by Dan Vyleta
‘Twelve years next month. I started after Manfred died. My husband.’
‘So you were there, when –’ She stopped, cast around for a phrase. ‘Everybody says he raped a girl.’
‘You want to know what happened?’
‘Yes. It’s important, somehow. Because of the dog. Walter.’
Vesalius snorted at the mention of the name, stared at her across five feet of darkness.
‘I can show you if you like,’ she said.
‘Please.’
‘I’ll be back.’
The old woman left the door wide open.
When she returned, Vesalius was holding a thick, square book, some sort of album, bound in green felt. She undid the lace ribbons that held it shut and leafed through the pages until she came upon a folded piece of paper. Its edges were crisp and clean: it had not been unfolded very often. The old woman handed it to Zuzka, who sat up in her bed and turned on the bedside lamp.
‘She was what they call a medium,’ Vesalius said even before Zuzka had a chance to commence reading. ‘A scientific experiment. All sorts of famous people came to watch.’
It was a page cut from a newspaper and was dated September 1927; its columns intersected by the neat lines of its folds. Zuzka tried to concentrate, the words swimming before her eyes, but all she could make sense of were the headlines that introduced each of the paragraphs, promising sensation.
‘Thomas Mann was there,’ she read, confused.
‘Your uncle was asked to examine her. See, it says here.’
‘Why him?’
‘In case she had something hidden on her body.’ Vesalius paused, pursed her lips. ‘It says somewhere that “ir called for a physician familiar with the female form”.’
Zuzka scanned the page for the quote, unsuccessfully, then looked back at the housekeeper, those hard, mocking eyes. It had never occurred to her that Vesalius, too, despised her uncle.
‘You’ve kept this all these years?’ she asked, giving voice to her surprise.
‘Have it,’ said Vesalius, turning away from her with sudden vehemence and pressing the album to her chest. ‘I have no use for it. And stop seeing that Gypsy.’
She left before Zuzka could either thank or ask her.
What did she care whether or not Speckstein’s niece managed to disgrace herself?
Zuzka waited until Vesalius had closed the door and she could hear her shuffle down the corridor before returning her attention to the article. The paper felt cheap in her hands, flimsy and grey; as she examined the page, some of the print began to smudge and stick to her fingertips. The page she was looking at constituted the opening fragment of a longer trial report; it cut off abruptly at the bottom. The cover page overleaf was dominated by a collage of images that began just under the title lettering and extended all the way to the bottom margin. She realised with a start that it was for this, the artist’s impressions of the courtroom rendered in small, feathery lines, and flanked by hand-lettered captions, that the page had been preserved. There was a total of three scenes, very lifelike, each depicting a different moment of the trial, juxtaposed for maximum effect. At the bottom of the page sat the members of the jury on the tiered, railed-in benches peculiar to their office, listening to the expostulations of an expert witness. This expert witness, a short, fat man with impressive moustaches, was rendered in profile, his right hand extended towards a propped-up poster-board upon which the outlines of female anatomy had been delicately sketched (all details that would have offended public taste had been carefully omitted, or else were blocked by the expert’s gesture). Above the jury, the space was cut in half. On the right cowered her uncle, looking ten years younger, his hair full and dark. He sat hunched in the dock, his hands neatly placed in front of him. His eyes were lowered and his brow creased as though in repentance or in shame. To his left, on the witness stand, a girl in her early teens, skinny and pale. She was wearing a plain black dress with a white collar. A cross was visible high on her breast. Her features were distorted by fear and disgust, the lips pushed forward and sealed; the left hand thrown over her eyes, fingers spread to reveal one tear-rimmed eye. Her right arm was extended, broke the boundary of the thin line of ink that separated her from the defendant, and reached across to point an accusing finger at her tormentor’s hunched figure.
‘Struck dumb by the assault, Evelyn Wenger testifies with her hands,’ the caption read. ‘The Professor awaits the verdict.’
‘The jurors are instructed about the results of the medical examination by Professor Dr Kiefer.’
Zuzka stared and stared at the little girl’s face. She knew at once that it was Eva.
