An Interpreter in Vienna is a response to Graham Greene's The Third Man and a psychological thriller serialized on The Matterhorn each Saturday. This prose is a continuation of a letter written by Marie to her (official) employers in anticipation of Josef’s arrival at her door.
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Chapter 23
There was nothing to do other than continue.
Walking through the labyrinth of the city eased my tension. Mainly I walked the same streets over and over again, often with Ishmael as I did the next morning. Though we didn’t have the strict square kilometer mandates like the French, there was safety in sticking to one’s neighborhood during this uncertain time.
Still, the streets began to confuse me. The more often I walked them, the stranger they felt. It was as if something was haunting them, lingering and waiting for passersby to swirl around and discombobulate my mind.
The side streets from Westbahnstraße looked like perfectly set up perspective drawings. The lines of all the bricks and pavement stones converged over and over again at the focal point with nothing in its way, nothing moving. They moved slightly downhill toward Burgaße.
I moved down narrow Stuckgaße and it felt like the buildings might come together and flatten me. Once I got halfway, I realized that, of course, they wouldn’t. So I stopped for a moment to look up and around. Who lived here? Who died here?
I continued and looped around and up Kirchengaße. I had walked it many times and even entered the large church at the other end, but still, I saw new things. I had never noticed the park just off the road. It was a bit rundown and of course, now there were huge locks on the gate. The space, however, gave me some peace. I hung on the rails for a few moments, just imagining life in the park: children on the swings or someone having lunch on the bench.
Along the street, I bought the local newspaper at a kiosk to look at while I stood in line at Joseph Brot for a fancy coffee and croissant.
I waited like the rest of them, each a couple of meters away. These strange habits had begun to feel normal, even to my dog who waited patiently for nothing. We waited for expensive bread and coffee. The price, long queue, and quiet, gray mies-en-scene would make you think it was wartime rations we were after. I guess the pandemic was a kind of war after all, and everybody wants a tiny luxury during those times.
The lead story in the paper was about a fear for the traditional dancing schools. The fear was not that children would get sick from dancing in close proximity or bring it back to their grandparents. No, instead it was that a generation of children would miss out on a year or two of dance lessons and the whole aesthetic of future ball seasons was in jeopardy. For how could they make their debutant appearances with a little less practice under their belts? The government was ready to bail out these schools before many other businesses, so the fear was not really financial. Although I had no clue how to ballroom dance, I was moved by the story.
What a sad world without the waltz. Is this how traditions die?
On the contrary, a revivalist effort was in hand to force all the children into isolated dance practice with imaginary partners, molded to move through their lives in the same way as their ancestors, lacking the ability to be agile in thought and response.
I once listened to a podcast that talked about longevity and our brain function. The guest neuroscientist concluded that dance classes were the best thing we could do for our brains, not only because physical movement and fitness can impact brain health but also because we had to calculate our movements as well as the social factor.
But mainly, he said, humans are social creatures. Even extreme introverts need human contact to prosper. It’s not just about feeling good; it impacts our brain cells on micro-levels.
At this time, my mind was swimming around with ideas like this but no outlet. It’s so great to write it down now; at least you guys will see it. I don’t imagine I have any mind-blowing ideas, but it feels good to tell someone what you’re thinking.
I ordered the largest size mélange, which is pretty much café au lait, and walked out again into the cold, uncanny streets with Ishmael at my side. It was just becoming light.
Even after things opened up that summer, the world seemed strange to me. And I felt strange with the world. The city that had at first awed me, then become allergic to me (or I to it, I wasn’t sure), was at that point in peace and harmony with me through our strangeness. We both had become closed off from outsiders. We both had hard formalities that were difficult to break through or understand. Neither of us had any need for affection and care, for empathy. The old buildings that had lasted through the war and been occupied by Hitler stood grand and impenetrable. Statues protruding from buildings were made visible on my walks with Ishmael due to the lack of people on the streets. The emptiness gave me peace. I felt like the still cherubs or gods that adorn the windowsills and entryways. We were all forever emblazoned, holding traumas within us silently and holding up our untempered visages to the world. I imagined these faces as mummifications of the past and studied them intently any time Ishmael stopped to explore a tree.
