The Fig Eater

by Jody Sheilds

  As they watch, Jószef stands up and digs his hand through his pockets. He pulls out a tiny bottle, shakes it into the palm of his hand, and swiftly pops something into his mouth. Franz is roughly shoved aside as the Inspector flings open the door and charges into the room. Jószef is frozen in a crouch; he doesn’t move until the Inspector hits the side of his head and he collapses onto the floor.

  Franz winces, afraid the blow has knocked off Jószef’s silver nose. He doesn’t want to see the black hole in the man’s face, the ruins of his nose.

  The Inspector stoops and picks up something with his handkerchief. He holds it out to Franz as if it were something precious, a bird’s nest, a jewel. Franz is puzzled by the small white square on the cloth and the sharp odor in the room.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a sugar cube. He’s an ether addict.”

  Now Franz can see a wet spot spreading around the square of sugar in the handkerchief.

  Jószef is curled up on the stone floor, his hands pressed dumbly against his head, the ether already leaked into his body.

  He’s locked up under observation.

  In Jószef’s pockets, Franz finds small bronze coins and a piece of ribbon tied in a single knot. His shirt, jacket, and pants are ripped apart and searched.

  Nothing is found sewn into the seams.

  A day later, deprived of his drug, Jószef is even more sullen than when he was first arrested. He stares at the floor in answer to their questions about the thumb found in his room. The Inspector is uneasy, certain the man’s silence is filled with a stream of foul incantations directed at him. Armaya is the word Erszébet gives these curses when they’re spoken out loud.

  Two days later, Jószef talks, no longer defiant, apparently worn out by his confinement in a windowless room, the worst punishment for a Gypsy. Timid, cringing, he tells them what they already know: the number of years he’s worked for Herr Zellenka and his wife, his fine opinion of them, his duties, his lack of an alibi. Yes, he knew Dora. For years. He loudly claims he had nothing to do with her murder. He closes his eyes when speaking about her. The death of a young person is a cursed event, he says. May my blood spill — Te shordjol muro rat — if I brought harm to the girl, he swears.

  He has no idea the severed thumb was hidden in his room. Anyone could have put it there. The room has no lock.

  What he says is true, but the Inspector knows this circumstantial evidence is probably enough to convince most examining judges the man is guilty of grave robbery, mutilation, and Dora’s murder. Bürger regard Gypsies as less than dogs. His investigation of Dora could end here, with Jószef.

  Perhaps the man senses the Inspector’s hesitation.

  “I caught a girl in my room,” he says eagerly. “A trespasser, a thief. She put the thumb there. May I be buried next to Dora — Te prakhon man pasha o Dora — if I lie.”

  The Inspector is suddenly tired. A girl, a thief in a Gypsy’s room? No. He tries to rein in his exasperation. All his skills of patience, his set of practices, are useless with this man. Is there a better strategy he could take?

  Jószef will say nothing further. Franz returns him to his cell. His shouted words echo down the hall, Si khohaimo may patshivalo sar o tshatshimo. There are lies more believable than truth.

  That afternoon, Jószef is escorted to a room and ordered to stand in a line with other ragged men. He asks to remove his diklo, a bright silk kerchief that clearly marks him as a Gypsy.

  Franz frowns and shakes his head, relishing his power to say no, but the Inspector gently puts his hand on his shoulder. It’s fine, Franz. Let him stand without his kerchief. There is nothing Jószef can do about his feet, which are sockless according to Gypsy code.

  Franz brings an elderly governess and a shoe-shine man into the room. He discovered these two witnesses, who swore they recognized Dora’s photograph, and were in the Volksgarten the day of the murder. They exchange formal greetings with the Inspector, who thanks them for their time and asks them to carefully study the individuals standing in front of them.

  “Did you see any of these men in the Volksgarten?”

  The Inspector’s voice is gentle, but it pulls like a string, and the men shift their feet, change the position of their hands, and either glance away or stare at him defiantly. One man coughs nervously, as if the ill feeling in the room were contagious.

