The Memorist

by M. J. Rose

  Meer could tell her father wasn’t convinced so she gave him something she knew would satisfy him. “Malachai can come with me.” Hesitating, she wondered if she was reading her father wrong. Maybe this was about him. “Unless you want me to stay here with you.”

  “Yes, but only because it will keep you safe. Certainly I don’t want you to stay here for my sake.”

  “I feel like I have to keep looking, Dad,” she said, lifting her hands and letting them drop.

  Jeremy smiled. “There’s an answer to every question even if it’s elusive. The Kabbalah tells us that there’s a level of our souls where we all connect to all the world’s accumulated knowledge. Jung agreed, just used different words and called it the collective unconscious. It manifests itself in an inner voice we all can hear if we listen deeply enough. You hear that voice. You’ve always heard it. Now you have to trust it. Just promise me,” he said with a smile, “you’ll be very careful.”

  There was no way Meer or Malachai would be able to find the book or read it since neither of them spoke German so Jeremy called Sebastian, apologized and asked for one last favor.

  The scent of leather and ink, glue and oil greeted them when they walked into the used bookstore off the Graben. A middle-aged woman with thick black hair looked up from her perch at a drafting table. Around her were pots and razor blades, papers, soft cloths, books in various states of repair, along with a battered copy of Gerhard’s memoir, which she handed to Sebastian.

  As he scanned the pages, Meer noticed the circles under his eyes and felt sorry that he’d been pulled back into her crisis when he had one of his own to deal with.

  After only a few minutes he closed the book and handed it back to the shop owner, thanking her.

  “What did you find out?” Malachai asked over the sounds of the traffic once they were back out on the street.

  “When Stephan died, Gerhard von Breuning inherited his father’s estate, which included dozens of items that had belonged to Beethoven.”

  “Was he specific?” Malachai asked.

  “Many books, several metronomes—a new invention at the time that Beethoven had been involved with—a dozen conductor’s batons and several musical instruments including a piano, two violins, an oboe and two flutes.”

  “Did he describe them in detail?”

  “No.”

  “We need to find out what happened to Gerhard’s estate,” Malachai said.

  Meer suddenly felt her father’s presence, almost as real as if he were standing there with them. Everywhere she’d been for the last two days, she’d pictured him making the journey with her and offering advice on how to proceed. She should have told him that in the hospital this morning. He would have liked knowing. When she went back later she’d tell him what it had been like in Beethoven’s apartments, both here in Vienna and in Baden, to sense his presence so strongly.

  Thinking about the apartment on Mölker Bastei she’d visited on Sunday she had a strong feeling that there was something she’d seen there she needed to remember now…but what? It had only been three days ago.

  While Malachai and Sebastian continued talking, Meer concentrated on playing Cicero’s memory game. Picturing herself in Beethoven’s apartment, she walked through the foyer…noticed the piano…circled the room…read the legends beside every item and artifact…and then she remembered exactly what she’d seen. What she’d read on the legends beneath each and every item in the house and why it mattered so much now.

  “I know what happened to his estate and where those instruments are,” she said.

  Chapter 62

  Wednesday, April 30th—11:30 a.m.

  Silently counting the all-too-familiar number of steps, she mounted the staircase to Beethoven’s Mölker Bastei apartment. Malachai and Sebastian followed as, without hesitation, she went straight to a violin in a case where, just as she remembered it, there was a card describing the instrument and giving its provenance in four languages. The three of them read different versions at the same time but both the English and German legends ended with the same information: the violin was a gift of the Gerhard von Breuning estate and was one of seven original instruments belonging to Beethoven and on display at the composer’s residences in Vienna and Baden.

  “Except we’ve been here and there and didn’t see a bone flute,” Sebastian said.

  “No. And you wouldn’t,” Malachai said. “It’s hidden. Beethoven said so himself in his letter to Antonie. Maybe Meer’s silver key will open its hiding place. Beethoven wrote that both the Archduke Rudolf and Stephan von Breuning had all the necessary clues even if they couldn’t see them.”

  “And if von Breuning left his son everything that Beethoven gave him and Gerhard left everything to the state and the state put all those objects on display in Beethoven’s apartments…” Sebastian connected all the dots in his mind. “You think that hidden amidst all these objects there’s a flute made of ancient bone?”

  Meer wasn’t listening to their conversation. The lights enfolded her, separated her from herself so that she was at once in this moment and outside of it, watching and trying to communicate with the woman on the other side of the divide who knew exactly where the ancient flute had been hidden. Her back ached; the metallic taste filled her mouth. Meer didn’t hear a voice giving her the answer to the puzzle, or see a ghostly figure pointing the way. Suddenly there was just knowledge she possessed that she hadn’t had a few seconds ago.

  Crossing the room she paused in front of a second glass case. Inside was a silver oboe more than two feet tall and two inches across. A white oblong card described the instrument in four languages but Meer didn’t need to read the English version. The only words she cared about were the same in every translation.

  Gerhard von Breuning.

  Chapter 63

  Wednesday, April 30th—11:35 a.m.

