The Prince Must Die

By Valentina Gurarie

In the Vienna of waltzes, masquerades and Freud, the Prince has died. Awash in blood, pistol in hand, clinging to his equally dead seventeen year old lover, Crown Prince Rudolf, heir apparent to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is no more. Was the death of Prince Rudolf a suicide, as the secretive Imperial Palace claims or was it, as widely rumored, murder? And if so, who killed Rudolf Hapsburg?
Twelve years have passed but the mystery of Rudolf’s death remains unsolved. To Victor Moritz – a journalist and a friend of the late Prince – finding the answers to these questions is no longer as vital as it once was. Amidst personal tragedies and professional disappointments, Victor has long abandoned his quest to piece the puzzle together. However, as a specter of evil rises over the Empire and Vienna is stunned by the wave of violence, the circumstances of Crown Price’s tragic demise acquire new relevance.
Victor barely survives an assassination attempt on his life, which leaves him in a bloody heap on the street of his beloved city. Struggling to regain his health, courage and fortitude, he is compelled to start anew the investigation he ingloriously halted over a decade ago. With the help of his bohemian, corset-shunning, bicyclette-riding daughter Emily, Victor is determined to search for truth. The tangled paths of guilt lead in several directions at once; Victor and Emily pursue them all.
More often than not, it is easier to explain Death than to solve Life. What if the hand that pulled the trigger and the head that willed it to do so don’t belong to the same body, dead or alive?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Valentina Gurarie
• Release date: Mar 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476349466

Valentina Gurarie

Valentina Gurarie was born in Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union, and studied Philology at the Maxim Gorky University of Kharkov. Later, while a graduate student in Slavic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,Israel, she edited the "Samizdat" – an underground magazine, banned in the Soviet Union at the time – for the University’s Publishing House. She published short stories, an essay and a novella in a bilingual (Ukrainian-English) literary magazine "Suchasnist" (Contempoary Times). In the United States, after a long and rewarding career in Information Technology, she turned fully to the pursuit of her writing aspirations. Historical fiction is this author’s favorite genre. In a cosmically negligible time-lapse between our ancestor’s dinner of mammoth’s stake and our yesterday-morning coffee at our local coffee shop, the history of humankind provided us with an impressive number of dead bodies, with never-ending string of mysteries attached to them. Sprinkled by the writer’s imagination, this fertile soil bears a fruit – a compelling story based upon a historical fact. With that in mind, "The Prince Must Die" and her soon to be published other historical novels were conceived. She finds her second plunge into writing a gratifying journey and is welcoming that collusion of serendipity and newly available venues of book publishing that makes it all worthwhile. With her husband of many years, Valentina makes her home in Boulder, Colorado, where she is visited by her two wonderful and talented sons with the families of their own.

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PROLOGUE

N e u e W i e n e r T a g b l a t t

January 30, 1889, Vienna

THE CROWN PRINCE IS DEAD!

Terrible confusion reigned at the Imperial Palace of Hofburg, where the fact of a serious accident was confirmed, but no detailed information was to be obtained. Repeated inquiries regarding the shocking news of the Crown Prince’s demise brought mixed and contradictory accounts.

While initial reports placed the Crown Prince in his hunting lodge of Mayerling with a firearm wound to his body, the latest communiqué released by court officials states that the Crown Prince was found dead in bed this morning, having suffered a heart failure. There are, however, later reports that a second corpse was found next to the Crown Prince, that of Marie Alexandrine Baroness von Vetzera, both bodies sustaining firearm wounds to their heads. Though strongly denied by the Palace, the account was confirmed by several eyewitnesses present at the scene of the tragedy. More news to come. – Victor Moritz, reporting from Vienna.

N e u e W i e n e r T a g b l a t t

February 3, 1889, Vienna

DO WE KNOW THE WHOLE TRUTH?

