“Rein in your stares, Perkovic,” he growled at the man whose scrutiny wandered feverishly over the body of the young man. “Will you finally continue?”
“Well, I searched the corpse and discovered this.” He pulled something from a pocket of his torn trousers and held it out.
Gavrila hesitated. He was terrified by the thought that those filth-smeared fingers had touched a corpse. Finally he glanced at the object and was shocked by what he saw. “That is…”
“I know what that is. That’s why I came. Thought you might want to go to the morgue with me.”
The morgue. No, he didn’t want to go there. He felt his head shake and simultaneously heard himself murmur ‘Let’s go.’
When Perkovic had found the necklace with this strangely unique pendant on the drowning victim, he had no other choice than to see if he had perhaps known the man.
“I knew you would be interested.” Perkovic grinned in satisfaction and grabbed for a full bottle of wine to carry it along as a provision for the road.
Gavrila allowed him to take it because he knew that he himself would not drink it. He threw his frock coat over his shoulders before he turned to the boy: “Close the door behind me and let no one in.”
The lad issued a short, submissive nod. Gavrila was content with this response and left the house at Perkovic’s side.
When they reached the end of the narrow, filthy lane, he cast a glance over his shoulder. He’d just then heard his spouse turn the key in the lock.
“Who’s the pretty boy?” Perkovic asked and also looked back highly interested.
“Never mind right now,” Gavrila warned grimly and thumped him against the upper arm. “He is my lawfully-wedded husband, so I expect you to restrain yourself.”
“Don’t ever tell him that you love him. The misery always begins that way.” Perkovic laughed joylessly and took a swig from the bottle.
“I don’t love him.” Gavrila buried his hands deeper into the pockets of his frock. His cold heart was incapable of such an intense emotion.
Perkovic looked at him suspiciously. “Then, why did you marry him?”
“To protect him.” His voice sounded raspy, and he had to cough.
“Why is his safety so important to you if you can’t stand him?”
“I didn’t say I can’t stand him! Now enough of this senseless discussion,” he stated in a tone that actually silenced the drunkard.
Instead of continuing to annoy him, Perkovic examined the necklace. “Do you think this man had anything to do with Dimitri?”
With his brother’s name spoken aloud, he gulped hard. “We’ll find out.” At least he was hoping for new insights. Perhaps those would preserve him from an approaching breakdown. His life was a pile of shit. If only he could find out what had happened back then, perhaps he would have the strength to turn it around before he fell into the abyss which had opened up before him and had been lusting after him for an eternity.
*
After Hyacinth had lingered in bed for a while and stared at the white blanket covered with tears, he stood up to explore his new abode.
His rear-end was still hurting and scarcely allowed him to forget his shame. He had bled some, and it worried him. He didn’t know whether this was normal. Whether it happened to every young man the first time or if he needed to be seriously concerned.
The bedchamber was a tiny room. Except for the bed with the night tables, the dresser where bottles of medicine stood, and a small wardrobe cabinet, it was empty. In front of the window hung a black curtain which could not be drawn back because it was nailed to a wall shrouded in grey. Bleak.
The living room was large though stuffed with the heaps of papers he had had to wander through last night. The windows were as filthy as they had seemed in the dark. The curtain rods were bare, providing anyone on the street a peek inside.
In the centre of the front windows stood a glass-covered entrance door. It appeared something had once been written in black letters on it before someone had scratched at them until they were illegible or partly removed.
Other than a fireplace, the wall to his right consisted almost completely of built-in bookshelves. They extended from floor to ceiling. They stood empty. A joyless laugh escaped him as he wondered why in hell Ardenovic didn’t put the books on the shelves instead of stacking them on the floor, leaving hardly a centimetre unobstructed.
He bent over and reached for one of the newspapers. The date was from nearly a year in the past. Nine months.
What compelled Ardenovic to collect old daily newspapers? And why couldn’t he tidy them up if he didn’t want to throw them away?
