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 Pop Music, Culture and Identity

Series Editors
Steve Clark
Graduate School Humanities and Sociology
University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan

Tristanne Connolly
Department of English, St Jerome’s University
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Jason Whittaker
School of English & Journalism, University of Lincoln
Lincoln, Lincolnshire, United Kingdom
Pop music lasts. A form all too often assumed to be transient, commercial
and mass-cultural has proved itself durable, tenacious and continually
evolving. As such, it has become a crucial component in defining various
forms of identity (individual and collective) as influenced by nation, class,
gender and historical period. Pop Music, Culture and Identity investigates
how this enhanced status shapes the iconography of celebrity, provides an
ever-expanding archive for generational memory and accelerates the
impact of new technologies on performing, packaging and global market-
ing. The series gives particular emphasis to interdisciplinary approaches
that go beyond musicology and seeks to validate the informed testimony
of the fan alongside academic methodologies.

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14537
 Ewa Mazierska
Editor

Popular Music
in Eastern Europe
Breaking the Cold War Paradigm
Editor
Ewa Mazierska
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Central Lancashire
Preston, UK

Pop Music, Culture and Identity

ISBN 978-1-137-59272-9 ISBN 978-1-137-59273-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59273-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016948833

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Cover illustration: © Split disc jockey Domagoj Veršić at work in Disco Club Gusar, 1969
© Sloven Mosettig 2016

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United
Kingdom
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book would not be possible without the help of many colleagues and
friends, to whom I wish to express my gratitude. One of them is my
previous research assistant, Lars Kristensen, who encouraged me to con-
duct research on popular music. I am also grateful to Elżbieta Ostrowska,
Zsolt Gyori, Laszlo Strauss and Aimar Ventsel for their insightful com-
ments on the introduction and some of the chapters included in this
collection.
I am also grateful to various individuals and institutions who granted us
interviews and allowed us to use the photos in specific chapters, and to
Felicity Plester and Sophie Auld at Palgrave for making working on this
book as pleasant and efficient process as it can be.

v
 CONTENTS

1 Introduction 1
Ewa Mazierska

Part I State Policies and its Interpretation by Grassroots

2 Propagated, Permitted or Prohibited? State Strategies

to Control Musical Entertainment in the First Two
Decades of Socialist Hungary 31
Ádám Ignácz

3 Pop-Rock and Propaganda During the Ceaușescu

Regime in Communist Romania 51
Doru Pop

4 Estonian Invasion as Western Ersatz-pop 69

Aimar Ventsel

5 The Eagle Rocks: Isolation and Cosmopolitanism

in Albania’s Pop-Rock Scene 89
Bruce Williams

vii
viii CONTENTS

Part II The Function of ‘Gatekeepers’

6 Censorship, Dissent and the Metaphorical Language

of GDR Rock 109
David Robb

7 Folk Music as a Folk Enemy: Music Censorship

in Socialist Yugoslavia 129
Ana Hofman

8 ‘The Second Golden Age’: Popular Music Journalism

during the Late Socialist Era of Hungary 149
Zsófia Réti

9 Youth Under Construction: The Generational Shifts

in Popular Music Journalism in the Poland of the 1980s 171
Klaudia Rachubińska and Xawery Stańczyk

10 The Birth of Socialist Disc Jockey: Between Music Guru,

DIY Ethos and Market Socialism 195
Marko Zubak

Part III Eastern European Stars

11 Karel Gott: The Ultimate Star of Czechoslovak

Pop Music 217
Petr A. Bílek

12 Czesław Niemen: Between Enigma and Political

Pragmatism 243
Ewa Mazierska

13 Omega: Red Star from Hungary 265

Bence Csatári and Béla Szilárd Jávorszky
 CONTENTS ix

14 Perverse Imperialism: Republika’s Phenomenon

in the 1980s 283
Piotr Fortuna

Index 303
 LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 4.1 Fix in Vanemuise theatre, Tartu, Estonia, 1983 82

Fig. 5.1 Matura 72 98
Fig. 5.2 Aleksandër Gjoka in concert 102
Fig. 6.1 Silly in the 1980s 125
Fig. 8.1 The total number of popular music-related articles
in the Hungarian youth press, 1964–1974 154
Fig. 8.2 Popular music content in Ifjúsági Magazin, 1973–1989 156
Fig. 10.1 Pioneer disc jockey Domagoj Veršić at work in 1969
in Split’s Gusar club 201
Fig. 10.2 A 1975 self-made promotional poster for Zoran Modli’s
travelling disco show 208
Fig. 11.1 Gottmania explodes in Prague: Karel Gott faces the crowd
of people who welcome him after his return from Las Vegas
at the Prague airport 227
Fig. 11.2 Karel Gott posing as a star before his departure for Rio de
Janiero festival in 1968 231
Fig. 11.3 Karel Gott receives the title of National Artist from
president Husák in 1985 236
Fig. 12.1 Flamboyant Niemen at the peak of his career 246
Fig. 12.2 Niemen performing Mournful Rhapsody in Memoriam
of Bem 256
Fig. 13.1 Omega in its heyday in the mid-1970s 275
Fig. 13.2 Band members celebrating the 25th anniversary of Omega
in 1987 278
Fig. 14.1 Grzegorz Ciechowski performing during Rockowisko
festival in 1981 287

xi
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction
Popular Music in Eastern Europe: Breaking
the ‘Cold War Paradigm’

Ewa Mazierska

The purpose of this collection is to examine popular music in Eastern Europe

during the period of state socialism. Its roots lie in frustration at the limited
amount of scholarly work available in English concerning popular music in
Eastern Europe and the perspective applied in the majority of them. The
number of volumes devoted to popular music originating from, and con-
sumed in countries such as Poland, Hungary or East Germany is low, not
only in comparison with books about music in the Anglo-American centre
but also with what is known as ‘world music’. It also rarely happens that
music from this part of the world is used to illustrate phenomena pertaining
to popular music at large, such as stars, genres, music videos, live music,
subcultures or local identity. The only exception is when authors discuss the
relationship between music and politics (for example, Szemere 1992;
Wicke 1992; Wicke and Shepherd 1993; Mitchell 1996: 95-136; Bennett
2000: 49; Connell and Gibson 2003: 120–21), due to the fact that rock

E. Mazierska (*)
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Central Lancashire,
Preston, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2016 1

E. Mazierska (ed.), Popular Music in Eastern Europe, Pop Music,
Culture and Identity, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59273-6_1
2 E. MAZIERSKA

from Eastern Europe is seen as more political than its western counterpart;
an opinion which is problematic. Moreover, existing studies focused on
Eastern European popular music, most importantly Timothy Ryback’s
Rock Around the Bloc (1990) and the collection Rocking the State: Rock
Music and Politics in Eastern Europe and Russia (1994), edited by Sabrina
Petra Ramet, are based on problematic assumptions which, broadly speak-
ing, reflect a way of thinking pertaining to the Cold War, even if they were
already written and published after the fall of state socialism. This collection
has the ambition to interrogate and challenge these assumptions.

FROM SELF-COLONISATION TO PARTICIPATION

IN COSMOPOLITAN CULTURE

One of the assumptions made in existing studies concerns the allegedly

marginal status of Eastern European popular music not only globally, but
also within the Eastern bloc. Ryback and Ramet argue that, whenever
permitted, consumers of popular music from Hungary, Poland or
Romania tuned into the media broadcasting western music rather than
choosing performers addressing them in their own language. In the intro-
duction to Rock Around the Bloc Ryback evokes a meeting of Mikhail and
Raisa Gorbachev with the widow of John Lennon, Yoko Ono, in which
the then Soviet leader and his spouse present themselves as Lennon’s fans.
Ryback also mentions the Beatlemania in Poland, East Germany and the
Czech Republic, concluding that:

Western rock culture has debunked Marxist-Leninist assumptions about the

state’s ability to control its citizens. Across more than eight thousand miles
of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, from the cusp of the Berlin Wall to
the dockyards of Vladivostok, three generations of young socialists, who
should have been bonded by the liturgy of Marx and Lenin, have instead
found common ground in the music of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.
(Ryback 1990: 5)

Ramet muses: ‘A Yugoslav poll taken in late 1988 found that Eric
Clapton, a rock guitarist, was one of the people most admired by young
people and that he was more popular among the young than was Serbian
party boss Slobodan Milošević.’ Later she adds, ‘There is one figure who
casts a long shadow over the entire East European (and Russian) rock
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

scene and who served as an inspiration to an entire generation: former

Beatle John Lennon’ (Ramet 1994: 6).
Such claims, although they might be factually correct, lead to questionable
conclusions, such as that Lennon and Clapton were more popular in the East
than local stars and that throughout its history the state socialist East
remained under the spell of a limited number of iconic western stars, hence
being doubly backward, by being unable to develop its own rock culture and
having limited access to western rock.
Instead, the Gorbachevs’ tender recollection of Lennon might reflect
more their generation (being born in the 1930s), their limited knowledge
of pop-rock, and their politeness towards their visitor than the true stand-
ing of Lennon in the Soviet bloc at the time of Yoko Ono’s visit. Clapton’s
greater popularity among young Serbians than Milošević, in my opinion,
merely points to the well-known fact that young people (especially after
the end of the 1960s) have shown little interest in politics and hence
politicians cannot compete with pop stars as role models.
If the West provided the East with the only acceptable cultural model, as
above-mentioned authors argue, then popular music of any value originat-
ing from this region was a product of imitation. Given that during the Cold
War the socialist East and the capitalist West were in conflict, the character
of such music was oppositional. Rock stars were heroes and martyrs, ‘rock-
ing the state’, as the title of Ramet’s collection announces, fighting with the
Leninist ideologues and politicians. In the most extreme version of this
view, as proposed by Ramet, ‘the archetypal rock star became, symbolically,
the muse of revolution. The decaying communist regimes (in Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, and Romania especially) seemed to fear the electric guitar
more than bombs and rifles’ (Ramet 1994: 2).1 According to this narrative,
if such stars stayed in their own countries, rather than escaping to the West,
this was either because they were locked behind the Iron Curtain or felt
responsible for revolutionising the masses, rather than because working for
the eastern culture industry brought them some benefits, outstripping the
potential advantages of working in the West. By the same token, listeners
tuned into their stars to capture the sounds of revolution or at least political
subversion. This also means that if a given state was seen as particularly
totalitarian, there was no pop-rock worthy of its name, as Ramet argues in
relation to Albania and Romania (Ramet 1994: ix).
These assumptions have been labelled as ‘self-colonisation’ and ‘political
subversion versus state propaganda’. The argument in this book is not that
they are false, but that they are simplistic and prevent us from appreciating
4 E. MAZIERSKA

