The Fig Eater

by Jody Sheilds

  “Yes. Unless there was someone else with Dora and her murderer in the Volksgarten.” Erszébet smiles. “There are at least four people who also know Dora ate a fig. The murderer. My husband. You. Me.”

  Wally returns her smile.

  Erszébet has carried the painted replica of the fig across the city in her satchel. Now she hands the watercolor to Wally.

  “This is the fig from Dora’s stomach?” Wally is fascinated by the painting. “It’s wonderful, so precise. Like a photograph. How did you learn to paint?”

  “My father hired an instructor. He taught botany, drawing, and painting.”

  Erszébet also grew up surrounded by the words of the old women helping her mother. They told stories, floating the household on a wave of superstition and omens. Days of the week and even some hours had a special significance attached to them that determined the activities of the house. No needles or scissors could be used on Monday or Friday. Tuesday, Kedd, was unlucky, a dangerous day to wash hands or comb hair. Every day at sunset, evil spirits gathered, reaching the height of their powers at midnight.

  Erszébet props the watercolor up against her coffee cup. Although pleased by Wally’s compliments, she would never praise anything she accomplished or owned. The girl doesn’t understand Erszébet’s belief in the magical power of words. A Magyar mother will call her unchristened newborn the little ugly one or the little pagan one to protect it from sorcery. Words guard the baby, disguise its perfection.

  Although Erszébet doesn’t acknowledge this to Wally, she knows they have collaborated on an irresistible story about Dora’s murder. She chooses to discuss it only with the girl. If she confessed her pursuit of Dora’s murderer to her husband — even though he values her opinion — it would give authority to his greater experience and wisdom. She cannot disclose her role without renouncing it. What is unspoken remains most powerful.

  However, this secret pursuit has altered her relationship with her husband. She wonders if her new concupiscence is the result of frustration, and if it is shared by the others who circle around Dora’s corpse, desiring an answer, a conclusion, resurrection.

  Later, when they walk toward the Hofburg, Erszébet tells Wally about a legend she found in an old book. It sounds like a dream, she says.

  If you fall asleep under a fig tree, you will be awakened by a spectral nun. She will offer you a knife. If you take the knife by the blade, she will stab you through the heart. If you grasp the knife by the handle, she must grant you good fortune.

  Wally doesn’t smile at the story. She adopts the image as her own, as if she’d fashioned it in her dreams.

  The night following their conversation, Erszébet dreamed of figs but not of good fortune. She saw a girl’s face, white and still. A fig was split open over her closed eyes and mouth, like swollen brown lips, bruised genitals. Green brown violet, the colors of decay.

  CHAPTER 4

  The city of Vienna is intimately positioned over crypts and burial vaults hollowed out under its churches, the Kapuzinerkirche, the Stephansdom, and the Michaelerkirche. A subterranean passage connects the Burg and the Augustinerkirche. Thousands of plague victims are interred in a deep pit near the church of Maria Treu.

  Now pneumatic mail tubes snake underneath the city, avoiding these enclaves of the consecrated dead. Above ground, they are marked by red postboxes.

  The Inspector received a letter from Dora’s father, delivered by pneumatic post. He’d like to discuss a matter that concerns them both. In his office. Very little surprises the Inspector at this point in his career. Frequently, people connected with a crime contact him months or years later, their memories embroidered by guilt and fear. Suddenly an incident, a word, or even a stray glance they’ve recollected becomes enormously significant.

  The same thing happens with individuals who were close to a suicide. They blame themselves, assign their own behavior, some selfishness, as the cause of the tragedy. Nothing usually comes of it. He’s convinced this phenomenon works like a superstition, just as a bloodred moon is later remembered as an indication of the next morning’s windstorm, and a dog’s howl or a magpie perched on a roof foretold a death. He doesn’t trust a rethreaded memory. It isn’t a reliable guide.

  The Inspector finds Philipp’s office is located at a good address, and furnished in an expensive modern style. He welcomes the Inspector, pulls out a chair for him, and even leans toward him over his desk, flatteringly attentive. He offers a Regalitas and then lights one himself. The man seems more at home here than in his own study.

