by Frank Tallis
'Herr Hölderlin – over here!' the voice boomed.
Peering around the statue, Heinrich Hölderlin caught sight of Hans Bruckmüller, seated by himself at a single table outside a tiny coffee house aptly named the Kleines Café. It had no front windows and the entrance was a very modest double door, one half of which had been propped open with an iron doorstop. A bicycle was leaning against the wall next to Bruckmüller's table. Hölderlin assumed that it did not belong to the big man. It was impossible to imagine him perched on such a spindly frame.
'Good afternoon, Herr Bruckmüller.'
'Good afternoon, Hölderlin. Coffee?'
Hölderlin made a show of examining his pocket watch and then, after feigning some mental calculations, replied, 'Yes, why not?'
Bruckmüller leaned back in his chair and bellowed into the gloomy interior of the tiny coffee house.
'Egon!'
Immediately a rangy young man with a downy moustache and sparse side-whiskers appeared. He was little more than a boy.
'Another fiacre for me. And you, Hölderlin?'
'A melange.'
The boy bowed and loped into the darkness.
Hölderlin sat at the table, removed his hat, and wiped a flat hand over his bald head.
'You are a frequent patron, Bruckmüller?'
'Yes, I am. It's a little haven, a splendid place for quiet contemplation.'
'Then perhaps I have disturbed you?'
'Not at all,' said Bruckmüller, smiling. But the smile was too hasty and lingered for longer than was strictly necessary.
Hölderlin placed the volume he was carrying on the table and Bruckmüller lowered his head to read the spine.
'Isis Unveiled.'
'By Madame Blavatsky.'
'Interesting?'
'I don't know. To be honest, I haven't read it – it belongs to my wife. I've just been to collect it from Herr Uberhorst. Juno lent him this book over a month ago.'
'And he didn't return it?' said Bruckmüller, surprised.
'No,' said Hölderlin. 'Although such an oversight can be forgiven.'
'Yes,' said Bruckmüller, relenting. 'Under the circumstances . . .'
The waiter returned with a silver tray and slid it onto the table. Bruckmüller's fiacre exuded a strong smell of rum and was topped with a spiral shell of whipped cream. The frothed milk in Hölderlin's melange seemed animate and bubbly, like frog's spawn, and was creeping over the lip of his coffee cup. He interrupted its journey with a teaspoon and scooped the foam into his mouth.
'His behaviour – at the seance . . .' Bruckmüller looked across the square at the Renaissance façade of the Franziskankirche. The church's high, involute gable was adorned with saints and Egyptian obelisks. 'What did you make of it?'
'Difficult to say . . .'
'He wanted to know whether he should tell them. You thought he meant the police, didn't you?' The banker looked distinctly uncomfortable. 'And a matter of honour? What on earth did he mean by that?'
Hölderlin took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped the beads of perspiration from his crown.
'It's a long walk from Herr Uberhorst's,' he said apologetically.
'I've never had the pleasure.'
'He has a small workshop in Leopoldstadt.'
'Then you should have hailed a cab!'
Hölderlin applied the handkerchief to his forehead.
'The weather is improving – I thought it would be pleasant to walk.'
'The taking of regular constitutionals is undoubtedly a good habit and it aids digestion, so I'm told.' Bruckmüller lifted his glass and took a sip of his fiacre. 'Are you all right, Hölderlin? You seem a little—'
'Hot, that's all.' Hölderlin interrupted. 'I think I overdid it.'
Bruckmüller nodded and gestured towards the Blavatsky.
'May I?'
'Of course.'
Bruckmüller picked up the volume and let the pages fan beneath his thumb, stopping occasionally. When he had completed this cursory examination he lifted his head and looked at his companion.
'Was it some demon, do you think?' Bruckmüller's voice was a confidential rumble.
'The spirit said so.'
'Yes . . . but I'm asking what you think, Hölderlin. I know what the spirit said, but what's your opinion?'
Hölderlin looked around the square uneasily, as if trying to locate any eavesdroppers. The area was empty.
