Death And The Maiden lp-6

by Frank Tallis

  ‘What is it?’ asked Else. As usual, she had sensed his unease.

  ‘Nothing,’ he replied. He moved to the table and rested his hands on Else’s shoulders. ‘I thought I heard rain.’

  55

  Professor Freud lit a cigar and produced a flotilla of clouds that floated slowly over Liebermann’s head. Their conversation had touched upon several weighty subjects — masochistic impulses, psychasthenia, eurotophobia, and the mechanisms of repression — but as the evening progressed the atmosphere had become less collegiate and more convivial. Unusually, Freud had loosened his necktie prior to sharing some reminiscences of his early medical career.

  ‘One day,’ said the professor, between puffs, ‘I had a friendly message from Chrobak.’

  ‘The renowned gynaecologist?’

  ‘Indeed. He wanted me to take on a patient of his. You see, he’d just accepted a new teaching appointment and didn’t have enough time to care for her. I arrived at the patient’s house before him and found that she was suffering from attacks of meaningless anxiety and she could only be soothed by the most precise information about where her doctor was at every moment of the day. When Chrobak arrived he took me aside and told me that the patient’s anxiety was due to the fact that although she had been married for eighteen years she was still virgo intacta. The husband was absolutely impotent. In such cases, he said, there was nothing for a medical man to do but to shield this domestic misfortune with his own reputation and put up with it if people shrugged their shoulders and said of him: He’s no good if he can’t cure her after so many years. The sole prescription for such a malady, he added, is familiar enough to us, but we cannot order it. It runs …’

  Freud picked up a pen and scribbled something on his prescription pad. He tore off the sheet and handed it to his young disciple.

  Liebermann took the slip of paper and read:

  R Penis normalis

  Dosim

  Repetatur!

  Liebermann looked up and smiled.

  ‘Chrobak recommended this?’

  ‘Like many of his colleagues, Chrobak was perfectly aware of the link between eros and emotional disturbance. A year earlier I had overheard Charcot discussing a similar case.’ Freud reproduced the hand movements of the great French neurologist, ‘It’s always a question of the genitals — always, always, always! I thought to myself, if he knows that, why does he never say so? In due course my own clinical observations confirmed what had hitherto been merely anecdotal. I was convinced that many mental disturbances — and not just those affecting women — were attributable to problems arising in the bedroom, and subsequently concluded that, without satisfactory release, the accumulation of libido in the nervous system has a tendency to turn into anxiety. At that time, I viewed this transformation as a purely physical process, like wine going bad and becoming vinegar, but I have since, of course, rejected this simplistic view in favour of a more sophisticated etiological theory.’

  Freud continued talking, but Liebermann was distracted by a line of thought not unconnected with the professor’s reflections. The room seemed to recede as he was drawn inwards and a ghostly image of Amelia Lydgate formed in his cranium. She was stepping towards him, moving closer, her head falling backwards in readiness to receive his kiss. He had been so cautious, indecisive and dilatory. He had supposed that because Amelia had once been assaulted the prospect of intimacy would be unwelcome to her, and even psychologically damaging. But perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps intimacy, real intimacy, could be corrective, healing.

  ‘Listen to this.’ Freud’s voice impinged upon Liebermann’s reverie. The old man was evidently about to tell a joke, although how this had come to pass was a complete mystery to Liebermann on account of his distraction. ‘Frau Weinberger,’ said Freud, tapping his cigar on the edge of an ashtray, ‘accompanied her husband Jacob to the doctor. After the doctor had given Jacob a complete medical examination, he called Frau Weinberger into his office, alone. I regret to inform you, said the doctor, that Jacob has been overworking and his health has suffered. His condition is critical and unless you take the following advice he will surely die. Each morning, wake him gently with a kiss. Be pleasant to him at all times and make sure he is always in a good mood. Cook him only his favourite meals and don’t burden him with chores. Never nag or make unnecessary demands. And, most importantly, never deny him his conjugal rights. A satisfactory erotic life is essential for his well-being. If you do as I advise for the next six months, I am confident Jacob will regain his health completely. On the tram home, Jacob asked his wife: What did the doctor say? Frau Weinberger assumed a grave expression and replied: He said you’re going to die.’