At these times, I also thought: what is to become of me?
I realized then that I had no future before me and that Vienna was the place for me to live out my years and peacefully rest in eternity. I am nearing thirty and have no aspirations for a family of my own. When Ishmael dies, I will find a new dog to replace him. There will always be translation work and within thirty years, I will have my pension available. I thought then about all the solitude before me as a blessing. No one to make decisions for me. No one to care for. No one to worry if they approved of me or were angry at me. I had learned with that whole media thing that it was probably better to remain invisible from people.
It was true that I had changed the way I navigated the city. I started to notice it with the absence of people around me, just something to reflect on. I had begun by habit to take the little side streets instead of the grand boulevards. I preferred to be out in the early morning or late night when the only others I would see were the loners like myself. The transitions between light and dark felt comfortable to me. I avoided the areas with bars and cafes in the evening because I knew people were looking at me and maybe talking about me. The ball photo had damaged my reputation and I didn’t want to face any questions.
But some days I felt like Ishmael kept me softer than that. It wasn’t fully possible to harden myself and take away the human needs that had once driven my life: feelings of love and affection, desire for nourishment, and acceptance by others. I mostly shunned these things now. I had become skinny and hard. I wanted to just blend into the stone and so I tried to become as hard as the rocks of the city herself. But sometimes when I was home with the dog, he would come over to jump onto my lap to sleep or ask me to throw his ball. At those moments, I forgot my resolve and freed myself into a connection with another being. The hangover of that feeling was always one of loss and emptiness. I could nearly taste the void of human connection. And so, I would open some wine and nourish my soul while watching a detective show with murder or rape, the hardest criminals, and fill my heart with intrigue and fear and that kept it beating, even while it was alone.
I wondered at times like this, just before putting on the detective show but after the first glass of wine, if I were doomed to this for eternity or if there was some possibility for a way out. I had been enlightened to the loneliness of man. In high school, we learned about Descartes’ ideas of solipsism. I guess this is why I’m explaining to you here even some things that sound bizarre or imaginary – my mind’s inner life is my reality. This is how we are, we are all alone. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we stop searching for happiness through others.
I am in that in-between moment now as I write. I have drunk the first third of the bottle of a Zweigelt, and I am waiting with my weapon ready. It is the same type of moment I have had many times in the last month or so. Right now, I want a lover. Or, I want my family in Bretagne back. But maybe it is too late for me, I consider. So, if I keep drinking the wine and dive into the horror, I will at least feel alive. I imagine the worst is just to lie around all day wishing you had a companion or a family, so I use it as a tool of energy.
That evening, on a second walk after a few glasses of wine, I saw her again. I saw Marija but from a distance as she turned the corner. I knew it was impossible but at the same time her green coat was recognizable and her hair was just like mine.
I followed until she turned, still fifty meters away or so, and slowly approached. Was it a desire for absolution from her ghost?
As Ishmael started barking, she called out to me in French: ’Marie! Wait, it’s me, Marija!’
I wanted to scream and yell that I hated her. But shock and formalities got the better of me. ‘Hello,’ was all I could say at first, but then I managed to add, ‘It’s so nice to run into you.’
‘Sorry I haven’t reached out sooner. Are you ok?’
’No problem, I have been very busy.’
‘Oh? What have you been busy with during this pandemic?’
On impulse, and I’m not sure why at this point, I wanted to say: hating you. Instead, I said, ‘I got a dog.’
‘Oh, how lovely!’
A van then drove between us, for there was a side street in the middle of where we were standing. As it drove off, she had disappeared. On the side of the building where her face had been was one of those mirrors to help drivers and pedestrians see around tight corners. Had I been talking to myself?
This was some kind of ending, some kind of goodbye. I recalled the last time I had seen her alive and hadn’t thought much of the goodbye. And then I thought of the goodbye with my mother at Christmas. She had asked for a second hug and kiss before I left which I had delivered in haste and rushed off to the taxi waiting and put on a playlist.