  The shoe-shine man is just as uneasy, aware that he’s just one step away from joining the shabby group in front of him. He nervously searches their faces.

  “No. I don’t recognize anyone. Nobody here I’ve seen before. I’m sure of it.”

  The governess is even more uncomfortable. She glances quickly at the men, then squeezes her handkerchief and bows her head, too shy to speak. The Inspector takes her aside, hoping her reluctance indicates she recognizes Jószef.

  “Please, Fräulein, you must study the suspects. There is no need to feel embarrassed. You may speak to me later in private.”

  She stares at the floor.

  “No,” she says. “I can’t help you. It’s beneath me to look at these men. I’m a lady.”

  The Inspector and Franz exchange a pained glance and dismiss the men.

  Protesting loudly, the Gypsy is returned to his cell.

  Franz compares Jószef’s boot to the plaster footprint from the Zentralfriedhof. Although they look about the same size to his eye, he knows a plaster copy is always slightly larger than the sole of the original boot or shoe, the difference calculated at about 2.5 millimeters. Jószef’s boot is measured and is calculated to be the same size as the boot that left the print in the cemetery.

  However, the plaster model doesn’t show any wear and patching, details that would unmistakably match it to Jószef’s well-worn boot. The soil in the cemetery was too dry to pick up these details. A dead end.

  A large cabinet in the Inspector’s office is filled with skulls of both criminals and victims. The collection was assembled by his predecessor following the methodology of Caesar Lombroso, a professor of psychology in Milan. Lombroso supported his claim that physiology could identify a criminal by measuring the skulls of countless murderers, rapists, thieves, petty criminals, and unfaithful wives, both dead and alive, and comparing the statistics. The meticulous measurements of the skulls in the cabinet are recorded in several thick volumes on the shelves.

  One of the skulls in the case — that of a murder victim — was used as evidence in a trial by Professor Hans Gross and was later presented to the Inspector as a curiosity. During the trial, Gross carefully showed the skull to each man in the jury, then set it on a table. After a dramatic pause, he placed his hand on the skull and gently pressed down, shattering it into a thousand pieces. Gentlemen of the jury, this was the victim’s head as the murderer’s hatchet left it, he announced. They swiftly convicted the murderer.

  To prepare this evidence, Gross had boiled the skin off the crushed skull and reassembled the bones, gluing them together invisibly with cigarette papers.

  The Inspector imagines the gratifying effect Dora’s severed thumb will produce when it is shown to a jury.

  A pathologist stewed the severed thumb in formic aldehyde to preserve it. Before the jar was permanently sealed with wax, the thumb was fished out, dried, inked, and a print was taken. It was compared with the prints taken from Dora’s hands. The severed thumb print was identical.

  Unnerved by the eerie reuniting of the thumb with its identification, Franz refused to have anything to do with this process. He is surprised that the whorls and ridges on Dora’s thumb remained completely unchanged during its time underground.

  “Fingerprints only vanish with the destruction of the skin,” the Inspector patiently explains. “It’s impossible to alter fingerprints on the living. In Lyons, Locard and Witkowski tried a series of mutilating experiments, pouring hot oil and boiling water on their fingertips, even burning themselves with heated metals. After their skin healed, their fingerprints were still intact and identical.�
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  Franz stares at the palms of his hands.

  The Inspector continues. “Fingerprints are like a piece of lace. No matter how it is twisted, it returns to its original pattern.”

  The Inspector isn’t completely convinced Jószef murdered Dora or even severed her thumb, although this is a straightforward conclusion supported by the evidence. The idea that Dora’s parents or friends would mutilate her body is terrible. And he believes unlikely. Or was this hideous dismemberment meant to falsely transform the crime, making it only explicable by superstition or the actions of a madman? Was it designed to draw him away from the truth, a distraction while the suspect slipped away? He must step back, be careful not to read himself into the crime.

  He sends a second letter to his colleagues with a knowledge of Gypsy lore, asking for information about human talismans. None of the men have responded to his first inquiry about excrement left at the scene of a crime.

