An Interpreter in Vienna | Chapter 5

Part I: Xenophobia

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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Chapter 5

On the next day, I went to work as usual. We were preparing for a bigger event in November also about counter-terrorism. Grégoire, your aid was speaking to someone from Apple in the US, and I was supposed to interpret even though I knew she could understand everything. But then we found out the American guy was originally from Haiti, so they just switched to French anyway and I stood by ‘just in case’. I felt utterly redundant. At least I was getting paid. 

⬩

The week went on in a more regular, even boring, manner. 

For a moment, I had been worried (or perhaps just intrigued) if the drowned man could be from the UN. All I found was a very short police note in one of the online papers with a name of Jonathan Barbero and age of fifty-four. I was afraid to visit the record shop or to contact Brian; I wasn’t sure if he had seen me in Prater and wanted to feign indifference. 

Finally, it was the evening of the dinner party. I hoped Brian wouldn’t be there, so I could suss out Josef without obstructions to my demeanor.

⬩

I got off the train at Stadtpark and exited into the park. It was getting dark and the park had a slightly seedy feeling to it. I saw a few men on their own. I moved quickly and tried to keep my posture up and alert to avoid being their prey. It was probably rather paranoid of me, but after those years in New York and the recent encounter with death, I didn’t believe the narrative of Vienna’s status as a safe city. My rational mind told me these had been natural accidents, but something made me uneasy. 

I was in the third district and felt safer away from the park, now on the streets lined with many white apartment buildings that look more like colonial houses. They were completely out of character with the rest of the city. Each diplomatic abode was divided into three or four flats in an old, open-spaced style. I later learned that each was about the same size, so whether single or a family of six, you were able to fit into it. Sometimes I wondered why people actually wanted to have kids, or even marry. I mean when you consider things like this - living space - it just seems like a downward hill that you choose for yourself.

The area was beautiful and felt deserted in the moonlight. Unlike most urban places I frequented in the last few years, I felt a void that made me vulnerable. But part of me wanted this danger, this solitary susceptibility. I welcomed it freely back into my life, having only really known it in childhood. I started to realize that Vienna offered these spaces alongside the busy urban streets. But the drawback was that it was difficult to remain invisible. In Tokyo, New York, even Paris outside of one’s quartier, I could just be one of many and either decide to be noticed or not at all. I could move like water through these spaces. 

Your building was one of these classical homes with a big green door out the front and a buzzer to be let in. I walked in and made my way up the worn, wooden staircase that creaked under my feet, carefully carrying the wine I had brought. 

At the door, I met you, Julie, for the first time since our meeting in New York. Your small frame was capped with freshly curled brown hair, and you were smartly dressed in tight jeans, black heels, an open white blouse, and a vibrant blue scarf. Your French perfume encircled me like a lasso to pull me into the soirée.

‘Bonsoir, Marie! Bienvenue chez nous!’

We spoke French together, of course. (I’ll continue to use English here for the purpose of this letter’s potential use.) You took me into the kitchen and handed me a large glass of a beautiful Bordeaux Graves, deep enough to pull me into safety and serenity after a whirlwind of new people during my first month. The kitchen was pearly white but intimate. 

‘Ah, finalement! Those people are ok, but they’re all a bit boring. Maybe they’re not local, but they might as well be.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, come on! You know — they talk about work; they’re never interested in making new connections; the only art they care to talk about is the stuff they’ve visited a hundred times on the walls of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Now, I don’t know you well, but I could see in your eyes you felt the same way. Oui? C’est vrai?’

I thought about it for a minute and realized she had articulated what I couldn’t. I smiled at her: ‘That’s it! So people like you exist here?’

‘Sure! There are even Viennese like this, but we are hidden people. After a few years here, you’ll see. We tend to retreat into our interiors. In fact, that’s what I transformed my work into. Let me show you something.’

You did a twirl while carrying your wine glass and the bottle through the doorway as I followed. We went down the apartment corridor to the very last room and entered to a landscape of birds and trees painted on the wall. 

