“Laksari and I exchanged glances, and there was something in her eyes, something that still haunts me. We rushed up the stairs. Inside the nursery my children lay in their beds, writhing, their faces contorted, their bodies racked with convulsions. They were poisoned. No one thought to look for Fairuza. But by then she was gone.
“I held my children in my lap, praying for a miracle—if only he would let Non and Norman live. ‘Please,’ I whispered again and again. ‘Please, God. Please.’ My voice sounded feral, like a wild animal’s. I rocked back and forth. Black vomit covered my nightgown. Non was still screaming but Norman’s eyes were rolled back into his head. ‘Norman. You’ll be fine. Norman. Please.’ I felt panic as Norman convulsed in my arms. ‘Don’t die! Norman, please don’t die!’ And then his three-year-old body stopped shaking. It went still. I held him in front of me and his face was pale. Non survived. But Norman was gone. Our first, our little boy. I hadn’t spent enough time with him. Rudolph killed Norman. He raped our nanny so she killed our baby.”
Edouard covers his mouth. Anna’s eyes are red. It’s a terrible story.
“I spent three months in bed. Then I got dressed and went outside to watch Non play. I sat on the swing and went back and forth, watching my daughter without seeing her at all. The house was haunted. Norman was everywhere. So now you know the kind of man my daughter is with. And he is angry.”
Edouard has gone very still. I have to look close to see that he’s even breathing. “We are going to get her away from that man,” he says. “I have to leave now. I must make some calls.”
“How? How are we going to get her now that Rudolph knows I want her?”
“I don’t know.” He rises. “I don’t know.”
Part 2
Fecundity
LINING UP OF THE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FOUR AUSTRIAN ARCHDUKES AND ARCHDUCHESSES FOR THE FIGHT OVER THE SUCCESSION HAS BEGUN-BELIEF THAT THE TROUBLE, WHICH WILL COME WITH THE DEATH OF THE KAISER FRANZ JOSEF, IS CLOSE AT HAND-ONLY MUTUAL RESPECT FOR THE AGING MONARCH KEEPS THE BITTER COMBATANTS APART.
By Bernard Aston.
Special Correspondent.
Vienna, Oct. 1.
Secret strife rends the numerous Hapsburg clans. Only respect for the venerable Kaiser Franz Josef keeps it from open warfare. For twelve years past, but particularly since 1908, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand practically took command of the Empire, the one hundred and twenty-four archdukes and archduchesses have been divided sharply into two camps which hardly ever speak and seldom even meet one another. Of the seventy odd out of the one hundred and twenty-four who are old enough to have opinions, about twenty stand in with Archduke Franz Ferdinand: while about fifty are banded together to resist to the death the heir, his pretensions, and his morganatic wife. Members of the opposing groups no longer entertain one another, or even pay formal visits; they are at present engaged in severing their common property interest, and so universal is the feud that even the army is divided in mind as to what will be its duty when the great crash comes.
“The great crash” is involved in the decision for or against Franz Ferdinand, which is inevitable when Kaiser Franz Josef dies. It is a European issue. For with the Austrian Slavs gravitating to Russia, and the Austrian Germans gravitating to Germany, a civil war in Austria almost certainly means a general war in Europe. And at most within a few years, but possibly within a few months, Europe will be faced with this risk.
Chapter 13
What's Done Is Done
1913
My opening of Tristan and Isolde in Berlin is stupendous. Every seat at the Deutsches Theater is filled. I should be happy, delirious even. I am thirty-seven years old today and my name is still flashing in lights. But it is a difficult anniversary for me. I am Aunt Marie’s age when I took her husband; I am my mother’s age when she died. My own daughter is no longer a little girl.
Edouard invites me to celebrate my birthday in an exquisite restaurant on the Kaiserdamm. I want to decline. After all, what am I celebrating? But Edouard is persistent.
“You glow,” he says when I slip into the padded leather chair across from him.
I have been drinking since the final curtain. “That’s what Evert used to say,” I tell him, raising my glass and then finishing it. “He used to write poetry for me,” I say, recalling Evert’s voice, his eyes. I order another bottle and pour myself more wine. “He used to call me beautiful. Not Dutch beautiful, exotically beautiful,” I clarify.
“Who is Evert?”
How many years have I known Edouard, and I’ve still never told him this story? “Someone I thought I knew,” I say. “I met him after I left the Walrus’s school. I was living with my father’s sister, Aunt Marie.”
Edouard finishes his glass. “You told me about her years ago. Are you saying she wasn’t too poor to take you in when you were a child?”
“Marie wasn’t wealthy, but she wasn’t impoverished either—my mother’s sisters were misinformed. When I was expelled, Aunt Marie welcomed me into her home.”