  Behind a ragged cloud of tobacco smoke, Philipp says he’s been thinking about his daughter’s case. There is some information he’d like to share. The Inspector silently quiets his skepticism and doesn’t take his eyes off the man’s face or hands as they maneuver his cigar. He watches him as closely as a lover.

  “I suggest you talk to a friend of the family, Herr Zellenka. He might be able to help with your investigation.”

  The Inspector carefully puts his cigar down. He takes out his notebook and makes a note about Herr Zellenka, identifying him in code as Herr K. This is the man Philipp’s wife had also mentioned.

  “You believe he knows something of interest?”

  “It didn’t occur to me at first. But now, yes, I think so. I noticed he had a strange manner when Dora died, and even long before that. Until recently, he took a genuine interest in Dora, gave her books, escorted her to museums. But I believe they quarreled. In fact, she was no longer speaking to him when she died.”

  “Do you have any idea about the reason for their quarrel?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t. You’ll have to ask him.”

  “Herr Zellenka is happily married?”

  “Yes. Of course, you’ll want to speak with his wife, too. She was also close to Dora.”

  “What is your relationship with him?”

  “A fair question. He was an intimate friend of mine, but we had an argument. I haven’t spoken to him since Dora’s funeral. Over three weeks now.”

  During their conversation, the Inspector is highly conscious of the man across from him. How he nervously jerks his chair forward. At what point he picks up and puts down his cigar. When he touches his face or raises an eyebrow. The Inspector tallies these silent gestures as well as what he says. For members of the Bürgertum, any show of emotion or flamboyant gesture is unmanly, unrefined. Even young men walk and talk carefully, slowly, like grandfathers, following this male code of respectable behavior.

  “May I ask what your quarrel was about?”

  “I assume it is necessary for me to answer?”

  The Inspector notes he takes offense at the question, stalls his response. He struggles to keep from anticipating the man’s answers. Keeping his face expressionless, he stares straight across the desk at him. Philipp idly watches the frail burned end of his cigar crumble.

  “Very well. Our quarrel had nothing to do with my daughter. Perhaps quarrel is too strong a word. We just drifted apart. He’ll give you the same story regardless.”

  “You’re quite certain of that?”

  Philipp leans back in his chair, lazily playing with his cigar. This action betrays his agitated state of mind. The Inspector senses he’s furiously deliberating with himself. He wonders what memory pictures the man is recalling, possibly struggling to disavow. He makes himself remote from Philipp’s process.

  “I may as well tell you. We had a disagreement over a woman. Not my wife.”

  “Is your wife aware you’re seeing this woman?”

  “My wife doesn’t exactly know about her, but let’s say she understands. At any rate, I’m no longer in touch with this woman, and I don’t wish to say anything more about her. She has nothing to do with my daughter’s death. I won’t reveal her name.”

  “I will note your refusal to give me the woman’s name. You won’t reconsider?”

  “Her identity is a point of honor, although I don’t imagine that’s something you encounter very often
in your work. I’m certain you’ll be able to discover who the woman is by questioning Herr Zellenka or one of the other gossips employed by my wife to manage the house.”

  The Inspector wonders about Philipp’s code of honor. He makes a show of closing his notebook and rises slowly from his chair. He retrieves his cigar. He waits. He knows not to leave before the subject of an investigation indicates he has finished. It’s a mysterious signal; sometimes it doesn’t happen at all. But occasionally a man or woman will blurt out something of interest, reveal themselves with a remark or a joke made in sheer relief the interview is over. It’s always significant. There’s an expression, Herrschaften haben Zeit, “Ladies and gentlemen never hurry.”

  Philipp pushes back his chair and gets up, shifting his cigar so he can offer his hand to the Inspector.

  “I imagine you’re a perceptive judge of men, so I probably don’t need to explain this to you, but Herr Zellenka is not to be trusted. That is just my very biased experience, of course.”

