An Interpreter in Vienna | Epilogue

The first part of the ending with the final installment next week

An Interpreter in Vienna is a response to Graham Greene's The Third Man and a psychological thriller serialized on The Matterhorn each Saturday.

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Epilogue

I decided to escape to the most obvious place: my childhood home. By going there, it would seem like I had nothing to hide. It was mine, after all, and since I didn’t have any new income, it was the most economical choice. I’ve got some new jobs now but let me explain what happened first. 

I went back to a very mundane existence, which I realized ironically had been my biggest fear all along. Koinophobia: the fear of being ordinary. All those other phobias I had encountered and explored within myself. Somehow though, that nameless woman in the church had given me courage. I decided to have an existence that embodied the everyday life of my mother, who I know now had been so happy, and the extraordinary invisible undertakings of the old woman.

⬩

Everything in my long ramble to Julie and Grégoire was true. I didn’t worry about telling anyone I had the musical score as well, since it was likely the gold had already been recovered from the apartment long ago.

There was one thing I left out from my previous account, still within the time frame of that writing, although just a few paragraphs before my closing. 

When Josef had come to my apartment, he had left a message under the door. I didn’t find it until the next morning, too afraid to even go that close to the outside world. 

Upon seeing the paper, I worried for a moment that it could be poisoned with ricin or something else. It could also be my ticket to freedom, or fame. 

I can clearly say now that I had been wrong about him. And his note placed under the door revealed what I had often hoped, that he was in fact good. That he was in cahoots with Fred and Roger, and even Finn after Marija’s death.

This is what he wrote:

      Marie,

      I’m sorry it has come to this. I am not who you think I am. I loved Marija, but I fell in love only after I was investigating her. There’s something else going on. I came to tell you the missing piece, but I can’t do it in writing. 

      Please bring the score to Finn to find out the truth. He is expecting you. Don’t speak with anybody else. Don’t try to contact F & R. 

      J.

My initial reaction was to trust the letter since he knew about the score. But I then began to wonder if he had stolen the painting. But I wanted to be sure this wasn’t some game, and there was a trap outside my building, so I waited silently for three more days in my apartment before venturing out to meet Finn who could confirm the story.

Then I remembered there was someone I could contact. The American, Michael Brown. I had saved his card in my wallet and got it out to give him a call from the burner phone.

‘Michael? Mr. Brown? This is Marie.’

‘Yes, I know you. I thought you might call.’

‘You did?’

‘Yes, I’m aware of the situation. Do what the note says. And good luck! I hope to work with you in the future.’

He hung up and I got my things together to walk to the Bulgarian embassy. 

⬩

We sat in the library, Finn and I. 

‘I’m so sorry about your wife…’ God, I didn’t know what to say to him: the husband, the murderer? But he made it rather easy for me.

‘Yes, a tragedy. But it is no secret we were not close. Please do not pity me.’ 

‘I won’t. She was a lovely woman.’ It seemed like the classy thing to say. Something you could say with a glass of champagne in your hand on a rooftop in Vienna.

‘How is Notes from Underground going?’ He had remembered from so long ago.

‘Oh, it was wonderful. I finished it a few weeks ago, but didn’t know you were still in town…’

‘Ah, what a wise story of a disgusting character. Do you remember the mouse? “[I]n its loathsome, stinking underground, our offended, beaten-down, and derided mouse at once immerses itself in cold, venomous, and, above all, everlasting spite.” It is even ashamed of its fantasies. How many in this city feel that way? How many are rotting from spite and seeking revenge, dying of their own resentment? Me, I try to learn from literature. I let these things go. I cared very deeply for my wife. I think she, too, had some of this spite and strange fantasies.’

I didn’t know what to say.

He looked off into the distance. ‘And Josef…what a fascinating man…’

‘Finn, did you know they were lovers?’

‘Yes, but it made sense. It didn’t affect me all that much. I’m just a guy who likes books and who’s happy to be alive. I always enjoyed the company of my wife and we married when we were both a bit bored of our lives in Switzerland and Bulgaria. We enjoyed going to cultural events together or occasionally traveling. Neither of us wanted children; she was more focused on her career and I had to raise my three siblings when our mother died young. They have children whom I visit frequently and teach about literature during our hikes in the mountains or moments at the family ski chalet. For me, this is enough. I have a good life, and I stay out of politics…or the underworld. Marija was like Robin Hood and Josef is Batman. I admire them both. They suited each other.’ 

Marija was perhaps an elegant and powerful ambassador in her own right, but she was a tiny pawn for the Russians who made use of her, then disposed of her when she threatened to reveal the truth, if that was the real story. She had thought she was helping her people, the Bulgarians, by supplying them with protection from something she could not stop from happening anyway. 

