The Silence

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A lone figure stood high up in the central spire of Vienna’s Rathaus. At the observation window above the enormous illuminated clock, he surveyed the city he ruled, feeling the juddering thud of each minute’s passing in the mechanism beneath his feet.

For a time, he watched the docile Viennese plod about their business this brutally cold afternoon of the last day of January. The skies were clear, brittle blue, and afforded a view to the northwest of the Vienna Woods, flecked in snow.

Slowly, menacingly, he allowed his eyes to move to the far left middle distance. There stood the twin towers of the Votivkirche, which he regarded as an open insult to him. This was the devotional church to the emperor, Franz Josef, built to commemorate the occasion when the young emperor survived an assassin’s knife.

Doktor Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna for three years, and something of a king himself, scowled as he gazed at the emperor’s church. He and Franz Josef were old enemies; thrice had the Habsburg denied Lueger his place as mayor, even after the Viennese had resoundingly elected him. Three times Franz Josef had felt it his solemn duty to save the Viennese from themselves.

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