City of Lost Dreams (5 page)

So many funerals. He would stand at the graves of them all, every last one of them.

FOUR

S
arah had brooded about Pols during the long train ride to Vienna, ignoring her Ohioan seatmate’s breathless, excited narration of every landmark—“A church! Another church! A farm!”

The way Pols had played her first piece, “Vienna Blood,” had felt like a warning. Schumann’s “Träumerei” was also known as “Dreams of Childhood,” but in Pollina’s interpretation the dreams had been twisted and haunted. The girl’s preternatural ability was very like the young Mozart’s, and she wanted time to be able to develop it as he had. But she knew her body was turning against her, as Beethoven’s had. Though she would never say it out loud, she had been sending Sarah a clear message in her choice of pieces: Pols was perfectly aware of how sick she was. And she was anxious, and frightened.

 • • • 

A
crackly
“Wien Meidling”
had announced her train’s arrival in Vienna. Sarah made her way outside the station to a queue of cabs, greeting the driver with the Austrian
“Grüss Gott.”
For her ride through the city that was the adopted home of Beethoven and Mozart, she had to listen to ’80s pop blaring on the car radio. Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf,” then Gloria Estefan demanding party and siesta.

Vienna. Outside the window, low industrial buildings were gradually replaced by lovely edifices of stone, and curving boulevards bisected with tram tracks. Sarah was relieved to see how orderly, how expansive, how cosmopolitan and polished Vienna appeared. After the warren of Prague’s Easter egg–hued streets, Vienna looked refreshingly straightforward. Prague was a place where you could easily believe alchemists were lurking about. Vienna, although geographically farther east, had a decidedly Western European ambience. This was the kind of place where the frontiers of modern medicine were being pushed forward by scientists, not magicians. Sarah began to feel a surge of optimism. It was like Nico said. She wasn’t going to sit and do nothing. She was going to use her talents. No moping, no hand-wringing.

Her friend Alessandro’s apartment was located just outside the “Ring”—the wide boulevard that Emperor Franz Joseph had ordered built in 1857 to replace the old city walls and which now enclosed the historic center of Vienna.

“Bellissima!”
exclaimed Alessandro, opening the door of his apartment to Sarah. The lanky and beautiful Italian was wearing an oddly cut dark green suit with leather piping and an Alpine hat, complete with feather. He planted a firm kiss on her lips and grabbed her ass.

“Ah, good,” he said. “So often the acquisition of the PhD is ruinous to the
culo.
But yours has survived intact. Congratulations, Frau Doktor Weston.”

“Danke,”
Sarah said, giving Alessandro’s own perfectly formed
culo
a good swat. Sarah had heard signorina after signorina testify in operatic terms as to the quality of Alessandro’s lovemaking through the thin walls of their Boston apartment, but had never felt the urge to try it herself. Fortunately, Alessandro had not taken this as a challenge, and he treated Sarah as a sister—or, as he had once said, like a brother. Now he released her and ushered her into a tiny and immaculate living room.

“University arrange this nice place for me. I take down all the Klimt posters. At Harvard, you could tell if a girl would sleep with you by her poster. Modigliani—
sì
. Klimt—
no
. I want to set the right mood.”

“Well done. But the outfit? Why are you dressed to go stag hunting with an archduke?”

“It is part of my very clever plan.” Alessandro produced a garment bag from the hall closet and waved it with a flourish. “There is a ball tonight, and the scientist you wish to meet, Frau Doktor Müller, she will be there. You and me, we make friendly with her and then, boom, she say yes to enrolling Pols in the study.”

It wasn’t a bad idea. Alessandro’s charms were legendary, and no woman seemed ever to say no to him. If anyone could sway Bettina Müller, it was Alessandro, especially at a ball.

“Do I dare ask what’s in the bag?”

“This is a Tyrolean Ball. A special event being held at Rathaus. Traditional dress, this is mandatory. These Austrians are very serious about their balls.”

Sarah’s laughter was cut short when Alessandro whipped off the garment bag.

