City of Lost Dreams

FOURTEEN

Well, she was making a little bit of progress. Heinrich could certainly be considered a suspect for the missing laptop. Sarah thought it might be worthwhile to take his brother, Gottfried, up on the offer of a tour of the Spanish Riding School; she could ask a few discreet questions.

It was hard to get a sense of Bettina from Nina, though, who seemed pretty in thrall to the doctor. Would she help Pollina or not? What kind of person was she? Sarah hoped Marie-Franz might be able to give her the skinny. The professor had seemed pretty up on everyone at the ball.

Frau Professor Marie-Franz Morgendal worked at the main building of the University of Vienna, a short walk from Bettina’s lab. The pleasant inner courtyard’s arcade was lined with niches containing busts of the college’s illustrious dead. Since the university had been established in 1365, these were numerous. Sarah studied the profile of Schrödinger. Bettina was like Schrödinger’s famous cat, Sarah thought. Here and not here.

Sarah looked around at the young people chatting, smoking, and enjoying the sunny October day. She tried to determine if Austrian students looked any different from their American counterparts, and decided they did not, except that possibly, here, berets were worn without irony.

Sarah inquired at the front desk and learned that Frau Professor Morgendal was giving a lecture. She followed the instructions to an auditorium paneled in wood and furnished with steeply banked rows of ornately carved wooden pews, which gave it a churchlike feel. The lecture had started, and Sarah slipped into a back pew. It was nice to see a few black, brown, and Asian faces among the students. Walking around Vienna’s Innere Stadt, she had noticed that it wasn’t only the buildings that looked incredibly white.

“We don’t just hear music,” Professor Morgendal was saying to about two hundred students, all pecking away on laptops and tablets. “We feel it.” The professor was an imposing presence, with her height and elegant wingspan, her deep voice, and her well-cut suit. Sarah wondered how the Viennese establishment had taken her Hansel-to-Gretel gender switch. The students certainly didn’t seem to care.

“I want you to keep this concept of feeling music in mind as we talk about an eighteenth-century doctor here in Vienna. You will recognize his name. Franz Anton Mesmer. From him we get the word ‘mesmerized’ and also the phrase ‘animal magnetism.’”

Sarah had heard of Mesmer, and knew he was considered the father of hypnotism, but in a vaguely discreditable way. She was interested to hear where Marie-Franz was taking this lecture.

“Mesmer was born in 1734.” The professor flashed portraits of Mesmer on the large screen behind her. “He studied divinity, philosophy, and law before turning to medicine. His dissertation, De planetarum influxu, was completed here at the university and outlined what would be Mesmer’s idée fixe for his entire life: that the planets influenced the human body by means of a universal fluid, an impalpable and invisible gas that permeated everything. What do you think people called him? Crazy! Ha!”

Sarah thought of the recent discoveries of dark matter and dark energy, which were in fact impalpable and invisible and permeated everything. Not so crazy, Mesmer.

“Like many physicians of his time,” Professor Morgendal went on, “Mesmer was interested in the healing properties of magnets. In the Middle Ages, Paracelsus had written about magnets, which were thought to be able to attract illness to themselves, be it a menstrual cramp or a demon in the liver. This notion made something of a comeback in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and Mesmer began to wonder if the universal fluid in the body might be conducted—controlled—by use of magnets.”

More images flashed on the big screen, scenes of Vienna from Mesmer’s day. Drawing rooms, horse-drawn carriages, servants in livery, and men in powdered wigs. This was the Vienna of Empress Maria Theresia. Pleasure seeking, arrogant, decadent, and frivolous.

“Mesmer experimented. He went, it must be said, magnet crazy. Ha! He magnetized everything: plates and cups, clothes, furniture, mirrors, musical instruments. Pets. Flowers. He would magnetize water and then instruct his patients to soak their feet in it while holding on to cables he attached to trees in his garden that he had magnetized. He wore a magnet in a pouch around his neck.”

Professor Morgendal flashed a seemingly incongruous photo of a bar called Viper Room.

“By the 1770s Mesmer had married a wealthy woman and set up very nicely for himself in Vienna. His house and clinic were at Landstrasse number 261, which I cannot show you because it is no longer there, so instead I show you this bar, which is possibly on the site though we are not sure, but in any case serves a fine schnapps. Ha! Mesmer’s house was called a ‘miniature Versailles.’ He served excellent food and wine and, above all else, excellent music. Haydn, Gluck, Piccinni, Righini. Mozart’s first opera, Bastien und Bastienne, premiered in Mesmer’s garden.”

