The Goose Fritz

by Sergei Lebedev

  Balthasar, of course, existed on the periphery of the notes; nevertheless, there were things to discover. How Balthasar, learning that there would be no hospital nor presentation to the emperor but only the search for eternal life for a half-crazed old man, tried to escape; the second time, the prince attached a servant to him, an escaped convict, a murderer, who’d strangled one of the prince’s biggest wolfhounds on a bet; how Balthasar refused to do something and the prince had him locked up in the Tower of Solitude, ordering no food to be brought to him, bringing Balthasar to a starvation faint, and the convict—who had developed a strange respect for his subject—fed him by pouring broth through a copper funnel; how Balthasar got caught up in the prince’s madness, and together they made homeopathic mixtures; how Balthasar cured the prince’s gout, which made the prince imagine that the clever German knew much more than he was willing to share and had him strung by his arms; how he changed his mind, hearing the twisted joints crunch, and wrapped exhausted Balthasar in his fur coat; how he married him off, mockingly, to the German governess, a young girl imported to care for the prince’s bastards, and the priest, who was too afraid to refuse, performed the marriage rite, even though both were of a different faith; and even though the marriage was illegal, it was still before God, you couldn’t just refuse, you couldn’t get unmarried.

  Then a new physician appeared, who claimed that he could heal with electricity and built bizarre machines to catch lightning; the prince, disillusioned by homeopathy, exiled Balthasar to a distant building and made him work as an apothecary and treat the local servants.

  The eccentric obsessed with lightning taught that everything in the human body was moved by electricity, that it was the essence of life, and for rejuvenation the supply had to be refilled; it had to be natural, original, as he called it, electricity reaped from the swollen storm clouds—the eccentric had a streak of the poetic about him. No sooner did a storm threaten than he went out to the meadow, set up his machine—flasks, coils, iron rod—and waited in vain for lightning to strike the rod. Prince Uryatinsky stood at a distance beneath an umbrella, impatiently staring at the sky.

  The eccentric almost achieved his goal. Ball lightning floated onto the meadow, circled the machine, danced on the tip of the rod, and then slowly sank; the lightning catcher touched it—and burned to death. Balthasar was on the meadow. Uryatinsky had invited him to see the new, true science of life and death, and Balthasar saw the fiery sphere flying in the twilight, saw the electricity healer burst into flames and turn to ashes.

  Soon after, Prince Uryatinsky died. The notes contained the subtlest hint, in intonation only, that the prince had been poisoned. The archivist named no names, made no accusations—and certainly the relatives did not—the immensely rich prince died with universal accord, peacefully in his bed, for his earthly term had come to an end and God had called him.

  However, interestingly, Kirill learned from his visits to the Uryatinsky estate and the neighboring villages that to this day the local old men, who were born in the thirties, before the war—no one older was left—knew the legend of a German doctor who had poisoned Count Kozelsky, owner of the estate, in 1917, and vanished with a fortune.

  The Uryatinsky family did sell the estate to the Kozelskys in the middle of the nineteenth century. But the count never had a German doctor; Kirill had established that absolutely. The count had not been poisoned but had very prudently departed in the revolutionary spring for France, keeping his life and his savings. It seemed the old story that took place in 1837 was transplanted into new circumstances and retold.

  There was no proof, but Kirill sensed that he was not mistaken; Balthasar realized he would never escape the estate that had become a prison unless Uryatinsky died. However much the prince complained about his health, he had no intention of leaving this world, Balthasar could diagnose that.

  Balthasar avenged his imprisonment and his murdered apostolic dream. Did Balthasar give the prince poison himself or did he merely supply it to somebody else? Or did he simply refuse to treat the prince, poisoned by another hand, not Balthasar’s? Kirill did not know. Maybe Balthasar had nothing to do with it all, and the servants fingered him to avoid blame themselves?

  But then why didn’t Balthasar return to Germany? Was it because he didn’t want to return to his allopath father, the prodigal son admitting defeat? One would think that after seven years in prison he’d lost his pride and would have wanted to return home.

