"Fly, Thought, on Wings of Gold" - 1955
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Fly, Thought, on Wings of Gold
The glass door opens. It takes so many gestures to open it, so many locks, so much pressure, even the scrape of the jamb through dust and dangling rubber, carving its black arc onto the tile. The sound is somewhat jarring to Austria, not because he hasn’t heard it before (because oh, he certainly has), but because whoever this is decided to wait until he finished playing, and that is not something Prussia does.
There are also no footsteps afterward. This person is not coming in.
So Austria turns from the piano bench, listens to those sounds as well (the upholstery is starting to give), and plants his own feet on the floor to make up for the absence.
“Whose was that?” Germany asks, in civilian clothes, dark green slacks and a navy blue sweater under a tan coat and scarf, more color than Austria has seen him in for years.
“Mendelssohn,” Austria answers. “Opus 67, number 5. Yours.”
Germany nods, and it’s hard to tell whether that’s approval or just agreement. He glances over his shoulder, but the walls are made of glass, Austria can plainly see that Germany’s come alone.
“Your people have been free for several years,” Germany says.
“I have people?”
Germany does not answer that, not precisely. “The people may walk free even when the Nation does not. I have seen it. Most of us have seen it.”
Austria hangs his head, and intends to bring it up for a nod, but ends up staring at the keys instead.
“Your home in Wien still stands,” Germany goes on. “The war has not reached it.”
“You of all people should know that just because the battle hasn’t-”
“My apologies.” When Austria does look up, Germany has bowed his head, as if there is a scale between them, tilting. “But your home does still stand. You will not be permitted to function in your official capacity as a Nation. The terms of the Anschluss also still stand. But I cannot keep you here any longer.”
The obvious question is cannot, or will not? but they both know which he really means.
This does not feel like freedom. Austria wonders if he’s ever had that.
He turns aside on the stand, and closes the lid of the piano keys, and then stands up to let the lid proper down as well, tucking the stick in reverently.
“We can have this back at your house within a week,” Germany says. “Before the holiday.”
“After,” Austria corrects-and then wonders why, no, Christmas is in two weeks, if he’s been keeping count correctly.
And Germany too considers, for a moment, “After, yes,” and does not explain. “You’ll be returning by train.”
“I’ll walk,” he says, in a tone that brooks no argument.
“You’ll walk,” Germany repeats, and now his eyes are closed too. The sweater and scarf wash them out to a blue as pale as an amateur’s sky. “You can sell the train ticket. It should get you enough to make it there.”
“My coat is out of fashion.”
“Have mine.”
12 December, A.D. 1955
Austria is glad to have requisitioned Germany’s coat. He sells his own with the train ticket, along with the cufflinks from his shirt, which has grown too large. He buys instead a belt and a sweater (the inflation is not as awful as he feared), a new map, a file to keep his papers in, ink and matches and some pencils for when a pen won’t do, and a dark red kerchief for his neck, because the white cravat seems inappropriate with a shirt that is hanging off his shoulders and neck. And of course he secures some food for himself, some bread, some fruit that will keep on this journey through countries that aren’t.
He can follow the railroads without taking the train. At least that way he knows what direction he’s going in.
He gets most of his provisions at the same store, which is named after and run by a man named Gustaw, which makes Austria wonder where Poland is. “There’s room in your suitcase for this,” Gustaw says, and slides him a shirt-sized envelope of brown paper, taped neatly shut. “Won’t kill you to wear it.”
“But they’ll kill you for not?”
“There’s a reason it goes under the clothes.” Gustaw smiles.
Austria accepts it graciously, but is not the least bit curious, and leaves it in its wrapping. The paper, at least, will prove useful if he runs out. And he can always sell it if he needs to.
The town, it turns out, really should be in Poland, and used to be in that bedrock way that colors all the names. It’s just south of Gliwice (is it really still called that?), which means it should possibly also be Czech, but he’s not anywhere to be found either in this imperial swathe of Germany, Germany, Germany. The main railroad runs (mostly on time) from here to Ostrava, to Brno, to Wien. “You can make it by Christmas if you try,” the man who took his ticket back had said, “but you’ll spend every mark I just gave you on sleep.”
“That’s fine,” Austria had told him. And he thinks it will be, setting out in the late morning, south and a little west. It looks and feels like snow, which probably means rain.
-
13 December, A.D. 1955
It is supposed to be easier for Nations, over land.
It isn’t for Austria.
There isn’t a border checkpoint, so the land must still be Germany’s. Austria walks over it at a human’s speed, in the rain that starts outside Rybnik , which is only halfway toward where he is going. His first half-day free, and he’s still in Poland.
He really isn’t a Nation anymore, is he.
He drifts away from the railroad when the rain gets so cold it makes the iron shine. The coat keeps most of the wet off Austria’s shoulders, but his slacks were already starting to drag and are soaked through. How quickly he finds an inn is almost distressing when he compares it to how long it took to get here, but he’s at the threshold of a boarding house off the Wodzisławska before he even reflects on whether he’s still supposed to call the road by that name. There are a candle and little bowls of oil in the window, stubborn ones, three of them lit and five not. Someone is playing Chopin in the parlor, and the piano is out of tune but not egregiously so, and Austria only grimaces a little when he opens the inn door.
The proprietor is asleep, but the barman isn’t, and he’s willing enough to take Austria’s money to scrawl his name in the book for the night. Rather than go straight to his room, though, Austria heads to the parlor, where there’s a piping stove and a fireplace to dry off his clothes.
It’s far too late at night for there to be fresh food, but there’s wine, and pickles and greens and fried dough with jam. Austria doesn’t think his stomach will consent to the sweets and the oil, but he won’t turn his nose up at it, and eats and drinks as much as he can. The older woman playing the Mazurka switches unobtrusively to a Nocturne, and the tinny upright piano consents to this with remarkable grace. Austria smiles without realizing it, his glasses unseating and clouding with a strange wistfulness.
The Nocturne has its effect, and Austria nods off by the fire, sleeping with his cheek against the wall.
-
He wakes uncomfortably a few hours later, when all save him have gone up to bed. Someone has cleared his plate, and the fire has gone out, but the little bowls of oil and the candle beside them are still going, on their last licks. What light they give barely reaches the piano, highlighting the chipped ivory and ebony keys. Which of course means that someone has left the lid open, and that’s criminal, so Austria hauls himself up from one chair to another, pushes up his sleeves, and poises his hands to shut it.
He can’t. The warm, eerie light from the oil washes over his forearms, yellows them, dips into each curve of hanging flesh and raised vein and withers them. He jumps back, nearly topples the stool over-doesn’t-sits straight with his hands clenched at his sides. It’s a trick of the light, he thinks, and then says aloud. It’s a trick. He isn’t old. He isn’t fading.
The sides of his clothing that didn’t face the fire are still damp and clinging to his calves. He reaches down to smooth them out, and finds himself caressing the curve of his shoe, not quite flush to his bone-thin ankle. He hasn’t worn shoes for eighteen years, and these have blistered his feet with the effort of walking. He still has enough money, more than enough. He could deal with one more day, get as far as Ostrava and buy a ticket there.
He shouldn’t have to. He’s a Nation.
Telling himself that takes more of a toll than it ought. He repeats it and varies it anyway. He’s a Nation. He is a vaunted Nation, a Reich that surpassed the expectations of the suzerain who created it, a hub no the hub of European culture, an Empire that survived his own fall. A Nation that survived invasion upon invasion and emerged all the stronger. A Nation that when faced with the prospect of starting a war for the sake of vengeance, handed himself over to the mercy of his conquerors rather than participate on his own behalf. He is Austria. He is Austria and his people are free.
He is Austria and his people are German.
He lifts his hands to the piano, poises them impotently over the keys. But it’s the dark before dawn, he decides, I oughtn’t wake everyone up. He depresses a single key, an A 440 which is actually more like a 431, and listens to the hammer nestle against the string.
-
It takes him eight hours to walk to Ostrava. He knows because he replays all of Siegfried in his head twice, without breaks for intermission.
On the way, he lets the sounds of late birds and early crickets thread the music only he can hear. The railroad makes no sound except when a train passes on it, and they’re regular trains, enough to mark time by. One comes the first time Siegfried takes a hammer to the shards of Nothung. The next comes when he breaks Wotan’s staff. Austria isn’t certain which production of it he’s hearing in his head, probably the original. It left the best impression, and then Germany stole it.
Ostrava. In Ostrava the street names and storefronts are all still in Czech. The city is much more beautiful than he remembers, or perhaps that’s just a particularly striking sunset, casting shadows so long they cross Cihelní from one cross-street to the next. Some of the mud from Yesterday’s rain is caked on Austria’s shoes-he finds it distasteful, and should buy a new pair in the morning, if he intends to walk any more-and he leaves chips of Poland’s earth on the streets of Czech, tapering away from the train station.
“Excuse me, sir. Your papers.”
Austria shuts his eyes and nods. He was asked in Latin; he answers in German. “I had wondered why there wasn’t a checkpoint at the border.”
“There is no border here,” Germany says, his features superseding the Officer’s with stark alacrity. He extends a black-gloved hand from a black-cuffed uniform. With one glance from face to hand to face, the apparition is gone, and the officer is a no-account of the WHRR. “You were not on the train, sir?”
“No, I walked from Rybnik.”
The officer taps the papers on his wrist, still reading them. “These say you are Austrian.”
I am Austria, the same as he told that composer fellow, that Catholic-did he make it out?-so many years ago. “I walked to Rybnik from Gliwice.” He does not have to say how he got to Gliwice.
“That checks out.” The officer nods, thumbs to another page. “Your errand in Ostrava?”
“Room for the night and a new pair of shoes.”
“You intend to walk all the way to-”
“Wien, yes.”
“I can recommend a cobbler. But you would do well to spend that money on a train ticket.”
Austria has sufficient largess to refrain from saying, I have no intention of ever boarding another of your trains. “I appreciate the advice. Where can I find that cobbler?”
“He will be closed at this hour, sir. But he is one of your kind, he’ll be up in the morning so you can start on your journey again. Come,” he says, handing Austria his papers back, and Austria obeys. He spends most of this leg of the walk staring at the back of the officer’s head, wondering how this boy must have looked with longer hair.
-
The cobbler’s shop is closed for the night. It’s in a district of town that still has a wall around it, but there are only gaping hinges where the gates used to be. Once here, though, Austria sees the shop before the officer does, and the small hotel just up the road. There are no wreaths on the doors here, but a warm glow under most of the doors and in many of the windows. It hollows out the officer’s cheeks, fills them with savage red lines and augmenting black shadows.