'I think such things are possible. However—' He paused and toyed with his teaspoon. 'I suspect that Herr Uberhorst would no longer subscribe to such a view.'
'He cannot accept that Fräulein Löwenstein dabbled in the black arts,' said Bruckmüller sagely. 'How naive.'
'Indeed. But there's more to it than that, I feel.'
'Oh?'
'In his workshop I noticed numerous lock mechanisms. In vices and on the table. He had been dismantling them . . . and there were instruments everywhere.'
'The man's a locksmith, Hölderlin! What did you expect?'
'Tweezers? Knitting needles? Magnets? There was even a hospital syringe. It was like a laboratory.'
Bruckmüller shook his head: 'I don't understand . . .'
'I think,' said Hölderlin, 'that Herr Uberhorst is trying to work out how it was done. I think he's trying to solve the mystery of the locked door.'
45
ELSE RHEINHARDT HAD been shopping in Leopoldstadt, where everything was so much cheaper. She had ordered a roll of fabric from a draper in Zirkusgasse that was at least half the price she would have paid on Karntner Strasse. Her expedition had taken her as far east as the Prater, and she decided to reward herself with lunch at the Café Eisvogel. She had a particular weakness for their honey-and-almond tart.
Else lingered for a while, watching the people come and go, observing the little dramas that constituted the affairs of the world: a couple in the corner were clearly enjoying an assignation; a group of gentlemen at the next table looked like conspirators; and a solitary young man by the window was writing what she imagined to be a poem on his napkin. In Vienna, the cafe had replaced the theatre. One could learn as much about human nature in the Eisvogel as one could by reading all the plays of Goethe, Molière or Shakespeare.
Else noticed the time and felt her conscience nettle. She had to return home. She had only accomplished the first three items on the crumpled list that occupied one of the pockets in her purse.
The sun was burning in a cloudless sky, and Else opened her parasol. She walked across a wide, open concourse in the direction of the Riesenrad. The giant wheel dwarfed the other buildings, even the four towers of the water chute. As she approached the Prohaska restaurant, Else was surprised to see her husband sitting at one of the many outside tables. Her instinct was to call out and run over. Her step had already quickened when the automatic smile on her face froze and disintegrated.
There was a woman sitting next to him – and they were both laughing.
Else did not recognise her, and judged her, even at a distance, to be quite attractive. She and Oskar seemed perfectly at ease together. Rheinhardt was smoking a cigar, and the woman seemed to be entertaining him with an amusing story.
It did not look like a police interview – or any other kind of professional engagement.
The woman leaned forward and, reaching over the table, rested a flirtatious hand on the sleeve of Rheinhardt's jacket. The gesture was confident enough to suggest an atmosphere of relaxed intimacy – and enough to shake the ground beneath Else's feet.
Else turned abruptly and walked back in the direction of the Café Eisvogel. She was utterly confused and proceeded in a daze. The Riesenrad, like the great wheel of fortune itself, turned slowly and impartially as the first angry tear rolled down Else's cheek.
46
KARL UBERHORST HAD got as far as the police station on Grosse Sperlgasse. He had stood outside the modest building for almost an hour, pacing, deliberating, doubting, questioning, before finally heading off towards the centre of town.
Since the ill-fated seance he had experienced considerable difficulty sleeping – and even when he did sleep there were the nightmares to contend with. The visitations from a now familiar company of vengeful demons and repulsive succubi; the shocked awakening followed by an icy trickle of sweat; the lingering terror that paralysed his body; and the hypnopompic presences that melted into darkness. As a result Uberhorst preferred to eschew sleep and spend the small hours wandering the streets of the Innere Stadt. The comforting monotony of his night-time tread on the cobbles helped to calm his troubled mind.
It was approaching midnight when Karl Uberhorst found himself walking across the Graben. He slowed as he approached the plague monument – a mountain of writhing, tumbling bodies. There was something orgiastic in its excess, its unfettered, hysterical mass of swirling cloud, saints and putti. Indeed, it was as though the monument itself was diseased and had started to become excrescent, an amorphous mass of weeping chancres and swollen nodules. Climbing a few steps, he rested his hands on the balustrade and contemplated Faith and a winged cherub gleefully impaling the old hag Plague.