  Instead, Balthasar gave up homeopathy and took a job as physician in the Widows’ Home in Moscow, where the widows and children of poor state officials lived out their lives; the post probably didn’t require patronage to obtain. He served there for the rest of his long life, until 1883.

  At first Kirill thought that Balthasar was trying to atone for his sin, intentional or not, by serving widows and orphans—that he decided to return to traditional medicine because homeopathy, or rather his dream of converting nations to the homeopathic faith, had taken him too far literally and figuratively.

  But he could have helped the weak in Leipzig just as well. There must have been another circumstance that prevented Balthasar’s departure, that made it impossible to consider.

  Debts? A wife from a lower social order, married under duress against church canon? Fear of exposure and accusation as Uryatinsky’s killer? But if he had feared accusations, he would have tried to leave.

  Kirill went over these questions, focusing on Balthasar. And suddenly he realized it was Andreas, his younger brother! All Kirill remembered about him was that he had no children: on the family tree, he was a branch that bore no fruit.

  Andreas! Kirill found him in the genealogy chart he’d posted on his wall: Thomas Benjamin, wife Charlotte, son Balthasar ... son Andreas. 1817–1837. He had served in the Naval Corps.

  1837. Kirill flipped through his papers feverishly. Uryatinsky died—he couldn’t say “was killed”—in fall 1837, in late November. Andreas—another look at the tree—Andreas died in February 1837. At the age of twenty.

  Kirill hadn’t paid close attention and was under the impression Andreas had died after retiring from the Naval Corps. Why had he died so young?

  Had he even wanted to go to Russia? How did Balthasar tempt him? Or had he been sent by relatives with their own goals? That was more likely. Kirill studied the genealogical tree closely. Clergymen. Physicians. Officials. No one seemed to have anything to do with the sea. Probably most of them had never even seen the sea. Then how did Andreas end up in the Naval Corps? Through patronage from someone originally from Zerbst?

  Then it hit him. Some German, a member of the Big Family, serving in the Naval Corps, offered to take Andreas, because he wanted to build his own clan of loyals. He needed his own children, not tied to anyone in Russia who would be obligated to him for their careers. Andreas was given to him, that unknown benefactor, and sentenced to the sea; he was a boy, he made no decisions on his own. Balthasar had simply accompanied him to Russia, as his traveling companion.

  He studied at the Corps for five years. They took him despite the fact that Andreas most likely did not speak Russian. That meant his patron was very influential. Who was he? Did it matter?

  Kirill wrote to the naval archives. A month later he got an email with a brief summary.

  Andreas Schwerdt. Graduated as midshipman. Assigned to the sloop Grozyashchy, a military transport ship, bound for a circumnavigating voyage. He did not return. Died. That was all.

  Kirill called a naval historian recommended to him.

  “A circumnavigation? Right after graduation?” the historian asked. “Strange. You can’t imagine how hard it was to get on any ship going around the world. Even the leakiest miserable longboat.”

  “Why?” Kirill knew little about the navy and had never thought about how the crews were assembled for such expeditions; he thought they simply sent a group of staff officers and sailors, with a sprinkling of scientists and diplomats.

  “My dear sir,” said the
naval historian, laughing at Kirill’s ignorance, forgivable in a “general historian” without a specialty. “Participation in circumnavigation was a most important factor in career growth. People came to blows over it, believe me. Admirals pushed for their protégés. Once you’ve been around the marble”—Kirill had not expected him to use the word—“you have a promotion out of turn. It speeds up the years of service for orders and pension. Like a trip in a time machine. Some officers got higher up on the career ladder after two or three circumnavigations that others couldn’t manage over fifteen or twenty years of service.”

  “Thank you,” Kirill said sincerely. “Thanks.”

  “Why are you interested in this?” the Seaman asked. Kirill knew the man was a retired captain, had seen action, served on warships. Kirill had unconsciously given him the nickname “the Seaman.” “I thought you dealt with the twentieth century? I read your work on the Caribbean crisis. Well, from our naval point of view, the navy was deeply involved.”

  Kirill had not intended to share the details of his research and Andreas’s life seemed secondary to Balthasar’s. But suddenly he felt ready to take the risk; he felt there was an important detail to learn.

