An Interpreter in Vienna | Chapter 7

Part II: Scopophobia

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…at the threshold where she believes one of them will die.

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Scopophobia

noun: the fear of being stared at; an anxiety disorder — morbid fear of being seen in public or stared at by others

“That’s a secret, private world you’re looking into out there. People do a lot of things in private they couldn’t possibly explain in public.”

-Detective Doyle in Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)

Chapter 7

A week or so later, I received a handwritten letter in German from my landlady. It was difficult to read her handwriting, but I could make out the gist of it. She introduced herself and said she wanted to meet me and see if I was ok in the apartment. There was no phone number. Instead, she wrote the time and date that I could expect to receive her. It seemed a strange request, and I wasn’t sure what I’d have to talk about with an old Viennese lady, but I chose to honor it as I wanted her to keep the rent low. 

⬩

Frau Grüber arrived punctually and with a box of chocolates from Heindl, outstretched before her as a ritualistic offering. Her face was angular and wrinkled with makeup to accentuate her lips and eyebrows. Her gray hair was sprayed into a wavy coif that offset the height she lost by leaning slightly on her cane. 

Unexpectedly, she greeted me in French. ‘Bonjour! Marie? Ah, I am so pleased to meet you.’

‘Enchantée, Frau Grüber. Welcome…to your flat.’

She thought this was very funny, ‘Ha, yes, thank you for accepting my request. I hope I am not intruding? I don’t want to be one of those meddling landladies!’

‘No, not at all. We can speak German if you prefer? Although my German is not very good.’

‘Oh, merci, you are such a polite young woman, and cultured! No, I prefer French if you don’t mind. You know I lived in Paris for a long time? Back then, the Viennese were very sexist, well maybe they still are. Anyway, I decided not to have a husband and to learn French and accounting. I had a good job and retired early. My parents left me this flat, but I also bought one in the first district. Not that long ago, real estate was very cheap here and my French pension went far,’ she paused, ‘Oh my, I am so silly, Marie! I am telling you so much information and I haven’t asked about you. In fact, I’m still standing in the doorway.’

I realized that perhaps I had made a faux pas and scrambled to set it right, ‘I’m so sorry, do come sit down. Let me get you something to drink. Coffee?’

‘Please, that would be wonderful. And Marie, call me Christa!’

She had already eaten three chocolates by the time I came back with the espressos. 

‘This place has many memories. You know, I grew up here until I was about ten and then we moved to Baden. Do you know it? It’s where the Beethoven walk through the woods ends. When I returned for university, I also lived in the flat. My parents bought it just after the war, or that’s what they had told me. When I was in university, a man from New York showed up at my door. He told me the flat had belonged to his grandfather before the war. His great uncle had been in the cabaret, you see, which probably meant he was gay. That’s what the Vienna cabaret was — both a safe haven and a celebrated cultural institution. The brothers fled together as the threat came with some help to America. Now they have done very well for themselves! This man didn’t want to take the flat back, just to see where his parents had lived. It was quite touching.’ 

‘That is…incredible. It must have been very strange for him to see it.’ 

‘Yes, I think it was. We drank a coffee together, and he told me about some gold his father had supposedly hidden in the flat. He didn’t need the money, but he wondered who had gotten a hold of it. Anyway, the more we talked, it brought back memories of his father. The man started getting very emotional and decided to leave. I thought we could stay in touch, so we exchanged names and addresses. We send cards at the new year, or rather I send them to his children since he also died.’ 

‘Beautiful story. I can see that you like to send letters?’

‘Yes, I am old-fashioned like this. I probably communicate more via letters than in person these days. I don’t always like to be seen. You are also a woman of language. Julie told me you are an interpreter? And a very good one, I believe. Educated at the Sorbonne?’

‘Yes, I was. We must have lived in Paris at the same time. How funny. Julie also told me you are a wonderful woman and that your flat is incredible.’

‘It is! You will have to come see it soon. I would love to have you as a guest. Her painting in the entry room is simply gorgeous. She worked on it for a month! Can you imagine? We chatted all day long, every day. I get quite lonely sometimes, so it was very nice to have her there.’

The jubilant and well-dressed old woman suddenly paused and looked as if she were about to cry. I handed her the box of chocolates, but she silently refused and began to let the tears flow. 

‘Are you alright, Frau Grüber? Sorry, Christa?’