Eastern European popular music in its richness and complexity, including its
artistry. At the same time as projecting the Eastern European rocker as an
anti-communist fighter, they render the consumer of such music as a
machine for capturing political (sub)text, rather than boys and girls search-
ing for entertainment, for whom catchy melody is more important than
the message of a song. In this context it is worth mentioning Simon Firth
referring to a survey of high school students that was carried out in Michigan
in the 1970s which concluded that ‘the vast majority of teenage listeners are
unaware of what the lyrics of hit protest songs are about’ (Robinson and
Hirsch, quoted in Frith 2007: 95). If listeners in Eastern Europe were similar
in this respect to their American peers, then the researchers’ excessive pre-
occupation with the political content of pop music from this region by-passes
the most important part of their experience.
To move away from the ‘self-colonisation’ paradigm, a different frame-
work is proposed by considering Eastern European popular music as an
articulation of local culture and an act of participation in the global phe-
nomenon of popular music, and especially in what Motti Regev describes
as pop-rock. In relation to the first point authors such as Martin Stokes
(2003a, 2003b), Tony Mitchell (1996), Andy Bennett (2000), and the
author’s own work (2015) are followed. These authors propose to divert
from the colonial discourse or even its specific form, ‘cultural imperialism’,
according to which Anglo-American pop-rock ‘displace and appropriate
authentic representations of local and indigenous music into packed com-
mercial music commodified for ethnically indeterminate, but predominantly
Anglocentric and Eurocentric’ markets (Mitchell 1996: 1). Instead, they
suggest that the ‘imperial’ influences are always reworked at a local level,
leading to producing music which reflects and addresses local needs and
sensibilities, as well as global trends. It is worth mentioning that in the
context of popular music in Eastern Europe the term ‘cultural imperialism’
is especially problematic, because, to the vast majority of those listening to
western stations broadcasting Anglo-American music, it was not a vehicle of
malevolent western powers, but a gentle instrument of enlightenment which
was accepted with gratitude, as the term ‘self-colonisation’ reflects. However,
what the proponents of the ‘cultural imperialism’ thesis and the advocates
of ‘self-colonisation’ have in common is the emphasis on what is taken from
the West, rather than how it is relocated and reworked in a new context. By
contrast, in this collection, the local context will be foregrounded.
Regev is more interested in the global, rather than a local facet of popular
music, seeing pop-rock as pertaining to late modernity and consisting of a
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

process of intensified aesthetic proximity, overlap, and connectivity between

nations and ethnicities or, at the very least, between prominent large sectors
within them. It is a process in which the expressive forms of cultural practices
used by nations at large (and by groupings within them), to signify and
perform their sense of uniqueness, come to share large proportions of
aesthetic common ground, to a point where the cultural uniqueness of
each nation or ethnicity cannot but be understood as a unit within one
complex entity, one variant in a set of quite similar (although never identical)
cases. Aesthetic cosmopolitanisation is a term that is best suited to depict this
process in world culture [and it] refers to the ongoing formation, in late
modernity, of world culture as one complexly interconnected entity, in
which social groupings of all types around the globe growingly share wide
common grounds in their aesthetic perceptions, expressive forms, and
cultural practices. Aesthetic cosmopolitanism refers, then, to the already
existing singular world culture (Regev 2013: 3).
There are several advantages to applying the concept of aesthetic cos-
mopolitanism to the phenomena of pop-rock culture in Eastern Europe
under state socialism. First, automatically condemning it to the position of
a poor relation of music produced in the Anglo-Saxon world is avoided,
even if it is widely acknowledged that it has played a privileged role in the
global culture of pop-rock (Bennett 2000: 53). Second, it allows one to
draw on research about other forms of popular culture produced in Eastern
Europe, most importantly cinema, which is typically seen not as an imitator
of western culture, but as an autonomous product developing according
to its own logic and contributing to global culture along the lines proposed
by Regev. Third, by seeing Eastern European popular music as a form
of global pop-rock, rather than an imitation, various similarities between
popular music can be accounted for within the whole Eastern bloc, and
problems with assessing the meaning of the (relatively rare) cases when
western artists borrow music from the East can be avoided, as recently
happened when Kanye West sampled Omega’s hit Pearls In Her Hair on
his track New Slaves.2 Such instances show, as Regev claims, that pop-rock
is an interconnected entity and, as argued elsewhere, music is always in the
process of relocation and translation (Mazierska 2015).
It is also worth mentioning that socialism, both in its Marxist incarna-
tion and that practised in the Soviet Union, did not reject western culture
tout court, trying to build a superior one from scratch, as some authors
suggest (Risch 2015: 6–7). Rather socialist culture and art were meant to
accommodate and build on progressive elements from all previous styles,
6 E. MAZIERSKA

being a logical culmination of history. As Boris Groys put it, ‘The attitude of
the Bolshevik leaders towards the bourgeois heritage and world culture in
general can be summarised as follows: take from the heritage that which is
“best” and “useful to the proletariat” and use it in the socialist revolution
and construction of the new world’ (Groys 1988: 37). For this reason, Marx
praised Balzac, and Lenin appreciated Tolstoy. Following this logic, there
was nothing inappropriate or dangerous in drawing on western music cre-
ated either in the past or in contemporary times if this culture could be seen
as progressive in the same way as Balzac’s novels. Its bland rejection by some
regimes in some periods rather points to a betrayal of socialist ideals by selfish
and insecure political leaders who did not dare to open their policies to
comparison with other versions of socialism (Yurchak 2006).
Even when dealing with seemingly straightforward cases of imitation,
for example when an artist from the East covers a song from the repertoire
of a western star, employing the paradigm of aesthetic cosmopolitanism
and music as always being ‘on the move’, encourages us to consider it in
multiple contexts: global, national and regional.3 Contributors to this
collection are interested in all these contexts by, for example, examining
the international careers of Eastern European stars and the ways they tried
to fulfil expectations of different types of audiences.

WHOSE MUSIC?: REWORKING IDEOLOGY

AT THE GRASSROOTS LEVEL

Together with diverting from the ‘self-colonisation’ paradigm, this book

tries to overcome the perception of Eastern European pop-rock as being
merely a case of political subversion or collusion with the socialist state, as
summarised by Ryback in his catchphrase: ‘Leninism versus Lennonism’
(Ryback 1990: 50). In this sense it follows in the footsteps of the recent
collection Youth and Rock in the Soviet Bloc (Risch 2015). Its authors
acknowledge that Eastern European pop-rock belongs to the sphere of
politics, as does popular music in the West and in the rest of the world, but
as John Street aptly observes, musicians under state socialism were not only
imprisoned and exiled, but also feted and promoted by the state (Street
2001: 252–53).4 In some countries, most importantly East Germany, they
were also involved in producing state policy concerning popular music
(Wicke and Shepherd 1993; Robb’s chapter in this collection). On many
occasions, it is difficult to say whether a given artist was an anti-communist
martyr or a communist collaborator, as is argued in the chapter about
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

Czesław Niemen. Moreover, pop-rock artists sang and played not only to
upset or flatter the totalitarian rulers but also to express themselves and
transmit universal ideas, as well as to gain popularity and earn their living.
This often involved avoiding engagement in grand politics and ideology,
instead investing their energies in micro-politics, for example being on good
terms with local music journalists and music promoters. To understand the
specificity of popular music in the Eastern bloc, we have to pay at least equal
attention to such micro-politics and the economy of popular music, as to the
grand narrative of the Cold War, with its heroes and villains.
To do so, it is worth employing the Althusserian concept of ideology,
which, although elaborated to account for capitalism, suits state socialism
well. Following Marx, Althusser contended that the economic base or the
infrastructure of the capitalist system determines a two-level superstructure.
First, ‘the State is a “machine” of repression, which enables the ruling classes
(in the nineteenth century the bourgeois class and the “class” of big land-
owners) to ensure their domination over the working class. The Repressive
State Apparatus (RSA) encompasses the police, courts, prisons, the army, as
well as the head of State, the government and the administration’ (Althusser
2006: 92). Second, there are the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs): the
church, educational system, family, legislation, political system, trade unions,
communications (press, radio, television, etc.) and culture (Althusser 2006:
95–6). The ISAs, contrary to the RSA, which is single and operates in the
public domain, are multiple and belong to the private domain. Moreover,
while the RSA functions predominantly by repression, including physical
repression, and only secondarily by ideological means, the ISAs function chiefly
by ideology, but also secondarily by repression even if ultimately this is a very
attenuated and concealed form of repression (Althusser 2006: 97–8).
Following Marx’s formula that the ideology of the dominant class is a
dominant ideology, Althusser believes that ISAs are ultimately in tune with
the RSA. However, many authors after Althusser, even those belonging to
the Marxist tradition, disagree. They argue that, while striving to appear
unified, the terrain of ideology is actually scarred by hidden silences, elisions
and contradictions (Eagleton 2006; on its application to Eastern Europe, see
Näripea 2016). Moreover, ideology does not work simply by imposing on
people certain ideas from the top, but also by reworking them at grassroots
level. Ideologies and ideologues change (ordinary) people, but also people
affect ideologies and not only during revolutions but at other times as well.
This point is conveyed by the authors contributing to this collection.
They refer to the fact that there was no single policy towards popular
8 E. MAZIERSKA

music in the Eastern bloc. Each country had its own (often unwritten)
rules, which changed over the years and even within any given period were
open to interpretation by different agents, such as political leaders, local
politicians and government clerks, and the state media, including promi-
nent journalists and musicians themselves, who tried to navigate between
different expectations, often guessing the best course of action for their
careers. One example is jazz, which was considered as the protest music of
African Americans as well as ‘bourgeois’ decadent music (Yurchak 2006:
166–67; see also Ventsel and Ignácz’s chapters in this collection). Another
example is offered by Ana Hofman in her chapter about the censorship of
popular music in Yugoslavia, where she refers to the neo-folk song
Jugoslavijo, which was panned by critics as kitsch, offending the taste of
the Yugoslav people until it was endorsed by Tito himself as a great
patriotic song.
Although each country and each period was different, certain common-
alities can be found. While the role of RSA was crucial during the Stalinist
period, it diminished during the periods of ‘thaw’ when ISAs became
more important. At the time, censorship eased and popular music gained
more space and autonomy within the official culture. This allowed artists
to develop their own idiom of expression, both due to reworking foreign
influences and drawing on a larger palette of available motifs. Moreover,
from the perspective of socialist ideologues the enemy was initially not
only politically incorrect music, but also music seen as kitsch or inauthen-
tic; what fits Adorno’s description of ‘popular music’ (Adorno 1990) and
‘culture industry’ (Adorno 1991). This is because under state socialism the
division between serious and popular music was meant to disappear by
bringing serious music to the masses5 and creating popular music of a high
standard. As Peter Wicke and John Shepherd argue in relation to East
Germany, the laws ‘required that the workers who were expending their
energies building socialism should be entertained only by highly qualified
individuals with an appropriate degree from an artistic educational institu-
tion’ (Wicke and Shepherd 1993: 26). Workers were meant to ‘benefit
from the best kind of entertainment possible, and what was considered
best derived from traditional bourgeois notions of art’ (Wicke and
Shepherd 1993: 28). One means to achieving this goal was by encoura-
ging popular musicians to gain a university education and attributing
different categories or ‘tariffs’ reflecting their musical craft to them, as
demonstrated by passing certain exams. Such an approach might indirectly
have led to developing in Eastern Europe music which drew on high art to a
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

larger extent than in the West, as exemplified by Czesław Niemen, who in his
work drew on Polish romantic poetry, or Karel Gott who sang opera arias.
Another aspect of the same approach was the use of folk music, seen as an
‘authentic’ expression of the masses. In this respect (as in many others) music
in Eastern Europe was not very different from its western counterpart, where
folk versus pop opposition surfaced in the 1960s, in part as a response to Bob
Dylan abandoning acoustic guitar in favour of the electric guitar (Buxton
1990: 428). The difference was that the perception of authenticity of folk
music lasted much longer in the East, leading to the development there of
many types of folk rock, such as ‘shepherd rock’ and ‘ethno-rock’. The
advantage of such genres was its attractiveness to foreign audiences, who
regarded them as mildly exotic ‘world’ music (Connell and Gibson 2003:
121). Privileging of high(er) art within popular music also led to a situation
where some genres of popular music subsidised others. A case in point was
the use of revenue from rock concerts in Poland in the 1980s to help sustain
the jazz industry (Zieliński 2005: 98-9).
After the end of Stalinism not only did it become unlikely for musicians
to be sent to prison for singing subversive songs, but the role of (any)
ideology in the success of a specific musician or genre diminished. It was
rather the quality of ‘music as music’ which decided the popularity and
critical acclaim of a given artist or song. At this time it was also impossible
for musicians to ignore the needs of the audience. Only by addressing
them could they become popular and achieve a degree of artistic freedom
and commercial success. It is true that under state socialism there was no
simple correlation between the popularity of a particular performer and his
or her financial success, largely due to the state monopoly of the record
industry, which often reacted with delay to the audience’s needs and did
not pay artists royalties in proportion to the sale of their records.
Nevertheless, there was a link, as the more copies they sold, the more
gigs they could play, which was typically the main source of their income.
This also brought the chance to perform on television, which was a source
of additional income, or to write music for film or theatre. Furthermore,
success in the domestic market increased the chance to perform and make
records abroad. Many bands from Eastern Europe had to content them-
selves with playing in small to medium size clubs, where they earned
relatively little in comparison to their western counterparts. However,
due to the high exchange rate of western currency on the black market,
back home their earnings were significant and allowed them a standard of
living which was much higher than the population average.
10 E. MAZIERSKA

