The Fig Eater

by Jody Sheilds

  The walls in the director of the lunatic asylum’s office are lined with papers and charts. Inside a cabinet, the Inspector recognizes familiar round shapes, a collection of skulls. Probably harvested from patients, he calculates.

  The director doesn’t make him wait, abruptly entering the room while he’s still studying the contents of the cabinets. He’s a slim man with long and tousled hair, surprising for a doctor. Two pairs of pince-nez swing from a cord around his neck. They exchange courteous greetings.

  “Inspector, I deeply regret your encounter with one of our patients. The man had escaped his orderly. Nothing broken, I trust?”

  The Inspector shakes his head. His neck throbs inside his collar.

  “Good. Then we can move on to business. I think you’ll be very interested in the patient I mentioned in my letter. He fits the description of the man you’re looking for.”

  “I appreciate your help in this case.”

  “Certainly. It is my duty to assist when I can. During my time here, I’ve developed a personal interest in the criminally insane. In fact, I have records of my conversations with all the patients, if you’d ever care to read through them. I can recommend some of the more fascinating cases.”

  He waves his hand at the sleek rows of books lining the walls. Without waiting for the Inspector to reply, he eagerly continues.

  “The inmates have told me terrible stories of their childhoods. Sometimes I believe it is a privilege to bear witness. Of course, many days I hear nothing but the nonsensical ravings of madmen. I feel like their confessor.”

  “How do you know they’re telling the truth?”

  “Ah, that’s the problem. Perhaps their stories are an elaborate game to gain my sympathy. At any rate, it’s difficult not to give their ravings some sense. You know, organize their words.”

  The Inspector says he feels the same way when interviewing a suspect. He’s learned you have to let them go. Just wander into their dialogue without a destination. Don’t impose a beginning or an end.

  The director agrees. “I’ve found you have to watch your reactions. It’s strange, but even a madman can sense when you’re skeptical. I’ve had to discipline myself. I work to keep my face expressionless. My wife hates it. She tells me I bring the job home, I should smile more.”

  He looks worried. The Inspector smiles back at him.

  “I have a similar problem. Eye contact. My wife says it makes people uneasy.”

  “It does affect your life, doesn’t it? You know, I let the inmates do drawings with colored pencils. I save some of the better sketches.” He’s embarrassed now. “Some people believe I’m too easy on the patients. But it isn’t like the days when we locked up the mad in the Narrentum, that circular dungeon.”

  He’s momentarily lost in reflection.

  “Although you can’t be too sympathetic. The patients are sly. Once they’ve found a crack of pity, believe me, they’ll stick their fingers into it any way they can. Enough of this. Shall we visit my patient? He was brought in about five months ago. In early September.”

  The Inspector figures the man would have been free when Dora was murdered in August.

  As they step into the dark room, the Inspector senses they’re being watched, even though it seems empty, and their footsteps tunnel a hollow noise into the space. There’s a slight movement in the corner. As his eyes adjust to the level of light, he makes out a ragged young man hunched on the floor, his hands tied together in front of him. The Inspector walks over to him and then crouches down, bringing their faces level.

  The director waits by the door, giving him freedom to work.

  “He was found behind a barn, howling at the moon. Blood all over him. Claims he’s a csordásfarkas. Don’t get too close. We sometimes keep him restrained.”

  The Inspector doesn’t move back. His voice is so slow he feels his lips clearly shape each word.

  “Tell me your name, sir.”

  “Karl.”

  “Tell me, Karl. What strange things have you done?”

  Karl shuffles forward; his eyes never leave the Inspector’s.

  “The moon. The full moon comes, it’s like a window opens. Do you understand me? I go through it. I wander. I forget where I am. In the morning, my clothes are torn.”

  Becoming agitated, Karl spasmodically jerks his head from side to side.

  “Karl, did your head become larger, like a wolf’s?”

  “My lips swell. My mouth is dirty. My hands are dirty.”

  “Any women? Did you harm any women when you lost yourself?”

  “I don’t know. I woke up once with blond hair in my mouth. And I found something, a button in my pocket, but it wasn’t mine. I took it from someone. Red under my fingernails too.”

