And as I puzzled this over, he laughed out loud and said, ‘Laer si meht fo eno ylno dna eerht neve ebyam ecno ta secalp owt ni era uoy won.’ His face began to change. The long thin beard vanished, the eyes grew larger, the turban lengthened into a curly wig – and the green caftan became …
A cloak of royal crimson!
It was the count I had seen when returning to Belgrade. The slippers with the black pearls at the tip remained and did not change into riding-boots. But this was no comfort to me at all. In fact, it merely threw me into even greater confusion.
As the man in crimson was clearly an Austrian, it meant he would be travelling with us and not disappearing in the time-honoured tradition of genies released from the bottle.
And why had he spoken to me in that manner? Either he had not wanted me to understand or else he knew who I was and meant to let me know what he was about without anyone else’s understanding. Whichever the case, it wasn’t good. For if he spoke so I would not understand he was mad, and the mad are to be feared even more than the wicked; and if he knew who I was, then he could be my greatest foe. The Regent of Serbia had also recognized me immediately, but the Regent of Serbia had no power to transform himself into a grand vizier. And if this was indeed my greatest foe it could mean only one thing: the end of the world was truly upon us.
‘What’s wrong, master? You’ve got the smell of brimstone about you again,’ said Novak.
‘Be quiet!’
‘I don’t see anything …’
‘Be quiet!’
‘But I don’t understand.’
‘Will you be quiet!’
And in the end, merely by being so annoying, he managed to calm me down. I slowed my horse until I was lagging further behind the man in crimson. Novak wisely followed suit. When we were far enough away, I asked Novak, ‘Do you see that man in the crimson cloak?’
‘I don’t see anybody in a crimson cloak.’
‘How many of us are there?’
‘Eight, counting the two of us. What kind of question is that?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Have you asked about Wittgenstein?’
‘The name is Wittgenau.’
Who can keep all those surnames straight? I could barely keep track of all the families of Europe and their ties. Marrying away, right, left and centre. All of them with their double-barrelled surnames and everyone related to everyone else. How I look forward to the end of this aristocratic muddle, the marriages and family names and all the other contrivances of inequality. I note that the English colonies in America have made great strides in that direction. There one finds no counts, barons, princesses or other ranks of birth; what counts is one’s ability. I’m becoming quite partial towards the lads across the pond.
‘Well, let’s hear it.’
‘He was born in Germany to a good Catholic family, but he’s said to have Jewish blood. Later he went to England. From there he came to Belgrade.’
The fool.
‘Supposedly he said, The world is all that is the case,’ Novak continued.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘No one does, but that’s why they thought so highly of him.’
‘I understand.’
‘Anyhow, Wittgenau was particularly interested in the two cisterns that Doxat had ordered to be built over three years: the one in Belgrade and the other in Petrovaradin. Everyone was sure he’d come on some sort of inspection to see whether there’d been anything crooked about it and to make sure the work at Kalemegdan was on the level. But Schmettau’s man tells me, just between ourselves, that Wittgenau wasn’t sent by anyone, and certainly not by the emperor in Vienna, and that he came on his own, wanting to go down into the cistern.’
‘Why? Aren’t people allowed into the cistern?’
‘He hardly had time to. Not long after he arrived the poor man went missing.’
‘Perhaps he went down into the cistern after all? Heh, heh, heh. Only he couldn’t get back out. There’s the secret of the cistern for you. Once you get to the bottom you find what you were looking for, but there’s no way out.’
‘From what I hear, there are two spiral staircases leading to the water level. One set of stairs for going down, and the other for coming back up.’
2
You say my story is inconsistent, that I’ve been saying things that contradict one another? You say it’s clear I must be lying?
