The warden of the state prison gestured toward Picard with his cigar. “Lajos was a born acrobat, climbed the side of our building like a fly.” The warden pointed out the window to the high stone walls. In the distance, beyond the walls, the triumphal arch of Empress Maria Theresa commanded the skyline. Picard stared at her for a moment, feeling his own triumph nearing.
“I knew he’d scale the wall some day,” said the warden. “We all knew it. We’d seen him demonstrate acrobatics to the other prisoners.” The warden relit his cigar. “An ideal prisoner in many ways, I hope you can bring him back. Taught wood carving to the men. He seemed to enjoy prison life. Told me once that it was good to spend a certain amount of time in solitary confinement. Here’s the full dossier on him.”
Picard went through it quickly: Zoltán Lajos convicted of the murder of Anton Romani. Weapon an ice pick, during a quarrel over some dice Lajos had entered the game with. Romani lost the game, with an ice pick driven through the center of his forehead. Because Romani was an ex-convict, the death penalty was not brought. The warden received the dossier back. “You’ve got Lajos pinned?”
“I’ll have him here inside a month.”
“He’s a slippery devil. Be on your guard.”
“I’ll bring him, but will your prison hold him?”
“More suitable arrangements can be made.” The warden rose, showing Picard toward the door. “Stop in Debrecen, Inspector. The police there have had dealings with your man.”
* * *
The inn beside the railway station was small, but held a stage in back, roofed over by carefully tended vines, beneath which a gypsy ensemble played. The goulash was served with sweet fritters and gherkins, and the wine was tokay, “the wine of kings, monsieur,” said the waiter, pouring for Picard.
“Enough,” said Picard, holding up his hand. The small bottle was three-quarters gone, and the waiter seemed eager that he should finish it and begin another.
The gypsies played softly and Picard ate slowly; each table was lit by a candle concealed inside deep-blue glass; the candle flames quivered as the inn door opened and the wind rushed in, accompanying a young woman. She was dressed in a long sand-colored cape, had a proud and independent air—releasing her cape into the waiter’s outstretched hands and then following him to a table not far from Picard. And she too was brought the wine of kings.
Her presence caused a notable flurry among the gypsy musicians, whose playing became instantly more seductive. At the same time, their music continued to influence Picard’s elbow, as he pressed on with the kingly wine, watching the woman all the while. Artificial violets were entwined round her large purple hat, but there was nothing artificial about the expanse of soft flesh that showed above the neckline of her jacket. Picard rose from his table and walked into the back garden of the inn, where he returned a portion of the wine of kings to the soil, taking a breath of air and collecting his senses. The train does not leave until morning. There’s time for a dance.
He paused at the edge of the little vine-covered stage and passed a bank note to the gypsy cymbalom player, who received it with a knowing smile. Of course we will play a tune of enchantment, for that is our greatest pleasure. The fiddler stepped from the stage and made his way slowly round the room, followed by his associates.
The waiter stepped beside Picard. “We call it mulnatni, monsieur. Enjoying oneself with the gypsies.”
Picard perceived that the woman’s body was already moving, just faintly, in time to the fiddler’s cunning song. She will spin her skirts tonight; her pretty legs will show.
The fiddler had begun an almost obscene display of musical ornamentation as he approached with his men to the woman’s table. Grace notes, trills and flourishes filled the air and the guitar player began to sing.
“What is he saying?” asked Picard.
The waiter paused a moment to open another noble bottle, pouring for himself and Picard. As their glasses touched he said quietly,
“... they taught to me, those gypsies three,
when life is saddened and cold,
how to dream or play, or puff it away,
despising it threefold.”
Picard accepted a cigar from the waiter and they puffed away together, the smoke making him dizzy and he not caring, smoking to ease his nervousness as he prepared himself for the advance. His mind blew away, his body followed, light as a candle flame burning in blue glass, flickering, dancing, bewitched by music, wine, and the woman’s high-heeled boot. He kept his gaze upon it, saw it moving discreetly beneath the table as the music gradually enveloped her. Slowly he took in the whole of her body with his look and when he reached her eyes he found that she was looking back at him.
