have seen more than a small part of the ceremony if they were indeed present. The reports generally disagree on certain major details, while in other particulars they often show unmistakable signs of having been cribbed one from another. In any case, they almost always compress the two funeral processions into one: the cortege along the Mariahilferstrasse from Schonbrunn on 27 November, and the shorter journey three days later through the Karntnerstrasse to the Capuchin Crypt after the lying in state in St Stephen’s Cathedral.
As to the famous traditional exchange outside the crypt, by the way, while I hate to cast doubt upon a cherished legend, I once discussed this in detail with a Polish general, the very soul of veracity, while we were sitting in a shelter near Victoria Station during a prolonged and noisy air-raid one night in 1941. He had actually been within earshot of the crypt door that day, as a young Rittmeister in an Uhlan regiment, and he assured me upon his honour that no such ritual ever took place. He thought that it might once have done, perhaps back in the eighteenth century; but certainly by 1916 it had long since fallen into disuse. As to the thirty-four crowned heads, neither of us had the slightest idea how that total had been calculated. True, the usual mob of small-time German royalty had turned up—probably more for a free meal than anything else—but Kaiser Wilhelm had pleaded other engagements and there was a war on, so in the end only Ferdinand of Bulgaria had appeared for the non-German monarchies.
The other reason for my not wishing to bore you with yet another account of the funeral of the Emperor Franz Joseph is the simple fact that I was not actually present at either part of the ceremony. I had been due to walk in the cortege from Schonbrunn on the 27th, representing the Knights of the Military Order of Maria Theresa; but at the very last moment I had received a telephone call instructing me to report immediately to Aspern flying field. It appeared that the Italian poet-aviator and daredevil Gabriele d’Annunzio had given a newspaper interview in which he had announced his intention of flying to Vienna on the day and bombing the catafalque as it passed through the streets, hoping thus to distribute the Emperor’s embalmed remains among his grieving subjects. As an airman I found the whole idea quite preposterous: if d’Annunzio was prepared to fly a six-hour round trip across the Alps and back in winter then in my opinion he was even more intrepid than the Italian press made him out to be. But the local military command had taken alarm and a scratch air-defence squadron had been assembled at Aspern from aircraft out of the workshops and a collection of test-pilots and convalescents. So that is how I spent the afternoon of 27 November, sitting on the field at Aspern in the cockpit of a Brandenburger waiting for the telephone to ring. We were not finally stood down until dusk, so I missed it all.
As to the interment itself, it was the last day of my leave and my presence had not been requested either in the procession or as a pilot. The weather was fine for Vienna in late November, so Elisabeth and I decided to take advantage of the fact that the trams were running and spend the day walking in the Wienerwald: not far, because her waist was beginning to get cumbersome, but enough to get some fresh air and just be together alone before I returned to duty. We kicked up the autumn leaves as we walked arm in arm along the woodland paths, talking of this and that and just luxuriating in one another’s nearness. We drank tea in a little cafe near Grinzing, then climbed up on to the wooded Kahlenberg to look out over the distant city. Despite the anaemic sunshine a light November mist filled the bowl in which Vienna lies, so that only the needle spire of the cathedral and a couple of the higher buildings protruded from the golden haze. Then it began, drifting up to us where we sat: the tolling of all the city’s remaining church bells. And above them all rang the sonorous booming of the Pummerin, the great bell of the cathedral cast from Turkish cannon captured in 1683. We both tried hard not to be affected by it all, but it would have taken a heart of granite not to be moved by the sound of a venerable and once-great empire pulling its own passing-bell. We did not speak to one another: there was no need. We merely sat holding hands, acutely aware that the world in which we had been born and grown up was now slipping away for ever.
When it was all over, after a quarter of an hour or so when the last tolling had died away, we got up to make our way home while the trams were still running. As we descended the slope of the hill through the beech woods we saw that others had also given the funeral of their late master a miss. Ragged and thin-faced, dressed in sacking and fragments of army uniform, women and children from the Vienna slums were out gathering wood to keep themselves warm—and berries and mushrooms to eat.