‘This is what I do! I paint interiors on commission. I came here as an art teacher at the French Lycée and got really bored of it. I also started to…this sounds terrible…not really want to be around other people that much. That happened during my long maternity leave. Not great for teaching!’

I laughed with her. ‘I didn’t know you and Grégoire have a kid?’

‘Oh yes, she’s grown though. In Scotland, away from home like all of us. But I guess she was raised to be international.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, and meant it.

‘Wait, there’s more. Follow me…’ We weaved in and out of the other four rooms in the hallway, each with a different scene. There was a flowery pastoral room, one with exotic African animals (‘we went on a safari once…’), walls with a sort of paisley pattern that mutated, and finally a room filled only with whites and creams of marble-like statue images (‘inspired by Greece…’). I also noticed that despite the older state of the building – I hope you don’t take offense if I describe it as shabby-chic? – the furniture in the rooms you showed me was carefully selected. There was no sign of IKEA anywhere; the few other UN workers and interpreters’ homes I visited tended to have the same couches and tables as mine although perhaps in a different color. Instead, your antique wardrobes and large sleigh beds had clearly been chosen with care. During a later visit, you told me that your dining room table was made of bocote wood from Mexico and a local seamstress had redone your armchair covers with a tapestry you found in Carcassonne.  

‘I’ve made a life of private spaces. People pay me to do their walls. I do it on the condition that they leave me entirely alone until it’s done. Of course, it takes days, so in between, they are not allowed in the room to give me feedback. I tell them that when it’s done, they can ask me to redo it if they are unhappy, but it’s never happened. All the time, I’m listening to opera music and just losing track of time.’

‘Wow. I can’t believe you’ve made a life of this. It’s incredible. Very old fashioned and yet new as well. Don’t you ever get lonely while you’re working?’

I could see her thinking for a moment. ‘I used to crave interactions with people. And, like I mentioned, something happened to me while I was here. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’m over fifty now and my grown child lives in another country. Maybe it’s because my German’s not so great. I don’t know…but I’ve learned not to apologize for it and just embrace it. There’s something I love about the privacy of this art. People have to invite you into their private spaces if they choose you to see it. I guess it’s the same way people keep stolen art. 

I was struck by something in her eyes and didn’t want to get into a deep conversation about it; I had just met her after all. ‘It’s beautiful! I really haven’t been into any Viennese homes yet. Are they grand?’ I put it back into a more general cultural conversation. I also hoped to remind her I didn’t know anyone and that it might be nice to be introduced to the people at the party, including Josef. 

It worked: ‘Oh my goodness, yes, I keep forgetting you are new here. Do you want to come meet some of the other guests? There are quite a few bores but one or two really interesting ones.’ 

‘Sure, merci.’ 

We walked back through the long hallway. I was walking behind her and turned briefly when we got back to the kitchen. There was some sort of darkness down that hallway that I couldn’t pinpoint exactly. It felt like a bad energy. Maybe it wasn’t malicious, but it was some kind of suffering, of loneliness. 

There were three other rooms, each with doors closed. I never asked you what they contained, nor did I tell you that I saw a light flick on and off in one of them. At the time, I supposed it was a bathroom being used by a guest, but later when I asked for the bathroom, you led me somewhere else. 

View from the 25hours Hotel rooftop bar, Vienna (2017)

In the kitchen, a boyishly joyful blond Austrian met us with a question, ‘Beautiful ladies! Grégoire has asked me to find more wine. Can you help?’ 

‘Bien sur, Christophe! You know where the wine is.’ Julie laughed, He was still polite despite their familiarity. Maybe he would have taken the wine himself if Julie had not come in. ‘Well, since I am helping you get it, we might as well get the really nice one I bought yesterday. Let me see…I put it in here before all the guests brought their own.’ I suddenly realized that the local Zweigelt¹ I had handed her at the door may not have been up to par. All of us French know our wine pretty well and probably all of us prefer French wine most of the time, but I had been trying to tap into the local culture in any way I could. 