“He was called Bruno Bari when he operated here,” said the Debrecen Chief of Police. “I’m quite sure it’s the same fellow. Had an outstanding salon, entertained our finest citizens, and peddled an elixir of eternal life.”
“Elixir?”
“An interesting scheme. It separated the aged Count Stephan Magor from a number of old family diamonds. Will you join me in coffee? Help yourself to the cream... the recipe for immortality required that the Count be starved for sixteen days, then bled, then given some white drops, bled again, and starved for thirty more days. The old boy went into convulsions, his hair and teeth fell out, and in this state he surrendered a good deal of his private property to Bruno Bari.”
“Did he achieve his immortal wish?”
“He wears false teeth and a wig, and suffers, I am told, from a delusion that he will last another fifty years, after which he will need a few more of the white drops.”
“There were no charges brought against Bari?”
“It was too sensitive a case for us to touch, because of the Count’s political position. And after one other minor incident we lost sight of Bruno Bari altogether.”
“What was the other incident?”
“Not the sort of thing you can jail a man for.”
“How so?”
“Sándor Zetti is one of the great merchants of the Hortobagy. He owns tremendous farm acreage there. Bruno Bari had the good fortune to steal Zetti’s wife.”
* * *
The estate of Sándor Zetti consisted of vast grazing land on both sides of the Hortobagy River. The master of the estate was out with his men, herding the horses. Would the Inspector care to ride out and join him?
Picard mounted a spirited black horse with a single white star on his forehead. A stable boy led the way on a second horse, out onto the plain. The day was bright, and unseasonably warm. Picard enjoyed the sleek powerful body of the horse between his legs. His injured testicle performed its usual hide-and-seek game, creeping away from the horse’s spine and taking refuge in the Inspector’s abdomen. He felt it hiding, felt the painful tug in his guts. He pulled his stomach tight and concentrated on the horse’s flowing mane, the bobbing head, the sound of the hooves.
In the distance, he saw the flying cloaks of the Hortobagy horsemen, and the dust from their racing mounts.
Ranks closed up and Picard was racing alongside the horsemen, whose whips were cracking over a herd of splendid horses.
The men’s faces were dusty, weather-beaten, and their moves instinctively graceful. Picard matched them to the best of his abilities as they circled the herd, his cloak rising up as exuberantly if not as brightly as the loose purple capes of the horsemen. The air was filled with whipcracks and thundering hooves, and Picard rode joyously over the sprawling plain, in company with the men, lifting his cry with theirs, turning the horses with them.
When the herd was finally calmed and the dust had started to settle, a man as barrel-chested as Picard came riding up. He was obviously master of the estate, his eyes sweeping over it, and over Picard, with the look of a man used to having his way.
Picard held out his police shield. “I’m searching for Bruno Bari.”
“When you find him, please inform me.” They trotted side by side, while the other horsemen
raced ahead.
“Tell me what you know about him.”
“He stole my wife,” said Master Zetti, tugging at his heavy mustache. “A whore, but what a whore, the most beautiful prostitute in Buda. You’ve seen her?”
“Yes,” said Picard, seeing her instantly in his mind, her body moving through his memory, her breasts trembling in his brain.
Zetti smiled for the first time. “I see that you have met her.” He laughed, patting his horse on the neck. “I was the highest bidder. Every man of wealth in Buda sought her favor. And what favor, what rare and priceless favor it was. I lost more than money when she left, though she took off with a great deal of that, as well. Of course, she had to have the best.”
“Did Bruno Bari take any of your property?”
“He took my soul, which was not my property. Look, Inspector, look up there and tell me what you see.”
Ahead in the sky was a herd of running horses, shimmering, fantastic, galloping through the blue dome of heaven.
Picard blinked his eyes, watched the horses racing off into the endless reaches of the sky.
