City of Lost Dreams

NINE

Since Sarah had not wanted to leave the box unattended in Alessandro’s apartment, she had spent the afternoon flipping through Vienna guidebooks and more or less babysitting the model ship. She had found out what she could about it: a sixteenth-century “galleon” possibly owned by good old Rudy II. This object was right up his alley. Fully automated, it had once been able to trundle down the length of a table, playing music from the organ on its hull, the toy sailors in the crow’s nest striking hammers to announce the time, electors processing on the deck before the seated emperor, and cannons firing smoke.

She had found nothing on the Internet about the galleon having been stolen, which was reassuring. She tried to come up with legitimate reasons why a nanobiologist would have a treasure from the British Museum in her fridge, but quickly gave up. For Pols’s sake, she would do as she was told without asking questions.

Sarah had spent some time studying Renato’s Facebook profile. His picture was of a bust of Apollo, which Sarah hoped meant he had a sense of humor. Of course, that didn’t mean he would be okay in helping her with trafficked goods. At least she didn’t have to worry about Alessandro, who had neurology rotations at the hospital and wouldn’t be home until late.

So Sarah read and looked at pictures of Vienna’s tourist attractions. The guidebooks, she noticed, stayed clear of the city’s most recent history (no Hitler tours) and instead focused on the glories of Imperial Vienna, the Secession and Jugendstil, the café culture, the music. Sarah had already noticed that nearly every shop window in the city contained images of either Klimt’s The Kiss or a portrait of Empress “Sissi,” the melancholic, anorexic, and ultimately assassinated wife of Emperor Franz Joseph.

It was dark when Sarah arrived at Maria-Theresien-Platz, another grand testament to those ultimate size queens, the Hapsburgs. Two massive structures with identical Neo-Renaissance façades, the Kunsthistorisches and the Natural History Museum, faced each other across an expanse of formal gardens, complete with fountains and statues. A gigantic monument to Maria Theresia presided in the middle of the Platz, with the plump and motherly looking empress holding out one hand as if to say, “Welcome, my dears. Don’t muck up the shrubberies.”

Comfortably settled on a throne atop Corinthian pillars, Maria held in her other hand the Pragmatic Sanction, the document her father, Charles VI, had worked for during his reign, which would secure her succession since there were no male heirs. Maria Theresia would hold on to the throne for forty years, pop out sixteen children (including the next emperor, Joseph II, and one Marie Antoinette), and fight a couple of nasty wars. She was one of the few Hapsburgs who wasn’t inbred, though she had plenty of crazy ideas. Violently anti-Semitic and superstitious.

“Sarah?” Renato greeted her in English. He was a slight, dark-haired man with a long thick scarf wrapped around his neck. Sarah held out her hand and Renato touched her fingers lightly with his gloved hand. Sarah saw that part of his face was covered with a blistering rash.

“My condition is called seborrheic dermatitis and it is not contagious,” he said quickly, in a slightly mechanical tone that let her know he had said this very often. Before she could respond, he pointed with his chin at the statue of Maria Theresia. “One of my favorite monuments in Vienna. She always reminds me of my mother, who sits exactly so in the chair at the salon in Piazza Navona while she’s having her hair done.”

“Does that make you Joseph II?” Sarah smiled.

“No, Marie Antoinette.” Renato laughed. “So, shall we go for a glass of wine and discuss your art-related problem? I have a very boring life so I was really grateful for your message.”

“Actually . . .” said Sarah, who then ran through a creative version of “helping a friend who had been given something she thought had been stolen.”

“I know this is a terrible imposition,” Sarah said, hefting her bag. “And I don’t even know if this thing is real. But if it can be done discreetly, it seems the best thing to do is get it back to the museum it belongs to. If it is the real thing, it’s probably incredibly valuable. At the least, it’s very old.”

“How old?”

“Sixteenth century.”

“Pfft.” Renato made the Italian man’s noise of dismissal. “That’s not so old.” He appeared to think things over for several minutes, then asked, “Do you know where it is supposed to be?”