  Like a flock of birds descending, the rooms suddenly filled with dozens of small noises that all together created a great flurry. Glancing at the door, Meer watched a harried female teacher trying to corral a bevy of kids. The same college student who’d been sitting at the front desk selling tickets followed them in, beginning a guided tour.

  “Bad timing,” Sebastian muttered under his breath as the three of them watched the group gather in front of the piano. As the guide spoke, she gestured to a painting on the wall. “Except I think we can make this work in our favor. Stay here.” Leaving Meer and Malachai by the oboe cabinet, Sebastian went up to the guide. She appeared fascinated by what he was saying, nodded twice, and then gestured for him to follow her. Together they approached the cabinet and, using a ring she took out of her jeans pocket, the young woman tried first one and then a second key. Pulling the hasp lock apart, she opened the lid, reached inside, gingerly extracted the silver oboe and handed it to Sebastian, as if she were making an offering. He examined it with an expression of reverence on his face; one that Meer was sure was sincere. He was holding an instrument owned by one of the greatest composers of all time, the instrument he himself played in the Vienna Philharmonic.

  Behind them and beside them, the children milled around and when one started chasing another, the ticket taker excused herself. Calling out, she gestured for them to gather around her in front of another case in the far corner of the room.

  “How did you get her to give you the oboe?” Meer asked incredulously.

  “I told her who I am and showed her my ID from the Philharmonic,” Sebastian whispered as he set about carefully examining the instrument.

  Meer glanced over her shoulder at the children, who were all riveted to the Beethoven death mask, which she’d examined herself three days before. As the young woman explained what it was and how it was made, a hush fell over the room. It was a haunting object, not so much because of what it looked like but rather because it had been made within hours of the maestro’s death. Even a photograph would not seem as real as the bronze sculptural sepulcher of his soul. Meer’s heart ached and she felt a stab of
grief.

  “Look at this.” Sebastian’s voice was low but insistent. They closed ranks around him and each peered down.

  On the underside of the oboe was a group of silver hallmarks. Meer knew a fair amount about them from working in her mother’s antique store on weekends and summers. Handling so many silver objects she’d memorized many of the most popular but she’d never seen this particular grouping before. Then she noticed something she never had seen before on a maker’s mark: a small hole. Cleverly hidden in the midst of the engraving was a pin-thin opening. Her fingers went to the chain around her neck.

  “Yes, we have to try it,” Sebastian urged, figuring it out at the same time.

  “Now? Here?”

  “Yes,” Malachai’s voice insisted.

  She glanced up first at the children who were moving on to the next room with the ticket taker and then she checked the young woman’s counterpart at the front desk who typed away at his computer.

  “Now, quickly,” Malachai persisted.

  Fingers shaking, Meer lifted the chain out from under her shirt, leaned over and slipped the tiny silver key into the keyhole. She’d wondered since she’d first seen what she’d pulled from beneath the mummified heart what lock could be this small. Now she knew.

  The mechanism gave as softly as a butterfly sighing and she let the chain and the key fall back as she tried to open the oboe. How many years had it been since this hinge had been exercised? Gently, she pried the two halves open, forcing the instrument to give up its prize. Gazing down at the contents of the slim silver tomb, Meer recognized what was nestled there from a place deep, deep inside her soul.

  It was so delicate and brittle-looking she was afraid to even touch it. Very gently she lifted it out of its hiding place.

  “Quickly, give it to me,” Sebastian said.

  She was confused. Which instrument? Before she figured it out, he reached out, took Beethoven’s silver oboe from her and snapped it shut.

  “Put that in your bag, quickly, Meer,” Malachai said, nodding at the bone flute.

  Meanwhile Sebastian had taken several steps away from both of them and put the silver cylinder up to his lips. Not Beethoven, but Pachelbel’s Canon filled the room. It seemed appropriate to Meer; this was music that Beethoven would have heard, Pachelbel having been a composer who’d also moved from Germany to Vienna almost a hundred years before Beethoven did. The children, their teacher, the ticket taker guide and the young man at the computer all focused their attention on Sebastian and the sweet and sacred sound that he brought forth from the oboe.

  Hands trembling, Meer opened her bag and slipped the bone flute inside.

  Sebastian finished the piece, accepted an enthusiastic round of applause and with a flourish returned the oboe to the ticket taker, who replaced it in its repository without showing any undue curiosity. Wasn’t it lighter without the flute inside? Or hadn’t she paid attention to its heft in the first place?

  Done, the woman locked the cabinet and thanked Sebastian who in turn thanked her for the honor of letting him play the instrument. Then, nodding at Malachai, he put his arm around Meer’s shoulder and gently led her out of the room and out of Beethoven’s house.

  Chapter 64

  Wednesday, April 30th—11:55 a.m.

  None of them spoke as they walked down the stairs until they were out on Mölker Bastei and then Malachai and Sebastian proceeded to have a totally innocuous conversation about other Austrian cities within driving distance that were worth visiting.