In the end, Bulgarians didn’t trust the government anyway, and the large unvaccinated rate made its citizens the most prone to COVID deaths in the world. 

Josef had been investigating her secretly, through the art trade, not intending to be a honeypot though that’s what he had become. In any case, he had fallen in love, and this is what killed her. In love, he had told her his version of the truth, knowing about the falsified research and what she had planned to do to her people. She was in shock, finally realizing the evil she was about to play a role in. Of course, with the Russians, refusal is not an option. She knew too much and also tried to be ‘better’ than they were. So she had to die. 

This was why Josef blamed himself. 

Finn found it all quite sad even though he didn’t love his wife, in that way at least. Josef had come to tell him the truth for no other reason than to take responsibility and to show Finn that Marija had been honorable. ‘I admired her even more; him as well. But my life is different. I am a Swiss who detests national conflicts. I live here — and married her — to escape that world. I would never even entertain a connection to the Russian underworld that she moved into our home. They saw me as an idiot, a fat cuckolded husband of no use to them anyway. But they underestimated me.’ 

‘Oh yes, Finn, I think you are quite an interesting and intelligent man.’

‘Thank you, Marie, but it’s not that. You and I understand each other; we both appear simple on the surface but are much more complex and daring than any of them will allow!’

‘So what is it? What did you do?’

‘I have the lost Klimt painting. The one you were looking for and the one Julie and Gregoire planned to take. Do you have any idea how they are connected?’

‘Julie kept asking about it…I thought she was just an admirer of his work.’

‘She and Gregoire are greedy. They’ve done this before. They pretend to work for cultural institutions and the like but really are attempting to make money on the black market. I don’t know if they are working with others, but their greed is personal.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They are not seeking political changes or anything like this. Most recently, their daughter needs some medical support in the US, I understand. She wants to have a baby and needs IVF treatments. Because of COVID, everything with the NHS is backed up. They want to pay for her to go to America.’

‘Wow – ‘

‘Please don’t pity them. They have done this before! Simply for personal gain. The opportunity is important for their daughter, yes, but the NHS will open up again soon. I can understand doing something for someone you love. However, they know plenty of important people who could help them with the funding if it were absolutely necessary. They were also working on this well before the pandemic, so even if they wanted to use it to help their daughter, it truly was not needed.’

‘Do you mind if I ask who your sources are?’

‘Not at all! Your friends, Fred and Roger. I’m not working with anybody. Like a typical Swiss guy! But, they trust me. And I’m somewhat untouchable, here in this embassy with guards and immunity.’ 

‘I hoped I could trust them!’

‘Yes, you certainly can. They saved you the other day. In the church.’

‘But they weren’t there!’

‘You didn’t see them, you mean. Fred and Roger had been following you for your protection. They had seen you go inside the church again; one had waited outside and saw Julie following you in. He stopped her at the tram stop for a chat and distracted her and made her nervous enough that she did not enter the church. Fred had gone inside the church, hiding behind a column at the back. He had seen the entire scene and was worried about what would happen to me if I was holding onto the painting as I exited the church. Julie has been violent in the past. Roger had alerted him with a message that Julie was outside, so he did something awful. He gagged and tied up the old woman at the back where he knew the priest would be sure to come within a few hours. She nodded when he asked her this. And he told her she would be fine, but it was for her protection. Then he replaced the stone and grabbed the painting, exiting once Roger told him it was all clear.’

‘So, it was Julie who attacked me in the basement?’

‘Yes. I don’t know why she hadn’t looked there before. It’s not hard to break a lock. Makes me think that she was trying to intimidate you instead. To make you think someone else, like Josef, was trying to kill you. That way, you might trust her even more when you eventually discovered the art.’

‘That makes sense I guess.’

‘She’s a strange woman. I wouldn’t think too much of it. Anyway, it’s certainly not personal! You were, sadly, a pawn for their plan, all the way since your meeting in New York.’

‘I feel so stupid.’

‘Don’t! You’ve done excellently. If you like, you can continue this journey. Or you can live on the margins of it like I do. The choice is now yours. But go home. To France, I mean. Take some time to consider your next move.’

‘You mean about the score?’

‘Ah, yes. Did you bring it with you? We could have a look together. I don’t plan to do anything with it, but we could put the information in the right hands.’

‘Ok, yes I have it here.’ 

‘The Vienna Philharmonic has a mixed history when it comes to the Nazis. Many joined the party even when it was illegal before 1938. They drove musicians out, some of whom were killed in the camps. And some of the music was, of course, used as propaganda. The worst part is that the Austrian government didn’t admit this until just six years ago.’¹

‘Wow, I wonder why they kept it a secret.’