Zuzka turned back to the article, willed herself to read the text. She grasped it in snatches of bold type and quotation, but was unable to keep her mind focused through the whole of the piece: there seemed to be altogether too many words for one simple truth.
Vesalius had not been gone ten minutes when Zuzka began dressing, folding up the page back into its neat, tidy square and stuffing it into a handbag to take along. She closed the door to her room behind her, tiptoed into the hallway and searched for her coat in darkness. As she approached the front door and felt for the keys on the hook, she grew convinced that the housekeeper was behind her somewhere, staring at her from the door to the kitchen, or standing behind the hallway wardrobe, disapproving and silent. Zuzka did not turn around. Outside, the air was cold, rain coming down in a spluttering drizzle. She hurried to the tram stop and then onwards, towards Schwedenplatz and the Kasperl Club.
6
She would have liked to take the tram. It was far to Schwedenplatz – more than a mile down Alser- and Universitätsstraße, then a quarter of the way clockwise along the Ring – and she would have liked to take the tram, only she wasn’t sure whether the tram would still be running at this time, and when she got to the station there was no timetable and nobody waiting whom she could ask. So she set off, thinking she could always find one at Schottentor, and some minutes later the tram flew past her, its windows brightly lit, three, four passengers sitting on the benches, staring out into the street. It was cold and it was raining, the night sky covered in cloud. Only now and then the wind blew a gap into the clouds and revealed the sickle of the waning moon, cut to pieces by the web of wires that hung suspended above the tracks. Halfway down Universitätsstraße, she was startled by the clip-clop of horses as a carriage drove past, heading home towards some outlying stable. She arrived at Schottentor, saw a crowd of drunk men clustering around the sausage stand, eyeing her up and down as she drew close, placing her, a solitary woman out late at night. There was no tram in sight, and, rather than wait under the eyes of those men, she walked on, turned left on to the Schottenring, towards the Stock Exchange, her coat growing heavy with the rain, her footsteps ringing on the cobbles. A policeman passed her, paused, and removed the cigarette from his thin lips long enough to give a shrill, insinuating whistle; two other men, old and shabby, stopped an argument as she walked past and stood shoulder to shoulder, watching her legs pick their way around the puddles, before resuming their hostilities. She left the Ring, chose a short cut, then got lost in the little alleys around Judengasse until she found a flight of steps that led down towards the canal.
The rain let up while she was crossing the bridge, once again flinching under the gazes of men who moved about in packs of two or three. A car drove past, caught her in its headlights; slowed down (so it seemed to her), men’s faces darkened by the windscreen, their talk inaudible out on the bridge; then a howl as gears were changed, and the spray of a puddle gunning for her shoes. She hurried on and entered Leopoldstadt, the second of the city’s twenty-one districts. Once, she had read, it had been the Jewish ghetto, separated from the city by the waters of the canal. Now it was the place where men went to drink and to buy love.
Zuzka found the Kasperl almost at once. The club was in a side street, two blocks from the bridge. A painted sign announced the venue, hung brash and new upon
a yellow flaking wall. There was little traffic here, no line for the door, just a tired old man in a barman’s waistcoat sitting on an upturned bucket and having a smoke. The door itself stood ajar.
She walked up to it, heard noise travel through the gap; reached out with fingers tingling from the damp and pushed it open. There was a narrow hallway, its walls thickly plastered with handbills, and a staircase leading down into the cellar. Against the wall leaned a man in something like a porter’s uniform: gold-trimmed royal blue. Epaulettes made from thick, yellow thread dangled from both shoulders. He was a tall man and quite impressively fat. When he caught sight of her, he immediately appraised her face and figure. She expected him to say something, but he just stood there, his thumbs wedged behind his belt, sucking on a short-stemmed pipe. The clamour of bar noises travelled up the stairs, followed by a scatter of applause.
‘Is this the Kasperl Club?’ she asked, blushing. ‘May I come in?’
The man sucked on his pipe. ‘Are you a guest or trade?’
‘I – I am here to see – the show.’
