The Sensualist

by Barbara Hodgson

  Continuing the search, she found more references to Titian’s associations with anatomy. He had lived in Venice during the same period as Vesalius and Kalkar had apprenticed under him. A volume of anatomical illustrations, called Notomie di Titiano, published posthumously in 1670 showed engravings from the Fabrìca signed with Titian’s own initials. She shrugged; she wasn’t going to solve the dispute by reading old arguments.

  As far as Helen could see, the whole history of Vesalius was fraught with arguments. He himself had published his work with a haughty provocative attitude, an uncontrollable pugilist throwing punches into the air, barking out threats to would-be plagiarists, doubters, critics. She read of how controversy and jealousy exploded the minute the books emerged from the press: Vesalius had dared to contradict Galen; thus he was a heretic. He had stepped on too many toes. The arguments surrounding him continued on through the centuries, leading academics perpetually into scholarly mud-slinging.

  Vesalius’s frequent admonishments of plagiarists fascinated Helen. As early as 1538, he had written a warning to all copyists and vendors, threatening them with heavy penalties should they try to distribute his work unauthorized. His words fell empty into the air; copyists threw themselves into the task with gusto. In response, in 1546, he published an essay called Letter on the China Root. Ostensibly the essay was a discussion of some kind of Chinese herbal medicine used to treat a variety of illnesses ranging from syphillis to gout; in reality it was an opportunity for him to harangue his plagiarists and detractors.

  Side-tracked by these details, Helen had forgotten about the chronology of the woodblocks. It seemed that so much had already happened, and yet it wasn’t until 1771 that the woodblocks were to surface again, this time in the hands of a surgeon, Herr von Woltter in Ingolstadt. He approached a Bavarian anatomist, a Dr H.P. Leveling, to see if he could print an edition from them. Leveling tried to raise money by subscription, failed, and so Woltter sent them to a Leipzig printer named Crusius. There was no information about Crusius, except perhaps that he misrepresented his capacities, as it turned out he couldn’t afford to print a new edition either. To be fair, he sent them back to Woltter in Ingolstadt. Where on earth was Ingolstadt? Dr Leveling finally managed to print a first edition of, he claimed, 1500 copies in 1781. Her source speculated that perhaps only a few hundred were actually bound and sold. He then had a second edition printed in 1783, also purported to consist of 1500 copies.

  The blocks remained in Ingolstadt—with Woltter? The history books weren’t clear—until 1800, the time of the French invasion, when they were moved to Landshut. The book specified that Landshut was also in Bavaria, implying that Ingolstadt was in Bavaria as well. So that must mean that the two cities were somewhere near Munich. Why were the woodblocks safer in Landshut than in Ingolstadt, who were they with, and who moved 227 of them in 1826 to the library in Munich where they were stuffed in a corner and left until their rediscovery in 1893? The accounts at last reconnected with some facts, reporting that a couple of editions were printed following their last appearance, a notable one being the Icones Anatomicœ, a co-publication between the University of Munich and the New York Academy of Medicine.

  So, she wondered, was the woodblock used for the printing of her woodcut one of the 227, or was it one of the 50 that never made it as far as the library in Munich? She had to get it back, or at least see it again, to imprint its design upon her memory. Then she had to find a copy of the Icones Anatomicœ. Continuing to search through Anselm’s library seemed a logical step, but it was already seven o’clock, time to get away before Anselm woke up. She wanted to clear out and stay away for the entire day. No doubt Anselm’s house would be invaded by the police, now that she was involved and they knew where she was living. As the rat responsible for this she had to do what all self-respecting rats did: keep herself scarce. She contemplated calling von Ehrlach and warning him to also expect a visit, but decided in the end that it served him right; he warranted none of her pity after the way he had treated her.