‘Oh Marie! I miss him so much! Maybe Julie told you? Ah, my lover has died.’

I was impressed and confused with little idea of what to say next. Luckily, she was such an eager talker, that I didn’t have to say anything at all.

She managed to continue speaking through tears, her desire for companionship and conversation trumping her grief, ‘Like I said, I never married. However, upon returning to Vienna in early retirement, I took a lover. I call him a lover because we never lived together and we began our affair while his wife was in a nursing home, really in the later stages of dementia, so I’m not a bad person. Please don’t judge me.’

‘I would never do that. I’m happy you had someone in your life like that.’

‘It’s true, I’ve been very lucky. These are partially happy tears for what I had. He was old, older than I am. It was his time to die, but I still miss him so. I am even luckier still that his children and their young ones have adopted me as a granny of the family. I was afraid they would shut me out when he died, but they also didn’t realize he never planned to leave me money. Of this, I was aware. Of course, there is one son who doesn’t believe the division of the state property is fair and is not speaking to any of us,’ she rolled her eyes, ‘What an idiot! But inheritance is always like this here. That’s why I insisted he not leave me anything. I have everything I need anyway, and that’s always how I wanted to be: independent.’

‘I think we have some things in common, Christa. It is good to be an independent woman and you were ahead of your time.’

‘Sometimes I think you are right!’

‘More coffee?’

‘No, thank you. Do you have schnapps instead?’

Luckily part of my welcome gift from the foreign office had been such a bottle, and one I had not touched. I excused myself to fetch a little for both of us, trying to learn the customary habits and flavors of the locals. 

When I came back to the living room, she was standing and looking out the window. ‘That church, I used to go there as a child, too.’ I came to the window as well and saw the bell tower rising above the other apartment buildings in the neighborhood. 

‘I looked in there once. The bells are quite nice in the evening.’ Despite my strange experience there, I expected a fond memory to follow.

‘Heavens, yes, the bells are nice but stay away from there! Promise me, please. That space…it’s not haunted, but it is not a place of good.’ 

‘Of course.’ Somehow it felt safer not to tell her of my experience. I was afraid I would somehow cause offense or at least expose my cultural unawareness. 

‘What I mean is that I don’t like the Church as an institution. This one is probably fine as my lover’s childhood friend is the priest. No, I think his friend was the priest’s sister. Still, I don’t want to go.’

She continued in non-sequiturs. ‘My lover’s name was Wolfgang Lechner. Have you heard of him?’ 

’No.’

‘His father was the conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic during the war. They had the same name. I will tell you more about him another time. He had a lot of secrets; I think I would like to tell you about some of them,’ she paused to look at me fully. I wasn’t sure why she felt this close of a connection to me; maybe because she had nobody else. I realized then that the loneliness in this city was felt by everyone, that the fear of others was universal. ‘What art have you seen in the city?’

‘Well, I went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum last week for the evening opening.’

‘Did you see the Klimts? He is my favorite! Wolfgang used to love those paintings. We went to all the museums together.’

‘I did. They were so unusual.’

‘You must visit the Belvedere as well as the villa in Heitzing where he did a lot of his work. Have you heard about this home and studio? The historians were finally allowed to refurbish it recently. Felix Klein, the owner in 1939, was a member of the Jewish bourgeoisie and had to flee, of course. Even just a decade ago, the Austrian government was trying to hold onto it, maybe out of shame or greed, I don’t know.’

“Golden Hall,” Wiener Symphoniker’s Musikverein, Photo by Bells Mayer on Unsplash

She left soon after a second glass of schnapps. I waited a few minutes until I was sure she was on the tram before heading outside to walk the neighborhood. More and more, I was clearing my head in this manner. I went back up the tram line toward the fifteenth district, past cafes and kebab shops, and past the eerie church. 

There was a shop not too far away that sold old photographs. I looked in the boxes outside, hoping for something to adorn my empty walls. Black and white photographs of skiers and hikers took up most of the space. 

One photograph seemed to jump from the box: a violinist looking sad and hopeful at the same time, somehow. The background was the Wiener Symphoniker. I recognized it from one of my exploration walks. I was constantly walking, anonymously, avoiding interaction with any others. 

On my way back, I felt compelled to enter the church but didn’t. I passed the mysterious doors again and wondered what secrets were hidden there. 

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To be continued…

Find all the published chapters in the Table of Contents.