In front of the hearth was a dining table and a sofa stood against a wall. Across from it two old armchairs with a coffee table in between. Without exception all furniture was strewn with newspapers, loose scraps of paper and books.
To his left, the front windows were superseded at some point by white stonework to shield the small, U-shaped kitchen area from gazes outside. There where lots of cabinets with working surfaces, a modest oven and to his right a small counter which reminded him of a bar. Everything in yellowed white. With a lot of patience and even more soapsuds, perhaps someone could bring some lustre back into this dingy home; however, he was not Ardenovic’s housemaid!
With a sigh he turned away from the chaos which allowed for no sense of cosiness.
A narrow door led him into the cupboard whose contents left a lot to be desired. He reached for a piece of bread and noticed it was stale. Nevertheless, he chewed on it because his empty stomach was in urgent need of nutrition.
The more he discovered, the less astonishing he found the fact that Ardenovic had freed him from the clutches of his father. The man had actually expected to find in him a housekeeper to put all of this mess back into order. However, Hyacinth would refuse to lift a finger! He was not his husband’s servant!
With a surly movement he dabbed cold sweat from his forehead and ate another bite of the bread which nearly cost him his teeth.
Behind a door next to the sofa laid the bathroom complete with tub. He paid no particular attention to the room because there was nothing to see. Only the fact that Ardenovic did not even own a mirror was worth mentioning.
A narrow, wrought-iron spiral staircase led him upstairs where he found numerous crates on the floor. It appeared as if Ardenovic was in the process of moving. In reality it was more likely he hadn’t made the effort after a move to unpack his belongings. As though he hadn’t planned to stay long.
Hyacinth stooped beside a wooden crate. Haphazardly he reached in and pulled out something peculiar. It was a hollow tube of fine wood. At one end of the item was a hole, and he held it to peer inside. Nothing. Only darkness. He ran his fingers along the instrument whose purpose he couldn’t imagine. Then he shoved the tube into a pocket of his coat and continued to rummage through Ardenovic’s possessions, however lost interest when he only discovered more books whose foreign-language titles appeared so bizarre that he didn’t even bother to open them.
A sigh escaped him when he sat for a short time on the cold wooden floor to mull things over. He hated it here. And he harboured the suspicion that he would also hate Ardenovic as soon as they became more familiar.
The man was more than eccentric. Even in the past, the appearance of this thin rail of a man had brought upon him a sense of queasiness. Ardenovic appeared to be withdrawn, was unfriendly and tight-lipped. He had certainly been attending the soireés for quite some time, but never conversed with anyone. He gave the appearance of having only come to observe somebody.
His inclination to sickliness was disconcerting. Hyacinth had no wish to be infected with anything. But that might be unavoidable if they were living together in such a confined – and filthy – space.
No, it could not remain as it was now!
*
Nausea rose up inside Gavrila as he entered the morgue. He held a handkerchief over his face to keep the odour from penetrating his
nostrils.
The flagstone floor beneath his feet was wet – a mixture of melted snow, soap residue and the moisture from decay which now stuck to the soles of his shoes. His stomach was churning incessantly.
The people paid them no attention. Anyone could walk in and out of here at wish. There were no doors, no windows, everything open to allow the stench to seep out into the city.
Perkovic often hung around down here, to make himself useful and earn a few coins – and additionally, to steal from corpses.
By contrast, Gavrila had last visited the municipal morgue when Dimitri had lain there. Down there where he didn’t belong. He had been a fine man and ought to have belonged lying in state in a fine morgue – in one for the wealthy – however…
“That’s him. I got the necklace from him.” Perkovic tore Gavrila from his dark thoughts, which barely allowed him to breathe, and pointed at a bloated corpse with bluish skin and gruesomely wide-open eyes.
