did not fail him here. That was unforgettable! Old passions were revived in the old man as he recalled it. For a while, he felt the old aversion for his mock enemy in the manoeuvres, whose actual death he and the entire Imperial and Royal Army were now bound to avenge. The old man felt a rush of blood to his head at the thought that this obstinate opponent, who had waited in vain for so many years for him to die a natural death, still gave him no peace even after his own death. Something in the old man’s mind declared, triumphantly, “Look, I have outlived him after all!” But even this single unspoken victory was moments later overshadowed by sorrow for his unforgettable only son Rudolf, who had also been unfortunate: “Mir bleibt nichts erspart!”[2]
An uncomfortable silence descended on the room. Berchtold’s cloying perfume was in the air, drifting like incense over the bodies of the murdered. “Adieu, Parisian perfumes!” The road is cut off. The Triple Alliance, the Triple Entente! Count Berchtold knew very well what this meant. He recognized the odour of the impending course of history. It smelt of restriction to local products. But in the eerie silence not even the jovial Krobatin noticed that scent. He had never smelt powder either, but he was Minister for War, nonetheless.
The Emperor was deep in thought. His light blue, watery eyes grew dim behind his spectacles. His clean-shaven chin sank into his golden collar; only the whiskers of his sideburns protruded. The glittering cross on the crown of St Stephen leant even farther, threatening to fall on the old man’s head. He remained silent, engrossed in the sombre catacombs of cadaverous recollections.
The tension continued to mount at the round table. The old armchairs were creaking. The sclerosis in the veins of the paladins advanced another step. Eventually, the Crown Council’s impatience broke the bounds of etiquette. The generals began to whisper.
“Time is running out! He must sign.”
Krobatin could not last any longer without a cigarette. At this point, Berchtold touched Count Paar’s elbow. The latter placed a large sheet of paper before the Emperor. The second replica of the Emperor held a pen with (as court ceremonial procedures dictated) a new, unused steel nib. All eyes were turned towards the Emperor’s dried-up, frail hand. At last, he came to and adjusted his spectacles. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief.
The monarch spent several minutes coldly perusing the rigid black rows of letters. He paid strict attention to every word, every punctuation mark. But after he had read the first sentences, his eyelids reddened and he had a burning sensation in his eyes. His spectacles misted up. Lately, the old man had found reading very tiring, especially in artificial light. He now looked away from the sheet of paper and, noting the Crown Council’s impatience, dipped the pen with a trembling hand into the open black maw of the inkwell. The hand returned with the nib now steeped in the poisonous fluid and settled shakily on the paper like a pilot feeling for the ground below as he lands. Soon the left hand came to its assistance, holding the paper steady.
The Emperor was placing his signature, so long awaited by the ministers. As soon as the name “Franz” was written, the pen ran out of liquid breath; the ink ran dry. As the Emperor reached for the inkwell once more, the quivering pen slightly scratched the thumb of his left hand. A tiny drop of blood squirted from his thumb. It was red. No one noticed that he had scratched his thumb; he quickly wiped it and, with a single flourish, added “Joseph”. The ink was blue.
Count Berchtold picked up the document. The following day it was translated into all the languages of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was printed and displayed at all street-corners in cities, towns and villages. It began “To my peoples…”. For the illiterate, it was read aloud by town criers.
The Emperor rose with the assistance of his aides-de-camp. He was not accustomed to shaking hands with his officials. On this occasion, however, he shook the hand of the prime minister. In the doorway, he turned once more and said—it was unclear to whom—
“If I am not mistaken, blood will be spilt.”
Then he left. Archduke Friedrich offered Finance Minister Biliński a Havana cigar. From down below, the crash of the hobnailed boots of the 99th Regiment infantrymen was heard. A crash of rifle butts on the command to order arms. At the nearby barracks the lights-out bugle call was sounded. It was nine o’clock.
At nine o’clock, the soldiers throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire go to bed.
The guards locked the gates at ten o’clock, as was the custom, opening them to latecomers in return for the customary twenty-heller tip. The eagles stamped on the faces of the nickel coins they unceremoniously pocketed were old and worn out. No one hurried home, though. In Vienna, the beds of even the most respectable citizens remained unoccupied until long after midnight. Only the children were asleep. Only the factory workers were snoring away, exhausted, concerned about nothing and prepared for anything, as the night shift had relieved them at eight o’clock. The sellers who set off to market every day at dawn were asleep; the postmen who had been going up and down flights of steps all day were asleep. Prisoners in their cells were sleeping, or pretending they were asleep. In hospitals, in clinics and smart sanatoria, bodies wracked by civilian diseases lay in a drugged stupor brought on by sleeping-draughts. In the cemeteries, the dead were sleeping. Somewhere far away the Emperor was sleeping.