A Sojourn in Bohemia

by G. D. Falksen

  “I thought that Prussians were famous for honesty.”

  Julius chuckled a little. “If you ask the Austrians, I think you will find it to be quite the opposite.”

  “I suppose they have ample enough reason to suspect Perfidious Brandenburg,” Iosef said. “First you ally, then you declare war, then you ally again. You cannot fault the Austrians for being suspicious.”

  Julius stared at Iosef, surprised by his candor. Surely Julius was not accustomed to being spoken to in such a way by one he mistook for a youth. But after a moment he laughed.

  “Entirely the fault of Bismarck, I assure you. Pardon me for speaking ill of the dead, but with that wily fox gone from the government, I daresay the world may find in us the truest of allies.”

  “Of course,” Iosef said. Then, to assuage any insult from his earlier words, he added, “Do forgive my bluntness, Julius. I do not mean to speak ill of your country.”

  “Ah, it is nothing,” Julius replied, though he smiled at Iosef’s apology. “Indeed, scholars must be honest with one another. Too often they succumb to the politician’s duplicity and cannot be cured of it.”

  “Alas, it is so,” Iosef agreed. “A man may come to love his position more than he loves the work that brought him there.”

  “I say let them leave the universities and quarantine themselves in Berlin,” Julius said. “They will be better received there.”

  “So politics is a prison for those too arrogant for scholarship?” Iosef almost laughed, but his capacity for laughter had become too dulled, not only by time but also by the weight of loss that still hung upon him and clouded his thoughts.

  Julius sighed and said, “I wish that it were so. Instead, such men are to be found everywhere doing everything, and that is perhaps why so little is ever accomplished.”

  It was clearly a joke, so Iosef made himself smile at it. In truth, there was humor in it, but again sorrow and age together robbed Iosef of such amusement. But Julius seemed pleased that his joke had been well received, and he grinned.

  “Would you care to sit, Count von Raabe?” Iosef asked.

  “Julius,” came the reminder. “And yes, I would be grateful.”

  Iosef pulled a second chair to his desk and motioned for Julius to join him. Even seated, Julius maintained his Prussian dignity, his back ramrod straight and his chin held high; but such was his pleasant joviality that this seemed more an indication of liveliness than an affectation of pride. Iosef approved of that. Men should be dignified because it pleased them, not because they hoped to put others to shame.

  Julius’s gaze fell upon the old leatherbound book that Iosef had been reading and he said, “Ah, ha! I see you have been perusing the works of Stanislaw Kaminski. A most interesting man, if I may say so.”

  “You may indeed,” Iosef agreed. He picked up the book and examined it for a few moments. “And ‘interesting’ is one way of putting it. His account of witchcraft in Christian Poland is intriguing, certainly, but his accusations toward the Teutonic Knights are nothing short of scandalous.”

  “Scandalous indeed,” Julius said, chuckling. “At least they would be were they true.”

  “You disbelieve the great Kaminskus Magnus?”

  Iosef found enough good humor in himself to offer a jest, which seemed to please Julius further. Iosef made a note of this. Maintaining friendly terms with the Count would make it easier to siphon his knowledge about the amulets and the cults that made them. And, Iosef reflected, there was something pleasant in conversing with another man of letters.

  “I do indeed!” Julius remarked. “A brilliant alchemist, it is true, and certainly his study of witchcraft is an intriguing look into the vestiges of paganism lurking in the Polish countryside, but I fear that the very suggestion of devil worship and sorcery among the Teutonic Order is ludicrous! These are the same absurd charges levied against the Knights Templar by Philip IV, and as men of intellect and learning, we ought to dismiss them just as readily.”

  “I suppose one should not be surprised to find a highly placed member of the Polish court accusing his king’s enemies of such things,” Iosef said. “The knights had just conquered Danzig and cut Poland off from the sea.”

  “Quite so,” said Julius. “Under such circumstances it is easy, even preferable, to look at an enemy at the height of his power and accuse him of all manner of horrors.”

