The Fig Eater

by Jody Sheilds

  Rosza won’t allow herself to weep. She’s beyond any comforting words Wally can offer.

  “Since Herr Zellenka paid for my treatment, I agreed to tell the police he was with me when Dora died. He asked me to lie. Now that I have no obligation to him, I will tell you he wasn’t with me that night. Maybe he harmed her, I don’t know.”

  Dora’s story has fallen into a shocking chain of order. I am lost, Wally thinks. This is a place of dread, Gregynia dakuluj, the devil’s garden.

  When she closes her eyes in sleep that night, Wally dreams about Mary, Baroness Vetsera. Three indistinct figures emerge from a rough building, their shadows preceding them. Then she sees that two men are balancing the hunched and motionless figure of a girl between them, her head bent at an odd angle, her unmoving booted feet hovering just above the ground, as if she had another way to move without them, if only they would release her. Their haste, their skulking movements say deceit.

  The next morning, Wally realizes why the dream seemed familiar. She pictured Dora’s killer moving in the same way as he left the Volksgarten after releasing his victim from this earth.

  CHAPTER 15

  Egon pinches a letter between his mutilated fingers, waves it teasingly at Wally and Erszébet. He’s sitting between them at a back table at Gerstner’s.

  “The letter is for Wally,” he announces.

  “For me?”

  “It’s from Rosza. She left it at my studio for you.”

  Wally reaches for it, but Erszébet stops her hand.

  “Wait. Let the tarot predict what it says.”

  Erszébet quickly scoops the cards up from the table and shuffles them. Wally rests her hand on top of the deck, then picks the top card, turns it over.

  The card has the image of a woman in an elaborate hat, prying open the jaws of a lion. She gazes at the beast with an expressionless face.

  “How do you interpret the card?” Wally asks, relieved she didn’t draw le Diable.

  “The woman represents strength, a cardinal virtue. You see on the card, she masters the lion, easily opening its mouth. She’s like Diana, goddess of the hunt. Rosza’s letter must involve mastery over something, a situation or instinct. Or perhaps passion.”

  Wally opens the letter.

  Rosza destroys Herr Zellenka’s alibi. She’s written an account of her affair with Dora’s father, detailing her accident, Herr Zellenka’s financial support of her medical treatment, her lie about his whereabouts the night Dora was murdered. No accusation of his guilt. She confesses she was unable to tell the police about her foolish complicity with Herr Zellenka. She trusts Wally will explain everything to the proper authorities. By the time they read this letter, she will have left Vienna. Rosza’s illegible signature is at the bottom of the paper. The envelope has no seal.

  Erszébet feels the arc of a black rainbow open. There is something she can’t see at its far end. She is filled with utter confidence.

  Wally is dismayed at the letter and Erszébet’s reaction to it. There’s a hollowness to her eyes, as if she’s consumed by some internal process. Wally finds her unfathomable, like a lighthouse in daylight, her purpose hidden.

  Wally remembers when her mother was dying she had the same detachment. The smallest gesture of emotion — and then even recognition — wearied her. Wally watched and waited as her mother slowly unhooked herself from her surroundings, and finally from Wally and her father.

  Now Wally recognizes the same quality in Erszébet, and it frightens her.

  Later, Wally and Erszébet puzzle over the letter. Rosza told Wally she had confronted Egon in his studio, but it may have been a righteous lie. If Rosza was unable to forgive him, why did she trust him with the letter? They decide there was no other way for her to reach Wally, since she didn’t have her address. This seems to hold true.

  Perhaps Rosza’s letter is a ruse. Perhaps she didn’t write it. Neither of them has ever seen her handwriting. Could Egon have written the letter himself?

  And Rosza has mysteriously vanished.

  Wally is uncertain about what to do with the information. Maybe Egon intends to double cross them.

  “Should we tell the police Rosza’s story about Herr Zellenka?”

  No. Erszébet slowly shakes her head. She needs time. “Let’s keep everything to ourselves for a little longer. Nothing’s resolved yet.”

  Wally readily agrees, reluctant to argue with her.

  There is one piece of evidence they are unaware of. Egon didn’t mention that he left Rosza’s original letter on the Inspector’s desk earlier that day. He wanted to show off in front of Wally and Erszébet. Guilt prompted him to give the letter to the police.

  A few days later, Wally thinks she catches sight of Rosza in the lobby of the Hotel Imperial. She is on the arm of a distinguished man, but the couple vanishes before Wally makes her way across the crowded room to them.