Gavrila approached the lifeless body and looked into the face of the drowned man. “I don’t know him,” he uttered in a muffled voice and tried to suppress the trembling of his fingers. He wanted to turn away but he couldn’t. Instead, he stared at the stranger as if the answer to his questions were written in his undefined features. His lacklustre gaze seemed to bore through him the same way Dimitri’s had pierced him back then to ask him reproachfully where he had been that night. Where he had been instead of saving his brother’s life and in his stead to be lying in the morgue. With slightly opened lips through which a breath would never pass again.
It should have struck him instead of Dimitri.
Abruptly someone laid a hand on his shoulder. A gasp would have escaped his throat, but the stomach acid surging up drowned it and made him swallow with pain.
“What are you both up to?” It was old Haggard who was suddenly standing next to him. Haggard was a fellow like Perkovic – without a home, without family, without proper work. He came here to help the morgue workers wash the dead. “Did you come on account of Dimitri?”
Gavrila didn’t respond but simply shook off the powerful hand which he didn’t want to touch him. How had it come to the point that he now was surrounded only by failed existences? He knew the answer. It had been Dimitri’s death which had led his life into that filthy dead-end street.
After he’d seen his brother lying on that table, he had fallen into a kind of shock. For days he had slept on the steps in front of the morgue, beside the broad columns. He had neither eaten nor drunk anything.
In the end Perkovic and Haggard had adopted and taken care of him until he was responsive again. Since then they had stood by him in his efforts to solve Dimitri’s murder. They didn’t do it without ulterior motives, but he had to confess openly that those men were his friends. Although usually he wished they would just leave him in peace.
“We found something here.” Perkovic swung the necklace in front of Haggard’s broad nose.
The bull-like man followed its pendant with a look as if hypnotised by it. “This damn thing. We should ask if they know who the fellow is yet.”
“The worthy inspector won’t be happy when he hears that Gavrii is gallivanting around here to investigate.”
“I couldn’t care less what Hathaway thinks,” Gavrila shot back trenchantly and scanned the area for a morgue worker. For the one he’d often bribed and who would make it easy for him to do so once more.
The tall, young man with straw-blond hair and the name Andrew Petticoa noticed him and obediently approached when Gavrila signalled him over with a nod. “Yes, Sir? May I be of service to you again?”
“Do you know the identity of this man?” Gavrila inquired straightforwardly, without removing the cloth from nose and mouth.
“I’m sorry, Mr Ardenovic, but we don’t. Until now no one has come to take a look at him.”
Gavrila withdrew a few bills from the breast pocket of his coat and gave them to Petticoa. “As soon as someone turns up, I want to know what the bastard’s name is. Not a word to Hathaway.”
With that, he stormed out of the morgue and drew fresh air deep into his lungs which seemed to be in the grasp of an iron hand.
*
The windows were freshly cleaned and finally let in the gloomy daylight in which Hyacinth sorted the books and neatly placed them on the shelves.
Two metres of wall space were already full and still so many works lay scattered on the floor. At least he had emptied the chairs and washed them with vinegar water to get rid of the dust and the odour of antiques. He was proud of himself because it looked almost homelike. He had pushed all the newspapers up to the wood stove in order to regularly replenish the fire. For a while old paper would have to suffice.
As a key clicked in the lock, he turned to Ardenovic who entered hesitantly and made a face as if he were standing before the ruins of his house. Although it now looked better than before. However, his husband’s expression indicated that Hyacinth could not count on praise or any degree of gratitude.
“What have you done, you fool?!” Ardenovic demanded to know, his jawline tightly fixed, looking around in horror. Quickly he went to the stove and gasped when he noticed the newspapers burning inside. Faster than Hyacinth found his voice again, Ardenovic had loosed his belt from its eyelets and closed the distance between them. He gruffly snatched him by the collar and pulled him over to shake him. “What have you done, you damn bastard?!”
