Night. Hermann, in white tie and tails, sits alone. The lamps are mostly unlit but there is some light on Gustav Klimt’s portrait of Gretl, which is on an easel. Hermann is staring at it. The painting is not one of the spectacular portraits of a few years hence. It is closer to his portrait of Serena Lederer (1899) or of Marie Henneberg (1901–2). Gretl is wearing the green shawl.
Ernst comes in, in an overcoat and tieless, carrying his ‘doctor’s bag’.
Ernst Hermann … are you unwell?
Hermann No. I’m sorry if my message caused you anxiety. What do you think? We haven’t decided where to hang it. Gretl favours the cloakroom.
Ernst Well, it’s … not bad. I’m sorry Gretl doesn’t like it. Is she all right?
Hermann Oh, yes. She had retired when I came in. I’ve been out to dinner, Willi von Baer’s boys-only dinner to celebrate his birthday.
Ernst Where did you go?
Hermann It was at home. The Baron and Baroness were in the country, conveniently. There were twenty of us. I didn’t know everybody. I knew half of them perhaps. A lot to drink. Dinner, cards, billiards …
Ernst (puzzled, cautious) Oh yes?
Hermann We played poker, I won a huge hand, and I won it with a bluff, which I then showed, to some applause …
Ernst (interrupting) Hermann.
Hermann Yes? What?
Ernst It’s three o’clock in the morning.
Hermann I know. Well, my opponent took it badly. But the moment passed, so I thought, and Willi proposed an adjournment to a certain house in Kärtnerstrasse where, he assured us, the ladies are regularly inspected for a medical certificate. The proposal was received with acclamation. I pleaded an early start. My opponent at cards then made an extraordinarily coarse joke which I need not repeat to you. But I should give you some indication. It concerned the very personal inspection a gentleman was required to submit to, to establish his bona fides at the more discriminating of such houses.
Ernst A comedian.
Hermann Willi, who is a decent chap, gave me a smile and a shrug but our friend plunged on. Between the untouchable daughters of good families, he said, and the sweet young things of the working classes who were very likely to give you a dose, it didn’t leave a man much, even if one took the view, which he did, that a Jewess is not a Jew. Laughter and cheers. No, he said, the best bets were the wives of the bourgeoisie, pretty young women who’d fulfilled their purpose by having a child or two and were now bored with nothing to do except take tea with each other – but best of all, he said, were the wives of rich Jews, factory owners and suchlike, because in Fritz’s opinion – his name was Fritz, a lieutenant in the Dragoons – in Fritz’s opinion, these wives were voracious for sex with a gentile, for anatomical reasons. I felt sorry for Willi presiding over such a gaffe. I was even sorry for Fritz, as though I’d watched helplessly a skier ski into a crevasse. I thought I’d better pull him out. ‘My dear fellow,’ I said, ‘we haven’t been properly introduced, it’s Willi’s fault.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I know who you are.’ Dead silence. More fool me, eh?
Ernst What did you do?
Hermann Obviously, I said, ‘In that case, you will be hearing from me,’ and I left.
Ernst Hearing from you? Oh no. Absolutely not. Because this idiot felt like insulting you over losing at cards?
Hermann It was my wife he was insulting.
Ernst He doesn’t even know your wife. It was you, and you should have socked him and have done with it.
Hermann You don’t understand anything. In matters of honour, we don’t hit each other.
Ernst What ‘we’?
Hermann Don’t be obtuse …
Ernst You’re not ‘we’.
Hermann I’m not a gentleman?
Ernst Is this Fritz a gentleman?
Hermann Of course. An officer and a gentleman. Character doesn’t come into it. If I don’t go through with this comedy I’ll be a social pariah among my … my circle, friendships I value. I don’t want to discuss it any more. I want this over with. Ernst, I have the honour to ask you …
Ernst (panicked) Why me?
Hermann Because you’re a doctor. These affairs might require a doctor. Who else could I ask? I want you to go and find the house in Kärtnerstrasse –
Ernst How on earth do I –?
Hermann Ask a policeman. Willi’s party will be there till morning. Request an interview with Baer. Present my compliments and ask Willi if he would do me the honour firstly of demanding an apology from his guest, failing which, secondly, to make the arrangements for a shooting match at first light with rules to be agreed on both sides.
Ernst No. Are you insane? How would I face Gretl?
Hermann I must say I expected you to have a little more faith in me. I’m a very good shot.
Ernst Then you’d be charged with murder, and by the way I thought you were a Catholic –
Hermann A Catholic, an Austrian citizen, a patriot, a philanthropist, a patron of the arts, a man of good standing in society and the companion of aristocracy. My great-grandfather was a pedlar of cloth. His son had a tailor’s shop in Leopoldstadt. My father imported the first steam-driven loom from America. They strove to lift me high. Absurd as it is, I would be repudiating them if I flinched now.
Ernst Hermann, no offence, but don’t you think you repudiated them by being baptised?
Hermann No. They were Jews, they knew a bargain when they saw it.
Pause.
Do you mind if I take that back?
Ernst I would.
Hermann sighs, gestures helplessly.
Hermann I can tell you the moment I decided not to be a Jew. My Grandpa Ignatz – Mother’s father – told me when I was nine or ten how he once tossed a coin into the hat of a man playing a fiddle on a street corner. The man stopped playing and said, ‘Where’s your manners, Jew?’, and snatched Grandpa’s cap off his head and threw it into the road. ‘What did you do?’ I said. ‘Why, I picked up my cap,’ Grandpa said. He had a good laugh about it. His hero was Bismarck. If he had been able to choose his life, he said, he would have been a Prussian aristocrat.
He pauses.
If this ends badly … I’ve written a note for Gretl. Otherwise, there is no need for her to know anything. I ask that of you.
He makes his last appeal.
Ernst … we’re both Christians.
Ernst’s answer, after a pause, is to pick up his bag and let himself out.
Hermann stays still.