'Good evening, sir.'
She was suddenly standing next to him – a woman wearing a long flared coat and a veiled hat. He had not seen her standing behind the monument on his approach, and was startled by her appearance.
'Good evening,' he replied, stepping down.
'Lonely, are you?' Her voice was coarse and accented but her question was curiously penetrating.
Uberhorst wanted to answer: Yes, I am lonely.
He missed their little conversations, the smell of her golden hair as she examined the lines on his palm.
'I'm sure a man like you has a few krone to spare.' He couldn't place her accent – was she a Ruthene or a Pole? 'Why don't you walk me to my room, over in Spittelberg? It's a long walk, but by the time we get there we'll have got to know each other really well. How about it?'
As he looked at her, the woman's face blurred. Her eyes became enlarged and her lips more full: Fräulein Löwenstein's smile shimmered across the whore's broad features.
Perhaps he could ask this woman to sit with him, to hold his hand, like she had?
The whore laughed and came closer, reaching out and rubbing the collar of Uberhorst's coat between her thumb and forefinger, like a tailor establishing the quality of the cloth. She was taller than him and he found himself staring into her bosom.
He looked away, embarrassed.
'Don't be shy . . .'
Again he was forced to contemplate the old hag, and was reminded that Vienna was in the grip of another plague. If he allowed himself to be seduced, not only was there the risk of infection to consider but also the indignity of subsequent treatment. Weeks spent lying in a hospital bed, having mercury rubbed into his body, until his teeth fell out – one by one.
'No, thank you, Fräulein,' he said curtly, touching his hat. 'Good evening.'
Uberhorst pulled away and walked off at a brisk pace.
'You'll regret it later,' the prostitute called out.
He lengthened his stride, eventually breaking into a graceless canter.
The shadow-memory of Fräulein Löwenstein's face had played on the whore's lineaments like bright sunlight on murky water. Uberhorst was still obsessed with the dead medium.
He must tell the police.
He must tell them what he knew.
He must tell them what he suspected . . .
Looking up, he caught sight of the cathedral spire tapering off into ghostly invisibility as it climbed beyond the luminescent haze of the street lights.
Uberhorst felt like a haunted man. How could he be sure that Charlotte Löwenstein was not with him even now? Her spectral step shadowing his, her cold ectoplasmic arm linked with his. Would she chastise him from beyond the grave for not keeping her secret?
I'm pregnant, she had said.
Her head had touched his shoulders. Her golden curls had touched his mouth.
What am I to do? she had asked.
He had not known – and they had sat in impotent silence as the minutes of the afternoon had ebbed away.
Now he was prompted to ask himself the same question.
What am I to do?
The door of the cathedral was open, and Uberhorst crept into the cold, redemptive world of St Stephen's. As he did so, he felt something close to relief. He had been yearning for the security and certainty of his former faith: the stolid predictability of stations and ritual, the spiritual epicentre of Rome.
The vastness of the cathedral was suffused with a Stygian gloom. A seemingly boundless obscurity concealed a lofty vaulting that could be sensed – as a continent of stone pressing down from above – but not seen. Uberhorst made a sign of the cross and walked past the flickering remnants of votive candles down the central nave.
The sepulchral silence was disturbed by a curious squeaking, which heralded the appearance of a moving light in the distance: an ignis fatuus, blinking in and out of existence as it floated behind the colossal Gothic columns. It was the sacristan lighting the lamps.
Uberhorst felt trepidation as he approached the high altar where a baroque panel showed St Stephen being stoned to death in front of the walls of Jerusalem. Above him the heavens had been rent apart, revealing Christ at the right hand of God.
Uberhorst genuflected and slipped into a pew. Kneeling, he touched his forehead against hands joined together in prayer.
Somewhere a door opened and closed.
'Father, forgive me,' he whispered.