“The British Museum.”

Renato whistled.

“Show me?”

“I can’t really whip it out in the Platz,” said Sarah. “It’s big.” She hefted the BILLA bag. Renato pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking again.

“Okay, here’s the plan.” Renato’s eyes were now twinkling with excitement. “We will go in through the security guard entrance, which actually has the fewest cameras. I will bring Thomas, my favorite guard, a nice espresso. I will introduce you as my friend. Then I will ask if we can use his service elevator, which I am not supposed to do, but he will let me and he won’t search your bag because it will all be very friendly and so forth. You will use your feminine wiles on Thomas. Then we’ll go straight to my tiny office, which is inside the antiquities wing. Everyone in that part of the building will be long gone, and the security guards only patrol outside the wing. They find the inside too spooky, apparently. Or maybe they are afraid of me.”

“Okay, that sounds good. Then what?”

“Then you show me what you have and then we figure out a nice safe place to leave it and then we go get a drink and a nice pasta.”

“Mille grazie,” said Sarah. “If something goes wrong, act really surprised when they haul a priceless artifact out of my bag.”

“This is so exciting,” Renato said. “Nothing like this ever happens in Vienna. Or maybe just never to me.”

“Sadly,” said Sarah, “things like this happen to me all the time.”

The first part of the plan went surprisingly well, though Sarah made no attempt to use feminine wiles on Thomas. It was clear that the man had eyes only for Renato, who made jokes and seemed relaxed, but whose hand shook when he handed the barrel-chested guard the espresso. Sarah thought that the audacity of smuggling “loose” art into a museum might have caught up with his nerves, but in the service elevator Renato admitted that seeing Thomas was pretty much the happiest part of his day, and that he had nursed an enormous crush for several years.

“I look at beauty all day long,” he said. “But, you know, it’s all long-dead beauty. Still, a guy can dream.”

“He obviously likes you,” Sarah said. “Maybe you should—”

“He’s just a nice person,” Renato interrupted. “He’s way too perfect looking to be into someone like me.” The elevator doors opened and Sarah stepped into a twilit ghostly hall. The floor was a beautifully laid out geometric pattern of black and white marble. The ceiling was vaulted and decorated with elaborate stucco designs and paintings. Her nose was flooded by the scent of lavender.

“Holy smokes,” she said. “Is this place . . . perfumed?”

“Piped in the vents.” Renato nodded. “Very subtly. You have a good nose.” He led her across the hall to the antiquities wing, unlocking a door and waving a magnetic card over a sensor. She followed Renato through room after room of busts, cornices, jewelry, small figures, lamps, coins, and pottery. It was a huge collection. Although, Sarah thought, she had hardly visited a museum that didn’t seem to have an enormous amount of Greek and Roman antiquities. Had anything those people touched not made it into a museum? Or was it just that if something was made four centuries before Christ, you couldn’t just toss it, even if it was only a comb?

Renato unlocked a small door in the corner of a room filled with sarcophagi and she found herself in a small, book-lined office, just like hers back in Cambridge. Only better organized. And where she kept a silly papier-mâché bust of Beethoven that a friend had made for her, Renato had the bust of Apollo from his Facebook page. Renato saw her admiring it.

“Two thousand years old, and still working it, right?”

She set the BILLA bag on Renato’s desk. “For an antiquities expert this might not seem so impressive, but have a look.” Renato took off his thick gloves and replaced them with a thin fabric pair, textured at the fingertips. She saw that the skin on his bare hands was also peeled and patchy. It looked painful. She complimented him on the gloves.

“I made them myself,” he said, handing her a pair. “Latex and I are not friends. The gods have a terrible sense of humor, bless their hearts.”

Sarah glanced at the gleaming pale curves of Apollo’s face in the corner. Greek and Roman statues, she knew, had originally been painted in bright and lifelike colors. Only time had worn them down to smooth whiteness, rendering them exquisite and remote. Did Renato choose antiquities because things of the past were easier to be around? Or was it like her feelings about music—to be near greatness, to try to understand it, to show it to others, was the thing that gave a point to existence?

