Florian (23 page)

Franz Joseph did not approve of such Russian measures, but ultimately he agreed, only remarking casually that he did not put much weight on the strict execution of his orders.

It was late September. When a chestnut dropped into the Emperor's carriage, he laughingly ordered that all the ripe fruit be shaken off the trees standing in double rows in front of Schönbrunn lest a chestnut fall into the carriage and hit the Czar. God forbid! Nicholas might swoon on the spot, or have an epileptic fit.

The Czar came. The poor state of his nerves was apparent from the outset. The train rolled into the station with all its windows heavily curtained. Nothing stirred while the military band played the Russian national hymn. Franz Joseph waited on the long narrow runner stretching to the door from which the guest was supposed to emerge. But there was no door there; only the side of a car.

The archdukes waited, lined up in a row. The members of the Russian Embassy waited. The ministers and other dignitaries waited. A select Court gathering waited. The drums and trumpets reechoed from the glass dome overhead. The band continued to play the Russian hymn.

Waiting.

Franz Joseph looked helplessly around.

After a while, at the far end of the train, the Czar's bodyguard climbed down, a Tartar giant in a scarlet kaftan, his cartridge belts across his chest, the high gray astrachan cap on his head. Unhurriedly he walked along the row of cars and passed Franz Joseph whom he pushed aside with a sweep of his arm. Taken aback by this unparalleled audacity, the Emperor hopped a step backward.

And still the Russian hymn blared forth and mingled with the echoes falling in fragments from the high glass roof; an exciting cacophony.

At an even pace the Tartar walked to the very front, to the first carriage, the windows of which had been rendered opaque with white paint. He opened the door.

Behind it stood Nicholas in the uniform of an Austrian Dragoon. Slim, pale, timid, he stood there, not stirring, until Franz Joseph rushed up. Then he stepped down quickly and gave the Emperor a hasty embrace, clutched him by the arm and dragged him along. He did not bother about the Company of Honor, about the gentlemen from the Embassy, the archduke, the officials and the courtiers. Almost at a run he left the platform, forcing Franz Joseph along at half a run. In the general consternation, which was accompanied almost sarcastically by the thunder of the Russian hymn, a general finally succeeded in silencing the band. The solemn Imperial reception had been turned into a farce of fear and stupidity; it dissolved in disorder.

By that time the carriage bearing the two rulers started toward Schönbrunn—a magnificent carriage
à la Doumont;
the floor rose in an elegant curlicue toward the driver's box. Franz Joseph and Nicholas sat in it as in a saucer. Just behind them fluttered the white plumes of the two
chasseurs.

Konrad Gruber relished the grandeur of the
à la Doumont
team. He knew this to be a vestige of feudal times when the high nobility used to drive daily in such manner. He knew also that where four horses were ordinarily used, six were the prerogative of a monarch. Everything connected with driving that accentuated regal prerogative, he held inviolate. He had a reverence for the noble scale of the carriage and for the team he guided. The perfect union of sublimity and discretion, the greatest magnificence and the utmost simplicity, could not but impress. Of that he was convinced.

He rode Florian, rode him for the first time on a public occasion. He resented the artillery display. Like Franz Joseph, he was displeased by the well-nigh complete absence of the public; he badly missed their amazement, admiration and
vivas.
He was angered, even as Franz Joseph, by the way the few spectators present were squeezed close to the walls of the houses. Knowing the slow pace Franz Joseph desired on such occasions, he kept it even slower than usual. He did not need to fear Imperial displeasure on that score, of that, too, he was convinced. Let this rabbit of a Nicholas tremble with impatience. Konrad Gruber was glad of it.

Florian carried his rider as if he were a feather. Devoid of any conception of human things, Florian had no idea who sat in the carriage. He had the same joyous feeling he would have had at a festival arranged for him. He was the first in the triple row of six horses. Ahead of him the street was clear. No carriage, no pedestrian, nothing. The street seemed to wait for him.

To the right and left he could descry the heads of the horses in front of their cannon. Brown Wallachian mares. Not a single stallion. There they stood to admire him!

He almost walked. He mustn't run, he didn't want to run. To trot was always sport, yes; to pass other horses running along the same street, and leave them, behind, was something he could not do with five others. He and Capitano, yes, had shared that thrill together often enough. Unhampered speed, an unhampered flow of power and health—they had tasted it in the streets of Vienna and in the woods near Ischl. Now it was entirely different. And since free rein didn't belong here, he didn't miss it.

Florian knew the signs, knew every bit of help he received from Gruber. By his willingness he had regained the beautifully unique harmony with his rider that he had known in the days when he used to dance under Ennsbauer at the Spanish Riding School. Moreover, he had kept all the force of his disciplined existence, the leadership over the five other horses. His inherited intelligence told him that being in the company of his five cousins was participating in a ceremonial procession; that therefore the subduing of his fire; the subjugation of his temperament was his task. This knowledge, coming from subconscious organs of intelligence, was itself not conscious; nor in the terms of any language. His musical sensitiveness effortlessly and unthinkingly achieved in him an attunement to the demands of this hour; expressed itself in the rhythm of the short cadenced steps and filled him with the sensuous pleasure of self-obliteration in a melody.

When Florian reached the wide-open gate of Schönbrunn and was gently guided across the white yard to the inner staircase, every joint and sinew of his tapering legs and shoulders was a spring. His torso rocked his rider like a lulling cradle. His head was raised high, his eyes shone, his small ears fluttered. All of Florian had become one paean of joy. The cries of the guard, the rumble of the drums were a demonstration in his praise, a hail to his success.

