The Sensualist

by Barbara Hodgson

  “None. It’s the first time I’ve thought of it in so many words. But I was given a Vesalius print—the police in Vienna have it now—when I first arrived in Austria. I showed it to Peter Ganz when I met with him; he borrowed it to have it authenticated, and then he died before he could tell me what the results were. The print, along with the report, went to the police, who told me that the woodcut itself was authentic, that the paper was authentic, but that the ink had been manufactured after the war. If true, it can only mean that someone is printing with these again and possibly trying to pass them off as originals.”

  “It is interesting,” mused Arany. “The third speculation is to do with alterations? I do not see any significance. What do you think?”

  “I haven’t had any, I was just grasping at straws. I had read that between the first edition and the second edition there were minor changes made to make it more understandable, opening up the crossreferencing letters positioned beside the different elements, and then an even later edition was printed with the engravings supposedly initialed by Titian. Other than that, no, I have no other reasons for suggesting it.”

  “Then you want to know what I recommend he do next. Given the little that I know of the subject, I tell him to go to Munich since the originals have been there. As I mention already he is not forthcoming; he evidently did not want to share his suspicions. He tells me, as I have told you, that he has been already. What can I say? I suggest that he go to Padua or Venice. Start tracking the woodblocks down to follow the path that they originally take.”

  “Venice, then over the Alps to Basel, and so on?”

  “Precisely. Though in my eyes, that is not modern journalism, that is old-fashioned detectives, and no one these days has the time for such luxury.” The waiter, seeing that the level of the second wine bottle had dropped to within inches of the bottom, wheeled over a precariously overladen dessert tray. Arany looked at his watch. “Speaking of time, will you join me for torte and coffee?” He chose a plate bearing a tempting selection of cakes. The waiter poured two demitasse and placed them on the table.

  Helen looked at her watch; it was four o’clock and the restaurant was almost empty. “I’ve kept you so long from your office…” her voice trailed off as she longingly eyed the insanely rich concoctions.

  “You are a refreshingly open book, Helen. It is okay with you to call you Helen?” She smiled and nodded, realizing that he had not, until now, ever referred to her by name. “I am sorry for you and for your husband. For me it would be enchanting to live with a woman who so naturally showed her pleasures. Excuse me for being frank.”

  She flushed a deep red, disarmed by the unexpected intimacy of the remark. This was her chance to be honest about something that could matter. Stefan Arany was not a conventionally attractive man; his face was scarred and pitted, his forehead low and broad, his eyelids thick, and his long black mustache harvested crumbs and droplets continuously throughout the meal, forcing him to stop at intervals and painstakingly groom it. Stray twists of black hair curled over his collar, tenaciously escaping from the meticulously combed flock. He was short for a man, about her height, maybe a touch taller; but his commanding personality increased his stature substantially. He mesmerized her. How rare, she thought, are the opportunities to give in to our appreciation of the opposite sex without being misunderstood. Why can’t I just sit back and admire him, like I admire this cake. To feast my eyes on what may be a fleeting sensation of beauty. Today, he is all the satisfaction that my eyes require. He sat watching her, an expectant look on his face.

  “Should I tell you that you’ve offended me?” asked Helen, relieved that her words didn’t betray her. “I can’t say that you have, but you did startle me. Some women may be accustomed to handling compliments; I’m not. Especially not that kind of compliment. For me,” she licked the last of the cream off of her fork, “I’m here only to find my husband. This may sound old-fashioned, or pathetic even, but I am nobody until I disentangle all of this. And as nobody I have no will, no desires except to free myself.” She wanted to say so much more, ask him if he loved someone; ask him to do something simple like just touch her hand. She set her hands on the table, contemplating putting temptation in his way, to see what he would do. No. She couldn’t do it. The hands returned to her lap.

  Her bald-faced lie was stated too forcefully for Arany to contradict; his eyes conceded defeat. Helen submerged further her yearning to admit her desires and went on, “I haven’t even any expectations of what I’ll do once I’m free. That’s unimportant. Well,” she said, now too uncomfortable to go on juggling the deception and the honesty, and attempted a joke, “maybe I have one desire that I’ll admit to,” she eyed the cake tray and slid one more slice onto her plate.