Although the Palace has not changed its stance that the Crown Prince died overnight of natural causes, the true circumstances of the Crown Prince’s death (and, for that matter, the death of young Baroness) remain a mystery. It is speculated that Baroness might have shot the Crown Prince first and then herself, that the two died as a result of a suicide pact, or were even murdered by an unknown intruder. Could the death of the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire have been a suicide or an assassination? And if so, by which of the many parties that stood to gain? – Victor Moritz, reporting from Vienna.

† † †

December 23, 1901

The snowstorm swirling in from the Balkans invested the Austrian landscape with an eerie magic. The Oostende-Vienna Orient Express thumped in a rhythmical, monotonous half-speed through the white pall, its lanterns turned into miniature snowmen fitfully braving the night.

A morbid whistle broke through the velvety comfort of compartment number 2 in the first of the luxury cars.

…This will be the last stop before Vienna!

What was that announcement, dear? the woman asked anxiously.

Baden. We’ll be arriving to Vienna late. It’s the snowstorm.

The woman turned to the window and peered into the night. The snow was falling so heavily that the fields and sky merged into a single blinding mass. She shivered and wrung her gloved hands.

You are trembling, my dear. What is it? Are you cold? the man asked.

It’s only my nerves, she said.

I understand, he said. After all, it is your first visit to Vienna since we were married.

Vienna exerts a mythic force, and I am not impervious to it, she whispered. You know how I feel coming back to Vienna. I’ve been erased from Austrian history as though I’ve never been a part of it. You might think, I am sure, that there is no point in feeling bitter about it.

He took hold of her hand and pressed it to his lips. Darling, he said, carefully modulating his voice, It’s been more than a decade since he… since His Highness the Crown Prince passed away. There are many ways that God calls souls to join him in eternity. True, the way Rudolf was called could hardly be called an act of divine love. But I’ll tell you this: the dolorous hours of your life are behind you. And Vienna, I am sure, would welcome you with open arms. There are some weeks before the Parliament reconvenes after its winter recess. The New Year in Vienna should cheer you up.

She nodded. It should. Although I feel frightfully nervous appearing in public.

There is no escape from it, Stéphanie. These are the perils of life. Of course people will be curious about you. And they should be – it is human nature. To Vienna, to the world, you are still a cause célèbre.

She looked him in the eyes. But it is the inhumanity of these people that hurts. I am human too, Elemer. My husband, the Crown Prince of the Empire, was found in bed, pistol in hand, hole in his head and the bloodied corpse of a woman beside him. If that is not the most horrible thing that could befall a wife, I don’t know what is.

Don’t be angry with me, my dear, I am aware that the circumstances surrounding his death broke your heart. But look at me, my little Empress, and listen: Nothing can touch you now. Nothing in the world. And we are happy. Aren’t we happy?

Yes, we are, Elemer. We are. Very happy.

She smiled at him, but only her lips moved. Her worried gaze lingered over her purse. It was made of shiny, almost translucent snakeskin, and it was a gift, a precious gift, exquisitely small and delicate with a bejeweled clasp. About the size of a large envelope, it was. And it did indeed contain an envelope. It snuggled inside like a poisonous serpent before its deadly strike.

An anathema.

A disaster.

And it came at a time when the beguiling fantasy of permanent bliss seemed suddenly so tangible.

Elemer, she whispered.

Yes, dear?

Elemer, you have something up your sleeve, don’t you? Something you are proud of, something awfully important to address the Parliament?

His expression changed from concerned to incredulous. I am surprised you’ve asked. Didn’t you say the other day: ‘for once, Elemer, I want to be a woman and a wife, not the crown jewel of any monarchy, not any part of a political body?’ These were your words. Beneath his customary gentleness his voice carried a note of distant condescension that at once surprised and displeased her.

But as a wife I have to interest myself with the concerns of my husband, Stéphanie said in a small indignant voice. And I think you are on the verge of doing something very important. Am I wrong?

No, my love. You are not wrong.

What is it then? Can you tell me?