“A mirage, Inspector. The fabulous Fata Morgana. Bruno Bari was fascinated by it, by which he showed himself to be a true peasant. Only the peasants let the mirage rule their life, daydreaming over it. He always talked about it, making it sound rare, philosophical. Like all the other famous liars around here, he claimed to have gone walking through the Fata Morgana, through paradise.” Sándor Zetti spat on the ground and spurred his horse.
Picard touched his own mount with his heels and they raced toward the floating paradise in the sky, where the horses of heaven roamed, but he and Zetti came no closer. Earth-bound, they were unable to rise up and run with the celestial herd, and their galloping slowed again to a trot.
“Some days you’ll see entire forests floating in the air. Lakes and valleys and hills, all golden, with perhaps a cow sailing over the whole of it.” Zetti turned to Picard. His eyes were suddenly questioning, and in the question was a small boy, in pain. “Have you seen Renée with Bari?”
“He’s called Ric Lazare now. They’re in Paris.”
“Yes, she loved the high life. And how is she looking? Don’t tell me, or we shall both appear ridiculous.” Zetti spurred his horse once more and the two men rode across the last part of the field, bringing their horses to the stable, where the grooms received them. “I chased him myself, unsuccessfully.” They walked from the stables toward the house. “You saw my men, Inspector. Relentless riders. We tore this half of Europe apart trying to catch Renée and Bari, but we could not, though we saw them twice. They vanished, like the Fata Morgana. You’ll dine with me, of course.”
* * *
The dining room of the mansion was built around a huge stone fireplace. The windows were of stained glass, which gave an iridescent quality to the sunlight as it filtered through onto the long massive wooden table, the tabletop aglow with quiet light, the soup tureen and serving plates part of a fabulous Fata Morgana—beautiful, delicately tinged, through which the hand passed, never quite able to grasp the streaming color. Picard reached for bread, and turned golden; leaned back through a band of blue, and settled in a pool of red light which surrounded his chair, a wanderer come to the rainbow’s end and served with fairy food in a gossamer room. The voice of his host brought him back from his daydream, but even so, Zetti’s face was bathed in gold, like some titan of the rainbow, ferocious and chimerical, and Picard could not escape the peculiar feeling that his chase was leading him still deeper into mirage, into a danger more subtle than any he’d ever faced in the brutal Parisian underworld.
“He came here as her guest. Quite often.” Zetti sipped his wine. “Renée loved his toys. He had a wonderful gift that way, I must admit. It fascinated Renée, and charmed me, and while I was so charmed, they stole off together.”
“You say you followed them?”
“Into the mountains of Transylvania. Fifteen men surrounded the inn in which we’d cornered them. But he slipped by us, heaven knows how. We picked up his trail again at the base of the Mountain of Skulls. There is a ruined castle there. As we made our way up the mountainside, one of my men suddenly clutched at his chest and fell to the ground, as if he’d been struck by—by a poisoned dart. He muttered hysterically that Bruno Bari was a sorcerer, and by the time we got the man under shelter he was dead, without a mark on his body. He was a young man, in perfect health. I abandoned the chase at that point, in regard for my men.”
“That was the end of your knowledge of Bari?”
“There was a newspaper account of the death of a young priest, in the convent gardens of the Metropolitan of Transylvania. The priest had recently been involved in an argument with a traveling magician, or charlatan, call him what you will. I know it was Bruno Bari, and I call him a filthy dog.”
“In what manner did the priest die?”
“The coroner’s report was apoplexy. This was, by the way, the same diagnosis given of my man who died upon the Mountain of Skulls.”
In the wild and sinister mountains of Transylvania, Picard felt again the strange vertigo he’d known in Austria. He should, by rights, be heading now toward Paris. His case was complete. And yet there was a nerve end that thrilled toward this death by apoplexy of a young Transylvania priest. And so he continued on by carriage, through winding and inhospitable terrain. Something said he must go on past the mountaintop castles and through the rugged villages where the peasants sat in their doorways, smoking long black pipes. The doors and window frames were intricately carved in mystical whorls, depicting the soul of a highly imaginative and somewhat fantastic people.
