Annette Nauraine

This book is based on the opera, Arabella, by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmansthal. Hofmansthal died suddenly of a heart attack while dressing for his son's funeral, who had committed suicide. Strauss's intention was to make Zdenka, not Arabella, the heroine of the opera. I've done what I think the composer and librettist wanted and made Zdenka, the cross-dressing, younger sister, the main character of my book. I hope you enjoy this excerpt. 

There's a preceding Prologue, which I've chosen not to include.

 

 

Vienna, Austria, 1867

 

Gräfin Zdenka Waldner tugged at her gentleman's evening jacket. “Cousin Thomas's suits are becoming a bit snug. I can’t button it.”

“Your bosom is growing.” Gräfin Arabella, Zdenka’s beautiful, older sister, giggled.

Zdenka moaned. “Just what a boy like me needs. I don’t mind being your brother…” She squirmed and pulled at the tight wrappings. “But these bindings are bothersome.”

“After the Coachman’s Ball in a few weeks, you can give up being a boy and return to your rightful gender,” Arabella said, trying, Zdenka knew, to nudge her toward respectability.

“I’m not eager to return to being a woman. I’ve rather come to enjoy the freedom I have as a gentleman. I can do as I please, walk about unescorted, ride when and where I please.” Zdenka pressed her nose to the windowpane of the fiacre and watched as the houses and apartments, lit by gaslight, became elegant houses, and then palaces.

They had been in Vienna since the January, through snow, rain and sleet. Mercifully, spring murmured its impending arrival now, in this beginning of April. The city was beautiful, but noisy, with air sooty from coal fires, dwellings crowded together and women hunting for husbands. It was everything she could do not to find a mount and ride the distance back to their run-down estate in Hohenruppersdorf with its fields and pine forests, its pastures and livestock. Back to where she was most herself and no one cared if she wore pants or petticoats.

“Don't become too fond of being my brother,” Arabella said, using her big-sister know-it-all voice that chafed Zdenka. “Galloping about in trousers on the farm is one thing, but next fasching, you’ll be looking for your own husband and you’ll have to wear a dress.”

Fasching, the Viennese social season commenced in November and ended on Shrove Tuesday. It consisted of endless parties, balls, soirees, and general carousing, all meant to foster advantageous matches between the upper classes. The Coachman's Ball was the final ball before the gloomy descent of Lent when all of Catholic Austria refrained from life’s pleasures—even drinking hot chocolate. It was at that evening that many of the best matches were made.

“I like dresses fine, but they’re impractical for birthing lambs, riding, and pitching hay and bringing in crops. You, of all people, know how much I want to go home and rebuild the farm.”  Zdenka scratched behind her ear. Mama had shorn her hair so she could pass as a boy, but the pomade used to control her curls felt like horse glue.

With Papa having gambled away most of their fortune, there wasn’t money for two debuts—which Zdenka didn’t want anyway. There wasn’t even money for Mama to buy a new gown and the ones she had were out of date, threadbare and shabby. Arabella had only this one Season to make a good match. So, Zdenka, dressed as a young man, was pressed into service as Arabella’s chaperone for every tea, soiree, dance, theater, orchestra or opera performance. Zdenka was willing to do anything, including stand on her head in front of St. Stephan’s Dom, if it meant Arabella could make a good match and save the farm from the debtors.

Arabella seemed not to hear her. “Next year, you'll return as my distant cousin and no one will be the wiser. You’ll have a brilliant season, and we’ll find you a tolerant, indulgent husband.”

Zdenka knew how to quiet her sister. “As far as I can tell, men only want a mindless vessel for their children.”

“Zdenka, how vulgar,” Arabella chided. “This is what comes from reading all those foreign newspapers and essays by those so-called emancipated women. It makes you appear unattractively intelligent. Really, you mustn't forget you are still a lady underneath those trousers.”

