Strangers in Vienna

by Angela L.

  “I’m talking about your memories. The people who made you feel sad, or invincible, or just plain crazy. The places you’ve been and the moments you would die to live again.” While he said this, I could tell that he was waving his hands in midair like he was trying to show me the future.

  “Yeah, well, I have a pretty boring life.”

  “I doubt that,” he said. He sneaked under the blankets, covering him from head to toe. He made a lump under the blankets that looked like a human-sized potato.

  “I don’t like thinking about my memories.”

  “Start thinking then. Use that pain or sadness, and transform it into something beautiful through your writing.” His voice sounded muffled underneath the blankets.

  “I like blocking the pain. It keeps me from going crazy,” I said.

  “Crazy isn’t a bad thing. Einstein was crazy.”

  “He was a crazy genius. There’s a big difference.”

  “It’s still crazy. I think anything that has a hint of craziness, of madness or insanity, is absolutely beautiful.”

  “I guess we have different definitions of beautiful then.”

  He chuckled. “I think you’re beautiful.”

  “What?” I asked, startled.

  He thought I was beautiful.

  Out of all the European girls that he’d laid eyes on, he thought I was beautiful.

  Me, with my plain brown hair that I bet looked like a hot mess, and my weird figure that made me cringe when I wore a bathing suit. He said it so bluntly that I didn’t know how to respond.

  “You… are my definition of beautiful,” he said. “You know…you’re also one of a kind,” he said after he realized he had left me speechless.

  I was not used to guys saying these things. Usually guys back home just called you hot or whatever. Plus, I was also that girl no one ever noticed.

  “Is that a good thing?” I asked.

  “Yeah. You’re…real.”

  It was pretty ironic. He didn’t even know my real name. “What do you mean by that? You hardly know me,” I replied.

  “I think…you’re that girl who’s been through a lot, but you don’t complain because you always try to forget it and move on, although I think you shouldn’t because you never get closure. You seem like the type of girl who would secretly cry in movies and the girl who would give away the money that she just found randomly on the street to a homeless person because she knows that she doesn’t need it. You seem like the type of girl who’s insecure so she second guesses everything, but the funny thing is, if she were to look at herself through my eyes, she would just see how wonderful she truly is.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. I was expecting a different answer, something less…breathtaking. His words shocked me, and, in that one moment, I fell for him. I fell for him harder than my heart could beat and, I swear, all I wanted was to kiss him at that very second. It was like God gave him a script of what exactly to say to make me speechless.

  “You don’t know all that,” I said, clearing my throat after a long dead silence of shock.

  “You’re absolutely right. You’re just a random girl that I met today. But, funny thing is, it feels like I’ve known you way longer than that,” he said, softly.

  How can this guy be annoying and creepy at first, then so completely and utterly sweet?

  I didn’t want to get my hopes up. This guy had fallen in love more times than my dad. I wasn’t going to let myself give in.

  Sadly, my heart and my brain functioned separately.

  Besides, I told myself, we won’t even see each other after tomorrow morning. He’ll be on his way to another city, moving on with his life, and I’ll be in Vienna for a week before heading back home to Missouri.

  As I lay on the sofa, with Alaric a few feet away from me, I found myself wanting him to come back with me to Vienna. I wanted to spend one more day with him. I just wanted him to stay with me. I needed him to.

  But deep down, I knew that this was the last time that I’d ever see him again. I stole a quick glance at him, and I realized that the glimmer I had seen in his eyes earlier was back as he stared out the window, into the night sky brimming with stars. That look sent shivers down my spine, and it was like an itch that I just couldn’t scratch.

  Chapter Eight

  (July 28, 1992, in Vienna)

  Marcel was furious. He was very, very, extremely furious.

  The minute I opened the door to his apartment, I could hear his freaked-out voice as he tried to explain everything to whoever was on the phone, which I was guessing was Raya.

  “Where were you?” Marcel screamed, then sighed with relief when he heard the door shut with me standing in front of it.

  “I went to Krems an der Donau. I missed the last train back to Vienna so I stayed in a motel for the night,” I lied. I stood in front of the closed door, anxiously waiting for him to lecture me. I felt extremely guilty for putting Marcel in this position. But I wanted to give him as little information as possible. He didn’t need to know that I spent a night with two complete strangers.

  “I came home, found you gone, then Raya called, asking to talk to you and all I could say was that you were in the shower. Until she called again, leaving me no choice but to tell her that you vanished somewhere in Vienna on your second day here, and I had no clue where,” he snapped.

  It’s funny how everything that you want to express comes out so quickly when you’re mad. Although Marcel looked more freaked out than mad.

  “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  “And you didn’t think about calling me?”

  “I did. It said the number you gave me didn’t exist.” I walked up to Marcel and gave him the slip of paper where he had written his phone number.

  “What?” He looked at the number and his expression changed from a “you’re so screwed” kind of look to a “I gave my niece the wrong emergency contact number, and I expected her to call me; this is an epic fail” kind of look.