  Eyes closed, Karl rocks back and forth, rhythmically striking his bound hands against his knees.

  The Inspector quiets his thoughts. Empties himself. Strangely, it is almost a pleasurable sensation.

  Suddenly Karl stops moving.

  “I have dreams, but I can’t tell if they’re dreams or if they’re real. I dreamed I was a csordásfarkas.”

  “Yes, yes. I’m here to listen to you. Karl, were you ever in the Volksgarten? The park by the Hofburg. Do you remember?”

  “The Volksgarten? I don’t know. One tree is like another in the dark, isn’t that true?” He can’t hold still, he starts rocking again.

  “How do you know you’re a csordásfarkas?”

  The sore points on his neck ache. He senses Karl has no orderly retrieval of memories, and whatever he summons has no meaning. An image is just an image. The young man is truly mad.

  Karl bites his lip. He pantomimes Come here.

  The Inspector leans closer, completely focused, feeling his body too clumsy for the fineness of his concentration.

  Karl laughs and lifts his hands. His excited words tumble out, he can’t get his breath right.

  “See my hands? I have long hairs on the palms, that’s how I know. That’s the sign of a csordásfarkas. And my mouth, my mouth is the mouth of a wolf. See? See?”

  Karl throws his head back and opens his red mouth wide, his tongue lolling out.

  The Inspector slowly stands and puts a kind hand on his head, then leaves the room. Karl’s shrill howling laughter follows him out.

  For a terrible moment, the Inspector thought he saw hairs on the man’s palms, silky dark threads, but he dismisses it as a trick of the light.

  Back in his office, the director studies the Inspector’s face. “What did you think of Karl? Is he delusional or was he telling the truth?”

  The Inspector shrugs. He’s still troubled by his vision of the man’s hands. Surely that was a delusion.

  “It would make my job easier if a madman could be attached to every crime. But most madmen don’t reveal their true natures as straightforwardly as Karl.”

  The director nods. “He’s really no trouble to anyone here except at certain times of the month. I’m investigating whether his fits are tied into the cycles of the moon.”

  He hands the Inspector a folder.

  “I thought you’d be interested in this account of another wolfman. He lived long ago, and apparently was covered with thick hair. He was found in Compiègne, crouched over the bodies of four animals he’d torn to pieces with his teeth. They brought him to King Charles IX. Right in front of his majesty, the wolfman attacked and bit the king’s dog.”

  “At least there was a reliable witness to the crime.”

  They bid each other a cordial farewell at the door.

  It has been frequently remarked that madmen, especially certain varieties of madmen, are excellent observers; they are not nearly so averse to telling the truth as many people who rejoice in all their faculties, for they do not allow themselves to be guided by considerations of propriety; they have also more opportunities for observation, for things are done and said in the presence of a lunatic which would not be done or said before others.

  In the fi
aker going back to Vienna, the Inspector can’t shake his restlessness, as if he’d caught it from Karl. The creaky rocking of the carriage sickens him. He fixes his eyes on the snow, hoping its whiteness will soothe him, blank out his disappointment and fatigue. He puzzles over the evidence, shifts it around and tries to follow the trajectory made by its new order. Tilt a photographer’s glass plate in a certain way, and when the light strikes it, a hidden image will suddenly flash into recognition.

  No matter how he sets himself at Dora’s case, it defeats him. The asylum was another dead end.

  He’s gradually lulled by the optical rhythm of the trees passing outside, the hypnotic pattern of dark-light, dark-light. The disorder in the pattern is what catches his eye. The broken whiteness next to the road. The error in the situation.

  The tracks of a large animal — a wolf — disturb the snow. As if his carriage were following something. He looks into the distance. Something moves in the woods, a blacker shape between bare black trees.

  He presses his forehead against the window and shouts to the driver to slow down. The place where he saw something is just ahead of him. Now he can make out dark figures standing in a circle. Their gestures are strangely abrupt; they hunch over and drop to the ground in an unfamiliar way. In the instant his carriage flashes past, he believes he recognizes the figures as csordásfarkas, shape-shifters, turning back into wolves.

