Ode to Red Vienna
It was right when the quarantine was about to lift that the cases spiked again. A whole new strain they hadn’t seen before. The text came through this morning. Just when it seemed like the end, here we all were once more, back in the middle of it; or perhaps, still only at the very start. The world would remain as it had been for some ninety days already: still.
Six months ago, I packed my bags to leave my redundant little suburb far behind: destination Vienna, Austria. I waved goodbye to Mom, Dad and Sis at the airport, with a duffel slung over my shoulder and clarinet case in hand. Melancholy gave way to exhilaration, as I went off to become the protégé of the fabled headmaster of the Prayner Konservatorium. No more town bars or community theater for me; the Vienna Philharmonic awaited. . . .
When this all started, life seemed like it would carry on much as it had before; the empty space and time opened new, unexplored. There was time to practice, time to compose, all unencumbered by responsibility; all waiting for when things could go back to the way they always were.
That was, at least, until we lost contact. When the web crashed. It’s been three weeks now. When they finally did get it back online, the government marshalled it for managing the bare necessities. It was what kept food, the essentials (toilet paper), gas, electricity and water all flowing, but everything else beyond the front door that much further away. And then, with cell phone tracking and curfews, the police could patrol even harder. Breaking curfew no longer meant reprimand or fine, but arrest.
The last headline I read before the crash was etched in my thoughts: “Life will never be the same again.”
My clarinet held the line between my thoughts and I. I’d summon it in the twilight hours, playing to four, deaf walls, until the thoughts overtook me again. “Had I already been infected?” “Maybe it was those sniffles I had after the flight?” “Even if I had got it, could I get it again?” “Was, perhaps, the worst still to come?”
And so, practice I would, until my lips grew numb, my lungs spent. They said it lived in the air for three hours, on surfaces for nine; that the symptoms would set in days, weeks later, until your lungs filled up like two water balloons. Stealing the last refuge of breath.
As the weeks went by, my thoughts won out and my practicing of whole pieces of music turned to songs, then just warm ups. Until finally, I merely repeated the same seven ascending and descending notes, over and over.
Tonight, sleep was hopeless. I sat at the edge of my bed, the wall clock reading 2:37am; tick…tock…tick…tock. I went over to my window and looked out at the bar patio across the Rotenhofgasse.
When I first arrived in Vienna, jetlag left me almost two weeks sleepless. When home seemed far away, around this hour every night, I could always trust the bar owner---a 50-something woman with pepper-grey hair---, to be standing there once the guests had long gone home. Meditating on the night, she’d puff the remains of her last cigarette. Now, the chairs and tables sat folded up, as they had been left months ago.
I placed my head against the windowpane. The tick-tock crept along. Curfew or no curfew, tonight I was going out to search for signs of life. Out the door at 2:45am and my clarinet case came with.
Empty sidewalks everywhere in the suburbs; Spanish-style houses, minivans and SUVs, but rarely another face. In other times, nearly two million residents in this city---making strides before St. Stephan’s on an afternoon, strumming folk tunes on the Favoritenstrasse, hiking the Stadtwanderweg to gaze at the blue Danube.
Tonight, it was as barren as the surface of the moon. Only buildings, in their haunting majesty, there to whisper their stories.
Before quarantine, I would pass the Vienna State Opera almost every day, until I decided to splurge on a ticket for a performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. It wasn’t long after that night that I would pass by the opera house to find the stamps „ABGESAGT“[1] piling up over the posters and schedule. And there they’ve remained, now yellowed and peeling away.
As I stood before it tonight, though, I could still hear that final applause as the performers took their bow, still feel the tremors that passed through me. With the morning chill setting in, I popped my collar and went on my way.
As I kept to the back streets to avoid police, the spaces around me became unfamiliar. Time seemed to stretch and contract. The thoughts came trickling back. My mind sketching the lines of my parents’ faces, echoing my sister’s laugh, then to that headline; thought after thought cascading one upon the other.
I noticed now a basketball court to my right, where insulation tubes had been twisted into a chain-link fence to spell the word ‘freedom’. As I passed further, a public housing building to my left. The Reummanhof; one of many, but one of the three grandest of the mass housing projects of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria in the days of old ‘Red Vienna’. Simple, but elegant. Muscular, but kind. Humane. I had passed it so many times before, but it spoke differently to me now.
I advanced into the courtyard and was met by a bust of Reumman himself. Below the bust, a plaque read:
„Hier im Reumannnhof
verteidigten am
12. Februar 1934
Sozialdemokraten
die Demokratie
gegen den Faschismus
12. Februar 1984“[2]
15 years, the city had nursed its citizens through the likes of the Spanish flu, the Great Depression. Until the Austrofascists unleashed hell and it all fell in just four days. The last of old Red Vienna.
My breath misted into the morning air, as I pulled my eyes away from the inscription and made my way back out of the courtyard.
I paused. If I had even crunched a leaf underfoot, I would have missed it: a sweet, velvet melody that satiated my hungry ears. I dared not devour it all at once. I turned. Clearer now: a trumpet. And as it came to meet me, it wrapped me in embrace.
My heart began to race and I fumbled my case to the ground, clicking the latches open. My clarinet lay there, shining by the light of the moon. Cradling it in my fingers and lifting it to my lips, I waited for a break to reply. At first timidly, with those same seven notes. Silence, at first.
More forcefully this time; ascending and descending, again and again. Then, the chirp of the trumpet, greeting me with my same seven notes. Call and response. Call and response. Speaking now and the formalities gave way to something familiar, as those seven notes began to break.
As our duet lifted, others began to speak. Cello. Violin. Flute. Piccolo. Each instrument swirling one into the other.
Then, a spark of light, as the façade came alive in a steady, electric glow. The brightest shade of red; one never before seen by human eyes. Pulsing like a heartbeat to our phantom orchestra.
Apparitions began stepping out of the air, in the windows, then passing me on either side. I stopped playing and stood there, my feet cemented to the ground. Where the bust of Reummann had stood just moments before, now stood a man whose voice lifted as he declared „Wenn wir einst nicht mehr sind, werden diese Steine für uns sprechen!“[3] The music built to a crescendo.
Then, like the flick of a switch, off it went. Apparitions vanished. The bust of Reumman stood back in place. The music dead.
Catching my breath, I raced my clarinet back to my lips, knocking my teeth. Nothing. I tried again, louder, until my clarinet squealed, but hopeless. Obediently, I placed my clarinet back in its case and prepared for the long walk home.
Then, as I was about to clear the courtyard, I heard it once more. Those same notes, meandering on the night. I turned and saw silhouettes, gazing out at me. The one with the trumpet waved and I waved back, with a tear rolling down my cheek. And, as soon as I had blinked, they were gone.
I don’t remember when I got in that morning, but I slept . . . soundly.
I’ve broken curfew several times after that night, waiting by the Reumannnhof for the slightest sound. These days, whenever that old headline wades through my mind, “Life will never be the same again,” I think “It may never be the same again, indeed, but, when is it ever?” And every night, I pick up my clarinet, leaving my window slightly ajar, and play. So, if some wanderer should pass by, they might remember what life is like. And perhaps, even when I’m gone, this ode to old Red Vienna will still play for them. . . .