  He hastily got out his pen and rewrote it. “Here,” he said, giving me the slip of paper. “Try to stay within Vienna next time, okay?” He grabbed his work case. “I’m late already. Stay put,” he said as if ordering some dog to sit and stay, except there was no treat as a reward, and I wasn’t a dog, and I absolutely wasn’t about to sit and stay.

  Now that it was my third day, part of me wanted to go out there again and hopefully run into Alaric. But he was probably in another city by now. Miles and miles away from my reach.

  The sound of his voice rang through my head like those church bells that chimed every hour.

  I grabbed my bag, this time bringing more than a few schillings with me just in case of an emergency like last night, and I headed toward the café near Marcel’s place.

  I passed the street where I’d first seen Alaric with his violin, and weirdly enough, I could still feel his presence at that exact spot playing the same melody as he did that night.

  His music lingered in the air, so in the spirit of it, I decided to go to the Staatsoper opera house since it was nearby. It was closer than Krems an der Donau, and I even left a note beforehand on the kitchen counter for Marcel in case he came back home early.

  It was easier to get around the metro this time, and I didn’t need help with the translations since the Staatsoper was only four stops away.

  The opera house was ginormous with its white decorative walls and medium-sized statues poking out through every visible place. There was a rusted, green metal sculpture of what I thought was the Greek god Apollo carrying his instrument on top of a flying horse that had its leg raised up and head looking down.

  The monument was blocking the sun, which cast a humongous shadow over me. From down below, I could see the sunbeams trying to poke out from the edge of the green tiled roof.

  I looked around, turning a complete three-sixty degrees in front of the Staatsoper opera house, feeling like a lost ant in the city surrounded by strangers. Couples were walking down the
street, hand in hand, enjoying coffee together. Families asking other families to take pictures of them in front of the monument and vice versa. Tourist groups huddled together like sheep and followed their guides’ raised flags.

  I felt so alone yet so thrilled at the same time. To these people, I was nobody, and that, I knew, allowed me to be anybody.

  I could do or be whatever or whoever, because at the end of the trip, when I returned back to my hometown, these people would have no recollection of me.

  I quietly sneaked along with an American tourist group, blending in among the people and entering into the Staatsoper opera house.

  Something about the opera house made me feel so sophisticated and classy. I kept imagining myself in a gown attending a masquerade ball or just any high-class event and twirling my way across the carpets like a celebrity.

  “The Staatsoper opera house has history dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. It was originally called the Wiener Hofoper, or the Vienna Court Opera House. However, it was renamed in 1920.” The tour guide’s high-pitched voice rang through her microphone that was attached to her collared shirt. I looked at her; her face was filled with enthusiasm, yet more than half of the people in the tour group didn’t seem to care about the history at all and were too busy taking pictures.

  I wondered what it was like to guide people around the same places repeatedly, telling the same history, and still acting excited about it as if you’d just learned the information that morning.

  “Hi, I’m Timmy.” A boy with blond hair, no older than seven, pulled the ends of my shirt. He was wearing a baseball cap backwards, which made him look even more adorable.

  “Hi, Timmy,” I whispered and smiled at him. “Shhh.” I placed a finger on the middle of my lips.

  Timmy smiled, copying my motion. “Shhh.” He nodded and gave me a serious face as if it were his mission to keep quiet.

  I looked around carefully, hoping nobody noticed that I wasn’t actually part of the tour group.

  We went up a flight of stairs with green carpet. On either side of the wall stood two tall lights with vintage handles. Intricate designs of floral patterns were carved on the stone walls, and as we climbed higher and higher, I could see the chandeliers that hung onto the ceilings at eye level. The dust floated around the metal curves of the chandeliers and cobwebs clung to certain spirals, making me wonder how long it’d been there and what history it would tell if it could speak.

  “The Staatsoper was rebuilt with great attention to detail after it was destroyed in a bombing raid of World War II. Frank zon Dingelstedt became the director of the opera house from 1867 to 1870. After the many decades that followed, other great men have stepped in his place And today the position is taken over by a talented man called Welser-Möst,” the tour guide continued.

  We circled back to the second floor. Two men in black suits opened the doors for us. I was hidden in between two tall couples and couldn’t tell where we were heading. I stayed back and made everyone go in front of me so I could have my own space, and when I did, I realized that what stood before me was absolutely stunning.

  We were on the second-floor balcony with a view looking down at a right angle toward the stage. Well, the tourists were. I hung back in the aisles near the stairs, knowing that no seat was reserved for me since I wasn’t part of the group.

  I looked across to the other side as people started taking their seats. The stands were painted gold with diamond patterns plastered onto the sides. The voices of the audience echoed and bounced off every wall as people squirmed in their seats, waiting for the play to begin.

  Looking down, I wondered what it would be like to stand on that stage and look out toward the thousands of people sitting in the seats, yet still say every line with perfection without a single sweat. But most of all, I wondered what it was like to hear the applause and the cheers that thundered at the end of the performance as the actors and actresses stood under the spotlight.

  The play was called Der ferne Klang. I read the brochure over a child’s shoulder, while he was folding it into a paper airplane. I could tell he just wanted to go outside and fly it, instead of sitting in a seat for hours in the dark and watching a play in a language he didn’t even understand.

