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

Klimt—
no
. I want to set the right mood.”
    “Well done. But the outfit? Why are you dressed to go stag hunting with an archduke?”
    “It is part of my very clever plan.” Alessandro produced a garment bag from the hall closet and waved it with a flourish. “There is a ball tonight, and the scientist you wish to meet, Frau Doktor Müller, she will be there. You and me, we make friendly with her and then, boom, she say yes to enrolling Pols in the study.”
    It wasn’t a bad idea. Alessandro’s charms were legendary, and no woman seemed ever to say no to him. If anyone could sway Bettina Müller, it was Alessandro, especially at a ball.
    “Do I dare ask what’s in the bag?”
    “This is a Tyrolean Ball. A special event being held at Rathaus. Traditional dress, this is mandatory. These Austrians are very serious about their balls.”
    Sarah’s laughter was cut short when Alessandro whipped off the garment bag.
    “Yeah, I’m not wearing that.” The gown was an upscale version of the dirndl, or traditional Alpine peasant dress. There were three layers to the outfit—a white scoop-neck cropped blouse with puffy elbow-length sleeves, a midnight-blue velvet dress with an embroidered bodice, and a forest-green silk taffeta apron. It came with white tights and black flat shoes. She would look, Sarah thought, like an extra from
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
.
    “You’ll wear it for Pols,” said Alessandro. “And I will promise not to post pictures on Facebook. Maybe.”
    Sarah took the dress from him.

FIVE
    A lessandro had slightly underestimated Sarah’s dress size and slightly overestimated her shoe size, so once she was dirndled up and shuffling along, Sarah felt like a well-trussed duck. Remarkably, their costumes caused nary a second glance as they strolled through streets where every third building was a landmark of historic or cultural significance. Alessandro pointed out the Secession Building, where artists like Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, and Carl Moll had made their stand against the
gemütlichkeit
culture of middle-class coziness and complacency that reigned at the end of the nineteenth century in Vienna. And then Café Museum, originally designed by Adolf “ornament is crime” Loos, where the artists had gone to drink coffee, argue, and seduce beautiful women into modeling and more. They reached the Opernring and the lit-up State Opera House came into view, decorated to within an inch of its life in Neo-Renaissance splendor and topped with equestrian statues.
    “This has tragic story,” said Alessandro. “When the building was completed, Emperor Franz Joseph said the building sat a little low. And so one of the poor
architetti
killed himself in shame, and the other died of a broken heart.”
    “Never read reviews,” said Sarah, struggling to catch a deep breath in the dirndl.
    “Or give them.” Alessandro nodded. “Franz Joseph felt so bad that after, whenever anyone ask of him what he thought of some building, he just said, ‘It is very nice. I like it very much.’”
    They passed a blindingly pink coffee shop: Aida. Alessandro explained that Aida was a chain, but a good example of a
Konditorei
, a pastry shop favored by women who went to gossip and eat pastries, as opposed to the more macho
Kaffeehaus
, where men went to gossip and eat pastries.
    “Mark Twain said that, outside of Vienna, all coffee was merely liquid poverty,” Sarah commented.
    “It is true.” Alessandro sighed. “The coffee is heaven. But the food is awful. Knödel. A crime against pasta.”
     • • • 
    A lessandro steered her toward Maria-Theresien-Platz, so Sarah could take in the enormous white and pale gray edifices arranged around the edges of a vast green square. Beyond this lay the even more massive Hofburg complex, with its monuments to the power of the Hapsburgs and the time when Vienna had been the seat of the Holy Roman Empire, powerful and seemingly indestructible. Now all of these places were