HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason
Page 43
Turning to Helena, I saw that the joy and hope had faded from her eyes. She stared at me accusingly, wonderingly, and in her prolonged silence, I thought I heard again the questions that I had never answered. The questions in that letter she had written to me in Königsberg after her one and only meeting with my father. What can cause such hatred in a parent, Hanno? What does he think you have done?
The trunk was consigned without another word to the attic, where it lay collecting dust for some months. An unusually wet summer had passed and a cold and gloomy autumn was upon us when I was obliged one evening to repair to the attic in search of candles. Having found what I was looking for, I was just about to return downstairs when a sudden impulse took hold of me. Morbid curiosity, set aflame by a spark of resentment for my father, prompted me to open the trunk and examine the contents with more care than my first state of shock had allowed. As the lid fell back on its rusty hinges, a dusty cloud of pain and sorrow seemed to rise into the air. The shambles of my brother’s brief existence on this earth had been tumbled into that box with violent energy and total disregard. Honey had congealed like amber on a bundle of love letters tied up with a faded pink ribbon, and stained the covers of Stefan’s favourite book, The Sorrows of Young Werther.
I sat down on the wooden floor, that book as heavy as lead in my hands, recalling how much he had loved the tale. He must have read it a hundred times with a passion which seemed never to diminish, but, rather, to increase with every reading. How often had he recited passages aloud in the study that we shared? And how frequently had I dozed with Goethe’s noble phrases ringing unheard in my ears? In a moment of distraction, as I relived this lost Arcadia of youth, the volume slipped from my hands and fell on the floor. Looking down, I saw that the novel had fallen open at the pages that describe the untimely death of the young protagonist. Stefan had scribbled critical notes in the margin with a pencil, as he was wont to do. But then, I espied my own name written there. ‘Dearest Hanno,’ I read,
You may have asked yourself why I was silent when you spoke of Paris, and the murder of King Louis. All my life I had plagued you with my questions. But I said nothing. You could not know the emotion that your words provoked in my soul. And how was I to tell you? If there is no life after death, no place where we may meet again, I thank you now for sharing your secrets with me. I thank you for showing me the path to follow. Can suicide be defined as cold-blooded murder? It is the most momentous decision that any man can make. Is any freedom more absolute?
If we must wait to be annihilated, to ‘suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’, as the English Poet tells us, why defer the crisis another day? To die is the sublimation of every life that was ever lived.
I have decided to end my suffering.
And with your help, dear Hanno, though you will never know it. I doubt that you will ever read this book of mine! Tomorrow we will climb the Richtergade. You will not fail me. Our minds and our hearts are troubled, dearest friend. You have your reasons, I have mine. A race to the top will do us both the world of good. But I will ne’er return, for I am sick of honey! Perhaps you will discover the trick…
He had slipped his own life-saving vial of nectar into my empty pocket as we left the house that morning. Tears came to my eyes as I read the final line of what he had written:
As you have given me a glimpse of Freedom, I bequeath you the vision of my death.
Ruisling, 17 March 1793.
Thus I came into my true inheritance.
Could I have received a more bountiful legacy? In his unloving wish to damn me beyond his death, to taunt me with a crime that I had never committed, my unforgiving father had restored to me the peace of mind that I had all but lost seven years before.
The following morning, strolling in the countryside around the house, enjoying the first bright day in weeks and the uncertain trials that little Immanuel made to get about on his own two legs, I finally answered Helena’s questions: I spoke out plainly about Stefan’s death, and told her what my father thought I had done. She listened in silence. Her eyes gazed calmly into mine. Like my brother when I had told him what I had seen in Paris. Like Kant when I confessed to him the fear of the obscure creature that had taken possession of my mind. I told her of the troubled youth that I had been before we met, and of the man that I had since become. At that point, she laid her hand tenderly upon mine and raised a finger to her lips, directing my attention towards our infant son with a curious gesture of her head. Immanuel had broken free from her guiding hand and was stumping solemnly but steadily ahead of us on his own two chubby little legs.