In the 1980s in some countries such as Poland and Hungary, a slow

neo-liberalisation of the popular music industry can be observed. At
this time, creating the culture industry in Adorno’s sense was not only
tolerated but encouraged. This was reflected in the breaking of the state’s
monopoly of the record industry by private companies entering the market
and an increase in concert ticket prices. This situation led to a greater
differentiation of the economic status between the biggest stars and less
popular musicians, and a greater independence of artists from state
politics. In Poland in the last years of state socialism, despite the overall
economic crisis, one could observe in the popular music business a shift
from the economy of shortages to a market economy, where supply
exceeds demand. This was reflected, for example, by cancelling various
rock festivals and other gigs not because of their subversive character, but
because there were not enough people willing to buy tickets (Zieliński
2005: 75-6). Moreover, changes in the technology, most importantly the
almost universal accessibility of the audio cassette and a well-developed
black market selling cassettes of foreign records, led to a situation where in
some Eastern European countries the productions of local musicians had
to effectively compete with music coming in from the West.

FROM ALBANIA TO ESTONIA, FROM LIGHT MUSIC

TO POP-ROCK: MAPPING THE FIELD

The main purpose of this collection is to present popular music in Eastern

Europe during the state socialist period from perspectives which were pre-
viously neglected, and focus on areas which were under-represented. One of
them concerns the political conditions of production and consumption of
music. The authors consider issues such as the effect of socialist ideology on
the state of the music business, paying particular attention to the shifts effected
by the changes in the leadership of the communist parties. Another area which
is examined is that of the role of censors and music journalists in shaping the
discourse on popular music in specific countries. Music journalism is especially
neglected in the existing literature on Eastern European music, in part because
focusing on music journalists undermines the Manichean vision of Eastern
European pop-rock culture, in which nonconformist rockers fought with the
oppressive state, by introducing mediators and translators in this battle.
Finally, stars are taken into consideration. This is because when think-
ing about popular music in any country or region one thinks immediately
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

about its stars. Examining stars also allows us to see many other aspects
of music, such as state politics regarding music, dominant genres, organi-
sation of the music industry, fandom, and international connections
between music businesses and scenes. Rock stars are frequently endowed
with agency; they are regarded as the ultimate authors of their work, not
unlike film directors, known as ‘auteurs’. Ray Shuker observes that such an
approach to stars started in the late 1960s. John Cawelti claimed that ‘one
can see the differences between pop groups which simply perform without
creating that personal statement which marks the auteur, and highly
creative groups, like the Beatles who make of their performance a complex
work of art’ (Cawelti, quoted in Shuker 2013: 60). By the early 1970s,
‘self-consciousness became the measure of a record’s artistic status; frank-
ness, musical wit, the use of irony and paradox were musicians’ artistic
insignia—it was such self-commentary that revealed the auteur within the
machine. The skilled listener was the one who could recognize the artist
despite the commercial trappings’ (Frith, quoted in Shuker 2013: 60). By
contrast, pop stars are seen as manufactured; they do what is expected of
them rather than following their own ideas (Waksman 2015: 297-316).
One can notice a similar rule pertaining to pop-rock in Eastern Europe.
The first stars seen as auteurs appeared in the late 1960s (Niemen, Omega)
and the closer we come to the present day, the more we find. As in
the West, their status was to do with their perception as ‘auteurs within
the machine’, as Colin Frith puts it, able to transcend the limitations of the
national culture industry. Their presence in the Eastern bloc challenges
the claim that the socialist state apparatus attempted to control all spheres
of human life and that culture was created from the top down by means of
Party directives. Analysis of specific cases demonstrates that the production
of stars was a complex process, which involved a negotiation not only
between a star-to-be and the political authorities but also between the star
and his or her wider music habits, which included music journalists and
promoters.
The state socialist system was in some ways hostile to home-grown stars as
demonstrated by, for example, limiting the salaries of stars by introducing a
system of tariffs and paying them a standard fee for concerts and records,
irrespective of the number of tickets and records sold, as previously men-
tioned. On the other hand, there were some ways in which it was conducive
to their creation and sustainment of their careers. Paradoxically, this had
to do with the same factors which thwarted or slowed their careers. The
shortage of records for foreign and domestic popular music, unlike in
12 E. MAZIERSKA

the West when in any given period there were hundreds of bands competing
for available space on the shelves in record shops, rendered the music
produced by local stars more popular than they otherwise might have
been. Moreover, the inertia in the state music business reflected in the
slow reaction to changing fashions, and the nepotism dominating many
state institutions, led to a situation where those who reached the Pantheon
of popular music stayed there for decades.
The authors of this collection do not use any official definition of
‘Eastern Europe’ because such a definition does not exist, but rather try
to account for the way this term is currently employed in academic
research (on the discussion on Eastern Europe in relation to cinema, see
Mazierska 2010). For this reason, there are no chapters about popular
music in Russia and the majority of countries comprising the old Soviet
Union, because they are usually treated separately from its satellite coun-
tries. Nevertheless, the reader will find here a chapter about Estonian
music because Estonia, together with other Soviet Baltic republics, func-
tioned as a kind of ‘western enclave’ within the Soviet Union. Moreover,
after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Estonia positioned itself as a
Baltic country, politically and culturally closer to Scandinavia than to the
old colonial centre of Moscow. While excluding Russia, this collection
tries to account for pop-rock in countries which are neglected in existing
studies, namely Albania and Romania, on account of particularly harsh
political regimes in these countries. The authors of respective chapters do
not deny their harshness, but they acknowledge that pop-rock existed
there, and in Romania even flourished, testifying on the one hand to the
need of populations of these countries to participate in the flow of global
popular music, and on the other hand to the difficulty in policing the taste
of audiences and, at times, of the state accepting its existence and trying to
use it to its advantage. The largest part of the book is devoted to music in
the three countries which can be described as mini music empires within
the Eastern bloc: Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia. These countries had
the most developed popular music business (Kan and Hayes 1994: 41).
There, artists enjoyed the greatest artistic freedom, were most exposed to
foreign influences and even managed to gain popularity abroad. Of greater
interest is music produced in the later decades of state socialism, namely
the 1970s and 1980s, because then one can observe an explosion of rock
bands in many state socialist countries. Although influenced by western
music, they managed to produce highly original works by incorporating
elements of folk music, drawing on local classical music or poetry,
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

employing metaphor, and taking issue with ‘socialist living’ with its
numerous shortcomings, such as the sense of uniformity.
In terms of genre, the emphasis in this collection is on what Motti
Regev describes as ‘pop-rock’. As Regev himself admits, the term is
problematic on two counts. ‘One is the relationship between “pop” and
“rock”, and the other is the place of rock in popular music history.’ The
author refers to several distinctions between ‘rock’ and ‘pop’, of which the
most widely accepted is that ‘rock’ is a more authentic and artistic sector of
popular music, while ‘pop’ is its more commercial, ‘inauthentic’ and
watered-down version (Regev 2002: 251; on the division between pop
and rock, see also Frith 2001: 94–5; Keightley 2001: 109).
However, while not rejecting it altogether, Regev argues that what
connects pop and rock is more important than what divides them; hence
the use of the meta-category. He defines ‘pop-rock’ by three characteristics:
a typical set of creative practices, a body of canonised albums, and two logics
of cultural dynamics, namely commercialism and avant-gardism (Regev
2002: 252-57). The creative processes pertaining to ‘pop-rock’ include
‘extensive use of electric and electronic instruments, sophisticated studio
techniques of sound manipulation, and certain techniques of vocal delivery,
mostly those signifying immediacy of expression and spontaneity’ (Regev
2002: 253).
Although the term ‘pop-rock’ is virtually absent from the discourse on
popular music in Eastern Europe, and even the words ‘rock’ and ‘pop’
entered the literature on this music relatively late, being replaced by terms
such as ‘beat’ or ‘big-beat’ (due to the initial association of ‘rock’ with
western imperialism and decadence), this term was opted for because the
discussion on Hungarian, Polish or Yugoslav music revolves around the
issues identified by Regev as central to pop-rock. Hence, the reason why
‘beat’ was seen as different from other forms of music such as jazz, classical
music and folk, which were exactly those identified by Regev. Moreover,
in the discourse on pop and rock in the aforementioned countries a drive
can be observed towards ‘canonisation of the so-called ‘classic’ Anglo-
American rock albums and authors of the 1960s and 1970s, and their
inheritors in later decades’ (Regev 2002: 255). Indeed, the typical opinion
of critics discussing pop-rock in a specific Eastern European country is that
it achieved a state of maturity when it created its own canon, consisting of
albums seen as inheritors of classical Anglo-American rock albums from
the 1960s and 1970s, and had performers seen as authors of their own
songs (see, for example, discussion of Polish rock in Kan and Hayes 1994;
14 E. MAZIERSKA

and Zieliński 2005). This is the main reason why Eastern European rock
music of the 1970s and 1980s is valued more highly than that which was
produced earlier, and why rock in Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia is seen
as being of a higher quality than that in the remaining countries of the
Eastern bloc. Similarly, the issue of commercialism and avant-gardism is of
great importance to critics discussing Eastern European pop-rock, in rela-
tion to which an interesting paradox can be observed. While on the level of
generalisation most critics castigate Eastern European pop-rock for reject-
ing the logic of the market, seeing it as the main reason why it lagged
behind the West and especially its Anglo-American centre, when it comes to
discussing specific artists, they condemn those who they see as ‘commercial’
and praise those leaning towards the ‘avant-garde’, although ‘commercial-
ism refers to a cultural logic driven by market interests or organizational
isomorphism’ (Regev 2002: 256). The question of how the state socialist
economy at large and its application to the popular music industry affected
the logics of commercialism and avant-gardism of Eastern European pop-
rock is touched upon in some chapters but deserves a separate study.
While the terms ‘pop’ and ‘rock’ refer to the music produced after the
Second World War, the field encompassed by the term ‘popular music’ is
larger as it can also be applied to lighter forms of music identified in the
nineteenth century, as well as to genres and phenomena which are concur-
rent with pop-rock but different from it, as exemplified by the soundtrack
from The Sound of Music (Regev 2002: 252). This type of music is covered in
this collection due to a close proximity between popular and other types of
music under state socialism, most importantly serious and classical music.
This resulted from the fact that serious music under this system was meant to
be popular and popular music was meant to be of high quality; hence the
drive towards avant-gardism and, at an institutional level, pushing the artists
to enhance their qualifications, as discussed earlier. The second reason is a
porous boundary between popular music and pop-rock, especially in coun-
tries with a heavier censorship of rock, such as Romania, Albania and some
Soviet republics. In these countries, popular music labelled ‘light music’ or
‘estrada music’, occupied a position which in other circumstances would be
taken by pop-rock, and revealed some characteristics normally associated
with this genre, as demonstrated by Aimar Ventsel in the chapter included in
this collection. Similarly, the development of ethno-rock, which is one of the
most interesting phenomena originating from Eastern Europe, can be seen
as a way to hybridise pop-rock with popular music, or even a way to
masquerade rock as popular music.
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

Covering as many dimensions of popular music as possible comes at the

price of exposing more gaps in research than closing them. Among them is
the need to engage in a detailed and comparative study of topics such as
music policies and industries in specific countries, sub-genres of pop-rock
(for example, progressive rock, ethno-rock, punk, disco, electronic music),
scenes, reception of western music, fandom and the relationship of
pop-rock to other media, most importantly film and video. Some of this
work is already taking place, as demonstrated by the recently published
volumes and articles on the relationship between youth and rock culture in
the Soviet bloc (Risch 2015), and on pop-rock in specific Eastern
European countries, although usually of the period following the fall of
the Berlin Wall (for example, Szemere 2001; Buchanan 2006, Mišina
2013)6, rather than the period of state socialism, as is the case in this
collection. The hope is that this collection will be followed by more
detailed studies. Only by engaging in such research will it be possible to
demonstrate the richness of this music and the usefulness of studying it
not only for the sake of offering a fuller picture of the cultural history of
Eastern Europe, but also the cosmopolitan character of pop-rock music
at large.

