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 There was a show on TV about Vienna, the capital of Austria, back in time just before World War One, so we're talking about 1907 to 1913. I'd seen it before, and found that overall epoch in history fascinating. But I'm not just a working nurse (N.P., M.S.) but also famous among my friends as a history nerd, and I love that stuff. It's not just about wars and marching bands, not just about strutting emperors and millions of dead soldiers and destroyed lives—all for nothing, as usual, so typically dinosaurs and Jurassic and Cretaceous and all that. I could imagine them all roaring in their swamps, hungry for blood.
It's about fashion, dancing, Moulin Rouge (Red Windmill in the Montmartre of Paris, as in Can-Can, oo-la-lah!) and all that new Ragtime jazzy stuff coming over from the U.S.A.
Those decades were the Belle Époque, French for Beautiful Era. It wasn't so beautiful if you were a maid working below stairs, or a young man shoveling coal in a mine, but it was a time of great creativity and huge money (the peak of the European and North American world empire) and a lavish celebration before it all came crashing down in a dark hail of artillery and machine guns, of poison gas and bombs dropped from those new-fangled aeroplanes of canvas and wood, and heavy steel tanks clanking through the mud… Before the world wars, it was an age when fashion designers like Coco Chanel could rise from nothing and make beautiful dresses and immortal perfumes in Paris. It was a time of great composers, painters, singers, dancers were celebrating up a storm in great cities like Paris, London, New York, and Vienna and more. Huge story, I love the whole TV series.
I'd seen that one particular episode of the series before. It talks about how two souls breathed the same air in Vienna for about seven years. One was Felix Salten, who wrote a powerful story called Bambi, A Life in the Woods, published in 1923 in Vienna, and made into a sanitized 1942 Walt Disney classic animated film.
The other, a truly dark spirit who arrived in Vienna as a young man of 18 and left seven years later in 1913 (just before World War One started in 1914) was Adolf Hitler. He was a disturbed, hateful, angry spirit who knocked on doors around Vienna, wanting to become a great painter. He was refused entry, because he lacked the education and talent (more specifically, any sort of real human soul). So he became a starving vagrant, picking up day labor where he could. In his spare time, he painted rather pedestrian little watercolor souvenirs that (how ironic) he sold for a few Groschen (coins) to mostly Jewish shopkeepers who took pity on him. But oh how he would get even on all of them and nearly destroy the world in doing so.
Felix Salten (born Siegmund Salzmann, son of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi) had moved to Vienna with his family shortly after his birth in 1869 in Pest, which is half of the fabulous city of Buda-Pest in Austria-Hungary. The family soon moved to Vienna (capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire) because Jews received full citizenship and toleration in Vienna. That was during the Belle Époque, that wonderful period in so many ways, at least for the rich and the creative across Europe in the decades before the blood bath began (two world wars, over a hundred million dead for no reason except the testosterone madness of Kaiser Bill in Germany and later Adolf Hitler, a rewind of same stuff but on even greater steroids). Argue all you want about exact causes, this and that, but the dead don't live to enjoy any more sunshine, and most of them were innocent young lives snuffed out for always the wrong reasons.
Adolf Hitler certainly lit a fire that torched much of the world, already scorched from earlier wars in that Unbeautiful Era from 1914 to 1945.
Felix Salten was in his thirties by the time he started writing and selling stories after 1900. He was approaching forty when that anonymous evil spirit floated into the imperial capital amid all of its Waltz music and glory. In those days, the armies were resting, and the generals were gearing up for their next glories. Uniforms were splendid, sparkling with gold medals earned on parade grounds rather than muddy battlefields. What wars they fought were in distant realms of their empires, in remote corners of Africa or Asia. It was a time for fairy tales, and Felix Salten dialed into all that.
In the Germanic world, if you think of the Brothers Grimm, fairy tales were indeed grim. And if you think of how German the English really were (all their royals, from the Georges to Prince Albert to Queen Victoria) had family names like Hannover and Saxe-Coburg, which the English royals had to quickly change to Winsor or risk getting booted out by the English. Never mind that England is Angle-land, named for the Germanic invaders who took over after the Romans left in the 400s. But then again, France is named for a German nation (the Franks) so history is filled with bloody ironies.
So there I am, powdering my nose and humming lightly to myself, with all that bloody history playing out in my memory. It's important, like I said, because the date rape drug I was given by Mr. Swastika, that son of a bitch, made me hallucinate in 360 degree Technicolor, and it was horrible. I'll get to all that shortly.
And I'll talk about Felix Salten's great creation, Bambi, the most famous little deer in history.
I checked myself out in the bedroom with the door partially open, twirling before the tall mirror on the bathroom door.
Dori and I each had a single bed, and between us was a generous French door leading out to that wonderful slate-flagstone patio with wrought iron table and wiry chairs. The table outside had a glass top, and standing in the middle was a red and white striped umbrella. The chairs, like the table, were wound-steel painted elegant black, glossy, and quite ritzy like everything else in the condo complex and for that matter the town below by the lake.
Minutes later, having sat before the bathroom mirror with some light applicators (a little mauve dust around the eyes, blink-blue, a touch of mascara in the lashes, and a quick dusting of peachy dust on the cheekbones, a little help from a quick reddish lift upward on the cheeks), and I rose, ready to do battle.
The girls all whistled and clapped admiringly as I stepped back into the den, where they sat on plush furniture with the local TV news on while they sipped wine. That was the dark red, blood-colored wine from my nurse friend's cabinet, in expensive glowing crystal stemmed glasses.
I plopped down to buckle on my white strap-up quarter-heel shoes. I sometimes wear taller heels, but when you have a bit of wine, and want to go dancing (assuming a suitable man approaches you), I don't want to be wobbling around on stilettos. The other girls were all dressed similarly—summery, sensible, with dressy practical shoes.
"What's on the news?" I said casually, not really caring. It was just conversation.
"Same old," said Sheri, the palest-skinned of us, with freckles like spattered orange juice. I'm the blonde, but I have more Latina skin than Sheri, who looks more Germanic or English or Irish. We're all mixes, right? Dori is part Asian, with dark almond-shaped eyes and glossy black hair. Laurel is a brunette of Italian extraction and a bit of Afro in the mix.
"Same old violence, murder, shootings, rapes…" Dori added.
"Oh stop," Laurel said, cutting her off. "I don't want t hear it."
"We want to have fun," Sheri said.
"Like that old song," Laurel said. "Girls just want to have fun."
We all sang a brief refrain, girls… just a-want to have fun, oh, oh…
We all laughed. We were having fun. So far. It was all looking good.
While I was getting ready in the bedroom, they watched TV in the living room. I caught glimpses of the big TV from my bedroom vanity as I fussed about to look pretty.
The television was on, and this is important as I later realized, while recovering from the soon to be madness in a resort bar overlooking the lake, where a young man with a swastika tattoo and icy Arctic eyes slipped some of his hate and cruelty into my fizzy little pink drink. I'll explain part now, part later…
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