Laura Furman - The O Henry Prize Stories 2005

In any case, his famous cousin soon found herself the object of a nerve-shredding public hysteria. The pan-Germans continued their threats to disrupt the concert, citing as justification the “occult” fits and seizures which the Fantasy had induced seventy years before. The Secessionist and Young Vienna movements appropriated the young pianist as their champion, while a congeries of beards from the conservatory accused Anna and her managers of sensationalism, fomenting needless conflict for publicity purposes. An obsessed fan worked out a dizzying mathematical correlation between the date of Visser's death and Anna's birthday, which the Abendpost featured in a front-page story. Professors of neurology and musicology were invited to propose theories explaining the Fantasy’s violent effect on listeners, while Sigmund Freud-obscure, struggling, no longer young, shunned by the medical establishment and passed over for professorship-followed the controversy from his office on the Berggasse, where he read the newspapers and wrote The Interpretation of Dreams in the long stretches between patient appointments.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Hugo told Anna on January 11. “Nobody would blame you for backing out.” “Nor you,” is the curt answer which he recorded-apropos of Flora? Mayor Lueger of the Christian Social party said that he could not guarantee security outside the Royal Opera on the evening of the twentieth, citing “forces beyond all but the Almighty's control.” But the young virtuoso was nevertheless resolved. Those with access to the Kuhl household at this time reported that Anna was the very essence of composure; though it seems that a phase was widely feared, and perhaps secretly desired, among her inner circle, she practiced unstintingly each day, the Beethoven, the Liszt, her beloved Chopin, and the Fantasy over which her fingers were gradually gaining control. Pianists will tell you that they practice in order to reduce the risk of catastrophe, but they know that to play with complete safety is an insult to their art. Music demands risk, a condition that Anna seems to have embraced with near-manic devotion, as if by engaging the demons inherent in her art she could destroy all claims they might have on her.

Overwrought fans, and on several occasions journalists, were caught infiltrating the Kuhls’ apartment house in hopes of overhearing Anna practice. An old man, one Zolmar Magg of Lvov, a tanner, was discovered to have heard Visser perform the Fantasy in 1831, and the local music society appealed for funds to send him to Vienna for the revival. And on January 16 Hugo makes this entry:

To Uncles in the P.M. I can hardly bear to listen to the thing now, this Fantasy , this nightmare-it's like a dream in which you’re trying to flee some hideous creature, yet for all your terror your legs refuse to move.

The following day the Ministry of Culture announced that it was unilaterally canceling Anna's engagement at the Royal Opera House, citing security concerns and the previous autumn's Wagner debacle, for which, the Ministry's communiqué suggested, Fräulein Kuhl was in part responsible. Even as shock resolved into shrill outcry a second announcement was made, this time issuing from the Theater an der Wien, one of Vienna's oldest theaters and its leading operetta house. The impresario Alexandrine von Schonerer, owner and director of the theater and, incidentally, estranged sister of the notorious anti-Semite George von Schonerer, had offered to suspend her current production of Die Fledermaus so that Anna might perform the Fantasy as scheduled. Kornblau publicly conveyed the Kuhls’ acceptance of the offer, noting that the Theater an der Wien had generously chosen to honor all tickets for the Royal Opera venue; the following day, the eighteenth, the pan-German press went into convulsions, calling for vengeance on “the Semitic vampires and their insipid hangers-on” and once again vowing to enjoin the concert. That afternoon the adjutant gen- eral announced that the emperor's own First Hussars would be deployed in the streets around the theater, with orders to ensure the strictest security.

Thursday 18 January

Anna detached, quite removed from the outer chaos. What Kornblau, Leo, everyone fears most is a phase-Puchel looks to be on the verge of a stroke, so great is his anxiety-but it doesn’t occur to any of them that a phase might be the most normal response to all of this.

And yet she carries on-meals, lessons, study, practice, all in the coolest way imaginable. A method of storing up energy, I suppose. Tonight I played “Soirées de Vienne” for her after dinner, then read Goethe aloud, Italian Journey.

“I will be at your side, every step,” I told her, which she acknowledged with a grave nod. “God bless you, Hugo.”

“God bless you”-the truly blessed would get her out of here, had he the slightest scrap of courage.

For the performance she chose a black, full-skirted gown with dark brocade roses, a shirred waist and a high collar of mousseline de soie. A light snow was falling that evening as she and her entourage departed the Salesianergasse, the flakes fine and dry as ash, forming brilliant silver aureoles around the street lamps. Approaching the theater they began to pass mounted hussars at the street corners, the soldiers magnificent in their blue capes with sable trim, their crested helmets and gold-edged riding boots. Soon the streets were filled with carriages all moving in a thick yet peaceable flow toward the theater. As the pan-Germans had vowed, the virtuoso experienced difficulty in reaching her destination, but it was this mass of coaches, rather than virile nationalism, which proved to be her sole hindrance-Anna was delayed by her own traffic jam, in effect.

Frau von Schonerer received her at an obscure side entrance to the theater, along with a captain of the hussars, six uniformed police, the theater superintendent and three muscular assistants, as well as two plainclothes agents from the emperor's secret police. Anna was escorted first to her dressing room to remove her cloak, then to a basement rehearsal space where a Bösendorfer grand stood waiting for her final warm-up. Puchel entered with Anna and shut the door, leaving the others to endure the chilly hall while Anna ran through fragments of her repertoire, the glorious bursts of notes and supple noodlings followed by Puchel's muffled voice as he delivered last-minute instructions.

“So small,” the hussar captain later remarked, describing Anna as she left the rehearsal room. “So frail and small, it seemed impossible that this delicate girl could be the cause of so much furor.” With the theater superintendent and police in the lead, Puchel and Frau von Schonerer on either side, Anna walked amid a vast entourage back to her dressing room, thirty or more people snaking with her through the backstage labyrinth. The captain was close at her heels, then her parents, her uncles, Hugo and several other cousins, Kornblau and his mistress, then a trailing flotsam of stagehands and well-connected journalists. For twenty minutes Anna sat in a corner of the dressing room while this crowd was allowed to mingle about, sampling the sumptuous buffet of meats and cheeses and admiring the flowers and telegrams sent by well-wishers. Hermine and Kornblau, still in mortal dread of a phase, sought to distract the young pianist with trivial chatter. Hugo positioned himself nearby, saying nothing, while Frau von Schonerer furnished periodic updates on the size and eminence of the audience.

“She seemed to withdraw into herself,” Hugo wrote later, “to seek some deep, unfathomable place within her soul, a refuge from this ridiculous melee.” Finally, at ten minutes to eight, Anna announced that she wished to be alone. Her parents and managers protested, fearing a collapse, but the girl was firm.