  He slaps his forehead. I’m in the Gregynia dakuluj, the devil’s garden, he mutters. My wife would tell me so. Lately, he’s noticed her superstitions have become increasingly powerful, intruding on his thoughts as imperceptibly as the sky changes color. Only occasionally does he consciously struggle against her.

  What is mine? he wonders.

  Wally has never studied a face so well as Erszébet’s. Today she notices bluish half-circles under her eyes, like swipes made by a painted finger. Her skill at deciphering character is based on physical observation, a function of her youth.

  Wally longs to see her own presence reflected in Erszébet’s eyes. But Erszébet easily hides from her. She is nearing the end of her period of ráböjtölés. The black fast is a heavy presence within her, not the airy dislocation she had anticipated. On this Friday, she sits across from Wally in the Heinrichshof Café. She can neither eat nor drink.

  Twenty-two years ago this month, under the arc of the planet Venus, Crown Prince Rudolf committed suicide with his mistress, eighteen-year-old Mary, Baroness Vetsera. To avoid scandal, Mary’s stiff body was removed from the hunting lodge where she died by her two uncles, who held her upright and “walked” her out. In the carriage, the men stuck a broom down the back of her dress so she sat straight between them. Mary had been dead for forty hours.

  Wally was fascinated by the story. A corpse that walked. Like Dora.

  Erszébet wants Wally to make a prediction, and she agrees. Now Erszébet’s fist flattens her left hand to the table.

  “It won’t hurt.”

  Wally closes her eyes. Erszébet delicately punctures Wally’s middle finger with a hat pin, then presses it until blood shows.

  “Hold it over your right hand. The drop of blood must fall on your middle fingernail. Now look at the shape it makes. Tell me what you see. It will forecast the future.”

  First drop. Flustered, Wally squints at the red spot on her fingernail.

  “I can’t tell. It’s blurred.”

  Erszebet pinches her finger again, harder. A second drop of blood falls.

  “A fire? I’m not sure.”

  She wipes the blood off her finger with her napkin.

  Third drop of blood.

  “It’s a woman’s head. A profile. Yes.”

  Wally sucks her finger. Erszébet frowns and hands her a lace handkerchief.

  “The woman must be Dora. Something to do with a fire. You did very well.”

  Wally is embarrassed about the handkerchief, now blotched with red. She reluctantly hands it back. Erszébet closely examines the bloodstains. With a satisfied smile, she folds the handkerchief and tucks it in her reticule.

  “Do you really think a blood reading will work?”

  Erszébet nods. “I’ve found it infallible.”

  “Why don’t you prick your own finger?”

  “Your interpretation is better, since you’ve never done it before. My eyes aren’t as fresh as yours.”

  The waiter brings a single Kleinen Schwarzen and a glass of water. Wally doesn’t ask any more questions, but the incident has made her uneasy.

  “You know, it’s strange, but only the Gypsy women tell fortunes, and they never read another Gypsy’s fate,” says Erszébet, staring over Wally’s shoulder into the distance.

  Wally stirs cream into her coffee, and it shapes itself into sinister whorls. Erszébet notices.

  “There’s your fire. Doesn’t it look just like smoke?”

  Wally set out on a bitter cold day, punctuated by brilliant and sharp snowfall, to run errands. She moves quickly on the streets, afraid she’s being followed. Boots and gloves are left to be mended. Books are picked up for the children. Her search for Pears soap at a certain English-style pharmacy is unsuccessful. She’s speaks curtly to the clerk behind the counter.

  The storm grew while she was in the store. A stinging white cloud transformed the street into a place strangely populated with contorted, staggering figures; the furs and thick scarves bundled around their shoulders give them a hunchback’s posture. Only a military man strides through this whiteness still upright and unbending.

  Wally welcomes the blizzard’s fierce camouflage. She has just looked up to study the shell-pink facade of a Baroque building on Naglergasse, curiously radiant even in the snow, when a hand drops on her shoulder. She pulls away, nearly slipping on the cobblestones. Rosza stands behind her. There’s a smile on the woman’s lips, but her eyes look pinched and wary. She circles her fingers around Wally’s wrist and pulls her along to the corner, where a fat driver waits by his fiaker. He sweeps the door open for them. Wally is surprised by Rosza’s abruptness, but glad of the carriage.

