HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason

by Michael Gregorio

  As I replaced my hat and turned away, the sound of earth crashing down upon the bare wooden coffin, I halted for a moment. Had I done the right thing? After all, Merete Koch was buried somewhere in the city. Perhaps I should have made more careful enquiries before ordering Sergeant Koch’s interment inside the walls of the Fortress? They had been partners in Life, they should comfort each other in Death.

  But for that single detail, the affair in Königsberg was truly over.

  Within two hours, I had packed my travelling-bag and boarded the same state coach that had brought me to the city in the company of Amadeus Koch. There was no ‘starry sky’ above my head to induce awe and wonder, as Immanuel Kant’s most famous epigram declares. There had been a brief snowfall as Sergeant Koch was buried, but the louring sky overhead was now a leaden, pitch-black sheet. It weighed down mercilessly on the city of Königsberg and the irrefutable Truth that I had left behind me, as I thought, for ever.

  Chapter 35

  The weather went from bad to worse, and Immanuel Kant remained unburied for sixteen days. The earth had frozen so solid, no grave could be dug for him. Day after day, exposed to public view in the University Cathedral in Königsberg, the body withered and shrank. It had begun to look so fearfully like a skeleton, the local newspaper hinted, the city fathers were praying desperately for a break in the weather.

  Back home in Lotingen, I threw myself into work. Hard labour should have been the best medicine for my ills, but I made little progress on those cases that had accumulated in my absence. I sat for hour after hour, staring at the repetitive flowery patterns on the walls of my office, or shuffling idly through the papers on my desk at home. The only solace that I could find was in my family. Helena revealed her loving care in a thousand looks and kind gestures. And her gentlest stratagem to ease my pain simply could not be ignored: I mean my beloved little ones. My wife saw to it that we were much together, far more than I had ever permitted before I went away. She was quick to curb the excitement the children showed after my absence, firm in tempering the unexpected freedom they now enjoyed before it got out of hand.

  One morning, Helena came bustling into my study with a fresh copy of the Königsbergische Monatsschrift in her hand. ‘It was as if the Earth refused to take him,’ she said, as she lay the news-sheet down on the desk. There had been a heavy rainfall and a sudden thaw, the headlines announced: the burial service for Professor Kant would take place the following day at one o’clock. I read the article carefully, and turned to make some comment to my wife.

  ‘Go to Königsberg, Hanno. See his soul laid to rest,’ she said, her voice soft, yet so determined that I was left with little choice in the matter. She might have been comforting one of the children after a painful fall.

  Though I had decided in my own mind never again to set foot in Königsberg, at dawn the following morning, dressed in a black suit and overcoat, a new black silk band pinned to the rim of my day-hat, I boarded the mail-coach. There were no other passengers, and I was glad that I would not be obliged to engage in conversation that I felt disinclined to sustain. I sat in splendid isolation, recalling with a heavy heart the last time that I had made the journey, in the company of Amadeus Koch.

  The coach arrived at midday, and I made my way directly to the house in Magisterstrasse, where Professor Kant’s mortal remains had been removed the previous day. The mass of common people jostling for a vantage point out in the narrow street, and the constant arrival of other persons more closely associated with the philosopher, made the lane seem more like a bustling cattle market than the haven of peace it had been in Kant’s lifetime.

  Passing in through the garden gate, I was swept up in a rushing sea of mourners, propelled along on the crest of a tidal wave by a large group of students in the academic robes of the Collegium Fridericianum who had come to pay their last respects. In the dining room a lavish oak coffin had been set up on a catafalque surrounded by ivy wreaths, and decorated with elaborate floral arrangements. The coffin lid stood propped against the wall, and I removed my hat in silent tribute to the remains of the philosopher lying there in state. A stark death’s head stared up at me, the same enigmatic smile that I remembered written on the rose-painted lips. Neither Death nor the embalmer had been able to wipe it away.

