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Pity that he didn't know my grandfather, who would probably enjoy another intrigue.

Grandfather - who's parked and locked the taxi in the lot at Karl's Church - walks Hilke and the cookie crock home. Ignoring Grandmother's protest, they peek in on Zahn Glanz. Peeled out of his pieplates, disarmed of his last claw, the eagle's feet protrude from the little girl's bed. A chicken feather laces his ear, a pink pouf makes him cosy; he sleeps midst the knick-knackery and troll kingdom of my mother's room. Hilke tucks him in again, and he sleeps through supper; he sleeps right up to the seven o'clock report on Radio Johannesgasse. Grandfather can't let Zahn miss the news.

The postponement of the plebiscite is announced, and the resignation of the entire Cabinet - all except Seyss-Inquart, who's staying on in his office as Minister of Interior.

Zahn Glanz is not fully recovered; when he goes wordlessly back to bed, old Miklas is sitting all alone in his office of the Federal President, watching the clock run by seven-thirty. Field Marshal Goring's ultimatum time has expired, and Seyss-Inquart is still not Chancellor of Austria. Miklas refuses to make it official.

Then Kurt von Schuschnigg performs the last and most conclusive leap backward of his career - an executive order to General Schilhawsky to withdraw the Austrian Army from the German border; to offer no resistance; to watch, or perhaps wave, from behind the River Enns. The Austrian Army has only forty-eight hours of steady-fire ammunition anyway. What would be the point of so much blood? Someone phones from Salzburg to say the Germans are crossing the border; it's not true, it's a false alarm, but it's another fine hair to be split, and Schuschnigg doesn't wait for verification. He steps back.

At eight o'clock, he asks Radio Johannesgasse for a nationwide broadcasting privilege. The microphone wires are strung up the banister of the grand staircase in the Ballhausplatz. And Grandfather wakes up Zahn again.

Schuschnigg is all sadness and no reproach. He speaks of yielding to force; he begs no resistance. He does say there's no truth to the Berlin radio reports of worker revolutions terrorizing Austria. Kurt von Schuschnigg's Austria isn't terrorized; it's forced to be sad. And in the whole show, the only sentiment that touches Grandfather's skulking heart is the rude outburst of the Commissioner for Cultural Propaganda - the old cripple Hammerstein-Equord, who grabs the microphone when the Chancellor is finished, but before the technicians can pull the contact plug. 'Long live Austria!' he burbles. 'Today I am ashamed to be German.'

It's a sad thing for Grandfather to hear. Even tough old cripples like Hammerstein-Equord consider German as something in the blood, and look at Germans as a race to which Austria must belong.

But my grandfather has never looked at things that way. 'Pack, Muttie,' he says. 'There's a taxi full of gas just round the corner.'

And my mother takes the arm of Zahn Glanz; she holds to it tighter than she's ever held a thing alive, and waits for Zahn to raise his eyes to hers; her fingers on his arm are talking: Hilke Marter will not let go, will not pack herself or any of her things, until this eagle can unfuddle enough to make up his mind and speak it clear.

While Miklas, with his mind made up and all alone, refuses to accept Schuschnigg's personal resignation and is still speaking of resistance - without a single soldier of the Austrian Army between the German border and the River Enns. In the Federal President's office, Lieutenant General Muff, German military attache to Vienna, is explaining that the reported border-crossing by German troops is a false alarm. But the troops will cross, says Muff, if Miklas doesn't make Seyss-Inquart the Chancellor. Perhaps old Miklas is less futile in his resistance than it appears; he may even recognize Hitler's apparent need to legalize the takeover. But the patient Muff keeps after him: Does the Federal President know that all the provinces are now in the hands of local Austrian Nazi officials? Does the President know that Salzburg and Linz have given the seals of office to Nazi party members there? Has the President even looked in the corridor outside his office, where the Vienna Nazi youth are lighting cigarettes and jeering over the balcony of the grand staircase; they're curling smoke rings round the head of the wood-carved Madonna in mourning for poor Dollfuss.

At eleven o'clock the patient Muff is still conjuring images. Seyss-Inquart has revised his list for his proposed Cabinet; Miklas, in his tenth hour of resistance, is telling an anecdote about Maria Theresia.

At eleven o'clock my grandfather is arbitrating the matter of silver or china. The china is breakable, and less saleable. It's the china that stays in Vienna, the silver that goes. And whether Zahn Glanz will go or stay is still being perceived through my mother's touch.

'It doesn't necessarily mean they'll come marching in,' says Zahn. 'And where can you go in my taxi anyway?'

/> 'It does mean they'll come marching in,' Grandfather says, 'and we'll take your taxi to my brother's. He's the postmaster of Kaprun.'

'That's still Austria,' says Zahn.

'It's the cities that won't be safe,' Grandfather says. 'The Kitzbuhler Alps are very rural.'

'Rural enough to starve, is it?' asks Zahn.

'Librarians put away some money,' Grandfather tells him.

'And how will you get it out of your bank,' Zahn asks, 'in the middle of the night?'

Grandfather says, 'If you decide to stay a while, Zahn, I could endorse my bankbook to you and have you post a draft'

'To your brother the postmaster,' says Zahn. 'Of course.'

'Why can't we just leave in the morning?' Hilke asks. 'Why can't Zahn come with us?'

'He can, if he wants to,' says Grandfather. 'Then I'd stay until morning, and Zahn can drive you.'

'Why can't we all go in the morning?' Grandmother asks. 'Maybe in the morning, we'll find it's going to be all right.'

'A lot of people will be leaving in the morning,' says Grandfather. 'And Zahn hasn't checked in his taxi for a while. Do you think they might start missing your taxi, Zahn?'

'The taxi better go tonight,' Zahn says.

'But if Zahn stays,' says Hilke, 'how can he get to Kaprun?'

'Zahn doesn't have to stay if he doesn't want to,' Grandfather says.

'And why would he want to?' Hilke asks.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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