  “Not that the knights were any stranger to horrors,” Iosef noted dryly. “As I recall, bloodshed came easily to them in the subjugation of Prussia.”

  Julius shuddered a little, but he nodded his agreement.

  “Yes indeed,” he said. “The knights massacred the pagans, and the pagans massacred the knights.… It was a very different time.” He looked grim and saddened by such thoughts for a moment, and then he smiled. “But thank God such things are no longer done these days.”

  No, Iosef thought sardonically, today we are honest enough to admit that we are killing our neighbor for his land rather than pretending it is because of his god.

  But he kept his thoughts to himself. “Thank God indeed,” he agreed. “Now then, shall we examine the amulets?”

  “A splendid idea!” Julius replied, producing the object in question from his pocket and placing it upon the desk.

  Iosef opened the small drawer that held his amulet and reached for it. He shivered instinctively as his fingertips brushed the smooth metal. The thought of Sophio’s death came to him again, and for a moment he could only stare ahead as the shadows whispered her name to him.

  Sophio, Sophio, Sophio.

  Iosef blinked a few times to compose himself. Each time he closed his eyes, he saw Sophio in her last moments: aflame and burning into ashes. But somehow the familiarity of such horrors helped calm him and silenced the whispers.

  Regaining his senses, Iosef quickly drew out his amulet and placed it beside Julius’s.

  “Ah, yes,” Julius said, leaning over to examine the two objects. “Practically identical.” He paused and looked up. “Could we have a little more light, Iosef?”

  Iosef glanced toward the oil lamp that sat on his desk. The wick was burning very low, and the room had indeed grown dark. As Living Shashavani, his keen eyes barely noticed, but a mortal like Julius would certainly be troubled by the encroaching shadows.

  “Certainly,” he said, turning up the lamp and pulling it a little closer so that Julius might take advantage of the light.

  With fresh illumination, Iosef also began examining the amulets. Julius was correct about their being identical. The front face of each was stamped perfectly with the ouroboros and eye.

  “If these were made by hand rather than machine—” Iosef remarked.

  Julius looked at him a little disdainfully at this, and though he said nothing, his eyes all but scoffed at the suggestion.

  “—then they must have been made at the same time,” Iosef continued. “Or else one copied from the other.”

  “Or both copied from a third,” Julius suggested, almost giddy at the thought. “I would be most excited to discover a third amulet.…”

  “Yes,” Iosef agreed, “perhaps found in Perm or Yugra as Herr Mordechai suggests.”

  “Mein Gott, do not encourage him,” Julius protested. “He is Yugra-mad, convinced of some urheimat for the Black Goat cults located in the furthest reaches of Arctic Siberia. I fear he takes the legends of the Reindeer Queen far too literally.”

  Iosef paused a moment, unfamiliar with the name. “The Reindeer Queen?” he asked.

  Julius sighed and shook his head. “A fanciful tale to frighten children. Allegedly, a now forgotten Uralic tribe believed in a demon goddess who rules over the land of the dead at the northernmost reaches of the world. It is said that those who freeze to death in the wilderness are carried to her kingdom in the tundra and made to serve her for eternity. It is as lurid as it is absurd,
and considering that the only ‘evidence’ we have for the tale’s existence are some ghost stories told by Cossack adventurers in the seventeenth century, I am inclined to dismiss the whole thing as nonsense!”

  “That would seem the most prudent action,” Iosef agreed. However open he was to legends and mythology, the story certainly had the feel of an explorer’s fabrication.

  Returning to the amulets, he turned them over and examined the back of each. Both were stamped with letters written in an alphabet he neither knew nor had ever seen other than on the amulets.

  “What do you make of these characters?” he asked.

  “A message, clearly,” said Julius. “Perhaps a prayer or incantation of some sort. It seems rather an expensive medium for a recipe or a bill of sale!”

  He laughed at this, no doubt amused at the thought of rare aluminium being used for the same simple purposes as clay tablets.