I thought Julie would bring out some Champagne or a nice Bordeaux, so I was surprised to see neither French nor Austrian wine but a deeply colored Barolo. Christophe noticed, too: ‘Ah, Italiano! Great, I will open it for you and make sure each of us gets a glass before they attack it out there. Maybe there is another I can bring out as well, Julie?’

‘Good idea, here’s a crisp white from the Loire. Marie, you’ll be taking the Barolo, I presume?’

She smiled when I accepted. 

‘Ladies, I will be back! Don’t move! Kitchen conversations are so much better, don’t you think?’ And he briefly disappeared. 

‘He’s from the mountains,’ Julie explained, ‘That’s why he’s so nice!’ She chuckled at that, and somehow I already sort of knew what she meant. 

The wine was exquisite and we had a good time. You told me that you had lived in Milano for a few years as a young artist and art teacher, before meeting Grégoire. You had frequented the Brera art district’s wine bars nearly every night. And you had loved the Italian men. ‘This good Italian wine makes me think of the joie de vivre of all those fine Italians! I love Grégoire but he’ll never have that wild interior of an Italian. Ah, how poor we all were! But happy, too…’ 

Before I could jump in with my own questions or stories, Christophe came back with a dark-haired, bearded mysterious-looking man.

‘I found a dashing Hungarian sneaking around the shadows,’ Christophe laughed like a real mountain man. 

‘I didn’t see you come in! Where have you been? How have you been?’

‘You know me, Julie. I was just being quiet.’ They exchanged cheek kisses, then he turned to me, ‘I am Josef, pleased to meet you.’ He took my hand for a kiss as if he were a count and since I didn’t know anything about Eastern European customs, I graciously accepted. His dark eyes closed as he leaned forward. I felt the softness of his lips on my skin and his breath as he hovered there an instant too long.

‘Marie; enchanté. I am the new interpreter for Grégoire and the French.’

‘Lovely, your language has such a romantic quality, don’t you think? I prefer not to understand and simply to be tempted by it. What do you like about Vienna, Marie? What have you seen so far?’

‘I haven’t seen much at all. I mean, I’ve been working and it’s been hot, so I’ve been down by the river and canal some. I’ve been wandering around my neighborhood in the seventh sometimes as well,’ as soon as I let it out, I realized maybe I shouldn’t have revealed where I lived. But then I soon thought this was also nonsense; a whole district, plus I would be working with this man. I had no idea what I was doing.

‘Oh, you are right near Museums Quartier! A beautiful area. Have you been to the Kunsthistorisches Museum yet?’

You rolled your eyes, Julie, ‘Ah! I warned her about you lot! Same stuff, over and over again.’

‘But it is beautiful, no? Who can resist those Klimts on the stairway and ceiling?’

‘Well…of course.’

‘Anyway, I wanted to invite her to the museum party tomorrow evening. Aren’t you going, Julie?’

‘We have a prior engagement. But he’s right, Marie, you should go. They open up the roof and you can have a cocktail by the paintings.’

‘Ok, that would be…lovely. Thank you.’

‘I will see you there. Anyway, I have to be off tonight. I had a previous engagement at Atmosphere. It’s the rooftop bar at the Ritz, Marie, you must go sometime. I just wanted to pop in quickly to say hello here. Always a pleasure, Julie! Happy to see you are enjoying the Barolo!’

He seemed to bow and left as if pulling a cape around his face and disappearing, but of course, it wasn’t really like that. It just felt that way under the veil of wine and new places. 

‘Well that is Josef, isn’t it Julie?’

‘Genau².’ You flashed a knowing smile.

‘Ha ha. Ok, let’s get the party going. I’m going to amplify the music…’ Christophe disappeared as well back into the party, and we soon followed. Diplomacy was gone and everyone was set on escaping into drink and music without games of espionage. 

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To be continued…

1. An Austrian red wine. Not bad, in my opinion.

2. German for ‘exactly.’ A ubiquitous word in Vienna. It can help you fake knowing German as well, as this TikToker explains.