An Interpreter in Vienna | Chapter 8

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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Chapter 8

Akihiro told me about a wine walk¹ the following weekend that many from the UN were going to. Vienna is surrounded by vineyards that are peppered with Heurigen, little shacks selling wine and sometimes snacks. But a couple times a year, all the Heurigen were open and some even gave away their wine to celebrate the harvest and encourage people to purchase their wine. 

We were all to meet in the nineteenth district. I took two trams to arrive at the base of many vineyard hills where groups of people congregated to collect their plastic wine cups. We donned them as necklaces. 

There were ten or so of us in a group and then Danae arrived. She had huge bags under her eyes that she attempted to hide with autumn sunglasses. Nobody talked about Brian’s death in the group and I didn’t know of any friends she had outside of it. I had no idea how close they were but just the fact that she had been there must have been difficult. It must have made her feel a bit guilty, too. Maybe she knew something else. 

I had also been there, of course, but I had no way of knowing what would happen. We hadn’t even spoken. The evening played through my mind as we waited for a few others. Josef had whisked me away just after I had seen them. He had distracted me for a while until I drifted again on my own. Was it just a coincidence? Could he have taken me away purposefully? Or could he have slipped up into Brian’s company later in the night? I realized either was possible but also unlikely. There must’ve been a couple thousand people there, and most with the same opportunities. 

Akihiro grabbed my arm, ‘Marie, it’s started! Let’s go!’

We began climbing the hill quickly in anticipation of our first drop. I had tucked my map away, allowing the movement of the group to propel me along. 

We spoke in Japanese: ‘This thing gets messy really fast. You have to pace yourself. Last year, we ended up doing cartwheels between the vines.’

‘Akihiro, I think I need to let loose a little today. Things just seem really…restrictive here. Or, strange. I don’t know. In Tokyo, everything was strange and I stood out as a foreigner, but people were friendly or just got on with their urban lives. Here, I feel watched.’ 

I expected him to just tell me to chill out, that I was just new and tired, to give it some time. Instead, he agreed, ’I know what you mean, Marie. Just stick with me. Let’s get drunk but look out for each other, ok? You never know who’s around.’

We returned to the varieties of Englishes to join the others and not sound suspicious. After the top of the hill, the stops came quickly, and it seemed we never stopped drinking wine. The words began to flow more smoothly but made less sense. I had become such a loner that the social connection — even if absurd — was like a forbidden drug that made me high, that spurned me to drink more and more. 

The hills that move toward the chateau-like dwelling that we could only dream of. The denizens locked up in their tower rooms, looking down on us all as experiments in socialism, knowing it was really feudalism they were witnessing. The little beings in their vineyards happily drinking the wine and forgetting their woes. Working every day while the vineyard owners simply counted how many bottles they had produced this year and considered which to keep as vintage. 

We frolicked drunkenly up and between the many lines of grape vines, as if playing a game, such as the labyrinths they have in the hedges of the chateaux of the Loire. But the difference was these were all perfectly parallel, the only changes were in the undulations of the earth. One could try to run from someone else but would end up moving in a straight, predictable line, and the vines were too short to caché one anyway. We were all exposed, like little mice running around a cage. 

I looked back up at the vineyard chateau above and saw lights turning on and off in the dusk. Who was watching us below? What was happening in the enormous house? Had they ever come out to interact with the common folk who frolicked on their land and drank their wine?

I was already drunk but Danae was terribly inebriated, downing bottles. For a while, it didn’t affect her much, as if she were born from these grapes. She was very thin, something I didn’t expect from a Greek girl. So small that I sometimes wondered if she had an eating disorder, and it had only become worse in the couple of weeks since the accident.

In some ways, though, she blended right in. I would often see extremely thin girls around the city. More than in other places. It always seemed to me like some sort of rejection of local culture: a rejection of the heavy food; the inability to wear a dirndl; incapability of opera singing; and finally inability to drink much beer or wine. I always wondered if it had something to do with that royal lady they all admired and found fashionable who is said to have been anorexic. Sissi, or Empress Elisabeth of Austria, who was immortalized through a Geneva stabbing assassination, haunts the Hofburg Palace that I used to walk through every day before taking the train from Stephansplatz up to the UN in the twenty-second district. It was as if her tiny tiny waste was seen as a thing of a goddess was what these locals were still after: some sort of empress quality. Sissi Syndrome is a “lifestyle malady,” they say. It is an inner emptiness, a depression with existential yearnings. The empress hid in her apartment, doing exercises, getting her hair done for hours, and coming out to obsessively walk her dog. I wondered if this could be my fate should I stay here a long time.