  “I won’t say that you misunderstand me,” replied Arany, his wall of defeat instantly creating a distance between them, “because I believe that you understand yourself far too well. I wish you the best of luck in your hunt, and only wish that I could be more help. What do you think you will do next?”

  “I can’t really say that I’ve made up my mind. The way that I see it, I have two choices. Both you and Friedrich Anselm suggested to Martin that he go to Padua. You also advised him to go to Munich. The fact that he had already been is a strong reason for me to go there. Is there anyone you know there that I should see?”

  Arany shook his head, “I am afraid not,” he said. “Once again, Friedrich would be the best person; he has spent much time in Munich.”

  “That’s right, he mentioned that he went to Munich frequently with his governess, Fräulein Kehl. I didn’t realize that he continued to go there after he had left home.”

  “I don’t think that he ever ‘left home.’ The house where he is currently living is his home all of his life. As far as I am aware he continues to go to Munich until the late sixties, around when he goes blind. It is a matter of some controversy at the time. But perhaps we are more interesting in what is between him and Fräulein Kehl!” The distance between them retracted with his humor.

  They both stood up and walked to the restaurant door, where the maître d’ waited holding their coats. They stepped out into the now dark and freezing Budapest afternoon; Arany waved a taxi over and asked her if he could drop her at her hotel. She thanked him and declined. They shook hands, Arany got into the cab, and with one last “Good luck,” hurled into the wind, drove off. His departure left Helen feeling sadder and more alone than she’d ever felt in her entire life.

  CHAPTER 15

  MUNICH

  Munich or Padua, Padua or Munich? Sauerbraten or pasta, beer or wine, German or Italian? Freezing winds from the Alps or moderating currents from the Adriatic? Nine-hour train ride or twelvehour train ride? That settled it. Munich.

  Am I seriously pursuing this or am I trying to get out of an extra three hours on the train? She put the question to herself while she flicked the little bedside lamp on and off. “At least there’s heat in here,” she said aloud, getting up and wandering over to the radiator. She sat down on the heated bars, warming her backside.

  Rosa had suggested Padua. Right here in this very room, last night. She had written a note and then thrown it away. Helen got down on her hands and knees and felt under the bed, behind the bedside table, under the wardrobe, behind the radiator. It must have been tossed out this morning when the room was done. Why would Rosa suggest Padua? Rosa was not what Helen considered an integral part of her purpose in Europe. She was a nuisance, an encumbrance, a disturbing distraction. Helen’s life was, after all, her business, and Rosa’s was her own. If there was ever a compelling reason to go to Munich, it was because Rosa had suggested going to Padua. That really settled it.

  The lunch with Stefan Arany had been more disturbing than she wanted to admit. It was her heart that was reacting the most—not the figurative heart, but the physical beating heart. Still beating crazily, thumping violently, ever since he first took hold of her arm. She opened up her box to the page that co
ntained the old vials. There it was, the ext. digitalis, the heart stimulator. She felt as though she’d taken a huge dose. What else was in there? Something else, perhaps, to calm a heart? Here was ext. atropa belladonna. Oh great, she thought. Everyone knows about belladonna: the deadly nightshade associated with romance and madness—dilates pupils, brings blushes to cheeks. This one, the one that Rosa had offered to her for her eyes, was ext. euphrasia officinalis. She opened the flap in the lid of the box, and for the first time read the description of the medicines in the vials. Euphrasia, or eyebright, intended to improve vision and cure eye diseases. Ext. ruta graveolens, rue, associated with repentance and sorrow. Ext. hyoscyamus niger, the fancy name for the poisonous henbane, a sedative if the patient was lucky, a dizzying, stupifying killer, if not. And the last one, the empty one. She twisted the bottle around, trying to see if there was any evidence of its contents. The flap declared this to be ext. ventus septentrionalis. Ha! A wind. She read on. The north wind, the wind that sharpens the senses. This is ridiculous. Heart stimulators, stuff to drive you mad, air. Whoever put this together had a wicked sense of humor.