  From time to time, the Inspector has experiences of déjà vu, prompted by certain odors, colors, slants of light, and shadows. Even a stranger’s gesture or manner of walking can sometimes seem uncannily familiar. He’s convinced these sensations are proof of his prowess as an investigator, his skill of observation. He values these signs for their usefulness rather than as connections to his own most intimate memories.

  He wasn’t surprised when the thumb was discovered in Jószef’s room. It was as if he’d been waiting, expecting something to darken his foreboding. He considers the excrement found by the girl’s body. The fig in the vial. The thumb in the floor. Dora’s reticule, buried in the garden. He recognizes the same mocking attitude. The Gypsy was correct. Si khohaimo may patshivalo sar o tshatshimo.

  A woman on the street bumps into him, a red-faced flower seller he’s never seen before. The heavy liquid weight of the jar containing the thumb shifts in his satchel, weighing down his arm. Agitated, he tosses the woman a few coins. “Küss die Hand,” she thanks him.

  He stares at the bunch of pale hothouse roses she’s forced into his hand, closed petals with the greenish tint of dead skin. For a moment, he’s convinced the piece of flesh — the thumb in his satchel — has some weird power. No, it’s nonsense. He dismisses the notion. He’s taken other objects connected with crimes from his office, certain that their meaning can more easily be deciphered by isolating them. At various times, he’s carried around a button from a missing child’s jacket, a thin blade pulled from a murdered man’s chest, a cheap bracelet from a suicide’s wrist, a lock of hair from an adulteress. Once he had a cane that concealed a dagger the width of a pencil. He kept a whip that was found near the tracks just outside of the city, apparently thrown from the train. His collection of fetishes.

  He tells himself he took the objects for study.

  Erszébet puts her husband’s roses in a vase taken from the credenza in the dining room. After he walks upstairs, she opens his satchel. She does this as a matter of routine. Pandora’s privilege. In the bottom of the satchel she discovers a heavy jar, a clumsy shape wrapped in paper. She takes it into the hallway, hoping he won’t hear her footsteps.

  She holds the jar in one hand, the glass gradually growing colder against her palm as she unwinds the paper from it. When she sees what’s inside, she nearly drops the jar. In the dim light, the thumb moves like a strange fish in the thick liquid. The thumb itself is intact, attached to a chunk of exposed muscle and ragged, mottled skin where it was roughly cut away from the hand. Dora’s name and a date are written on the tag affixed to the jar.

  She wonders what chain of events created this hideous souvenir.

  Very late that night, falling snow covers the house like a bell jar. Under that perfect silence, Erszébet sets out her supplies in the kitchen. She paints a replica of the thumb, touching a brush to paint, to water, and then to paper. The captive thumb in the jar is the mirror image of her own hand holding a brush in front of it. She works very carefully, since the least motion of the table makes the thumb spin lazily in the jar.

  She imagines if the thumb were set free in water, it would swim away.

  Erszébet had no concept of the way her husband searched a room. She worked backward, hiding objects. She taped some of her watercolors flat to the underside of the kitchen table. Smaller papers were curled into the linings of her hats. She folded the veils and tissue paper over the hats in a particular way before the lid of the box was closed. A secret trap set for intruders.

  During the search of Jószef’s room, the Inspector had been too distracted to pay close attention to Frau Zellenka.

  “Franz, did you watch her reaction when the thumb was discovered?”

  Embarrassed, his assistant blinks and shakes his head. He’d been too caught up in the excitement, his eyes fixed on the floor.

  The Inspector doesn’t feel a second reprimand is necessary. He had noticed the woman’s remarkable coolness, her self-composure. She was invisible during the discovery of the evidence. A curious woman. He schedules an interview with the Zellenkas at their home.

  Fräulein Yella opens the door, takes his hat and walking stick. They’re expecting you in the drawing room, she says, giving him a stare he describes later as insolent.

