Florian: The Lipizzaner Read online

  It was in front of the Weissenbach hunting lodge that Franz Joseph, as he climbed from the carriage, commended Gruber: “The horses are better than ever.”

  “At your service, your Majesty.”

  “I think Florian particularly is in excellent shape. Don’t you think so?”

  “At your service, your Majesty.”

  The Emperor smiled. He approached Florian and stroked his neck. Florian bent his head and sniffed at the old man’s pockets.

  “What do you want of me? Sugar? Do you have any sugar, Gruber?”

  “At your service, your Majesty.”

  They were by themselves. The Emperor, Gruber and the horses. Far to one side, a councilor, the game warden and the hunting retinue were waiting.

  Gruber gave his master a few lumps of sugar.

  “The other one is splendid, too,” said the Emperor, “but this Florian is simply marvelous. Absolutely marvelous!”

  Konrad Gruber remained silent; after all, he hadn’t been asked.

  In the stable Florian invariably looked for Bosco. He and the dog had agreed that this stable was the best and the most comfortable they knew.

  Anton was a happy man. He found himself in a landscape that reminded him of his Styrian home. High wooded mountains, topped by stately crags at which the snow still licked with its white tongue. In the distance the glacier of the Dachstein was visible. If Anton wandered along the Salzburg road he saw farmhouses in the deep broad valleys. It was years since he had seen a farmhouse. At the suggestion of a few colleagues and under Gruber’s brief order he had fared forth on his first walk; it was climaxed by his coming across a peasant’s abode. After that he frequently took the road toward Pfandl, went even beyond it when the Emperor was hunting. He made sure always to ask Gruber’s permission beforehand, and he always took Bosco along. The dog enjoyed the long uninterrupted walks, the explorations he could make, the many amusing and critical adventures that befell him.

  The two companions did not bother about each other on these walks. Each was certain of the other; they were linked together even when one disappeared for a short while.

  Bosco experienced all kinds of gallant episodes.

  And for Anton suddenly there was Kati.

  Her name was Kati Pinchelberger and she was the daughter of a small farmer; almost thirty and a widow; a big-boned, full-bosomed woman with broad hips, thin hair and freckles all over her coarse healthy face.

  Anton spoke to her of his homeplace.

  Why hadn’t he stayed at home on the farm? she wanted to know.

  So he told her about his military service, about Lipizza, about Siebele, about Florian and about the Emperor’s stables.

  “Well, then you have a good job,” Kati stated prosaically.

  He had never questioned the security of his position, never troubled his head about that. He talked and talked about Florian, and since he now had found the chance to pour out his heart and Kati listened to him, he liked her.

  He had never had the desire to talk or to open his heart to any human being. Now, though, he felt that it did him good. Once he summoned up all his courage and asked Kati to come to the stable to see Florian.

  She replied matter-of-factly that she could do so only on a Sunday. And so she came next Sunday after mass. Anton was overcome at sight of Kati in the festive raiment of the Ischl peasants. In his estimation she looked ravishing. They sat together in the stable and looked at Florian.

  “A horse like that,” Kati opined, “is no good for work in the fields.”

  “Florian isn’t made for that,” Anton replied. “But he is beautiful, Florian is.”

  Kati couldn’t deny that. “Yes, he is,” she said.

  “And so good,” Anton appended.

  In that, too, Kati agreed with him. “Sure. Sure.” But she argued: “Why shouldn’t he be good when he is treated so well?” And after a longish pause, she decided: “Only the Emperor can have a horse like that.” She changed the subject. “Does the Emperor talk to you much?”

  Anton was shocked and informed her that the Emperor had never talked to him.

  Sitting next to Kati in this fashion it occurred to him that it might be rather pleasant to have her for a wife. He mulled this over for a long time without being able to express it. In the end Kati came to his assistance and said without beating about the bush:

  “Two people like us would make a nice pair, wouldn’t we?”

  “Maybe,” he murmured, and grew pale.

  “Then I’ll stay with you to-night,” she informed him.

  And he answered timidly: “As you please.”