“There is a place for you here,” the officer says, in Latin again. “I apologize for detaining you, sir. Please enjoy your stay in Ostrava, and I wish you good health and fair weather on your journey.”
If he had not added that last clause, Austria would not have thanked him. But he did, and so Austria does, and even does the favor of not watching the Officer leave, not listening for the hiss of a glass door closing.
He rests his hand on the window of the cobbler’s shop, tracing the raised black letters. The glass is cold and thick and new, without a whisper in it. On the other side sit rows of matched shoes, in haphazard piles, to display experience more than artistry. That will do, he thinks, and at the rate he’s going he’ll wear the new ones out too, with another four hundred kilometers to go. But at least they’ll fit, which is more than he can say for the ones on his feet.
It seems that once he pushes his hand off the glass, it’s closing around the handle of the door to the hotel. The metal is even colder than the glass-Austria thinks he might buy gloves from the cobbler as well.
It’s early enough, so the proprietor is there, and he greets Austria in Czech. Austria certainly speaks enough to make his intentions clear, and books himself a room for the night. He is shown to it with a rare and eager expediency, and the proprietor tells him that once he gets settled he should come down to the parlor. “There’s singing in the parlor on Wednesdays,” he says. “It’s a real treat, and if you have an ear for music, you should come down.”
“I will,” Austria says, and “thank you,” but before he even gives it a second consideration he sits on the bed and lays back, cradling his head in his hands.
The door shuts, and that’s enough for Austria to get back up and open it again. He listens to the sounds of the lights buzzing in the hall, leans his shoulder into the jamb. The posture is very like Prussia, he thinks, and the thought should disgust him. But whatever the churning in his stomach he tries to emulate it, tries to slide his heel forward as if the boots cling high and tight, tries to push off the doorframe as if it’s pushing with him. It’s very easy to imitate, even with all his blisters and aches. So he swaggers toward the bed, tries to picture himself laying there, threadbare and unkempt and supposedly free.
He asks himself, in German, why he bothers. He doesn’t have an answer. Then again, he isn’t actually laying on that bed anymore.
-
He’s not; he is downstairs in the hotel parlor, and while the piano isn’t particularly grand the singing is, even if the songs are regulation Italian.
So is the audience.
“You made it!” Italy cheers, hopping up from his seat and rushing Austria, throwing his arms around Austria’s middle. (He doesn’t even seem to notice that he’s disrupted the performance.) The white uniform is immaculate, almost glowing as it drowns out the subdued colors of Austria’s clothes. Italy grins, rubs his chin on Austria’s chest. “I’m so happy! Germany was talking about it for so long but Prussia wouldn’t have it and he said you’d only get your parole if he said so but Prussia doesn’t come to as many meetings as he really should and so Germany says that Prussia doesn’t get to say anything about you anymore and I didn’t think he was really going to do it because he cares about Prussia so much but he cares about you too and I guess that’s what won out in the end. Hi! Welcome back! Are you going home?”
Austria at least has a good excuse not to say he doesn’t know. “Italy, there’s a performance going on.”
“Oh!” he chirps, and then covers his mouth with his gloves and whispers instead. “Oh! Sorry. But there are lots of performances,” he says through his fingers, “and you only get to be free again once.”
Austria shivers. But Italy’s let go of him now, at least, so he probably doesn’t feel it.
Italy lets his hands down from his mouth, but keeps whispering. “She sings Italian wrong anyway,” he says, and takes Austria by the wrist. “Let’s go to the front hall!” The iron cross bounces on Italy’s chest as he drags Austria out, without any of the respect he used to have. And no wonder, Italy looks older, and not just older but grown.
Never mind the chill, and never mind that Austria might have wanted to listen, but they’re out in the foyer soon enough and Italy is hugging him again.
“I missed you, you know,” Italy says, and now it’s not loud anymore, just loud enough to create counterpoint with the muffled singing. “I mean, I know why you had do go away, but it’s not the same without you. And it might not be the same with you either, but you’re here and that’s best, right?”
“Right,” Austria says.
Italy beams. Even his teeth are as white as the uniform. “So! So I wanted to say that you’re welcome in my house any time! I mean, if you want to play some music or conduct or something. Or just talk. Or have some food! And that goes for fratello too, I think. Well, maybe not right now. Fratello isn’t speaking to me right now. But he and Spain would love to see you.”
Austria thanks him, but Italy’s glee at that is rather disproportionate.
“Oh, and you’ve been gone for so long, did you get any news where you were? I know a lot must have changed! Eighteen years isn’t a lot usually but it is a lot now because everything’s happened so fast. It’s a much longer war than the last one. At first I thought that was because you weren’t fighting in it, because, you know, most of your wars go very quickly, but then I thought that it’s not that at all, it’s that so many people are fighting. I mean, the Great War was a world war, but the whole world wasn’t involved. And this time it is. There are a lot of Nations. So maybe you did the right thing, because if you’d fought then more people would be fighting. You’re everywhere now, right?”
“I’m here,” Austria says.
“Well, yes,” Italy agrees, and smiles his gleaming smile, and clings to Austria’s wrist. “But you’re not home.”
-
14 December, A.D. 1955
Italy talks so much that one day becomes another, and Austria does not get to actually hear the singing in the hotel parlor. But when Italy finally leaves Austria alone (“I should be getting back, I’ll tell the others you’re all right, they’ll want to know, especially Hungary, she never talks about you but that means she thinks about you all the time, I know it!”) Austria retreats not to his room, but to the parlor piano, thankfully abandoned.
He sits in the dark, and thinks that his distress surpasses impropriety, and plays.
The first piece to come to mind is a variation series, Schumann, impassioned and mournful-
“Whose?” Germany asks, from the light of the open door.
“Schumann,” Austria answers, not pausing in it. “-Clara,” he specifies, “Clara Schumann, Clara Wieck, you remember her. Yours.”
“Yes,” he says. His silhouette nods, but his shadow doesn’t. He listens politely a few moments more, long enough for Austria to finish the second variation and start the third. The second soars, endless repeating tenuto (why, Clara, have you been listening to Beethoven?), and the third, when it switches the minor and major aspects, is all tiny grace-note figures that suit her husband’s work much more soundly. And the runs of the fourth manage to pry Austria’s eyes back to the keys, squinting in the dark.
Germany asks, “Do you have enough for new shoes?”
Austria tells him yes.
-
First thing in the morning, he buys them from the cobbler, but not gloves, and sets off for Pribor. At the rate he’s been walking, that will take all day.
-
It does.
-
15 December, A.D. 1955
And from Pribor to Hranice.
.
16 December, A.D. 1955
And from Hranice, to Olomouc.
17 December, A.D. 1955
And from Olomouc to Prostéjov, and that takes even longer, because halfway between them it begins to snow.
Austria’s new shoes are durable, yes, but not as well-lined as he would like, and soon enough he can’t feel them at all. He shuts his eyes and turns his cowl up. The ħai at his neck is so cold it’s scalding, and he reaches up to cover his collar, and tries not to bow forward in the snow.
He’s been to Prostéjov before-he thinks of what inn he’ll probably be staying at, if Germany left it standing, wonders how many lights will be shining in that window. He counts-if there were three in the makeshift Menorah back in the window of the inn in Rybnik, then Ostrava should have been four, Pribor five, Hranice six, Olomouc seven, and Projéstov eight-no, it’s Saturday, there wouldn’t be any lit at all, not until after the Sabbath is over, if there is anyone alive to observe it.
The rush of warmth is so sudden, and literal, that it stings his toes.
He is not walking through the snow at the side of a railroad. He is in a cellar in a ghetto in Prostéjov, and a young man is holding one bright braided candle. There are eight others in this basement. Austria brings the total count to ten. Not a single man here is a day over twenty-five; most, including the one leading the service, are teenagers. Their hair is short and ragged, as if grown out in haste. Their Hebrew is as clumsy as Austria’s, except for the parts of prayers that always repeat. Everything is tinged with Czech and German, more Yiddish than Hebrew really.
Austria wonders how long his coat has been dry.
The boys sing and drink, to conclude the service-or, well, to switch to the other one, and light the candles that the Sabbath prohibited. One boy pushes up the sleeve of his shirt, to pour the wine. The number on his arm is stretched and worn, each numeral warped out of alignment with the skin around it. It didn’t grow well with him. When the boy hands Austria a glass, Austria drinks. It is so cold, and the wine is so warm, that he can see curls of vapor on the air.
-
18 December, A.D. 1955
In the morning, the snow is still falling thickly, and at least two decimeters have stuck to the rooftops and windows of Prostéjov. From the room he’s been let for the night, Austria can’t see much at all, let alone consider what it means to walk in it.
Of course he can spare a day and wait at least until the snow stops falling, or buckle down and buy a train ticket after all, or see if someone’s got a car going and space in it. But the niggling, persistent thought is that he shouldn’t have to. He is a Nation. He has people. A journey that takes a man a week should take Austria a day, maybe two. People speed the travel of Nations, and no Nation of Europe has been barred from his own borders. Never. Either he is a Nation, or he isn’t.
He comes away from the window, and shuts the curtains over the towering white snow smothered to the glass. Someone knocks at his door, and then announces himself-breakfast, with the compliments of his hostess.
Austria opens the door and is entirely unsurprised to find Germany.
But of course, he is only Germany for a few words and a moment. “I hope you are not going back on the road in this weather,” he says.
Austria takes the coffee cup and jelly doughnut from him, and asks, “What choice do I have?”
With something as simple as a shrug, the servant is just a servant. He says, “That one’s fresh from the vat. There’s more downstairs-we’re trying to use up the last of the oil. So if you’re going to go, take some with you.”
Austria nods his thanks.
-
Brno, he thinks. Brno should still be Brno. When he was last there, he came to admire the architecture, the buildings of the First Republic. But Czech hasn’t been here, and Czech was there to see his own new buildings and his own new art, and that’s over, and this isn’t a Republic anymore. (Or if it is, Germany doesn’t seem to think so.)
He walks out into the streets of Projéstov, lifting his feet out of the snow, leaving tromping footprints of his new, cold shoes. Brno, he thinks again, the way he used to think when the city was new and harder to get to. Joining of two small rivers. Nothing. The conferences of Moravia. Nothing. The Swedish army. Nothing. He has gone all of five steps through the snow. Austerlitz. I can remember nearly dying. I can remember Germany stabbing me in the back before he even knew he was Germany. Nothing. If anything, he’s going slower.