  The Inspector allows himself an almost imperceptible shrug. Though Philipp made his comment in an offhand way, he detects an eagerness, as if his words were underlined. He nods absently, as if he hadn’t heard him.

  He thoughtfully taps his bowler hat down on his head and picks up his walking stick. He is halfway down the polished hallway before he realizes Dora’s father has forgotten his claim that a stranger, a Gypsy, is responsible for the death of his only daughter.

  Not for the first time, he wishes it were possible to truly share the intimate process of an investigation. To ease his isolation. He cheats when he takes his wife and Franz through the course of his deductions. Unconsciously, he tailors his sentences and his questions to each of them, trying to shape their answers. He also holds back certain uncomfortable or speculative ideas.

  He recognizes uncertainty as part of the process of solving a case. There is always a waiting period, an empty time when nothing seems to happen and nothing seems connected. He can live with this state of unknowing. This is how he differs from the author of Kriminalistik, who put a name to everything. Professor Gross’s theory of crime has no blanks.

  In his copy of System der Kriminalistik, the Inspector has marked certain passages with pencil. He often turns to these pages, like a man rereading poetry or the Scriptures for guidance.

  Now he leafs through the Kriminalistik to the chapter on “Orientation,” although he knows it by heart.

  What above all is of importance in private life is to ferret out a motive for a lie. When a story about something has been related either to ourselves or others, false in some particulars which we only discover later on, we more often than not carry the matter no further, because it is of no importance in itself; but if we wish to gather a lesson therefrom we shall try — by a direct method for preference, as by frankly and honestly asking the question — to discover why the lie has been told.

  When the Inspector studied with Professor Gross, he was compelled to keep a notebook commenting on what he’d read, his observations about others, and the nuances of his own moods and desires. This mindfulness is a noble pursuit that brings self-acceptance and pleasure, Gross told his students. It may lead you to some truths about yourselves as well as criminal types. In this way, he modeled the students’ self-development on the lessons of Epictetus, who believed men must vigilantly test their thoughts against the highest principles.

  The Inspector has religiously kept up this habit, so that he is a watcher of men and himself. This training has enabled him to work unencumbered by his emotions.

  He also has the habit of creating a visual picture for the crimes he investigates. When he thinks of Dora, he sees her body spanned with threads, so she’s roped and bound to the ground like Gulliver. This is his image of the case right now.

  He never imagines the face of the murderer. He does memorize the face of the victim.

  On the street, gentlemen lift their bowler hats to friends, acquaintances, and unfamiliar attractive women. The police are less obliging, and treat all women with equal contempt in public. If a single woman is moving too slowly on the sidewalk, they loudly ask her what she’s waiting for. Wally has noticed that some women will walk quickly past a policeman, averting their eyes or focusing on something in the distance, hoping to avoid his loud comments.

  There is no ordinance forbidding women to smoke in public, and so even young girls defiantly enjoy cigarettes and small cigars on the street, in offices, and even on the electric tramways. In the most expensive restaurants and hotels, women are allowed to smoke and have dinner without a male escort.

  One evening early in October, Erszébet took Wally to the Hotel Sacher on Augustinerstrasse, to celebrate her eighteenth birthday. The Sacher is considered the best hotel in the city, and several tables were occupied by women dining together. In a corner of the room, two elderly women relentlessly turned the air blue with their cigar smoke. A pair of American ladies waved the maître d’hôtel over. Tell them to put out their cigars, they ordered. I regret I cannot do so, he whispered, the smokers are the Princess Trauttmansdorff and the Princess Esterházy. Aristokraten. The American women silently folded their napkins and left the room to eat downstairs with the coachmen.

  Archduke Otto, the emperor’s nephew, disgraced himself in the lobby of the hotel when he appeared naked except for his sword and cap before a group of ladies.

  Erszébet felt uneasy about two women visiting the Naturhistorisches Museum, so she selected her best hat, a deep-brimmed black felt with feathers and other pieces of bird snared in its veiling. She carries an umbrella. Wally wears her red cloak.