CHAPTER OUTLINE
The collection consists of three parts. The first, entitled ‘Reworking State
Policies by Grassroots’, examines how state policies affected the produc-
tion and consumption of music in several Eastern European countries.
The first chapter, by Ádám Ignácz, entitled ‘Propagated, Permitted or
Prohibited? Popular Music in the First Two Decades of Socialist
Hungary’, charts the differences in the attitude to popular music on the
part of the Hungarian Communist Party and various state organisations,
trying to identify the factors which affected it most significantly, such as
Hungary’s relation to the Soviet Union and the West. Using extensive
archival research, Ignácz argues that after the end of Stalinism in the mid-
1950s, Hungary adopted a cultural model which permitted (if at times
grudgingly) the development of different types of popular music, includ-
ing West-influenced rock. This was a result of taking a pragmatic stance,
based on the assumption that the tide of popular music cannot be stopped
by state documents, and later also a realisation that popular music is a
source of significant revenue. At the same time, artists learnt how to ‘play
the system’, maximising their cultural and real capital, which eventually led
16 E. MAZIERSKA

to Hungary becoming one of the musical ‘mini-empires’ within the

Eastern bloc. Ignácz also draws attention to certain peculiarities of
Hungarian policy towards popular music, such as officially equating
classical with popular music and special treatment afforded to folk music.
Such edification of folk music will also be mentioned by several other
authors in this collection.
Doru Pop in ‘Pop-Rock in Romania during the Ceaușescu Regime’
examines the attitude of the Romanian regime to western popular music,
and those forms of Romanian popular music and youth culture which
drew on western influences. In common with Ignácz, Pop underscores the
fact that the attitudes to pop-rock kept changing, largely reflecting the
changes in political leadership and relations between Romania and foreign
countries. The crucial shift took place during the last years of the regime of
the hard-line Stalinist Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej in the first half of the
1960s and when he was replaced in 1965 by a more liberal-minded
Nicolae Ceaușescu, until the early 1970s when Ceaușescu’s policies chan-
ged in order to make Romania self-sufficient and isolated from external
influences. Although Romania of state socialism has a reputation as one of
the most autarchic and authoritarian countries in the world, Pop, drawing
on his own sociological research, argues that the local population was well
informed about western music. Moreover, the local pop-rock bands, not
unlike in Hungary, learnt to ‘play the system’, and used the state’s deter-
mination to produce a socialist culture to showcase their achievements, as
demonstrated by the ‘Cenacle’, a state-sponsored multi-media festival.
They also exploited Romanian folklore as part of their musical style, to
meet the state’s demand to produce ‘national music’, as well as create an
original style. Apart from discussing Romanian pop-rock as a distinct
phenomenon, Pop also examines its influence on other spheres of popular
culture, such as cinema.
Aimar Ventsel in ‘Estonian Invasion as Western Ersatz-pop’ continues
with the topic of the ‘West in the East’, but in a different context: the
presence of Estonian light pop music (estrada) in other parts of the Soviet
Union in the 1970s and 1980s. He argues that within the Soviet sphere
Estonian music, represented by artists Jaak Joala, Anne Veski and Gunnar
Graps, and bands Apelsin and Fix, played the role of western music.
Ventsel discusses the mechanism of their success, arguing that Estonia
was the Soviet West and Soviet culture managers in Goskontsert and other
state organisations promoted that image in order to create popular concert
artists. Estonian singers were encouraged not to sing in Russian, and to
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

appear as if they were western pop stars. At the same time, their work was not
a simple imitation of western pop-rock, but a creative reworking and adjust-
ment to the expectations of fans. The success of Estonian artists was a
product of the informal music industry in the Soviet Union. Every successful
Estonian artist had several informal managers who used their contacts to get
maximum airtime in key musical programmes of Soviet central TV channels
and as many big concerts as possible. Ultimately, Ventsel argues that in the
Soviet Union there existed a buoyant profit-oriented music business that
operated within the framework of official cultural institutions, contrary to the
‘cold war paradigm’ which emphasises the supremacy of socialist ideology in
deciding what kind of music was created and promoted in this part of the
world. Even after the fall of the Iron Curtain, when Russian audiences gained
easy access to music from all corners of the world, some Estonian artists
maintained their popularity, suggesting that they functioned not only as
ersatz of the western product but something original.
Bruce Williams in a subsequent chapter, ‘The Eagle Rocks: Isolation
and Cosmopolitanism in Albania’s Pop-Rock Scene’, considers pop-rock
in Albania, widely regarded as the most isolated of all Eastern European
countries. Williams argues that despite its isolation, there was an under-
ground penetration of international pop culture. The familiarity of
Albanians with international pop music was due to the makeshift antennas,
often constructed of soft drink cans wired to parts from transistor radios,
which served as decoders and permitted the clandestine reception of Italian
radio and television. Of particular consequence was the popularity of the
Italian San Remo festival, which was viewed by large groups of friends in
concealed locations. During the 1980s, private groups also met at Tirana’s
artificial lake and performed forbidden western music. These performances
by the so-called ‘Lake Bands’ provided an opportunity for Albanians to
familiarise themselves with western rock music. Nonetheless, it was not until
1988 that singer/guitarist Aleksander Gjoka staged Albania’s first rock
concert. What is of particular interest is the manner in which Gjoka avoided
official censorship and performed the concert at an official venue inside the
Palace of Culture. The concert was instrumental in debunking the notion of
condoned aesthetics established during the Hoxha years. Although
Williams’ chapter is not overtly concerned with censorship, he points to
the fact that even in a country epitomising isolation and lack of respect for
human rights, there was room for western music (although, significantly,
coming not only from the geographical West but also the South), and
indigenous pop-rock, particularly near the end of Hoxha’s regime.
18 E. MAZIERSKA

The second part of the collection, entitled ‘The Function of

Gatekeepers’, looks at the role of people and institutions which mediated
between the state, artists and their fans, such as censors, journalists, DJs
and managers of music clubs. The first, entitled ‘Censorship, Dissent and
the Metaphorical Language of GDR Rock’, authored by David Robb,
considers this phenomenon in East Germany, a country where popular
music and youth culture was treated with the utmost seriousness, as
demonstrated by the fact that the music scene was controlled by a network
of agencies which were directly linked to the organs of government. Robb
charts the shifts in attitude to pop-rock on the part of the political regime
from the 1960s to the end of state socialist period. Throughout this period
the state limited the freedom of expression of artists, but it never tried to
eliminate this type of music. Moreover, the pressure to conform was
significantly eased after Eric Honecker came to power in the early 1970s
until the so-called Wolf Biermann affair of 1976. Robb argues that the
continuous struggle between artists and censors led to a specific style of
lyrics of East German rock, marked by the wide use of metaphor, which he
demonstrates by a close reading of songs from a repertoire of bands such as
Puhdys, Renft and City. He argues that this metaphorical style of writing
was on the wane in the final years of East Germany. The importance
attributed by the political regime to popular music was also reflected in
its attempts to play a major role in the international arena, as reflected by
organising the annual Festival of Political Song in East Berlin, which was a
showcase for international and local political musical artists, including Bob
Dylan. On the whole, Robb argues that East German rock, while having
some points of contact with its West German counterpart, cannot be
considered to be an imitation as it constitutes an original phenomenon.
Ana Hofman in ‘Folk Music as a Folk Enemy: Music Censorship in
Socialist Yugoslavia’, takes issue with music censorship in Yugoslavia, a
country which attempted, with a significant degree of success, to imple-
ment a so-called liberal socialism. This resulted, among other things, in
complex censorship regimes of popular music that operated in the empty
space between official negations and actual enforcements. Overt censor-
ship mainly concerned a handful of issues, such as the national identities of
the respective constitutional peoples of Yugoslavia and the representation
of the country’s leader Tito. Because of that, Hofman shifts her attention
from institutional mechanisms of censorship to personal, unspoken and
unwritten norms and practices, in particular, self-censorship and so-called
‘editorial censorship’ concerned with limiting the presence of certain
 1 INTRODUCTION 19