If I were lying, everything I say would be perfectly consistent and all the pieces would fit together. That’s because, if I were lying, I’d have thought it all through in advance, and I’d tell you a story that made perfect sense. If I were lying, I’d be sure to observe Aristotle’s rules of logic. As it stands, since I’m telling the truth, I haven’t thought it through, and so mistakes are bound to creep in. Every perfect story is a lie. Truth is full of twists and turns and doesn’t stick to a plan. When we tell the truth we don’t look to the logic of the thing, for truth stands on its own, not because of Aristotle. Only a lie lives by the rules of reasoning.
I beg your pardon, I cannot hear you.
What happened next?
We continued to sit at the table they had laid for us. The seven of us. Vuk Isakovič was not with us. Now that I think of it, I didn’t see him at all until the following morning. And he’d been assigned as our guard.
I put on my favourite cloak, a crimson-purple sort of thing, for it had grown chilly for sitting out of doors. First we were served some jasmine tea. In those days I used to take my tea with quite a lot of sugar. But no sooner had I reached for a spoonful than Schmettau, who was sitting beside me, jarred my hand, causing me to spill the sugar on the table. He did say he was sorry, but I knew at once he had done it on purpose. This became even clearer when I tried to take some more sugar. Schmettau jostled me, again I spilled the sugar, and once more he apologized. My third attempt at sweetening my tea was also thwarted by Schmettau, and then I had to ask him for an explanation.
‘One does not take sugar with jasmine tea,’ he replied.
‘Could you not have simply said so?’
‘Had I told you, you might have listened, but also quickly forgotten. Now you are sure to remember that I was most appallingly rude and also that one does not take sugar with jasmine tea.’
‘Suppose, however, that now, just because of your bad manners, I shall always do the opposite of your unspoken admonition?’
‘You are clever enough for a woman not to spite your face by cutting off your own nose.’
‘To what do I owe this change in your attentions? Only a short while ago you were very nearly accusing me of having murdered your friend Count Wittgenau.’
‘Was I? I was merely speaking heart-to-heart. Who else is there to talk to? Cast your eye, won’t you, over the select company of idiots that surrounds us. A count from Vienna whom no one has ever seen before, who allegedly earned his title in the overseas colonies, as if there were anything there that needed doing. And who, by the way, also nicked my copy of Marshal Vauban.’
‘I was under the impression you’d given up reading.’
‘How did you know that?’
‘Word travels fast, you know, especially when it’s something bad.’ I smiled ever so pleasantly.
The soup course was served.
‘This is a Chinese noodle soup,’ said Schmettau. Silently we had our soup. I don’t know why everyone had stopped talking.
Next came the spicy mung beans but still no talking.
Only when the main course was brought did Schmettau speak up.
‘This is five-spice duck with moo shu pancakes. It is made by adding the duck meat to a chicken broth, bringing it to the boil and then adding soya sauce, sugar, salt, ginger and star anise. Reduce the heat, cover and allow to simmer for as long as Much Ado About Nothing takes to perform in the better sort of theatre.’
‘But if you’ve given up reading, what does it matter whether von Hausburg has stolen your book?’
‘I’ve stopped reading prose and p
oetry but continue to buy and study specialist literature. Remove the duck from the heat, drain, then rub the meat both inside and out with the five-spice mix, salted black beans and wine. Bread the duck with a mixture of corn and wheat flour. Allow to stand for the length of one act of a serious drama, under no circumstances substituting a comedy. Fry the duck in hot oil until it turns golden brown and then drain well. Take the moo shu pancakes, also known as Mandarin pancakes, wrap them in a damp cloth and steam them for the length of Hamlet’s monologue in Act Two. To finish –’
‘Why have you given up prose and poetry?’