He nodded slowly. I can no longer remain silent. Come next session, I will make a direct appeal to the Parliament accusing them of treason. They are our worst domestic enemies, a conspiracy of political extremes that is attempting to undermine the very foundation of Austria-Hungary.

They? Who are they?

Elemer rose to his feet. His striking figure a long vaulting pole topped by the eyes of a sleepy lion. There were no jowly pauses as he spoke, no summoning of air through outraged nostrils, no blazing of disapproving rhetoric, but the effect was nevertheless astounding.

We shall strike and we will win. It’ll suck the air right out of their lungs! And if it does, they should consider it a mercy killing.

Elemer! she called, but he seemed not to hear her. Who are you talking about?

Oh, pardon me, dear. You know so little of it all. The Pan-Germans, of course. The German National Party. The plague of Austria, menace incarnate.

Oh, she said, and picked the purse back off the floor. Carefully, she unlatched the bejeweled clasp, opening it just a crack and dipped her finger inside. Her nail scraped the edge of the envelope. She withdrew her finger quickly and stared at it, expecting to see a prick and blood. There were none. Why then she felt as though she was bitten by a snake?

Stéphanie, is something troubling you, dear? You are not quite yourself.

Everything is fine. Perfectly fine, she said and latched her purse.

Vienna! Now approaching Vienna! Last stop! Vienna!

Finally. At long last! Elemer reached to slide down the window pane. It opened into the wintry night.

Stéphanie stood up, clutching her purse. False face must hide what false heart doth know.

She could never tell Elemer about any of this, that much was clear. What could he do, in any case? What could anyone do? Only one person might remember enough to understand. If he is still alive. If she could find him.

She peered out the window, and Vienna cast an unfriendly stare upon her. Panic rose in her chest.

Moritz, she whispered. Victor Moritz.

Chapter 1. VICTOR MORITZ

March 10, 1901

If only not to look at Florien Meissner, I gaze at the wall. It is densely populated by a great number of photographs. The images of my younger self stare back at me with a curious mixture of contempt and pity. I gape at the pictures, overcome by sudden vertigo, as if free-falling through time.

There is one of His Highness Crown Prince Rudolf and myself, Victor Moritz. Another one with the Crown Prince in his hunter’s getup. Baron Hirsch, the Crown Prince and myself, Victor Moritz. A rather large group-picture featuring Baroness Helene Vetzera, dressed in black from head to toe, in the company of a quartet of somber-looking men, her brothers, and myself, all protectively crowding Helene. It is almost a family picture, except that I, Victor Moritz, a family friend, take the place of little Baroness Mary. It is dated February 1889: Mary is no more, and the Prince is dead.

I look rather coy in those pictures – my hair swept back above my high forehead in a manner that was often called noble by friends and lovers, with my beard trimmed to an elegant point. In my youthful days, I used to cut quite a dashing figure. Back then I enjoyed smoking, drinking and hard work and not just the reputation for smoking, drinking and hard work – though, to be sure, I enjoyed that reputation too. I collected news the way those around me collected wealth, accolades or fame, and I never thought of my newspaper work as a distraction from the life of letters. My newspaper work was the life of letters. It was also the life of politics, passions and hopes. All this until the day the Prince died.

It is a mercy photographs don’t talk. It would be more of a mercy if Florien observed similar discretion.

The Tagblatt is in one of its perennial convulsions, nothing more serious, I assure you! I hear his agitated voice but do not turn.

This convulsion looks fatal to me, my dear Florien, I say. The Tagblatt is no longer a newspaper with a future. It does not have much of a present either. I swivel around to face him. Look at the facts: I am not as young as I used to be. The Crown Prince is long dead, and Baron Hirsch no longer pays our bills. The last decade was a gratifyingly long goodbye, but the time has come to extinguish the candles with bitter spittle and walk out of the door.