genres in the media. She focuses on one such genre: Newly Composed
Folk Music (NCFM). This music was the object of prejudice and restric-
tions due to its perceived low artistic quality and purely commercial
character, apparent in the characteristic blends of local music idioms and
western production and technology. Recognising its strong market
potential, the state tolerated its high sales, but distanced itself from its
‘un-cultural’ and ‘un-educational’ features, restricting its visibility in the
media and banning its creators from honouring Tito, the Party or
Yugoslavia in their songs. In a wider sense, Hofman sides with those
authors who criticise the binary relationship between the ‘censor’ and
the ‘censored’ and spotlights the multiplicity of actors involved in the
censorial activities, instead of a single institution or authority. By the same
token, she criticises the totalitarian reading of Eastern European history and
its popular music, in which the evil state fought with the musician-political
rebels, suggesting that the dividing lines were drawn elsewhere, most
importantly between music regarded as high-class and that regarded as
kitsch.
Zsófia Réti, in a chapter ‘“The Second Golden Age”: Popular Music
Journalism during the Late Socialist Era of Hungary’, drawing on archival
research, most importantly Hungarian music and youth magazines from
1975 to 1989, analyses how popular music journalism functioned in
the late socialist period of Hungary. She argues that although the state
determined some of its aspects, and despite the fact that this type of
journalism was missing some of the institutional support that was available
for the other branches of journalism, it worked well. Hungarian music and
youth magazines presented a wide range of opinions, which reflected not
so much the Party directives as the views of specific journalists. Hungarian
journalists operated as a close-knit community. Everyone was connected,
and the most central nodes of this network, the legendary personalities of
popular music journalism, were easily recognised by their intermediary
nature. They worked in more than one medium, either in a consecutive or
a parallel fashion and exerted considerable influence on the shaping of
music fashions. The relative freedom and flourishing of music journalism
reflected Kádár’s liberal stance towards culture, according to which what
was not openly oppositional was tolerated. Réti also argues that the
development of music journalism in Hungary was not linear—while in
the 1970s the number of articles about pop-rock steadily grew, in the first
half of the 1980s it saw a sharp dip. She also draws attention to the fact
that there is a poignant disparity between the political position taken
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But the young man was still ruffled. “A chance! You seem to take
care, my good father, that I shall not have a chance, with your ill-
timed descent upon our meeting-place——”
“I looked to find any one but you, my dear Udo.”
“And yet you think you know everything.”
The Baron was content to reflect that there was not much that
escaped him, and this trifling ignorance was temporary. “I heard,” he
said, “that the Princess was in the habit of meeting a man in the
chapel, but the identity of the lover was, possibly from motives of
delicacy, withheld from me. It was my business to discover who was
hidden in the organ.”
“May I ask how you came to suspect my hiding-place?”
“I heard of your being shut up in the organ the previous night.”
“What?” Udo was surprised out of his sullen humour. “I shut up in
the organ? Never in my life till to-day.”
The suspicion in his father’s mind that he had been deluded became
a certainty. “So,” he exclaimed, without betraying the slightest
discomfiture, “then if you speak the truth, my dear Udo, we have
both been prettily tricked.”
Udo’s face grew darker. “How tricked?”
The Baron shrugged. “Our Princess has a lover, and you, my boy, are
not he.”
“Who is he?” Udo demanded with vicious eagerness.
“Ah, that is what I must know, shall know in a few hours,” his father
replied grimly. “He will not enjoy your immunity.”
“I hope not,” Udo observed amiably.
“I have a blood-hound on his track. You may trust me to run him to
earth. When a woman stoops to trickery she is more than a match
for the cleverest man; her strength lies in her weakness—and in his.”
Which saying was not exactly a soothing balm for Captain Udo’s
smarting vanity.
So the Chancellor had been outwitted for the nonce; he was,
however, far too diplomatic to let the Princess or Minna see that he
was aware of it, or to show the slightest spleen. On the contrary, he
took an opportunity when they met at a royal dinner-party that
evening of mildly bantering the Princess on her supposed
predilection for his son. “It is scarcely a fair game to play with my
poor boy, Highness,” he said half ruefully, “to lead him on to dream
of the unattainable.”
“Was it my fault, Baron?” she returned. “And for that matter, is it not
yourself who insist on placing me above everybody’s reach—save
one?”
“Do not blame the steward for keeping guard over his master’s
treasure,” Rollmar rejoined.
“Burying the talent, Baron.”
“Nay, keeping it for the man who can put it to the best use, not
allowing it to be frittered away and wasted.”
“And in the meantime we are beggars since our fortune is locked up
and unnegotiable. Really, Baron, your plan may be sound policy, but
it has its disadvantages. To go no farther, you have deprived me of a
willing organ-blower.”
“I shall be happy to replace him by a less aspiring one,” he returned
with a smile; “whose position will not warrant his exploring the
interior of the organ when the music is interrupted.”
She gave a petulant shrug. “I see poor Minna will have to resume
her work at the bellows. Perhaps it is best. I presume you have told
Captain Rollmar that his services are dispensed with?”
“I have told my son that wind is apt to fan a spark into a dangerous
flame.”
“You hear, Minna?” the Princess said to her friend who was near.
“You are not in future to call young men to your assistance when I
play the organ. The wind blown by a man is nothing but the breath
of scandal, and our dear Baron is going to have a lock put on the
door lest the works should be tampered with by our cavaliers taking
sudden refuge inside.”
Meanwhile Captain von Ompertz had received instructions to keep a
close watch on the chapel and the park, and especially to note all
the less conventional goings and comings of the Princess and her
maid. Notwithstanding this, however, Minna had, before the order
had been given, found an opportunity of warning Ludovic to keep
away from the palace. Had it not been for this it is likely that the
Chancellor’s desired prey might, after all, have fallen into his hands
that afternoon. As it was, Ludovic, though troubled and impatient,
kept safely away. The message, however, was not entirely one of
despair, for Minna had, on her own responsibility, added a few words
to the effect that should the Princess or she think proper to write,
the missive would be placed under the slab of a ruined sun-dial
which stood in a remote nook of the royal park. Nearer to the palace
than that point he was warned not to approach unless especially
bidden. That, at any rate, was something to feed his hopes upon,
and he lived in happy anticipation of what, perhaps, the next of his
morning and evening visits to the old sun-dial might have in store
for him.
Von Ompertz did his best to deserve his patron’s confidence,
although this detective work was not exactly what he had been used
to, or indeed congenial to him. Still he was a soldier of fortune,
literally and figuratively, and ready to take any official work that
came in his way. The pay was good, the prospects, at least as he
fancied, still better; and, after all, he was serving the state, and to
hire his services and his fealty to one state or another was his
vocation. Yes, he told himself, he was lucky to have come so well out
of a hanging matter, and must not grumble if the work which had
practically earned his release was not quite such as he would have
chosen. So he paraded the park, keeping a wary eye on the chapel
and the private entrances to the palace, with his beloved sword, now
happily restored to him, loose in its scabbard, and when the first
distasteful idea had been dulled he found himself as eager to earn
his pay by catching the Princess’s lover as though he were but a
bravo or secret agent, and not the man of such honour as he had
through a mettlesome career always striven to maintain.
His sentinel work did not, however, long remain unnoted by
Countess Minna’s sharp eyes. He was, of course, easily recognized
as the man whom Baron Rollmar had summoned to his aid in the
chapel. Consequently the reason of his patrol was not far to seek.
Whenever Minna took a stroll across the park she found herself
followed by the swaggering Captain, now gallant in his dress, his
better case throwing up a certain distinction in his appearance which
his former rough, unkempt attire had all but effaced. It was like the
restoration of an old picture; the traits of a certain nobility came out
through the film gathered by years of rough usage and neglect.
But the espionage was intolerable. Minna turned upon her follower
and demanded in high indignation what it meant. The Captain, taken
by surprise, was gallantly deferential and apologetic. He had no idea
of annoying the honoured Countess or of forcing himself upon her
notice. But strange men, presumably bad characters, had been seen
loitering about the royal precincts and it was his duty to keep watch
and account for them.
“It is, I presume,” Minna said resentfully, “no part of your duty to
follow me?”
Only as a protection and that at a most respectful distance, he
assured her. It was, he ventured to point out, the honoured
Countess who had accosted him, not he the noble Countess.
Minna was a pretty girl, and there was a certain wistful admiration in
the Captain’s eyes as he uttered the somewhat disingenuous
explanation.
“When I require your escort, your protection,” she retorted, quite
unsoftened by his hyper-courteous manner, “I will ask for it.”
“When you require it, gracious Countess, it will probably be too late,”
he rejoined. “My orders are——”
“To force your services upon the ladies of the household who walk in
the park,” she exclaimed indignantly. “Perhaps when you understand
that they are uncalled-for and distasteful you will see the desirability
of a not too strict obedience to your precious orders; that is, if a
soldier can understand anything beyond the word of command.”
If the taunt stung him his low bow hid its effect. “The noble
Countess will pardon me, but the humble soldier who has been so
unlucky as to offend her has also some pretensions to nobility. The
soldier’s trade is killing; but I hope my profession has not killed the
chivalry in the last of a noble Austrian race.”
He spoke with a certain dignity and a marked softening of the bluff
manner which a rough life had given him. But Minna was in no mood
to be interested in one whom she looked upon merely as a creature
of her arch-enemy, the Chancellor.
“You can easily prove your pretension,” she returned coldly, “by
ceasing to molest me. I am quite able to take care of myself, and to
be followed about the park is hateful.”
Without waiting for further parley, she turned abruptly and walked
off, leaving him to gaze after her with a discomfited look on his face.
“A plaguey business this of mine,” he muttered. “I must either
neglect my duty or my manners. After all, Albrecht von Ompertz is a
gentleman; it goes against the grain to play the spy. And on a sweet
pretty girl, too, though, by the lightning, something of a spit-fire. Ah,
there was a time when a girl of her sort would not have spoken like
that to me. Pfui! Can I blame her if she took me for—what I am,
what I have made myself? Bah! Let me get on with it. Duty before
everything; even at the risk of offending a proud little pair of bright
eyes.”
With something like a sigh he took up the burden of a false position
and strolled off watchfully in the direction Minna had gone.
 CHAPTER X
BY THE MIRROR LAKE

THE encounter between Countess Minna and von Ompertz had the
effect of making both watcher and watched more circumspect.
The Captain ceased to perambulate the royal precincts so openly,
while Minna’s daylight walks were of the most patently innocent
kind. So far she played her game shrewdly enough; but it was
certainly a dangerous, if not a false move, when she determined on
an expedition after dusk to the old sun-dial. The spirit of rebellion
had entered strongly into the Princess, and was fanned by her
companion from motives of pure roguery as well as for revenge for
the fright which the Chancellor had given her. It was to the Princess
Ruperta intolerable that her whole life and happiness should be
dominated by this cunning old minister, and to be subjected to a
system of close espionage was more than her spirit would endure. If
the Duke, her father, was weak enough to submit, she would not be
so tame: she would let Rollmar see that she was no pawn to be
pushed about according to the exigencies of his political game. She
wished as dearly as he that the laggard Prince would make his
appearance; she would give him an uncomfortable time of it, and
delight in upsetting the Chancellor’s plans.
“He is wise to keep away in hiding,” she said resentfully to Minna,
“but, for all that, I should love to hear that he had arrived. The
Baron should have many a mauvais quart d’heure, I promise you.”
“It would be rare fun,” Minna assented. “How I should enjoy
watching the old fox’s face while you were mortifying the vanity of
this precious Prince Ludwig. You will surely have a fair field there,
dear Highness, for were he not eaten up by self-conceit he would
have been here long ago.”
“He has never shown the least sign of interest.” The Princess made a
quick gesture of anger. “And I am to marry the pig. I hate him; I
hate him, as you shall see, my dear Baron.”
Meanwhile her precious freedom should not be circumscribed. Her
feelings should not be coerced. If this hateful marriage, after a
stormy wooing, had to take place it was at least hardly to be
expected that she should calmly wait, keeping her fancy free, for this
very cavalier wooer. The Princess was, as has been seen, a woman
of great determination, who could be as cold as ice, nay, colder, for
she had the power of remaining at freezing point under the fiercest
sun. Still, after all—and no one knew this more shrewdly than did
the Baron—she was a woman; her force of passion was none the
less strong because it was deeply set. To such a nature her very
bringing up had made for waywardness, power in a woman implies
caprice, and caprice is none the less absolute because the power is
bounded. The road to such a woman’s heart is not direct. They who
take the straight path shall find it but leads them to a blank wall, or
at least to a fast-barred door. The heart is set, as it were, in the
centre of a maze, you may chance upon it by taking a path which
seems to lead away from your objective. There is a cunning side
inlet; a short, unexpected turn, and lo! the goal is before you.
It was thus with Ludovic von Bertheim. He had caught the Princess’s
interest by surprise at the fortune-teller’s; the glamour of a strange
adventure was over his personality, the glimpses she had caught of
his character, so different from that shown by the young bloods she
was used to see about the Court, had captured her fancy, then her
heart, which, despite her reputation for coldness, was hungering for
love. And love had seemed so far off, so little to be hoped for now
that she was to be hand-fasted to a man whom she had never seen,
and who seemed bent on showing that he must not be expected to
play the lover. Small wonder then if, under the stress of a joyless
future and wounded sensibility, she forgot her pride of station and
allowed herself to think tenderly of a man who had so suddenly and
curiously come into her life. Now, more than ever, did she resent
with all the spirit that was in her the manifest way in which she was
being used by Rollmar to further his schemes of aggrandisement.
That he should wish her to form an alliance of high political
importance she could understand; it was, from a statesman’s point
of view, reasonable enough; but that he should take upon himself to
play the spy on her, to interfere with her personal liberty, was more
than she would brook. It was monstrous, and, with a girl of her high
spirit, was simply pressing the key which would give forth the note
of rebellion.
“It is dangerous, though, Minna,” she said.
“Surely, Highness, you are not beginning to fear that old fox.”
“Not I,” she replied scornfully, “I meant for him, for the Lieutenant.”
Minna gave a shrug. “Possibly. We may tell him the risk he runs. I
wager if we appoint a meeting he will not stay away for fear of our
dear Baron; and if he should, why, let him stay away for ever.”
“He will not stay away,” the Princess asserted. “But if we should lead
him into a trap, Minna, it would be terrible. The Chancellor is
relentless.”
“At least we are not fools,” Minna declared. “I have outwitted the old
tiger-cat once; trust me, dear Highness, not only to do it again, but
to deal with that stupid swaggering fellow of his, a great fool who
calls himself noble and proves it—by playing the spy.”
So presently Minna was allowed to write a short message, and after
dark she slipped out to take it across the park to the appointed post-
office. But all her wariness did not hide her from the sharp eyes that
were on the watch. The stupid swaggering fellow she chose to
despise was an old campaigner; one whose life had too often
depended on alertness of eye and ear to be caught napping. Neither
was he the fool she was pleased to call him. He had sense enough
to guess shrewdly that her daylight walks were a blind, and to
expect her appearance on a more purposeful errand in the evening.
If it went against the grain to spy upon a woman, Ompertz gathered
some satisfaction from the thought that the disdainful little maid of
honour evidently despised him, which sentiment she was by no
means given to conceal wherever they chanced to meet. Now,
perhaps it was to be his turn, he thought, as he followed the dark,
retreating figure that hurried along the great avenue of elms. Von
Ompertz was an expert stalker, his trained eye could see in the dark
almost as clearly as a cat’s, he had little difficulty in keeping her
within observation and himself out of it. She gave him a long chase,
but he stuck to it successfully, and was, after much wonderment,
rewarded by seeing the note posted beneath the loose slab of the
sun-dial.
In half an hour the missive was in the hands of the Chancellor; its
purport was noted, and it was restored to its place.
Rollmar was highly pleased at the near prospect of putting an end to
what might prove a tiresome impediment to his scheme. He
commended Ompertz, and with him concerted a plan of action for
the next night for which the assignation was given. The soldier was
quite willing to undertake the business single-handed, but at that
suggestion the Chancellor shook his head. It was too risky, the thing
was to be carried out swiftly, surely, noiselessly. Ompertz would be
provided with two assistants; he was to be in command, and the
Chancellor’s future favour depended upon the way in which the
business would be performed.