  ‘All is just as he would have wished,’ a voice murmured close by my ear, and Herr Jachmann offered me his black-gloved hand. ‘You left the town in such a fret, Stiffeniis,’ he said. ‘I was not certain that I would find you here today.’

  ‘I had to come,’ I said, the expression catching in my throat as the wooden lid was taken up, and the carpenter began to bolt it into place.

  We watched in silence as six students hoisted the coffin aloft and carried it from the room to the street. Jachmann led me towards the front row of the endless column of mourners lining up behind a black carriage pulled by four black horses. The coffin was fixed securely in its place, the floral tributes and wreaths arranged all around it, then the cortege began to move slowly forward. The procession wound its way through the streets of Königsberg, which were lined on either side with silent crowds.

  The University Cathedral was brightly lit by thousands of candles. A muted organ played solemn passages from Buxtehude while the invited mourners and city authorities took their places in the pews reserved for them. Johannes Odum was among them, Frau Mendelssohn and Doctor Gioacchini also. I sat myself down a few rows further back and sorrow swept over me in shuddering waves. I cannot say how long I remained in this distraught state, when my attention was distracted by a woman sitting in the pew in front of mine. As she removed her black scarf to settle it more comfortably on her head, I recognised her. She looked back over her shoulder and held my gaze for an instant.

  It was Frau Lampe.

  I had not thought for one instant to meet the widow at the funeral of the man she held responsible for all the woes of her husband. What was she doing there? I mulled the question over for some time without finding any answer, then turned my attention back to the memorial service, which was destined to last for another two hours. Herr Jachmann was one of many speakers sounding platitudes, which are as inevitable at a funeral as Death itself. When, at last, no more remained to be said, and no one remained to say it, the coffin-bearers came forward, the casket was taken up again on their young shoulders, and it was carried slowly from the church.

  I stepped into the aisle to follow, but Frau Lampe stood blocking my exit, her dark eyes fixed in mine.

  ‘I hoped to find you here, sir,’ she said. ‘I’d not have come other wise. Would you have me pay my respects to the creature in that box?’

  I made to move around her, but she refused to shift or give ground.

  ‘I have something that you will want to see,’ she whispered fiercely, drawing a slim leather document-case from under her cloak.

  ‘Whatever it is,’ I said coldly, ‘give it to the local police. My jurisdiction here is ended.’

  She turned her head, glanced towards the altar, then back to me.

  ‘You were a friend of his,’ she said and pursed her lips. ‘I think that you should have it, sir.’

  I looked down at what she was handing to me.

  ‘I found it some days ago. The book they were working on.’

  I studied the woman’s face for a moment. She was not stupid by any means. Did she truly not know what her husband had done? Had she never suspected?

  ‘I’ve taken up too much of your time,’ she said quickly.

  Thrusting the package into my hand, she turned and ran from the church.

  I grasped the unexpected gift to my chest with the same surge of burning excitement that I experienced when the wet-nurse handed me my first-born child. Immanuel Kant’s philosophical testament…He himself had hinted that it would change the entire course of Moral Philosophy. Falling down on my knees, I uttered my thanks to Almighty God for His immense generosity. I had been chosen as His instrument to exalt the incomparable greatness of the late Im
manuel Kant.

  I rushed from the cathedral and pushed through the milling throng in the churchyard, not caring about the people I elbowed roughly out of my way. The air was cold, but I was hot with agitation. Herr Jachmann’s voice called out my name, but I looked the other way and fought against the high tide of people flooding into the burial ground from the street. And all the while I clutched that precious packet to my heart like Moses carrying the sacred tablets down from the Heights of Sinai.

  In the relative quiet of the avenue, I stopped to catch my breath. Where could I read without fear of being disturbed? For a single, guilty moment, my blood froze at the immensity of the greed which consumed me. My only desire was to be alone with Kant’s papers.