Pols had mentioned this opera, Sarah remembered. She liked that Mesmer had stuck his neck out for the young Mozart, who had not been easily accepted into musical circles in Vienna. There had been trouble over productions of his juvenile operas, jealousy, and sabotage. He had needed patrons and supporters.

“Word of Dr. Mesmer’s magnetic cures spread throughout Vienna,” the professor continued. “It was Mesmermania. And what is a party without a hot tub? Mesmer constructed a baquet: an oaken tub of magnetized water with jointed steel rods poking through the covered lid.”

The next slide showed an engraving depicting well-dressed ladies standing around a big tub in groups, holding strange rods. Right, Sarah thought. It is always about sex.

“The patients would apply the rods to whatever part of their body was ailing. You can imagine the spectacle: women mostly, a few men, touching themselves with rods, moaning and shrieking, Mesmer striding around them, stroking all the bodies with his own magnetized wand.” The students, clearly loving the lecture, laughed. “During all of this—and this is crucial,” continued Professor Morgendal, “there was always music playing. He used a glass armonica, which is different from a harmonica, please note. ‘Gentle music,’ we are told, though I have not yet found exactly what was played.”

Sarah hoped it wasn’t the eighteenth-century version of bad porno music, although it was funny to think of boom-chicka-wah-wah being played on an armonica—a graceful instrument composed of glass bowls mounted horizontally on an iron rod, connected to a treadle. You pumped the treadle, the bowls spun, and you used the friction of your fingers to produce tones by touching the glass.

“There was a rumor,” the professor said with a smile, “that the sound of the armonica caused one to go insane.” She threw up her hands. “It is impossible to describe any of this without it sounding like the most obvious form of medical chicanery and exploitation, not to mention a night at the Berlusconi mansion, but Mesmer was a serious scientist, a man of steady and calm temperament. He approached his work methodically and deliberately, always seeking approbation and acknowledgment from the established medical community. And he had good reason to believe he had stumbled upon a significant cure for nervous ailments. And his patients, who look so mad to us, also had good reason.” The professor paused for a moment, making sure her audience was rapt.

“Because Mesmer’s cures actually worked. He never claimed that his magnetic cure would heal something like a broken leg or a bullet wound. But if the disease had its origin in the nervous system, Mesmer was your person. He cured hundreds, treating many patients gratis. Hysteria, anxiety, convulsions, rashes, headaches. We have letters, accounts from his time, of these cures. His fame grew and grew, until the nasty gossip of his detractors forced him to leave the city.”

Professor Morgendal showed a slide of the human brain.

“We began with the idea that we don’t just hear music, we feel it. That’s because sound is a construct of our brains—what we think of as ‘sound’ is just how our brain classifies waves of energy that make our ear bones vibrate. The brain ‘reads’ those vibrations according to patterns established in the limbic, or emotional, system. Then the vagus nerve acts as the conduit from the brain’s limbic system to the nervous system in the body.”

Sarah thought about the galleon drug and its effect on the vagus nerve and on the immune system. She had been thinking about music and the brain in an entirely different way. Sound therapy was still considered a bit on the fringe end of science. She leaned forward, making a mental note to learn more about Mesmer.

“So sound stimulates the brain and nervous system. Indian drummers and African shamans use music to send their listeners into a trance that leads to a vision in which patients are healed. Energy expressed as music. Music leading to trance. Trance leading to healing. Mesmer did the same—music, baths, rhythmic stroking all contributing to a trance state, or hypnosis, that led to healing. But Mesmer believed that he himself was the cure. He was correct and incorrect. What he had stumbled upon was what we now call the placebo effect, the ‘will to heal’ within the brain, and how that will to heal might be unblocked or encouraged.”

The placebo effect. There had been many interesting studies on this—including one where the placebo was prayer. A congregation had been enlisted, and the members dutifully prayed for specific patients. Some of the prayer recipients were told about this; some not. The ones who were told did heal slightly faster than the ones ignorant of the prayers headed their way. And the “will to heal”? Nico had said something about that, Sarah remembered. Yes, that was what he had called Philippine Welser’s recipe in that book. A will to heal. A spark to the engine.

“We know that much illness is a question of our bodies malfunctioning on a cellular level. Cancer, the immune disorders, depression. Our software malfunctions. If the placebo effect can be harnessed to repair it—think of such a thing.” The professor smiled. “Drug companies do not want us to dream this dream. But many people who are ill reject it as well. The responsibility of being your own cure is too much. Historically, people have been willing to subject themselves to the most poisonous of treatments rather than change themselves. In other words, meditation is hard, but pills are easy, and they feel reassuringly more like science. But what if Mesmer and the shamans, who are the history of science, are also its future: what if music is an energy that can provoke the brain into healing the body?”