Florien fixes me with his eyes and drawls: Herrrr Morrrritz! with such eccentric emphasis on the final syllable that his passion is almost funny, were it not so utterly chilling. Are you going to betray all of us? His index finger springs up, points to the photograph-studded wall and navigates to the picture of me in a fraternal embrace of the rather dyspeptic-looking Director of Vienna Opera, Gustav Mahler.

All of us maybe, I say. But not Maestro Mahler. Not him.

Florien glares, looking vaguely mad. Then he notices his mistake and transports his accusing finger to a larger and older photograph, directly above Mahler’s, grainy and heavily framed. This one features the entire staff of the Wiener Tagblatt circa 1885. The curly young lady in the front row – still a girl, actually – is my daughter Emily. And the very young man at her side is Florien. His handsome face is baby-smooth and his left temple is free of a horrific scar and a deep dent – the injury he’d acquire a year later in most extraordinary circumstances, circumstances neither one of us would want to re-live but are unable to forget.

In spite of his disfigurement, Florien would be a reasonably good looking man even today, if not for a scraggly beard that trickles down into the thick thrush of his chest hair, which is visible no matter what he is wearing. And his insufferable temper, of course, which shows up on his face often.

Yes, all of us! Florien cries, his voice growing a decibel in intensity, his finger sliding from one face on the photograph to another, from left to right, then from right to left, as if taking a headcount.

Florien is markedly off balance. This kind of passion is undoubtedly very nice to have and maybe even to live, but exceedingly tiresome to watch.

For no fault of yours or mine, my dear Florien, the Tagblatt is biting the dust, I say. It used to be ahead of its time. Now it seems to be lagging behind. It struggles to find an audience who can be bothered to drag their knuckles along the pavement to read a newspaper whose only appeal lies in its society pages.

Yours is clearly a defeatist stand, Herr Moritz!

The decline of my morale is not a pivotal moment in history, and it does not require a proclamation.

Closing your paper would be a betrayal of the liberal cause. Our cause, Herr Moritz. You seem determined to leave it all behind and start on tending your roses, don’t you?

My dear Florien, let me offer a carefully worded comment: please shut your mouth. I am tired of this useless debate and I am going home, and so should you.

Hurriedly, as if escaping fire, I gather my coat, carelessly shove my hat down to my ears and nearly run into the door.

The solid oak double-doors of my shop sport an excellent glass panel with the Neue Wiener Tagblatt insignia rendered in large and beautiful gothic lettering, the smaller print below – New Viennese Daily in English, Nouvelle Journal Viennois in French and Új Bécsi Napilap in Hungarian – suggesting Tagblatt’s international outreach, which – truth be told – is none. Hungary is hardly an international entity where the Austro-Hungarian Empire concerns.

Life in general is utterly terrible, but the night is not bad. In rare concurrence with the Tagblatt’s weather forecast, there isn't much of a moon in the skies over Vienna, but it is bright enough to distinguish shapes from the shadows on a dimly lit street. It is nearing 22 o’clock and Anastasius-Grüngasse is deserted. It would be another half an hour before the prearranged fiacre shows up to take me home. I decide not to wait but rather walk to the nearest corner and hail a cab there. This would afford me an extra half-hour of dour communion with a quart of peach schnapps at home. I walk fast, almost sprinting, and let various thoughts rattle in my mind, picking on them at random.

If my Eva were alive, I wonder, would I be doing anything different now? Should I have had a son, would I be as obstinate about admitting failure and giving up?

A man, if he is not so lucky to receive a son, ought to have a fair substitute in his daughter. And I’ve been blessed with two – Emily and Sophie – the smart and the beautiful, the joys of my heart. But I have no heir to my legacy, my trade and my business.

Yes, my proud Tagblatt is about to fold. For nearly a decade, the patronage of the Crown Prince gave it the lassitude not to bend to public opprobrium. Under the pen-name of Julius Felix, the Crown Prince delivered his reportages straight from the secretive citadel of the Empire – the Hofburg Palace. The Tagblatt was enjoying a golden moment, exerting a subtle but palpable influence on history. It’s been twelve years since Julius Felix – my correspondent, my friend, my Prince – is no more.

