NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND
Overground in Old Vienna
TONY PALMER
'I shoot lions,' my host began. 'Come down- stairs and see my trophies. Of course, these days you are only supposed to shoot one of each species per year but it's amazing what you can get away with if you pay the govern- ment a little money. Kenya, Tanzania, they're only in it for the money. They don't care how much wild life you kill off as long as you keep paying them the money.'
'I don't mind telling you,' whispered the Princess, 'that I find the man on your left boring. I mean, just because he's a neighbour doesn't give him the right to turn up at a dinner party like this. My friend the Baron, the one sitting opposite you, says that he's trying to turn us into a country like Sweden. That kind of socialism, where the race is still to the swift provided that everyone is allowed to start off from the same place. Have another oyster?' The man on my left turned out to be the Prime Minister of Austria, Dr Kreisky, and the lady on my right, the Princess von Reuss. I asked where Reuss was and she said it had disappeared but that she liked the title because it gave her a sense of place. Still, you didn't have to call her Ma'am or pretend that she was in any way different from you or me as you do with certain other redundant Princesses, And, as she pointed out, the dinner party was exactly the same as many other dinner parties that were happening at the same time throughout Vienna on Ash Wednesday even- ing. For example, the menu. Scotch salmon flown in especially, presumably from Edin- burgh, fresh oysters from London, fresh lobster from Spain, fresh herring from Sweden, beluga caviar from heaven knows where and endless vintage champagne. It was only a small gathering of some twenty people, so the food probably cost no more than £3.000. The guest list was also unre- markable—two princesses, a marquis and a marquesa, two or three barons, the odd count. Leonard Bernstein, the lion-hunter- what did he do in the war daddy?—and a Prime Minister. 'The greatest crime is poverty,' wrote Bernard Shaw. so there weren't many criminals at this dinner party. Just a few servants who bowed deeply when they spoke and backed away in reverence.
The Baron couldn't have been more charming. He'd lost all his lands since the war and had been left with just a couple of castles, two or three hunting lodges and about 4.000 acres of not very profitable farm land. Still, one just had to make do these days. There was so much decadence around that one had to be grateful for the few com- forts one had. He was thinking of taking a short two-month holiday skiing but the idea had already begun to bore him.
The conversation switched to a more serious tone. We find your English student problem so amusing, said the Prime Minister. The Dutschke business, for examnle. We have ways of dealing with people like that. You British. someone added. You make such a fuss. You even give him the benefit of the doubt. Now, in Austria, our young people are so much more peaceful. In the youth camps. We teach them the virtues of the outdoor life and of social leadership. We let them relax in the comforts of good Viennese high society while introducing them ever so slowly to the benefits of social- ism—full employment and a high standard of living for the workers. In this way, they feel they have the best of all possible lives and so are contented. As well we make sure they have many of the things you British envy—a heavily subsidised state opera house, state subsidised theatres and state subsidised concerts. So they are spiritually as well as economically contented. The workers do not strike, therefore, because they know that the State loves them. If they are lazy, it is because they are happy; if they no longer produce great art, it is because they prefer to live among the glories of the past. Someone else said that even the prostitutes were happy. Have you seen them? Near the opera house? They are full of smiles. The Marquis, who sold tyres, confirmed this view. About the workers, that is. The only things that are underground in Vienna, he said, are the sewers and anything else that says it is underground, we send there immediately. Have another oyster?
The silver plates were neatly stacked in one corner among the twenty-three silver candelabra and the eighteen ornamental silver fish which had decorated the table. They're so pretty, my hostess assured me. It's such a pity we only use them once or twice a year. I did not tell her of the acute moral dilemma which had confronted me and one of her silver fish staring with its jewelled eyes throughout dinner. To steal or not to steal. If I had stolen that valuable object, I could have given it to a friend for whom it would have been an exquisite joy. I could have actively contributed to the redistribu- tion of wealth that the socialist Prime Minister of Austria now supping coffee with me had spoken of in Parliament earlier that very afternoon. On the other hand, to steal is immoral, we are always taught, so in the end I chose what upon reflection was the weaker course and left the fish, although I am sure my hostess did not notice my sacrifice.
Mr Bernstein left early. He said he was tired and had to prepare for a strenuous rehearsal on the morrow. Bernstein was in Vienna preparing for a tour he is now making with the Vienna Philharmonic. He plays in London on the 15th. Musically, the biggest challenge is his interpretation of Mahler's Ninth Symphony. sadly not in- cluded in the I.ondon concert. Written when the composer knew he was dying, this monu- mental symphony is in many senses an extended farewell--to a café society which he had come to hate, to a German musical tradition of which he knew he was the last exponent, to a struggle for sexual and eMotional freedom which had eluded his briefly turbulent life. The dinner party, therefore, which in many ways epitomised all that Mahler had thought was already pass- ing sixty years ago, was not without a certain irony.
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