Spielberg castle, he tries, and it makes his head ache to think about, makes his ears swell red outside and in. A tremor wracks him from his temples to his knees, too hot to just be shivering. He refuses to fall, holds on to his suitcase and scarf. It’s as if the backlash of thinking hits him, as if the name is scalding.
He groans, and thinks, At least I know it still stands, and wonders what does not-
-and this factory is, or rather was, in the district Židenice, and he is surrounded by its iron skeleton. The snow is much lighter, here in Brno.
-
Once Austria has regained the compunction to breathe, the very first thing he does is check his watch. A little more than an hour has past, and this city is not Projéstov, it is Brno, and the ice on the ground is slicker and softer and burns Austria’s knees when he topples forward onto it. He drags his suitcase up and leans on it, gets uneasily to his feet, stares at the wreckage around him. It was a factory, that’s plain, the dark iron and steel machines indistinguishable from monsters without their prescribed purpose. Frayed cables streak the ice, embedded in it, too old and dead to spark. This building was bombed out years ago.
When he finds where the door and façade used to stand, there is vulgar iconography and language carved into and painted onto the stone. The name and purpose of the factory have been rendered almost entirely indecipherable. Almost.
Sweat drips along the chain around Austria’s neck. He knows how he got here. Or thinks he does, at least, and that’s perturbing enough.
Židenice gleams with icicles and cracked stone streets. This factory, on this strip, is not the only one that has been rendered a shell. But it is the only one that does not (yet?) have a construction setup outside it, tarps and towers and piles of stone left to weather before they are assembled. The parked trucks and turrets are each emblazoned with an iron cross, which should be more appropriate than it is. The factory at the end of the street has regrown the tallest of all so far, enough to be operational if not complete.
Those words make Austria feel warmly and distinctly ill.
But the rest of Židenice is not quite so bleak as this, and that carries over to the rest of Brno, as Austria walks around it all. It is late morning, and the city’s stores are bustling-that’s right, one week to Christmas, and no wonder-and the window displays are wreathed in pine and glass and electric lights. The great Christmas tree in the střed is festooned with whirling ornaments and gold bulbs, and Austria remembers that Brno was the first electrified city in the world.
“Hey,” Ukraine says, behind him, and then sneezes. It’s a very cute sneeze, one that makes a squeaking sound that complements the expansion of her coat at the bustline almost eerily. She rebuttons the coat.
Austria turns away from the tree and blinks. “Aren’t you on the-”
She sneezes again. “Other side, yeah. But I’ve got people here too, so...” She looks down, a little sheepishly, and comes closer. There’s a public mailbox between them, and she props her elbows onto it, less affected by the cold than he is-but then again, she’s sneezing. “I like the beard. It’s cute on your face. How’ve you been?”
She might not even know. He doesn’t answer. “You seem better.”
“Well, I’m out walking now,” she says. “So I’m much better than I was. I didn’t know you knew. But things are different now. I can still get over here, at least. Brother’s busier now, it’s easier.” Her smile should be refreshing, and isn’t with everything else. “Not to mention that the fighting’s starting to die down. Well, on my front at least. Parts of me are here, you know? I’d really like that to be settled soon.”
Austria nods.
“But you’re lucky. I haven’t seen you fighting at all. So is Germany just taking care of all of that, or Prussia?, or-”
She doesn’t know.
“-or, well, it hasn’t really stayed on your front, but it might if Brother’s still angry. He doesn’t let it show how angry he is, but he’s pretty angry at what his old boss did behind his back and all. But Brother gets really defensive when people think he agrees with everything his bosses tell him to do. Worse when he thinks he’s being punished for something his boss did. And he wants everything Germany’s taken back as much as his bosses do, but not for the same reason. It’s okay to tell you this, I guess,” she says, and then waves her hand in front of her face a lot, scrunching up her eyes, “Sorry, I’m going to sneeze in a bit-um-but I should say that it’s really okay to tell you this-”
“Why, Ukraine?” he asks, unknotting his scarf and giving it to her.
She grabs it from him and claps it in front of her nose. The sneeze that follows is as cute and vulnerable as the others, but louder, and Austria thinks he can kiss that little red scarf goodbye, though perhaps not literally. “Thanks. Um. Well, because they hurt you.”
Church bells ring. Snow drips down the wrist of his coat and burns his skin.
-
The hotel he finds for the night is the nicest yet, until the woman behind the desk asks for his papers and apologizes.
“Your money’s better spent elsewhere,” she says, giving them back.
He agrees, once he’s out the door.
In another district, he finds an equally nice, if older, building, with a grated rubber mat outside for him to tramp the slush from his shoes on. This one takes his name and suitcase and money, and Austria wanders off to the parlor. It’s a quiet night, a Sunday, and there are only four or five people clustered around the piano-a grand, like Austria’s, but not as meticulously in tune-singing Christmas carols. O Tannenbaum, or so it goes, du kannst mir sehr gefallen.
Even if only one of the people singing is wearing WHRR blacks, Austria hears five of the same voice.
The little crowd laughs, when most of them forget the first half of the second phrase of the second stanza, and they natter in Czech, trying to come up with whether it’s “Weihnachtzeit” or just “Winterzeit” in German, and fumbling around for a translation in Czech, if there is one, which there probably is, but they’re all from different parts of the country and they can’t quite agree.
Austria asks them if they mind. The one soldier looks at him rather pointedly, but the others clap and usher him to sit at the piano bench. One of them, a girl of no more than fifteen, remains on it beside him, and asks him if he sings.
“Not carols,” he answers, “but I will play something.” Since that one girl is sitting on the low end of the bench, he thinks about pieces that won’t require much of the left hand, and once he’s set his fingertips over the keys, plays just one low introductory chord and settles into the slow chromatic preface to something much sweeter. Once he gets to the long downward glissando, the revelers are silent, a few of them agape (that lone soldier included), and the long arpeggios that mark the end of the introduction leave them staggered.
He plays the simple waltz of the ritornello with enough gusto that a few of them laugh, and the other girl grabs the soldier and starts to dance with him. They’re all a bit drunk, Austria thinks, and when he approaches the first verse he resolves to keep it as much in time, or in their time, as possible. He remembers where the rubati are supposed to go and ignores them, keeps every flourish as quick and crisp as the regulation allows. The piece lacks something, by the first false ending at the end of the second ritornello, but he plays on.
The girl beside him, of course, is Germany, but younger and curious, asking, “Whose is this?”
“Kalkbrenner,” Austria answers, trying not to let the edge in his voice slip into the minor modulation at the end of the second verse. “Opus 52. Either yours or France’s, depending on where the borders were that week.”
She laughs-she must not be Germany anymore-and when Austria launches into the rigorous ornamental passages toward the song’s midpoint, the girl looks over Austria’s shoulder and asks her friends what Frankreich is.
-
19 December, A.D. 1955
In the morning, Austria buys himself a new scarf, a green one this time, and thinks himself all the way to Bratislava.
In the past he could get there simply by remembering. Bratislava was Pressburg then, and it was where Hungary hid her jewels and horses away. Austria never told her this, but he wanted to have her there, or wished he could, but the castle has sitting there been burned since the time of Napoleon. Bedding her there would have been a sort of apology for that, which is why ne never told her. So Austria could remember Pressburg or Pozsonyi and be in Bratislava, and more likely than not, Hungary would be there with him.
But he is not Austria any more, and should remember differently.
He arrives not in the ruins of Pressburg castle, but at the base of the hill, and the Danube is not so blue today. Parts of the bank are frozen enough for the snow to gather on. He turns aside, and Hungary is already near him, south and east.
She wears black. It does not suit her nearly as well as green, but it makes the shock of her hair seem even more red, or perhaps that is due to the combination of it and the snow. Her coat is long and lined with white fur, but he can still see the shape of the uniform underneath, and when she looks at him he wants to lodge the breath in his own throat and die of it.
“You made it,” she says. It’s not quite a whisper, more an echo of Italy than anything else. There is only about a meter of snow between them, tall enough that it could hide ice, and Austria does not want to step across it. Hungary takes that chance, though, and comes to stand in his space, takes him by the lapels of the coat. “This isn’t yours.”
“It is now,” he says. He can almost see the words on the air, it’s so cold. His breath fogs and clutters the space between them, no matter how little there is. “I’m glad you’re well.”
“It’s relative,” she says, and cocks her head, and smiles. “But you know that.”
He nods, and looks down at her black-gloved hands on his lapels. He could touch them. He doesn’t. “Walk with me around the city.” It’s not a request.
She treats it like one, though, and tells him, “Yes, that’s a great idea,” and slides her hand down from his coat to his wrist. She takes him by that instead of his hand, leaving it to shiver and curl into a fist. She sees that, of course she sees that, but walks just a little ahead of him until they reach the city centre.
Most of Bratislava is as ruined as the castle, now. There are barracks for the soldiers, and a hospital, and a few operational public houses, more of them hung with shrapnel than with tinsel. Hungary explains that at one point during the war, Russia occupied nearly all of Slovakia, and the battle when he got to Bratislava was, in her own words, “pretty awesome.” He knows that she means it in the literal sense, not the qualitative, but he can’t help but hear another voice threaded with hers.
“Seriously,” she says, “once the economy started getting to everything, Russia could just march his army into a town on the front and sit on it and we’d have to break out the big guns to get it back. Thank god it’s starting to get to him and America too.” She pauses, kicks a bit of rubble, holds his wrist a little tighter. “Did you know about that, actually? Russia’s got America now. Or America’s got him. I’d think it was pretty if they weren’t trying to kill us.” After a second, and a bit of a brighter smile, she adds, “Actually, it’s kind of pretty even if they are trying to kill us.”
Austria could smile at that if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. He does, however, let his fist uncurl a bit, and tries to slow their walking. “Have you done much fighting?”
“I’ve done my share.” She grins, proud as ever. “It’s different, the more you have to lose. You understand that.”
“Yes,” he says. “Which is why it’s so easy to not fight, when you have nothing.”
She holds him even tighter at that, but that could just be the corner they’re turning. There actually is a township here, if underpopulated. Soldiers speak German and Latin and Hungarian, no Slovak to be heard, and the street names are painted over with universal numerals. They don’t say much at all, for a while. The city is neither of theirs anymore.