A pretty big what-if, Sarah thought. She had grave reservations about the body’s ability to heal itself of genetic defects through good vibes, meditation, and nice tunes. All that could help, sure. But Pols was a devout Catholic who prayed every day and played music in what often looked like a shamanic trance. And she was dying from a defect on chromosome 20.

She caught the professor as she left the lecture hall. “Frau Professor Morgendal?”

“Marie-Franz, please! Sarah, what a pleasure.”

“Your lecture was fascinating,” Sarah said. “I hope you don’t mind that I listened in?”

“I am honored and delighted.”

“I was so interested in what you were saying about the vagus nerve and the immune system. And some of Mesmer’s work seems very prescient. You made me want to read more about him.”

Marie-Franz stopped at the door of her office. “You could say that Mesmer was chased out of the city in disgrace not for failing, but for succeeding in a way no one could explain. You have read Wittgenstein’s Vienna? It says, ‘Few cities have been as unkind as Vienna, during their lifetimes, to those men whom it proclaimed cultural heroes after their deaths.’ I am thinking of writing a book about Mesmer. To bring him back to his rightful place. Do you know that the Neue Burg has lost his armonica? The very instrument he used to make the healing music. Lost it!” With that she disappeared into her office, calling over her shoulder, “Come in, come in. Forgive the chaos.”

Sarah followed her into the small space, which was lined with bookshelves and contained a number of esoteric instruments, many of them musical. “Chaos” to an Austrian evidently meant a few papers on the desk and three unshelved books on the floor.

“That’s no longer true today, though?” Sarah pressed, seeing an opportunity to twist the conversation in the direction she desired. “About Vienna being unkind to its great thinkers? So much innovative, cutting-edge work is being done here. Like the scientist I met at the ball the other night, Bettina Müller. Do you know her?”

Marie-Franz pursed her lips and appeared to be considering her words carefully. “Slightly. Frau Doktor Müller is brilliant. And like many brilliant people, I think she is not always understood.” The professor held up a small package. “I have to return this now to Narrenturm. Would you like to accompany me? It is an interesting place.”

“I’d love to,” Sarah said, hoping to swing the conversation back to Bettina. The normally chatty and open Marie-Franz was holding something back about the doctor, she could tell. “What’s Narrenturm?”

“A place where you can get an old medical model of the human ear, among other things.” Marie-Franz waved her package.

Before leaving the building she showed Sarah the university’s library—the largest in Austria—and an enormous ceremonial chamber with copies of murals by Gustav Klimt.

“The original paintings horrified the faculty of the time, who found them pornographic and perverted. Klimt returned the money and demanded the paintings back—with a shotgun. Later, they were all burned by retreating SS officers,” Marie-Franz said. “We can add Klimt to our list of misunderstood Viennese geniuses.”

“Maybe the two things go hand in hand,” Sarah suggested. “To be a radical, you must have conventions to rebel against. My impression of Dr. Müller is that she is a genius. And everything in Vienna is so huge, it’s not surprising that there’d be a rogue nanobiologist here, studying the very small.”

“Yes, perhaps,” Marie-Franz agreed as they left the main building. “And I believe she is a genius. Her work is extremely well respected here. Revered. They say she will win the Nobel Prize someday.”

“I wanted to talk to her more,” Sarah pressed on. “But she left quickly. She seemed upset or . . . frightened of something. I’m sorry to be such a gossip.”

“One thing you must know right away about Vienna is that we love two things above all else,” said Marie-Franz. “Music and gossip. So when the gossip is about music we are thrilled. The rumor is that Dr. Müller is having an affair with Kapellmeister Gerhard Schmitt.”

Of course she is, thought Sarah. When does this woman get any work done?

“The Lion of Vienna?” Sarah tried to keep her tone casual. “Oh. I’m sorry . . . you are friends with his wife, I remember.”

“I would never bring it up with her, of course. One doesn’t. And they have children, so you see . . . Also the other rumor is that Dr. Müller started the rumor of the affair herself, and that Gerhard denies the whole thing and says she is crazy.”

Ahhh, Sarah thought. And if there were incriminating photos or letters on Bettina’s laptop that showed she wasn’t crazy? Gerhard might want those back. Very badly. Or maybe the unstable harpist wife was after Bettina. Was that why she got out of town? Seemed a little extreme, though of course no one wanted a harp launched at their head.