The lovers’ place of meeting was to be by the temple on the lake in

the park. A romantic spot where the trees grew down to the water’s
edge, and arched over till their branches swept the surface. It was a
favourite place for summer picnics and fishing parties. The lake was
of great depth; being formed in a chalk basin the water was
singularly clear, and reflected in almost startling intensity the high
wall of foliage which surrounded it.
It was on the outer fringe of this belt of woodland that Ludovic kept
watch next evening for the coming of the Princess, and as the two
cloaked figures showed themselves against a vista of moonlit sky he,
with a delicious sense of anticipation, hurried forward to meet them.
After the greeting, Minna dropped behind as the others walked on
towards the lake.
“Ah, Princess,” Ludovic said, “how desperately I have longed, and
how gloriously I have been rewarded.”
“I ought not to have come,” she replied. “It is a great risk, especially
for you. Baron Rollmar is suspicious, impertinently suspicious.”
Behind her quiet tone there was the vibration of restrained
indignation, of a sharp resentment. He joyed to realise that she
talked quite freely to him now; the impulsive act of their last
meeting had swept away the barrier of reserve which had stood
between them.
“The worthy Chancellor,” he said, “has plans for your future.”
“In which I am not consulted.”
“Is that the reason you resent them?”
“Could I have a better? So even you have heard of Rollmar’s plans?”
“Even I, Princess. Vaguely. You are to marry Prince Ludwig of Drax-
Beroldstein.”
“According to the Chancellor’s predetermination.”
“And you are not inclined to fall in with his views?”
Her face was set firmly as she answered, “I am not.”
“For no other reason than that you are not a free agent?”
Was it because he was catechising her with too much freedom that
she turned on him and replied sharply? “For several other reasons.”
“Dare I ask for one?”
She gave him a curious glance, surprised, perhaps, at his persistent
questioning. “I will give you one, an all-sufficient reason. I hate
Prince Ludwig.”
“You might not if you knew him.”
“I could not do otherwise. I hate him, I hate him!”
Her vehemence seemed to surprise him. “It is a rash declaration to
make,” he said. “I venture to think, Princess, that if you saw him you
might after all recant.”
She shook her head impatiently. “Never. Nothing could ever make
me like that man; not even were he to turn out the most charming
fellow in the world. Ah, of course, he is your Prince, your future
King, you are too loyal to hear a word said against him, even from a
woman whom he has treated, to say the least, with disrespect.”
“If he has done that, my Princess——”
“If? He has. But I will not stoop to complain. Happily his conduct
suits my purpose, and for the rest my pride can take care of itself.
Your Prince has a right to your loyalty, he is nothing to me but a
disagreeable shadow, a mere name that offends me. Let us talk of
him no more.”
They had now passed through the belt of wood and arrived at the
margin of the lake. It lay before them like a strip of mirror framed in
the dark sides over which the shadows reached. At a short distance
along the margin stood a small building, an imitation of a classical
temple, its cupola on which the moonlight fell, looking like a white
ball suspended in the air, since the lower part of the structure was in
shadow. From this a short platform or landing-stage extended over
the water and terminated in a boat-house. It was towards this
temple, their appointed trysting-place, that the Princess and her
companion strolled, Minna following them at a discreet interval.
“It makes me sad, my Princess,” he said, “to think that you are not
happy, when I am powerless to prevent it. I who would give my life
to spare you an hour’s unhappiness. If our paths lay together; as it
is they seem to cross only to run wide apart.”
She did not reply at once. “Who can tell?” she said, after they had
taken some steps in silence, “what the future may hold for——” she
hesitated—“for me? Happily no one, not even our Chancellor! and so
there is just a little space for hope to squeeze itself in, although they
would try to deny that to one whose birth puts her above the joys of
ordinary humanity.”
The same note of bitterness which she had struck that night when
they talked on the terrace sounded again. It was evidently becoming
the dominant tone in her life’s music.
“Princess,” Ludovic said, “I cannot bear to hear you talk like that.
And yet how can I dare——?”
She interrupted him with a little laugh, putting out her hand and just
touching his arm for an instant. “Come, my friend,” she said lightly,
“you shall have no more of my doleful grievances. We did not meet
to waste our time in grumbling at a fate which, after all, may not be
as bad as it looks. I love to hear of the world outside our dull court
walls, to come in touch with a life which is free and unrestrained by
the hateful officialdom in which my lot is cast. Tell me of yourself.”
They had reached the temple. The Princess sat down on a bench by
the pillared entrance and signed to him to sit beside her.
“Tell me of yourself.”
“I fear,” he said, “that my history is uneventful enough. It is but that
of a young soldier who is now on furlough and travelling for
pleasure. My life’s real history starts at a point whence it is as well
known to you as to me. And you can continue it as well, or better,
than I.”
She comprehended his meaning and looked down. He spoke
earnestly, yet with a chivalrous reticence which she appreciated. For
some moments there was silence between them. The murmur of the
woodland, just rustled by a slight breeze, was pierced by the cry of a
night-jar. It came like a note of ill omen, although to the lovers the
tranquil delight of the situation was too absorbing to allow them to
be altogether conscious of their surroundings.
“I?” She laughed with wistful eyes fixed on the black wall of trees in
front of them. “I can tell nothing. You know I am mistress not even
of my own actions, although a duke’s daughter.”
His voice, as he replied, was very low, coming to her ear only just
above the murmur of the wood. “You are mistress of one thing,
Princess.” He paused, watching her anxiously for a sign of offence or
encouragement. None came. “Of me—of my heart,” he ventured.
“And my own—that is all,” she said softly.
“That is all the world to us.” He took her hand and pressed it to his
lips. He was on his knees before her. “Princess! My love! Ruperta! My
love!” he murmured.
She seemed to check an impulse and turned her head away. “It is
madness!”
“Then let me never be sane,” he whispered in rapture. “Princess,
give me one word, one word in which you shall write my life’s history
—that I am beloved by you.”
The hand he clasped was cold, the face which glorified his gaze was
set as that of a beautiful statue. Only the breath which, coming
quickly, made manifest that the cold face was but the flag of one of
the belligerents within her. “It is not fair.” The words came from her
dreamily from excess of repression.
“Fair?” he echoed passionately. “How can it be unfair to either of us?
When I would die gladly in the sound of that word from your lips,
die before a fleck of scandal could touch you.”
“I believe that,” she replied. “I am sure that you are the very soul of
honour, but——”
“Ah, let there be no ‘but,’ my love, my sweet Princess.”
“You are asking me to speak a word which both of us know well I
have no right to utter.”
“From your head, perhaps; but from your heart?” he pleaded.
She still gently shook her head. “No, no, my dear friend. You must
be content with the signs I have already given you.”
“Princess, ah, dear love, I beseech you.”
“No, no.”
“Give me at least the sign again.”
“The sign?”
“A kiss.”
The hot breath of the word touched her cheek, which seemed to
glow and catch fire from its ardency. “No, no!” she cried desperately.
“You are unkind; I—I was mad; I knew not what I did. You must
forget——”
“Never! never!”
Her coldness, her innate imperiousness had vanished. She was no
longer the Princess, but a woman striving with the temptation of a
passion, which was snapping one by one the bands which had so
long confined it. She had for one moment given it working room,
and now she was reeling fainting in its grasp. With an intense,
supreme effort she put out her arms and thrust him from her. He
caught her wrists in his hands and held hers to his lips. So they
stayed looking into each other’s eyes; he had but to spread out his
arms to bring their faces together.
“Go!” she panted, “go! I—this is—ah, will you not respect me and let
me go; yes, and end this madness?”
His lips scarcely moved as he answered tensely: “Yes, Princess, I will
go if you bid me.”
“I bid you go.” An effort alone kept the words steady.
He lowered her hands, but still kept them in his own. “I have
offended you?”
“You will if you do not obey me.” She was steadying herself now
after the blind struggle. The rapture was thrust away; a few
moments more, could she but keep command of herself, and she
would be again the Princess as the world knew her.
Ludovic let her hands fall free. “At least, Princess,” he said with an
effort, “you shall not say I do not respect you.”
“It is best,” she replied simply; and he longed to detect a sign of
regret in her voice.
Like the sound that startles us from a dream came Minna’s voice in a
terrified undertone as she rushed into the porch.
“Highness! we are discovered! We are lost! There are men coming.
Look!”
A glance showed them figures but a few yards away advancing
quickly from the deep shadows of the trees. In an instant Ludovic
had sprung to the door. It was unlocked. With a deep exclamation of
relief, he slipped through into the circular room to which it gave
access. As he turned to fasten the door behind him he found that
the Princess had followed. “Go back,” he cried in consternation, “or
you are ruined. Trust me——”
The door was closed now, and they were in the room together.
Already could be heard the sound of a man’s voice and Minna’s
replying to it. Ludovic shot the bolt of the door, then ran across to
that on the opposite side which gave upon the lake. It was fastened.
“Princess!” he exclaimed in agony. “I have disgraced you, but——”
She was at his side, her face white with terror. “It is I who am to
blame,” she said in an agitated whisper. “They will kill you. They are
the Chancellor’s men, I know. They will kill you. Ah, they shall kill me
too.”
The streak of moonlight which fell through the window showed more
than terror in her face. It was love. For an instant he held her in his
arms. “Darling,” he whispered, strangely calm, “have no fear.” Their
lips met in a burning kiss, then again she pressed hers to his, as
though clinging to the last touch of joy the world would give her.
There was a loud knocking at the door. He gently put her from him,
and with unaccountable deliberation went towards it. She caught his
arm. “They will kill you without mercy or hesitation,” she said.
He turned. “Would it not be better,” he whispered, “for Prince
Ludwig?”
She started back as though the name had been a blow to strike her.
“To save me from him, let them not take you,” she entreated. “Let us
not part with that hated name between us.”
He seemed to change his intention, as he ran to the window and
opened it. “Farewell, my love,” he said, turning towards her.
Her arms were round his neck. “Good-bye, my darling. Oh, my love,
my love! That I could die with you.”
As their lips parted he turned and dropped lightly from the window
to the landing-stage beneath. Rigid with a despair too poignant for
tears, she stood and watched him, never heeding the knocking and
rattling at the door. She saw him creep out along the pier that
bridged the platform and the boat-house, the shelter of which he
gained just as the door of the temple was sent flying open and two
men stumbled into the room.
In a moment they comprehended how their man had escaped.
“The window,” Ompertz commanded hastily. “Pardon this violence,
Highness,” he added with a bow to the Princess, who stood before
him motionless, impassive as a statue, “but we are after a fellow
who haunts this place and may offer to molest your Highness.”
Her face did not change as with dry lips she said quietly, “He is not
here.”
Meanwhile the other man had got out of the window and been
joined from outside by a third. “To the boat-house, idiots!” cried
Ompertz, hastening to the window. Minna came in and sank down
trembling and hysterical by her mistress. The men ran along the
gangway and disappeared into the boat-house. Ompertz, waiting by
the window, half turned and began another apology to the Princess.
With a touch of her wonted imperiousness she cut him short,
forbidding him to address her. One of the men came back along the
pier.
“Well?” Ompertz demanded. “Have you caught him?”
“He is not there, Captain,” the fellow answered, at a loss. “The place
is empty.”
Ompertz swore an oath between his teeth. A shot rang out from the
boat-house. The two men leaned forward, peering anxiously across
the shadow-streaked water. They were too intent to hear a gasping
sigh as Princess Ruperta sank down by Minna’s side in a swoon.
 CHAPTER XI
UDO SEES