  “I’m writing a book about a German family,” Kirill said. “I’m interested in midshipman Andreas Schwerdt, on the Grozyashchy. He died in the Marquesas Islands.”

  “It’s a famous incident,” the Seaman said. “Well, for us naval types. But not written about.”

  Kirill asked to hear about it.

  “Gladly, with pleasure.” He expected the Seaman to make him wait while he lit a pipe, then the thump of a peg leg on the floor, or the prattle of a parrot in the background.

  “It was extremely rare. We’re not the English or the French, who sailed those seas much more,” he began. “It happened to them more than once. But for the Russian Imperial Navy it was extraordinary. Extra-or-di-na-ry!” He pronounced it both with edification and thrill. “The first and only. For an officer of the Russian Imperial Navy—”

  “What happened to him?” Kirill asked impatiently.

  “He was eaten,” the Seaman said. “Eaten.”

  Kirill shuddered. The horrible word eaten, conjuring up corpses, the freezing cold of the Leningrad blockade, the famine of the 1930s; you’re eaten, and where is your soul, is it in the other world, will it be resurrected?

  An image appeared in his mind, a tiny ship, wracked by a storm, carried by the winds in the expanses of the Pacific Ocean. Food supplies gone, no water, and the mummy-like men crawl around the deck, sharpening their knives—sailors and officers no more, they were only survivors and dead men.

  “It’s astonishing, yes. The emperor decreed that the incident be kept secret, so as not to impinge upon naval honor,” the Seaman said, clearly quoting the monarch’s resolution. “The papers were hidden in the archives and the crew reassigned to other ships.”

  “The crew, the crew ate him,” thought Kirill, horrified. Andreas, Andreas, the sacrificial lamb, sweet boy sent to his death by his ambitious relatives!

  “Savages,” the Seaman said.

  “Savages,” Kirill echoed softly, thinking his own thoughts.

  “No, you don’t understand,” the Seaman insisted, sensing his mood. “Real savages. Cannibals. A local tribe. Natives.”

  A new whirlwind of images: palm trees, huts made of palm branches, tanned, naked bodies, spears, bone necklaces, white-clay face paint, smoke, blue smoke from a stone firepit, texture and weight of those head-crushing stones, which would leave you in blessed unconsciousness while they sharpened a fresh skewer, long and smeared with rancid, slippery fat ...

  “The sloop set sail for Kamchatka,” the Seaman said.

  “Kamchatka. Transport. No cannons. They were running out of fresh water. The commander decided to land on an island. There was a charted bay there. It had a dozen names, each country’s navy called it their own way.

  “The islanders welcomed the sailors kindly. Too kindly. Promised water, fruit, fresh pork. But they wanted gunpowder and rifles in return. They wouldn’t take anything else in exchange. The captain grew angry and ordered the arrest of the priest who came for negotiations. They made the priest drink rum and gave him a pistol. The priest promised to give them food. In the morning they took a boat to the island—the priest, Midshipman Schwerdt, the interpreter, and ten sailors. Schwerdt had been instructed not to land onshore but to wait in the water until the natives brought pigs and caskets of food. Apparently, the tide was strong and the midshipman ordered them to disembark. The sailors had rifles. A crowd of natives appeared. The interpreter said there were no women among them and that was a bad sign, but the midshipman ordered them to wait until the natives brought the promised supplies; he probably wanted to prove himself to the authorities.”

  Midshipman. Kirill replaced the title with the name—Andreas.

  “The natives suddenly attacked the crew. With knives and spears they’d hidden amongst themselves. The midshipman shouted, ‘Save yourselves!’ The sailors used their rifles, but there were too many attackers. The boat was on the sand. The sailors jumped into the water to swim to the ship. The midshipman remained on the shore, wounded.

  “First the sloop commander sent a big boat to rescue him, thirty armed sailors. But they were fired on heavily from shore. It was later learned that a French corvette had also been ambushed and the savages captured their rifles.” The Seaman slowed down, then stopped. “While they turned around the sloop, loaded their weapons with buckshot, and organized a storming group—”

  The Seaman stopped and Kirill realized that he was living through what he was relating, but as a cruiser officer—someone who had the right to send people to their death. He must have been more upset by the incompetent commander and the unnecessary losses.