“Cleaned up your pigpen,” Hyacinth bit back and unsuccessfully tried to free himself from the firm grip. To his misfortune and his anguish, Ardenovic was much stronger than his emaciated body led one to assume. Soon he would feel his spouse’s rage for the first time and didn’t even know why he had earned this.
His counterpart who was only a slight bit taller than he, squeezed so hard that it hurt. “Do you know what havoc you have wreaked?!”
Tears of rage welled up in his eyes, but he suppressed them. “I was only tidying up, damn it!” Suddenly he comprehended what made Ardenovic so indignant. His gaze landed on the crate behind the man, but he kept quiet because he wasn’t asked about it, instead accused of a crime. “Come on, hit me now!” he spewed instead, shoved Ardenovic against the chest and nodded in the direction of the belt. “But don’t pretend to be timid! I’m your property now! Go ahead, do it, I’m not squeamish! Do you think you’re the first one to strike me?!” He withstood the urge to open his shirt to show Ardenovic the ugly reminders that his father and so many suitors had left on his skin. “You aren’t, so no scruples, you damn weakling!”
Ardenovic pushed him stomach-first onto the now uncluttered sofa to whip his backside with the leather. It stung like hell, but Hyacinth had learned to bite the bullet and not allow his pain to show. Without a sound, he also submitted to the blows which followed the first one.
“You have no idea what you have done!” Ardenovic thundered and lashed the belt violently against the wall then, with his back, slid down it and crouched on the floor.
Not until that moment did Hyacinth feel his raging pulse and how it slowly calmed down. After a brief hesitation he rose; with a foot he shoved the crate toward Ardenovic. He had emptied it out and filled it with something else.
He went into the bedroom to sit on the bed and stare at the wall.
*
Breathing heavily Gavrila’s gaze followed the young man as he hurried from the room, slamming the door loudly in its frame.
With a desperate snarl, he tore at his hair until it hurt. As he reached for the crate and looked inside, something in his chest cramped painfully. He discovered the many newspaper articles which the lad had painstakingly searched for and cut out. Hyacinth had taken the trouble to search through all those daily papers and to retain the marked passages.
They were the articles which reported on Dimitri’s death and which he could not throw away because he believed, in his delirium, he would find clues in the journalists’ reports, information which he had overlooked.
Though it had be
en obvious to him for a long time that he would find nothing. Nothing in those deceitful, fragmentary pieces. Nevertheless, he couldn’t part with them because there in black letters stood the name of his dead brother.
How panic-stricken he had become when he believed the reports lost could not be expressed in words. But they were not lost, only stored in proper and neat order inside a crate.
He became aware he had not only punished his lawfully wedded husband too severely but also for no good reason. The lad had merely done something which he had been incapable of. Hyacinth had simply brought order into his chaos, and he had nothing better to do than to whip him for it. God, he was a terrible person… So near the abyss, his soul firmly in the claws of a filthy, grinning devil. He was a cold-hearted monster who had only hate to give and deserved only hate. He had seen it in the eyes of the young man as well. It didn’t surprise him.
With a dry swallow and a deep breath, he drove off all of the feelings which tried to arise within him but which he didn’t wish to have. Instead, he locked them away as he’d been accustomed to doing for an eternity.
With effort he stood up and continued what Hyacinth had started by putting strewn books on the shelves, burning the remaining newspapers and putting on a soup prepared with the few vegetables on hand in the cupboard.
Thoughts swirled in his head about the dead man in the morgue and about the mysterious necklace whose pendant was so familiar and yet so strange to him.
On Dimitri’s body signs of a struggle had been found and under his fingernails blood and skin. In his right hand was such a necklace. He must have torn it from the neck of his murderer.
His fantasy placed the ugliest images before him as it always did. Imagining how his brother had drawn his last breath granted him no peace. “No peace,” he murmured and while coughing, grasped his feverish forehead behind which the most peculiar things were happening to torment and slowly drive him to insanity.
A Hyacinth for His Hideousness Page 2