With our patron-saint gone, my Tagblatt had a rather uninspiring fin de siècle, crawled through the threshold of the century and as of today – March 10th, 1901 to be exact – it is drawing its last breath.

Certainly I am still angry at Florien, but I understand him only too well. The crumbling of one’s dreams is hard to bear. Florien Meissner is by far the sharpest grappling hook in my tool bag – my right-hand man in business and, with his razor-sharp, refined mind, one of the Tagblatt’s best reporters. He can give an extravagant public scandal a dimension of private sadness. Vienna loves Florien Meissner – or she used to, anyway. Without a hint of hesitation, I must admit that Vienna has changed.

On the staff of the Tagblatt, Florien is one of very few gentiles, not that employing Jews is or ever was any particular rule of mine. Merely, it is a subconscious desire to even up the score. It was then, fifteen years ago, and has become even more so since, immensely difficult for a Jew of equal or greater qualifications to be hired by a gentile. And it is ever more so for an unobserving Jew, a liberal free-thinker. Representatives of this species are virtual outcasts everywhere. They are Jews among gentiles, and pariahs among the Jews. They are the kind that does not follow God but instead pursues all sorts of outlandish ideas – equality, fraternity, truth, and liberties among them – and occasional red-heads, blonds and brunettes, depending on their individual tastes. Who else is there for them but the fellow liberal free-thinker who is fortunate enough to be able to extend a helping hand?

Florien, by all accounts, is one of a kind. I’d give five Jewish liberal free-thinkers for one Florien any day. We have been on a first name basis for ages despite of a great number of Herr Moritzes he threw at me tonight. Florien Meissner and I are kindred spirits – two men, one with a lifetime of disappointment ahead of him, the other one with a disappointing lifetime nearly behind.

I cross the street and as I do, I hear muffled footsteps and suddenly have a feeling I am no longer alone on the street, and Anastasius-Grüngasse is not as deserted as it seemed only moments ago. Has Florien gone completely insane and decided to follow me?

I turn around. No, it isn’t Florien. In a crepuscular glow of gas lamps I see three figures. They seem to have peeled themselves off the garden fence and now they are gliding along the wall, following me. From afar their shapes look strangely incomplete – more than two-dimensional, and yet somehow less than three, which renders a paradoxical effect of seeming realer than reality and more frightening too, even from the distance. But the distance is getting shorter: they are barely a few yards behind me, then a mere six feet away even if that. The disconcerting although yet unfounded thought arises in my mind that I might be in trouble.

Hey, Jude, are you in a hurry?

Well, now I am. Not as much in a hurry as in trouble. The air suddenly becomes infused with the kind of dread that makes your saliva taste of brass. Although I feel that standing still is clearly to my disadvantage, it doesn’t occur to me to run, try to escape. The futility of such an effort seems obvious. Then suddenly they are all around me, overtaking me, and now all three of them are in front of me, and I know I’ll never make it to the corner, where there ought to be people, and carriages, and hope. I should have run but I didn’t, and, it strikes me, they knew I wouldn’t. It would be undignified. Dignity, you see, is important. You hold on to it to the last millisecond and then you are reduced to the state of an abject vermin.

My blood recedes leaving my limbs numb. All I manage to do is to back up flat against the wall. Only the traction between the fabric of my coat and the rough surface of the wall keeps me from sliding down.

They are slightly out of breath. They watch me silently and only the whizzing of inhaling gasps escapes the three gaping mouths.