  Helen stepped back over to the bed and fell onto her stomach, bundling herself into the bed’s downy arms. She nestled her nose into the pillow and breathed in the competing fragrances of lotion, laundry soap, and years; so different than the previous night, so reassuring. She rubbed her cheek, then her eyelids, then her forehead and mouth against the rough cotton. Her bed at home; their bed. What was it? A prison. A pallet. A no-man’s land. At best a battleground liberally salted with devious and shallow traps. What was the mattress? Was it foam or springs, soft or hard, rigid or giving? Was it wide or narrow, wide enough for two or narrow enough for one? Did her feet stick off the end; was she lost in it? Were there blankets or quilts? Wool or down? Were the sheets cotton? Were the pillows feather? Did it smell good? “Why can’t I remember?” she asked herself. She rolled onto her back and looked at the cracks in the ceiling.

  Could she remember the last time that she and Martin had shared that bed? Yes, she could. It was like the time before that and the time before that. She on her side, he on his. His back to her. That’s what she remembered about their bed: his back. What a mess. What a stupid, screwed-up mess.

  Her mother, superstitious as she was, always insisted that Helen’s father help her make up their bed when it came time to change the sheets. A weekly ritual, the two of them—tucking, fluffing, stuffing, sheets, quilt, pillows. Always white cotton. Dried into stiff and fragrant parchment on the clothesline out back. Baked by the sun, trailing the scent of grass and clouds. If they didn’t make the bed together, her mother had contended, how could they expect to stay together? Of course she meant sleep, sleep together; everyone knew that’s what she meant. Helen could smell the memory of her parents’ bed, here in her Budapest pension. The memory was a false one; the fragrances were too fresh, too real.

  This bed she was lying on now, wide enough for two people in love, narrow enough for one lonely bitter person, beguiled her to sleep.

  Late the next morning she found herself alone in the breakfast room. The woman who had brought her breakfast the day before—her name was Krisztina—explained that the old man, Kussák, left for work each morning at 9:00. Helen was surprised that he would still be working and asked how old he was. “Kussák’s only seventy,” Krisztina replied, “He has plenty of working days ahead of him yet. He watches the mail sorters at the post office to make sure that they don’t steal the mail. He used to be a veterinarian.”

  Helen, wearing all of the clothes she had brought with her, spent the day seeing Budapest and regretting the winter that not only kept her shivering against the gruesome blasts of air but also sent many of the museums and galleries into sporadic hibernation. She went back to the Semmelweis, not to see Stefan Arany again—she couldn’t withstand another encounter, she declared to herself—but to better inspect the displays, particularly the Vesalius woodcut. Followed closely by one of the attendants, she sketched the print, thinking that at some point she could match it up with the Icones Anatomicœ or perhaps one of the proofs she had swiped. She left the building, her wish granted; she hadn’t seen even a hint of the director and her spirits suffered accordingly.

  Helen escaped into detail: her train schedule booklet, which she assiduously studied during her lunch, promised several direct trains to Munich, all leaving from the Keleti station and all routed through Vienna. She could leave at 3:30 PM, 9 PM or 12:30 AM, meaning she could get into Munich at 12:30 AM, 6 AM or 9:30 AM. Nine-thirty was okay but that meant an overnighter. She shivered at the thought. Or she could go to Vienna and change trains there. There were lots of trains to Vienna; she could leave in the morning at half past eight or at ten to ten. This busy work buoyed her up, gave her something else to concentrate on, eliminated the need to think.