‘To finish, carve the duck in thin slices. Now, how to serve. Because I’ve looked, my dear princess. I seek but never find. Not one book has ever been good enough for me. They start out the way they should. They tickle my fancy, I get swept up, carried away – but in the end it’s never worth it, it’s always a disappointment, a big nothing. At first I thought some authors must not know what they’re doing, that they could think their way into a plot but not out. But as time went by it turned out that none of them could ever pull it off the way I like. Now, Chinese cuisine attaches considerable importance to the art of serving. Sprinkle the pancakes with hoisin sauce, add several pieces of duck, top with spring onions, roll up and eat. And then I understood what was wrong. I had been expecting books, those little books, to end with an explanation of life itself and its meaning. And that’s not what they were doing. They’d merely see the protagonists safely married off, or killed off, or crowned, or back at home after their long journeys. What was the point of that? I’ve forgotten, Princess, I am sorry, the proportions of the ingredients, so sorry, but we shall ask the cook if you care to know.’
‘Dear Count, would you ever have your portrait done in sand?’
‘Certainly not,’ he exclaimed.
‘Well then, would the dear Lord ever choose something as threadbare as language to explain the essence of the world?’
‘I couldn’t agree more, Princess – Madam Regent,’ von Hausburg put in. ‘Just think about language and what happens to it in the ears, let alone on the tongue. It was only the other day, you might say, that people were calling it the changing of the guard; now they’re calling it guard-changing operations. Before you know it they’ll be calling it modifications to be implemented in guard-duty-provider positions. Once they start, the Devil himself couldn’t come up with more sheer nonsense. Isn’t that a sure sign of linguistic impoverishment and decline? How is your man upstairs supposed to use that sort of language to express his greatest secrets, eh? How?’
‘Count von Hausburg, do not forget that the Lord spoke the world into existence. By his word was the world made, and the word is greater than the world, and by the word can the world be understood, but that writers fail and know not how,’ Schmettau said.
‘Oh, they know it all right. They know it only too well. If he did speak the world into existence, and if the word really was in the beginning, then what does that make mispronunciations, and metaphors, and switching one thing for another, and alterations, and figures of speech? The destruction of the world, that’s what. Let alone irony! The deadliest weapon of all. Imagine he’d said “Let there be light” in an ironic tone of voice and ended up creating darkness. Twist the language, and you change the shape of the world. That’s the Devil’s work, believe you me,’ said von Hausburg all in one breath.
‘But what about books with wise and beautiful sentences and a certain way of putting things, the ones that make you sit up straight, or move about in your chair, or even get to your feet because you simply must stop reading? You stretch and go for a walk. You think. The most pleasurable book to read is the one that makes you put it down and stand up for a moment. In a way, reading is like the passions of the flesh, which are just as much movements as interruptions. Interruptions when you know what just took place and look forward to what’s coming next. When that happens, do you really need to have the world explained to you? Novels and poems aren’t meant to explain the world or to twist it all out of shape. We’re meant to journey into them, to stay for a while, bathing in an airy stream of words, verses, chapters,’ I said.
We all sat quietly, and then von Hausburg spoke. ‘And how do you distinguish the rules of this life from the rules of literature?’
3
Let me stop and catch my breath. I’ve been talking all this time. It’s not easy remembering everything the way it was said and the looks and gestures that went with it. Well now.
It’s been many years since then, and so much has changed. For instance, that revolution in France. Who could have seen that coming? And here you are, asking about things that happened long ago and therefore don’t matter, about a country that’s already been given back to the Turks …
What? You say there’s been a book about it? What sort of book? Yes, I do understand I’m not the one asking the questions here. I do. But a book? Someone’s written a book about all the things I’ve been telling you? Hm.
Now I see why you’re questioning me. It doesn’t matter what really happened, all that matters is what the book says. It’s the book that’s upset you, not the events themselves.
And I know just who might have written that book. I do indeed.
I know all sorts of things now. Why, I even know the proportions of the ingredients for the five-spice duck with pancakes:
four cups broth
two and a half teaspoons dark soya sauce
half a cup salt
two spoonfuls star anise
two spoonfuls ginger
one and a half spoonfuls brown sugar
one and a half spoonfuls five-spice mixture
one and a half spoonfuls black beans
two spoonfuls wine
one spoonful cornmeal
one and a half spoonfuls wheat flour
six cups oil
sixteen to eighteen Mandarin pancakes
hoisin sauce
spring onions
This is for half a duck or one whole chicken, if you’d rather not have duck meat. I believe the proportions were doubled for our meal.