  Meer soon realized they were obfuscating in case someone was following them or listening to their conversation with wireless microphones. She stopped paying attention. All that mattered was whether or not they were in danger.

  Crossing the street, they entered a park. Meer noticed mothers watching their children and elderly people sitting on benches. A woman called out to a dog. Where was Sebastian taking them? A couple strolled by holding hands. A little boy zoomed by them on a bike, so close she could feel a whoosh of air as he passed.

  Suddenly Sebastian gripped Meer’s shoulder and he steered her to the right. Exiting the park, they continued on down the street toward the corner where a tram waited. Sebastian sped up, pulling her with him. They were almost at the corner. The tram’s door was closing. Sebastian’s grip tightened. He was going to try for it. Not sensing Malachai on her other side, she glanced over. He wasn’t keeping up with them. He wasn’t going to make it. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to either. What if the door shut on her bag? The flute could be crushed if—

  Sebastian jumped on the tram, turned and lifted Meer up and through the door just as it closed behind her. Dazed but unhurt, she looked around the car at the standing-room-only crowd.

  “Hold on to me,” Sebastian said.

  “But Malachai?” She strained to look out the window but the tram had already pulled away from the corner. “Will he be all right?”

  “He’ll be fine,” Sebastian said, speaking softly. “We’ll call him as soon as we get to where we’re going. It’s better this way. Three of us together were too easy to notice.”

  “But we can’t just—” Then she realized what he’d said. “You did it on purpose?”

  “Are you all right?” He ignored her question, his eyes telling her this wasn’t the place to discuss it. “Did I pull your arm too hard?”

  Meer shrugged, not telling him how much it hurt. “Where are we going?”

  “To get lost,” he whispered, so low she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right.

  She almost told him that she already was lost and had been for a long time. But like the pain, she didn’t want to admit it, and she wasn’t sure why.

  Chapter 65

  Wednesday, April 30th—2:08 p.m.

  Swinging 200 feet above the ground in the enclosed space of the Ferris wheel’s red cabin, Meer looked out over the city sprawl. “This is crazy.”

  “It was our best chance. The way the two trains were sitting there, even if someone had followed us from the tram stop, there wouldn’t be any way they could have seen us get off the first train and onto the second one.”

  “And now?”

  “And now we’re waiting. Catching our breath. Letting the sun set.”

  “And then?”

  “A hotel.”

  “You mean a different hotel?”

  “Yes, not the Sacher where you’re registered. We’ll find someplace else.”

  “When can we call Malachai? And my father? We have to let my dad know what’s going on.”

  “Once we get to the hotel.”

  The cabin swung in the wind and Meer felt her center of gravity shift.

  “I remember this scene from The Third Man,” she said. “We studied that movie for its zither score in a film scoring class I took at Juilliard.”

  “That’s what everyone remembers, the zither and this scene.”

  “It was a frightening movie, but Vienna really is a frightening city, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, behind the facades of these elegant buildings are ugly secrets and dirty shadows. Like a beautiful woman holding a gun behind her back.”

  His voice crawled on her skin and she glanced away from him and down at the miniature city below them.

  “What was that famous line from the movie about this view?” she asked.

  “It’s one of my favorite movies. By the time they’re here, Holly Martins knows all about the diluted penicillin and that Harry Lime has destroyed people for his own gain. The corrupt man as metaphor for the corrupt state. Sitting in one of these cabins—looking out at this same view, Lime tells Martins to look down and asks him if he’d feel pity if any of those dots stopped moving forever? ‘If I offered you 20,000 pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep the money? Or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?’”

  “That’s not the line I remember.”

  The wind picked up outside and the cabin swayed back and forth. Sebastian smil
ed and she saw something of Orson Welles’s character’s devilishness in his eyes as he recited the line: “‘In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.’”

  “That’s it. We used to play a game at Juilliard. What would you give up to create something brilliant and timeless?”

  “We’ve all played a version of that game.”

  Or what would you give up to save someone you loved? she thought but didn’t say as the car started on its downward cycle with a hard jerk. They were returning to earth, the people on the ground getting larger, and then there was a clap of thunder as the clouds broke open and fat, heavy drops streaked the windows. Minutes later, the car came to a stop.

  “All safe now,” Sebastian said.

  Chapter 66

  Wednesday, April 30th—5:45 p.m.

  Sebastian paid the taxi driver, got out, offered his hand and helped her exit. Her back had stiffened up and she needed the assistance. Despite steeling herself not to, she winced with the exertion. It was only drizzling and there was no reason to rush but they hurried across the street and quickly slipped through the frosted glass doors of the Thonet Hotel. Both of them were stressed and anxious. They’d spent the afternoon at the Prater, making sure they weren’t being followed, trying out alternative plans for what to do and where to go.

  The eighteenth-century villa’s ancient wooden beams, old stone floors, vaulted ceilings and six-foot-tall leaded glass Gothic windows had been restored so that the modernized space exuded character. Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 in G Minor played in the background and the air was scented with apples and burning wood. Under any other circumstances, it would be very pleasant here.