Untitled Frederic Morton Memoir

Chapter 1:Vienna 1936Austerlitz and I He will arrive as He should arrive -- eventually, in due time. His slowness is part of the thrill. So is the slight shock against my skin as I sit down to await Him. Against my back tingles wood as hard and cold and electric as I've known only in the seats of the Lux Movie Theater in our outer district in Vienna, in the midthirties.The fans won't start revolving until everybody has settled down. Overhead the three bulbs, already burned out last time, still haven't been replaced. Three chandelier arms still curve lightless, naked, sooty. This will make the transition from present dreariness to His radiance all the more exciting. Actually, the less illumination right now, the better. I'm less exposed to people staring at my clothes.In the Lux Movie Theater almost all other kids my age wear rough loden jackets and manly weathered leather shorts. I must sit there in a sissy sailor suit. Those staring kids have no knowledge, of course, of my own leather shorts, which are as toughly weathered as any of theirs. They have no idea that the sailor suit is the fault of the Cafe Landtmann; that I'm allowed movies only right after our family hot chocolate at the flossy Landtmann downtown, where men's cuff links gleam up during hand kissing and where I must scrawl on some fringed paper napkin examples of my penmanship for Aunt Emma. The Lux kids don't know that her jokes about my Chinese letters always go on and on, followed by Uncle Karl's endless, nervous, underbreath interpretations of the latest speech from Berlin. Nor do the Lux kids know or care that that's how I'm kept captive until after 4 PM, which means no chance to change into my leather shorts: I have barely two and a half hours for Him at the Lux, including travel time: I must be home again, ready for the supper table, hands washed, at 7 PM sharp -- in fact, earlier these days, when the sun sets sooner. My father, having caught Uncle Karl's nervousness, has decreed that in such times as ours I can't be out after dark. Therefore, to make His five o'clock showing I must rush like mad from Landtmann to the Lux, still imprisoned in my horrid sailor suit.How explain all that to the starers? Or explain further that I'm sitting almost alone in this expensive row up front only because even with my glasses I'd be unable to see Him clearly farther back? Since my bond with Him would be less special if I gave it away, I never mention Him to my mother in any emphatic way. I just remind her of the headache I get from eyestrain -- presto! she coughs up the extra fifty groschen for a seat nearer the screen. And she's always good for the thirty groschen more that buy the program on which only very few others in the audience have splurged. To me the program is vital, brimming with portraits and revelations of Him. To my father this is just the sort of indulgence that will spoil a child. Still, my mother always prevails with her theory about my film program collecting: it may not be as constructive as stamp collecting, but at least it does encourage the discipline I badly need if I am ever to improve my grades.Grades, study habits, politics...all that fuss recedes, now that the chandelier is dimming. At the same time pictures begin to glimmer up across the speckles of the screen. They are His vanguard, even though they are just hand-painted lantern slides advertising local stores.Two identical loden jackets appear; one coffee-stained and dotted by the little spots of the screen; the other with the stain removed but of course still screen-mottled -- A. Lazar, the neighborhood cleaner. Cherries, mottled and voluptuously lipstick red -- the greengrocer Peter Zeleny. The locksmith Alois Matuschek, with a big mottled, mustached grin, holding aloft a big mottled lock.After Matuschek the house grows quite dark. The ceiling fans have begun to rotate: propellers that will soon fly the Lux TMorton, Frederic is the author of 'Untitled Frederic Morton Memoir' with ISBN 9780743225397 and ISBN 0743225392.