I don’t know what’s in the five-spice mixture, as they call it, and I’m afraid I can’t tell you where to find the hoisin. I get mine from China, don’t you know, when our couriers travel to Tiananmen and back. My family and the Qing dynasty are on good terms.
You never really know everything that goes into a particular dish. There’s always a dash of something secret. Just so you understand, the smaller and more insignificant that mystery ingredient is, the more delicious your dinner.
What was my answer to von Hausburg? I’ll tell you in a bit. No need to go in strict order, is there? Besides, you already know what happened. And how. And in what order. Not only that, something important was just about to take place. Something more important to the story than my answer to von Hausburg.
One of the servants was careless with the Chinese soup and spilled some on Baron Schmidlin. He had to excuse himself from the table to change. You don’t see why this should matter? During the meal, neither did I. It was only later that I understood, and then very much so. As I say, Baron Schmidlin stepped into the hut to change his clothes. But changing seemed to take him a very long time – all throughout lunch, in fact. I must confess we had quite forgotten about him.
We finished the duck off quickly, or rather the pancakes with bits of duck in them, and in my distracted state I didn’t even notice when the three men from the commission began their discussion, whispering and explaining something very important to one another. I saw von Hausburg straining to listen as they whispered, but I don’t think he was able to hear. I, however, have unusually keen hearing. Or, rather, I did have at the time. And so I was able to hear and understand some of what they were saying.
The one doing most of the talking, or whispering, was the commissioner with the red wig, while the other two listened and occasionally nodded. In fact, the whole time they behaved as though the one in red were in charge and not
that doctor, as they’d given us to understand.
4
Yes, what I learned from the three men’s conversation is what actually happened later. They agreed that Klaus Radetzky would be the one to sleep at the mill. It wasn’t clear to me at first why the three of them didn’t just spend the night there together. Later Count Schmettau explained it. The Serbs would not stop believing in the vampires if all three men stayed at the mill. Vampires were believed to strike, for the most part, when no one else was around, so nothing would be proved if all three men stayed the night.
In the meantime, Baron Schmidlin had returned, just in time to break open his Chinese fortune cookies. The fortunes are written on slips of paper and then baked into sweet biscuits. There’s usually a line from Confucius or Lao-tzu, someone like that. Supposedly, it’s not by chance that one gets a certain message. It’s destiny, fate, speaking through the layers of sweetness.
Mine said: Joy is along the way not at the end of the road.
China?
Yes, the fortunes were in Chinese. Count Schmettau translated them for us. For all of us, of course. None of us knew Chinese. Although …
Although I do remember, as if it were yesterday, seeing Count von Hausburg give a start when he unrolled his fortune. It occurred to me at the time that he could read what was written there, and that the words had shaken him. But still he handed his paper to Schmettau to be translated. And Count Schmettau’s translation was: Your world is the totality of facts not of things. Von Hausburg looked at him in surprise, as if Schmettau hadn’t read what was really there, as if it said something entirely different. But von Hausburg said nothing, only took back his paper and crumpled it up.
What did Schmettau’s fortune say?
I don’t remember. I think it was something good. Something quite clear and auspicious, unlike mine and von Hausburg’s, which were neither good nor bad but merely unclear. At least they were still unclear at the time.
No, I wasn’t surprised that Count Schmettau knew Chinese. He liked the Chinese, anything from China. Everyone knew. He would often say, ‘How close we are here to the East’, then stare off into one of the Chinese paintings that hung at the palace. Bamboo ink on silk, enig matic paintings of Chinese landscapes. I think looking at such pictures calmed him. It wasn’t often that I met him, but when I did he was almost always lost in thought in front of one of those paintings.
Fear and His Servant Page 12