Then the one in the middle steps forward. I feel rather than see the unmistakable menace in his intent. He is a powder keg looking for a fuse. The first knuckle-fisted punch to the abdomen sends a sharp bolt of pain through me. My head hits the wall first as I collapse nearly to my knees and double up in agony. Then another man jumps out. I see his boots before I manage to straighten up enough to look into his face. This one is a porcine fellow in an oversized cap pulled down nearly to his snout. He holds an elongated object in his hand. It is heavy – very heavy by the look of it – and it weighs his arm down, giving his silhouette a slouched, labored appearance.

This is where and by whose hand I am going to die, comes the incredulous thought. The fact that I am going to die eventually, just like everybody else, refuses to cancel out the fact that I might die now, at this very moment.

Then I discover my voice all of a sudden, and it is not the voice of reason. It is the howl of an animal in peril. This at once novel and nauseating sound rips from my chest as if to deflect the blow that is to follow. And follow it does: he executes a short lunge and swings his armed hand, face contorted, lips parted with exertion. I can see the uneven fence of teeth in his mouth. I can smell his foul breath. These teeth are the last thing I remember seeing before the merciful darkness descends upon me.

Chapter 2. THE INVITATION

December 31, 1901

Flickering firelight dances on the walls of my drawing room. It is New Year’s Eve, and I am alone in the house. Ever since I’ve become an invalid, I am rarely if ever left alone to tend for myself. Zoe, my hatched-faced Ukrainian housekeeper, a most comforting and agreeable creature, has worked for me for years and is supremely loyal. Since the unfortunate incident that robbed me of my health, she virtually never leaves me unattended. Today, though, overruling Zoe’s protestations, I sent Zoe away to celebrate the New Year in the company of her relations.

It’s been many months since Florien found me lying in a bloody heap, face down, on the cobblestones of the Anastasius-Grüngasse, merely one hundred yards from the Tagblatt’s offices. He saw their shadows and he spooked them like a cougar spooks a flock of vultures. Should Florien, my continual and loyal courtier from Heaven, have appeared a minute later, I would have been dead. One more kick, one more shove, and the next rain I’d ever seen would have been a shower of red carnations pelting my coffin as my eternal spirit hovered above, communing with the heavenly ether.

As it happened, my earthly spirit – all but knocked out of me save for my last breath – gradually returned into the confines of my earthly body – badly mangled, far from intact, but still living. Instead of the downpour of red carnations, I received only one, and it was blue. Pinned to the lapel of my coat, it adorned a note, which said Happy Anniversary, dirty Jew. Remember 1886.

In a few short minutes of assault I’d been reduced to a collection of disjointed bodily functions. Emerging from morphine-induced delirium for negligible snatches of time, I gazed at the colorful patches of life as if peering into the tube of a broken kaleidoscope. A very long time past before I was able to feel the sweet breath of dawn on my cheek again, regain the use of my legs or successfully direct a spoon of broth into my mouth entirely on my own. For months, the workings of my body became the height of my self-expression. The circumstances of my battering weren’t mentioned even in passing, presumably not to disturb my fragile condition with unpleasant memories. Then – sometime in September it was, I believe – Florien at last brought up the subject.

It is time we should discuss it, Victor, he’d said, as though he was already in the middle of a conversation. It’s so ludicrous in so many different ways!

What is? I asked.

"What happened to you that night. I’ll be bold. The chief of the Imperial Police, the esteemed Baron von Krauss – have you noticed he has a weak, sort of slimy handshake? – insists on calling the assassination attempt on your life either an unfortunate incident or an assault by drunken ruffians."

Ah, so, I managed.

"A blind accident! What can you do against blind accidents? They are the dialectic of urban life, he says. When hard pressed, Krauss conceded that of late similar blind accidents happen to some people more often than to the rest of the populace. He asked me to keep this remark of his out of the press. And, if at all possible, the gruesome details of your incident as well." Florien was dipping his middle finger into the dent in his temple, massaging it in a habitual gesture of concentration. From my vantage point in the midst of seven fluffed-up pillows, it looked bizarrely as though he were stirring his brains with his finger inside his skull.

Have you asked him why?

