MICHAEL'S WOMEN

The gurgling of water is loud and insistent. The image before my eyes is of a large bluish pool. Sculpted nymphs of many fountains spout sulphurous liquid, refilling the pool with healing thermal water, its smell strong but not unpleasant. I recognize Baden, a spa famous since Roman times, nestled in a valley close to the Vienna woods. I stand at the pool’s edge, and swimming towards me is the first, moon-embracing love of my life, Christina. Tall, with blond curls cascading to her shoulders, she is the archetype of Schnitzler’s sweet Viennese girl. A blue bathing suit shows off her full figure, high breasts, never-ending legs. Sleek and wet, she steps out of the pool. We kiss with the tremulous passion only first love can awaken: shy, with a fearful intimacy, fragile and seemingly unbreakable at the same time. I cannot let go of her, we tumble into the sand, and create an indecent spectacle for the elderly nannies who are fully dressed on this summer day as they care for their charges, knitting furiously.

The year was 1937, and I had been in love with Christina for an entire year. Courting her without letup after we’d met in Mlle. Bourdeau’s private French class, I used to send a ceaseless flow of letters, poems and flowers to the spa town where she lived, half an hour south of Vienna. Two or three times a week she came to the city, visiting friends and taking French lessons. We were both eighteen.

I was not Christina’s only admirer. An entire movie company was after her. Not for her acting experience, but merely for her incredible looks, a budding Austrian film outfit had signed her for a walk-on part in a comedy called, Music for You, and she reported daily to the studio. George, my chief rival for her affection, and I kept hanging around the set. California had its leggy surfgirls, Budapest its dark gypsy types, but only Vienna could boast of Christina’s blond sweetness. I would proclaim this to my father -who was impressed with my good taste-, to my friends, and anyone else willing to listen to the praise that emanated from someone who was sick with love.

But Christina was a virgin, and though I had long ago been granted the greatest favor she was willing to bestow, kissing, she had firmly drawn the line at being touched anywhere below the neck. So sleeping with Christina was relegated to the far horizon of my shimmering fantasies. Still, I was content that along with hated George I was evidently at the top of the crowd that was pursuing her.

My happiness reached dizzying heights when Christina implied at Christmas, a holiday kissing feast, that I was the one who truly mattered to her. However, I was soon to learn a very different meaning of "dizzying heights."

There was one area in Christina’s life from which I was barred. She was a superb ballroom dancer and had been chosen, along with other Viennese beauties, to partake in the great entrance waltz which opened Vienna’s famous opera ball. By woeful contrast, I was a total zero on the dance floor. But being in love with Christina had caused me to enroll in Frau Hollreiser’s dance school, where I took private lessons from Fraeulein Cissy. An attractive brunette, she succeeded in teaching me the fox-trot and the slow-fox. But when it came to moving in ¾ time, I developed a frightening dizziness, especially when the tempo speeded up, as it does in the famous "Linkswalzer"; left turns only, and absolutely de rigeur in Vienna. Only an instant cessation of all movement would prevent a dead faint. Cissy was baffled by this phenomenon, but try as she might, her efforts were in vain.

In desperation, I sought medical help from my father’s friend, Professor Hirschhorn, who held the prestigious chair of neurology at the university. The famous man promised discretion, but concluded alter a lengthy examination that I had some inner ear trouble for which there was no remedy. He predicted that if I stood at a high place like the aerie of St. Stephen’s cathedral, I would be unable to look down to street level without experiencing the same symptom. He was right.

I was crushed. After wrestling with my anxiety, I decided to confide in Christina, hoping that in matters of true love, not being able to dance the waltz could be seen as a minor inconvenience. Christina made light of my despair. She said I should just practice some more, and if I wanted, she herself would teach me. This was a delicious proposal but fraught with even greater anxiety. After all, my young ego would be exposed to the potential humiliation of fainting in the arms of the woman I hoped to conquer. Eventually I gave in.

The tutoring was a total failure. I did not faint, but neither could I keep up the circling motions without getting dizzy. Still, the sensation of holding Christina in my arms, or more accurately, being held by her, was so enchanting that I hit upon a trick which turned my embarrassment to advantage. Once we started the damned turns and my dizziness increased along with the tempo of the accursed Emperor waltz, I would pull Christina down onto the nearby couch, showering her with kisses and admitting defeat on the waltz thing. I vowed that my love for her was on such a lofty level that it reduced waltzing to something pedestrian and insignificant. Surprisingly, the waltz kings, Strauss father and son, now became accomplices in my amorous strivings. For Christina reacted to my frustration on the dance floor by consoling me; somehow this opened her deeper feelings, and my desire to make love to her was met with a noticeably weaker "no."

I remembered a Russian saying: pity is the beginning of true love.