  They meet in the headquarters for the licensed Dienstmänner on the Stephansplatz. Erszébet hires a Dienstmann, Andrásy, to escort them for the afternoon, paying him forty Hellers. He’s stout, red faced, and outfitted in a scarlet leather cap and a uniform with a round, numbered medallion. This gives him an air of accountability.

  A fiaker drives them the short distance to the Naturhistorisches Museum, a heavy half-Renaissance, half-Baroque building on the Burgring near the Volksgarten. The solemn Dienstmann sits up front with the driver.

  Erszébet had written Herr Pietznigg, the chief botanist at the museum, in advance, using her husband’s name. When they are ushered into his office, Pietznigg makes it clear he was expecting an official, not a woman. The Dienstmann waits by the white-tiled stove, his arms folded across his chest. His posture tells them he also believes this is no place for women.

  Under their critical eyes, Erszébet calmly unwinds her watercolor of the fig from its silk wrapper and hands it to Pietznigg.

  “We need this identified.”

  Pietznigg is very blond, and his spectacles are fashioned from such fine wire they’re invisible on his face. The skin above his transparent eyebrows puckers in a frown.

  “A fig?”

  “What variety is it, please?”

  “It isn’t my habit to answer questions upon the instant. I will contact you with the information at a later date.”

  Erszébet makes an impatient clicking noise with her lips and narrows her eyes. “My husband, the chief inspector of police, would prefer an answer as quickly as possible.”

  Wally interrupts his protest. “We aren’t gardeners. We’re here on business. This is a police matter.”

  She’s confident her English accent will excuse her aggressiveness. She’s also afraid Erszébet will lose her temper. Wally knows that when Erszébet is provoked, she will never compromise her dignity by raising her voice. Instead, she’ll become very quiet or excessively polite, and then suddenly make a provocative statement. Sometimes she even reacts violently, which seems to appear from nowhere. Once Wally watched as Erszébet plunged her parasol between the wheels of a fiaker, simply left it there after the driver cheated on the fare and she paid it without complaint. Thrilled and embarrassed, Wally retrieved the parasol and hurried after her.

  Pietznigg backs down. “Very well, Fräulein.”

  His footst
eps grow fainter as he disappears into a maze of bookshelves to search for information. The Dienstmann clears his throat and shuffles his heavy boots. In a few minutes, the botanist reappears, struggling with a huge book. The Dienstmann rushes to help maneuver it onto the table. Pietznigg obviously doesn’t like the man’s touching it, but he elaborately thanks him and makes a ceremony of opening the book. He reverently turns the pages, which mollifies him.

  Erszébet notices the dark, rough-edged parchment, the dense Latin script.

  “Your fruit in question would appear to be Col di Signora Nigra, a variety of Ficus carica, the edible fig. It is grown extensively near Roussillon, in France. Its second crop is edible, usually ripening in late August.”

  Wally asks if the fig can grow in Vienna.

  “It could, although it’s susceptible to cold and wind. The tree is buried in the winter.”

  He smiles at their puzzled expressions. “You dig around the roots to loosen them. Then you dig a fairly deep trench straight out in front of the tree. The branches are tied against the trunk, and the entire tree is lowered into the ground and covered with dirt.”

  “Exactly when is the tree buried?” Erszébet asks.

  “I’d calculate sometime in November, depending on the temperature. You dig the tree up again in the spring. A botanical resurrection.”

  “Like Lazarus,” says the Dienstmann.

  His voice comes from the corner, startling them.

  Pietznigg misunderstands the women’s anxious looks. “There are plants that are even stranger. For instance, the trumpet flower and the mimosa are both pollinated by bats.”

  Afterward Erzsébet pays the Dienstmann and they walk up Kohlmarkt to Demel Konditorei. The interview has tired them, and Erzsébet forgets to open her umbrella. They order two strong Kapuziner and share a Streuselkuchen and a Guglhupf. Wally has found Erszébet unfailing in her choice of desserts. They finish eating before discussing the subject that obsesses them.