The Master of the Day of Judgment

by Leo Perutz

  But hush. Dr Gorski tapped his music stand twice with his bow, and we began the second movement.

  TWO

  How often have the rhythms of that second movement filled me with fear and trembling. I have never been able to play it right through without succumbing to deep melancholy, though my passionate love is associated with it.

  Yes, it's a scherzo, but what a scherzo. It begins with a dreadful merriment, a gaiety that makes one's blood run cold. Eerie laughter sweeps through the room, a wild and grim carnival of cloven-hoofed forms. That is how this strange scherzo begins; and suddenly from the midst of this infernal Bacchanal there arises a solitary human voice, the voice of a lost soul, a soul in a torment of fear that soars upwards and laments its suffering.

  But the satanic laughter breaks out again, smashes loudly into the pure harmonies and tears the song to shreds. Once more the voice arises, softly and hesitantly, and finds its melody and bears it aloft as if wanting to escape with it to another world. But the devils of hell are triumphant, the day has come, the last day, the Day of Judgment. Satan triumphs over the sinful soul and the lamenting human voice falls from the heights and disappears in a Judas-like laughter of despair.

  When the movement ended no-one spoke. The silence round me lasted for several minutes.

  Then the gloomy, disconsolate world of shadows in which I was plunged suddenly vanished. The dream of the crack of doom, the nightmare of the Day of Judgment faded and left me free.

  Dr Gorski had risen to his feet and was pacing slowly up and down, Eugen Bischoff was in a brown study, and the engineer had a good stretch as if he had just woken up. Then he helped himself to a cigarette from the box on the table and snapped the lid shut.

  My eyes turned to Dina Bischoff. One's first thought when one wakes up in the morning is often the last one had when falling asleep the night before, and all I could think of now that the movement was finished was how angry she had been with me and how vital it was for me to make it up with her, and the longer I looked at her the stronger became the need to do so. I could think of nothing else, and presumably this childish need was an after-effect of the music.

  She turned her head to me.

  "Well, baron, why are you so deep in thought?" she said. "What are you thinking about?"

  "I was thinking about my dog Zamor," I replied.

  I knew very well why I said that, I looked her straight in the eye as I did so, both of us knew very well indeed. She knew that dog, oh, how well she knew it.

  She winced, pretended not to hear, and turned away angrily. Now I had really upset her. I should not have said that, I should not have reminded her of my small dog Zamor just at the moment when that stranger, that whale, was certainly uppermost in her thoughts.

  Meanwhile Dr Gorski had put his cello and bow back into its linen case.

  "I think that will be enough for today," he said. "We'll spare Herr Solgrub the third movement, shan't we?"

  Dina threw her head back and hummed the theme of the adagio.

  "Listen," she said, "it makes you feel you're sitting in a boat, doesn't it?"

  To my surprise the whale also started humming the theme of the third movement. He actually did so almost faultlessly, only a trifle too fast. Then he said:

  "Sitting in a boat? No. I think it's the gliding rhythm that leads you astray. At all events it puts quite different ideas into my head."

  "I see you know the B major trio very well," I said. This remark seemed to make things up between me and Dina. She immediately started talking to me.

  "I must explain to you that our friend Solgrub is by no means as unmusical as he makes out," she said eagerly. "It's just that he feels obliged to display a superiority to music and all the other useless arts. Isn't that true, Waldemar, it's what your profession demands of you, isn't it? And he tries to persuade me that he accepts my husband as an actor only because he has seen his photo on picture postcards and in an illustrated weekly. Keep quiet, Waldemar, I know all about you."

  The whale acted as if all this had nothing to do with him. He took a book from the shelf and started looking through it. But he obviously liked being talked about and being explained and analysed by Dina.

  Her brother now intervened.

  "And at the same time he's more deeply affected by music than any of us," he said. "It's the Russian soul, don't you see. He immediately sees whole pictures in his mind: a landscape, or the sea with clouds and breakers, or a sunset, or the movements of a human being, or — what was it just now? — a flock of fleeing cassowaries, I think, and heaven knows what else besides."

  "The other day," Dina went on, "when I played him the last movement of the Appassionata — it was the Appassionata, wasn't it, Waldemar, that put the strange idea of a swearing and cursing old soldier into your head?"

  So the two of them have got as far as that already, I said to myself, full of bitterness and rage. She plays Beethoven sonatas for him. That's exactly how things had begun between Dina and me once upon a time.

  The whale put down his book.

  "The Appassionata, third movement," he said thoughtfully, and leaned back and shut his eyes. "It makes me see — with a clarity that it's impossible to describe at this moment — but at the time I could describe every button on his uniform — I see a cripple with a wooden leg, an aged, disabled veteran of Napoleon's campaigns, raging and cursing as he limps round the room."

  "Raging and cursing? Poor devil. But he had probably managed to lay aside a little money for a rainy day."