  “The buckshot knocked the natives out of the scrub. They brought a couple of the cannons onshore, slashed their way through the jungle.” Here the Seaman’s voice grew stronger, as if he were in charge of the landing. “But it was too late. They found what was left of the midshipman in the village. And scraps of his uniform. The savages had taken the epaulettes and buttons with them.”

  Kirill pictured the bloody scraps and felt nauseated. The Seaman’s voice continued hypnotically. “There were reports that many years later those buttons were found among aboriginal rulers. Some had them in necklaces, others used them as earrings—that meant they revered the midshipman, considered him a worthy sacrifice, a great warrior. ... And yes,” the Seaman added with embarrassment, “the body was discovered, mutilated. With undoubted traces of cannibalism. And without the head.”

  Without the head. The headless horseman.

  “The commander considered what was to be done with the remains. They could have buried him at sea, as tradition would dictate. But either he wanted to or was required to keep the body for the investigation. They marinated it. Stuck it in a brine barrel. He was buried on Kamchatka, their port. Without his head. It was all hushed up. But rumors spread, of course. Especially among the sailors. There was a researcher who worked with naval folklore. He noted that the legend of the Marinated Midshipman was known even among the crews of Rozhdestvensky’s Baltic Squadron, on the eve of Tsushima, seventy years later.”

  “The Marinated Midshipman?”

  “Yes. The Marinated Midshipman. The headless dead officer who lives in a barrel of brine. Don’t ever open that barrel. If you do, the Marinated Midshipman will get out. And kill everyone. Take his revenge for being left to the savages. He’ll eat you alive. But it’s just folklore, inconsistent, a fairy-tale narrative. How can he eat them if he has no head? And therefore, no mouth or teeth?”

  “Did the legend reflect the fact that he was a German?”

  “No, not at all. Just the Marinated Midshipman. A universal, Russified one.”

  Kirill stared ahead stupidly. He made an awkward farewell, rushed the conversation to an end, then prepared some Turkish coffee for himself, which he didn’t drink.

 
Andreas ... During the years Balthasar was at Uryatinsky’s estate, he had been at the Naval Corps Academy. Did the brothers correspond? Did Prince Uryatinsky allow Balthasar to write letters? Probably not. That meant that Balthasar had simply vanished for the German relatives, too—they thought he had broken all ties with the family, and Andreas, who probably got mail from home, must have known that Balthasar did not write to his parents; he had a believable explanation for his big brother’s silence.

  Balthasar left the estate after the prince’s death, arrived in Moscow, and ... by then the sloop had landed on Kamchatka, and the courier with the report had traveled through Siberia to St. Petersburg. For all that time, from February to November, the death of Andreas did not exist as an event. Only the crew knew, and then the military courier. And possibly not even the courier—it was just one report among all the others he was carrying.

  Kirill imagined how long—months and months—the letter had traveled along muddy roads, and Andreas Schwerdt was still alive for all who loved him. Death had the shape of an envelope with a wax seal, traveled inside it, deferred until the envelope was opened. The courier carried those deaths—surely Andreas was not the only deceased—and disciplinary issues, recommendations for awards, reports on discovered lands and skirmishes with local tribes, carried them from one end of the world to the other, like a weak, nervous impulse slowly moving up the spinal cord of the dinosaur empire, from the serrated tail of Kamchatka to the head in St. Petersburg, for everything finally happened there, in the head, while the expanse of the periphery was immersed in the heavy, murky sleep of semi-existence.

  Balthasar was free of Uryatinsky, but fate took away his younger brother and kept the death in the wings, like a good playwright. Balthasar was punished ahead of time. The manner of Andreas’s death, being eaten by cannibals, was moral revenge.

  Balthasar saw God’s threatening face in all the features of the world, thought Kirill. He felt God’s gaze upon him. His life no longer belonged to him, it was all about expiation. That was why he worked furiously at the Widows’ House, why he lived with a wife forced upon him and may have even come to love her—or forced himself to love her; that was why he could not return to his father—Balthasar knew why Andreas had died, who bore the cross, whose fault it was.