City of Lost Dreams

TWENTY-NINE

“Because I have been the worst houseguest since the Pilgrims showed up at Plymouth Rock,” said Sarah, handing Alessandro a boxed edition of the complete run of the television show The Golden Girls, which for reasons imperfectly clear to her, Alessandro had often stayed up late to watch in syndication when they had been roommates together, and insisted was the greatest comedy ever made.

“My ladies!” he cried, embracing both it and her. “For this I forgive you. I even forgive you bringing a rat into my apartment.”

Before Nico had left for Prague, he had handed Sarah another cage. “In case Bettina shows up asking for her rat, you’ll have a decoy.” The rat inside had arched its back, stamped his feet, and gnashed its teeth at her. Sarah had thought of Saddam Hussein, who had used doubles to throw off his enemies.

“Great,” she said. “I’m calling this one Ares, god of war. I can’t believe you found an open pet store.”

“I found an open dumpster. You probably should not touch him.”

“Got it,” said Sarah, as Nico picked up Hermes. “Don’t worry. I’ll be okay. I’ll meet you in Prague.”

Sometimes life gives you gifts, thought Gottfried when Sarah appeared outside his flat carrying a cage with a rat in it. Signs that you are on the right path.

Getting into the room with Bettina’s laboratory animals had been easier than he’d thought it would be, since someone had apparently torn off the doorknob. But rat #134 was not there.

“I’m petsitting for a friend,” Sarah said, putting the rat in the backseat. “Long story. But I can’t leave him alone overnight. Do you mind?”

Gottfried stared at the little brown rodent. Sarah had known Nina. Knew Bettina. This must be rat #134. Kept under constant watch by the scientist’s cronies. Yes, of course.

It was all falling into place. He was driving Sarah and the rat to the countryside, where it would be easy to get the rat away from her and hand it off to Heinrich. Heinrich would be so pleased, and they would collect all of the money. The Schloss would be saved.

And as for Sarah . . . what? Well, he would see what signs life sent.

“I do not mind,” he said.

Sarah got into the front seat. If Bettina came after her, let her come. As always, Sarah carried with her in her shoulder bag a small kit containing a Swiss Army knife, waterproof matches, Band-Aids, potable water tablets, lip balm, and a condom. With such fortifications, a woman could survive or enjoy just about anything. She was not prepared to leave Austria without anything to help Pollina, and there were answers for her in the place where Philippine had lived. The woman clearly had mad skills. Maybe there was another recipe in her book that would be useful. Maybe she could find out more about what had been put in the galleon.

Gottfried was wearing a jaunty green Tyrolean hat with a feather in its black and white braided hatband, and he produced a small box of chocolates and a bottle of water. “To sustain you on the journey,” he said with a shy smile. He kissed her. Sarah had a brief flashback of fire, and then she inhaled Gottfried’s particular scent of limes and leather and hay. For a moment she thought she could hear Conversano nickering.

Though Sarah offered to share the driving, Gottfried insisted on doing all of it so that Sarah could immerse herself in the scenery. Sarah would have immersed a little more successfully at a lower rate of speed, but Gottfried, like many European drivers, enjoyed traveling at well over a hundred miles an hour, weaving among trucks, cursing the idiocy of everyone else on the road, and treating the journey as if he were bringing serum to diphtheria victims, with the Mini Countryman in the role of Balto the husky. As they zoomed over mountain passes, through tunnels, and around hairpin turns, leaving the plain of Vienna behind and climbing up into the Alps, Sarah got a brief, tantalizing glimpse of storybook spires.

“Linz,” said Gottfried.

“The pajama makers?”

“That is Lanz, who make ladies’ flannel nightgowns so ugly and impenetrable that we call them Austria’s most effective form of birth control. In Linz, Kepler taught astronomy, and you will be familiar with another famous son, the composer Bruckner. And of course you Americans always want to bring up Adolf Hitler, who spent his youth here before leaving for Vienna.”