I always think it’s strange to say goodbyes when you know it’s the last time you’ll see someone: isn’t it a kind of death? I left people in Tokyo and New York that I would never see. People who had shared intimate conversations and experiences with me.
And now, without Maman in Bretagne, would I ever go back? Were all those people from my childhood dead to me, too?
The frightening part meant that I was dead as well…many times over.
⬩
When I got home, I watched a show with the rest of the bottle of wine before moving to bed. I could feel the fear rising in through my body as deep night came. At once I felt both lighter, as if a helium energy had taken over my body, and a burdensome and growing stone taking over my soul. I could not rest myself. I could not right myself. I could not move forward.
I let out a small scream, just to see if I was really there. It came out of my mouth with some force, so I did it again.
‘Help!’
I wasn’t sure whom I was asking for help or why exactly. I’m sure a neighbor must have heard me though. It was certainly loud enough and I could often hear people simply walking around their flats.
But nobody came.
Maybe I had to be more specific.
‘I’m stuck. I’m scared. I can’t breathe!’
But I said this more quietly. Even if the neighbors had heard a noise, they wouldn’t have been able to discern to words. They may have thought I was watching a film. Perhaps I said it for myself. It was a reminder that things were not ok. It didn’t mean I had a solution. Everyone was suffering now, weren’t they? It would be selfish to assume I had it any worse than anybody else. People were dying. Or they were trapped inside. Or they were trapped inside, dying.
I had seen the videos of people in Italy, taking their last breaths in their homes while the medics looked on with nothing they could do. There were no more ventilators to put them on. No medicine that would help. It was better, they reasoned, to hold their hands dying in their beds than to transport them to a parking lot to wait to see if they could enter a hospital to wait to see if a tube could be put down their throat, and where they would probably die alone and encased in plastic under fluorescent lights.
When you say it out loud, it’s obvious. But we hang onto a hope for life. Even a few minutes more alive, we reason, is better than death. Even if it means we suffer unnecessarily or have to be alone.
I continued to lie down, thinking sleep would come eventually. I rolled over on my left and suddenly my heart was popping out of my body. That’s what it felt like. I paid closer attention - I didn’t have a choice - and the beat was not exactly fast but it was all over the place. I continued to put my hand where the pumping was, no longer like pumping now like random movements as if it had a mind of its own.
I thought I should probably call emergency or at least just head over to the hospital. But I wasn’t sure if that was even allowed anymore. I didn’t want to get the disease and - worse - I didn’t want to get admitted to a room in isolation and get treated by doctors in hazmat suits, possibly die there. Like maman.
I realize this probably sounds stupid as I was totally isolated at home anyway but I guess at least it was home and at least my dog was there to keep me company. He was sleeping at my feet and didn’t suspect anything out of the ordinary. I remembered the story about the dog alerting parents their baby wasn’t breathing properly and thought I must be ok because he was sleeping well and maybe at least if I died in my sleep he would alert the neighbors to get me out. Well, at least when he wanted his breakfast. I now knew they would call the police over perturbing noise.
My phone broke into these thoughts. It was a text from Josef.
They are opening the border next week. Come to Pest?
‘Ok, which day?’ I didn’t want to sound too excited, so I made it simple.
‘Thursday. The nine o’clock train. I’ll send a diplomatic note just in case there are problems at the border. Then my driver will collect you at the train station.’
The rhythms of my heart turned from fear to excitement and radiated through my body. I would make my parents proud. I would live with purpose. But it was the promise of live human connection that allowed me to fall asleep soon after that.
To be continued…
Find all the published chapters in the Table of Contents.
The alienation, the alternating peace, and the ultimate: the search for self and maybe even meaning. Is hope coming along with the loyalty of Ishmael? You continue to intrigue, Kathleen.
Loved Marija's apparition! And loved how our protagonist reacts to it, as if it were only slightly out of the ordinary. And the mirror on the street -- really enjoyed the scene. Beautiful, Kate. :)