‘Alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s a cover charge. Eighty pfennig. You have that?’
She nodded, dug in her handbag, could not locate her purse. Her eyes filled with tears.
‘It must be somewhere,’ she said, stepping closer, into the hallway’s light. The porter stooped over the handbag with her, blew pipe smoke in her face.
‘No money, no entry, Missy,’ he guffawed and his epaulettes shook with his laughter.
‘Ah, go on,’ said the barman, who had finished his cigarette and picked up the bucket. ‘Such a nice lady, and the place half empty tonight. I’m sure someone will buy her a drink.’
His accent was Styrian, soft and melodious; nicotine stains on his fingertips and teeth. ‘What do you care if this one gets in for free?’
The porter shrugged, and the barman took her elbow and pulled her along with him, down the cellar stairs.
‘What would you like, sweetheart?’ he asked as they stepped into a long if somewhat narrow room filled with several rows of round tables and chairs. The floorboards were bare and very dirty, littered with cigarette ash and mud. There was a long bar on their left, and a raised stage to the front, the latter screened by a set of red curtains. The light was dim, made dimmer yet by the cloud of smoke that clung to the low ceiling. Just about half the tables were taken, mostly by solitary men, though there were some brightly made-up women to be seen. In one corner, near the stage, a group of six or seven young men sat together, wearing SA uniforms, the table in front of them overflowing with glasses. The atmosphere was muted, almost tense. Just then a hush came over the crowd, and the lights were further dimmed.
‘The show is starting,’ the barman whispered to her and led her over to the wooden counter. ‘Beer or wine?’
‘Wine,’ she answered, grateful, and sat down on a stool. Otto Frei had taken the stage.
He came on without announcement: parted the curtains and stepped out, dressed in black from head to toe. He was carrying a chair. It was only when he had crossed the stage, put down the chair and sat himself down that the house lights were switched off. All that remained was a single spotlight that sought out his face, and the glow of cigarettes amongst the guests. Everything that she knew about his face – the brow, the cheekbones, the fat, sensual mouth – was just the same, but it had been bleached of all emotion. A canvas remained, startling in its blankness; the large eyes cold and emptied of their passion. He stared out into the audience for an endless minute, his face disembodied in the dark.
‘Who’s first?’ he asked.
The voice had not changed. It was coarse and full of anger, the weak link in his act. For a moment he seemed human: a man with a painted face. Then the lips closed and silence reclaimed him.
‘Rudolf,’ a voice shouted, amongst the group of SA youths. ‘Over here! He’s reporting to barracks tomorrow, and soon it’s off to war!’
A second spot came into being, scanned the faces of this lively gang, half a dozen fingers pointing at someone sitting in their midst. The light settled on the man they indicated, a blond lad of twenty, his face drained of colour by the light. Now there were two death masks, one on the stage, the other rising from amongst the gaggle of his peers, staring one another in the eye.
‘All right then,’ said the young man, lips forced into a smile. ‘How will I fare?’
The mime did not react at once, but peeled back both his gloves and set them beside him on the chair. He stood, the light following his every movement, the hands falling lifeless from their cuffs. The next moment, they took on a rhythmic movement, up and down, forward and back, and in a moment it was clear the mime was marching, though his feet did not stir and he made no progress across the stage, just the hands moving to the inaudible rhythms of some drummer boy. The face meanwhile was proud, imperious, a soldier about his duty, only there was fear in it, too, a trembling right around the lips, and the occasional sideways glance to check on how his comrades were getting on, just to see whether they, too, were marching fearless to their likely death, or whether he had been fooled into taking to the road alone. A shell hit. It made no sound, but it hit all the same: the mime’s eyes caught it as it came hurtling into his line of sight. He dropped to his knees, raised his hands to cradle his ears, a soundless scream falling from his lips. More shells fell, the heat of battle, and the mime in their midst, hands curled to fists, stoppering up his painted ears. Then, the battle over, he stood, a frail, handsome smile spreading on the parchment of his face, shy at first – could it be that he was alive? – then young and carefree, though he kept his eyes up, not caring to look at what lay littered on the field. The mime sat down again, his chin raised in triumph. One hand turned around upon itself and became the hand of another man, pinning a white cotton ribbon on the black nothingness of chest. No medal had ever been better earned: the face said it, had long forgotten its fear. Then the hands disappeared within their gloves, and a great solemn blankness descended upon the whitewashed features of the mime. He was Rudolf no more.