“Ah,” Sarah said diplomatically.

“Even though Hitler was Austrian by birth, Nazism was a very German idea. Germans should not rule over other peoples. You want happy times? Let Austria rule over Germany, not vice versa.”

“Being so pro-Austrian I’m surprised you drive a British car,” Sarah teased.

“Ah, but my Schatzi is made in Graz, here in Austria.” Gottfried patted the dashboard with pride. “I make this drive often, but it is nicer with you here.” He put his hand on her thigh. Sarah hoped the villa beds weren’t too ancestral. Well, if need be they could improvise. Look what they had accomplished in a stable.

They passed through Salzburg.

“You will recognize from Sound of Music,” said Gottfried with a sigh. “Seventy percent of the foreign tourists who come to Salzburg visit not because it is the birthplace of Mozart, but to see where the nun Maria captured the heart of Captain von Trapp.”

“I’ve heard that Maria wasn’t actually that popular with the children.”

“Also, they did not walk over hills. Obviously, it is geographically impossible to cross to Switzerland from Salzburg by means of hills. The Von Trapps took the train. To Italy.”

The highway ducked briefly into Germany, then shot up into twisty Austrian mountain roads that made her ears pop.

At last they exited in Innsbruck, which was nestled beneath some truly spectacular peaks, already snowcapped in October. The blue of the sky seemed brighter here, and the pastel buildings cleaner. It was not surreal, Sarah thought. It was hyperreal. It was high-definition reality.

The little car began climbing up one side of the valley in which the town nestled, and they made their way along a densely forested lane over which a huge gray stone wall loomed. Finally Gottfried pulled up in front of a massive iron gate.

“Wait here.” Gottfried hopped out of the car, pulled an enormous ring of keys out of his pocket, and shoved a huge skeleton key into the rusted lock. He swung the gates open and got back in the car.

“The place is in deplorable condition,” he said. “I apologize. We cannot afford a full-time staff.” They continued up a long, winding lane. Sarah could see only another steep stone wall above them. “My father insisted the Kunstkammer be preserved in the right conditions, and the remainder of our fortune went to this. But there is only Heinrich and I to look after it.”

“You can’t open up part of it to tourists, as a museum?”

“We do not have the European Union–required facilities. There is no wheelchair ramp and very few bathrooms. There are no sprinklers for fire safety. No parking lot.”

They passed under the stone wall through a tunneled arch and into a courtyard. Gottfried’s family home was a gigantic hulking Renaissance castle and outbuildings, surrounded by a huge and densely overgrown park. The buildings were red and white, though the white had gone very gray, and the red was black in patches. There had been a fire here, probably more than one. Sarah got out of the car, carrying her overnight bag and Ares in his cage. She stepped over a fallen roof tile.

“It’s quite beautiful, isn’t it, in a wild sort of way?” said Gottfried. He escorted her past the tangled garden and up the hill toward the largest building, which was several stories tall and loomed over them.

“In 1563 when Ferdinand was named Margrave of Burgau and Archduke of Further Austria, which included Alsace and Tyrol, he bought this place, which was then a ruined medieval castle. Ferdinand was an odd person. As the second son of the Holy Roman Emperor he was not in line for the title, so he had great wealth but limited responsibility. He had been a brave warrior. But he was also very whimsical in his tastes.”

“A fun Hapsburg.” Sarah smiled.

“Yes, he loved learning, and collecting art and scientific specimens. He even welcomed unfortunate people with deformities—dwarfs, giants, hunchbacks, a family covered with hair—whom others at the time considered touched by the devil. He also fell deeply in love with Philippine, as you know, who was a commoner from Augsburg. I will show you their portraits. It was a politically disastrous marriage, and Ferdinand and Philippine’s children would never be recognized. Hence Ferdinand’s desire to hide his wife away from the court in Vienna.”

“So you’re not the first owner to bring an inappropriate commoner here?”