WITHIN the hour Ompertz was standing before his employer.

“Well?” Rollmar demanded sharply, as he read the soldier’s face.
“You have failed?”
“I dare not say we have, Excellency,” he answered, determined to
make the best of the business. “I should not like to swear that our
man is not lying at the bottom of the lake with a bullet through him.”
In Rollmar’s searching eyes there was a gleam of savage
satisfaction. “So? But there is a doubt about it, eh?”
“We lost the fellow in the darkness,” Ompertz explained. “But that he
went into the lake is certain, and almost so that he never came out
again. The water of the Mirror Pool is deadly cold, Excellency: he
would need all his hot blood——”
The Chancellor stopped him by an impatient gesture. “I want facts,
not theories, from a soldier. And the fact is you have bungled.”
“More likely that we have saved your Excellency the trouble of a
private execution,” Ompertz rejoined sturdily. “Pesqui swears he hit
him.”
The Chancellor’s contemptuous exclamation showed that he did not
accept that worthy’s view of the matter. “What of the Princess?” he
demanded.
“The Princess thought so too,” the soldier replied imperturbably, “for
she fell into a swoon. It was that which kept me from going to see
whether her lover had been accounted for.”
“And in the meantime he got clear away,” Rollmar said in a sharp
tone of annoyance. “What did the two fools that were with you?”
Ompertz gave a shrug. “They hurried round the bank, one on each
side, and searched thoroughly.”
“When it was too late.”
The Captain seemed, even in that presence, on the verge of losing
his temper. “What could they do, Excellency? They are Italian cats:
they cannot swim in icy water. The Princess’s condition demanded
my attention. I deny that we have failed, or, at least, that we have
bungled.”
“We shall see,” Rollmar said curtly, and dismissed him.
Very early next morning a boat floated out on the lake with two men
in it, the Chancellor and Captain von Ompertz. The glassy water
gave back the two faces which peered over the gunwale, as different
as two physiognomies could well be: one with sharp, cruel, saturnine
features, and a skin like creased parchment; the other full, ruddy,
weather-beaten, its pleasant jovial expression just held in check by
the grim business of the moment. The eyes of both men were
keenly scanning the bottom of the lake, clearly visible through
several fathoms of water; but the object they sought nowhere met
their scrutiny. Over every foot of water which could possibly have
been the theatre of the hoped-for tragedy the boat glided; to and
fro, turning and backing and zig-zagging, with the keen, ruthless
face bent over the bow like a devilish figurehead, its malignant eyes
eager for the sight of a grey face staring up from the white floor
beneath them. Rollmar’s anxiety was proved by the patient care with
which every place, likely and unlikely, was examined; but all without
result. At length he broke sharply what to his companion had been
an uncomfortable silence.
“Row back to the boat-house. It is as I thought. You have bungled.”
The accusation could not, judged by the result, be very well denied,
but the free-lance was not the man to let judgment go by default.
“From no lack of zeal, Excellency,” he protested as he set himself to
the sculls.
“Zeal!” There was an infinity of contempt and annoyance in the
word. “Better lack zeal than sense.”
Captain von Ompertz looked redder than the exertion of rowing
would account for. “I do not see, Excellency,” he argued sturdily,
“where we failed in sense.”
He was failing therein now, for wisdom will not argue with a
disappointed, angry man.
“Then I will tell you,” Rollmar returned, as though not unwilling to
have vent for his spleen. “The man you sought was in that building;
there were three of you, and you let him escape. All the wit shown
in the business he may fairly claim. You should have sent one of
your men round and cut off his escape on this side.”
“That I did, Excellency. I sent Forli round,” Ompertz assured him
promptly. “It was hardly my fault that in creeping along the narrow
parapet he slipped and fell into the water, thereby losing time.”
The boat touched the landing-stage. Without troubling to continue
the discussion, Rollmar stepped ashore and walked off quickly,
followed by the discountenanced but still jaunty Captain.
On reaching home Rollmar sent for his son. “Udo,” he said, “you see
much of the Court doings. I must find out who the man is for whom
the Princess has taken this foolish fancy. Have you any idea?”
The young man threw himself on a couch with a moody head-shake.
“I have seen nothing of it, father. She always seems cold and distant
to every one alike.”
“And yet there is a—lover.”
Udo winced. The idea stung him as with the flick of a whip.
“You are sure of that?” he asked, hoping for a doubt.
“Quite. I nearly had the fellow caught last night.”
“And you have no idea who he is?” Udo asked incredulously.
The Baron shook his head. “None. The fact is not flattering to our
system, but this, you see, is an affair which must be handled with
the greatest delicacy and secrecy. Should a breath of scandal reach
Beroldstein, our hopes in that quarter would be annihilated. Now,
keep your eyes open, my dear boy; I must find out who the man is.
The affair must be stopped at once. He shall not escape me again.”
Udo nodded and rose. His foxy eyes and sharp features did not look
as though they needed any especial incentive to watchfulness
beyond nature’s prompting. At the door he turned and asked, with a
certain jealous curiosity, “When you catch the fellow, what are you
going to do with him?”
As the eyes of father and son met significantly, it would have been
difficult to say which shot forth the greater malignity; the only
difference was that in Udo’s it was natural, in the Baron’s it seemed
rather acquired by the practice of a relentless state-craft. “He must
pay the usual penalty of high treason,” he answered.
Udo’s sharp look broadened into a meaning smile. “In such a
manner that neither the offence nor the punishment is likely to reach
interested ears.”
“Assuredly,” said the Chancellor.