  Late in the afternoon, as the shops were closing and before the restaurants started serving dinner, Helen strolled again through the lobby of the Gellért to check if there were any more messages for Martin. A futile chore; she hadn’t even looked at the batch she ‘d picked up when she first arrived. A sign pointing to the thermal baths reminded her of Rosa’s wild accusations about the pornographic films. The bitterly cold weather had killed any curiosity she might have had to check out the place first hand, but she wasn’t quite ready to leave the hotel for good; she decided to sit down in the sumptuous lounge just off of the lobby and order a glass of wine. When the waiter brought her wine, she asked him in German about the rumor. “Rumor,” he replied, “it’s not a rumor. They make a lot of money renting the baths out. The extra cash is just too tempting. And besides, there is a strict rule.” He looked around at the other tables then whispered, “No sex!” He winked at her and moved on to a table of new arrivals.

  The following morning Helen packed and went to the reception desk to pay. The television set: still on and still silent. Neither the old clerk nor the boy were at the desk, and Krisztina had disappeared—there was no sign of anyone. She went into the dining room, poked her head into the kitchen, and then went back and turned up the volume on the TV, hoping that the noise from the set would attract someone. A musical band, consisting of five chubby young men wearing what looked like cast-off Beatle suits, was playing on a studio stage. They jumped about—three guitarists, a drummer, and a saxophone player—lip-synching and badly at that. The studio set was minimally decorated with a curtain stretched unevenly across the back, two potted palms on either side of the band, and a raised dais for the drummer. They were playing the song she had heard on the radio the first day she arrived—”I’ll Never be Your Bodyguard.” She listened to it for a few seconds; maybe they were singing, “I Wanna be Your Bodyguard.”

  Helen looked at her watch impatiently—it was now twenty to eight—and repeated her circuit of the dining room, kitchen, and reception area. She called out down the hall towards the guest rooms. The band was playing a new song, this one sounded like “I am an Onion.” She counted out the cost of the room, added a bit more in case there was a tax she didn’t know about, left the cash and a quick note scrawled with her name and room number on the reception desk, and rushed out of the pension towards the train station, remembering at the last moment that she had left the television blaring nearly full blast.

  She arrived at the train station in good time, in spite of her worries, and seeing no benches, leaned against a wall in a corner of the main hall. It was cold, but at least here the wind only swept through when the doors were open. A malnourished sallow-skinned man of indeterminate age wearing a thin, worn suit, approached her.

  “Did you say something?” he asked her in heavily-accented English. She had been reading.

  “Pardon? No, I don’t think so,” she answered, nodding briefly at him and then looking back at her book. She tugged her luggage in closer to her, as if clearing more floor space.

  “Are you traveling far?” he persisted. Helen looked back over at him, hoping that he wasn’t going to b
e on the Vienna train.

  “To Prague,” she said, hazarding an alternative destination.

  “I am going to the Dead Sea,” he announced.

  She looked at him quizzically.

  “Yes, I know this route seems unusual, but I don’t have very much money.”

  This justification cleared up none of her confusion. What route?

  “I take my train to Subotica. You know Subotica? It is in Romania, just inside the border from Hungary.” He could see her knowledge of Balkan geography was weak. “Here, let me show you.” Before she knew it he had shifted her bags and was standing even closer, arms spread wide, a map open in front of them. “Pardon me,” he said, smiling. “Subotica is right here.” He had crowded in very close and was jabbing a badly kept fingernail at a point just across the Hungarian border. “From Subotica I catch a Romanian train to Ruse. Just inside the Bulgarian border. Will you permit me to tell you that you smell very nice? From Ruse I catch a train to… but you see what I’m getting at. And it’s cheaper that way.”

  “No, I don’t see. Where do you go to from Ruse?” She was determined to ignore the uncalled-for remark, mistaking it for audacious nerve.

  “To Istanbul.”

  “And from there?”

  “To the Dead Sea.” He inched nearer. She shifted away as best she could, leaning at a ludicrous angle, her feet trapped by the bags on the floor.

  “But how?”

  “By bus to Aleppo and then Damascus, and then to Amman. And then bus to Israel. Taxi if the buses have stopped working. Now do you see?” He sniffed appreciatively. By this time Helen could smell him: a mixture of cheap cologne, hair oil, tar, tobacco, something alcoholic— distilled, not fermented—laundry soap, and something else, something corporeal.