Gottfried frowned and nodded as he used one of his vast number of keys to open another creaking gate. Sarah followed him under yet another arch and into the most spectacular interior courtyard she had ever seen. All four walls surrounding her were sgraffitoed with hundreds of elaborate trompe l’oeil figures in an endless two-dimensional parade.

“Many of these figures have not been identified,” said Gottfried. “But there are the nine Muses. There are the Worthies. The story of Odysseus is here. And here, my favorite: the Virtues. Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice, Prudence, Fortitude, Temperance, and . . .”

Sarah didn’t mind being tested. She was good at tests.

“Divine Wisdom. I like that the artist gave her a dog.”

“Ferdinand was also deeply interested in alchemy,” said Gottfried. “So it’s possible that these drawings have some alchemical significance. When he died, Rudolf took most of his uncle’s Kunstkammer and absorbed it into his own. Some of the things were later recovered, or bought back, by members of my family.”

Sarah studied the etchings. One figure especially caught her eye. A woman, standing on top of a star. In one hand she held a book, in the other a stylus of some kind.

“That is possibly a portrait of Philippine,” said Gottfried.

Sarah traced the figure of Philippine, surprised at how much the image moved her.

“She looks very powerful,” she said. “Usually sixteenth-century women are just shown praying, or reading a Bible and looking sort of defeated.”

“Indeed. Her medicinal garden is back up in there.” Gottfried pointed toward another wing of the castle. “Some of her plants survive to this day. Her book is in the family’s private library. I will have to find the key.”

Sarah saw that to the left of the Philippine portrait, the wall was studded with holes.

“Bullet holes.” Gottfried nodded. “For a while, the Schloss was used as an army barracks. There are a number of bullet holes, all over the estate.”

Gottfried took her hand and she followed him through a doorway into a small and simply fitted-out kitchen, which she guessed belonged to the caretaker. He set out a loaf of bread, a salami, and a hunk of cheese. From a stenciled cabinet he produced a bottle of wine, which he decorked by hitting the bottle with a knife.

“The salami is wild boar,” said Gottfried. “I shot it myself.”

Sarah decided Gottfried’s online dating handle would be “Teutonic Throwback.” She set down Ares’ cage and he hopped around inside it, sniffing. Gottfried cut Sarah a slice of the salami. His knife went through the dense meat as if it were warm butter.

“Now you would like to see the book?” Gottfried asked after they had eaten. “Or should we make love first? Love first, I think.” He stuck his knife in the wall and reached for her. Ares shrieked.

“I suggest we leave your little rodent friend here with some cheese and water,” said Gottfried, a little later. He stood and opened the door. Sarah walked through, feeling a trifle dizzy.

“I am distressed that none of these keys work,” said Gottfried in frustration outside a locked storeroom on the third floor of the castle. Sarah had caught glimpses of cavernous rooms, furniture shrouded with dust cloths, as they climbed what had been a beautiful stone staircase, now chipped and a bit crumbly. “I’m sorry, Sarah,” Gottfried said at last. “The caretaker is visiting his daughter today. I’m afraid I will have to run down to her house to get his set of keys. I hope you do not mind the delay. We will find the book. In the meantime I will let you into Ferdinand’s Wunderkammer. I think you will be much surprised and it will give me pleasure to have you see it.”

Sarah followed Gottfried back down and across the courtyard to another whitewashed building, this one with a beautiful wooden balcony, now sagging and in need of repairs, and not-quite-symmetrical gabled windows in peculiar shapes. He told her it had been built by Ferdinand specifically to house his collections.

Here, one or two modern improvements had been added. There was an alarm system, the lights in the barnlike second-floor gallery were on timers, and the rug running down the central hallway of the first floor looked new. The rooms were lined with rows of glass cases as well as freestanding exhibits. It was utterly silent.

“It is all displayed exactly as Ferdinand left it,” said Gottfried. “Except for this terrible rug my brother purchased. And we have updated the alarm system. The original was very . . . grisly.”

