Long before the fall of the House of Habsburg,
there were certain reports from all parts
of the Empire, from Dubrovnik
to Linz, from Bratislava to Trieste,
that became so frequent, were so consistent
the Emperor had to be informed.
The usual stories of naked, dancing
alchemists in Sarajevo or Yiddish
speaking brown bears playing klezmer in Prague
could be ignored, but he needed to know
that so many of his subjects were claiming
to be musical instruments made of glass –
grand pianos, even whole wind sections.
Chancellor Von Taaffe reported to him
in the privacy of the map-lined study
at the Hofburg. Franz Josef nodded, sighed,
and was silent. Eventually he spoke.
“Shall the concert be in Salzburg – or here
in Vienna?”‘, and smiled so that Von Taaffe
would know it had been a witz. The Chancellor
smiled too, bowed, then asked for instructions.
“Meisterliche Inaktivität!”
After the massacre in St Petersburg,
so close to Nicholas’ Winter Palace,
and the failed revolution that followed,
Franz Josef had a recurring nightmare.
It always opened with the frontier post
at the edge of the Hungarian steppe,
and always on the Jewish Sabbath.
Approaching on the white road from the east
would be a bear and its keeper – the latter
naked and dancing, the former calling out
to the guard: ‘”Shalom! Gutes shabbes! Ikh bin
a glaz okarina”.
By David Selzer