“Intelligence isn’t a bad characteristic in a lady. And I haven’t forgotten I’m female, but marriage isn’t necessary for running a farm.” Or for much else, as far as she could see from her parent's marriage.

“You do need marriage,” Arabella said, with an edge to her voice. “Mine. Don’t forget my marriage will save your beloved farm from Papa’s gambling.”

Guilt washed through Zdenka. “I do want you to marry someone you love, not just to save the farm. I appreciate your sacrifice for the family.”

But Zdenka had made a promise to her Grossmutti to keep the farm in the family, and she intended to keep it, even if it meant pushing Arabella toward the altar. Zdenka could still feel her grandmama’s knob-knuckled hands gripping her own small, dirty hands. In her quavering voice, Grandmama had said, ‘You are the last hope of our ancestors. Promise me you’ll never let the land leave our family. You can be whoever you want here at Friedenheim. I know you love the farm as much as I do. My destiny was here and yours is, too.’

A week later, grandmama had died in her sleep. Zdenka swore on her grave she would never let Friedenheim leave the Waldner family.

Arabella’s feet tip-tapped a  rhythm on the floor of the fiacre. “I can’t wait for the Coachman’s ball. It’s the best and final ball of fasching. To think the Coachman’s ball has been held for two hundred years. That our parents attended the same ball.”

“By that night, you have to make up your mind which of the Grafen you will marry. You can’t keep waiting for the right man,” Zdenka said. Arabella could be such a giddy featherhead. Except for her obsession of finding the right man, ideas floated in and out of her mind like dandelion puffs.

“I know you think it’s silly, my waiting for the right man,” Arabella said with a wistful note in her voice. “But it’s all I’ve ever wanted since I was a child.”

“And what if he’s not rich, like one of the Grafen?” Zdenka asked. Because if the right man wasn’t rich, the once rich, noble Waldner’s would be homeless, as well as penniless. And Zdenka was determined not to let that happen.

“Then I'll make a practical and good match. I know what's expected of me, and I'll live up to my obligation,” Arabella said, affecting the more elevated tone and accent pervasive of Viennese upper class.

She had changed into a husband-hunter again. Zdenka missed the carefree sister who laughed from her belly, skipped when she was happy and let her hair trail down her back. This Arabella, in her heavy emerald brocade gown which fit her like a second skin was almost unrecognizable.

The fiacre jostled over a hole in the cobblestones and Arabella’s head bumped against the[ why did we say this?] side of the carriage, mussing her hair. “I’ll have to make a trip to the ladies robing room to straighten myself out.”

“Not a problem I have.” Zdenka touched her curls and winced, missing her once long braids. It was the only thing she disliked about being a young man. She consoled herself with the certainty her hair would grow back.

Their carriage pulled up to the palais one of Vienna's most infamous hostesses, Gräfin Thea Prokovsky. Arabella gave her fluttery Viennese laugh. “Let's not spoil the evening mooning a marriage of necessity. Let's enjoy ourselves, shall we, brother?”

Zdenka leapt out of the carriage, flipped down the step and helped Arabella down. As usual, heads turned to watch her. With Arabella on her elbow, the two started up the marble stairs. In front of them, an elderly man slipped and collapsed down on one knee with a groan of pain.

A strapping soldier quickly brushed past them, took the stairs two at a time, and helped the man to his feet. The soldier bent his head to speak to the old man. He brushed the knee of his trousers and steadied the man until he resumed climbing the stairs under his own power.

The soldier turned, and, for a moment he peered, not at Arabella, but for once, at Zdenka. Lamplight fell across his face, making it all sharp angles and shadows. His narrow-eyed gaze seemed at once wary and challenging.

Something in Zdenka bubbled like hot butter on a griddle. The sensation was not altogether unpleasant, but it was unfamiliar and confusing. Men were unnecessary.

Weren’t they?

“Not at all. It’s kind of you to think of it,” Matteo said. “No one knows what it was like, and even we soldiers want to forget.”

But, then, there were things he wanted, needed to remember, but could not.