  “Indeed,” Iosef said. He examined each line of letters in turn, looking from one amulet to the other. Although he could not discern their meaning, he could still recognize patterns. “The first two lines are identical,” he noted.

  “So they are,” Julius agreed, gasping softly.

  “The third one is different,” Iosef continued. “The fourth is the same. The fifth different…” He frowned slightly and narrowed his eyes. “I wonder what is to be made of that.”

  Julius shrugged and grinned. “Ignorant of the language, we may never know. But I tell you truly, Iosef, I predict that you and I shall have a tremendous amount of fun trying and failing to work it out.”

  Such was Julius’s enthusiasm that Iosef could not keep himself from smiling a little.

  “I suspect you are right about that, Julius,” he said, “on both counts.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Friedrich felt bad about the rats. They were such pleasant little fellows, always scurrying about in their cages, chattering to one another, grooming and playing. It made him regret killing them.

  Not that he actually did the killing—that was the fault of the cancer and the poison—but he regretted his hand in it. He winced each time a rat squeaked when he injected it with a new formula. Every day as he checked on the cages, he silently prayed that there would be no more sickness, that the latest subjects would show improvement. As often as not, he was met with corpses. And even those that did show improvement inevitably developed tumors and died.

  At first he had relied entirely on the local rat population, which was abundant in that part of the city. But as his early tests each ended in failure, Friedrich had hit upon the idea of breeding successive generations of test subjects himself, both to ensure a large enough supply and to prevent the rats from dying of any local poisons or diseases—which, he assured himself, was the entire reason for the failure of his formulae. Now months later, he had come to realize that perhaps it was not the local diet that was at fault.

  Sighing quietly, Friedrich removed the morning’s two dead specimens from their cages and carried them to his desk on a metal tray. He had been reading late the night before, and it took him a few moments to clear enough room from the mass of papers for his work. He set the tray down and rubbed his hands a few times to bring the feeling back into his fingers. It was cold in the garret apartment that served as his workroom, but at least it left him undisturbed by his guests on the floors below. And though the disrepair of the house was an inconvenience, at least the dismal state of the neighborhood meant that no neighbors would care much about the lights he kept burning late at night or about the occasional assortment of smells, fires, and explosions that were bound to happen in the pursuit of scientific discovery.

  Rubbing his hands a little bit more to make sure they had the necessary dexterity, Friedrich selected a scalpel from the pencil case he used to house his supplies. He had found it the best way to protect them when not in use. A burst of morning sun shone in through the nearby window and momentarily blinded him. When it had receded behind the clouds, he rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and fought back a rush of fatigue. He had fallen asleep at his desk again shortly before sunrise, leaving him with only a couple hours of rest to fortify himself.

  Friedrich glanced back at the cot that served as his bed, which was crammed into one corner. It was too short for him, of course, so he had extended it with a few piles of books below the footboard. It did the job, but he doubted that it was really the best substitute for proper accommodations.

  Don’t be so fussy! Friedrich chided himself. The Work! The Work! Better a few years of exhaustion and starvation than to give up the search for the greatest secret in the world!

  And having assured himself with his morning affirmation, Friedrich shook his head, blinked a few times, and looked back at the dead rats on his desk.

  “I am sorry my little friends,” he whispered. “I wish you had not died, but know that your sacrifice will one day conquer death itself.”

  The corpses stared back at him, unmoving, unspeaking, and silently judging him.

  Why did we have to die? their eyes demanded. Why did you fail us? You promised to find the secret ten years ago, Friedrich! Why haven’t you done it yet? Why do you always fail?

  As he began cutting, Friedrich knew that he had no answer, only the fleeting hope that it might one day be so. One day there would be a rat who would look back at him, alive, and thank him for being made immortal.

