“I can’t anymore, Robert. I can’t,” I’d told him. “If I don’t get up this very minute, I’ll die between these sheets. I need to come up for air. And anyway, I must see to the matter of my dowry.”
And a short time later, bathed, my hair done up, bejeweled and attired like a Viennese lady—I’d spent the last of my money on two new dresses, a cape and a hat—I watched as Robert braided his hair down the sides of his face and waxed his mustache in front of the mirror, an operation he carried out with great seriousness in spite of my teasing. Satisfied with our appearances, we said goodbye to Frau Wittek, the widow who’d provided us with a room on the second story of her house on Bäkerstrasse, and stepped out into a lustrous morning in which the sun set the colors of the fallen leaves ablaze with light and shone cleanly on the monumental façades of Vienna—St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the Hofburg Palace. . . . Oh, my beloved Robert, how proud I felt on your arm as we wandered the streets in search of the banker that the kind priest at St. Michael’s had recommended to us. How surprised I’d been by your command of German: Guten Morgen, gnädige Frau. Wir suchen Herrn Kesslers Bureau. Once we’d found the house, we crossed the vestibule and entered a busy office in which several men with black bankers’ sleeves affixed to their shirts were pouring over account ledgers and piles of papers. “Herr Kessler?” Robert inquired, and an elderly man, hunched and very pale, with hairy, agile hands, stopped moving the balls on an abacus and stood up.
Herr Kessler spent half an hour carefully examining our papers, scrutinizing mine in particular. Finally, he cleared he throat and addressed Robert in a guttural and disjointed French: “Everything appears to be in order, isn’t that so? Were it not for the war. . . . Ah, the war. . . . I would be able to advance you a larger amount. Surely you understand. . . . The collection fees, no? Excessive, Monsieur Renaud, excessive. Just imagine, a bill of exchange to be cashed in Toulouse. We are in Vienna. . . . Such an ill-fated war, don’t you think? Well, we shall be able to do something for you. Not much, to be sure, in these times. . . . There is hardly any money left at our disposal. And gold, well, gold is scarce, monsieur. The Emperor has taken it with him to Hungary. Of course, I realize . . . you are a newlywed. . . . The madame has a dowry. . . . Quite a large amount, I should be able to advance something to you . . . ” And on and on he went, talking without pause as he consulted a mysterious ledger that he had taken from his desk drawer, and knocked the balls on the abacus together, moving them from here to there with vertiginous speed.
“And?” said Robert impatiently.
“I can give you, tomorrow, at the same time . . . four hundred Guldens.”
“We need five hundred,” bartered Robert.
In the end, the amount was fixed at four hundred twenty-five Guldens. Since Robert was to rejoin his regiment the following day, early, as always—Lannes had not stopped over in Vienna and was already on the march in the direction of Olmütz—Herr Kessler agreed to bring the money to me at the flat on Bäkerstrasse, initiating a business relationship between us that would be revived some months later.
With nothing better to do until six that evening when the opera would begin, we headed toward the Prater, an enormous park on the outskirts of the city that we’d been told was nothing short of miraculous. (You, reading me now, if you can travel through time—and I say this with more hope than irony—do not fail to visit the Prater of my youth. There you will find gorgeous paths lined with chestnut trees, shops, cafés, taverns, restaurants where you’ll eat fried chicken and drink Pilsner beer and Hoffner wine. Seated at a table facing the Danube, you’ll admire the tall willow trees that line its banks and the groups of deer, gentle as sheep, that graze upon the grass. If you like horses, as I do, you could ride on an excellent course without fear of crashing into anyone, or step up to an arena at which you’ll be dazzled by daring equestrian exercises. Or, you might simply pass the time watching the children wave to their parents as they spin about on a carousel, mounted on brightly-colored plaster steeds. If you’re a lover of music and dance, follow the main avenue until you come to the Augarten, where you’ll find dance and concert halls and where the air is filled with waltzes and marches and songs and the sweet murmurings of lovers.) After a lunch of sausages and beer, we returned to the city.
Despite the normalcy with which the Viennese had carried on with their daily lives, at sunset they began to return to their houses. Few people remained in the streets, and, upon arriving at the theater, we saw that the foyer was nearly empty. There were scarcely any women, and the men, for the most part, were officials with the Grand Armée. Given the low attendance, we had no trouble securing a pair of box seats. As the orchestra was tuning their instruments, a hushed murmur ran through the theater; a dignitary with gray hair and a deliberate mien had just occupied the Imperial box. “It’s Talleyrand, the Grand Chamberlain of the Empire,” whispered Robert, rising from his seat to stand behind me, his bearskin hat resting, in a soldierly manner, between his forearm and right shoulder. At a sudden burst of applause, I turned my gaze to the orchestra pit. In walked the conductor, a small, bespectacled, dark-haired man who acknowledged the applause with a brusque nod of his head, then sat down perfunctorily on the bench in front of the pianoforte. I looked at the program. He was the composer of Fidelio, the opera being premiered that evening. The music was quite good but what really fascinated me—possibly because Robert had sunk his fingers into my hair and was caressing the nape of my neck—was to see how the resolute Leonore, having donned men’s clothing in order to rescue her husband, went about seducing the jailor’s daughter, arousing in her an ardent passion that resonated within me. Motioning to Robert to bend his head near mine, I whispered in his ear: “You see, I’m not the only one who dresses as a man to get what she wants.” Robert smiled and said nothing. That night, the last we’d spend together on Bäkerstrasse, we made love until dawn. When we said our goodbyes and I begged him to be careful, he began a sentence, but left it unfinished, as if he had decided that saying it would have hurt me too much: “Any hussar who hasn’t died . . . ” Then he kissed me once more and, looking me in the eyes, murmured: “I’ll be careful, my little Turk.”
All my efforts to locate Maryse and Françoise in Vienna had failed. And not only that; I had reason to believe that I might not see them again for a long time. It was rumored that days ago, near Linz, a pack of marauders had attacked the women and merchants following the army. True or not, the fact was that all camp followers had been detained in Linz, making it impossible for them to continue on to Vienna. The detention order had come down from the General Staff, and had been published in the Wiener Zeitung, now directed by an Austrian in the service of the French. Robert himself had translated the curt text for me on the morning of our wedding. As it was rumored in the cafés, the order was an attempt to mitigate the burden on the Viennese, who would already be overwhelmed with the necessity of feeding and housing the twenty thousand men that Napoleon would leave behind to secure the city. “Don’t worry,” Robert had said, seeing my anxiety rise. “You know Maryse. She’ll find a way to get to Vienna and find out where I’m stationed. If she arrives after I’ve finished my assignment, I’ll leave her a note in the arsenal.” But a week had gone by and there was still no word from her.
Fortunately, the same was not true of my uncle, who appeared at Frau Wittek’s door two