“Yeah, I’m not wearing that.” The gown was an upscale version of the dirndl, or traditional Alpine peasant dress. There were three layers to the outfit—a white scoop-neck cropped blouse with puffy elbow-length sleeves, a midnight-blue velvet dress with an embroidered bodice, and a forest-green silk taffeta apron. It came with white tights and black flat shoes. She would look, Sarah thought, like an extra from
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
.

“You’ll wear it for Pols,” said Alessandro. “And I will promise not to post pictures on Facebook. Maybe.”

Sarah took the dress from him.

FIVE

A
lessandro had slightly underestimated Sarah’s dress size and slightly overestimated her shoe size, so once she was dirndled up and shuffling along, Sarah felt like a well-trussed duck. Remarkably, their costumes caused nary a second glance as they strolled through streets where every third building was a landmark of historic or cultural significance. Alessandro pointed out the Secession Building, where artists like Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, and Carl Moll had made their stand against the
gemütlichkeit
culture of middle-class coziness and complacency that reigned at the end of the nineteenth century in Vienna. And then Café Museum, originally designed by Adolf “ornament is crime” Loos, where the artists had gone to drink coffee, argue, and seduce beautiful women into modeling and more. They reached the Opernring and the lit-up State Opera House came into view, decorated to within an inch of its life in Neo-Renaissance splendor and topped with equestrian statues.

“This has tragic story,” said Alessandro. “When the building was completed, Emperor Franz Joseph said the building sat a little low. And so one of the poor
architetti
killed himself in shame, and the other died of a broken heart.”

“Never read reviews,” said Sarah, struggling to catch a deep breath in the dirndl.

“Or give them.” Alessandro nodded. “Franz Joseph felt so bad that after, whenever anyone ask of him what he thought of some building, he just said, ‘It is very nice. I like it very much.’”

They passed a blindingly pink coffee shop: Aida. Alessandro explained that Aida was a chain, but a good example of a
Konditorei
, a pastry shop favored by women who went to gossip and eat pastries, as opposed to the more macho
Kaffeehaus
, where men went to gossip and eat pastries.

“Mark Twain said that, outside of Vienna, all coffee was merely liquid poverty,” Sarah commented.

“It is true.” Alessandro sighed. “The coffee is heaven. But the food is awful. Knödel. A crime against pasta.”

 • • • 

A
lessandro steered her toward Maria-Theresien-Platz, so Sarah could take in the enormous white and pale gray edifices arranged around the edges of a vast green square. Beyond this lay the even more massive Hofburg complex, with its monuments to the power of the Hapsburgs and the time when Vienna had been the seat of the Holy Roman Empire, powerful and seemingly indestructible. Now all of these places were simply part of Vienna’s perfectly preserved past. There was something, Sarah decided, a little smug about all this magnificence. Well, historically, Vienna had had the reputation of being a decadent, indolent city. Beethoven had once sneered in a letter that “so long as an Austrian can get his brown ale and his little sausages, he is not likely to revolt.”

Moving along, they passed the Volksgarten, the enormous Greek Revival–style Parliament building, and then turned into the approach to the Rathaus, Vienna’s imposing city hall, dressed to the nines in Gothic splendor, and boasting a statue of a knight in armor atop its lofty spire.

“Cheese and rice,” muttered Sarah (a favorite expression of her father’s) as they sailed into the majestic
Festsaal
. The ceremonial hall stretched the entire length of the building. She took in the barrel-vaulted ceiling, the parquet floors, the three-sided gallery, the statues and arcades, and the ornate flights of stairs. She counted sixteen chandeliers. Already there was a huge crush of people, all costumed, all wearing expressions of delight and anticipation in the frivolity to come. Members of an orchestra were settling themselves in one of the niches.

“I’m not going to have to waltz, am I?” Sarah asked, stumbling slightly in the overlarge shoes. “I don’t exactly have the moves like Ginger.”

“I will lead,” Alessandro said with a mildly sadistic smile. “Marie!” An exceptionally tall woman surrounded by a group of young ballgoers turned and then strode toward them, smiling, her wide shoulders and the stiff flounces of her many petticoats cutting a swath through the crowd. “Sarah, this is my friend Frau Professor Marie-Franz Morgendal. Marie-Franz teaches history of science at the university. She is also big Beethoven lover.”