Not a word had come to Princess Ruperta as a consequence of the

night’s adventure. No word to tell her whether her lover was dead or
alive, no sign of punishment for her escapade, no hint even that it
was known. Her father was pompously kind as usual, proud of her
imperious beauty, for which he took the credit. So the Chancellor,
who, of course, knew, had not thought it proper to tell his royal
master; for whatever the Duke’s faults were, he was no dissembler.
But this, the consequence to herself, scarcely troubled the Princess
in the terrible suspense she endured through the uncertainty of her
lover’s fate. When the first paroxysm of despair was over and she
had recovered from her swoon, her habitual self-command
reasserted itself, and she gave way no more to her feelings. Only
Minna, who knew her so well, could guess from a mere shade’s
difference in her manner how deep and bitter they were. On one
point only was she unrestrained, that was in blaming herself and
Minna for inviting Ludovic to what they had had every reason to
know might prove a death-trap. For that he had met his death the
Princess was sure, although every beat of her heart incited her to
doubt it. She read in the silence which was kept towards her that all
was over; the merciless hand had shut and clasped for ever the book
wherein those sweet words were written. Ah, she could not endure
the thought that the voice whose whispered tones had vibrated
every chord within her was silent, that the arm that had protected
her and clasped her in that dear embrace was cold for evermore.
Hers had been a starved life, and now when the wave of love for
which she was athirst rippled to her parched lips, it was driven back
by this storm of tragedy. Her whole nature now turned in fierce
rebellion against the annihilator of her happiness. As the hours went
by the torture of an unavailing despair became intolerable. The
passion within her was none the less intense that it was voiceless;
her rage against Rollmar seemed to have spread itself into every
fibre of her body. That she had been rash in leading her lover into a
trap in no wise altered the vileness of the fact that the trap was set.
Had Ludovic really been taken in it? Minna was persistent and never
wavered, at least ostensibly, in her belief that he had escaped. But
her mistress brushed aside every theory that argued for his safety.
“You might know the Baron by this,” she said, resenting the
flattering insistence of false hopes. “He does not make a mistake
ever. His methods are as sure as they are remorseless. I caught a
glimpse of him from the window just now. It was not the face of a
man who had failed.”
“I might retort, dear Highness,” maintained Minna, “that you might
know him well enough to put no trust in that ugly, wrinkled mask.
You will learn nothing from our amiable Baron.”
“But I will,” Ruperta exclaimed impetuously. “I will. He shall tell me
what he has done. I will challenge him this very night. There is no
secret now between us; and if there were, the time for fearing him
is past. Happily, this abominable scheme has given me a hold over
him, and he shall see that he has not a baby to deal with.”
There was a reception that night at the Palace, and Princess Ruperta
kept her word. No one who saw her as she entered the Hall of
Audience could have guessed her sufferings. Except that she was
slightly flushed, she seemed cold and proud and as magnificently
beautiful as ever. When the formal reception was over, the Duke
descended from the daïs and stood chatting with the members of his
immediate circle. The general company began to circulate in the hall
and the suite of state apartments which led from it, and the hum of
a subdued conversation rose.
Princess Ruperta, watching her opportunity, met Rollmar as, putting
an end to what seemed the somewhat inconvenient questioning of
one of the foreign representatives, he turned away in his abrupt
manner and left the royal circle.
A less acute man would have recognized that she had planted
herself in his way with an object, but he gave no sign that he so
understood it, his face showing nothing but a courtier’s smile as he
bowed before her. The Court etiquette kept clear a space round
them, so that the low tones of their talk could not well be overheard,
although curious glances might note the remarkable contrast
between the withered old man and the radiant beauty.
Ruperta came to the point at once, since it was doubtful how long
opportunity might serve her.
“You, or rather your hirelings, took a strange liberty last night,
Baron.”
Her voice was just steady, but he knew the effort it cost her. An old
diplomatist and word-fencer, he never hesitated to cut short his
party when he saw an opening for a riposte. He looked up from his
bow into the proud, indignant face.
“One which was forced upon me by the liberty which your Highness
has been so unwise as to permit yourself.”
He spoke with the firmness and confidence of a strong will and the
prestige of successful statesmanship. But she met unflinchingly even
the electric touch of his dominant personality.
“It is abominable,” she said. “I will not submit to your interference.”
Glancing at her sharply with those unfathomable eyes, he just gave
a slight deprecating drop of the head as he replied firmly—
“Not mine, Princess, but the State’s.”
“The State’s!” she echoed hotly. “You take too much upon yourself. I
will not submit to it. You may rule my father, but you shall not
control my actions.”
He was looking at her fixedly now. There was little of the courtier
about the old minister as he retorted pointedly, “It is a pity your
Highness should render control from outside a necessity.”
Her teeth were set in her lip till it was as white as her complexion.
Only the heaving of her bosom betrayed the force of her excitement.
“It is neither necessary nor acceptable,” she returned imperiously. All
this time the question she longed, yet dreaded to ask, was at her
lips, yet unspoken, as though she were fearful to invoke the spectre
of the truth. Yet she felt that to be thus at issue with Rollmar was
purposeless and undignified; it was certainly not for that she had
accosted him. Now she felt she must put the question, let the
consequences be what they might. She took a steadying breath, but
there was just a little flinching drop of the eyes, and then, in a voice
which would have struck a passing observer as quietly cold, almost
indifferent, she said—
“As you have gone to last night’s unwarrantable lengths, may I ask,
Baron, the result of your creatures’ attack?”
“Ah!” The suspicion of a smile softened for an instant the hard, dry
mask that confronted her. Had he suspected her reason for alluding
to a subject she would naturally have avoided? Anyhow, it was
patent now. “The result,” he answered slowly, “I cannot tell you.”
She gave a look of something like disgust at his almost brutal want
of consideration. Did he mean to force her to question him further,
and so incidentally acknowledge the facts of her part in the affair? It
was hateful, yet, she told herself, quite like him. She wished she
could strike him dead as he stood there before her mocking her
almost frantic anxiety with a smile of infinite evasion. Was the man a
fiend that he would not speak more fully? The answer he had given
her was truly Delphic. It might mean nothing, and, what was more
probable, it might mean the worst. Still, as she had stooped to ask,
she would press her question now till she got a tangible answer.
“I wish to know,” she said insistently, “what happened to the person
whom you set your men to attack?”
But for a trace of temper she was quite calm now. The chill of
despair was creeping over her, and the racking suspense gave way
before it. Rollmar looked at her curiously, almost as though
wondering whether he might attribute her calm to a callousness akin
to his own.
“Your question, Princess,” he replied with the same Sphinx-like
closeness, “is perhaps one which is better left unanswered.”
“All the same, I must have an answer,” she persisted.
“Then,” he said, with uncompromising decision, “I have to tell your
Highness that you will not be troubled any more by the person to
whom I presume you refer.”
Into his eyes, which were fixed with calm severity on her face, there
flashed a look of surprise. A rapid and unaccountable change had
come over her expression. Was she actress enough to receive a stab
in the heart with an air of joy? For the sudden light in her eyes was
surely nothing else. But for an instant was he at a loss; then he
turned quickly and looked behind him. The crowd was moving to and
fro, talking, laughing, all decorously as under the royal eye; the
Chancellor’s sharp and significant scrutiny caused many a furtive
glance at the pair, and perhaps cried halt to more than one
unguarded remark. His quick, rapacious eyes took in every detail of
the human medley, then suddenly glanced back, keen as a hawk’s,
to his companion’s face. But the look which had startled him had
gone. He saw nothing but a cold self-possession with just a
suspicion of triumph in the half-contemptuous eyes.
“You have answered my question, Baron,” she said simply, and
without the mocking lip he looked for; “and I thank you. It is well to
know our friends—and our enemies.”
“Your Highness,” he returned, “will never have anything but a true
friend in Adrian Rollmar.”
“Whose deeds to secure her happiness will speak for themselves.”
The mockery was there now, as, with a slight bow, she turned and
left him.
Your man of action is never left standing at a loss by discomfiture.
With purposeful alacrity, Rollmar turned away on his side and looked
for his son.
“Udo,” he said, when, as in response to a sign, the young man
joined him, “the man is here. The man we seek: Princess Ruperta’s
lover.”
“Ah, where is he? Let us——”
The Baron made a restraining gesture. “I do not know him even by
sight; have no idea who he is; but that he is here I am certain.
Watch the Princess. I will have my men ready. To-night must see the
end of this folly.”
It was not long before the Princess, her every sense of observation
quickened by excitement, became aware that the sharp eyes of Udo
Rollmar were following her every movement. The same whisper that
told Minna of Ludovic’s safety warned her of the spy.
“You must contrive to put him on his guard,” she said, “while I draw
Captain Udo away. But, above all, beware of the Baron. I cannot see
him, but feel sure he is watching from his spider’s corner.”
When they had separated, and Minna, on the arm of the vainest
and, consequently, the most stupid Court popinjay she could find,
had strolled off in search of Ludovic, the Princess signed graciously
to Udo and brought that fierce little fox to her side.
“You are quite determined to avoid us to-night, Captain von Rollmar,”
she said, forcing a spirit of banter with the man she now loathed.
Udo’s glance, as it met hers, changed from one of artful resentment
to a certain fiery admiration. With the object he had in view, it was,
he felt, waste of time to talk to her; he would have preferred to
watch and mark down her lover, thereby at one stroke appeasing his
own jealousy and paying her for the trick she had played him. But in
the veins of the fox-like little Captain, while he had much of his
father’s malicious keenness, ran warmer blood, and he was thus
liable to a weakness against which assuredly the Chancellor was
proof. The flush of excitement, of joy at the sight of her lover, had
given a radiance to Princess Ruperta’s beauty and an animation, an
exaltation which it usually lacked. To-night it was perfect, striking,
irresistible. It flashed down upon the cunning little face before her,
the sharp, crafty eyes with their red lashes, the carefully turned-up
moustache, and general dandified treatment of a natural
repulsiveness; and in that flash it took and held captive the
treacherous mind opposed to her. For that mind told him he had
never seen such radiant, imperious beauty. To turn his back upon it
when there was an opportunity of luxuriating in it would be the act
of a Stoic or a madman, and he was neither. He was quite shrewd
enough to know there was but a poor chance for him in the long
run, that even now he was but favoured for a purpose; but then he
was vain, and the future flattered him with possibilities, vague,
desperate, yet not unachievable. At least, his father’s schemes and
his own vindictiveness could wait for half an hour.
“If that was your idea, Highness,” he replied, “you might have
attributed my seeming avoidance to the consciousness that my
society might not be welcome.”
She laughed. Reading in his eyes the effect she was working, she
took care to keep him well under the spell. “Since when has Captain
Udo von Rollmar grown diffident?”
“Since his Princess showed him clearly, if unintentionally, that his
company was only welcome as a means to an end.”
Still smarting under the trick, he could not resist the taunt. But she
lightly ignored it.
“A means to an end? Is not that the reason of all good
companionship? What better end than pleasure?”
Though the voice and half confidential manner thrilled him almost to
intoxication, he knew that the words were quibbling and insincere,
that the woman was fighting for her lover with every wit sharpened
by the exigency of the situation. But that merely spurred his
determination to pursue this forlorn hope. At least, sincere or
insincere, she was giving him a lead; who could blame him if he
followed it? And, after all, if nothing better came of it, retaliation lay
that way. Even an august princess should not make him foot this
fool’s dance without paying the piper.
“The pleasure, my Princess,” he replied craftily, “may be one-sided.”
She gave him a quick, offended glance. “How do you mean? One-
sided?”
“Do not misunderstand me,” he pursued. “I should have said
disproportionate. The slight pleasure which you are gracious enough
to acknowledge, my Princess, may be a dear joy, a terrible pleasure
to me.”
If its origin was in craft, he felt as he looked at her that the
sentiment was true enough. It was, indeed, a dangerous beauty;
one to hurry a man to the pit of despair; and as he drank it in he
found himself vowing it should not be so with him.
They had left the great Hall of Audience and were in one of the
smaller of the state reception rooms. So far her purpose was
accomplished, and one of the spies held safe where he could work
no harm.
“You take,” she said, “the matter too seriously.”
“Can any one blame me for that, gracious Princess?” he returned,
feeling his way cautiously since he knew well her power of setting
presumption down.
“Of course I am to blame,” she suggested, hiding with a smile her
distaste for the business she was about.
“Are you not?” he rejoined, growing bolder as his determination to
profit by her complaisance increased. “If I dared to ask you to put
yourself for one moment in my place. To get a smile from the
loveliest woman in Europe, to be permitted to walk by her side, to
talk to her without restraint, in short, to be lifted from this common
world into another and a glorious sphere; then to know that he must
fall back to the cold earth again after those moments of Heaven;
Princess, imagine this and say whether the author of this desolation
would deserve blame or pity.”
He spoke with a feeling and impetuousness which were foreign to
him, and, as she listened in little more than curiosity, she wondered
whether it was feigned or true. If genuine, she could have little pity
for the man, and if false, none. But she realized as the speech grew
warmer that the situation was becoming unpleasant.
“You are determined to make friendship a terribly serious business,”
she said with gentle irresponsiveness. “Now, will you in turn try to
put yourself in my place? Then you will see how barren and lonely a
life must be which is denied pleasant intercourse with its fellows.”
“The fire must burn alone,” he replied. “The more glowing it is the
farther we must keep from it unless we would be consumed.”
She laughed. “Poor fellow! And you are scorched?”
Perhaps her laugh stung him, for, as they sat together, he turned to
her fiercely.
“I am scorched,” he answered with intensity. “It is for you to say
whether it shall be to the death.”
Something in his manner made her check the part she was playing.
“I do not understand you, Captain von Rollmar,” she said, as she
rose with a touch of proud dignity.
He sprang up and stood before her. “I hope that each of us
misunderstands the other,” he said meaningly.
“How?” she demanded, with the imperious light in her eyes.
He had got past restraint now, and was aggressively insistent. “I
mean,” he went on, “that I have suspected you of playing a trick
upon me, of showing me unlooked-for, unhoped-for favour to further
a certain purpose. How else could I account for your gracious
condescension?”
There was a touch of mockery in his speech. She welcomed it, at
least it was better than tenderness. But it was, considering their
positions, rude and she resented it.
“You are using a freedom which is the best reproof to my mistake,”
she said coldly. “It is scarcely gallant or respectful to suggest that I
have played a trick upon you.”
“You compel me, Princess, to speak plainly,” he retorted. “If your
high station does not prevent your using your powers to amuse
yourself with me it is hardly fair to screen yourself behind it. I am
not the fool you have sought to make me. I know you have a lover.”
She flushed. “You are insolent, Captain von Rollmar. It is you who
avail yourself of your father’s position to take strange liberties.
Please do not say any more. I am sorry that I took any notice of
you.”
She moved sideways to get past him, but he still barred her way.
“Do not add to your discourtesy,” she said with chilling contempt.
He showed no heed of her command, standing before her with
lowering face and ablaze with passion. “You must hear me,
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