Don’t ask, thought Sarah.

There seemed to be a great number of objects. The space was filled, top to ceiling. “Not to pry, but you can’t sell a few pieces and keep the castle?” she wondered.

“We are prohibited by law from breaking up the collection. Nothing can legally leave Austria,” Gottfried said. “But there is not enough money. If we sell, we have failed. We will have lost everything. I would not survive this shame. No. It cannot . . . It is a thing I cannot . . .”

Gottfried’s jaw was white with tension. He grabbed her hand and held it for a moment, hard. When he spoke again his tone was courteous and correct, but he did not meet her eye. He was, she thought, deeply embarrassed.

“Sarah, I will be back in a little while. Please feel free to examine anything you like. I do not have to tell you to be careful with my family’s treasures. I trust you.”

He left.

The wood floor creaked under her feet, and it was very cold. Though when she reached out to touch the thick, stuccoed wall, she found it warm to the touch. Interesting. It was fun to try to decipher what was in the cases without the benefit of a museum brochure, though here and there items were identified by small yellowed cards. The collection seemed to be sorted according to materials, such as coral, stone, gold, or wood, rather than type of object.

Sarah passed delicate corals carved into realistic models of mountains, a strange undersea coral crucifixion scene, and a coral chess set. Ferdinand was apparently a big fan of coral.

She’d be back in Prague the following day. Back with Pollina. She would see Max, too.

Would it be easier to see him with Harriet, now that she had enjoyed a dalliance with Gottfried?

Sarah passed a case that contained a miscellany of objects made from varying materials: a coconut goblet, a snake bracelet, a rhino horn mug, an ostrich egg, and a skeleton made of pear wood. Chosen for their oddness? For their beauty? For some legend attached to them?

Ferdinand had also collected musical instruments. Sarah paused in front of an eight-foot-long wooden alpenhorn, the local equivalent of the didgeridoo, and stared at a dragon-shaped Tartolte, another ancient wind instrument. This one was seemingly played by blowing into the dragon’s tail. She became consumed by a desire to try it out. Well, why not? Gottfried said she could examine things. And wasn’t that the advantage of a private collection? You could play with the stuff.

The tone was louder than she imagined, and pure. It reverberated through her. She remembered Marie-Franz saying “We don’t just hear music, we feel it.” That wasn’t poetry, it was science. She ran her fingers over the strings of a lute with nine inlaid alternating stripes of ebony and ivory and listened to the dusty twang. She looked at a bagpipe and an olifant, a wind instrument made from an elephant’s tusk that was (fortunately for elephants) quite rare. Sarah had only seen one in books, and she’d read of it in Song of Roland, in which Roland, a warrior in Charlemagne’s army, blows an olifant and dies. When Sarah blew into it now, she thought she caught a brief image of the African plains the horn’s original owner had once roamed, then felt a millisecond of intense pain, all over her body. It came and went so quickly she almost didn’t consciously register it, but the instrument had left her with a terrible taste in her mouth. Like something rotten.

She came next to an inlaid wooden case, like a piano, but much smaller. She touched the keys, but no sound came out. This object had a small card taped to its side: When you the hit keys, clappers will play glass bells (now missing). One of its kind.

A precursor to Mesmer’s missing armonica? She wished the glass bells were still inside. She headed deeper into the hall, where the light barely penetrated.

Her phone beeped as she stopped in front of the next case. A text from Gottfried. I am delayed in Innsbruck. Many apologies. Will return as soon as I can.

Don’t worry, she sent back. I’m perfectly happy.

Sarah looked around. She felt deep in her pocket, for the thing that was still there. It was a risk, but it was time to take risks.

Now? Yes. Now.

She smiled and took the object from her pocket. Yes, it was a risk. But Philippine had created her cures here at the Schloss. Sarah could read about them in the book, or she could watch them happen herself. And so she ingested the rest of the Westonia, and waited for the magic to begin.