  Why, in the name of all that was sacred, did I not go directly to Herr Jachmann and the other intimates of Professor Kant and tell them the wondrous news? Why did I avoid them all as if they threatened to carry off the priceless treasure that Frau Lampe had placed in my hands? The truth was that I had no intention of sharing the philosopher’s last unpublished thoughts with any other living person. Somehow, I felt that Kant intended the words he had dictated to Martin Lampe for me, and no one else. The valet and I were blood brothers in our arrogance.

  Further down the street there was a coffee house. It was crowded with university students as a rule, but they would all be at the funeral. Glancing in at the window, I saw that the place was deserted. I went in, sat down at a table in the far corner, and asked for a glass of hot chocolate to justify my presence there. As soon as the beverage arrived and the waiter turned away, I pulled that manuscript from under my cloak like a thief bent on examining his booty.

  The leaves were held together with a soiled red ribbon. Sifting through, I noticed that the ink in places was caked with sand which should have dried it. There was no title. No author’s name appeared on the cover. Opening the text at the first page, I recognised the writing immediately. The words were strung out in wavering, uneven lines, the letters ugly, childlike both in size and shape. I had seen that script in the autograph book of Roland Lutbatz. The same perplexing thought returned to my mind: what dire necessity had driven Professor Kant to entrust his final thoughts to such an unlikely amanuensis?

  As I began to read the opening paragraphs, I began to realise just how jealous I was of Martin Lampe. Kant reiterated his fundamental thesis that the moral nature of duty makes human behaviour subject to universal laws which are based on the precepts of Rationality. All action should strive, he averred, towards a Common Good which represents true Freedom. Despite the valet’s dreadful handwriting, I could not fail to recognise the inimitable voice of Immanuel Kant, the purposeful exposition of the rigorous concepts of moral philosophy that he had first expressed in the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Behaviour, before expanding them into the monolithic moral code of the Critique of Practical Reason.

  I cannot say at which point uneasiness began to creep up on me. The fact was that I began to feel increasingly uncomfortable as I read on. The author seemed, somehow, to have veered off the old, familiar path. Suddenly, I found myself lost in a terrain which I did not recognise. Scanning the lines ahead, looking for solid ground on which to rest, I searched for an idea or a concept that I could safely identify as Kant’s. Had Frau Lampe made a mistake? Was the document not what she had presumed it to be? There was something so rough and ready about the writing, far removed from the refinement of thought and elegance of expression that one habitually associated with Immanuel Kant. Even so, what I was reading was, somehow, very familiar…

  I sat back and sipped hot chocolate, trying to gather my thoughts and concentrate my attention. Naturally, I had been upset by the funeral. I glanced around the coffee house and noticed that the empty tables were beginning to fill up. People were coming in from the cold, the service must have ended. Fortunately, I recognised no one, and no one appeared to know me. I drank the remains of my beverage, and called for another cup. The landlord brought a long-necked pot of piping hot chocolate across to my table, and we exchanged a few words about the weather and the magnificent funeral. No other topics were worthy of interest in Königsberg that day. But then, as soon as I decently could, I returned to my reading, struggling with difficulty through another page. And another, until I reached page four. Halfway down.

  Oh, God!

  My heart throbbed painfully.

  I closed my eyes, hoping that everything would be different when I opened them again. Was this the true substance of Hell? Not burning flames, the eternal agony of unbearable pain, but a shadow world where holy angels suddenly threw off their cherubic masks and glistening diaphanous wings to reveal the hideous reality hidden beneath? Heavenly choirs chanting blasphemous rhymes in unified harmony, and making obscene gestures while they sang?

  The philosophical testament of Professor Immanuel Kant, written out in the clumsy hand of Martin Lampe, expressed my own words.

  The words that I had spoken in private to Kant, seven years before…

  Chapter 36

  The memory of that day seven years before came flooding back, tormenting in its clarity.

  ‘Walk me around the Fortress, Stiffeniis,’ Immanuel Kant suggested, as soon as the plates were cleared away after lunch.

  ‘In such dreadful weather?’ Herr Jachmann objected, a worried expression plainly written on his face.