C
OUNT BERTINGEN WAS NO LONGER equerry. He had resigned on account of fatigue and ill health. He wanted to end his last years in peaceful repose at his castle in the Croatian oak forest. After little more than a year and a half he flickered out like a burned-down candle. Thus did Franz Joseph's servitors, exhausted and done in, step back one by one into obscurity; burned-down candles.

Franz Ferdinand figured out who of all the generals, ministers and courtiers of the Emperor lingered on. Only a very few, to be counted on the fingers of one hand. And they were all younger than Franz Joseph. Some of them had not yet been born when he ascended the throne; they had made their whole careers under his rule, become old men. He alone, Franz Joseph I, the Emperor, lived on, indefatigable, erect, fresh, brimming with the unbroken will of the suzerain.

Franz Ferdinand admired him even while he hated him. What a blessed life! At eighteen he had become Emperor. When other youths still sat on their school benches, Franz Joseph already had a boundless wealth of power in his boyish hands. As a boy he had made mistakes. That was only natural. Making mistakes as a young man of thirty, after twelve years of rule, he had given conclusive proof (Franz Ferdinand consoled himself) of his lack of greatness. He had had bad luck on the battlefields, in politics, with his family. He simply had lacked the irresistible personality to shunt bad luck aside. He had lacked the gift of turning difficulties into advantages. Had lacked vision, perspective. He was a simple honest man. (Franz Ferdinand had no use for simplicity and held simple honesty in very low esteem.)

For more than six decades, already, had this magnificent Imperial existence of Franz Joseph endured. The end, near as it ought to be according to human reckoning, never seemed to come any nearer; like a mirage.

Franz Ferdinand had passed the fifty mark. He was in a state of desuetude. He had been Heir Apparent for more than two decades. Not an easy situation. Rather tragic. It was torture, tantalizing torture, to witness the decay of the realm, to have the plans and the methods for succoring the realm and preserving the dynasty—and to be shackled.

He wished nobody's death. His piety forbade that. But his impatience, his gnawing, searing impatience was understandable. He wanted to drive Franz Joseph into abdication; but Franz Joseph was tough and had no idea of retiring. God in heaven! Franz Joseph stood in the lingering shadows of a blessed life. He stood alone. He had burgeoned into majesty from his earliest youth. He was now the personification of majesty, the quintessence of majesty. For decades he had lived in a cold lofty solitude, alone, wrapped in his majesty; not a happy man, obviously not, but a monarch who faced his immense fate with a clear conscience.

Franz Ferdinand often consoled himself by vowing that the crowns he would inherit would give him, too, diligence, toughness and long life. He told himself this, time and again, and liked to hear his wife say it, his father confessor, and all his sycophants and supporters. Despite this forebodings ate at his heart and would not be stilled for long.

The new equerry began his incumbency. Prince Buchowsky was a youngish man, slightly over forty, and extremely handsome. His ivory-tinted face was adorned with a thick black mustache. Soft black eyes looked out from under long lashes. He was considered the most brilliant rider in the Army. He understood horses as well as the shrewdest horse trader. He had a lively gay temperament and great initiative.

However, everything remained as it had been, because everything had to be as it had been.

Konrad Gruber had known the prince for years and treated him with measured respect but not with servility. The prince handled Gruber jocularly.

“Well, my dear Gruber,” he said in the beginning, “I think we two will get along together.”

Gruber kept silent as usual.

“Don't be afraid,” the prince pursued, and smiled so that his perfect white teeth shone under his black mustache, “I won't interfere with you. You've been turning your hurdy-gurdy for quite a long time and to the satisfaction of his Majesty.”

About Gruber's lips played a furtive smile.

“But,” the prince concluded very seriously, “I'll stand for nothing from you, either.”

Gruber stood motionless. His cheeks paled under the weatherbeaten patina of his face.

“And now show me the horses which are entrusted to your care,” the prince ordered.

“In the stable . . . or—?” Gruber murmured.

“Out here, of course. One after the other. Florian first.”

Gruber disappeared. Immediately thereafter Bosco bolted from the stable door and casually sprung up at the prince who acknowledged this effusion with a loud halloa.

Then Florian came out. He was all alone, without a guide and stark nude. At Gruber's orders Anton had taken everything off the horse. Snowy white, he stepped out into the sunlight.

“Florian,” Buchowsky called. “Florian. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance. Come here to me. Come.”

Florian thrust his head aloft, snorted gaily and stared at the prince with obvious curiosity. The nobleman stood five or six paces away, the gold braid glistening on his uniform. He wore the light coat of the Arcieres Body-Guard, which only few wore.

“Come on,” Buchowsky coaxed. “This time without sugar. Just for politeness' sake.”

Florian approached and touched the prince's breast softly with his mouth.

“That's right,” the equerry laughed. “We're all good friends. I am delighted. I feel quite honored. Of course, I've known you for a long time. Just as one knows a famous stage star. Nice of you to be so condescending.”

Anton grinned. Gruber's mien remained inscrutable.

The prince stroked Florian on nose and forehead, along the back, across his croup. He walked around him, patted his firm limbs, tickled his loins to send a trembling over the light skin, slapped his chest and finally took his head in his hands.

A small cabriolet driven by Elizabeth entered the yard. Next her sat Neustift, and perched between them the little boy, Leopold, now in the uniform of the Theresianum.

Buchowsky faced them. “My first visit!” he declared.

“Our last,” Elizabeth replied.

They climbed down. Anton rushed over to assist them.

“Yes, please hold Caesar,” Neustift said to him. “And how are things with you?”

“Thank you very much, Captain,” Anton answered, and hastily corrected himself: “Beg pardon, Major!”

Elizabeth joined the prince. “We want to pay a farewell visit to Florian. Yes, to Florian. An old sweet memory ties us to him.”