“Frau Doktor Weston,” said Marie-Franz in careful, accented English. Her voice was deep and warm. “I read your book on Beethoven and enjoyed it very much. It was wonderfully insightful!” Sarah’s university had published her doctoral thesis on the correspondence between Beethoven and the 7th Prince Lobkowicz. Sarah had not mentioned in her book that some of her insights had come while she was on the drug Westonia, which had allowed her to actually
see
Beethoven and hear him play. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could tuck into a footnote.

“Please call me Sarah.” She had heard that Austrians were very big on titles, but “Dr. Weston” still sounded very strange to her.

“Yes? Then you must call me Marie-Franz. Sarah, I see that you have also tied your apron strings to signify you are an unmarried lady?” Sarah looked down at her apron, bemused. She hadn’t known she was sending a signal about her marital status.

“What is the tying that signals ‘troublemaker’?” asked Alessandro. “Sarah should have this.”

Marie let out a booming laugh as they were joined by a tiny, beautiful girl, whose pink hair and tattoos gave the whole dirndl thing a punk twist. Alessandro introduced the girl as Nina Fischer and explained that she was one of Bettina Müller’s grad students. Nina seemed fully aware of Alessandro’s plan and offered Sarah some advice.

“Play it cool, yes?” she said to Sarah. “Frau Doktor Müller is brilliant, but she can be a little . . . I don’t know if you have this word in English.” Nina switched to German, in which Sarah was fluent, and Sarah learned that Doktor Müller was “tricky.” Nina then introduced her escort, who must have been at least twenty years older than Nina and had the half-avaricious, half-desperate look of someone who knew his dates with young women were numbered, and he needed to make the most of them. “This is Heinrich von Hohenlohe,” said Nina, managing to look both proud and a little embarrassed as she pronounced the aristocratic “von.” But the name caught Sarah’s attention for a different reason. She remembered that Nico had said the von Hohenlohe family had the healer Philippine Welser’s papers and was highly possessive of them. Given the too hungry look of this guy, Sarah was glad that Nico already had the recipe he needed.

“Is she here?” Sarah asked Nina. “Doktor Müller?” There were hundreds of people milling about. This was going to be difficult.

“She will be late,” Nina said. “She always is. In the meantime, you should enjoy yourself.”

Sarah was just hoping not to split a seam before Dr. Müller showed up.

Heinrich touched her shoulder. “Do not be offended,” he shouted over the din, “if no one outside of our group asks you to dance. It would violate tradition. People come in couples or groups, and it would be considered ill-mannered to prey on a member of someone else’s party, although ogling is allowed.” Heinrich ogled Sarah, as if to demonstrate its acceptability.

When the orchestra leader announced,
“Meine Damen und Herren, alles Waltzer,”
and “Tales from the Vienna Woods” began, Sarah begged Alessandro to let her just watch the dancing for a moment. Each couple made their own swirling little circle while at the same time the entire crowd swirled counterclockwise, like an elaborate clockwork mechanism with hundreds of gauzy, glinting, moving parts. It was beautiful, it was romantic, it was slightly absurd, and it was fabulous.

When Alessandro led her into the next dance, Sarah had a moment of panic as she tried to recall where her feet were supposed to be, and then, to her great surprise, she was doing it, waltzing. Not perfectly, but definitely waltzing. She had to splay out her toes to keep the shoes on, and had an ongoing fear that the laces holding in her bosom would snap and release the hounds, and yet it was fun. Alessandro handed her over to another university colleague, who was more precise, and her technique improved. Then she danced with Heinrich, whose hands were predictably sweaty. But still no sign of Bettina Müller.

Marie-Franz suggested they go up to the gallery, where the view of the dancers would be particularly lovely. “
Vai
. I will wait for Bettina,” said Alessandro. Sarah and Marie-Franz made their way to one of the grand staircases, a marble and wrought-iron affair with columns supporting pointed-arch vaults. Their progress up was slow, as Marie-Franz continually stopped to introduce Sarah to more people. On the mezzanine they looked down on the swirling couples in costume and Sarah tried to remind herself which century she was in. Taking out her cell phone to snap a few pictures helped.

