The Memorist

Chapter 27

The Celts were fearless warriors because they wished to inculcate this as one of their leading tenets, that souls do not become extinct, but pass after death from one body to another…

– Julius Caesar

Vienna, Austria

Sunday, April 27^th-3:00 p.m.

Sebastian stood in the small square and pointed to the stone staircase and street beyond it. “Up there is the Mölker Bastei where Herr Beethoven lived for a time.”

On the way back to town, Sebastian, who was depressed after his visit with his son, asked Meer if she still wanted to see the Beethoven house that she’d been interested in the day before. She was reluctant to take up more of this man’s time but he insisted it would be as much of a distraction for him as it was for her. Now, as they climbed toward it, Sebastian fell into guide mode.

“Beethoven lived in over forty apartments in Vienna, moving so often because he was so messy and noisy he kept getting evicted. This is one of the few residences open to the public. A few others are just outside the city.”

Like every serious student of music, Meer knew the basics: born in Germany, Beethoven spent most of his adult life in Vienna. Despite a significant hearing loss that ultimately led to deafness, his infirmity didn’t mar his genius and he composed some of his greatest symphonies without being able to hear them clearly.

Looking at the long row of attached cream-colored identical buildings, her eye was drawn to number eight, which flew an Austrian flag. Staring at the freshly painted facade, Meer searched for spots where history seeped through. Her eye was drawn to one set of eight-over-eight paned windows on the sixth floor.

“This is what I love the most about Vienna,” he said as they kept climbing. “Streets where nothing has changed in over two hundred years. This is almost exactly how it looked when Beethoven lived here.”

A pigeon landed on the building’s pitched roofline. Then another. Until there was a twittering audience watching their progress.

“In his diary,” Sebastian continued, “he wrote that every afternoon he’d go for a long walk because he thought so much better when he was on the move. I picture him charging out the front door, coattails flying behind, disappearing down these steps. Already quite famous by the time he lived here, people on the street would recognize him and point him out. ‘That’s Herr Beethoven, the composer,’ they’d whisper as he strode by.”

The words on the plaque on the front of the building were in German but Meer recognized Beethoven’s name and the dates of his residence there.

“Most people make the gigantic fuss over Mozart,” Sebastian said. “Vienna has made him the hero of the city. There’s even a chocolate candy with his picture on it. I understand he was, what’s the expression, a true native son, born in Vienna. But like you, I prefer Beethoven.”

Had she actually told him that or had he simply intuited it because she’d chosen his house to visit?

“Why?” she asked.

“He had every reason to give up his hope and his music but he persevered. He faced the worst thing a composer can face and it made him stronger. He went further than everyone before him and influenced all those who came after. He wrote music that mapped the soul.”

“Mapped the soul,” she repeated, wanting to remember the phrase.

Sebastian held the door open and Meer walked inside. The vestibule was dark and small and there was nowhere to go but up the staircase. She started climbing. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. When she realized she was counting the steps she stopped but was at it again without realizing it only a few seconds later. Fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six. At the sixth landing, Meer stopped.

“How did you know we’re here?” he asked from behind her.

“Didn’t you tell me the apartment was on the sixth floor?”

“Did I?”

The door to the left was painted white like all the others, except beside it was a plaque etched with Beethoven’s name and a set of dates. Sebastian pulled it open and held it for her.

The jarring brightness of the whitewashed walls bewildered her as strains of the Moonlight Sonata emanated from inside and reached out to welcome her. Meer hesitated at the threshold, carefully wiped her feet first, then stepped inside.

Sebastian hadn’t followed her in. He was still standing in the hallway with a curious expression on his face. Meer followed his glance. He was staring down at the spot where she’d wiped her feet on the doormat.

Except there was no doormat.

Something was wrong with the air inside Beethoven’s apartment; it smelled of fake pine disinfectant instead of wax and wine and bread baking in the apartment next door. Even the walls were the wrong color-instead of such a clean, bright white, they should have been more yellow.

Meer wandered from room to room examining the exhibition cases that housed Beethoven artifacts, studying the portraits of his contemporaries, street scenes of Vienna at the turn of the nineteenth century, handwritten scores, programs from musical events, even his shaving mug and hearing trumpet. When she reached the case with his plaster life mask she stared at Beethoven’s face-not handsome but imperious and vigorous with broad cheeks, a strong chin and a wide forehead. She stared at it so long she became self-conscious and looked around to make sure Sebastian wasn’t watching her, but she was alone, waiting, as if communication across the centuries was possible.

In the next room, she stood in front of the maestro’s piano. It was so easy to imagine him hunched over the keyboard, the black and ivory keys dancing as he coaxed elaborate melodies from them. Meer started to shake as chills racked her body and her head began to throb. The room shimmered and became translucent. The familiar metallic taste filled her mouth and made her teeth hurt. Her back throbbed. Music filled her head and, dizzy with the sound of it, she expelled a long breath and felt a deep and debilitating emotion rise out of the depths of her subconscious.