‘Right, I guess we weren’t there and so it is complicated when it comes to the musicians themselves. I’m sure some of them thought music could heal, was a gift for the world that would maybe implicitly fight evil. On the optimistic side, I guess some people think moving on as a nation is easier with suppression. But you and I know the danger of doing that. I wonder if this score has more to reveal.’ 

‘Me, too. But what about the painting?’

‘Josef is handling the selling of the painting, as you know, and he will get the money to these scientists in Germany. They will save many people, he says. But the music on the back, the secret note, we need to take a look at together. I know you are an interpreter; you might see something I have not. I cannot make out what it is trying to say.’² 

‘I don’t read music; I only learned to sing from my mother without any particular notes or understanding of sheet music. I’m so sorry to disappoint you.’

‘This is understood. No problem at all! I read music. I have written the notes here for you. What do you make of it? You are the one working between languages. I think you are the one who can find the hidden meaning.’

I felt like I was being tested. Like this was all a game or a rite of passage. 

The letters didn’t spell anything: 

CCDEFG [rest] ADEFB [rest] FGABC [rest] DDABC

That was just the first line, but it went on like this. ‘It doesn’t spell anything. It doesn’t look like any language to me.’

‘I know, that’s what I was afraid of. Are you sure there’s nothing there in French or Italian? Maybe skipping a letter?’ 

I looked again at the symbols on the page. I thought back to the symphony concert I had seen on television with all the beautiful rhythms and tried to imagine what the music would sound like, though I couldn’t imagine the pitch. I began tapping what I said. ‘Wait a minute, I know a little bit about reading music from school — these are short notes, right? Eighth notes? And these are long ones — here, half notes? These are the rests you’ve already marked. Isn’t it weird there are no quarter or whole notes? I think the answer is in the rhythm, not the letters.’

‘But how can we read a rhythm?’

’There’s one universal rhythm of language: morse code.’

‘Do you know it?’

‘A little. We learned about it during my first training to go overseas. But it doesn’t matter, we can just look it up. The eighth notes must be ‘dit’ and the half notes are ‘dah.’ Normally they’re three times the length, but a load of triplets might be too obvious. It’s going to take some time, because we won’t know where letters end and begin necessarily. However, I guess each of these is a period,’ I pointed to two weird measures of eighth note followed by half notes three times and an eighth rest, ‘Look, a period is dit-dah-dit-dah-dit-dah. We can start with those and the rests between words I assume.’

‘Let’s try! I’ll get my computer and you start taking a look.’

We spent the whole afternoon trying out different possibilities until we finally found something that made a bit of sense:

ISLE OF LOVE. GOLDEN BATH OF BEAUTY. 

‘I have no idea about the second part, but the ‘isle of love’ is Cyprus, because Aphrodite was supposed to have come out from the waves at Paphos.’

‘Wonderful! My research here also says it was a film from 1920 starring a transvestite spy, apparently anti-Nazi. Maybe it has a double meaning?’

‘Could be.’

‘I’m going to pass this on to Fred and Roger to work with. Perhaps they will call you into action again. For now, I would just go home and try to relax. We’ve organized safe passage for you.’

‘I just, I’m not sure that this act will really amount to anything. What do you think? It’s just a way to get money on the black market. Or am I missing something?’

‘Little ripples make big waves. And in this case, we’re talking about many millions of dollars of waves. This is the Swiss way: to stay out of political allegiances and nationhood; instead we find money to use for protection. Protecting ourselves or others. Because we don’t have the motivations that many others do, we can work under the radar and achieve great protection. We haven’t had a war on our land for 500 years.’

‘Right, that was against us, the French. Some think the Swiss should have helped the Allies in World War II. What do you think?’

‘It’s a difficult one. I think we did help, or many did. And we provided safety for many, sure some Nazis, too, but many escaping them as well. I guess I just don’t know. But I act more as an individual. And what my country has taught me is that one should stand for one’s values and share in a common support of humanity.’

‘I like that. Yes, it’s what I want, too.’

‘Then keep doing your work. Just don’t make a lot of noise about it! You can learn a lot from Josef. Everything he told you in Budapest was true. My Marija, she was a wonderful person but too caught up in politics. I think I knew she would die from it one day. It was not a shock to me for that reason,’ he paused to look up the long staircase she had often arrived on, ‘Maybe I detached myself from truly loving her for this reason. To protect myself, I mean. I only just realized that now.’

‘I understand.’

‘I’m sorry, I also learned that your mother died. We both need to grieve. You need to allow yourself to feel the pain or you can never move forward. The driver is coming for you in twenty minutes. Promise me you will take the time you need.’

---

To be continued with the final installment next week…

Find all the published chapters in the Table of Contents.

1. Read part of the story here. It’s a complicated and unclear history.

2. For an example of a secret message in music during WWII, see this story about hidden Nazi gold.