I returned to Pola that evening to catch the boat for Lussin. On my way to the Sudbahnhof I had made a detour to a military outfitters on the Graben, then to the Marine Section of the War Ministry on the Zollamt- strasse to collect a small parcel. Before I kissed Elisabeth goodbye on the station platform I had gone into a cloakroom and removed the Fjl rosette from my cap, replacing it with one purchased that afternoon. It was embroidered in a dubious-looking wartime gold thread and read simply Kl, cipher of our new Emperor Karl the First—or Karl the Last, as people were already calling him. The parcel contained similar rosettes for my brother-officers at Lussin, and also forty or so of the other-ranks version: a disc of black-japanned metal with the letters embossed in gilt.
We held the oath-taking ceremony the morning after I got back: put on our best uniforms and paraded in the December drizzle, caps under left arms and right hands raised with first and second fingers together, standing before our commanding officer dozing in a chair, a military chaplain and a petty officer bearing the red-white-red naval ensign on a staff. There we swore undying loyalty to our prince and lord Karl, by the Grace of God Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, Croatia . . . and so on through a list of thirty-something fairy- book titles like Illyria and Lodomeria, finishing for good measure with “. . . and King of Jerusalem.” Mass was celebrated by the chaplain. Then the Petty Officer roared “Abtreten sofort!” Fregattenkapitan von Lotsch woke with a start to enquire what was the matter, we dispersed to our duties, and that was that: the Emperor was dead, long live the Emperor.
I was called from the Adjutant’s office half an hour later. There was trouble in the ratings’ mess hut and would I please come over, since they wished to see an officer? I put my cap and sword on and hurried across the rain-lashed square of cinders. I entered the hut to be greeted by silence. The men did not rise to attention but sat at the trestle tables, plates before them. I was met by that month’s president of the messing commission, a Slovak telegraphist rating called Kucar. He stood stony-faced, holding out a plate bearing two oblong slabs of gritty-looking yellowish- grey substance.
“Well Kucar, what’s the trouble? Why aren’t the men eating their dinner? ”
“Obediently report that we aren’t going to eat this stuff, Herr Schiffs- leutnant. It’s polenta.”
I looked closely at the unappetising slabs on the plate. It was indeed polenta, that sad pudding of boiled corn-meal that weighs down so many a table in northern Italy. As an accompaniment to something else—for example fried and served with jugged hare in Friuli—polenta is at least tolerable, if an acquired taste, by which I mean that it is rather horrid but that one can get hardened to it in time. But served on its own it is undeniably a most depressing dish, rather like cold slices of congealed porridge only with less flavour. I prodded it with my finger.
“Nonsense Kucar, that’s perfectly good polenta.”
“With respect Herr Schiffsleutnant, we couldn’t care less whether it’s perfectly good or perfectly bad: it’s polenta and we’re not going to eat it. Only the shit-poor eat polenta.”
And he was more or less right there of course: along the Dalmatian coast poverty and polenta went together like twin brothers. For the people of the port towns and the islands the consumption of polenta marked the final slide into indigence, rather as eating horsemeat would for the English or setting down black-eye peas and chitterlings in front of poor white people in Mississippi. In the end we had to get the Proviantmeister to open his stores and serve out bread and bacon to the men. But there would come a time not very far into the future when they would eat even polenta and be glad of it.
16 LAST FLIGHT
Fregattenleutnant Franz Nechledil and I made our first flight on behalf of the Emperor Karl on the morning of 4 December. For once it was not the usual business of convoy escort. We had been preparing to take off on the customary Lunga-and-back run, but at the last moment an orderly came running from the air-station Kanzlei hut. A telephone call had just been received from the Naval Air Station at Pola, our parent unit. One of their flying-boats had reported sighting a submarine about thirty miles west of Sansego Island. The aeroplane had been returning to Pola and was running low on petrol, and had anyway lost contact with the mystery vessel in a rain squall. Now we were to fly out and see whether we could catch the thing unawares before it gave us the slip. Our convoy escort would be taken over by an aeroplane from Fiume.