“Narrenturm,” Marie-Franz said, waving her arm as they rounded a corner. Sarah looked up at a squat, mustard-colored, perfectly round tower that looked more like it belonged on the set of a King Arthur movie than a twenty-first-century college campus.

“I want to see if you can guess what it was built to be,” said Marie-Franz. “Some people can. And dogs. They won’t come near.”

As they approached the flaking paint of the building’s entrance, Sarah felt a strange sensation—a wariness. She didn’t just smell something off, she felt it in her bones. The feeling intensified as they walked through a whitewashed arch that led into a narrow, semicircular interior courtyard. Pigeons fluttered and the sound only amplified the sensation. Dread, Sarah thought, categorizing. But it wasn’t the kind she usually experienced when forced to endure strip malls or romantic comedies. This was old-school dread.

“An insane asylum?”

“Well done!” Marie-Franz applauded. “Ha! The Tower of Fools. Dates back to 1784. Now it is a medical museum. Mesmer’s own writings on the treatment of the mentally ill helped influence its construction, although he was already in exile by the time it was completed.”

Marie-Franz left her package with the porter, and Sarah followed her into a narrow hallway that curved around the inside of the building. It had been a long time since the crumbling brick walls had been painted; scuff marks and handprints and scratches were everywhere. It was easy to imagine the inmates clawing these walls. Every few feet along the stone-floored hallway was a heavy wooden door with a small iron-grated hatch.

“Emperor Joseph II had the tower built according to numerological principles of healing,” the professor explained. “The circumference of sixty-six fathoms represents God, and it has twenty-eight rooms on each floor for both the lunar month and the Kabbalah number for ‘God heals the sick.’ I’m sorry. This is not good subject? I forgot Americans do not like to talk about religion.”

Sarah realized she was staring at the circular hallway with its row of doors.

“No. It’s just . . . this just reminds me of something.”

“You’ve seen photographs? Or perhaps—ha!—you were once interred here and are remembering the past life experience?”

“A dream,” said Sarah, mentally shaking herself. “And I don’t believe in reincarnation.”

“What about the idea of genetic memory?” Marie-Franz suggested. “An unconscious connection between others?”

“Communing with memories in my DNA? All the way back to the Mitochondrial Eve? The Y-Chromosome Adam?”

“Why not?”

“Maybe. Or maybe Alessandro is right,” said Sarah. “And really everything is all about sex.”

“Ha!”

Each former cell housed a different, slightly dusty exhibit. Yellowed information cards seemed to have been typed on a manual 1940s Remington. Nothing was left to the imagination: a display about tuberculosis featured not just brightly colored wax models of lungs and eyes, but also actual tubercular organs suspended in cloudy liquid inside large glass jars.

Another room contained a brash array of large-scale models of human sexual organs—giant vulvae and three-foot-long penises, artistically infected with syphilis and gonorrhea, painted with grisly pockmarks and oozing chancres.

“I make all of my students come here so they will never forget to use a condom,” said Marie-Franz.

They passed twisted skeletons bent almost in two, drawings of flesh-eating bacteria, jars of hundred-year-old deformed fetuses. A glass vessel marked Lack of folic acid contained a baby whose two eyes, two arms, and two legs were in all the wrong places. Sarah made a mental note to buy condoms and vitamins and followed Marie-Franz out of the chamber of horrors into the fresh air.

Crazy, Sarah thought, is subjective. Psychotics and schizophrenics would have been locked up in Narrenturm, along with, possibly, epileptics or homosexuals. The building to house insane people had been designed after numerological principles. Mesmer had thought that he had special powers to cure people, and people who agreed with him had actually been cured. Music had the power to change your brain.

“Scientific curiosity is a wonderful and terrible thing, is it not?” asked Marie-Franz. “What a time we live in, when we begin not only to understand how our clockwork mechanism functions, but also to develop the ability to reengineer it. Some call this arrogance.”

“I don’t accept that,” Sarah answered. “Are we just supposed to throw up our hands and say, ‘Oh, whatever God, or Mom and Dad, or Mitochondrial Eve gave me is what I am and shouldn’t be changed?” She had been thinking of Pols as she said it, but when she caught Marie-Franz’s amused eye, she realized she was preaching to the reengineered choir.

“But even I will say that the lines between what we can do and what we should do are not always clear,” said the professor.

“I agree, the lines are not always clear.” Sarah nodded.

And they weren’t, ever. Science marches on, with its discoveries about folic acid and venereal disease, but the one thing we can’t ever seem to understand, that still consistently makes us pazzo, Sarah thought, are all the emotions attributed to the human heart.

Gerhard had called Bettina crazy.

It was time to do a little Lion hunting.