The Memorist

Chapter 39

Vienna, Austria

Monday, April 28^th-8:20 p.m.

Sitting in the living room, Jeremy poured wine while he briefed Malachai on the details of what had transpired, starting with the robbery in Geneva and ending with the one at the Dorotheum. Malachai listened, sipped from the cut-crystal glass, nodded and then when Jeremy finished, asked Meer, “Now, tell me what’s been happening to you?”

She hesitated.

“It’s understandable that after all these years of not believing, what’s occurring is disturbing, but it will help if you can talk about it. Meer, tell me.”

She recounted what transpired then and also what happened during the second episode when she was with Sebastian in Beethoven’s apartment. And then what happened at the cemetery.

“Did you already know the woman in the memory lurches was named Margaux before you found the tombstone?” Malachai asked.

She nodded.

“Margaux’s husband found the flute in India and then died there,” Jeremy explained.

The icy bands were encircling her, tugging at her, trying to pull her into their vortex. Meer put her head down in her hands and felt a tsunami of sorrow come over her.

“No!” Meer almost shouted. “He’s alive. In India. That’s why I need to raise the money. To fund a search party to find him.” She missed Caspar. Missed a man whose name she never knew before Sunday. A man she would sacrifice everything for if she could just find him and save him and bring him back to her.

Then from a distance she heard her father’s voice breaking through.

“Malachai-stop. Look at what this is doing to her.”

“This is important, Jeremy. She’s remembering.”

“No!” Jeremy raised his voice in anger but Malachai ignored his friend and was talking to her again.

“Margaux, what’s happening?”

She made an effort and reached down into the blackness to find the answer. “Beethoven had the flute and was trying to figure out the melody from the markings carved into the bone.”

Even from inside the icy fog, Meer was surprised. The carvings were the key to the song?

“Do you know if Beethoven found the song?”

It was dark again. A familiar darkness worse than any of the memories. When she was a child, this was the darkness that surrounded that one memory that repeated over and over-a woman on horseback wearing a man’s coat, racing through the woods in a storm while being followed. She could hear the sounds of the horse’s breathing and the rain and smell the wet wool of her coat. But then the scene would fade to black and leave her enveloped by this same force field of sadness.

“Margaux?” Malachai asked.

“Enough, Malachai,” Jeremy insisted.

Malachai half turned to respond. “If this flute really does still exist and if we can confirm Margaux Neidermier was studying with Beethoven at that time-”

“You don’t have to bother Meer for that. I can confirm she was a student of Beethoven’s during 1814. I searched through a database of his letters when we came back from the cemetery this afternoon and she’s referenced several times.”

The cold was disappearing and the shivering stopped. Meer was listening to her father explain about Margaux’s studying with Beethoven.

“Did you find out anything else about her?” Malachai asked.

“I don’t have access to the complete letters. The database only gives me highlights but she first appears in a letter dated September of 1814.”

This was what it had been like when she was a child and under their constant scrutiny-a discussion topic and not a person at all. She stood up. “I can’t listen to any more of this now. I need a break.”

“Of course you do,” Malachai said. “We all need a break.”

Meer heard the concern in his voice but she also heard the hope…always hope. She looked at her father. Despite himself, the same hope shone in his eyes.