She brings him to a civilian hotel and checks them both in. No one asks for either his or her papers. When she is asked if this is an hourly or overnight stay, she tells them overnight. They are shown to a room much nicer than any of the ones Austria has purchased on this journey, with a bed nearly as large as the one Austria will find waiting for him in the house in Wien, and Austria barely gets a look at it before Hungary pounces on him and straddles him on the mattress.
The first time through, she does not even remove her coat. He manages to get his pants open but not down, and she takes only the slightest care of hers, and rides him until they both come in despairingly short order. She kisses him and grabs him by the wrist again, and traps his hand between her legs, and he thumbs at and strokes her there until she comes a second time. By then they’re both worn down enough that Austria can actually start removing his clothing, but just the sight of Hungary sprawled on the bed in her unkempt coat makes that particular effort half-hearted and he only manages out of his shirt by the time he finds himself tangled in her again, her arms knotted over his back, her hands in his hair, the frame of his glasses crushed against her chin as he attacks her neck.
They only break for water and use of the toilet, and removal of bits of clothing at a time; her coat (finally), his pants, their shoes. The bed is still half-made, just stained on the covers, dark with spit and white with everything else. At some point, he realizes that they haven’t drawn the curtains shut, and goes to fix that, but all Hungary does is laugh and pin him against the wall until he lifts her and returns the favor. It surprises him that he’s strong enough for that.
Her orgasm is threaded with laughter, and it’s contagious enough that when they sink to the carpet (grimy and cold, here, by the window,) Austria finds himself hiccoughing. She puts her hands on his stomach, runs them over his ribs, his hips, the sharp jut of his sternum and clavicles. By the time her hands are stroking down the bare flesh of his arms, the hiccoughs have become tremors; when her palm closes over the darkest part of his skin, his eyes flash open, directly into hers.
She has not removed her gloves.
-
20 December, A.D. 1955
While Hungary is still asleep, Austria bathes and dresses for the day. He unwraps the parcel he bought from Gustaw in Gliwice, and pulls the tallit over his head. It’s rather large on him, the neckline low enough that he can still see the thin chain of his ħai. So much the better, he decides, and buttons his shirt over it, leaving only the dangling tassels visible.
She wakes up when he is still pushing his head through the neck of his sweater. She says good morning, in her own language, and he comes to the bed, props himself on one knee and kisses her.
“I’ll check us out,” he says, against her mouth.
“You can’t, it’s in my name.” She plucks his glasses off his forehead and sets them aright on his nose, then gives him a peck on it. “But if you need to leave first-”
“I have to make sure they brought the piano to my house,” he says. “I really should have been there yesterday.”
“I’m glad you weren’t.”
“So am I.”
They kiss again; it’s rather laden, with her hands cupping his cheeks, with his at the base of her skull, her hair rich and thick between his fingers. When their lips part, he chases Hungary’s back down for one more brush, and holds her there securely.
She asks him, “Do you want the harpsichord back too?”
He shakes his head. “Keep it.”
“Then you’re welcome to come by and play it any time,” she says, and the heels of her palm reshape his jaw, scraping through the hair on it.
He shuts his eyes, and breathes, and tells her, “I should take care of things at my house first.”
-
He does.
It is as easy to get to Leopoldstadt as it always was, but the thoughts it takes are not that of a Nation’s home. Instead, Austria remembers the houses of others, the opulent mansions on his street, homes of the patrons of the Staatsoper and the nearby Yeshivas. He even arrives at his own mansion, conceiving of the journey this way.
That is because his is the only house on this street still standing.
He circles around once, staring over his left shoulder like an owl. His breath comes in heavy, visible gusts that gather on his cheek as he turns. His street is not only destroyed but neglected, without the construction trucks and iron fences that threaded all the other districts he passed through. Where Bratislava was besieged, Wien is destitute. Austria is certain that it can’t be true of the whole city, not with all its years as so central a place, so wealthy, home to those who’ve now left it to die. Austria remembers, all of it, Italy’s laughter while dusting in the corridors, the slice of paper as Germany turned the pages of his books, the jagged roll of carriage wheels on the cobblestone driveway, Hungary tonguing the corner of her mouth as she helped pin and powder Austria’s wig, Spain in the garden, Switzerland in the parlor-
The creak of the door on its hinges is like a scream. Rust crumbles and spackles the toe of Austria’s shoe. He leans his hand on the frontspiece of the frame without meaning to, more to support himself as he covers his mouth and coughs against the dust. The same long carpet still lines the foyer, sparkling with the motes on the air, catching the light from the street. The same grand staircase winds up from the center of the hall, but the servants are not at their posts, and the banister is slick with gathering wood oil, as if someone stopped in the middle of cleaning, packed his rags and gave up. The furniture in the drawing room is covered over with white sheets, and the clavichord is gone, its place by the hearth marked only by its deep circular footprints in the carpet. Some, but not all, of the art is gone from his walls, mostly pieces that he would agree could be construed as subversive, but some are just things that Italy must have liked. The portrait that Italy once painted a moustache on is still there. Austria would laugh if he didn’t find the irony sickening.
The main kitchen is as clean as he’s ever seen it, save for the film and cobwebs that have gathered in the corners. The cupboards are empty, and all Hungary’s cooking knives and ironware are missing, but the glassware and silverware are still locked in the cupboard. The windows of the library are shattered, and many of the books are gone, but those untouched have topped askance on their shelves. Austria’s heel crushes the glass onto the hardwood, and he slips on it, catches himself on the back of an armchair draped in white. He hacks up the dust he’s inhaled and is surprised when he doesn’t cry.
He carefully circumvents the glass on the way to the ballroom, and then the music room, and is relieved to find both of them entirely untouched, except for the missing harpsichord. All the other instruments are stacked neatly in their cases, and the music is immaculately shelved. Even the crystal chandelier is still hanging over the ballroom floor, and the tall ladder Italy used to clean it from remains against the far wall.
Austria manages to get back to the foyer, and takes those stairs up instead of any of the servants’ stairwells. Some guest rooms are better off than others, some missing art or furniture, but none of them destroyed. His own master bedroom hasn’t been touched at all, not even tarped.
And there is light peeping out from beneath the bathroom door.
Austria barges over, accidentally whacks his hip on the dresser, and flings the door open.
“No one’s pissed in this for eighteen years,” Prussia says, doing precisely that. The white tile of the bathroom walls and floor assaults Austria’s eyes almost as much as the sight of Prussia in it. “You mind?”
“Yes, I do,” Austria says.
“Fine,” Prussia says, but finishes just the same, and shakes himself off before redoing his pants. He looks even paler without the glass walls to remind Austria what color Prussia’s skin really is. He slinks past Austria without washing his hands (of course, they’re in gloves) and struts out into the bedroom, plunking down onto the bed. He sprawls there, crossing his arms behind his head. The mattress creaks suggestively. “Done.”
“You delivered the piano,” Austria says, because thinking anything else would be idiotic at this point.
“Germany’s too busy herding cats to drive a truck.” Prussia shrugs and grins, waves a lazy black hand through the air. “Not a scratch on it, I can promise you. Not even one string unstrung.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“What, you mean what I’m told to?”
“You never do what you’re told to.”
“Exactly.”
“You do this because you want to.”
Prussia sits up and laughs in Austria’s face. “I should ask you why you ask questions if you’re just gonna answer them yourself. Can’t deny it, though.”
No matter how weak Austria feels, he won’t lean against the wall right now. “Why do you want to?”
“Can’t say,” Prussia says with a smirk that he could whet a knife on. “Don’t think I can help it either. I know if I didn’t want to, I’d stop,” he says, and with one more backward rock, hops up to his feet and swaggers out toward the hall. “But I’m not the only one here who doesn’t know who I am.”
Austria corrects him. “Yes, you are.”
-
25 December, A.D. 1955
It is particularly difficult during the Christmas season, but Austria manages to sell the house and nearly everything in it. There were already people in Vienna with their eye on the property, on the whole of Leopoldstadt even, and museums and Nations and dignitaries will gladly purchase the rest. The black grand piano, Austria invests with what power he can, and fetters it to the dozens of small apartments he has arranged to purchase, in every major city in the WHRR-
-and several in Russia and the Eastern Bloc.
-and in China.
-and in the Middle East.
-and one, in Brooklyn, in New York, in America.
(25 December, A.D. 1955)
10 Tevet, 5716
And the apartment on the Pest side of Budapest is barely large enough for the piano, and Austria can’t unfold the bed from the wall, let alone sleep on it, let alone sleep on it with Hungary. But he’s survived worse, much worse, and if that means letting her drape herself over the piano while he plays and sings, he can accept it for the luxury it is.
She hums little snatches of harmony to his melody line, pronounces the German lyrics-Eichendorff’s poem, Das Ständchen-with the raw lilt her language lends to anything not her own. The accompaniment is gentle, shifting, imitative of a lute, the better of the two notable settings Austria’s people have done, in his own opinion. When he comes to the brief break after the climactic third stanza, auch die Laute hier geschlagen (Hungary pronounces it more Leute than Laute but that might be a pun instead of an error) und manch lustiges Lied erdacht, Hungary purses her lips and asks, “Whose is this?”
“Hugo Wolf,” he answers. “Mine.”
-
-
.
My apologies for the abundance of citations. This is not a complete list.
A map.
5716. The Hebrew Calendar is built on the Lunar Year, and as such the correspondence of holidays to the Gregorian calendar varies greatly within a seven year cycle. (It’s easily noticed during the Yule season, when, while Christmas is always on the 25th of December, Chanukah can take place as early as the middle of November and as late as twelfth night. It all depends on how many months there are in that particular year.)
The Tenth of Tevet, which occurred on Christmas in that particular Gregorian year.
Jelly doughnuts.
Spielberg Castle. (No relation.)
O Tannenbaum, written by the same guy who wrote Alle meine Entchen.
Mendelsohn, Op. 67 No. 5
Clara Schumann, Variations on a theme by Robert Schumann
Kalkbrenner, Introduction and Rondo, Op. 52
Wolf, Das Ständchen (lyrics)
Va pensiero, sull’ali dorate, or “Fly, Thought, on Wings of Gold”, is a famous chorus from Verdi’s opera Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar). In the present day it has come to be another National Anthem to the Italian people, but in its original context in the opera, it is also called the “Lament of the Hebrews”, as they send their prayers to the Nation they have lost. When Austria, in Put on the Costume, referred to “putting on Nabucco at Buchenwald”, this is what he referenced.