  Professor Kant chose pointedly to ignore the warning of his friend as we donned our coats and scarves. Out in the lane, the fog was as thick and heavy as a damp towel, and Kant caught hold of my arm immediately.

  ‘You lead, Stiffeniis. I will follow,’ he said.

  He seemed to suggest that something more than youth and strength were expected of me. As I closed the gate, I spotted Herr Jachmann peeping anxiously from behind the curtains, but the fog was like a living thing. Kant and I walked straight into its gaping maw, and were swallowed up in one gulp.

  As we pressed forward, I began to prattle nervously about the previous summer which I had spent in Italy. I told him of the relentless sun, the welcome cool as the autumn came on, the cold dampness of winter as I began my journey homeward through France, my preference for the dry cold of our own mountains.

  Kant suddenly halted.

  ‘Enough of the weather!’ he snapped. I could barely see him in the faltering light. His deathly pale face seemed to blur in and out of focus, like an ectoplasm struggling to materialise. ‘One human experience is equal to the power of Nature, you said during lunch. The most diabolical of them all. Murder without a motive. Cold- blooded murder. What did you mean, Stiffeniis?’

  I hesitated before replying. But I had come to Königsberg for that purpose, and for no other. I told him quickly what I had witnessed on a cold, grey morning not two months before. Intoxicated by Enlightened ideals, curious to see how the revolutionaries would deal with the monarch that they now disowned, I broke off my homeward journey in Paris. On 2 January 1793, I was standing in Place de la Revolution when Louis XVI mounted the steps to the guillotine. I had never seen a person put to death before, and I watched in thrall as the King knelt down before that fatal instrument. As the gleaming metal triangle was drawn up, drums rolled thunderously. Their thumping matched the clamour of my heart.

  ‘I stared into the Devil’s eyes,’ I told Kant, melodramatically, perhaps, ‘and the Devil stared back. The blade fell with a loud screech, stopped with a sickening crunch, and the whole of my being was invaded by the smell of blood.

  ‘I inhaled the salty tang as if it were frankincense. I drank in each spasm of that body as the severed head bounced into a waiting basket. The simplicity of the action: a lever shifted, a life was gone. It was the essence of Cause and Effect. So quick, so devastating, so final. I wanted to see it happen again, and again…’

  A monster had risen up from the depths of the rational person that I had always thought myself to be. This Doppelgänger had a taste for death and the wild euphoria it brought. I tried to evoke the sensation for Kant in a word I
thought that he would relish. ‘The experience was Sublime,’ I confided. ‘I was ravished by it, sir. My mind was petrified, my soul was thrilled.’

  There! Finally, I had said it.

  Professor Kant was silent for some moments.

  ‘There’s more, isn’t there?’ he said suddenly. ‘Why speak of murder without a motive? The people of Paris had reason enough to kill the King. You have something more to tell me.’

  He seemed to be looking through me.

  ‘Indeed, there is,’ I admitted. ‘I brought the madness home with me. A month ago my brother died…’

  What Kant said next was pronounced in the same polite tone with which, not an hour before, he had asked me whether I preferred my bread with butter, or without.

  ‘Did you murder him?’

  Even in my shocked state, I was aware of the lack of emotion in his voice. He had made the connection that I had feared to make for myself, yet he showed no horror, no revulsion at the thought. It was simply a question that needed to be asked.

  ‘Stefan was discharged from the army a year ago,’ I hastened to explain. ‘He was voted the best cadet at the Academy, the son my father craved. The very opposite of my own moody character. But Stefan was sick. He had begun to fall down in a death-faint for no apparent reason. The sweetness of his urine was the cause. Only honey could revive him. If naught were done to help, the doctors warned, his life was in danger. Everyone in the house knew of it. The servants had all been instructed what to do if a fit came on. A pot of honey and a spoon had been positioned in every room. If Stefan were pale, sweating, confused in speech or behaviour, we must give him honey. He was prohibited from leaving the house unless he took a corked vial in his pocket.’