The Salzburg Tales Read Free Page B

aware that the Archbishop did not give a benedicite for his style. Courteously he bent his head once more to the Archbishop’s chest and said, he hoped his Grace would applaud the Miracle Play of Everyman which they were about to put on again, and that, while indoors one tricked the eye with fat columns and a giant cornice to suggest boundless space, here his stage was two bare boards, for he had to present simple verities, and otherwise his theatre was exalted above fame by the redoubtable acts of Salzburg’s Princes of the Church. Meanwhile, the Director cast glances about him, conscious of whispers and of people standing on tiptoe to see him. He murmured discreetly to the Mayor the hiding-places of his actors concealed on the roofs and explained to a monk that the church-bells of the town would be silent now until the play was done. Then, he glanced over the audience, standing three-quarters on to the Archbishop still, with a gracious air which yet lacked polish, for he was a ready, practical man of elephantine dreams, who tried to give the imagination a footrest on earth: and he was always casting off from his thick, square shoulders set on his thick long torso, presentiments of trouble, of criticism and of failure. His eye grouped the audience quickly this way and that like the parting of thick hair with a comb. Here were the art patrons, rich amateurs, people of fashion, the Viennese, Berliners, New Yorkers, here the musicians, conductors and actors, there the poor, the townspeople from the boarding-houses, Cook’s tourists: beyond the rope were the
Naturfreunde
, and in the background some wretched of the town and peasants come in from the mountains wearing great black hats and bell-bottomed trousers, and monks and college students, and fishermen, and conscripts from the barracks down the river, and idling shopboys and shopgirls escaped for half an hour. Smiling, bowing and turning in the sun like a buoy in the bay, the Director backed away from the Archbishop and sat down a few seats away, waiting for the play to begin.
    After the Festival Director came the V IENNESE C ONDUCTOR , with another Conductor from Munich. The Viennese Conductor was like a tasselled reed, with shoulders and hands spreading outwards, delicate hips and a soft, long, feline stride: he sometimes took shorter steps and sometimes longer as if to show that in him the passion of rhythm was constant but tidal. He looked this way and that as he bowed obsequiously over his companion’s conversation, smiling to himself on the side, as if he had a tiding of joy in his sleeve, and gathering in the ladies’ glances; it might have been harvest-time and he a reaping-hook. Bowing, with long bright looks of adulation, he acknowledged the distinguished guests, and stooped with manner consciously rich and theatrical to the Archbishop, for whom he did not give a fig. He took the hand of an aged prima donna and looked as if he would faint from excessive admiration; and then he walked on indifferently, dropping all this behind him, like a dolphin in the waves, going on from easy conquest to easy conquest, speaking of violins and sunshine, of Max Reinhardt and overtones, of Mozart and Apollo, easily, wittily, with everything said in reverse in order to amuse. He was thirty years of age and had conducted orchestras since the age of six. He delighted especially in chamber concerts where the atmosphere was intimate and the women were near enough to study his attitudes, how he swooned with ecstasy one moment and closed his eyes wearily at another, how his eyes sparkled when the soft theme rose on the strings, and again, how he snapped his fingers quickly, impatient to hear the quick tread of the bows getting through the thicket of notes in soldierly unison: now he waved them off with both hands, entreating them not to assail his silken nerves with such boisterousness, now he bowed to them, and scooped them out of the basin of the orchestra, then he