The wine was really catching up to me. I felt suddenly very confused and remembered that Akahiro had already gone home, suggesting I go, too. 

It feels a little like a dream, remembering this scene, and I’m not sure why it feels necessary to document it for you. 

I met others who were drunk amongst the vines. There was a friendly young man from Syria who shared his wine with me. He told me he was a refugee and had been waiting to have legal status here for six years. He had entered when he was only fourteen and had since graduated from a local school and learned fluent German and English. ‘I am very lucky. I know this. I’m still waiting for a passport, but I am safe and have some kind friends.’

After friendly banter, he gave me a warning, ‘Don’t believe the utopia that you see. There are devils here. There are many wonderful people, too, but Vienna can swallow you up. It can handcuff you and terrorize you. You have to stay separated in your own head, that’s what I do,’ then quieter: ‘You can’t trust any of them.’ 

It reminded me of a scene in Water Dancer when Hi first learns about the nature of the Underground Railroad. The only difference was this refugee had no escape. Where could he go? He was stuck here in this ‘utopia’ without the ability to work or go to higher education. He had no travel documents, only his purgatorial status. 

I felt very sad for him, but at that point had no idea what his situation might have to do with mine. In fact, he didn’t look sad; I was the one who was lost. Not until the borders all closed up…but I am getting ahead of myself. 

I bought him another bottle of wine to share with his friends and said goodbye as I frolicked along carelessly with my new international group. I felt a belonging, a force of power in staying together, and a kind of anonymity as an individual. I couldn’t really call them friends, but a group of people whom I could do activities with and at least not appear lonely to others. 

We were each on an island. Each grappling with what it meant to live in Vienna, the best city in the world to live which we were still trying to find. It must be there. The golden promise was there. This man before me was seeking it, too, and I supposed at the time that his reluctance was merely due to the nature of his difficult case. It was a sad one but likely an unlucky and unusual one. 

Strangers converged around me all of a sudden, drinking and singing a local folk song, pouring wine down each other’s throats.

They pulled us in with them. Allowing us for a moment to become a part of their restrictive world. I was afraid, but it was easier and more fun just to partake.

Bottles were passed around as people danced. Noise rather than language escaped our mouths. 

I drank and drank and I didn’t want to know anything else…

Viennese Vineyards (photo by the author, 2016)

When I woke up, I had a huge headache and couldn’t remember how I got home. But I was sure it was fun because I only remember laughing and dancing along the vineyards and the winding paths. 

Pieces of the afternoon and evening came back to me like mosaics. Hugs and dance. Bread to keep us from getting sick. Viennese in dirndls and lederhosen standing at the top of the hills, watching us partake in hedonistic pleasure as we imbibed their wine. Their arms all akimbo in satisfaction that the harvest had been fruitful, that the commoners would fund their aristocratic lifestyle. 

Flashes of others, too, of Akihiro who politely left before it got too crazy, trying to convince me to go with him. Danae miraculously continuing her dance and her laughter, as if possessed. 

And then I remembered: Fred and Roger. They had come along late in the evening, drinking like all of us. They had approached me, had poured me a glass, asked me to be on their side. I had moved to the other side of the vine, but no, they said, in unison, ‘We are speaking about your allegiances, Marie. Join our cause.’

But the rest was black. Had I asked about the cause? Had I agreed? 

I now know there are many more than two sides in Vienna and it represents a microcosm of the world order. It is not simply evil and good. One must weigh many factors when choosing whom to work with, whom to give information to. I think now not only of Fred and Roger but also of Josef and of Marija, of my international group from the UN, of the landlady, and even of you both. 

I was now sure that the need for a decision was imminent. I had to choose my allegiances carefully, but I still had no idea what anybody was fighting for. The only knowledge I was aware of having was about the cyber-security briefings at the UN, and these were all fairly straightforward. Rather than specific information, it was about methods of cultivating and curating information online about suspected terrorists. 

But these people weren’t the immediate threat to me, at least in my world. There was something else going on, something brewing. I became determined to dig deeper quickly so I wouldn’t be lost in the sewers of the city, not knowing why I had been sentenced to that purgatory. No, if I were to be punished for my involvement, I wanted to know why, and I wanted to go down with my name spread all over the newspapers. Brian’s death had been a short blurb of information. My own successes would be revealed in world headlines, if not during my lifetime, then after, as an immortal legacy. As an unexpected heroine made into a muse for artists and spies alike.

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To be continued…

Find all the published chapters in the Table of Contents.

1. Wiener Weinwandertag