“This is like Christmas!” Renato gently cut away the paper and bubble wrap to reveal the galleon. “What a lovely toy. Beautiful craftsmanship.” He bent down to examine the figures on the deck of the ship. “What do you know about it?”

“It was made by a German clockmaker. Rudolf II had it at some point. It’s an automaton, though apparently it doesn’t actually move anymore and the clock, obviously, has run down.”

“Well, it’s fifteen centuries after my period, but it looks authentic. We have Rudolf II’s Kunstkammer here, on the other side of the building. This would fit right in.”

“Any ideas on how to get it back to the British Museum?”

“Actually I think it will be quite easy.” Renato grinned. “We just got a crate from them yesterday. Two vases for our January show. I’ll just tell them that this was in the crate, too. Someone obviously packed it by mistake.”

“Will they believe that?”

“Oh, stuff like that happens all the time. Things go missing; they get broken or vandalized. Stolen. Mostly this doesn’t get reported, since it’s always very embarrassing. Once the Brits have it back, they won’t ask a lot of questions. Everyone will just point the finger of blame at someone else.” Sarah’s relief was so intense that she spontaneously hugged Renato, who seemed surprised but pleased.

The galleon would go away, and now Bettina would have to help Pols.

“A really big dish of pasta,” said Sarah. “And a really expensive bottle of wine. You’ve earned it.”

They set about rewrapping the galleon. When Sarah tilted the automaton so Renato could position the plastic, the tip of her finger caught something on the underside of the ship. The hands of the clock face on the prow of the ship swung around, which caused a hidden compartment door to slide open.

“Oh, crap.”

“Did you break it?”

“No. I found something, though.”

Renato came around the desk and peered over her shoulder. “Secret chamber. How cute.”

Sarah tilted the galleon so they could peer inside, and a tiny cannon emerged from the compartment, clicking into place.

“Very cool,” said Sarah, as they both leaned forward.

Ssssssssssss. The tiny cannon directly in front of their faces released a cloud of spray, exactly like an aerosol can. They both jerked back, only just not dropping the galleon. Sarah looked at Renato, whose eyes were streaming. Her own felt like they had just dilated to three times their normal size.

“Gesù Cristo!” Renato reached for a tissue, coughing. “What was that?”

Sarah wiped her face, which was lightly misted, and sniffed the back of her hand.

“Please tell me that we did not just get sprayed with anthrax.”

Sarah shook her head. She examined the cannon carefully, but it appeared to have shot its entire wad. She brought her hands to her nose.

“It smells like . . . amber.”

She laughed. Renato laughed, too. Soon they had to sit down they were laughing so hard.

“Wait,” Sarah spluttered. “Why are we laughing?”

“I . . . don’t know.” Renato flapped his hands helplessly. “We should be screaming!”

This made them laugh even harder.

“Are we high?” Renato gasped. “Did we just do sixteenth-century crystal meth?”

“I’m so sorry!” Sarah felt like her face was going to crack from laughing. “How do you feel?”

She stood up and Renato stood up, too. Sarah looked around the room. Her vision seemed to be clear, her senses all firing. She just felt so . . . energized. Elated.

“I’m loving this!” said Renato. “Let’s pack this golden bong up and leave it in my superior’s office. I’ll write a message saying it was delivered to me by mistake and we’ll let her notify the British Museum.”

It turned out to be absurdly fun to wheel the box on a little handcart across the museum’s spotlit rooms. They deposited the galleon in another office, and then Renato gave Sarah a whirlwind tour of all his favorite works of art. Sarah thought the Kunsthistorisches had to be the most beautiful museum she’d ever been in. Marble floors, velvet couches and chairs for resting, huge doors. Spandrel frescoes by Klimt in the main hallway, along with a giant Canova of Theseus defeating a centaur. “Come see the Tintoretto!” Renato would whisper and they’d go racing into a room. “Come see the Salome!” They couldn’t stop laughing. Sarah looked at a portrait of Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol, Philippine Welser’s husband, and thought she saw the little lamb on his Order of the Golden Fleece turn and wink at her.