  The lights suddenly got dimmer and the curtains swiftly opened. An old man and what looked to be his wife stood together on the stage.

  Chapter Nine

  (July 29, 1992, in Vienna)

  I noticed that a thin pamphlet was lying on the ground, beneath Timmy’s chair. I grabbed it and read the English-translated plot that was printed on the back side of the crinkled paper.

  The play was about a composer called Fritz and a daughter of a poor retired officer called Grete Gaumann. In Act I, Fritz said that before he married her, he had to write a great piece of music and discover the “mysterious distant sound” that he heard within him, and he left Grete even though she tried to convince him to stay. Grete’s mother then complained about the family debts and suggested that Grete should get a job. Grete’s father came in drunk and revealed that he had gambled his daughter away to his landlord in a game of dice. To calm her mother down, Grete pretended to be pleased to marry the landlord and when her mother left, Grete jumped out the window and escaped in hope of finding Fritz. She ended up at the lake, exhausted and disappointed that she couldn’t catch up to Fritz. A strange old woman then appeared suddenly and promised to bring Grete a good future if she followed her, and Grete agreed.

  My butt started feeling sore from sitting on the steps and my left leg was falling asleep even though I wasn’t sitting in an awkward position. I didn’t want to get up in case one of the guards in the back noticed me.

  “Hey, Kaffee Mädchen.”

  That familiar voice came from right beside me, making my heart suddenly beat faster, and it made me wonder if I was hallucinating or not. Even though it was dark, I could make out his ruffled hair as he sat next to me on the stairs.

  “Wha—How—Hey,” I whispered, trying to place the right words together. I was so startled, yet so relieved to see him again. I had an urge to just kiss him, but I held myself back before I made things awkward.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not following you.” He silently chuckled. “Adriana made me bring something back for my mom. So instead of going to another city, I came back to Vienna. Just for today, though.”

  “But what are you doing here? Here, as in, like, listening to opera?” I looked at him, trying to figure him out. He looked so focused on the play.

  “I like music,” he simply said. “Bread?” He took out two pieces of bread, wrapped in napkins, out of a plastic bag hidden in one of his inside pockets.

  “What? I thought we weren’t allowed food in here,” I whispered.

  “So? You can do anything if you have the guts,” he says.

  “And you do?” I asked him. A girl that sat nearby gave us a dirty look and told us to shush.

  Alaric ignored her. “I’m a walking dead man, for goodness’ sake. I’ve got nothing to lose. They can throw me out. I don’t care,” he whispered and continued munching on his bread calmly.

  “Wait. How did you even get in here?” I asked him. He didn’t seem like the kind of person who would spend his money on an opera.

  “Snuck in,” he said.

  “Wow. You got guts.”

  “You, too,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You snuck in, too,” he said, munching on his bread like a cheerful child.

  “How did you know?”

  “If you didn’t sneak in, you would have taken a seat in the audience instead of sitting on the stairs,” he pointed out. Smart.

  We sat there as we both watched the play, but Alaric’s chewing distracted me from Grete’s singing.

  In Act II, which was ten years later, Grete was a celebrated queen on an island in the gulf of Venice, yet she still thought about Fritz. Grete promised she would end the suffering of her suitors by deciding on her next lover, anno
uncing that whoever could deeply touch her heart the most with a song would win her. As Grete was deciding, Fritz appeared. He went to Grete and told her that he had not found “the distant sound” for the past ten years and instead had gone in search of her, hoping to make her his wife. Grete revealed to him that she was a queen; however, Fritz was not the only man that was in love with her. The Count, who yearned to wed Grete, challenged Fritz to a duel. Fritz, shaken and disappointed, refused and departed, resulting with Grete in the Count’s arms.

  “It’s funny,” I whispered in the middle of the performance.

  “What’s funny?” he said in between bites of his bread.

  “We all know that Grete and Fritz will get together in the end,” I said. Most love stories consisted of the main characters falling in love, but there was always a second factor that affected their relationship. But no matter what, in the end, the two lovers were reunited.

  “Yeah, but it’s the disasters that the universe throws at them that make the story worth watching.”

  Act III started off with Fritz, five years in the future after he lost Grete to the Count, completing his opera called Die Harfe, which created a riot due to its badly composed music. Meanwhile, Grete lost the Count’s protection and was now a common streetwalker. She heard about the riot and was concerned for Fritz. On the way home, someone on the street assaulted her, and a doctor called Dr. Vigelius and the actors (who were staying in a hotel close by) appeared and saved her from being molested. Fritz was at home, old and depressed, realizing that he had destroyed not only his life but also his love for Grete. Grete met Fritz and they gratefully sank into each other’s arms. Fritz heard the distant sound and realized that the sound was always within reach. He joyfully began to write a new ending to his opera, but before he could finish, he died in the arms of Grete.

  The lights on the stage slowly dimmed as Fritz lay dead in Grete’s arm, who was sobbing while the curtains began to close.

  The audience lights suddenly turned on, blasting onto the stage as the actors and actresses each stepped out and soaked in the standing ovation. People in the crowd were throwing roses up on the stage but only a few managed to land in the right intended direction.