.
Fly, Thought, on Wings of Gold
The glass door opens. It takes so many gestures to open it, so many locks, so much pressure, even the scrape of the jamb through dust and dangling rubber, carving its black arc onto the tile. The sound is somewhat jarring to Austria, not because he hasn’t heard it before (because oh, he certainly has), but because whoever this is decided to wait until he finished playing, and that is not something Prussia does.
There are also no footsteps afterward. This person is not coming in.
So Austria turns from the piano bench, listens to those sounds as well (the upholstery is starting to give), and plants his own feet on the floor to make up for the absence.
“Whose was that?” Germany asks, in civilian clothes, dark green slacks and a navy blue sweater under a tan coat and scarf, more color than Austria has seen him in for years.
“Mendelssohn,” Austria answers. “Opus 67, number 5. Yours.”
Germany nods, and it’s hard to tell whether that’s approval or just agreement. He glances over his shoulder, but the walls are made of glass, Austria can plainly see that Germany’s come alone.
“Your people have been free for several years,” Germany says.
“I have people?”
Germany does not answer that, not precisely. “The people may walk free even when the Nation does not. I have seen it. Most of us have seen it.”
Austria hangs his head, and intends to bring it up for a nod, but ends up staring at the keys instead.
“Your home in Wien still stands,” Germany goes on. “The war has not reached it.”
“You of all people should know that just because the battle hasn’t-”
“My apologies.” When Austria does look up, Germany has bowed his head, as if there is a scale between them, tilting. “But your home does still stand. You will not be permitted to function in your official capacity as a Nation. The terms of the Anschluss also still stand. But I cannot keep you here any longer.”
The obvious question is cannot, or will not? but they both know which he really means.
This does not feel like freedom. Austria wonders if he’s ever had that.
He turns aside on the stand, and closes the lid of the piano keys, and then stands up to let the lid proper down as well, tucking the stick in reverently.
“We can have this back at your house within a week,” Germany says. “Before the holiday.”
“After,” Austria corrects-and then wonders why, no, Christmas is in two weeks, if he’s been keeping count correctly.
And Germany too considers, for a moment, “After, yes,” and does not explain. “You’ll be returning by train.”
“I’ll walk,” he says, in a tone that brooks no argument.
“You’ll walk,” Germany repeats, and now his eyes are closed too. The sweater and scarf wash them out to a blue as pale as an amateur’s sky. “You can sell the train ticket. It should get you enough to make it there.”
“My coat is out of fashion.”
“Have mine.”
12 December, A.D. 1955
Austria is glad to have requisitioned Germany’s coat. He sells his own with the train ticket, along with the cufflinks from his shirt, which has grown too large. He buys instead a belt and a sweater (the inflation is not as awful as he feared), a new map, a file to keep his papers in, ink and matches and some pencils for when a pen won’t do, and a dark red kerchief for his neck, because the white cravat seems inappropriate with a shirt that is hanging off his shoulders and neck. And of course he secures some food for himself, some bread, some fruit that will keep on this journey through countries that aren’t.
He can follow the railroads without taking the train. At least that way he knows what direction he’s going in.
He gets most of his provisions at the same store, which is named after and run by a man named Gustaw, which makes Austria wonder where Poland is. “There’s room in your suitcase for this,” Gustaw says, and slides him a shirt-sized envelope of brown paper, taped neatly shut. “Won’t kill you to wear it.”
“But they’ll kill you for not?”
“There’s a reason it goes under the clothes.” Gustaw smiles.
Austria accepts it graciously, but is not the least bit curious, and leaves it in its wrapping. The paper, at least, will prove useful if he runs out. And he can always sell it if he needs to.
The town, it turns out, really should be in Poland, and used to be in that bedrock way that colors all the names. It’s just south of Gliwice (is it really still called that?), which means it should possibly also be Czech, but he’s not anywhere to be found either in this imperial swathe of Germany, Germany, Germany. The main railroad runs (mostly on time) from here to Ostrava, to Brno, to Wien. “You can make it by Christmas if you try,” the man who took his ticket back had said, “but you’ll spend every mark I just gave you on sleep.”
“That’s fine,” Austria had told him. And he thinks it will be, setting out in the late morning, south and a little west. It looks and feels like snow, which probably means rain.
-
13 December, A.D. 1955
It is supposed to be easier for Nations, over land.
It isn’t for Austria.
There isn’t a border checkpoint, so the land must still be Germany’s. Austria walks over it at a human’s speed, in the rain that starts outside Rybnik , which is only halfway toward where he is going. His first half-day free, and he’s still in Poland.
He really isn’t a Nation anymore, is he.
He drifts away from the railroad when the rain gets so cold it makes the iron shine. The coat keeps most of the wet off Austria’s shoulders, but his slacks were already starting to drag and are soaked through. How quickly he finds an inn is almost distressing when he compares it to how long it took to get here, but he’s at the threshold of a boarding house off the Wodzisławska before he even reflects on whether he’s still supposed to call the road by that name. There are a candle and little bowls of oil in the window, stubborn ones, three of them lit and five not. Someone is playing Chopin in the parlor, and the piano is out of tune but not egregiously so, and Austria only grimaces a little when he opens the inn door.
The proprietor is asleep, but the barman isn’t, and he’s willing enough to take Austria’s money to scrawl his name in the book for the night. Rather than go straight to his room, though, Austria heads to the parlor, where there’s a piping stove and a fireplace to dry off his clothes.
It’s far too late at night for there to be fresh food, but there’s wine, and pickles and greens and fried dough with jam. Austria doesn’t think his stomach will consent to the sweets and the oil, but he won’t turn his nose up at it, and eats and drinks as much as he can. The older woman playing the Mazurka switches unobtrusively to a Nocturne, and the tinny upright piano consents to this with remarkable grace. Austria smiles without realizing it, his glasses unseating and clouding with a strange wistfulness.
The Nocturne has its effect, and Austria nods off by the fire, sleeping with his cheek against the wall.
-
He wakes uncomfortably a few hours later, when all save him have gone up to bed. Someone has cleared his plate, and the fire has gone out, but the little bowls of oil and the candle beside them are still going, on their last licks. What light they give barely reaches the piano, highlighting the chipped ivory and ebony keys. Which of course means that someone has left the lid open, and that’s criminal, so Austria hauls himself up from one chair to another, pushes up his sleeves, and poises his hands to shut it.
He can’t. The warm, eerie light from the oil washes over his forearms, yellows them, dips into each curve of hanging flesh and raised vein and withers them. He jumps back, nearly topples the stool over-doesn’t-sits straight with his hands clenched at his sides. It’s a trick of the light, he thinks, and then says aloud. It’s a trick. He isn’t old. He isn’t fading.
The sides of his clothing that didn’t face the fire are still damp and clinging to his calves. He reaches down to smooth them out, and finds himself caressing the curve of his shoe, not quite flush to his bone-thin ankle. He hasn’t worn shoes for eighteen years, and these have blistered his feet with the effort of walking. He still has enough money, more than enough. He could deal with one more day, get as far as Ostrava and buy a ticket there.
He shouldn’t have to. He’s a Nation.
Telling himself that takes more of a toll than it ought. He repeats it and varies it anyway. He’s a Nation. He is a vaunted Nation, a Reich that surpassed the expectations of the suzerain who created it, a hub no the hub of European culture, an Empire that survived his own fall. A Nation that survived invasion upon invasion and emerged all the stronger. A Nation that when faced with the prospect of starting a war for the sake of vengeance, handed himself over to the mercy of his conquerors rather than participate on his own behalf. He is Austria. He is Austria and his people are free.
He is Austria and his people are German.
He lifts his hands to the piano, poises them impotently over the keys. But it’s the dark before dawn, he decides, I oughtn’t wake everyone up. He depresses a single key, an A 440 which is actually more like a 431, and listens to the hammer nestle against the string.
-
It takes him eight hours to walk to Ostrava. He knows because he replays all of Siegfried in his head twice, without breaks for intermission.
On the way, he lets the sounds of late birds and early crickets thread the music only he can hear. The railroad makes no sound except when a train passes on it, and they’re regular trains, enough to mark time by. One comes the first time Siegfried takes a hammer to the shards of Nothung. The next comes when he breaks Wotan’s staff. Austria isn’t certain which production of it he’s hearing in his head, probably the original. It left the best impression, and then Germany stole it.
Ostrava. In Ostrava the street names and storefronts are all still in Czech. The city is much more beautiful than he remembers, or perhaps that’s just a particularly striking sunset, casting shadows so long they cross Cihelní from one cross-street to the next. Some of the mud from Yesterday’s rain is caked on Austria’s shoes-he finds it distasteful, and should buy a new pair in the morning, if he intends to walk any more-and he leaves chips of Poland’s earth on the streets of Czech, tapering away from the train station.
“Excuse me, sir. Your papers.”
Austria shuts his eyes and nods. He was asked in Latin; he answers in German. “I had wondered why there wasn’t a checkpoint at the border.”
“There is no border here,” Germany says, his features superseding the Officer’s with stark alacrity. He extends a black-gloved hand from a black-cuffed uniform. With one glance from face to hand to face, the apparition is gone, and the officer is a no-account of the WHRR. “You were not on the train, sir?”
“No, I walked from Rybnik.”
The officer taps the papers on his wrist, still reading them. “These say you are Austrian.”
I am Austria, the same as he told that composer fellow, that Catholic-did he make it out?-so many years ago. “I walked to Rybnik from Gliwice.” He does not have to say how he got to Gliwice.
“That checks out.” The officer nods, thumbs to another page. “Your errand in Ostrava?”
“Room for the night and a new pair of shoes.”
“You intend to walk all the way to-”
“Wien, yes.”
“I can recommend a cobbler. But you would do well to spend that money on a train ticket.”
Austria has sufficient largess to refrain from saying, I have no intention of ever boarding another of your trains. “I appreciate the advice. Where can I find that cobbler?”
“He will be closed at this hour, sir. But he is one of your kind, he’ll be up in the morning so you can start on your journey again. Come,” he says, handing Austria his papers back, and Austria obeys. He spends most of this leg of the walk staring at the back of the officer’s head, wondering how this boy must have looked with longer hair.
-
The cobbler’s shop is closed for the night. It’s in a district of town that still has a wall around it, but there are only gaping hinges where the gates used to be. Once here, though, Austria sees the shop before the officer does, and the small hotel just up the road. There are no wreaths on the doors here, but a warm glow under most of the doors and in many of the windows. It hollows out the officer’s cheeks, fills them with savage red lines and augmenting black shadows.