  Herr Zellenka greets him like an old friend, urging him to take coffee or a glass of Slivovitz. His wife says nothing, just briefly nods and continues smoking, a sullen figure in a loose silk dress brilliantly patterned in yellows and reds.

  “Inspector, we are very distraught about this terrible discovery. My wife hasn’t been able to sleep from worry. A finger hidden in the floor? How could such a thing happen?”

  “That’s what I’m going to discover.” He produces his notebook.

  “My wife described the thing to me, of course. But whose finger is it? And where is the rest of the body?”

  “I’m afraid that is a police matter.”

  His cold reply ignites Zellenka’s temper. The man isn’t accustomed to rebuffs.

  “But exactly how was it removed from the body? Was it cut off? I don’t know why you can’t tell me anything. After all, the evidence was found on my property.”

  “I’m here to discuss how the evidence came to be placed on your property.” The man’s curiosity irritates him. He’s encountered the type before, morbid seekers of information who eagerly quiz him for gruesome details when they learn his profession. He had to dismiss the last police photographer, who was caught peddling pictures of crime scenes to wealthy collectors.

  “No fingers are missing from anyone in our household.”

  Frau Zellenka’s voice surprises him; he’d forgotten her during the conversation. She kept herself distant, just listening, a calculation he recognizes.

  “That makes my job easier.”

  “Excuse my wife, Inspector. She sometimes speaks out of turn.”

  He studies — or feels — the tension between them. Lets this silence hang in the air.

  “What my husband means is that we all know Jószef is guilty. He clearly mutilated someone, hopefully a corpse.”

  Her fingers toy with a cigarette, and he realizes even this gesture is a challenge to him. A quick, unconsidered response would put him onto the game board she’s set up for him. He steps back.

  “Jószef hasn’t been formally charged with any crime yet. It isn’t the way the system works,” he says, his voice mild.

  “But is the finger related to Dora’s murder? It seems so extraordinary, there must be a connection.”

  The Inspector rewards Herr Zellenka with a tiny smile. A straight stretch of his lips. That’s his only acknowledgment of his question. The rest of the interview also doesn’t go well. The couple claim to know nothing that could help his investigation. They protest their involvement in this scandal. Herr Zellenka hopes the police won’t be coming back to dig up the garden.

  As anticipated, the Inspector learned nothing new about the evidence, but he knows more about Herr and Frau Zellenka. He’s angry. She’s in control.

  While he interviewed
the Zellenkas, the maid slipped out before he could talk to her.

  The next morning, Franz and three assistant officers dig up the floor of Jószef’s room and the entire stable. They find nothing.

  Erszébet gives Wally her watercolor of the fragment of the human hand in the jar. Dora’s thumb. Wally pushes her Kapuziner away, sets down the picture, and closes her eyes. They’re at a table in the automatic restaurant at 59 Kärntner Strasse.

  When she first saw the unholy contents of the jar, Erszébet had immediately understood the stolen thumb was to be used as some kind of talisman. That made the Gypsy the suspect. But why Dora? Perhaps the thumb had to be stolen from a dead virgin. Or an interred hysteric. Or the daughter of a man and a woman who had fallen out of love. Perhaps any dry human bone would do.

  Later, she began to believe Herr Zellenka mutilated Dora’s body. His motive is more difficult for her to read. Was it done to punish or blackmail Dora’s father? Is it a secret souvenir of his first crime, the girl’s murder? Did he have the assistance of Jószef — or was it done to implicate him? What happened during Dora’s life that led to this grotesque mutilation after her death? The fig, the thumb. Something added to the girl’s body, something taken away.

  “Why did Herr Zellenka hide the thumb in Jószef’s room?” Wally asks.

  “To put the blame elsewhere. Of course he couldn’t keep the evidence in his house, it might be discovered.”

  “Maybe he couldn’t sleep with such a vile thing under his own roof?”

  But how can they pursue Herr Zellenka? He’s inaccessible.

  I’ll ask the tarot what’s going to happen, Erszébet says, and draws the top card, number fifteen, le Diable. She frowns.