  I said that quite unintentionally and without thinking, I meant it merely as a joke, and only a moment later did I realise what a painful effect that remark was bound to have; and indeed, Dr Gorski shook his head disapprovingly, Felix looked at me angrily and put his bandaged hand admonishingly to his mouth, and Dina looked at me in shocked amazement. There was a moment of dismayed silence, and I felt myself flushing with embarrassment. But Eugen Bischoff had noticed nothing. He turned to the engineer and said:

  "I've often envied your ability to visualise things so vividly," and at that moment the idol of the gallery, the hero of the drama schools, looked very depressed. "You ought to have been an actor, my dear Solgrub."

  "What a thing to say, Bischoff!" Dr Gorski exclaimed almost violently. "You, who are chock-full of characters and personalities. They're piled up on top of one another inside you, kings and rebels, chancellors and popes, murderers, rogues and archangels, beggars and God knows who else besides."

  "But never in my life have I visualised a single one of them as vividly as Solgrub visualised his wooden-legged old soldier. All I've seen is their shadows, I've never seen anything but vague, shapeless, colourless, unsubstantial forms having a faint resemblance now to one character, now to another. If I had been able to visualise the button on that uniform, like Solgrub, good God, what an impersonator of human character I should have been."

  I understand the resignation implicit in his words. He was an old man, no longer the great Eugen Bischoff. People let him feel this, and he felt it himself, though he fought the feeling and refused to admit it to himself. Oh, the sad hopelessness of the years to come, the years of your decline, my unhappy friend.

  Suddenly the conversation with the director flashed through my mind, and I remembered what he had told me. Suppose someone passed on the information, suppose I myself. . . You know, dear Eugen, I'm on excellent terms with your director, we discuss all sorts of things, and recently — I can tell you, Eugen, you won't take it tragically — a few days ago he told me, only jestingly, of course ...

  Good God, what an idea. Heaven forbid that he should find out, it would be the end of him. Emotionally he's so vulnerable, so devoid of any inner prop, a puff of wind would be enough to bowl him over.

  Dina's brother was now talking to him. That excellent young man was resorting to all the stage jargon that he knew: the importance of psychological detail and of entering into the spirit of the play, and so on and so forth — but Eugen Bischoff shook h
is head.

  "Don't build castles in the air for me, Felix," he said. "You know as well as I do what I lack. What you say is quite right, but it doesn't go to the heart of the matter. Take it from me, those things can be learnt, or can come by themselves with the task one is facing. But creative imagination cannot be learnt. You have it or you don't. I lack the imagination that can create a world out of nothing, and many others, in fact most, lack it too. Yes, Dina, I know what you are going to say. I've made my way in the world, there are some things I can do, never mind what the papers say. But do any of you suspect what a dry, prosaic person I really am? Something happens that ought to give one sleepless nights, send cold shudders down one's spine and give one nightmares, but heaven knows that the effect on me is not very different from reading reports of accidents in the paper at breakfast in the morning."

  "Have you seen today's paper?" I interrupted. I was thinking of the workers' riots in St Petersburg. Eugen Bischoff was very interested in social questions.

  "No," he replied. "I looked for it everywhere, but couldn't find it. Dina, what happened to the paper this morning?"

  Dina went white and red and white again. Good heavens, I should have remembered that they had kept from him the newspaper with the news of the failure of his bank. I had put my foot in it again. I was committing one faux pas after another.

  But Dina recovered her composure quickly.

  "The paper?" she said casually, in tones as matter-of-fact as if she were mentioning something of no importance whatever. "I think I saw it somewhere in the garden. I'll find it again. But Eugen, please go on, you were telling us something so interesting."

  Dina's brother was standing next to me.

  "Do you propose to go on with your experiments?" he hissed softly into my ear without moving his lips.

  What did he mean by that? What was he trying to say?

  I had thoughtlessly committed a faux pas, and that was all.

  What else could it have been?

  THREE

  Eugen Bischoff paced up and down, he had something on his mind, he seemed to be trying to put something into words. Then he stopped right in front of me and looked at me. He looked me in the face, scrutinising me with a troubled, uncertain, almost mistrustful expression. The way he did so made me feel uncomfortable, I don't really know why.

  "It's a strange business, baron," he said. "It may make you feel hot and cold when I tell you about it. Perhaps it will keep you awake all night, that's the sort of thing it is. Up here" — and he vigorously tapped his brow — "there's a nerve inside me that dislikes being disturbed and won't co-operate properly. It's there only for minor matters, the petty, everyday things of life. But for fear and horror and anger and raging anxiety it's useless. I lack the organ to deal with them."

  "Then tell us about it, Bischoff, " Dr Gorski interrupted.

  "I don't really know whether I'll be able to make you understand what an extraordinary story it is. Telling a story has never been my forte. Perhaps the whole thing won't strike you as being so disturbing. As I was saying ..."

  "Why all this beating about the bush, Eugen?" said the engineer, tapping his cigarette over the ashtray.

  "Very well, then, listen, this is the story, make of it what you will. Some time ago I met a young naval officer who had been given several months' compassionate leave to settle his family affairs. These were of a peculiar kind.

  "He had had a younger brother here in Vienna who was a painter and a student at the Academy. He seems to have been very talented — I've seen some of his work, a group of children, a nurse and a girl bathing. Well, one day this young man committed suicide. It was completely unmotivated, there was nothing whatever to explain such an act of total despair. He had no debts or other money troubles, no love trouble and no illness — in short, the suicide could not have been more mysterious. And his brother ..."

