Chapter 6

In the morning, we took the bright yellow Renault 5, which I began to affectionately call The Yellow Beast, on the autobahn to Vienna. I was glad to get out of the countryside and head to the city, where I planned to lounge in rococo cafes and watch passersby.

Guenter was tired, so I drove the Yellow Beast on the autobahn as fast as I could make it go, shifting its gears from the steering column, and making sure to let all the Audis and BMWs and Mercedes pass me. I smiled at the people who stared at us as they whizzed by, several of whom honked and waved, after realizing the yellow antiquity was not a mirage. Guenter had told me that often people would shout out to him that it was wonderful to see a Renault 5 again, and hand him beers through the window, perhaps charmed at seeing a car that reminded them of their youth spent hitchhiking across Europe, or their first love, a bohemian artist who slept on the floor in front of an unfinished canvas, hoping he would be able to transfer onto it the wild images in his dreams.

Shortly after the Austrian border, we stopped at an outdoor cafeé on the grounds of a castle, high atop a hill and overlooking the valley, and ordered two beers named after his family, served in glasses with the same family crest as the one on his card. Sitting in the sun under the parasol, squinting from the reflection of the white tablecloth, his hand on top of mine, I watched a fly lazily buzz about and land on his arm. It was at that moment when he told me the date when he would marry again - February 3rd of the following year.

"Does that mean you have already picked a bride?" I asked, watching his eyes. I figured if this was just a fling and he had a bride waiting in the wings, at least I would know where I stood.

"No, I just know that is the day I will marry again." he replied, squeezing my hand significantly.

If I were a candidate in the running, which from the hand squeezing and his wanting to introduce me to his mother and sister, I assumed I was, I quickly calculated that we would have known each other a little over a year. I wondered who else was being considered, and if he put them in a spreadsheet to measure their pros and cons. I wondered if they had all been offered the red dress, and if trying it on was the ultimate test to pass, like the women villagers trying on Cinderella's glass slipper. Would Guenter get down on his knees and propose, or would he simply say,

"It's Tuesday, February 3rd. You know what that means."

I tried to weigh if I would be able to accept if he asked me. I thought of what I knew about him. He liked opera and sweets and bagels. He was tall and elegant. He was a pilot and an engineer. He was alternately very proud and very mysterious about his lineage. He seemed to like my sense of humor, and thought I was pretty. He had made many allusions to transforming his wife from an ugly duckling to a swan. She had apparently been rather plain when he met her, but through his guidance, had slimmed down and learned how to dress and do her makeup. I vaguely felt as if he imagined himself to be Pygmalion, and I, his second Galatea.

We reached Vienna in the middle of the afternoon, and soon saw signs pointing towards Schönbrunn. I said I had never seen it, so we parked the Yellow Beast and headed to the castle to take a tour. We had a tendency to tour things in an odd order, so we started with the carriage house. Walking along the amazingly overly decorated structures, peering inside them and trying to imagine gathering all those skirts into such a small space, I was struck by how some of the gilded and intricately carved ones looked almost gaudy, like the cheap overly done decorations of a Chinese restaurant. I said this to Guenter, and he looked at me strangely. Perhaps he has never been in a Chinese restaurant, I thought.

Walking from the carriage house to the main castle, he had his arm about my waist, and mentioned that he thought I had lost weight since the last time he had seen me in Atlanta. I said I hadn't consciously tried to do so, but that is was possible I had.

"You should lose more," he said, patting my waist.

"I like the way I look," I replied, drawing away from him. It was one of the rare times in which I actually felt that way, and I was determined to enjoy it. I decided to ignore the comment and put it down to German's propensity to sound demanding.

We went inside the main castle and opted for the recorded guided tour. I was embarrassed to have to ask for the English version. We followed along, shuffling with the crowds from room to room, and I struggled to work my headset right, often skipping ahead too far or going back to the beginning.

When we arrived at a particularly beautiful portrait of the Empress Elizabeth, or Sissi, as she is affectionately known in Austria, he caught my eye when the narrator talked of her slim figure, which she obsessively preoccupied herself with, often eating only broth to preserve her weight of a mere 90 pounds. I raised my eyebrows at him from across the room and stuck out my tongue.

Later that day, at the Hotel Sacher, I flipped through the menu pages and burst out laughing when it claimed that Empress Sissi herself was fond of Sacher tortes from the hotel and regularly had them sent to Schönbrunn.

"She didn't eat them; she weighed 90 pounds!" I exclaimed.

"She must have had such a happy life, living at Schönbrunn and being so adored by Emperor Franz Josef," he said dreamily.

I stared at him.

"Are you kidding?" I said, taking a sip of my sweet coffee concoction with a kick of cognac. "She ate fucking broth all her life!"

"Yes, but she kept her slim figure like Franz Josef liked," he said, admiringly, as if this, of all things, should be her crowning achievement.

I thought of how the taped tour narrator had talked of her, isolated in the castle, constantly fighting with her mother-in-law and adored but misunderstood by her husband. There had even been a quote from one of her letters describing marriage as a "...preposterous institution ... You are sold as a child of fifteen, you swear vows you do not understand, and you regret them for thirty years or more, but you can never break them."

"She was miserable," I said.

We went from the Hotel Sacher to check into our hotel, located in a Turkish section of town. It was an older building with large mirrors and a crystal chandelier in the room. I flopped on the bed, exhausted and ready to relax.

