The Only Woman in the Room

by Marie Benedict

Democrat. Or worse, my benefactor could sympathize with the National Socialist Party and long for the unification of Austria with Germany and its newly named chancellor, Adolf Hitler.

All except one man. There, in the center of the third row, the most prized seat in the theater, stood a barrel-chested and square-jawed gentleman. Alone among all the patrons of the Theater an der Wien, he remained standing. Staring at me.

Acting had been a ward against childhood loneliness, a way to fill my quiet existence with people beyond the ever-present nanny and tutor but the ever-absent Mama and Papa.

And I liked learning that the power I had over men mirrored the power I had over the audience—to keep them in my thrall.

“Then you know that as soon as the Nazis came to power, they began a formal boycott of Jewish businesses and banned all non-Aryans from the legal profession and civil service. Jewish German citizens have not only been subject to violent attacks, but they’ve been stripped of their citizenship rights—rights that Austrian Jews have counted upon since the 1840s.”

“Mr. Mandl has a long-standing relationship with Mussolini; he supplied him with weaponry for years. The rumor is that he arranged the meeting between Dollfuss and Mussolini.”

“This Mr. Mandl is the man behind Chancellor Dollfuss’s throne. But he may also be the man behind Austria’s continued independence.”

And my family, well, we really didn’t consider ourselves Jewish, except in a vague, cultural sense. We were fully assimilated into the vibrant cultural life of the capital city. We were Viennese above all else.

“Rulers and movements may rise and fall, but the power of money always prevails,” Fritz said.

“You cannot treat this man as you’ve treated all those boys that came before, Hedy. When you tire of him, when he angers you, you cannot treat him as one of your past fripperies. The stakes are too high. Do you understand, Hedy?”

“Good, because this is for life, Hedy. For all our lives.”

The strength and independence Fritz seemed to have admired during our brief dating days had evaporated, replaced by a fierce need for my acquiescence and a fervent desire to exact verbal retribution should I not meet his standards.

I knew that the Schutzbund was the military arm of the Social Democratic party, run by the Jewish leader Otto Bauer.

I’d been the only woman in the room, the only pop of color in a sea of dark suits.

The Christian Social Party—Fritz’s people—are anti-Semites too.”

“Because of Barbara La Marr, the silent film star who died of a heroin overdose. You remember her, don’t you?”

“No man owns me, Mr. Mayer. And no man ever will. Not even you.”