  * * * *

  Friedrich woke as the door opened. He did not remember falling asleep. Momentarily confused, he grabbed a nearby scalpel and lunged to his feet before he had properly regained his senses. In that instance, he felt certain of danger and of nothing else. There was an instinctual determination to survive this as yet unseen threat, a voice whispering to strike first before death could crush him in its hungry jaws.…

  “Good morning, Friedrich.”

  It was Zoya, who stood in the doorway, her hair and hands mostly clean of paint. She eyed the scalpel in Friedrich’s hand and smiled at him, though her eyes were hesitant.

  “Bad dreams?”

  Friedrich looked down at the blade in his hand and quickly tossed it onto the desk.

  “I…I do not recall,” he answered. “I didn’t realize I had fallen asleep again.”

  “You and your sleepless nights,” Zoya said, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her. “They’ll be the death of you.”

  Friedrich laughed. “Nonsense. If that rats haven’t killed me yet, I have nothing to fear from a little fatigue.”

  “Mmm,” Zoya answered. “Your rats.” She walked to the nearest cages and examined the rats as they scurried about behind the bars. “What ever do you do with them, Friedrich?”

  “I have conversations,” Friedrich said, the hint of a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

  “Before or after you cut them open?”

  “A bit of both,” Friedrich admitted.

  Zoya laughed. “Do not feel badly about it. I scold my paintbrushes when no one is watching.”

  “Pleased to know I’m not the only madman in the house.”

  “What would a madhouse be without the mad?” Zoya answered, smirking at her own joke. “But at least we are a respectable madhouse.”

  “Because of the drunks?” Friedrich asked. “Or because of the socialists?”

  “The drunks, of course. Any respectable man might be a drunk. Indeed, most of them are. But a socialist…he might be sober.”

  “God forbid,” Friedrich said, laughing. “Sobriety will be the death of us.”

  “Now you sound like Wilhelm,” Zoya said.

  “He’s not a complete fool,” Friedrich replied. “Stanislav likes him.”

  “Stanislav likes everyone,” Zoya countered, her smile growing as she approached Friedrich slowly, one careful step at a time. “He even likes Karel.”

  “I like Karel.”

&nb
sp; “Then you’re more the fool,” Zoya said. “He’s a self-righteous bourgeoisie pretending to be an artist, and I’m surprised you even give him the time of day.”

  “You give him the time of day,” Friedrich replied.

  “He’s pretty. That doesn’t mean I like him.”

  “He is pretty,” Friedrich agreed. “Stanislav thinks he has a poet’s soul, and he pays rent once in a while, so he’s welcome here.”

  “Even if his poems are dreadful?” Zoya asked.

  Friedrich nodded. “Even if his poems are dreadful. But they aren’t dreadful, are they?”

  Zoya sighed. “Not entirely, no.”

  Friedrich poured himself a cup of water from a glass decanter. Then, remembering his manners, he quickly cleaned a second cup with his handkerchief and filled it as well. He offered the first one to Zoya.

  “Thirsty?”

  “Parched,” Zoya said, taking the cup. “After all, I need my voice for when our guest arrives.” She looked at the clock on Friedrich’s desk. “And that won’t be long now, I wager.”

  “Guest?” Friedrich asked.

  “Good Lord!” Zoya exclaimed. “Your aunt, Friedrich. Don’t you remember?”

  Despite the chastisement, Friedrich smiled at the news. “Really? Aunt Ekaterine is coming here today?” he asked. Then it hit him. Of Course! Zoya was painting Ekaterine’s portrait. “The painting.”

  “Yes.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to go to her house for that?”

  Zoya frowned. “Apparently artists aren’t welcome in respectable houses, so she’s coming here for the portrait.” She shrugged. “Still, it saves me a journey.”

  “I suppose that’s a small mercy.”

  “I’m not accustomed to small mercies, Friedrich. I wouldn’t know one if I encountered it.”

  Friedrich considered this and nodded. “Of course.”

  Zoya paused a moment and then grinned. “Smile, Friedrich,” she said. “Your pretty aunt is coming. It’s a reason for us both to smile.”