  Liebermann laughed, but his laughter died when he noticed that the prescription slip was still in his hand. The words written upon it were as portentous as an ancient prophecy, and had many implications concerning his past and future conduct with Amelia Lydgate.

  56

  Rheinhardt and Liebermann’s music making was over, but a fragment of Schubert’s Abends unter der Linde — ‘Evenings under the Lime Tree’ — had lingered in Liebermann’s mind, transparent but curiously persistent.

  ‘Commissioner Brugel was unimpressed by Mathias’s supplementary report,’ said Rheinhardt. ‘He said he thought that the results were inconclusive.’

  ‘I suppose there’s an element of truth in that,’ said Liebermann. ‘A man committing suicide might have kicked up some mud.’

  Rheinhardt sipped his brandy and replied, ‘I was advised, in no uncertain terms, to leave the Saminsky affair alone.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  The inspector turned to his friend and said, ‘I keep thinking of the Crown Prince.’

  ‘Another suicide,’ said Liebermann with suggestive emphasis.

  ‘Did you know he was seen at the opera shortly before his demise? The overture had already begun when the curtain was pulled aside and his father joined him in the royal box. A significant occurrence: the emperor rarely patronises the opera. They say the two of them were whispering throughout the performance. The conversation they were having was apparently very serious. Expressions were grave. After the second act the emperor rose abruptly and departed. A week later the troublesome prince was dead.’ Rheinhardt emptied his brandy glass and placed it on the table. ‘I think, on this occasion, I will obey orders.’

  The silence that followed was deep and protracted. Liebermann could still hear the Schubert melody, endlessly repeating. Beneath it he discerned the beat of his own heart. Liebermann offered Rheinhardt a cigar but the inspector refused.

  ‘Another brandy, perhaps?’ Rheinhardt ventured.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Liebermann, obliging.

  The inspector took the replenished glass and swirled the contents. ‘I have some news that will make you happy,’ he said, without turning. ‘I have received authorisation to exhume the body of David Freimark.’

  57

  Low, dark clouds hung over the St Marxer cemetery. Everything seemed colourless, bleached to a vapid greyish monochrome by an obstinate drizzle. Two gravediggers and their assistants were standing in a hole, only the upper halves of their bodies visible. Although spades descended with mechanical regularity, progress was slow. The ground was so wet that it was necessary to shore up the sides of the grave to prevent the walls from falling in. Clots of viscous mud oozed through the vertical timbers, creating an alternating pattern of faecal extrusions.

  Rheinhardt and Liebermann had tired of watching this dismal scene, and had walked the short distance to the Mozartgrab. Beneath the stretched fabric of their umbrellas they smoked cigars and made some desultory conversation about the composer’s genius. The truncated column and the statue of the despairing cherub, his hand pressed pathetically against his brow, had never appeared more poignant. They returned to Freimark’s grave, made some encouraging remarks to the men (even though the hole didn’t look any deeper) and then walked up and down an adjacent pathway, stopping occas
ionally to read headstones.

  Eventually they heard a cry. Turning, they saw one of the gravediggers waving his spade in the air like the pendulum of a metronome.

  ‘Come,’ said Rheinhardt.

  They hurried towards the swinging blade, their route necessitating a disrespectful leaping over the final resting places of the dead. When they arrived at their destination they stood on some planks that had been placed at the foot of Freimark’s grave and peered down. The distinctive shape of a coffin had been revealed. A section of the lid had rotted through, and Liebermann thought that he could see something white inside. He also fancied he could smell corruption, decay, the release of foul vapours, but he checked his imagination and realised it was only the fetor of waterlogged earth.

  The exhumation continued under a pall of silence. In due course the coffin was heaved out of the grave. Liebermann could see, quite clearly now, a fixed, skeletal grin through the aperture.

  ‘The top’s rotten,’ said the chief gravedigger. ‘But the rest is sound. We could carry it to the mortuary van.’

  Rheinhardt nodded.