“There is a place for you here,” the officer says, in Latin again. “I apologize for detaining you, sir. Please enjoy your stay in Ostrava, and I wish you good health and fair weather on your journey.”
If he had not added that last clause, Austria would not have thanked him. But he did, and so Austria does, and even does the favor of not watching the Officer leave, not listening for the hiss of a glass door closing.
He rests his hand on the window of the cobbler’s shop, tracing the raised black letters. The glass is cold and thick and new, without a whisper in it. On the other side sit rows of matched shoes, in haphazard piles, to display experience more than artistry. That will do, he thinks, and at the rate he’s going he’ll wear the new ones out too, with another four hundred kilometers to go. But at least they’ll fit, which is more than he can say for the ones on his feet.
It seems that once he pushes his hand off the glass, it’s closing around the handle of the door to the hotel. The metal is even colder than the glass-Austria thinks he might buy gloves from the cobbler as well.
It’s early enough, so the proprietor is there, and he greets Austria in Czech. Austria certainly speaks enough to make his intentions clear, and books himself a room for the night. He is shown to it with a rare and eager expediency, and the proprietor tells him that once he gets settled he should come down to the parlor. “There’s singing in the parlor on Wednesdays,” he says. “It’s a real treat, and if you have an ear for music, you should come down.”
“I will,” Austria says, and “thank you,” but before he even gives it a second consideration he sits on the bed and lays back, cradling his head in his hands.
The door shuts, and that’s enough for Austria to get back up and open it again. He listens to the sounds of the lights buzzing in the hall, leans his shoulder into the jamb. The posture is very like Prussia, he thinks, and the thought should disgust him. But whatever the churning in his stomach he tries to emulate it, tries to slide his heel forward as if the boots cling high and tight, tries to push off the doorframe as if it’s pushing with him. It’s very easy to imitate, even with all his blisters and aches. So he swaggers toward the bed, tries to picture himself laying there, threadbare and unkempt and supposedly free.
He asks himself, in German, why he bothers. He doesn’t have an answer. Then again, he isn’t actually laying on that bed anymore.
-
He’s not; he is downstairs in the hotel parlor, and while the piano isn’t particularly grand the singing is, even if the songs are regulation Italian.
So is the audience.
“You made it!” Italy cheers, hopping up from his seat and rushing Austria, throwing his arms around Austria’s middle. (He doesn’t even seem to notice that he’s disrupted the performance.) The white uniform is immaculate, almost glowing as it drowns out the subdued colors of Austria’s clothes. Italy grins, rubs his chin on Austria’s chest. “I’m so happy! Germany was talking about it for so long but Prussia wouldn’t have it and he said you’d only get your parole if he said so but Prussia doesn’t come to as many meetings as he really should and so Germany says that Prussia doesn’t get to say anything about you anymore and I didn’t think he was really going to do it because he cares about Prussia so much but he cares about you too and I guess that’s what won out in the end. Hi! Welcome back! Are you going home?”
Austria at least has a good excuse not to say he doesn’t know. “Italy, there’s a performance going on.”
“Oh!” he chirps, and then covers his mouth with his gloves and whispers instead. “Oh! Sorry. But there are lots of performances,” he says through his fingers, “and you only get to be free again once.”
Austria shivers. But Italy’s let go of him now, at least, so he probably doesn’t feel it.
Italy lets his hands down from his mouth, but keeps whispering. “She sings Italian wrong anyway,” he says, and takes Austria by the wrist. “Let’s go to the front hall!” The iron cross bounces on Italy’s chest as he drags Austria out, without any of the respect he used to have. And no wonder, Italy looks older, and not just older but grown.
Never mind the chill, and never mind that Austria might have wanted to listen, but they’re out in the foyer soon enough and Italy is hugging him again.
“I missed you, you know,” Italy says, and now it’s not loud anymore, just loud enough to create counterpoint with the muffled singing. “I mean, I know why you had do go away, but it’s not the same without you. And it might not be the same with you either, but you’re here and that’s best, right?”
“Right,” Austria says.
Italy beams. Even his teeth are as white as the uniform. “So! So I wanted to say that you’re welcome in my house any time! I mean, if you want to play some music or conduct or something. Or just talk. Or have some food! And that goes for fratello too, I think. Well, maybe not right now. Fratello isn’t speaking to me right now. But he and Spain would love to see you.”
Austria thanks him, but Italy’s glee at that is rather disproportionate.
“Oh, and you’ve been gone for so long, did you get any news where you were? I know a lot must have changed! Eighteen years isn’t a lot usually but it is a lot now because everything’s happened so fast. It’s a much longer war than the last one. At first I thought that was because you weren’t fighting in it, because, you know, most of your wars go very quickly, but then I thought that it’s not that at all, it’s that so many people are fighting. I mean, the Great War was a world war, but the whole world wasn’t involved. And this time it is. There are a lot of Nations. So maybe you did the right thing, because if you’d fought then more people would be fighting. You’re everywhere now, right?”
“I’m here,” Austria says.
“Well, yes,” Italy agrees, and smiles his gleaming smile, and clings to Austria’s wrist. “But you’re not home.”
-
14 December, A.D. 1955
Italy talks so much that one day becomes another, and Austria does not get to actually hear the singing in the hotel parlor. But when Italy finally leaves Austria alone (“I should be getting back, I’ll tell the others you’re all right, they’ll want to know, especially Hungary, she never talks about you but that means she thinks about you all the time, I know it!”) Austria retreats not to his room, but to the parlor piano, thankfully abandoned.
He sits in the dark, and thinks that his distress surpasses impropriety, and plays.
The first piece to come to mind is a variation series, Schumann, impassioned and mournful-
“Whose?” Germany asks, from the light of the open door.
“Schumann,” Austria answers, not pausing in it. “-Clara,” he specifies, “Clara Schumann, Clara Wieck, you remember her. Yours.”
“Yes,” he says. His silhouette nods, but his shadow doesn’t. He listens politely a few moments more, long enough for Austria to finish the second variation and start the third. The second soars, endless repeating tenuto (why, Clara, have you been listening to Beethoven?), and the third, when it switches the minor and major aspects, is all tiny grace-note figures that suit her husband’s work much more soundly. And the runs of the fourth manage to pry Austria’s eyes back to the keys, squinting in the dark.
Germany asks, “Do you have enough for new shoes?”
Austria tells him yes.
-
First thing in the morning, he buys them from the cobbler, but not gloves, and sets off for Pribor. At the rate he’s been walking, that will take all day.
-
It does.
-
15 December, A.D. 1955
And from Pribor to Hranice.
.
16 December, A.D. 1955
And from Hranice, to Olomouc.
17 December, A.D. 1955
And from Olomouc to Prostéjov, and that takes even longer, because halfway between them it begins to snow.
Austria’s new shoes are durable, yes, but not as well-lined as he would like, and soon enough he can’t feel them at all. He shuts his eyes and turns his cowl up. The ħai at his neck is so cold it’s scalding, and he reaches up to cover his collar, and tries not to bow forward in the snow.
He’s been to Prostéjov before-he thinks of what inn he’ll probably be staying at, if Germany left it standing, wonders how many lights will be shining in that window. He counts-if there were three in the makeshift Menorah back in the window of the inn in Rybnik, then Ostrava should have been four, Pribor five, Hranice six, Olomouc seven, and Projéstov eight-no, it’s Saturday, there wouldn’t be any lit at all, not until after the Sabbath is over, if there is anyone alive to observe it.
The rush of warmth is so sudden, and literal, that it stings his toes.
He is not walking through the snow at the side of a railroad. He is in a cellar in a ghetto in Prostéjov, and a young man is holding one bright braided candle. There are eight others in this basement. Austria brings the total count to ten. Not a single man here is a day over twenty-five; most, including the one leading the service, are teenagers. Their hair is short and ragged, as if grown out in haste. Their Hebrew is as clumsy as Austria’s, except for the parts of prayers that always repeat. Everything is tinged with Czech and German, more Yiddish than Hebrew really.
Austria wonders how long his coat has been dry.
The boys sing and drink, to conclude the service-or, well, to switch to the other one, and light the candles that the Sabbath prohibited. One boy pushes up the sleeve of his shirt, to pour the wine. The number on his arm is stretched and worn, each numeral warped out of alignment with the skin around it. It didn’t grow well with him. When the boy hands Austria a glass, Austria drinks. It is so cold, and the wine is so warm, that he can see curls of vapor on the air.
-
18 December, A.D. 1955
In the morning, the snow is still falling thickly, and at least two decimeters have stuck to the rooftops and windows of Prostéjov. From the room he’s been let for the night, Austria can’t see much at all, let alone consider what it means to walk in it.
Of course he can spare a day and wait at least until the snow stops falling, or buckle down and buy a train ticket after all, or see if someone’s got a car going and space in it. But the niggling, persistent thought is that he shouldn’t have to. He is a Nation. He has people. A journey that takes a man a week should take Austria a day, maybe two. People speed the travel of Nations, and no Nation of Europe has been barred from his own borders. Never. Either he is a Nation, or he isn’t.
He comes away from the window, and shuts the curtains over the towering white snow smothered to the glass. Someone knocks at his door, and then announces himself-breakfast, with the compliments of his hostess.
Austria opens the door and is entirely unsurprised to find Germany.
But of course, he is only Germany for a few words and a moment. “I hope you are not going back on the road in this weather,” he says.
Austria takes the coffee cup and jelly doughnut from him, and asks, “What choice do I have?”
With something as simple as a shrug, the servant is just a servant. He says, “That one’s fresh from the vat. There’s more downstairs-we’re trying to use up the last of the oil. So if you’re going to go, take some with you.”
Austria nods his thanks.
-
Brno, he thinks. Brno should still be Brno. When he was last there, he came to admire the architecture, the buildings of the First Republic. But Czech hasn’t been here, and Czech was there to see his own new buildings and his own new art, and that’s over, and this isn’t a Republic anymore. (Or if it is, Germany doesn’t seem to think so.)
He walks out into the streets of Projéstov, lifting his feet out of the snow, leaving tromping footprints of his new, cold shoes. Brno, he thinks again, the way he used to think when the city was new and harder to get to. Joining of two small rivers. Nothing. The conferences of Moravia. Nothing. The Swedish army. Nothing. He has gone all of five steps through the snow. Austerlitz. I can remember nearly dying. I can remember Germany stabbing me in the back before he even knew he was Germany. Nothing. If anything, he’s going slower.
