The Day I Became Emperor of the Prater
Power in Vienna is not a matter of bloodline anymore. It is entirely acoustic.
I discovered this on a Tuesday, at three o’clock in the afternoon. I am seven years old. I was standing on the second slat of the green wooden bench facing the Riesenrad, holding half a pretzel that tasted mostly of salt and disappointment. I was tired of being navigated by the elbows. I dropped the pretzel, took a breath of air thick with hot oil and roasted almonds, and shouted.
I did not scream. Screaming is for children who have dropped their balloons. I shouted from the diaphragm, a sharp, flat, perfectly projected bark of sheer administrative impatience.
“Halt.”
Every pigeon within a thirty-meter radius snapped to attention. They didn’t scatter. They froze, their iridescent necks twitching, waiting.
More interestingly, a woman in a beige raincoat stopped mid-stride. A man carrying three oversized plush bananas turned on his heel and faced me, his posture suddenly rigid. A teenager operating the ticket booth of the miniature railway sat up straight and hid his cigarette behind his thigh.
They did not know why they were complying. Adults are fundamentally exhausted, and if you hit the exact tonal frequency of a Habsburg bureaucrat denying a pension, their spines simply remember the empire and they obey.
I stepped up to the highest slat of the bench. The Ferris wheel turned behind me, a slow, iron clock grinding out the minutes of my ascension. I was no longer a boy in short pants. I was the sovereign of the Second District.
Every empire requires an enemy to unify the populace. I already had mine.
His name was irrelevant. He was the ice cream vendor stationed between the Madame Tussauds garbage bins and the ghost train. A man with a damp forehead and a braided mustache who had mastered the art of the architectural fraud. To adults, he served dense, heavy spheres of pistachio and dark chocolate, pressing the scoop deep into the chilled metal tubs.
To children, he served a hollow scrape. A thin, deceptive dome of lemon or vanilla resting precariously on the rim of the waffle cone, hiding a vast, cynical pocket of air beneath. He relied on our lack of economic leverage. He assumed we lacked the vocabulary to articulate our exploitation. He had failed to account for a coup.
I left my bench and marched down the Hauptallee. The asphalt was soft under my sneakers, bleeding the heat of late July. The air smelled of ozone from the bumper cars and rotting sugar. I did not walk like a child heading toward a treat. I walked like an auditor.
A small crowd was gathered at his cart. He was in the middle of a transaction. A little girl, perhaps five, was watching with wide, trusting eyes as he dragged his silver scoop lightly across the surface of the strawberry ice cream, preparing to construct another empty lie.
I stopped ten feet away. I planted my feet. I let the ambient noise of the Prater—the synthetic accordion music, the shrieks from the Extasy ride, the hum of the cooling generators—wash over me. Then, I cut through it.
“Put it down.”
The pigeons on the roof of the ghost train lifted off in absolute unison.
The vendor flinched, the scoop hovering an inch above the cone. He looked around, confused, his eyes passing over me entirely, searching the adult faces for the source of the command.
The little girl’s father, a tall man in a linen shirt, suddenly reached out. His face was blank, his eyes unfocused. He took the half-empty waffle cone from the vendor’s hand. He did not give it to his daughter. Without a word, he turned his hand over and dropped it onto the sun-baked concrete.
It hit the ground with a wet, pathetic slap.
The father blinked, staring at his own fingers in mild terror, entirely unsure why he had just done that. The little girl didn’t cry; she just stared at the crushed strawberry smear.
The vendor’s mouth opened. A bead of sweat rolled down his nose and hung there. He finally looked down and saw me.
I stood with my hands clasped behind my back. I did not smile. Rulers do not smile. I simply raised my right hand and pointed a single, unbending finger at the deep, untouched tub of stracciatella.
“Again,” I said softly.
A middle-aged tourist to my left immediately dropped her handbag.