  The rain intensified and the gentle background susurration, hitherto ignored, suddenly increased in volume, becoming a continuous thrumming. There was something minatory about the downpour. Liebermann should have felt eager, excited, but the bleakness of the landscape and the miserable weather had lowered his spirits. The grave looked as if it had been violated rather than simply opened. He was filled with terrible doubts about the entire enterprise.

  ‘Well,’ said Rheinhardt, demonstrating remarkable perspicacity. ‘It’s too late to put him back again.’

  ‘There won’t be much left of the poor fellow,’ said Professor Mathias. ‘Putrefaction and maggots: they eat everything.’

  Liebermann and Rheinhardt helped the old man take the lid off the coffin. Inside were Freimark’s jumbled bones and some shredded remnants of fabric. A considerable amount of soil had accumulated around the skeleton. Where it was deepest, the surface trembled on account of the activity of burrowing insects. One of them, a creature with a ribbed carapace and agitated flagella, was crawling along the ridge of Freimark’s hip.

  Mathias stood at the head of the coffin and, assuming a solemn expression, began to recite a poem.

  ‘“The warder looks down at the mid-hour of night, on the tombs that lie scatter’d below.”’ He raised his hand up, like an actor, and added, ‘“The moon fills the place with her silvery light, and the churchyard like day seems to glow. When see! First one grave, then another opes wide, and women and men stepping forth are descried, in cerements snow-white and trailing.”’ Behind the thick magnifying lenses of his spectacles, Mathias’s eyes seemed to be floating outside his body. They fixed on Rheinhardt and the professor issued a challenge. ‘Well, Inspector?’

  ‘That was the first stanza of Goethe’s Totentanz,’ Rheinhardt replied.

  ‘Too easy, wasn’t it?’

  ‘There’s something in the coffin,’ said Liebermann.

  ‘Yes, the remains of David Freimark,’ Mathias responded with alacrity.

  Liebermann ignored the remark and pointed at an object half-buried in the soil. His extended finger directed the gaze of his companions through the baroque curves and arches of Freimark’s ribcage. ‘Look.’

  Mathias craned over the coffin’s edge. ‘So there is.’ He reached under the sternum and pushed the soil aside, uncovering a long wooden box. A tiny rusted key projected from the lock.

  The three men exchanged glances. Professor Mathias gave the box to Rheinhardt, who turned it over and examined it from all sides. The surfaces were unmarked. There was no beading or inlay. It looked, to the inspector, like an elongated pencil case.

  ‘Oskar?’ said Liebermann, impatient to discover what was inside. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  Rheinhardt sat down on a stool and placed the box on the bench in front of him. The key resisted the force of his knuckle for a few moments, then suddenly capitulated. Its rotation produced a click that sounded disproportionately loud — amplified by the morgue’s commodious acoustics. Rheinhardt raised the lid. Liebermann was aware of a faint breath of air and registered a fragrance, the merest trace of lavender. Inside the box lay a cylinder of paper, speckled with musical notation and tied with a piece of red ribbon. With great care, Rheinhardt removed the roll and slipped off the binding before flattening it out on the bench.

  ‘A song,’ said Rheinhardt.

  The staves were arranged in groups of three, a vocal part and piano accompaniment. The tempo indication was Langsam, andachtig. Slowly, devoutly, Rheinhardt read the title: ‘Nearness of the beloved.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Professor Mathias. ‘I know it well. Once again, Goethe, I believe.’

  ‘Schubert also wrote a setting,’ said Rheinhardt.

  Without looking at the text, Mathias began to recite, ‘“I think of you when the sun’s shimmer gleams from the Sea: I think of you when the moon’s glimmer is mirrored in streams …”’

  ‘Yes. That’s it.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s not a copy of the Schubert song?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  Liebermann pulled up a stool next to Rheinhardt, sat down, and stroked the edge of the paper. All the notes had straight stems and the heads were neatly executed. Beneath the vocal stave Goethe’s poetry shadowed a melody which was ostensibly in C minor but swiftly slipped through a series of bold modulations. Rheinhardt turned the sheet over and held its extremities to stop the paper from curling. In the bottom right-hand corner was a date. 1 September 1863.

