by Jody Sheilds
No footprints disturb the snow around the stable. Jószef’s door has a new lock. Interesting. He takes the magnifying glass and a stiff broom-straw brush from his satchel. The fine webs of snow in the corners of the steps, which have the delicate appearance of something produced by a spider, are easily dusted away. He searches the area next to the stable, a tangle of frozen grasses. He works his way around the side of the building. His knees begin to ache from the cold and the crouching. He finds nothing.
A bit of red, half buried by snow, catches his eye. The color is so strange and out of place against the whiteness that for a moment he mistakes it for a lost jewel. No. A red pencil.
He automatically picks it up and reads the gold script stamped on its side. Cumberland and Rose Carthame. He has an image of a shop and the smell of oil paint. Erszébet’s pencils. He bought a set of Cumberland pencils for her at an art store in Paris.
Dora’s mother looks better. She was lulled into regular sleep at the sanatorium with doses of valerian and morphine. The sharp edge of her grief is gone.
She’s glad to see Wally, embracing her even before she can take off her coat or set down her portfolio. Wally notices she still wears the same black dress; it seems as if no time has passed since their last visit.
“Here, please sit down. Let me move the cushions for you. Are you comfortable? Would you like coffee?”
Her fussiness irritates Wally, but she finds herself unbending to it. Erszébet has been so distant with her lately.
Dora’s mother talks about the sun in the south. She walked every day. And the water. As part of her treatment, she sat in a tub of dark water that had bits of decomposed roots and grasses floating in it. And it stank of putrid sulphur.
A maid brings coffee and a layer cake, Pischinger Torte.
She continues to chatter. She enjoyed the whey milk sweetened with sugar at the sanatorium. Yes, she feels better, thank you. She’s decided to wear mourning dress for the rest of her life, just like the Kaiserin Elizabeth. Did Wally know that even the empress’s pearls were black, her grief was so great after the suicide of her son, Prince Rudolf.
After the torte is served, she takes Wally’s hand.
“I’d like to make you a gift of one of Dora’s books.”
Wally isn’t paying attention. She fumbles with the portfolio, her fingers too nervous to undo its wrapper. With her hasty effort, she tears it.
Alarmed at her nervousness, Dora’s mother watches her without speaking. She takes the photograph Wally hands her.
“What is this?” she asks, her voice fearful.
Wally stares at the picture as if she’s never seen it before. In this light, the nude girl is a harsh, ugly sculpture, her flesh carved up by scars.
She barely hears Dora’s mother gasp and move away, doesn’t notice the sofa cushions sink as she stands up and walks stiffly out of the room.
Wally doesn’t look after her.
Snow has left white hats on the statues and thick, mushy lines across balconies, windowsills, gateposts. Even though she counts the snow-covered and receding lampposts, trees — anything passing outside the windows — nothing distracts Wally from her feeling of deceit. Remembering the expression on Dora’s mother’s face, she’s tender with regret. She watches the spire of the Stephansdom approach, a fixed point above the rooftops, which are silver white or black, depending on the passage of sunlight during the day. Someone — a bearded doctor — told her a fable about Vienna: the skyline was created when a tea tray was tipped over the city, scattering its contents, which became the curiously shaped chimneys. However, the image of Dora’s mother, hands trembling as she held the ugly photograph, is stronger than anything else she sees.
She loudly asks the driver to go faster. He snugs his muskrat coat closer and urges the horses along Weihburggasse, the Parkring, and into Stadtpark. In the park, snow and the fading light have conspired to obliterate the head and breasts of the nymph of the Danube statue and double the size of the turret on the Moorish Pavilion.
She tells him to go past the lake, since it is sometimes illuminated with torches for skating in the evening. And now faint dots of light are visible behind the black woods.
The fiaker turns, and the lake is suddenly revealed, a great flat oval that appears to radiate a cold heat off its surface, transforming the surrounding icy trees into weightless, glittering lines. The torches at its edge are reflected on the ice, two broken white lines like a double strand of pearls.
Daredevil skating instructors in otter-skin caps and braided jackets boldly speed over the ice alone. Others move more slowly, coaxing their halting pupils. When the women on skates spin and turn, their long black veils float around their bodies, as if animated by some power of enchantment.
She gets out of the fiaker and watches until her feet are cold. Then Wally leaves Stadtpark for another destination.
The fiaker waits as she takes small, cautious steps along the icy walk in front of a large house. There’s a suggestion of light behind the curtains in the windows, perhaps a single lamp or candle burns in the room. She pounds on the door. After a few minutes, a tired-looking maid opens it and crossly tells her no one is at home. Wally shoves the portfolio of photographs at the woman and instructs her that no one but Erszébet is to open it. She tells her a second time. Yes, yes, the woman nods angrily, I understood you.
The driver is surprised when Wally runs back to the fiaker.
She’s giddy with relief. As the fiaker jerks forward, she falls back against the seat and doesn’t sit up again, just lets her body rock with its movement. Everything seems to be happening very fast. Go back through Stadtpark, she shouts at the driver, remembering the skaters executing circles and thinking she’d like to see them again.