The room exploded into laughter and applause.
‘And his girl?’ somebody shouted. ‘Will she be faithful?’
The mime heard it, shushed them with a finger laid across his lips. His eyes opened wider, became pretty, the mouth soft and round. The gloves came off again, and the mime-turned-girl began to write a letter, tender words that left their imprint in her tender smile. She had not finished with her composition, was labouring, her tongue between her teeth, to find phrases that did justice to her virgin love, when a knock interrupted her: she looked up, startled, waved one hand to usher in her guest. That it was a man, a stranger, one knew at once by the caution that crept across her face. She shook her head twice, gave curt and hurried answers to some unheard question, each answer mouthed by pale and displeased lips. The man would not leave, drew nearer, put a hand upon her arm. She tried to shake him, struggled, beat a fist against his chest. Then, little by little, a change stole over her, some sort of slackening of the will. At first she hung lifeless and endured his groping, her lips tightly sealed against his kiss. But slowly, moment by moment, caress by caress, something else woke in her, old and powerful and born of the body. It would not be denied. She gasped in surprise as she watched herself yield: a stretching of the throat and jaw, eyes swimming with the knowledge of her need.
The act finished with the mime enacting her passion, the heavy braying of a beast in heat, made all the worse for its total lack of sound. When he was done, shouts and whistles followed him off the stage. He stepped through the gap in the red curtain, dragging his chair behind himself like a rag-and-bone man dragging home his cart. He never even bothered to bow.
‘He’s good,’ said the barman, and refilled her glass. Zuzka had not realised she had drunk it. ‘Three days back, he told some fat man he would die on the crapper.’ He wagged his chin. ‘Heart attack. Just as he was reaching for the paper, to wipe h
is old arse: out pop his eyes and his ticker goes bust. It nearly came to blows.’
She smiled back at him and drained her second glass in three quick sips.
‘Where is he now?’ she asked.
‘Backstage. The door over there. You know him?’
‘Yes,’ she said and her heart beat as though she were pleading guilty to some unknown crime.
She got up, made her way towards the stage and past it, to the metal door the barman had indicated. Some of the men looked up from their tables, followed her with their eyes. She was still wearing her wet coat and hat, the leather handbag dangling from the crook of her arm. The sign read ‘No Entry’ but the door wasn’t locked. It opened upon a black, heavy curtain, designed to keep out the light. She closed the door, stood in darkness looking for the gap in the curtain, then stepped through into a brightly lit corridor with linoleum flooring that reminded her for a moment of a hospital corridor. A mop stood in an empty bucket in one corner, a number of doors led off to her left and right. She stepped up to the one closest to her (it stood ajar) and pushed it open a little wider. A woman, stripped to the waist, was stepping into a cocktail dress. Her chest and ribcage were covered with old bruises, her painted face looked haggard and worn. Zuzka had not seen another woman naked since puberty and was taken aback by the sight. She was particularly struck by the smallness of her breasts and nipples, and the sickly cast of the woman’s skin; the knobbly protrusion of her belly button that clung to her belly like a tumour. She had a cluster of moles over her left hip.
‘What is it?’ the woman asked, fastening the dress at her waist and pulling its top over her naked frame. Her voice was tired, not unkind. ‘You lost, honey?’
‘I’m looking for Otto. Otto Frei. The mime.’
‘You his girlfriend or something? Third door on the left. Unless he nipped out for some air.’
Zuzka left her, followed her instructions: a door with a crack in its lacquer running from handle to hinge. It, too, stood ajar; behind it, Otto, sitting on a stool. The room was large and barren, held no mirror and no sink, a tube of make-up lying crumpled on the floor. He rose when she stepped in, a cigarette jutting from the painted lips.