‘Franz Josef was not so gay either,’ said Gerstenbacker, as we went down to the crypt, ‘He lived here in one room and watched his empire fall to pieces. Because you know here was made a great dream of a glorious Europe. Once, you understand of course, we were Europe.’ We had Spain, the Nederland, Italy, the Balkans. All run from here. Not the crypt, of course, upstairs, where is Waldheim now.’ ‘Oh, is he?’ I asked, ‘The great forgetter.’ ‘Well, some things we remember, some we forget,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘Yes, here was the Emperor, the archdukes, the courtiers, the diplomats. The bureauarats, the policemen, the apparatus, the files, the rules of law, and trade, and censorship.’ ‘It all sounds a bit like Brussels now,’ I said. ‘The same,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘The European Community, you know we will join very soon. I believe we have some experiences that would be useful.’ ‘I’m sure you do,’ I said. ‘Good, now you have seen some of our past, next I will show you some of our modern,’ said Gerstenbacker, checking his piece of paper, ‘In fact I will show you everything.’

And sure enough, over the course of the next hours, Gersten­backer did exactly that. He showed me as much of everything as time and the human frame would permit. He showed me gothic, the church of darkness and mystery, and he showed me baroque, ! the church of light and joy. He showed me Biedermeier, the art of the bourgeois, and he showed mejugendstil, the art of dissent. He showed me Calvinism; he showed me the New Eroticism. He showed me Egon Schiele and he showed me Gustav Klimt; he showed me Salome and he showed me Judith. He showed me the Café Central where Trotsky used to sit and reflect, he showed me a table used by Krafft-Ebing, he showed me the home of Gustav Mahler. He showed me the consulting rooms of Sigmund Freud at Berggasse 19, its contents mostly disappeared, where sex-shocked patients once used to lie among portraits of Minerva and pictures of Troy. He explained to me things that were there, things that had once been there, and even things that had never been visibly there but came nonetheless. For he briefly took me out of the city and into the Vienna Woods, where Freud had once bicycled, and where a plaque among the trees read very simply: ‘Here, on July 24, 1895, the secret of dreams revealed itself to Dr Sigm. Freud.’

And all the time, as we toured the city, getting on a tram here and taking a taxi there, I tried to encourage perfectly pleasant young Gerstenbacker to talk to me about Bazlo Criminale. There was no obstruction; he seemed totally willing. Yet always, it seemed, there was some absolutely necessary diversion or other. ‘Look, tell me, do you have any idea where Criminale stays or who he sees when he visits Vienna?’ I would ask. ‘You think he comes to Vienna?’ he would say. ‘Professor Codicil said he comes to Vienna,’ I would say, ‘He said it was one of his homes from home, you remember.’ ‘Homes from home, not home from homes?’ he would say, ‘By the way, do you like to see a building with a cabbage on the top of it?’ ‘Homes from home,’ I would say, ‘What do you mean a building with a cabbage on the top of it?’

‘It has a cabbage on the top of it.’ ‘Why does it have a cabbage on the top of it?’ I would ask. ‘It has a cabbage on the top of it because of course Josef-Maria Olbrich put it there.’ ‘Who did?’ I asked. ‘Olbrich, don’t you know him? The friend of Otto Wagner? They all wanted to make a great Secession together.’ ‘I see,’ I said, ‘So when Criminale comes to Vienna, where does he stay?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he would say. ‘Who are his friends?’ I would ask. ‘Does he have some?’ he would say. ‘I expect so,’ I would say, ‘You’ve never met him?’ ‘I, of course not,’ Gerstenbacker would say, ‘I think the Secession was really where the Viennese baroque shook hands with Viennese modernism.’ ‘We’re back to the cabbage, are we?’ ‘Don’t you like to see it? It is very famous.’ ‘All right, Gerstenbacker,’ I said at last, ‘Let’s go and see a building with a cabbage on the top of it.’