“Adele!” Sarah turned and Marie-Franz introduced her to a man she named as Herr Kapellmeister Gerhard Schmitt, and then to his wife, Adele, a willowy blonde who clung briefly to Marie-Franz as the taller woman stooped to kiss her cheek. “Frau Doktor Weston joins us from Boston. She’s only just arrived.”

“Frau Doktor Weston, I kiss your hand. I hope our meager entertainment is not a bore,” said the man, as his wife rolled her eyes theatrically. Sarah couldn’t tell if the woman was unimpressed with the splendid scene or her husband. The Kapellmeister had a mane of very blond hair, and Sarah thought the name was familiar.

“Not at all,” said Sarah. “It’s—”

“In the regular season,” the blonde interrupted, “it is not uncommon for women to get fat injected into the balls of the feet, so they can dance all night long.” She spilled some of her drink on Sarah’s dirndl and lurched sideways into the professor. “I wish I had your sense of humor, Marie-Franz. I wish I could laugh it all away.”

Before the professor could respond to this, the man said, “Enjoy your evening,” and led his wife away, his eyes lingering on Sarah’s breasts.

“You recognized him perhaps?” asked Marie-Franz after the couple were out of earshot. “Gerhard Schmitt is a composer, and director of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. He has taken the old title of Kapellmeister, though he is known in the press as ‘the Lion of Vienna’ on account of the hair. Ha! Adele is a harpist. I’ve known her since we were children. She’s not always so . . . unstable.”

“You seem to know everyone.”

“Oh, we’re terrible gossips here.” Marie-Franz laughed her infectious, booming laugh. “And it is more that everyone knows me! Not that I am famous. But you see, I used to be
Herr
Professor
Franz
Morgendal. And now—” Marie-Franz gestured modestly to her dirndled bosom and flipped up the ends of her thick, wheat-colored hair.

Sarah put the deep voice, the height, the hands, and the slight hint of Adam’s apple together.

“Some people think I should drop the Franz from my name, because it is confusing,” the professor explained. “But I just like the way Marie-Franz
sounds
.”

“It’s very musical,” Sarah agreed. “And why not please yourself?”

“
Yes!
I did not take the hormones or do the surgeries so that I could make people uncomfortable or comfortable. I did it so that I could live my life as it was intended in my soul.
Yes!
I use the word ‘soul’ even though I am a professor of the history of science and in the history of science they have never proved the soul. Only its expression.”

Sarah raised her glass in salutation. She rarely used the word ‘soul’ herself, but she was definitely in kinship with living your life as you feel it was intended.

“Geniesse das Leben ständig! Du bist länger tot als lebendig!”
said Marie-Franz, clinking glasses.

Constantly enjoy life! You’re longer dead than alive!

They returned to the main floor. A tall man, resplendent in a Tyrolean uniform, had joined their group and stood chatting with Nina and Heinrich. The man’s hair was dark, but his mustache and beard, groomed to a point, were red. His entire bearing and grandeur were very like the statue of the fifteenth-century Viennese notable he happened to be standing in front of.

“My brother, Gottfried,” said Heinrich. Gottfried bowed stiffly.

“Gottfried is a rider at our famous Spanish Riding School,” said Nina. “He’s also a terrible snob, so don’t expect him to ask you to dance.”

Gottfried looked at Nina coolly, then offered his arm to Sarah. By this time, Sarah felt as though she had had enough of the waltzing already. Her toes were aching, her ribs felt oddly numb, and she was anxious about the continuing no-show of Bettina Müller, but she took his arm.

Gottfried, Sarah noted as they danced, smelled like an intriguing combination of oiled leather and fresh hay. Her sensitive nose also picked up an interesting crackling energy. And the beard was very sexy. Under different circumstances, this would all be worth exploring (and it would be one way to get her mind off Max), but Sarah was at the ball to find Dr. Müller, not pick up hot guys, no matter how Tyrolean. Still, she tried making conversation with Gottfried, asking him about the Spanish Riding School.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I do not speak your language.”

“I’m speaking to you in
German
,” Sarah pointed out.