‘He is a good, brave lad, Hanno. A trifle independent, perhaps. Exactly like his father,’ Helena observed. ‘I do believe the time has come for us to pay a visit to Ruisling. Don’t you?’
That evening, I overheard Lotte and Helena chatting in the kitchen. Our maid sounded both puzzled and concerned, saying that she was glad to find me so serene after the news of my father’s death and the financial disappointment it had brought upon us.
‘I’ve never known him so carefree as he was today,’ Lotte exclaimed. ‘The master seems to have recovered from a long and terrible illness.’
The answer my wife returned was coined in that animated, joyful tone of voice she normally employed with the children.
‘He has, Lotte. He most certainly has.’
Two days after, we made our pilgrimage to the family plot in Ruisling. The thanks I addressed to Stefan, the prayers I uttered for the souls of my mother and father rang all the louder for the profound silence of the place, which seemed to wrap itself around me like a warm and comforting cloak.
In the month of May, a bright and sunny morning after a dismal week of lingering, dreamlike fog and early morning frosts which had set the untilled fields a-shimmering, Lotte Havaars entered the kitchen with a theatrical air of secrecy about her.
She held out her clasped hands to the children, then opened her fingers with a sudden gesture, revealing two bright orange ladybirds nestling together in her palm.
‘The whole of the country is infested with them, sir,’ she announced with a happy smile. ‘This summer will be a good ‘un. Ladybirds this early in the season! It’s an omen of plenty. Napoleon will ne’er prevail against a nation that’s so rich an’ good an’ strong.’
Mindful of how we had laughed at her sour predictions the previous year, and of all that had come to pass in the mean time, Helena and I exchanged a wan smile. We were more than well disposed to believe that Lotte was right.
And so she was.
The summer of 1805 was a season of great bounty and fruitfulness. Peace reigned in Eastern Prussia. Like Königsberg and all the other towns great and small in the kingdom, Lotingen returned to the steady industriousness of former times. Napoleon Bonaparte turned his armies south to face the combined forces of the Austrians and the Russians at the Battle of Austerlitz. To all effects, the French Emperor appeared to have turned his back on us. But how long would the undeclared truce persist? He had marched into Hanover and occupied the city in 1802, and everyone knew that he could do exactly the same again, whenever he chose. Margreta Lungrenek, the aruspice to General Katowice, had foreseen the possibility, cunningly divining the name of the nation’s graveyard in the tangled, bloody entrails of the dead crow that lay crucified on her table.
History was to prove her right.
The Prussian seed had been planted in Napoleon Bonaparte’s indomitable mind, and it would flower within a year, carried south, perhaps, on the innocent wings of a migrant ladybird from a cornfield on the outskirts of Jena…
Acknowledgements
Many wonderful books have influenced the development of this novel, but one of the most enlightening explorations of life and thought in Prussia in the early nineteenth century must be Tales from the German Underworld by Richard J. Evans (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998). Regarding the life and opinions of Immanuel Kant, the recent Kant – A Biography by Manfred
Kuehn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) debunks a thousand myths, and adds enormously to our knowledge of the philosopher. Both books are both highly recommended.
Special thanks to agent, Leslie Gardner, for her critical insights and endless encouragement, and to everybody at Faber and Faber in the UK and Thomas Dunne Books / St. Martin’s Minotaur in the United States, particularly our editors, Walter Donohue and Peter Joseph.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
CRITIQUE OF CRIMINAL REASON. Copyright © 2006 by Michael Gregorio. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Gregorio, Michael.
Critique of criminal reason / Michael Gregorio.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4299-5647-5
1. Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804—Fiction. 2. Serial murders—Fiction. 3. Kaliningrad (Kaliningradskaya oblast’, Russia)—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6107.R4447 C75 2006
823′.92—dc22
2006048324
First published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Limited
First U.S. Edition: November 2006