It was with relief that he reached the city of Bucharest, finding it wholly normal and bourgeois, untouched by the morbid quality of the peasant art which had worked upon his spirit for so many lonely miles. The hotel sent his message to the Metropolitan of Transylvania, who responded at once. His Holiness would see the Inspector at two in the afternoon.
Picard arrived punctually at the palace gates. He was admitted into a large park. Tame deer strolled through an avenue of trees, and in front of the holy palace a fabulous procession of peacocks was passing.
He was shown down a long stone hallway to the receiving room of the Metropolitan, an elderly man in long soutane and crowned by a high red calette.
“Your Grace.” Picard bowed to the old priest.
The Metropolitan summoned his footman and jam was served in little glass plates. The two men touched at the spread with small silver spoons. “Whatever you can tell me about the death of Father Miklós, and of the magician with whom he quarreled...”
“Father Miklós and I were walking together, on the palace grounds. It was a quiet, beautiful day. Suddenly the deer, who had been feeding close by us, ran away terrified, as if they’d caught scent of something in the wind. The peacocks screeched wildly. Father Miklós turned to me, with a deep sadness in his eyes. He sank to the grass, dead at my feet.”
“Dead of apoplexy.”
“That is correct,” said the old priest. “Of course, the servants and the local people made much of the terror of the birds and deer. And they inevitably linked it to Father Miklós having had a run-in with a traveling mesmerist, whom he ordered out of the city on the previous day.” The Metropolitan paused, tapping his small silver spoon upon his front teeth. “Our people are very superstitious. It is not good to stir them up with such things as this mesmerist was reputed to have been performing.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, telling fortunes, and causing people to act in strange ways against their will. Suggestiveness is very deeply seated in the human heart, I’m afraid,” said the Metropolitan. “So we took steps against the man. His name was...” The old priest paused again. “I think it was the Great Baltus, a name of that sort anyway, the usual pompousness these people have. Father Miklós visited him, and by a coincidence met his death not twenty-four hours later.”
“You see no connection?”
&
nbsp; “I have lived a good many years, Inspector, and have seen many strange and terrible things. But without exception, their origin was in accord with the accepted laws of causality. I am not trying to make less of a tragic death. Father Miklós was like a son to me. But his passing was not mysterious, only unfortunate for being premature. As to the animals, I’m sure you are aware how sensitive animals are to impending death.”
“Did you see this mesmerist?”
“He was described as a lean man, with a metallic brightness in his eyes, of the kind one sees in the eyes of an epileptic. His wife was said to be of special beauty. There are many such gypsies traveling the roads. They are no different from the rest of mankind.”
Picard rose. “I’m grateful for your time, Excellency.”
“Please,” said the old priest, “take this.” He reached into his soutane and withdrew an embroidered piece of cloth, hung on a thin red string. Upon it was woven the descent of a white dove.
Picard slipped the amulet into his pocket, and bowed again to the old priest. The footman showed him down the hallway and out of the palace. On the grounds were the tame deer who had bolted at the premonition of Father Miklós’s death. They were nibbling quietly now, undisturbed by such intuitions.
PART III
The Magician
Snow was falling in Paris; he stood on the Pont-Neuf and stared upriver, his bag beside him on the walk. The towers and bridges were wrapped in the storm, but the snow didn’t stick, was melting on the ground, on his outstretched hand, and he melted into the familiar facades, feeling it all again, Paris, a trap, a sewer. Nonetheless, I’m happiest in you. I’ve been visiting your sisters, and they can’t compare with you. You’re my one madness, and I know you’ll ruin me in the end. But I’m glad to be here.
He picked up his bag, crossed the rest of the way over the river, and entered the Latin Quarter. The voices of the street, the smells coming from the café kitchens, the familiar swirl of life on the rue Dauphine were as soothing as the healing waters in far-off Esztergom. I’ll open my rooms first, let some air in, change my clothes—and there are the lovely lemon tarts. Pass, Picard, pass and keep your belt hooked tight.
Fata Morgana Page 10