Spielberg castle, he tries, and it makes his head ache to think about, makes his ears swell red outside and in. A tremor wracks him from his temples to his knees, too hot to just be shivering. He refuses to fall, holds on to his suitcase and scarf. It’s as if the backlash of thinking hits him, as if the name is scalding.
He groans, and thinks, At least I know it still stands, and wonders what does not-
-and this factory is, or rather was, in the district Židenice, and he is surrounded by its iron skeleton. The snow is much lighter, here in Brno.
-
Once Austria has regained the compunction to breathe, the very first thing he does is check his watch. A little more than an hour has past, and this city is not Projéstov, it is Brno, and the ice on the ground is slicker and softer and burns Austria’s knees when he topples forward onto it. He drags his suitcase up and leans on it, gets uneasily to his feet, stares at the wreckage around him. It was a factory, that’s plain, the dark iron and steel machines indistinguishable from monsters without their prescribed purpose. Frayed cables streak the ice, embedded in it, too old and dead to spark. This building was bombed out years ago.
When he finds where the door and façade used to stand, there is vulgar iconography and language carved into and painted onto the stone. The name and purpose of the factory have been rendered almost entirely indecipherable. Almost.
Sweat drips along the chain around Austria’s neck. He knows how he got here. Or thinks he does, at least, and that’s perturbing enough.
Židenice gleams with icicles and cracked stone streets. This factory, on this strip, is not the only one that has been rendered a shell. But it is the only one that does not (yet?) have a construction setup outside it, tarps and towers and piles of stone left to weather before they are assembled. The parked trucks and turrets are each emblazoned with an iron cross, which should be more appropriate than it is. The factory at the end of the street has regrown the tallest of all so far, enough to be operational if not complete.
Those words make Austria feel warmly and distinctly ill.
But the rest of Židenice is not quite so bleak as this, and that carries over to the rest of Brno, as Austria walks around it all. It is late morning, and the city’s stores are bustling-that’s right, one week to Christmas, and no wonder-and the window displays are wreathed in pine and glass and electric lights. The great Christmas tree in the střed is festooned with whirling ornaments and gold bulbs, and Austria remembers that Brno was the first electrified city in the world.
“Hey,” Ukraine says, behind him, and then sneezes. It’s a very cute sneeze, one that makes a squeaking sound that complements the expansion of her coat at the bustline almost eerily. She rebuttons the coat.
Austria turns away from the tree and blinks. “Aren’t you on the-”
She sneezes again. “Other side, yeah. But I’ve got people here too, so...” She looks down, a little sheepishly, and comes closer. There’s a public mailbox between them, and she props her elbows onto it, less affected by the cold than he is-but then again, she’s sneezing. “I like the beard. It’s cute on your face. How’ve you been?”
She might not even know. He doesn’t answer. “You seem better.”
“Well, I’m out walking now,” she says. “So I’m much better than I was. I didn’t know you knew. But things are different now. I can still get over here, at least. Brother’s busier now, it’s easier.” Her smile should be refreshing, and isn’t with everything else. “Not to mention that the fighting’s starting to die down. Well, on my front at least. Parts of me are here, you know? I’d really like that to be settled soon.”
Austria nods.
“But you’re lucky. I haven’t seen you fighting at all. So is Germany just taking care of all of that, or Prussia?, or-”
She doesn’t know.
“-or, well, it hasn’t really stayed on your front, but it might if Brother’s still angry. He doesn’t let it show how angry he is, but he’s pretty angry at what his old boss did behind his back and all. But Brother gets really defensive when people think he agrees with everything his bosses tell him to do. Worse when he thinks he’s being punished for something his boss did. And he wants everything Germany’s taken back as much as his bosses do, but not for the same reason. It’s okay to tell you this, I guess,” she says, and then waves her hand in front of her face a lot, scrunching up her eyes, “Sorry, I’m going to sneeze in a bit-um-but I should say that it’s really okay to tell you this-”
“Why, Ukraine?” he asks, unknotting his scarf and giving it to her.
She grabs it from him and claps it in front of her nose. The sneeze that follows is as cute and vulnerable as the others, but louder, and Austria thinks he can kiss that little red scarf goodbye, though perhaps not literally. “Thanks. Um. Well, because they hurt you.”
Church bells ring. Snow drips down the wrist of his coat and burns his skin.
-
The hotel he finds for the night is the nicest yet, until the woman behind the desk asks for his papers and apologizes.
“Your money’s better spent elsewhere,” she says, giving them back.
He agrees, once he’s out the door.
In another district, he finds an equally nice, if older, building, with a grated rubber mat outside for him to tramp the slush from his shoes on. This one takes his name and suitcase and money, and Austria wanders off to the parlor. It’s a quiet night, a Sunday, and there are only four or five people clustered around the piano-a grand, like Austria’s, but not as meticulously in tune-singing Christmas carols. O Tannenbaum, or so it goes, du kannst mir sehr gefallen.
Even if only one of the people singing is wearing WHRR blacks, Austria hears five of the same voice.
The little crowd laughs, when most of them forget the first half of the second phrase of the second stanza, and they natter in Czech, trying to come up with whether it’s “Weihnachtzeit” or just “Winterzeit” in German, and fumbling around for a translation in Czech, if there is one, which there probably is, but they’re all from different parts of the country and they can’t quite agree.
Austria asks them if they mind. The one soldier looks at him rather pointedly, but the others clap and usher him to sit at the piano bench. One of them, a girl of no more than fifteen, remains on it beside him, and asks him if he sings.
“Not carols,” he answers, “but I will play something.” Since that one girl is sitting on the low end of the bench, he thinks about pieces that won’t require much of the left hand, and once he’s set his fingertips over the keys, plays just one low introductory chord and settles into the slow chromatic preface to something much sweeter. Once he gets to the long downward glissando, the revelers are silent, a few of them agape (that lone soldier included), and the long arpeggios that mark the end of the introduction leave them staggered.
He plays the simple waltz of the ritornello with enough gusto that a few of them laugh, and the other girl grabs the soldier and starts to dance with him. They’re all a bit drunk, Austria thinks, and when he approaches the first verse he resolves to keep it as much in time, or in their time, as possible. He remembers where the rubati are supposed to go and ignores them, keeps every flourish as quick and crisp as the regulation allows. The piece lacks something, by the first false ending at the end of the second ritornello, but he plays on.
The girl beside him, of course, is Germany, but younger and curious, asking, “Whose is this?”
“Kalkbrenner,” Austria answers, trying not to let the edge in his voice slip into the minor modulation at the end of the second verse. “Opus 52. Either yours or France’s, depending on where the borders were that week.”
She laughs-she must not be Germany anymore-and when Austria launches into the rigorous ornamental passages toward the song’s midpoint, the girl looks over Austria’s shoulder and asks her friends what Frankreich is.
-
19 December, A.D. 1955
In the morning, Austria buys himself a new scarf, a green one this time, and thinks himself all the way to Bratislava.
In the past he could get there simply by remembering. Bratislava was Pressburg then, and it was where Hungary hid her jewels and horses away. Austria never told her this, but he wanted to have her there, or wished he could, but the castle has sitting there been burned since the time of Napoleon. Bedding her there would have been a sort of apology for that, which is why ne never told her. So Austria could remember Pressburg or Pozsonyi and be in Bratislava, and more likely than not, Hungary would be there with him.
But he is not Austria any more, and should remember differently.
He arrives not in the ruins of Pressburg castle, but at the base of the hill, and the Danube is not so blue today. Parts of the bank are frozen enough for the snow to gather on. He turns aside, and Hungary is already near him, south and east.
She wears black. It does not suit her nearly as well as green, but it makes the shock of her hair seem even more red, or perhaps that is due to the combination of it and the snow. Her coat is long and lined with white fur, but he can still see the shape of the uniform underneath, and when she looks at him he wants to lodge the breath in his own throat and die of it.
“You made it,” she says. It’s not quite a whisper, more an echo of Italy than anything else. There is only about a meter of snow between them, tall enough that it could hide ice, and Austria does not want to step across it. Hungary takes that chance, though, and comes to stand in his space, takes him by the lapels of the coat. “This isn’t yours.”
“It is now,” he says. He can almost see the words on the air, it’s so cold. His breath fogs and clutters the space between them, no matter how little there is. “I’m glad you’re well.”
“It’s relative,” she says, and cocks her head, and smiles. “But you know that.”
He nods, and looks down at her black-gloved hands on his lapels. He could touch them. He doesn’t. “Walk with me around the city.” It’s not a request.
She treats it like one, though, and tells him, “Yes, that’s a great idea,” and slides her hand down from his coat to his wrist. She takes him by that instead of his hand, leaving it to shiver and curl into a fist. She sees that, of course she sees that, but walks just a little ahead of him until they reach the city centre.
Most of Bratislava is as ruined as the castle, now. There are barracks for the soldiers, and a hospital, and a few operational public houses, more of them hung with shrapnel than with tinsel. Hungary explains that at one point during the war, Russia occupied nearly all of Slovakia, and the battle when he got to Bratislava was, in her own words, “pretty awesome.” He knows that she means it in the literal sense, not the qualitative, but he can’t help but hear another voice threaded with hers.
“Seriously,” she says, “once the economy started getting to everything, Russia could just march his army into a town on the front and sit on it and we’d have to break out the big guns to get it back. Thank god it’s starting to get to him and America too.” She pauses, kicks a bit of rubble, holds his wrist a little tighter. “Did you know about that, actually? Russia’s got America now. Or America’s got him. I’d think it was pretty if they weren’t trying to kill us.” After a second, and a bit of a brighter smile, she adds, “Actually, it’s kind of pretty even if they are trying to kill us.”
Austria could smile at that if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. He does, however, let his fist uncurl a bit, and tries to slow their walking. “Have you done much fighting?”
“I’ve done my share.” She grins, proud as ever. “It’s different, the more you have to lose. You understand that.”
“Yes,” he says. “Which is why it’s so easy to not fight, when you have nothing.”
She holds him even tighter at that, but that could just be the corner they’re turning. There actually is a township here, if underpopulated. Soldiers speak German and Latin and Hungarian, no Slovak to be heard, and the street names are painted over with universal numerals. They don’t say much at all, for a while. The city is neither of theirs anymore.