  Next morning, after Kati had gone home, Anton fell to thinking. His habit of being with Florian, of caring for nothing else in the world except Florian and Bosco—no—that habit he couldn’t give up. Would a wife stand for that? Would Kati who was so blunt and so definite let him remain with Florian? He did not know the answer. He couldn’t see his way clear. He was afraid. He would have liked Gruber’s opinion. He regarded Gruber as the pinnacle of wisdom, the well of all experience. But he did not dare address him or seek his advice. Anton considered his own affairs and his own person not worthy of mention.

  He met Kati again, twice, without touching on marriage. He felt easier both times when the meetings passed off so smoothly. Finally he had to quit Ischl and didn’t even have the chance to say good-bye.

  Franz Joseph journeyed to the Imperial maneuvers in Moravia. Florian and Capitano were dispatched there a few days ahead. The Imperial headquarters were in a medieval castle that looked romantically like a robber baron’s roost. Everything there was weirdly beautiful. The deep moat encircling the castle, the thick walls, the portcullis, the century-old ivy which clothed the facade in a tenuous green garb, the inner courtyards, the stables that looked like deep caves and yet contained red marble mangers. These stables smelled of rats and mice, which threw Bosco into a state of feverish anticipation.

  Of the maneuvers Anton had as much idea as any common soldier has; that is, none at all. But he recognized the different regiments from the patch of color on the soldiers’ collars. And it was jolly to witness the military scene, which did not concern him, while he sat in front of the stable door in the courtyard.

  On the other side of the fosse Franz Joseph’s host, the manorial lord, had erected a long low wooden shed for the guardsmen who came the morning of the Emperor’s arrival. Gruber went to fetch his master from the distant station. An hour later the automobile of the Heir Apparent rolled into the courtyard.

  At length the Emperor arrived. The Guard presented arms.

  Thereafter there was little for Florian and Capitano to do. The reason was that the new Chief of Staff, Conrad von Hötzendorff, a favorite of Franz Ferdinand, no longer made the maneuvers a mere spectacle for the monarch. Fierce and warlike, with surprises that came hourly, the operations of the troops stretched over a vast terrain. And the Emperor, if he wished to see something, if he wanted to be present at decisive moments, must needs use the hated automobile.

  A magnificent motorcar waited for Franz Joseph in the castle. He owned it but had never made use of it. Two chauffeurs went with it. Konrad Gruber shunned any contact with them. Here conceit met conceit. Here the stubbornness of yesterday was pitted against the superciliousness of a new epoch. Gruber despised the machine drivers who in turn looked down at a mere coachman.

  For three days Franz Joseph sat in the automobile. But when Franz Ferdinand proposed that he return to Vienna by car, he didn’t deign to answer, merely shrugged his shoulders. To his adjutant he said: “The ideas this Franz has . . . incredible!”

  The Heir Apparent laughed. “Emperor Ferdinand refused to travel by rail and the present Emperor can’t get accustomed to automobiles. Well, when I am emperor everybody will use cars—or fly!”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  IN THE FALL FLORIAN MADE his first public appearance with Capitano at the head of a team of six.

  Czar Nicholas II of Russia came for a vis
it. He threatened to cancel everything if he were not driven in a closed automobile from the station to Schönbrunn. Under no circumstances would he risk an exposed ride through the streets to the Imperial Palace. Schönbrunn was immediately made ready for the Russian “Little Father” who lived in constant fear of assassination. As for the closed automobile, that Franz Joseph adamantly refused. He held absolutely to the tradition of transporting visiting sovereigns through the capital by carriage à la Doumont. He had neither cause nor intention to show his people distrust; and the closed automobile would assuredly be so construed. Neither Franz Joseph nor the Czar of all the Russians had any ground for disquietude; Nicholas need fear nothing in an open carriage.

  Nicholas conceded this point only after the ambassador earnestly made clear to him that Franz Joseph shared the same danger, if any, as he, and was in this fashion giving guarantees at the risk of his own person. But he made further difficulties by demanding a double spalier: artillery, in the first row, the horses and men facing the sidewalks; then infantry, their guns primed and ready for action and pointed at the houses and the people along the way. There should be little room for the populace to move about. Furthermore, plainclothes policemen were to be distributed among the spectators.

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

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

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

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

  Waiting.

  Franz Joseph looked helplessly around.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

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

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

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

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

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

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