"Would you like to go to the opera tonight?" he asked from the bathroom.

"Oh, yeah!" I said. I had seen pictures of the Staatsoper and had thought how nice it would be to go there with him. But it was already early evening, and I wasn't sure if we had time.

"I'll go ask the concierge to get us some tickets," he said, and went downstairs.

I took a shower, lingering under the hot water, willing myself to wake up. Hot water always made me sleepy, but cold water went against my principles.

He came back up and announced from the bedroom that we had gotten tickets, but that I needed to be ready in 15 minutes. I hadn't ever, in my entire life, gotten ready for anything that quickly, not even when I was late for work. I rushed out of the bathroom, upended my suitcase on the bed, and dumped out the contents of my jewelry case, sifting through it for the necklace and earrings I wanted, a black beaded choker and dangling earrings to match. I chose a black velvet bolero jacket with white satin cuffs and black pants, and a pair of sexy black high heeled sandals I had bought for pennies in Brazil. I applied my makeup in a flash, choosing to go with the smoky-eyed look, as a steady patient hand called for more time than I had.

Twelve minutes later, my hair still wet, I was ready. He looked me over approvingly.

"You look beautiful," he said, smiling, and turning me around in a pirouette.

We went arm in arm downstairs and jumped into a waiting taxi. On the way there, I fanned my fingers through my hair, trying to simultaneously style and dry it, while also attempting to get a glimpse of the city whizzing by.

We got out a block down from the Staatsoper, which was large and imposing, and lit up on the outside.

I straightened up and tried to look relaxed as we walked through the huge entrance doors. I was glad to have my arm laced through his. He was at home in this old world of large ornate buildings, marble staircases and frescoed ceilings, and I felt proud to be with him. I had thought that with my blonde hair and blue eyes, I would blend into the background in Germany and Austria, but instead I would regularly catch people looking at me as if wondering where I had appeared from. I had asked him about it once when we were in some small town in Germany on our way to Austria.

"Look around you," he had said. I had, and saw young couples, families, and older people walking by. They hadn't looked not much different than me, I had thought.

"Do you look like anyone here?" he had quizzed.

"What do you mean?" I remembered asking. He had smiled and fingered my purple boa, and nudged my blue sunglasses playfully back up my nose.

"You look like a moooofie stah!" he had said, laughing, and took me in his arms.

I fervently hoped I still did - the Staatsoper being a place where one aimed to look particularly stunning. He spoke to an usher, who pointed up to the last floor. We climbed up four flights, and once at the top, a little out of breath, he led me to our seats. Since we had last minute tickets, we were relegated to the cheap ticket section, where young art and music students sat crouched on the stairs scribbling in notebooks. The ceiling was very low, and as we were basically right under it, I was immediately uncomfortably hot.

The opera was unknown to me, but the composer I knew. Each seat was outfitted with a small digital screen that could be angled up however the audience member wished, and the subtitles were available in five or six different languages. I looked around at the predominately red and gold decor, and marveled at how the even the exit signs blended elegantly in.

The opera began, and it was immediately apparent to me that the opera singers were far superior to any I had ever had the chance to see. I wondered if they were well known in Austria or Europe, or if they were merely average local talent. At the intermission, he asked if I wanted to get a drink, and I was glad to get a respite from the stuffy air and cramped quarters. We headed down arm in arm to the first level ballroom, where drinks were served in real glasses and people could sit at small round cloth covered tables. I ordered a 'sekt' - orange juice with champagne. A mimosa - I thought amusedly, and remembered skipping the first morning class with my sister to eat beignets, drink chicory coffee and sip mimosas no one asked us to show our IDs for at a New Orleans style cafe on Peachtree Street.

When intermission was over, he led me to much better seats in the main gallery, and I tried not to meet anyone's eyes lest they know we were taking someone else's places. It is one of the ways in which I am very American - I don't cut in line and it never occurs to me to take a seat I haven't paid for. But I had to admit, the view of the stage was fabulous, and it was worth any wayward glances we might have gotten. He stared straight ahead, his head held high, as if he owned the place. I doubted anyone would second guess him.

We walked out of the Staatsoper arm in arm and crossed the street to a lit up sausage stand.

"You have to try some of these," he said.

It was more than a mere sausage stand; it was a fully functioning kitchen with every non cooking space used for displaying sausages, drinks and candy. I looked at the different cans, smiling at the yellow one with the cartoon alpine boy and girl on it. Yellow again, I thought, there has got to be a reason behind all this yellow. He pointed to it, and said he grew up drinking it. I asked him order me one with the kind of sausage he liked best. I could tell he liked my deference to his taste. We stood there, leaning up against the makeshift counter, eating off of paper plates in our opera best, the street lights shining on his chiseled face. I nuzzled into him, and he wrapped his arm around me, feeding me bits of his sausage, and explaining the differences between all of them. He wiped a smudge of mustard off my nose and kissed me, to the amusement of the Turkish and Armenian men around us.

We flagged down a taxi and returned to the hotel.

I had barely removed my earrings and necklace before he picked me up and carried me towards the bed, where he swept the jewelry to the floor and laid me down in one fluent movement. He undressed me slowly, kissing each exposed piece of skin as it was uncovered, pausing occasionally to admire and touch. I buried my face in his hair, which smelled faintly of sausage and cool night air. I caught the reflection of our bodies in the mirror of the bureau, as we made love slowly and tenderly underneath the crystal chandelier.