I squeal and squirm beneath Mister Austria's foot.

"You placed the soup spoon and the salad fork on the left side of the plate! What is the matter with you? Do you not remember that everything goes on the RIGHT side of the plate? I thought you had a photographic memory!"

"Why does everything have to be set all formal anyway?" I squeal. "Most likely we won't use one of those utensils!"

"Can you remember what I told you to do yesterday when you first arrived, Mister Brainiac?"

"To do everything you tell me to do without asking any questions," I sighed.

"Good. So why are you asking questions?"

"I...I believe that it assists me in my ability to remember how to perform the tasks you assign to me if I know why I have to do everything that way, Mister Austria."

"Well, since you're so smart, Mister Brainiac, I shall leave it to you to figure out the WHYS. Sit down and eat."

Tonight Mister Austria serves Wienerschnitzel aside a bowl of Rindsuppe and a plate of salad, with a cup of tea instead of coffee (cheapskate). I have a hard time cutting the Wienerschnitzel, which, as it turns out, is made out of ground offal instead of the soft succulent veal tenderloin that my family dines upon.

Mister Austria taps his conductor's baton menacingly as he nags me to finish the entire meal. I am able to tolerate the cheap organ meat, it being fried and greasy, but the salad makes me gag, and so does the bitter tea that I try to swallow it down with, so I have to drink soup to force my throat to open to let it down and to wash the flavor out.

"OK, now you shall clear the table, wash and dry and put away the dishes, and then come upstairs for more music practice. You are competent at the clarinet, aren't you?"

"Fairly..."

After I had finished the dishes (by putting them away without washing them, knowing that Mister Austria would never find out as long as he had me doing the dishes, I climb upstairs and, following my ears, find the music room that Mister Austria is practicing violin in.

"Well you are awfully fast. You know that song I played earlier? It would sound so much better if I could hear clarinet in the background. So you are going to practice for when we perform at the Opera Ball later this week."

Mister Austria stands in front of a stand with sheet music on it and begins to wave his baton. I follow, remembering the tune of the song, but my heart cries for a completely different instrument...

"M-Mister Austria..."

"You idiot! WHAT?"

"Not to be, um, rude or anything, but I feel much more in the mood to practice violin right now."

"Well we can't always do what we want when we want to, can we?"

"All I am saying is that I cannot perform at my fullest potential if my heart is not into it at the moment. It would be far more productive for you to wait until I feel like the clarinet before making me practice it-"

"And suppose that you do not feel like it in time for the Opera Ball, huh? Then you will have majorly screwed our entire performance! Now suck it up and practice!"

Never thought I'd have my love of music tainted by becoming a music slave. I reluctantly play the clarinet, absentmindedly listening to Mister Austria's scolding me for not having enough fingers or large enough hands to play it properly, while dreaming of the expressive wail of the violin...

Wonder if this is how Onkel Wolfgang felt when his parents forced him to play instruments. No wonder he only likes science...

My thoughts turn to science research and inventing in the hour that he has me perfecting my fingering of the holes on the clarinet. Vienna is not only a Mecca for the arts, after all.

"OK, now you get to practice violin for an hour. Are you happy now?"

"Actually, I don't feel like violin anymore now. Can you take me to the University of Vienna so I can show off my skills at controlling the brain at the neuronal level using entanglement methods?"

"No, you wanted to practice violin, so you're practicing violin! Now, since you're so small, you can hold the violin like a cello, your shortage of fingers should not be an issue here..."

"Is that all you care about is music? You say that you represent our country, but being a nobleman who does nothing but practice classical music is hardly a fair representation of Austria! Austria is also a land of influential physicists such as Ludwig Boltzmann, Ernst Mach, Lise Meitner, Christian Andreas Doppler, and Nobel Prize winners Wolfgang Pauli, Victor Franz Hess, and Erwin Schrödinger! Of Nobel Prize-winning chemists Walter Kohn, Richard Kuhn, Max Ferdinand Perutz, Fritz Pregl, and Richard Adolf Zsigmondy! Physiology and Medicine Nobel Prize winners Karl von Frisch, Karl Landsteiner, Julius Wagner-Jaregg, and Konrad Lorenz! Mathematicians Emil Artin, Paul Ehrenfest, Kurt Gödel, Hans Hahn, Heinrich Franz Friedrich Tietze, and many others! Chess grandmasters Rudolf Spielmann, Ernst Grünfeld, Erich Eliskases, Carl Schlecter, not to mention Wilhelm Steinitz, winner of the first ever world chess championship! And let's not forget Sigmund Freud."

"Why don't you just throw in Adolf Hitler while you're at it!"

"What does your title mean, anyway, Mister Austria? Did you win some beauty pageant?"

"They don't have beauty pageants for men, only bodybuilding competitions, such as Mr. Europe, a title once held by Arnold Schwarzenegger."

Mister Austria here seems the polar opposite of Schwarzenegger, whom my younger brothers idolize, watching movies of him that they were too young to see while I sit in my lab and bemoan the fact that my country's influence on their culture extended no farther than that. Needless to say, Mister Austria is no bodybuilder, or even as strong as the average man.

"Wait a minute, how did we come to discussing Herr Schwarzenegger? You should be practicing the violin that you want to be practicing so badly!"

"You know what? You are just as bad as my mother! All you care about is music, culture, humanities, arts, with a sprinkling of politics and economics! I try to keep a balance between those and the sciences, which to me are just another form of art, if you really think about it! But you are just a pushy arrogant snob with a... winning appearance, and a sort of charm... that you use to get your way and hide your bad traits!"

Mister Austria tapped the baton on his hand, giving the impression of a stern schoolteacher. His elegant shapely white knuckles clenched over the stick in a wringing motion.

"It looks like... you need some spanking."

I cry shamelessly as Mister Austria lashes at my rear with the baton, making my tail even more bent out of shape with each lashing.

"Go to bed now," he says. He never raises his voice; he always keeps the same snotty, slightly aggravated tone, regardless of his mood, except when he's absorbed in his music.

I find my way to my room, pull the sheets and the overly lacy covers over myself, and sink belly-first into the pillow top, my body withdrawn into my shell. I wonder if he will beat me for scratching up his fancy bedding with the spike on my shell.