  They sit side by side while the fiaker proceeds down Naglergasse.

  “My God, I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I didn’t know how to reach you. Where have you been?”

  Wally is taken aback by Rosza’s agitation. “The family I stay with has returned, so I’ve been busy taking care of the children.”

  Although Rosza sits stiffly upright, she is betrayed by her hands. Her fingers nervously toy with the reticule in her lap. It is so cold that even inside the leather-upholstered cabin their breath is visible. Rosza’s perfume — heady and strange, something with ambergris — mingles with it.

  When Wally looks out the window, it seems that the carriage is imprisoned in a kaleidoscope, the snow falling furiously from every direction, as if some mechanism twisted it into patterns around them. The carriage shakes across trolley tracks.

  As if the jarring motion reminded her of something, suddenly Rosza turns from the window and grabs Wally’s hands.

  “Listen, I’ve decided to help you. Remember you asked about Dora’s photographs?”

  Puzzled, Wally nods.

  “Now I’ll tell you about the pictures.”

  There is a strangely contemptuous expression on her face as she leans back against the seat. Staring at Wally, she pulls up her skirt, transforming it into a dark mass around her waist, and shoves her hips forward. Rosza is naked under her skirt. Light from a streetlamp flashes into the carriage, skewering her legs — two white lines — in its glare. The place between her legs looks as if it has been melted or erased; the skin above it is crossed with a dark patchwork of scars.

  Wally tries to speak, but her mouth is a dry cavern. She’s struck dumb. Frightened, she peers at Rosza’s face, but the woman is bent over, her legs spread apart.

  After a moment, she whispers, “You were burned?”

  Rosza sits up and smoothes her skirt down. She doesn’t look at her.

  “I’ll tel
l you the story from the beginning. When I was with Dora, as her promeneuse, her father pursued me. He was polite, amorous, gallant. I tried to resist him, believe me. I knew it would bring trouble. Dora found out about us. She wasn’t a child. I don’t blame her. I didn’t blame her then. She was clever. She turned her mother against me, and I had to leave their house. But I continued to see her father. He gave me a little money. We went to the Vienna Skating Club masquerade at Stadtpark. I wore the most beautiful costume, an enormous dress of white silk tulle. I’d spent all the money I had to buy it. I could tell Philipp was in love with me. I began to dream perhaps he’d even marry me.”

  Rosza’s face is fierce. Wally doesn’t speak or move.

  “We skated over to the side of the lake to smoke. He lit our cigarettes and leaned over to kiss me. I wanted to tease him, not kiss him so easily. You understand? Is that so terrible that I should be punished?”

  Rosza closes her eyes for a moment.

  “He was impatient and reached for my mask. His cigarette touched my skirt, and it caught fire. Suddenly I was alone, I was a circle of flame. I skated away, burning. I don’t remember screaming. Someone in costume, a Pierrot, skated after me and shoved me down on the ice. I lay there, my skirt in black shreds. Even my skates were black with soot, they told me later. I was burned all over below my waist. I’ll never forget the smell. Burnt flesh. I can’t get rid of the odor, even with perfume.”

  “Is it painful?”

  “Constantly. I can’t wear a corset. And what man would want to see this mutilated flesh?”

  There’s silence between them for a time.

  “Philipp left you alone at the lake?”

  “Yes. He didn’t want a scandal, and I was unconscious. No one knew who I was. The Rettungsgesellschaft carriage took me to the hospital. I was there for weeks. Although Philipp had abandoned me, he recommended me to one of his doctors. Dr. Last operated on me several times. Out of pity, Herr Zellenka paid for everything. To be discreet, he let them think I was Philipp’s daughter. I thought he was kind. When you said he had watched when my picture was taken, I went mad. I went back to see the photographer, to confront him about his shame. He took money for my pain and my nakedness. It’s unforgivable what they did. Both of them.”