Frederic Morton - Runaway Waltz: A Memoir from Vienna to New York

ALSO BY FREDERIC MORTON

The Forever Street

Thunder at Twilight

Crosstown Sabbath

A Nervous Splendor

An Unknown Woman

Snow Gods

The Schatten Affair

The Rothschilds

The Witching Ship

Asphalt and Desire

The Darkness Below

The Hound

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Copyright 2005 by Frederic Morton

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Parts of this book appeared, in altered form, in Harpers and The Atlantic Monthly.

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Designed by Dana Sloan

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Morton, Frederic.

Runaway Waltz / Frederic Morton.

p. cm.

1. Morton, Frederic. 2. Authors, American20th centuryBiography. 3. Refugees, JewishUnited StatesBiography. 4. JewsUnited StatesBiography. 5. Austrian AmericansBiography. 6. Vienna (Austria)Biography. 7. New York (N.Y.)Biography. I. Title.

PS3525.O825Z47 2005

813.54dc22

2005042493

ISBN 0-7432-2539-2
eISBN 978-1-4391-0464-4

In memory of M.C.M.
and
For Rebecca

Runaway Waltz

Vienna 1936

Austerlitz and I

He will arrive as He should arriveeventually, in due time. His slowness is part of the thrill. So is the slight shock against my skin as I sit down to await Him. Against my back tingles wood as hard and cold and electric as Ive known only in the seats of the Lux Movie Theater in our outer district in Vienna, in the midthirties.

The fans wont start revolving until everybody has settled down. Overhead the three bulbs, already burned out last time, still havent been replaced. Three chandelier arms still curve lightless, naked, sooty. This will make the transition from present dreariness to His radiance all the more exciting. Actually, the less illumination right now, the better. Im less exposed to people staring at my clothes.

In the Lux Movie Theater almost all other kids my age wear rough loden jackets and manly weathered leather shorts. I must sit there in a sissy sailor suit. Those staring kids have no knowledge, of course, of my own leather shorts, which are as toughly weathered as any of theirs. They have no idea that the sailor suit is the fault of the Caf Landtmann; that Im allowed movies only right after our family hot chocolate at the flossy Landtmann downtown, where mens cuff links gleam up during hand kissing and where I must scrawl on some fringed paper napkin examples of my penmanship for Aunt Emma. The Lux kids dont know that her jokes about my Chinese letters always go on and on, followed by Uncle Karls endless, nervous, underbreath interpretations of the latest speech from Berlin. Nor do the Lux kids know or care that thats how Im kept captive until after 4 pm, which means no chance to change into my leather shorts: I have barely two and a half hours for Him at the Lux, including travel time: I must be home again, ready for the supper table, hands washed, at 7 PM sharpin fact, earlier these days, when the sun sets sooner. My father, having caught Uncle Karls nervousness, has decreed that in such times as ours I cant be out after dark. Therefore, to make His five oclock showing I must rush like mad from Landtmann to the Lux, still imprisoned in my horrid sailor suit.

How explain all that to the starers? Or explain further that Im sitting almost alone in this expensive row up front only because even with my glasses Id be unable to see Him clearly farther back? Since my bond with Him would be less special if I gave it away, I never mention Him to my mother in any emphatic way. I just remind her of the headache I get from eyestrainpresto! she coughs up the extra fifty groschen for a seat nearer the screen. And shes always good for the thirty groschen more that buy the program on which only very few others in the audience have splurged. To me the program is vital, brimming with portraits and revelations of Him. To my father this is just the sort of indulgence that will spoil a child. Still, my mother always prevails with her theory about my film program collecting: it may not be as constructive as stamp collecting, but at least it does encourage the discipline I badly need if I am ever to improve my grades.

Grades, study habits, politics all that fuss recedes, now that the chandelier is dimming. At the same time pictures begin to glimmer up across the speckles of the screen. They are His vanguard, even though they are just hand-painted lantern slides advertising local stores.

Two identical loden jackets appear; one coffee-stained and dotted by the little spots of the screen; the other with the stain removed but of course still screen-mottledA. Lazar, the neighborhood cleaner. Cherries, mottled and voluptuously lipstick red-the greengrocer Peter Ze-leny. The locksmith Alois Matuschek, with a big mottled, mustached grin, holding aloft a big mottled lock.

After Matuschek the house grows quite dark. The ceiling fans have begun to rotate: propellers that will soon fly the Lux Theater across the Atlantic. Their low whir mingles with the hiss of an air-freshening spray. The sprayer is the usher, who has as his badge of office a World War I sergeants cap. A flashlight fixed to his visor, he bestrides the aisle, hissing aroma into the air, holding the spray can aloft like an annunciatory trumpet.

However, its not He who responds to the fanfarenot yet. Its more commercials. Still, these are no longer crude daubs but photographs, quite polished ones, and therefore already approximations of Him. There is the cravated lady-killer, sporting a patent-leather forelock and a silver cigarette case from which he extracts with knowing gusto a Jonny smoke, his dash mottled by the screens rash. A pretty lady, mysteriously smiling, mottled from gamine bangs to stiletto heels, caresses her Odol toothpaste tube. No less mottled are the muscles of a runner in a relay race, handing along a bottle of Obi apple juice.

Out in the ordinary world the mottles might be blemishes. In the Lux they are the hallmark of a prelude like no other. They spice my expectation. They warm the slick pages of the program in my hand. Its too dark to read it yet another time, but my fingers can feel its centerfold illustra-tion: Him, leaping high in black-tie glory.

Meanwhile, drums and woodwinds surge from the loudspeakers. The newsreels thunder onto the screen. No longer still photographs but moving pictures, they are yet stronger prophecies of Him. Great personages begin to loom. Unlike Him they have no personal connection to me. Yet their eminence points toward His ultimate peak.