  ‘Eighteen sixty-three,’ said Liebermann. ‘The year he died.’

  ‘His last song?’ Rheinhardt ventured.

  ‘Possibly,’ Liebermann replied.

  ‘I’m very fond of ‘Hope,’ said Mathias. ‘I wonder if this setting is as affecting. You sing, don’t you, Rheinhardt? Would you care to give us a flavour …?’

  ‘Not now, Professor.’

  ‘Come now, don’t be shy. I’m told that you have a fine singing voice.’

  ‘With respect, Herr Professor, although I also am eager to hear Freimark’s swansong, given our purpose right now, I would very much like you to proceed.’

  ‘As you wish,’ Mathias grumbled and shuffled back to the coffin. Rheinhardt released the paper and allowed it to curl. He rolled it up tightly, replaced the ribbon, and pushed it back in the box. As the lid fell, Rheinhardt caught Liebermann’s eye. The young doctor looked feverish with excitement.

  ‘We’ll find a piano later,’ said Rheinhardt under his breath.

  ‘You do realise,’ said Mathias, ‘that the chances of discovering anything significant are vanishingly small.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rheinhardt. ‘Even so …’

  The professor picked up a femur and studied its ballooning terminus and the Greater trochanter: ‘I’ll clean the bones and take a closer look at them in due course; however, if the facts you have presented me with are correct, then much will depend on the condition of Freimark’s cranium.’ Mathias put the femur back in the coffin and lifted the hollow white skull. He held it in both hands and stared into the eye sockets. ‘My poor, dear fellow. That it should come to this.’ Mathias sighed and held the skull beneath the electric light which hung over the dissection table. ‘See here,’ Mathias said. ‘A very substantial insult, radiating fractures, located in the right parietal bone and a smaller, centrally placed insult, located in the frontal bone. The right zygomatic arch is also cracked. However, the occipital and temporal bones are intact, as are the maxilla.’ He paused and ran his finger over the parietal injury. ‘Interesting.’

  ‘What is?’ asked Rheinhardt.

  ‘Come closer. What do you see?’

  ‘An indentation, some splintering.’

  ‘And what about this?’ Mathias poked his finger into the damaged area.

  ‘What about what?’

  ‘It’s a right angle, Oskar,’ said Liebermann.

  ‘Straight edges,’
said Mathias. ‘Most unusual. Now, it’s perfectly possible that a man falling off the Schneeberg might land, unhappily, on a rock, the tapered summit of which just happened to be square-shaped; however, most natural structures are irregular or rounded. Ergo: I would suggest that this parietal insult was produced by a mallet or hammer.’ The professor turned the skull around. ‘The other injuries are unremarkable.’

  Rheinhardt had heard Mathias’s words and understood their meaning. Nevertheless, he felt an irrational desire for confirmation. ‘Freimark was killed with a hammer?’

  ‘Or a mallet. Yes.’

  ‘He was struck down first,’ said Rheinhardt, ‘and then pushed off the mountain?’

  ‘That is very likely,’ said Mathias. ‘Congratulations, gentlemen. I must admit that I was rather sceptical about this escapade. I thought that you might be wasting my time. But I was wrong. I do not know how you came to suspect foul play, but your methods have been vindicated. Again, congratulations.’

  ‘Professor Mathias,’ said Rheinhardt. ‘Why do you think it was that no questions were raised after the original autopsy? Why didn’t the pathologist mention an anomalous impression on the skull in his report?’

  ‘Why?’ Mathias responded. ‘Because he never saw it, most probably. He didn’t undertake a thorough examination — and why should he have? Accidental falls are common enough in lower Austria. The cause of death is almost always a head injury. In Freimark’s case, a superficial inspection of the scalp would have sufficed to locate the fatal trauma. There would have been little reason to look further. Besides, we are talking about a pathologist who practised forty years ago. If he was anything like the men who taught me, he would have been eager to finish his work and return to his club.’

  Rheinhardt turned to face his friend.

  ‘Well done, Max.’

  ‘I was wrong,’ said Liebermann distractedly.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’