She brings him to a civilian hotel and checks them both in. No one asks for either his or her papers. When she is asked if this is an hourly or overnight stay, she tells them overnight. They are shown to a room much nicer than any of the ones Austria has purchased on this journey, with a bed nearly as large as the one Austria will find waiting for him in the house in Wien, and Austria barely gets a look at it before Hungary pounces on him and straddles him on the mattress.
The first time through, she does not even remove her coat. He manages to get his pants open but not down, and she takes only the slightest care of hers, and rides him until they both come in despairingly short order. She kisses him and grabs him by the wrist again, and traps his hand between her legs, and he thumbs at and strokes her there until she comes a second time. By then they’re both worn down enough that Austria can actually start removing his clothing, but just the sight of Hungary sprawled on the bed in her unkempt coat makes that particular effort half-hearted and he only manages out of his shirt by the time he finds himself tangled in her again, her arms knotted over his back, her hands in his hair, the frame of his glasses crushed against her chin as he attacks her neck.
They only break for water and use of the toilet, and removal of bits of clothing at a time; her coat (finally), his pants, their shoes. The bed is still half-made, just stained on the covers, dark with spit and white with everything else. At some point, he realizes that they haven’t drawn the curtains shut, and goes to fix that, but all Hungary does is laugh and pin him against the wall until he lifts her and returns the favor. It surprises him that he’s strong enough for that.
Her orgasm is threaded with laughter, and it’s contagious enough that when they sink to the carpet (grimy and cold, here, by the window,) Austria finds himself hiccoughing. She puts her hands on his stomach, runs them over his ribs, his hips, the sharp jut of his sternum and clavicles. By the time her hands are stroking down the bare flesh of his arms, the hiccoughs have become tremors; when her palm closes over the darkest part of his skin, his eyes flash open, directly into hers.
She has not removed her gloves.
-
20 December, A.D. 1955
While Hungary is still asleep, Austria bathes and dresses for the day. He unwraps the parcel he bought from Gustaw in Gliwice, and pulls the tallit over his head. It’s rather large on him, the neckline low enough that he can still see the thin chain of his ħai. So much the better, he decides, and buttons his shirt over it, leaving only the dangling tassels visible.
She wakes up when he is still pushing his head through the neck of his sweater. She says good morning, in her own language, and he comes to the bed, props himself on one knee and kisses her.
“I’ll check us out,” he says, against her mouth.
“You can’t, it’s in my name.” She plucks his glasses off his forehead and sets them aright on his nose, then gives him a peck on it. “But if you need to leave first-”
“I have to make sure they brought the piano to my house,” he says. “I really should have been there yesterday.”
“I’m glad you weren’t.”
“So am I.”
They kiss again; it’s rather laden, with her hands cupping his cheeks, with his at the base of her skull, her hair rich and thick between his fingers. When their lips part, he chases Hungary’s back down for one more brush, and holds her there securely.
She asks him, “Do you want the harpsichord back too?”
He shakes his head. “Keep it.”
“Then you’re welcome to come by and play it any time,” she says, and the heels of her palm reshape his jaw, scraping through the hair on it.
He shuts his eyes, and breathes, and tells her, “I should take care of things at my house first.”
-
He does.
It is as easy to get to Leopoldstadt as it always was, but the thoughts it takes are not that of a Nation’s home. Instead, Austria remembers the houses of others, the opulent mansions on his street, homes of the patrons of the Staatsoper and the nearby Yeshivas. He even arrives at his own mansion, conceiving of the journey this way.
That is because his is the only house on this street still standing.
He circles around once, staring over his left shoulder like an owl. His breath comes in heavy, visible gusts that gather on his cheek as he turns. His street is not only destroyed but neglected, without the construction trucks and iron fences that threaded all the other districts he passed through. Where Bratislava was besieged, Wien is destitute. Austria is certain that it can’t be true of the whole city, not with all its years as so central a place, so wealthy, home to those who’ve now left it to die. Austria remembers, all of it, Italy’s laughter while dusting in the corridors, the slice of paper as Germany turned the pages of his books, the jagged roll of carriage wheels on the cobblestone driveway, Hungary tonguing the corner of her mouth as she helped pin and powder Austria’s wig, Spain in the garden, Switzerland in the parlor-
The creak of the door on its hinges is like a scream. Rust crumbles and spackles the toe of Austria’s shoe. He leans his hand on the frontspiece of the frame without meaning to, more to support himself as he covers his mouth and coughs against the dust. The same long carpet still lines the foyer, sparkling with the motes on the air, catching the light from the street. The same grand staircase winds up from the center of the hall, but the servants are not at their posts, and the banister is slick with gathering wood oil, as if someone stopped in the middle of cleaning, packed his rags and gave up. The furniture in the drawing room is covered over with white sheets, and the clavichord is gone, its place by the hearth marked only by its deep circular footprints in the carpet. Some, but not all, of the art is gone from his walls, mostly pieces that he would agree could be construed as subversive, but some are just things that Italy must have liked. The portrait that Italy once painted a moustache on is still there. Austria would laugh if he didn’t find the irony sickening.
The main kitchen is as clean as he’s ever seen it, save for the film and cobwebs that have gathered in the corners. The cupboards are empty, and all Hungary’s cooking knives and ironware are missing, but the glassware and silverware are still locked in the cupboard. The windows of the library are shattered, and many of the books are gone, but those untouched have topped askance on their shelves. Austria’s heel crushes the glass onto the hardwood, and he slips on it, catches himself on the back of an armchair draped in white. He hacks up the dust he’s inhaled and is surprised when he doesn’t cry.
He carefully circumvents the glass on the way to the ballroom, and then the music room, and is relieved to find both of them entirely untouched, except for the missing harpsichord. All the other instruments are stacked neatly in their cases, and the music is immaculately shelved. Even the crystal chandelier is still hanging over the ballroom floor, and the tall ladder Italy used to clean it from remains against the far wall.
Austria manages to get back to the foyer, and takes those stairs up instead of any of the servants’ stairwells. Some guest rooms are better off than others, some missing art or furniture, but none of them destroyed. His own master bedroom hasn’t been touched at all, not even tarped.
And there is light peeping out from beneath the bathroom door.
Austria barges over, accidentally whacks his hip on the dresser, and flings the door open.
“No one’s pissed in this for eighteen years,” Prussia says, doing precisely that. The white tile of the bathroom walls and floor assaults Austria’s eyes almost as much as the sight of Prussia in it. “You mind?”
“Yes, I do,” Austria says.
“Fine,” Prussia says, but finishes just the same, and shakes himself off before redoing his pants. He looks even paler without the glass walls to remind Austria what color Prussia’s skin really is. He slinks past Austria without washing his hands (of course, they’re in gloves) and struts out into the bedroom, plunking down onto the bed. He sprawls there, crossing his arms behind his head. The mattress creaks suggestively. “Done.”
“You delivered the piano,” Austria says, because thinking anything else would be idiotic at this point.
“Germany’s too busy herding cats to drive a truck.” Prussia shrugs and grins, waves a lazy black hand through the air. “Not a scratch on it, I can promise you. Not even one string unstrung.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“What, you mean what I’m told to?”
“You never do what you’re told to.”
“Exactly.”
“You do this because you want to.”
Prussia sits up and laughs in Austria’s face. “I should ask you why you ask questions if you’re just gonna answer them yourself. Can’t deny it, though.”
No matter how weak Austria feels, he won’t lean against the wall right now. “Why do you want to?”
“Can’t say,” Prussia says with a smirk that he could whet a knife on. “Don’t think I can help it either. I know if I didn’t want to, I’d stop,” he says, and with one more backward rock, hops up to his feet and swaggers out toward the hall. “But I’m not the only one here who doesn’t know who I am.”
Austria corrects him. “Yes, you are.”
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25 December, A.D. 1955
It is particularly difficult during the Christmas season, but Austria manages to sell the house and nearly everything in it. There were already people in Vienna with their eye on the property, on the whole of Leopoldstadt even, and museums and Nations and dignitaries will gladly purchase the rest. The black grand piano, Austria invests with what power he can, and fetters it to the dozens of small apartments he has arranged to purchase, in every major city in the WHRR-
-and several in Russia and the Eastern Bloc.
-and in China.
-and in the Middle East.
-and one, in Brooklyn, in New York, in America.
(25 December, A.D. 1955)
10 Tevet, 5716
And the apartment on the Pest side of Budapest is barely large enough for the piano, and Austria can’t unfold the bed from the wall, let alone sleep on it, let alone sleep on it with Hungary. But he’s survived worse, much worse, and if that means letting her drape herself over the piano while he plays and sings, he can accept it for the luxury it is.
She hums little snatches of harmony to his melody line, pronounces the German lyrics-Eichendorff’s poem, Das Ständchen-with the raw lilt her language lends to anything not her own. The accompaniment is gentle, shifting, imitative of a lute, the better of the two notable settings Austria’s people have done, in his own opinion. When he comes to the brief break after the climactic third stanza, auch die Laute hier geschlagen (Hungary pronounces it more Leute than Laute but that might be a pun instead of an error) und manch lustiges Lied erdacht, Hungary purses her lips and asks, “Whose is this?”
“Hugo Wolf,” he answers. “Mine.”
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My apologies for the abundance of citations. This is not a complete list.
A map.
5716. The Hebrew Calendar is built on the Lunar Year, and as such the correspondence of holidays to the Gregorian calendar varies greatly within a seven year cycle. (It’s easily noticed during the Yule season, when, while Christmas is always on the 25th of December, Chanukah can take place as early as the middle of November and as late as twelfth night. It all depends on how many months there are in that particular year.)
The Tenth of Tevet, which occurred on Christmas in that particular Gregorian year.
Jelly doughnuts.
Spielberg Castle. (No relation.)
O Tannenbaum, written by the same guy who wrote Alle meine Entchen.
Mendelsohn, Op. 67 No. 5
Clara Schumann, Variations on a theme by Robert Schumann
Kalkbrenner, Introduction and Rondo, Op. 52
Wolf, Das Ständchen (lyrics)
Va pensiero, sull’ali dorate, or “Fly, Thought, on Wings of Gold”, is a famous chorus from Verdi’s opera Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar). In the present day it has come to be another National Anthem to the Italian people, but in its original context in the opera, it is also called the “Lament of the Hebrews”, as they send their prayers to the Nation they have lost. When Austria, in Put on the Costume, referred to “putting on Nabucco at Buchenwald”, this is what he referenced.
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