“I feel like . . . skipping,” said Renato. “Is that crazy?”

“No!” said Sarah. Skipping sounded incredible! Why didn’t she skip anymore?

“Come on!” Renato clapped his hands. “I’ll show you my favorite room in my wing.”

They skipped through the beautiful rooms.

“Wheeeee!” said Renato, slapping the ass of a life-size Zeus.

They came to a room shrouded in darkness.

“Stand here.” Renato positioned her in the middle of one wall and then flicked a switch. Beams of illumination shot out from the ceiling. The room was full of pillars of different heights, from waist to shoulder high. Atop each pillar, in its own individual spotlight, was a sculpted head. They were all pure white marble, and all incredibly lifelike. She was staring at fifty disembodied heads.

“Sarah Weston, I would like you to meet my friends,” said Renato, walking among them. “This is Vespasian, and this is Marcus Aurelius, and this is a commodore I like to call Bob. And this is Julia and this is also a Julia, and this is little Knabe, dear Mädchen, and this is Gay Face. Tell me this ragazzo wasn’t the toast of the taverna on a Saturday night!”

As Sarah laughed, the marble face of the young man with huge beautiful eyes seemed to frown for a second.

And then the fifty disembodied heads began to talk.

“Hey,” said Marcus Aurelius angrily, “I feel funny.”

“Did he just say that?” asked one of the Julias. “Or did I?”

“The heads are talking,” said the other. “Wait. What’s happening?”

“Be quiet!” cried Gay Face. “I need to think!”

“Renato?” whispered Sarah. “Are you hearing this?”

But Renato wasn’t listening. He was staring at his hands. “Guarda,” he said. He held his hands up and then touched his face. He turned to Sarah. The blotchy patches of skin were fading, evaporating. His skin was luminous.

“Oh,” gasped Vespasian. “You look wonderful.”

Renato whipped off his sweater and T-shirt and Sarah saw the angry red skin all over his torso. But the weals were fading, replaced with healthy, olive-colored skin.

“Madonna santa,” said Renato. “I’ve tried every drug—prednisone, cyclosporine, every immune suppressant out there—and nothing’s ever worked. Sarah, this is a miracle.”

The marble heads were all admiring his physique. Bob the commodore whistled.

Renato dropped to his knees and began to thank every holy figure Sarah had ever heard of.

“San Franceso, Maria, Gesù, Buddha, Giove, grazie, grazie, grazie,” Renato was crying. “Grazie Minerva, Diana, Zeus, Dio, Gaia! E tutti i dei africani e indiani, grazie!”

Sarah looked at her own hands. They seemed the same, but of course she didn’t . . .

“Grazie, Apollo!” Renato shouted. “Grazie, Zeus!”

The heads were now all talking at once, shouting, calling to each other, demanding to be heard. Renato leapt to his feet.

“How long will it last?” he shouted to Sarah over the din.

“I don’t know!” she yelled back. “I don’t understand what’s happening!”

“Thomas.” Renato grabbed his sweater. “If I have only five minutes like this, I want to be touched.” He rushed for the door.

“Wait!” Sarah called.

“I’m sorry,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ll come back!”

As the door clicked behind him, several of the male voices burst into laughter and shouted encouragement after Renato. “Men!” said a Julia. “Always thinking with their cocks!”

“Did Bettina rig the clock with some kind of drug?” Marcus Aurelius wondered.

“Or was it something from Rudy II’s time?” one of the child heads piped up.

“Rudolf had a lot of ailments,” said Gay Face. “Why not seborrheic dermatitis?”

“This is crazy,” said Bob. “It’s like LSD or something!”

“Why would Bettina put a drug in a clock?” asked Vespasian. “That makes no sense.”

“What if the drug cures more than skin disorders?” Mädchen wondered.

“They are speaking my thoughts,” said Julia. She smiled at Sarah. “Yes, I just said that. And yes, we are.”