Erszébet and her husband go away for the weekend, to stay with friends east of the Danube. It is a four-hour train ride, and the snow is much heavier outside Vienna. The train stops at the station late at night. They’re transported by sleigh to an immense house in the country, and their arrival is greeted by fires burning in the two fireplaces downstairs and glasses of strong Vilmoskörte, pear brandy.
His suspicions about the evidence — the rose-colored pencil — that may belong to Erszébet are unspoken between them, like cards that have been dealt but remain facedown, unplayed. There’s nothing he can do but cultivate an active patience. The bitter feeling around his heart surprises him.
If Erszébet notices he’s less withdrawn when they are in company, she gives no sign of it.
The next morning, a group of boar hunters gathers below Erszébet’s window. The men are identically dressed in jackets, huge caps, and gauntlet gloves, all of white fur. Heavy white felt boots cover their legs and thighs. She doesn’t recognize her husband until he waves at her.
As the hunters turn and walk across the white field, they suddenly vanish as completely as if they’d stepped into a black night without a moon, their clothing making them invisible against the snow. She can only follow their movements by the minute glints of light on the silver knives at their belts. They are like ghosts that move in sunlight.
Egon works just off the Graben on a street lined with photography studios and engraving firms. Wally finds him identified as Portrait Photographer on a plaque next to the door. A dark silhouette of steps leads up to his studio on the top floor.
Answering her knock, Egon opens the door himself and shows his surprise to see her. She’s breathless from the climb, stamping the snow from her boots in the hallway.
“I hope you don’t mind I came to visit.”
He reassures her it is his pleasure to see her.
Behind him, she can see a space filled with light. She walks into a room that seems unfinished, temporary, leaving a transparent trail of droplets from her wet boots. There’s little furniture, and the floor is bare wood. The light from a bank of slanted skylights is the heaviest presence in the studio.
She stares up at the ceiling.
“The skylights face north.
They give the most perfect light,” he explains, eager to impress her.
“I have a friend who paints pictures. She said Leonardo da Vinci did his portraits in bad weather or at twilight because that was the most perfect light.”
“I don’t need to wait for the weather or the sun. The camera operates with a different type of light. See what I can do?”
He hooks a pole into a thick black curtain at one side of the skylight and expertly jiggles it across the glass, plunging the room into artificial darkness. Another shade of stiff black fabric unrolls up from the bottom of the skylight with ropes and pulleys. It’s as flexible as a kite. By manipulating the curtains, he can make the light in the room grow brighter or dimmer, as if the entire daily procession of the sun were at his command.
“I can put shadows on the left or right side of someone’s face. Or I can move a light in front of them, so it appears they’re standing outdoors. Someone told me this light is as strong as the sun in the desert. I call it Egyptian illumination. I can only create it in the winter, since I need snow on the roof for reflection.”
Standing in this open space makes Wally uneasy. She’s been in few places that were this empty and she’s at a loss about where to position herself without the guidance of chairs, tables, rugs. Like familiar conversation. She notices painted lines radiating out from a point in the center of the room to the walls. Each line is marked at the baseboard with a number at fifteen-inch intervals.
He notices her staring. The lines are to calculate perspective, he says.
He hovers close behind her, and she walks away to examine the camera, a square wooden box as big as a trunk set on a wheeled table.
“See the bars set into the floor?” He points to a thick metal track embedded in the boards. “They’re for the camera. Let me show you how it works. Stand back.”
At the push of his hand, the camera hurtles straight toward her, like a blind thing, its transparent glass eye shuttered. She jumps back just before it hits her. The machine abruptly stops at the end of the track.
“Could you make me some tea?” she gasps, trying to smile.
“Of course. I’m sorry I didn’t ask you before. Excuse me a moment.”
He leaves to heat water on a ring behind a screen. She makes her way across the room to examine the photographs tacked up on the wall, which appear as indistinct gray images from a distance.
When she looks at the pictures, it’s as if she’s suddenly stepped into a void. They’re the same photographs Erszébet stole from the doctor. In one picture, the nude woman is seated, her hands at her sides. In the next three pictures, she faces the camera, cut off just below her knees. Her bald genitals are clearly visible, the center point of the photographs, the skin puckered and fiercely blotched. In all the images, her body would appear headless except for the thin outline of a hat, which completely shadows her face.
Wally is startled by footsteps, then Egon is standing behind her. She’s too shocked to be frightened.
“You took these pictures?”
“Yes. Some time ago.”
“Who is she?”
“No idea. She came here with a man. He asked me to take photographs of her as a medical record. Maybe he was a doctor. He said the woman had just finished surgery and was healing. She never spoke, never said a word, but I could tell she was unhappy. I take enough pictures to read bodies like a face.”
Her eyes are fixed on the photographs, but she’s only conscious of his presence. She moves back, but he’s behind her and she panics at his closeness. She’s suddenly claustrophobic; her breath comes from a tightness deep in her chest. She doesn’t turn around but focuses her eyes on one of Dora’s photographs until her breathing is easy again. Now she can ask a question.
“Who was the man with her? Do you know his name?”
