Read Online City of Lost Dreams by Magnus Flyte - Free Book Online Page B

desperately in need of repair and the sale was the only way to save it. A tragic history for a work that had been inspired by a symphony meant to celebrate the equality and brotherhood of man. But at least everyone could look at it now. For a fee.
    The mural encircled the whole room and was observed from an elevated platform. A pair of stylish Brazilian women were taking pictures of the frieze with their phones when the guard’s back was turned, apparently intending to reproduce it in a master bath. The frieze’s narrative began on the left wall: female robed figures, eyes closed, floating with arms outstretched in front of them. Genii, Sarah read in the pamphlet. “Yearning for Happiness.” The women looked like they were dreaming.
    Sarah’s own dreams the night before had been filled with the sound of Pols’s horrible coughing. Coughing that had taken on a three-quarter-time melody, as if to rebuke Sarah for every step she had waltzed the night before.
    She focused now on three supplicating naked figures in the panel before her, a kneeling man and woman, and a girl behind them. They were pleading in front of a knight in golden armor, turned away from them in profile. Behind the knight were two more female figures. The brochure identified them as “Ambition and Compassion.” Sarah found it hard to look at the simple figure of the naked girl. She looked resigned, as if she didn’t much expect the golden knight would help her.
    The next panel was titled “Hostile Powers.” Skeletal gorgons with snaking golden jewelry, a naked crone with pendulous breasts lurching behind them, and a lascivious siren with tendrils of long red hair, legs bent and pulled up to her chest, watched over by a richly garbed procuress. In the center, a giant, black, winged, gorilla-like beast with mother-of-pearl eyes and jagged, broken teeth.
    Sarah thought about the hostile power threatening Pols. Not a huge hairy monster with wings, but something too small to be painted. A defective chromosome. It would be easier, Sarah thought, glancing back at the knight in armor, if the threat were something she could pick up a golden sword and take a satisfying swipe at.
    In the final panels of the frieze, the Arts (more floating women, and one with a lyre) led to the higher plane, where Man and Woman embraced in a mystical union and a chorus of stylized women sang. Sarah contemplated this for a while. She had never really thought of the Ninth Symphony in terms of visual images. Did she agree? Was this what the “Ode to Joy” looked like? No. It was too artificial, too sensual, too . . . pretty. Beethoven, she thought, would not have cared for it.
    Thinking this made her intensely lonely for Beethoven. It was absurd to “miss” Beethoven, but she did. The Westonia-drug-fueled visions where she had seen the great man, heard him speak, seen him play . . . they had changed her forever. She had felt connected to him so profoundly. And now here she was, in a place where there should be traces of him everywhere, looking at art that supposedly honored him. And he was invisible to her.
    Sarah left the museum and headed to the Naschmarkt, feeling melancholy, which wasn’t helped by a drizzle of cold rain. She ordered a mélange, the Austrian equivalent of a latte, and a
Topfengolatsche
, which was Austrian for “You have gone to pastry heaven. You’re welcome.” Sugar inspired, Sarah wondered if maybe Nina Fischer knew of any similar work to Bettina’s being done somewhere else. Sarah thought she had run down every other avenue when she was in Boston, but maybe . . .
    Her phone beeped.
    I had to leave. My life is in danger.
    What the hell?
    Dr. Müller?
Sarah texted back.
Where are you? And how do I know this is you?
    After a moment, her phone beeped again. There was a photo of her own cover letter on Pols’s medical records. Then another message.
    I can help your friend. Will you help me?

SEVEN
    N icolas Pertusato woke up in a very