“What if the drug acts on the whole immune system?” Septimius Severus shouted.

“Or is this all a hallucination?” Marcus Aurelius whispered.

“What if it is Bettina’s drug?” interrupted the North African soldier. “What if it could help Pols?”

Sarah ran to the door.

“I hope I don’t set off any alarms!” shouted Bob.

“I don’t care!” Julia shouted back.

Sarah staggered through the rest of the antiquities display, but quickly became disoriented. Statues in various rooms called out to her, confusing her even more. “Did I come through this one?” they cried. “This doesn’t look familiar!” The life-size Zeus muttered, “I remember that,” as she ran by him.

Sarah was now at the main staircase of the museum. In front of her was the giant Canova. The museum guards, Sarah thought, they must be patrolling around. Would they be able to hear the statues, or was it just her? Don’t speak, she thought furiously at the centaur-slaying soldier. Do not say a word.

The soldier raised his head, narrowed his eyes at her, and then thrust his pelvis forward. He had sprouted a ten-foot-long erection. Sarah ran down the stairs and then ducked behind a pillar. She could hear footsteps and saw the sweep of a flashlight across the marble floor. She looked back at the Canova, who was still watching her, and stroking his massive erection.

Sarah tried hard to think of nothing at all, in order to keep Canova quiet. She was trembling all over. Her body was burning up. She was . . . dear God. She was having an orgasm.

She needed to get back to Renato’s office. She should take the clock with her.

She needed to . . .

Sarah clamped her hand over her mouth, trying to stifle the moan that was coming from deep inside her chest. She stumbled across the hall and groped for another door. Unfortunately, this one set off an alarm when she opened it, and Sarah crashed through two more doors and then suddenly she was outside, in the cold air. The statue of Maria Theresia loomed up before her. Sarah ran toward it, hoping she wouldn’t be followed by a squadron of security guards.

Or that she would be. And they would lay her down here, right here on the ground in front of Maria Theresia’s horsemen.

“Me, me, do me,” said the four horsemen in chorus. Sarah started running again.

The second orgasm came as she reached the gates of the Volksgarten. “Ohhhhhhh,” she groaned, passing a pair of older women. “Sorry, ate some bad chicken.” They didn’t quite believe her, she feared.

She wanted to tear her clothes off, touch herself all over, grab any other person . . .

Where was she going in such a rush anyway? This could be the best night of her life.

Another orgasm came as she pulled out her phone. She needed to get a message to Bettina. Did she know what was in the galleon? Sarah had another orgasm, right under a statue of Empress Sissi. Every cell in her body was filled with intense joy, vibrating in unison. Sarah sang out in ecstasy, all thoughts banished. She finally knew the truth. It had been revealed. Nothing else mattered but this feeling.

“Pull yourself together,” Sissi snapped. “I am no prude, but . . .”

“Anyone who starts a sentence with ‘I am no prude’ is a total prude!” Sarah shouted. God, even her fingernails felt pleasurable. “You were a melancholic. You didn’t even like food! There is nothing wrong with me!”

“Is the drug stimulating the vagus nerve?” asked Sissi. “That’s how they treat epilepsy and depression, both of which Rudolf II may have suffered from.”

Sarah stared at the empress.

“You read this online last month when you were researching a cure for Pols.” Sissi sounded very smug. “The vagus nerve acts on several parts of the brain and nervous system in ways we don’t yet understand. They’re exploring the use of vagus nerve stimulation in other diseases, including Alzheimer’s. It has anti-inflammatory properties that may make it useful in treating heart disease, colitis, and arthritis. And it’s very long, connecting the brain to the—”

“Okay!” Sarah shouted. She fought down another orgasm and dialed a number on her phone.

“You should call Max and admit you’re still in love with him,” said the empress.

“Fuck off, Sissi,” said Sarah. “It’s not that simple.”

The call went through at last. “I’m sorry to bother you but it’s an emergency,” she told Alessandro. “I need a drug test.”