Not to alarm the public unnecessarily, I was told. Alarm! Unnecessarily! I pointed out to him that the impressionable people of Vienna, far from being horrified, might be horribly enthralled with such news. They simply love exploding body parts, geysers of arterial blood, amputations, beheadings, eviscerations, torn out throats and gruesome killings. They take creepy delight in them.

"Well, I would not be particularly pleased to find my name cited in a context like that. For all that I care – you may place my obituary into the Tagblatt’s next issue."

In those days I was so dependent upon large doses of morphine to curb my pains that prolonged conversations were impossible to sustain, unless they occurred between the shots of drugs. I remember feeling that a familiar buzz in my head was getting stronger. Millions of metallic insects were rubbing their legs together in demonic dissonance.

Von Krauss suggested that you may have had the blue carnation in your lapel to commemorate the anniversary of Kaiser Wilhelm I’s demise, you see. The blue carnation is, as we all know now, the late Kaiser’s favorite flower. I pointed out to him that it is also the favorite flower of pan-German thugs, and that it was an altogether different anniversary that your assailants commemorated by planting the carnation and the note on you, Florien intoned and I tried my best to understand his words, drowned in the hum between my ears.

And?

He called me a paranoiac. A crucial symptom of clinical paranoia, he said, is the conviction that what seems to be offhand, incidental or meaningless is actually full of significance.

And you believe…?

The note is a collage, Victor. Florien ceased his incessant pacing and settled down in the chair at the foot of my bed. "It’s composed of newsprint cutouts. True, the words Happy Anniversary can be found in any newspaper any day, but dirty Jew is not. It is, however, an oft-repeated colloquial found in the Alldeutsche Blatter. And the newsprint is unmistakably the Blatter’s typeset, if I know anything about typesets." He laid the note carefully beside me.

I remember staring at it without touching, as though I was afraid it had teeth and might bite me. I was afraid it was infused with the kind of venom that could penetrate my skin. I was afraid, for that was the man I’d become.

There was no punctuation mark after the Remember 1886. No question mark. It wasn’t the question whether I remember 1886. I was supposed to be dead, after all, and dead people were neither asked questions nor expected to answer any. Remember 1886 was a statement intended as an after-the-fact justification of the murder. My murder.

Well, I said. The past seems to be repeating itself.

These days – after many months of sheer agony – my pains are not quite as acute as they used to be. This has allowed me to gradually withdraw from the morphine and the other brain-softening substances. Then, as if broken bones, severe concussion and injured internal organs weren’t enough, I suffered a severe heart attack, which nearly did me in. Ever since I have been experiencing chest pains, recurring with puzzling frequency. They wake me up at night and I sit bolt upright, staring at the darkness, unable to move, afraid to press my hand to my chest, fearful that the angry, sick animal that my heart has become might jump out of its cage and bite. I sit like this for a while – sometimes a long while – waiting for the palpitations to diminish and the ireful snarl in my ribcage to ease to a more agreeable purr. No matter what happens in the future, no matter the murky fate of Austria and the world, it will feel better than this weasel gnawing at my chest.

Although my life seems rife with agony and fragility, all things considered, I am recovering famously. There is still some hope that I’ll get much better before I become much worse; that I’ll recover before my final surrender to myocardial infarct or old age. One of those conditions will send its envoy to escort me to the other side of Styx sooner or later.

† † †

"Happy New Year, Papa!"

I shake my head in disbelief. You are impossible, Emily! On a night like this! It is a childish lark if ever there was one, I say as my daughter kisses both my cheeks. Her lips are freezing.

Don’t throw me back into the cold, Papa. It wasn’t easy to hire a cab, you know. Most coachmen are either sleeping drunk in their carriages or busy hauling people between parties, which is not to say that those busy ones are not drunk along with their horses. Even horse urine smells of schnapps tonight!

"In these frivolous days there are very few activities left in which ladies should not engage. To venture out alone in the dark or to come back home