“No. He didn’t make an appointment. He just walked in with her. He paid in cash, no argument about my price.”
“How old was he?”
“In his forties, I guess.”
“You’d recognize him if you saw him again?”
“Probably. He wasn’t unusual, a businessman. Very proper, a good Bürger. Why?”
“I’m just curious. These pictures are so strange.”
Her father had taken pictures too. She remembers her surprise when he solemnly handed her a photograph, and there were the familiar trees in the orchard, robbed of color and converted into black and white, strangely flat. She thought the trees were dead and she started to cry.
Egon brings her a cup of tea and a stool, and she sits next to him with her back to the photographs. His props and other paraphernalia are stacked against the wall in front of them; large wooden frames covered with white muslin, which he says are light reflectors; painted backdrops of pastoral landscapes and ruined castles; a stack of balustrades. He twists his legs around the rungs of his stool.
“After I photographed the woman, I heard the man ask her how many pictures I’d taken. She was too distraught to remember. He made me give him all the photographs. Even the glass-plate negatives. I secretly kept the four photographs that I printed, the ones on the wall.”
Wally fixes her eyes on his mutilated hand in order to concentrate on her questions.
“Did he seem friendly with her, the woman? They knew each other well?”
“Yes, I had the impression they knew each other, although they were a little uncomfortable. It was a strange situation. We were all a little uneasy.”
“How old was she?”
“I’m not sure. She seemed young. Twenty? She didn’t really want me to see her. That’s why her face is covered in the photographs. She wore a hat with a veil. She always looked at the floor. He did all the talking. Look, why are you so interested in her? I have better pictures.”
He plucks the cup from her hand and vanishes behind the screen, his footsteps dramatically loud on the bare floor.
When he returns, she makes her voice enthusiastic, to pull back the thread of their conversation.
“Your photographs are so wonderfully artistic.”
He grins, makes a mock bow, and presents her with another cup of tea. He tells her about an apparatus for picture taking he’s created, a system with a dynamo light and reflectors. He rummages in a box, then brings over a silver metal cone connected to a wire that will be synchronized to the camera’s shutter. Somehow it will direct light onto an object, correcting the exposure for the camera’s eye.
“Since I lost my fingers, I’ve been trying to make a safer light for the camera. The metal cone will contain the explosion.”
To gain his confidence, she fusses over the gadget. Eventually, she brings him around to discussing the mysterious woman’s visit to his studio again.
“She didn’t want the man to watch her being photographed,” Egon says, still patient. “He left the room while she undressed. I had the black cloth over my head, I was in back of the camera, so I guess she could pretend I wasn’t there. She came out from behind the screen with just a shawl around her. She stood where you’re sitting, right in front of the backdrop.”
Egon shifts his feet on the stool, straightening his lanky body out of its slouch. She waits, afraid to breathe, her balance on the stool slipping. She looks at him.
Frowning, he nervously revolves the silver cone in his hands. “I don’t know if I should tell you this. I haven’t told anyone. The man who wanted the photographs must have had a great deal of money. He came to the studio alone the day before he brought the woman here. He paid me to put a hole in the wall so he could watch her. I could see his eye, just there, when I took her picture.”
He points to a dark spot on the wall.
“I thought it wouldn’t matter, since she didn’t know he was watching. She’d been burned all below her waist. You can see it in the pictures. Her skin is ruined. I used his money to make this light for my camera.”
CHAPTER 12
The colored pencil is tagged and stored in a drawer in the police station, along with the r
est of Jószef’s meager possessions. A description of the pencil is entered in the logbook. The Inspector leaves it in storage, having convinced himself it is official property and cannot be removed.
When he discovered the pencil outside Jószef’s stable, the Inspector automatically classified it as evidence. A key and an enigma. In the next moment, when he recognized the pencil as perhaps identical to one he had given Erszébet, he felt the thing would burn his fingers, it was a red-hot wand. It was only with a great effort he slipped the pencil into his pocket, his hand trembling.
His discovery of this evidence has somehow marked him, made him a coconspirator without knowing the plot.
Had the pencil been planted near the stable? Clearly it didn’t belong to Jószef. And Erszébet? It is inconceivable that the pencil belongs to his wife. Could this unlikely evidence be connected to the mutilation of Dora’s corpse — or did a careless hand simply drop the pencil in the grass? Perhaps it has no significance.
He aches to forget it entirely. Why has he saved the memory of this object to resurrect it now? One thought chases another. He tries to calm himself. Seneca reasoned it was easier to prevent the inception of the emotions than to subdue them.
The solution is simple and secret. He can search through Erszébet’s art materials. He knows exactly where the box is kept. He could even dust it for fingerprints; there is charcoal powder in his satchel.
No, he refuses to tie Erszébet to his string of suspicions. He will not look through her belongings. He believes this is the correct decision. But in the back of his mind, he’s afraid of what he might not find in her box of art supplies. A certain pencil, rose carthame. At the same time, he longs for the relief of her denial — or confirmation.
He recollects a passage from Kriminalistik that details an officer’s approach to a problem: “When he starts work, the most important thing for the Investigating Officer is to discover the exact moment when he can form a definite opinion.”