One of the major characters in Anita Desai's The Zigzag Way is Doña Vera, the Austrian widow of a Mexican silver baron. The couple had met and married in Vienna just prior to the outbreak of World War II. Before her marriage, Vera and her family lived in a Viennese slum. Her work as a chorus dancer attracted the attentions of well-connected men through whom she was able to find jobs for her father and brothers. My question stems from this passage about those jobs and Vera's situation:
If they [the jobs] did not last, she was not to blame (although her mother clearly did: "I told you so —" she shrieked the night Vera's father came home bloody and beaten by a group of anti-Nazis. "I told you so!"). Next it was the director at the theater, polite and circumspect Herr Schmidt with the spotless white cuffs and cashmere scarf, beckoning her into the office as she went by in her costume and makeup and perspiring from her dance, to warn her to becareful of her friends "because we cannot protect you out there." Coming from him, the words had authority. She had not been unaware of the rumors and fears swirling thick and dark around them, making everyone realize that the bright lights were about to go out, only she had so much wanted it all to last.
Desai, Anita. The Zigzag Way. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. p. 58.
It's clear from this that the men who support Vera in exchange for her sexual favors are pro-Nazi. But I lack the knowledge of Viennese society in the late 1930s to understand what's going on. Heretofore my belief has been that most Austrians at that time favored unification with Nazi Germany. However, the passage suggests that consorting with pro-Nazis was dangerous? Why would that be the case? Why would Vera's father be beaten up by anti-Nazis? What makes this outcome foreseeable enough for Vera's mother to say "I told you so?" And why would Schmidt need to caution Vera? From what forces would she need protection?
Vera feels the threat acutely enough that she marries Roderigo to escape the country, but its particulars escape me. Since Schmidt singles Vera out to warn her, her wanting to leave Austria doesn't seem to be just a general wish to flee the imminent war. It seems that something specifically about Vera's association with pro-Nazis precipitates her marriage and emigration. So: why might someone who consorts with Nazi collaborators feel compelled to flee Austria on the eve of the Second World War?