His sibilant prayer of atonement bounced between columns of black marble, heeded only by the mute statues of clerics, madonnas and angels.
'What shall I do?'
The ensuing silence was not disturbed by divine intervention but by a dull, echoing thud from the back of the nave. It sounded as though a prayer book had been knocked or dropped to the floor.
Uberhorst raised his head and looked back over his shoulder, squinting into the shadowy vastness. There was no longer any squeaking – and no floating light. The sacristan had gone.
Uberhorst placed his hands together again and continued his prayer, only to be disturbed by another sound: a single footstep.
He was not alone.
47
THE DOOR FLEW open and a hatchet-faced man, pursued by a porter, came marching into Professsor Gruner's room.
'I'm sorry, sir,' said the porter. 'I couldn't stop him.'
The man brushed the porter aside and strode up to Gruner's desk.
'What is the meaning of this!' Gruner demanded, rising from his chair.
The man's eyes were hollow and a thin moustache hugged his upper lip. His hair was black and oily, combed back from his forehead and over the crown in a single wave.
'Aah . . .' said Gruner, his voice softening with recognition. 'Signor Locatelli. Please sit down, I am so very sorry—'
'Where is she?' The Italian diplomat's voice was hoarse.
'Please, I understand how distressing this must be for you.'
'Where is she?' the diplomat repeated.
'Sir?' The porter looked towards Gruner.
'Wait outside,' replied Gruner. 'I know this gentleman.' The porter looked at Gruner in disbelief. Gruner nodded once and the porter reluctantly left the room.
The diplomat leaned across Gruner's desk.
'I want to see my wife.' His voice was more resonant, and for the first time Gruner detected an accent.
'If you wish to visit the mortuary,' Gruner replied, 'then of course this can be arranged. However, might I suggest that first you sit and compose yourself.' The Italian turned and looked at the empty chair, a single finger lingering on the desktop as he withdrew. Gruner walked to the window.
'Please accept my condolences. I had hoped to inform you of this tragedy in person. You must have been travelling all night.'
'I left Venice as soon as I received your telegram,' said the diplomat, sitting down. 'The train didn't get into Westbahnhof until se
ven.'
Gruner placed his hands behind his back and stepped forward a pace.
'Signor Locatelli, I would like you to know that we did everything in our power to help your wife. She received the very best treatment, I can assure you. There are few hospitals in Europe better equipped to treat hysteria.' He paused and gestured towards a tower of battery cases. 'Indeed, some would argue that we occupy the pre-eminent position. Be that as it may, some patients, inevitably, are beyond help. By the time they come to our attention their nervous systems have been so weakened that they cannot benefit from our ministrations. This, sadly, was the fate of your wife. She was suffering from a progressive loss of nerve strength that could be neither arrested nor repaired through the administration of electrotherapy. Although her hysterical paralysis had begun to respond – as I predicted – any such therapeutic gains were nullified by deteriorating levels of mood disturbance. In the end, her melancholia was so severe that her faculty of reason was compromised and she became the architect of her own demise.'
Locatelli had been staring blankly at Gruner. When the professor had finished speaking, Locatelli seemed to become more aware of his surroundings, and his attention was captured by the gruesome contents of Gruner's specimen jars. His face creased in disgust.
Without turning to look at Gruner, he said quietly and clearly: 'You murdered her.'
Gruner cleared his throat.
'I beg your pardon?'
'I said, Professor: you murdered her.'
The Italian fixed Gruner with a cold accusatory stare.
'Signor Locatelli,' said Gruner, spreading his hands in a placatory gesture. 'You are clearly in a state of shock. Please permit me to prescribe a sedative. I will arrange for you to be accompanied home by a junior doctor who will make sure that you take the correct dosage. Tomorrow, when you are properly rested, you will feel better and we can continue our conversation.'
Ignoring Gruner, the Italian reached into his pocket and produced a sheet of paper. It was covered on both sides in an inky scrawl.
'This letter was the last I received from Julietta, my wife. Let me translate it for you: