The Memorist (23 page)

Under the Musikverein Concert Hall
Wednesday, April 30
^th
—3:03 a.m.

S
leeping in the crypt on the dirt floor with only his jacket as a pillow had actually been easier than sleeping in the ugly room at the pensione. For the first night since David could remember he hadn’t been haunted by the familiar and hideous PTSD dreams that were his nemesis. Instead a very different vision had awakened him. The images had been very vivid; intense but fragmented. He’d been in terrible pain but at the same time felt a deep satisfaction that he’d done the right thing.

Standing, stretching, he took some supplies out of his knapsack, then drank a bottle of mineral water and ate a hard-boiled egg—consumed them mechanically as if they had no taste or texture but were just sustenance. That last morning, Lisle had made him eggs. He’d been in a hurry, but she’d insisted. It was his son’s birthday morning—they’d all have breakfast together—no. He had to stop
doing this. It was not helpful anymore. He was taking care of it now. Action fueled by rage was better than helpless pity. His family was not going to have died in vain. The Bible talked of an eye for an eye. What he was doing was that and more.

A ragged scratching noise startled David and as he spun around he put his hand on the hilt of his Glock.

But it was only one of the half-dozen caged rats scraping its sharp nails on the metal bars of its cage. David considered his companion rodents who survived in the world’s cesspools. But wasn’t the whole world becoming a cesspool? Several of the rats were scratching at the bars now as if they sensed that their captor was thinking about them. They were impatient but they’d have to wait…

David had found that waiting down in the crypt wasn’t as difficult as he’d imagined. So much of his anxiety over the last few weeks had come from the fear he’d be discovered before he’d accomplished his task.

He only had a few more hours until the concert hall came back to life and Paxton’s men would return to continue their explorations. It was easier to stay awake when there were noises above him. Concentrating on them gave him something to do. The rats had stopped scratching and it was too quiet now; quiet enough to fall asleep again…even on the ground…here on the dirt…

Standing on the shore of a rushing river with tall snow-capped mountains filling the Indus Valley horizon, he breathed in air sweetened with the fragrance coming from flowering trees. An older man wearing a light-colored robe was screaming at him bitterly, threatening him. But he wasn’t scared of the elder. The woman with sea-green eyes
was in danger because of this man and he had to do something to save her.

David woke up with a start, surprised that the dream had returned. He felt an overwhelming sense of impending doom.

Vienna, Austria
Wednesday, April 30
^th
—9:15 a.m.

J
eremy Logan looked more exhausted than he had the day before and when he told Meer and Malachai that he wouldn’t be leaving the hospital that morning or probably even that afternoon, she wasn’t surprised but she was worried.

“I’m running a slight fever. Something I’m sure I picked up here in the hospital yesterday. The longer you stay in a hospital, the sicker you get.”

“How high a fever?” Meer asked.

“It’s nothing serious but because of the episode that showed up on the EKG, the doctors want to keep me under observation a little longer. Damn their efficiency. Now, I
insist you stop asking about my health and tell me everything you’ve found out since yesterday.”

The only part of the trip to Baden and finding the mess of parchment that once must have been the memory song that Meer left out was the attack in the woods.

“Let’s not worry about what we lost,” Malachai said when she finished. “We’ll figure out the song once we’ve found the flute. That’s what we should be concentrating on. It’s clear from everything we’ve read that von Breuning must have had the flute even if he never realized its value. Fathers leave their estates to their sons, especially in the nineteenth century. Did Stephan have a son? Did his son have children…did the family stay in Vienna? Maybe some old man has it still and doesn’t know what it is.”

“He had a son, yes. Gerhard von Breuning,” Jeremy said. “In fact, Gerhard wrote one of the few firsthand accounts of knowing Beethoven. I’m certain the library has the book.” He looked at his watch. “But it doesn’t open till noon on Wednesdays.”

“Isn’t there a bookstore open now?” Meer said.

Jeremy stared at her. “I don’t want you involved anymore.”

“Too late for that.”

“Let the people who know how to handle dangerous situations do their job.”

“At this point we’re only talking finding a book and seeing if it offers up any more information.”

Meer could tell her father wasn’t convinced so she gave him something she knew would satisfy him. “Malachai can come with me.” Hesitating, she wondered if she was reading her father wrong. Maybe this was about him. “Unless you want me to stay here with you.”

“Yes, but only because it will keep you safe. Certainly I don’t want you to stay here for my sake.”

“I feel like I have to keep looking, Dad,” she said, lifting her hands and letting them drop.

Jeremy smiled. “There’s an answer to every question even if it’s elusive. The Kabbalah tells us that there’s a level of our souls where we all connect to all the world’s accumulated knowledge. Jung agreed, just used different words and called it the collective unconscious. It manifests itself in an inner voice we all can hear if we listen deeply enough. You hear that voice. You’ve always heard it. Now you have to trust it. Just promise me,” he said with a smile, “you’ll be very careful.”

There was no way Meer or Malachai would be able to find the book or read it since neither of them spoke German so Jeremy called Sebastian, apologized and asked for one last favor.

The scent of leather and ink, glue and oil greeted them when they walked into the used bookstore off the Graben. A middle-aged woman with thick black hair looked up from her perch at a drafting table. Around her were pots and razor blades, papers, soft cloths, books in various states of repair, along with a battered copy of Gerhard’s memoir, which she handed to Sebastian.

As he scanned the pages, Meer noticed the circles under his eyes and felt sorry that he’d been pulled back into her crisis when he had one of his own to deal with.

After only a few minutes he closed the book and handed it back to the shop owner, thanking her.

“What did you find out?” Malachai asked over the sounds of the traffic once they were back out on the street.

“When Stephan died, Gerhard von Breuning inherited his father’s estate, which included dozens of items that had belonged to Beethoven.”

“Was he specific?” Malachai asked.

“Many books, several metronomes—a new invention at the time that Beethoven had been involved with—a dozen conductor’s batons and several musical instruments including a piano, two violins, an oboe and two flutes.”

“Did he describe them in detail?”

“No.”

“We need to find out what happened to Gerhard’s estate,” Malachai said.

Meer suddenly felt her father’s presence, almost as real as if he were standing there with them. Everywhere she’d been for the last two days, she’d pictured him making the journey with her and offering advice on how to proceed. She should have told him that in the hospital this morning. He would have liked knowing. When she went back later she’d tell him what it had been like in Beethoven’s apartments, both here in Vienna and in Baden, to sense his presence so strongly.

Thinking about the apartment on Mölker Bastei she’d visited on Sunday she had a strong feeling that there was something she’d seen there she needed to remember now…but what? It had only been three days ago.

While Malachai and Sebastian continued talking, Meer concentrated on playing Cicero’s memory game. Picturing herself in Beethoven’s apartment, she walked through the foyer…noticed the piano…circled the room…read the legends beside every item and artifact…and then she remembered exactly what she’d seen. What she’d read on the legends beneath each and every item in the house and why it mattered so much now.

“I know what happened to his estate and where those instruments are,” she said.

Wednesday, April 30
^th
—11:30 a.m.

S
ilently counting the all-too-familiar number of steps, she mounted the staircase to Beethoven’s Mölker Bastei apartment. Malachai and Sebastian followed as, without hesitation, she went straight to a violin in a case where, just as she remembered it, there was a card describing the instrument and giving its provenance in four languages. The three of them read different versions at the same time but both the English and German legends ended with the same information: the violin was a gift of the Gerhard von Breuning estate and was one of seven original instruments belonging to Beethoven and on display at the composer’s residences in Vienna and Baden.

“Except we’ve been here and there and didn’t see a bone flute,” Sebastian said.

“No. And you wouldn’t,” Malachai said. “It’s hidden. Beethoven said so himself in his letter to Antonie. Maybe Meer’s silver key will open its hiding place. Beethoven wrote that both the Archduke Rudolf and Stephan von
Breuning had all the necessary clues even if they couldn’t see them.”

“And if von Breuning left his son everything that Beethoven gave him and Gerhard left everything to the state and the state put all those objects on display in Beethoven’s apartments…” Sebastian connected all the dots in his mind. “You think that hidden amidst all these objects there’s a flute made of ancient bone?”

Meer wasn’t listening to their conversation. The lights enfolded her, separated her from herself so that she was at once in this moment and outside of it, watching and trying to communicate with the woman on the other side of the divide who knew exactly where the ancient flute had been hidden. Her back ached; the metallic taste filled her mouth. Meer didn’t hear a voice giving her the answer to the puzzle, or see a ghostly figure pointing the way. Suddenly there was just knowledge she possessed that she hadn’t had a few seconds ago.

Crossing the room she paused in front of a second glass case. Inside was a silver oboe more than two feet tall and two inches across. A white oblong card described the instrument in four languages but Meer didn’t need to read the English version. The only words she cared about were the same in every translation.

Gerhard von Breuning.

Wednesday, April 30
^th
—11:35 a.m.