The building Gerstenbacker took me to was the famous Seces­sion Building (motto: ‘To the age its art, and to art its freedom’); sure enough, it did indeed have a kind of cabbage-shaped metal dome on the top of it. We walked inside, to see the place where, in the 18905, Viennese baroque met Viennese modernism, and an art of the new, now already beginning to look like an art of the old, was born. ‘What about Professor Codicil?’ I asked as we looked round, ‘Does he see much of Criminale?’ ‘I think perhaps not any more, I think he no more comes so often,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘Do you like to know who paid for all this?’ ‘Yes, who did?’ I asked. ‘Wittgenstein’s father,’ said Gerstenbacker. ‘So where does he spend most of his time these days?’ ‘In the tomb, I think. He is dead,’ said Gerstenbacker.

‘Now please, Gerstenbacker, not Wittgenstein’s father,’ I said sharply, ‘I’m trying to talk to you about Doctor Criminale.’ ‘But how can I tell you these things, really I have no idea,’ said Gerstenbacker innocently, ‘Did you know that Ludwig Wittgenstein and Adolf Hitler went to the same school?’ ‘No idea at all?’ I asked, ‘Wittgenstein and Hitler went to the same school?’ ‘Yes, in Linz,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘If only Adolf Hitler had had a bit better marks, he might today be professor of philosophy at your University of Cambridge.’ ‘That’s quite a thought,’ I said, ‘If Wittgenstein had had worse ones, he could have been up there telling the Nuremberg rallies that the limits of our language are the limits of our world.’ For a moment Gerstenbacker considered this gravely. ‘Perhaps it is theoretically possible,’ he said at last, ‘I do not think it is likely. But he would not have gone to Cambridge and you would have had no Viennese philosophy at all.’

When we went out into the street outside the Secession Building, Gerstenbacker started again. ‘So now I think you would like to see an opera house with cats.’ ‘What is an opera house with cats?’ I asked. ‘You don’t know cats?’ he asked, ‘Cats are by Andrew Lloyd Webber.’ By now I thought I had taken the point. Gerstenbacker was a perfectly nice young man, but the task assigned to him by Codicil was plainly to get me as far away from Criminale as possible. ‘You’re very kind, Mr Gerstenbacker,’ I said, ‘But really I don’t want to see any more Imperial Vienna, any more Baroque Vienna, any more Secession Vienna, any more Freudian Vienna. I especially don’t want to see Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Vienna. What I want to see is Criminale’s Vienna.’ ‘But it doesn’t exist,’ he said. ‘No?’ I asked. ‘After the Second World War when he came there really was no Vienna.’ ‘At least you admit he came,’ I said, ‘But what do you mean there was no Vienna?’ ‘Well, there were four Viennas,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘There were four zones, Russian, American, British, French, yes? And now I think you must go to see the Blue Danube.’ ‘It’s not necessary,’ I said. ‘But of course,’ said Gerstenbacker, shocked, ‘You cannot come to Vienna and never see the Blue Danube. We will go to Nussdorf.’

So we went on a tram to Nussdorf, where we stood on the end of a decrepit pier and did not see the Blue Danube. For the Blue Danube, as you probably know all too well already, since we live in an age of travel, is not actually blue. That is probably why the Viennese, quite some time ago, considerately moved the Danube right out of the city altogether and put it in a concrete cutting in a far suburb, where it would not constantly be checked, and they could go on singing about it without embarrassment. We stood on the pier and stared down at a dirty brown flow as it passed nervelessly by; nearby a group of dispirited Japanese tourists refused even to uncap their cameras, despite the urgings of their dirndled guide. ‘It’s brown,’ I said, ‘It’s brown and muddy.’ ‘Yes,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘But it is also going blue in certain lights.’ ‘Gerstenbacker,’ I said, as we turned and walked back into Nussdorf, ‘have you ever actually seen the Blue Danube when it was blue?’ ‘No, but I come from Graz,’ said Gerstenbacker. ‘Have any of your friends or relatives seen the Blue Danube when it was blue?’ I asked. ‘No,’ said Gerstenbacker, ‘But in Vienna we know it is blue.’