  She presented herself to the desk clerk at the police station at 2:45, but it wasn’t until 3:30 that an officer escorted her to Hauptmann Bauer’s office. Without apologizing for keeping her waiting, Bauer pointed to the same chair she had sat in the day before. While guarding what appeared to be a report, he nodded to the omnipresent aide to commence scribbling, asking her if she had remembered any new details. She had thought long and hard during her wait in the anteroom, hoping to be able to satisfy his craving questions with the scattered morsels she had forgotten, but nothing, except Rosa, had surfaced. And she still wasn’t ready to reveal Rosa.

  “We’ve been considering your testimony.” Helen sat forward at the word testimony, carefully eyeing his stiff, densely typewritten sheet of paper.

  “I thought this was just an informal interview. Are you telling me that I am to regard these as official interrogations, or perhaps I have misinterpreted the word testimony?”

  “No, not at all,” soothed Bauer, “just an expression. Shall we say, we’ve been going over yesterday’s discussion?”

  Helen acquiesced and sat back in her chair.

  “And I find that I have many more questions. For instance, when we talked to Herr Gerstner—”

  “Who?”

  “Gerstner, Herr Albert Gerstner, Ganz’s personal secretary. You met him, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did. I just never knew his name. Gerstner. Okay.”

  “Herr Gerstner mentioned that you had shown Herr Ganz a box and that Herr Ganz was quite struck by it. Perhaps you would like to show me this object?” He looked at her expectantly.

  “Yes, I suppose I would.” Helen reluctantly reached into her bag and set it onto the desk.

  “Open it, please.”

  Helen obliged.

  Bauer and the aide both inclined slightly towards the box, trying to take it all in while maintaining a facade of decorum. “Remove the contents, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  It had never occurred to her to try to take the book out. This astonished her; it seemed like such an obvious thing to do. She carefully tipped the box upside down and maneuvered the entire book onto the desk. The box sat empty.

  Helen opened the pages and took out the finger bone, the notebook page, the vials, the magnifying glass, the dog tag, and the other sundry bits of junk and arranged them all on a cleared area of the desk. Bauer lifted each object up, one by one, describing them while the aide scratched away furiously with his pen.

  “One magnifying glass, steel, medical inscriptions, seventy-four millimeters radius.”

  “You’re not planning to keep these, are you?” Helen interrupted, a shade vexed.

  Bauer’s face accordioned in on itself at her intrusion. “One dog tag, brass, inscribed BER-7621. One human phalange…” the list droned on.

  “Was this where you kept the,” he looked at his notes from the previous day, “Vesalius engraving?”

  Helen nodded. “Yes. Woodcut.”

  “Where did you say you acquired it?”

  Helen knew it was useless to insist on the irrelevance of these details. Even she could see the connection. “From a woman named Rosa Kovslovsky I met her on the train.”

  “Rosa Kovslovsky, Rosa, Rosa, no, there is no mention of Rosa Kovslovsky from your declaration of yesterday. Could you explain this?”

  Helen squirmed. And then remembered that she had referred to Rosa, just not named her. “But I did mention her, it’s just that we talked about so much that I don’t believe I gave you her name.”

  Bauer went over the notes again. “I see here that you spoke of sharing your compartment with a stranger from some unidentified location until Munich. Is this Rosa Kovslovsky?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “And you knew her name from before? Or she introduced herself?”

  “We only just met. Frankly, I disliked her from the minute I woke up in her presence. She was in my compartment very early in the morning, at least from 6:30, probably earli
er. I tried not to talk to her, she gave me the creeps,” Helen admitted.

  “Why would she give you such a box?” He turned it around, flipped the lid back down, stared at the pearls and the tooth, opened it back up again and examined the ringed finger bone. “And such items? She clearly did not feel the same animosity towards you.”

  “They weren’t all in the box to begin with,” Helen said. “Frau Kehl, I told you about her, she gave me the ring.” No sense saying it was by accident. “The conductor gave me the ticket to Berlin, the woman named Anna gave me the dog tag, von Ehrlach gave me the engraving of the tooth extraction. You see, things have rather added up since it first came into my possession.”

  “Are these real pearls?” He had shut the lid again and ran his finger around the frame.