  "Such cases are more frequent than one thinks," Dr Gorski interrupted. "They are generally disposed of in the police reports by resorting to the phrase 'while the balance of his mind was temporarily disturbed'."

  "Yes, that was what happened in this case, but the family were not satisfied. The parents in particular thought it inconceivable that their son should have killed himself without leaving behind a letter for them. Not even the one-line note usual in these cases — 'Dear mama, papa, forgive me, I could not do otherwise' — was found among his papers, and earlier letters gave no hint of any suicidal tendencies. So the family refused to believe it was suicide, and the elder brother came to Vienna determined to do everything possible to throw light on the matter.

  "He had a fixed plan which he carried out doggedly. He lived in his brother's flat, assumed his daily habits and daily routine, and sought out and made the acquaintance of everyone with whom his brother associated or came into contact, and he avoided opportunities of meeting anyone else. He became a pupil at the Academy, he drew and he painted and spent a few hours every day at the café where his brother had been a regular customer, and he even went so far as to wear his dead brother's clothes and join an elementary Italian class that his brother had attended; and he never missed a lesson, though as a naval officer his command of Italian was complete. He did all this in the belief that in this way he was bound eventually to stumble on the cause of his brother's puzzling death, and nothing would divert him from his purpose.

  "He led this life, which was not really his but someone else's, for two whole months, and I can't say whether it brought him any nearer his objective. But one day he came back to his lodgings very late. His landlady, who took up his dinner, noticed this because it was in striking contrast to his usual habits, which were marked by meticulous punctuality. He was not actually in a bad mood, though he made some irritable remarks about the food, which had got cold. He told the landlady he wanted to go to the opera that evening and hoped he would still be able to get tickets, and ordered a cold supper in his room for eleven o'clock.

  "A quarter of an hour later the cook took up his black coffee. The door was locked, but she could hear the young officer striding up and down the room. She knocked at the door and called out: 'Your coffee, sir,' and left the cup on a chair outside the door. Some time later she went up again to fetch the empty cup, but it was still outside the door and had not been touched. She knocked, but there was no answer, she listened, but nothing stirred, and suddenly she heard voices and brief cries in a language she did not understand, and soon afterwards there was a loud cry.

  "She shook the door, called out, raised the alarm, the landlady arrived, the two of them forced the door — and the room was empty. But the windows were open, there was a noise down in the street, and they realised what had happened. Down below a crowd had gathered round a body. Half a minute before, the young officer had flung himself from the window — his cigarette was still glowing on the desk."

  The engineer interrupted the story.

  "Flung himself from the window?" he exclaimed. "That's amazing. As an officer he must have had a weapon in his possession."

  "Quite right. His revolver was found in a drawer of his desk. It was unloaded and intact. An army 9mm. revolver. The ammunition was in the same drawer, a whole boxful."

  "Go on, go on," Dr Gorski urged the actor.

  "Go on? But that's the whole story. He had committed suicide, like his brother before him. I don't know whether he had found the answer to his riddle. But, if he had, he must have had his reasons for taking the secret with him."

  "What are you saying?" Dr Gorski exclaimed. "Surely he left behind a letter or note, at any rate a line or two of explanation to his parents?"

  "No."

  This emphatic reply came, not from Eugen Bischoff, but from the engineer, who went on:

  "He had no time, don't you see? That's the extraordinary thing about the case, he had no time. He had no time to fetch his revolver and load it. How could he have had time to write a letter?"

  "You're wrong, Solgrub," Eugen Bischoff said. "He did leave writing behind. True, i
t was only part of a single word ..."

  "I call that military brevity," said Dr Gorski; and an amused twinkle in his eyes indicated to me that he regarded the whole story as fiction.

  "Also," said Eugen Bischoff, finishing his story, "the tip of his pencil broke and the paper was torn at that point."

  "And the word? What was it?"

  "It was hastily scribbled and almost illegible. It was 'dreadful'."

  No-one spoke. Only the engineer let out a brief and sharp "Oh!" of surprise. Dina had risen and switched on the lamp. Now it was light in the room, but the feeling of oppression to which I, like all the others, had succumbed would not go away.

  Only Dr Gorski was sceptical.

  "Admit it, Bischoff," he said. "You made up the whole story to make our flesh creep, didn't you?"

  Eugen Bischoff shook his head.

  "No, doctor, I didn't make up anything. It all happened less than a week ago just as I described it. The most extraordinary things happen, you can take it from me, doctor. What do you think about it, Solgrub?"

  "It was murder," the engineer replied briefly and firmly. "A very unusual kind of murder, but murder, that's obvious to me. But who was the murderer? How did he get into the room and where did he vanish to? One will have to think about it very carefully when one's on one's own."

  He looked at his watch.

  "It's late, and I must go."

  "Nonsense, you're all staying for supper," Eugen Bischoff announced, "and afterwards we'll all stay for a while and talk about more cheerful things."

  "How would it be, for instance, if the distinguished audience of connoisseurs assembled here were privileged to hear extracts from your new role?" Dr Gorski said.