L
ike a flock of birds descending, the rooms suddenly filled with dozens of small noises that all together created a great flurry. Glancing at the door, Meer watched a harried female teacher trying to corral a bevy of kids. The same college student who’d been sitting at the front desk selling tickets followed them in, beginning a guided tour.

“Bad timing,” Sebastian muttered under his breath as the three of them watched the group gather in front of the piano. As the guide spoke, she gestured to a painting on the wall. “Except I think we can make this work in our favor. Stay here.” Leaving Meer and Malachai by the oboe cabinet, Sebastian went up to the guide. She appeared fascinated by what he was saying, nodded twice, and then gestured for him to follow her. Together they approached the cabinet and, using a ring she took out of her jeans pocket, the young woman tried first one and then a second key. Pulling the hasp lock apart, she opened the lid, reached inside, gingerly extracted the silver oboe and handed it to
Sebastian, as if she were making an offering. He examined it with an expression of reverence on his face; one that Meer was sure was sincere. He was holding an instrument owned by one of the greatest composers of all time, the instrument he himself played in the Vienna Philharmonic.

Behind them and beside them, the children milled around and when one started chasing another, the ticket taker excused herself. Calling out, she gestured for them to gather around her in front of another case in the far corner of the room.

“How did you get her to give you the oboe?” Meer asked incredulously.

“I told her who I am and showed her my ID from the Philharmonic,” Sebastian whispered as he set about carefully examining the instrument.

Meer glanced over her shoulder at the children, who were all riveted to the Beethoven death mask, which she’d examined herself three days before. As the young woman explained what it was and how it was made, a hush fell over the room. It was a haunting object, not so much because of what it looked like but rather because it had been made within hours of the maestro’s death. Even a photograph would not seem as real as the bronze sculptural sepulcher of his soul. Meer’s heart ached and she felt a stab of grief.

“Look at this.” Sebastian’s voice was low but insistent. They closed ranks around him and each peered down.

On the underside of the oboe was a group of silver hallmarks. Meer knew a fair amount about them from working in her mother’s antique store on weekends and summers. Handling so many silver objects she’d memorized many of the most popular but she’d never seen this particular grouping before. Then she noticed something she never
had seen before on a maker’s mark: a small hole. Cleverly hidden in the midst of the engraving was a pin-thin opening. Her fingers went to the chain around her neck.

“Yes, we have to try it,” Sebastian urged, figuring it out at the same time.

“Now? Here?”

“Yes,” Malachai’s voice insisted.

She glanced up first at the children who were moving on to the next room with the ticket taker and then she checked the young woman’s counterpart at the front desk who typed away at his computer.

“Now, quickly,” Malachai persisted.

Fingers shaking, Meer lifted the chain out from under her shirt, leaned over and slipped the tiny silver key into the keyhole. She’d wondered since she’d first seen what she’d pulled from beneath the mummified heart what lock could be this small. Now she knew.

The mechanism gave as softly as a butterfly sighing and she let the chain and the key fall back as she tried to open the oboe. How many years had it been since this hinge had been exercised? Gently, she pried the two halves open, forcing the instrument to give up its prize. Gazing down at the contents of the slim silver tomb, Meer recognized what was nestled there from a place deep, deep inside her soul.

It was so delicate and brittle-looking she was afraid to even touch it. Very gently she lifted it out of its hiding place.

“Quickly, give it to me,” Sebastian said.

She was confused. Which instrument? Before she figured it out, he reached out, took Beethoven’s silver oboe from her and snapped it shut.

“Put that in your bag, quickly, Meer,” Malachai said, nodding at the bone flute.

Meanwhile Sebastian had taken several steps away from both of them and put the silver cylinder up to his lips. Not Beethoven, but Pachelbel’s
Canon
filled the room. It seemed appropriate to Meer; this was music that Beethoven would have heard, Pachelbel having been a composer who’d also moved from Germany to Vienna almost a hundred years before Beethoven did. The children, their teacher, the ticket taker guide and the young man at the computer all focused their attention on Sebastian and the sweet and sacred sound that he brought forth from the oboe.

Hands trembling, Meer opened her bag and slipped the bone flute inside.

Sebastian finished the piece, accepted an enthusiastic round of applause and with a flourish returned the oboe to the ticket taker, who replaced it in its repository without showing any undue curiosity. Wasn’t it lighter without the flute inside? Or hadn’t she paid attention to its heft in the first place?

Done, the woman locked the cabinet and thanked Sebastian who in turn thanked her for the honor of letting him play the instrument. Then, nodding at Malachai, he put his arm around Meer’s shoulder and gently led her out of the room and out of Beethoven’s house.