  “According to Rosa Kovslovsky they are.”

  “And the tooth?” He had flipped the lid shut and was trying to pry the tooth out, but his fingers were too clumsy and coarse. She reached over, waited for him to give up, so she could show at least one grace and pluck the tooth out for him. He obliged, so the molar, free but balanced between her thumbs and index finger, was presented to him, proprietorially, a concession to his fall from superiority. This was hers to give him and so she would. His face showed no expression as he cupped his hand below hers, ready to accept her charity. She dropped the tooth onto his palm, then pointed to the book.

  “May I?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  She flipped the pages until she came to the drawing of the tooth extraction. Smoothing it out onto the table she pointed to the tooth in question.

  “This is how bizarre my week has been. It may help excuse my apparent lack of cooperation. This molar, premolar, rather, belonged to the elevator operator,” she hunted for his card. “Wilhelm Stukmeyer, in Dr von Ehrlach’s building. He gave me the tooth when he saw the diagram of the extraction, claiming them to be related.” She sighed. “This box is a magnet for every nut case in Vienna—it is not evidence pertaining to either Herr Ganz or to my husband Martin.”

  “Where did the drawing of the extraction come from?”

  “Von Ehrlach. He fobbed it off on me when my questions started to bother him, then he pushed me out of his office.”

  Bauer nodded again.

  “And he mistook me for Rosa Kovslovsky, whom he happens to know quite well.”

  “Do you resemble Rosa Kovslovsky?”

  “Not in the slightest. She’s at least seventy years old, is obese, and wears remarkable wigs.” Helen toyed with the ends of her hair, thinking about the photo of Rosa that would turn this declaration into an outright lie. The photo lay safely hidden in Anselm’s study; there was no chance that Bauer would ever find out about the resemblance between her and Rosa.

  “Hmm. Von Ehrlach is recognized to have lightened his grip on the here and now. He seems to spend much time in the past.”

  “How do you know Dr von Ehrlach?”

  “Professional witness.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Testifies on the state of peoples’ minds. We call him in for the really odd ones.”

  Bauer steered them back to Rosa.

  “Did she tell you why she was giving this to you?” He cradled the box in both hands.

  “No. I had left the compartment just before we arrived in Munich, partly to escape from her and partly to wash up. I was feeling very sick at the time, catching a cold, and I found the compartment stuffy, suffocating in fact. By the time I got back the train had stopped, and Rosa was gone. All that was left was the box and this note,” she picked up the piece of paper that said “For your search.”

  “I see,” said Bauer. “Is there anybody else who you’ve spoken to, met, who you may have forgotten to tell us about?”

  Helen thought some more and then remembered Herr Thüring. “Why, yes there is.”

  “Well,” he prompted.

  “A Herr Thüring. I met him at the Sauer Coffee House. He’s an author.”

  “You met Herr Thüring!” Bauer was astounded. “You have only been in Vienna for under two weeks and you met Herr Thüring!” Helen could see that his estimation of her rose dramatically, and basked in the relief, even if it was only going to last for a few minutes.

  “Yes,” she said rather proudly, “and I helped him with one of his phone calls. Haven’t you met him?” she asked.

  “No.” Bauer frowned, “but I have spoken to him. It seems like so long ago.” He smiled at some distant memory. His teeth exposed, ripples at the corner of each eye, a new face, a kind face. “Tell me, what letter is he on?”

  “Ds. I called a lady name Dilsman and wrote down the notes. Thüring couldn’t think of a better way to describe what he did.”

  “But how did this come about?” He was genuinely interested, no longer in authority.

  “I accidentally sat at his table.”

  “Ah,” he nodded. Everyone acknowledged that it was a tricky business in Vienna, these cafe tables, skewering the habitue between rudeness and civility, especially when foreigners were involved; here ignorance was an excuse.

  The skin smooth once again, the smile stored away for others, questioning proceeded. “Have you met Rosa Kovslovsky since?”

