J. Jones: The Silence

Today, Werthen discovered as he glanced at the newspaper in front of him, the architect Otto Wagner had been turned into copy for the hungry dailies.

‘I am a frequent visitor to the Rathaus,’ Wagner told a journalist for the Neue Freie Presse. Werthen knew of and appreciated Wagner’s role as artistic consultant to the municipality in numerous civic projects, including the newly opened Stadtbahn station at Karlsplatz in a Jugendstil design that infuriated many stodgy burghers. The elderly Wagner had also angered many critics among the conservatives with his 1899 membership in Klimt’s Secession. Though he did not necessarily agree with all of Wagner’s theories of urban design, or with his concept of utilitarian design, or Nutzstil , Werthen thought Wagner was a national treasure. As was usual with Vienna, Wagner was more famous in the rest of Europe and even in the United States than he was at home; scores of his designs had been neglected and left unrealized because of politics and rivalries.

Wagner further noted to the journalist, ‘I thought at first it was a motor car exhaust. I cannot imagine why, as it is very unlikely that one would hear such a sound three stories up the Rathaus.’

Equally unlikely that one would hear a gunshot there, either, Werthen thought.

Wagner had precious little to add to the tragic tale, but his name usually made good copy. His enemies, and they were legion, might even wonder if he had not pulled the trigger himself. The Viennese loved a scandal and delighted in mixing the names of the famous with such scandals, thereby reducing to their own paltry level whatever great man they selected for the honor.

As Werthen finished the article, he heard the door open to the outer office. There was a mumble of voices; he thought he recognized one. A tapping came at his door, and Fraulein Metzinger, a scarlet blush spreading into her scalp, looked in.

‘Sorry to interrupt. There is a fellow here to see you. He says it is rather urgent.’

Not a ‘gentleman,’ but a ‘fellow.’ And someone who was able, within instants of meeting her, to embarrass Fraulein Metzinger with some wayward statement or glance. That could be only one person.

‘Send Herr Klimt in,’ Werthen said.

She looked at him with amazement, then backed out of the door, to be replaced momentarily by the bulky frame of the artist Gustav Klimt, attired in an Astrakhan wool coat and matching Cossack-style hat. He hardly looked the part of the bete noire of Viennese painters; rather if one saw him for the first time you might think him to be a jumped-up butcher or baker.

‘My lord, Werthen, you have made improvements in this office. That girl’s a wonder. Wherever did you find her?’

‘It is nice to see you, too, Klimt.’

‘Am I being too lax with my politesse once again? Sorry. I hate formalities. But, if you insist. “Greetings, dear Advokat. How hale you and your lovely wife, Frau Berthe?” Is that better?’

‘And daughter,’ Werthen added, going around the desk to shake hands with the artist. His first child, a daughter, had been born on January 19.

‘Well, bravo for you, Werthen. A father. A wonderful institution.’

Klimt should know; for he had fathered numerous children in Vienna by various mistresses.

‘Too kind,’ Werthen said. ‘Now what is it brings you here? It can’t be the bill. I understand from Berthe that was finally settled.’

‘A sore point, Werthen. Shall we move on to other, brighter topics? In fact, I come bearing blessings for you in the form of yet another commission. If this keeps up, I shall take a proper percentage for my troubles.’

Indeed Klimt had been responsible for starting Werthen on the road to inquiry agent when the artist himself was accused of murder two years earlier. And last year he had been good enough to send another client Werthen’s way, the young beauty, Alma Schindler.

‘Do tell, Klimt.’

But Klimt had seemingly lost interest in his errand. Instead he was busily surveying the room’s decor: heavy mahogany furniture, green wallpaper, tasteful yet conservative prints of flowers and animals.

‘Bit stodgy, don’t you think?’ Klimt said, nodding toward a print of a horse and jockey.

‘It’s a lawyer’s office, not a salon,’ Werthen replied.

‘What you need are some paintings from our Secession. I could let you hang them here without a fee. Good for you, good for us. Expose your clientele to the new arts. Turn them into connoisseurs.’

‘They come to me for reassurance, Klimt, not an introduction to aesthetics.’

‘And some of our Werkstatte furniture would do wonders.’

‘What commission, Klimt?’

‘A Kolo Moser bookshelf, perhaps.’

‘The commission , Klimt.’

‘Fatherhood does not seem to be favoring you, Werthen. You are damnably testy today. The little bugger keeping you up at night?’

Werthen shook his head. ‘The “little bugger,” as you so lovingly refer to our Frieda, is a sleeper.’

‘Well, something is chewing at your nerves, then. If you were a dog, you’d be snarling.’ Klimt divested himself of coat and hat, looking about for a place to throw them. Werthen took them, and placed them on a straight-back chair by the wall. He pointed Klimt to an upholstered chair near his desk and returned to the other side of it to his own chair. Sitting down, he let out a sigh.

‘It’s the parents, if you must know.’

‘How do you mean?’

Too late, Werthen remembered Klimt’s devotion to his own mother; she was faultless in his eyes. There would be no sympathy, let alone empathy, from Klimt regarding one’s parents. The artist, despite his many affairs and entanglements, still lived with his aged mother, and his sisters. For many Viennese men, such a living arrangement was not a punishment, but a salvation.

Am I simply an ingrate, or are my parents more difficult than most? Werthen wondered. Estranged since his marriage to Berthe, whom they felt was socially beneath the Werthens, his parents had come back into his orbit once they learned of the advent of a grandchild. This was as it should be, and Werthen was initially happy for the reconciliation. They had taken a suite of rooms for the winter in the Hotel zur Josefstadt in the Langegasse, close to his flat in the Josefstadterstrasse, and were often visitors to Werthen and Berthe.

But from his initial joy at having his parents back in his life, Werthen had begun to dread their visits.

‘You’ll put the wet nurses of the empire out of work, at this rate,’ his father joked having learned that Berthe had decided to breastfeed her child herself. ‘Simple division of labor.’

And his mother engaged in endless wrangling with Werthen’s housekeeper and cook, Frau Blatschky, over the proper foods to prepare for a young mother. Frau Blatschky, happy that Berthe’s interminable morning sickness was done with, relished the preparation of all the richest food in the Austrian culinary canon, for a feeding mother should be able to indulge herself.

‘All that lovely mother’s milk does not come from eating crusts,’ Frau Blatschky intoned, as if Berthe had hitherto been subsisting on a convict’s diet.

Werthen’s mother, however, was worried lest her daughter-in-law lose her shapely figure. A mere week after the birth she said to Berthe with sweet insouciance, ‘You don’t want Karlchen to be harnessed to a dray horse, now do you, dear?’

Werthen hoped — he had long given up on praying — that his parents would finally pack their bags and go back to their estate in Upper Austria. Reconciliation be damned; he wanted his domestic peace once again.

‘Werthen? Are you quite all right?’

Klimt’s voice brought him out of his thoughts. ‘Sorry, Klimt. Forget I mentioned the parents. As you say, put it down to lack of sleep.’