An Interpreter in Vienna | Epilogue ii

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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 (continued)

I have since been erased from the equation. Effectively this: even when the painting emerges to the public sometime in the next year or two, it will be impossible to trace it to me. Julie and Gregoire - and any Russians or anybody who cares - will not be able to link it to me. This has been guaranteed by Fred, Roger, and Josef. Fred and Roger have already left for Cyprus and started a wedding planning company, organizing destination marriages for foreigners. At some point, they will work on the gold and Finn says there is other important business in that area of the world. 

Josef is untouchable, Finn claims. He did manage to call me once I got home on my mother’s landline. He gave me thanks and said to watch for news of the vaccine. ‘Your work was worth it, Marie. The painting will also eventually be displayed to the public. We will meet again, long before that happens.’

They say I am safe now. I’m not sure it’s true but I like to believe it. My work is invisible. Is this better? I guess I’m not ordinary anymore but everyone will think I am.

I’m taking time to chill out in Bretagne before I get my next assignment. I can just pretend I’m doing some freelance interpreting whenever I travel. Easy cover. 

⬩

There was a terrorist attack in Vienna not long after I left. Many were surprised. People were living under a security blanket without seeing the terror all around, usually invisible. But this was a representation of that hatred felt on the streets from long ago or of the extreme toll of isolation we all felt, perhaps not as much as our Italian neighbors or that girl in the blog in Wuhan, but we felt it still and would never be the same again. 

I realized none of this was the fault of the Viennese. They were vessels in a world gone wrong. Once the Nazis, now a polycrisis to start the 2020s. When they had been occupied not just once by Hitler but again by all the Allie powers and finally still by the movements of espionage within her walls, Vienna’s energy was tainted and it hardened her people into stone. It was the way to survive — to exist within the echoes of strangeness all around them. Their faces remained cold year-round. They did not move out of the way for anyone, fearing any movement could be interpreted as meaning of some kind or another. They rarely traveled beyond the borders, some staying in the city itself, out of a kind of paralysis. At once they were trying to heal their city from within and were quite naturally too afraid to face the forces that came from outside threatening its freedom. 

Vienna is one of the freest utopic places in the world at the surface. The invisible workings of foreign powers and those from inside trying to capitalize from those forces. 

No wonder there was no trust.

No wonder they held on desperately to their own dialect.

It would take a long time to thaw. But as the gold comes out of the woodwork and the people travel and the art is admired and talked about, it will heal. 

At least there is no threat of war in Europe.

Brittany, Photo by Julio Wolf on Unsplash

Now I am back in Le Conquet living in the house I grew up in. Comfort has replaced the depression I first felt when I got here. Upon arrival I slept in my old room at the back of the house, afraid of the staleness in my parents’ room. Looking at the closed door each day haunted me, and when I opened it, I only saw the relics of a simple life rather than rich memories. 

One day when the sea wind was strong, I opened all the windows to change the air completely. The wind knocked over several photos and even a lamp in that large room facing the sea. I entered the storm, my hair flying all over my face, and began to purge. I stripped the bed and placed my mother’s clothes in boxes to give away. The only things I held onto were a couple of photographs of us as a family and the gold necklace with a single diamond Maman had worn anytime she was invited to somebody’s house. I already had her wedding band on my index finger from the small package sent to me from the hospital. 

Online, I ordered new bed linens and a desk looking out to see. I have work as a translator now, which consisted of mostly the mundane task of translating a few words on official documents like diplomas, driver’s licenses, and marriage certificates. However, it pays well enough to live on. I am also working on a new translation of Proust, starting with Swann’s Way. I don’t have a publisher yet, but the daily practice keeps my mind active and steady. I also started to write film reviews. Maybe if it goes well enough, I can use that as my cover, traveling to film festivals and special openings. Right now, it just keeps me busy.

I often go to the fish market to think of my parents and buy something to cook. They say cooking for oneself is a kind of love. This morning, it was packed as Fridays often are. A man bumped into me while I was raising my arm to catch a portion of monkfish wrapped in paper. I turned to look, but he was already several people away. My hand went immediately to my pocket where I anticipated the empty effect of a pickpocket. Instead, the pocket was fuller. My fingers felt a Nokia phone. I looked up again and saw the friendly American, Michael Brown, glancing back at me with a subtle nod.

I watch time pass before me in the undulations of the sand that change with each tide. I know that one of these tides will bring my next assignment. Then, I will go, fearlessly, into the unknown. Because now I know what I stand for. So there’s nothing to be afraid of. 

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Find all the published chapters in the Table of Contents.