  Helen had anticipated this, but it didn’t make it easier to answer. “Yes,” she said finally.

  “Where?”

  “My hotel room, the day after I arrived in Vienna. Or rather, the night after I arrived.”

  Bauer waited for her to continue.

  “I woke up and there she was. She’d, uh, broken in. Picked the lock. She showed me her skeleton keys. I woke up out of a, a bad dream, and like I said, there she was. Just sitting there, waiting for me to wake up. She wanted to tell me about someone I should see. Von Ehrlach, as a matter of fact.” Helen’s head was starting to ache and the officer’s stare was hurting her eyes. He said nothing. “She had already set up an appointment with von Ehrlach. I haven’t yet been able to figure it out.

  That’s all. I haven’t seen her since. Oh, one more thing, Friedrich

  Anselm seems to know her quite well, also.”

  “Do you love your husband, Frau Martin?” Bauer’s question came out of the blue.

  “He’s run away from me, how could I love him?”

  “That would make some women love their husbands all the more.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. That’s not love. That’s flagellating self-pity.”

  “What are you doing here then?”

  The question made perfect sense, yet every part of Helen revolted against answering it. After a moment’s delay she said, “Look, Hauptmann Bauer. Martin, as a husband, has been dead for a long time. I’m sick and tired of living with the deceased. I’ve come here to bury him, regardless of whether he’s dead or alive.”

  Bauer dismissed Helen after taking down a description of Rosa and suggesting that she get back in touch with him in a couple of days. Sooner, if she had any further information. She reminded him of her plans to go to Budapest, to which he nodded, raising no objections. She gathered up the contents of the box and methodically replaced them one by one. Without so much as a glance at Bauer, but sensing his impatience, she snapped the lid shut and slid the box in her bag.

  She hazarded another question. “Can I see my woodcut?”

  He shook his head.

  “Just for a minute. I’m trying to figure out if it came from one of the supposedly destroyed blocks.”

  “But it did.” He started fanning papers out onto his desk.

  “But we don’t know for sure. There were 50 unaccounted for. Fifty of the original 270 or so that never made it to Munich back in 1826.”

  He tapped his pen on his desk. “I don’t have it here.”

  “Will I ever get it back?”

  Bauer looked at her coldly, then turned to the papers which now obscured the entire desk top. The aide, grasping her arm, steered her out of the office. Helen realized that there was more than the simple issue of ownership at stake. />
  CHAPTER 11

  LEAVING VIENNA

  Anselm’s insulated haven had been invaded by police the day of Helen’s second interview, but neither Anselm nor the house seemed any worse for it. The old gentleman took it with good humor and had given them a guided tour, even assisting as they sorted through Helen’s meager personal effects. This he admitted to quite proudly, congratulating her for traveling neatly and compactly. “It’s not everyone who could withstand so firmly the prying eyes of the law and the idle hands of curiosity, you know.”

  He brushed aside her attempts to apologize for having dragged the police into his life. “Don’t worry about it for one bit. They were too circumspect, really, to have done any damage or any real ransacking. But,” he added, “they didn’t quite explain what they were looking for. Does this concern your husband?”

  “Only marginally. It’s more to do with the murder of Peter Ganz.” Still curious about Bauer’s rank, she asked Anselm.

  “Hauptmann, hmm? Moderately important. Don’t worry, you haven’t been fobbed off on some underling. But what has this to do with Peter Ganz?”

  She explained why they thought that there might be a link between her, Anselm, and Ganz—it all seemed to come back to Martin and the Vesalius woodcuts. Anselm’s nonchalance silenced Helen’s dreads, giving her previous night’s conversation with Jimmy Singleton an aura of unreasonable hysteria.

  That evening Anselm ordered in a marvelous feast from a neighboring restaurant. A waiter appeared late in the afternoon to set the table and arrange the dining room. By seven o’clock, Anselm was fluttering about as nervous as if he himself had prepared the meal. By 7:30 the waiter was reinstalled, pouring the first wines and serving the first dishes.