  At the end of the same week, she glimpses Rosza in the window of Wopalensky, a hat shop on Kohlmarkt. Rosza is engrossed in conversation with a second woman. Wally walks to the end of the street, debating about approaching her. When Wally returns and enters the dim shop, the woman turns away and quickly pulls her veil over her face. The shopkeeper looks at Wally strangely, and she apologizes and leaves.

  Wally didn’t recognize either of them. She continues to watch the shop from across the street. Only the veiled woman walks out.

  Wally wonders if the mirrors and the dim light inside the shop caused her to mistake the woman for Rosza. However, she’s certain she identified one thing in the shop correctly. The unmistakable odor of Rosza’s perfume.

  In his investigations, he assigns the blame for a crime to a number of people — the calculating guilty, the provocative innocent, a bystander with bad luck. This allows the Inspector to keep his distance. He is the last witness with the pointing finger.

  However, now that his relationship with his wife is strained, he takes the blame for it. His suspicions about her have become manifest in her behavior, like a premonition that has come true.

  Their routine intimacy has changed. The familiar is now strange, in the way a crime can transform a common object — a drinking glass, a hairbrush — into something suspicious. In the language of the body, an ill-timed gesture, hands that won’t be still, eyes that look away — also betray guilt.

  His observations, words, his affection — all of it is of no use against Erszébet’s silences. Nothing rouses her; she seems weary of everything. Even her sporadic happier states seem to have nothing to do with him. Something else occupies her.

  Erszébet’s state of torpor alternates with eruptions of anger. She disagreed with him about something while they were in a fiaker. She angrily shouted to the driver to stop and then got out and strode away while he sat inside, stunned and miserable. Once she came into the bedroom and found him examining her toilette items. He held a blue glass jar of her face cream. She said nothing but swept her arm over the top of the bureau, and the container of talc opened as it fell, becoming a weightless white cloud.

  One evening, the violent quality of her lovemaking left him feeling even more isolated.

  Did he somehow wish for this unhappiness between them? What has he done to provoke her? He doesn’t believe a blameless party exists. Dora’s case has shown him this. Everyone who knew her is guilty.

  He was secure with his concept of Erszébet as his wife, her days filled with small errands, busywork he couldn’t fathom. He was confident all her efforts were directed at him, at the temple of their marriage. He is no longer certain of this.

  But he won’t judge her. He says nothing; his strategy is to listen and observe. He wills himself into the role of the good disciple, setting a Banquet of Silence for her. He waits for her to reveal herself.

  He recognizes the atmosphere of Vormärz, when something is going to happen.

  The next day, Erszébet sends Herr Zellenka an anonymous letter by post. There is something of interest I have to tell you about Dora. Th
is information is significant only to you. She will wait for him at Café Gerstner, and she names a time. He should carry his hat in his left hand when he enters the café. In two days.

  It is the bitter end of January.

  Franz and the Inspector are working late in their office. Their investigation of another crime is falling into place. The examiner’s report has just confirmed that a woolen thread snagged on a chair at Klinkosch, a jewelry store that had been robbed, matches a minute hole in the suspect’s jacket. The Inspector is jubilant, almost like his old self. He jokes with Franz, even urges him to speculate about a vile horse thief they arrested yesterday.

  Later, the Inspector turns his attention to the papers on his desk, which he’s neglected for some time. He idly flips through the mail, and the hesitant writing on one envelope catches his eye. Perhaps a crank or a suspect, or an anonymous confession. He frequently receives mail like this and can usually pick out the odd ones. He opens the envelope.

  He reads Rosza’s letter, then — still holding it in his hand — races across the room. He grabs his hat off the stand, shouting instructions to Franz as he bolts through the door and down the hallway.

  It takes Franz half a second to find the Luger pistol and follow him.

  Something has erupted. Franz ducks through the spray.

  Outside, a thick winter fog has descended, and their journey through the streets is a sinister expedition. Pedestrians vanish when they’re four steps past each other. On the Ringstrasse, only the crooked tips of the branches are visible, as if the rest of the tree had been swallowed by flood water. Preceded by the sturdy clank of their horses’ harnesses and the whistles of their drivers, carriages suddenly materialize out of the fog.

  The terrible visibility slows their passage. The Inspector smokes one cigarette after another and cajoles the driver to hurry, hurry. Franz has never seen him so agitated.

  As he explains Rosza’s letter — talks Franz through it, since it’s too dark in the carriage to read — the sense that something is finished is clear to him. It is remorseless and certain. A fissure closed. Herr Zellenka, guilty. The pistol is strange and heavy in its holster. He peers hopelessly at his pocket watch. They can’t be far from the Zellenkas’ house. He struggles against his feeling of euphoria.

  No response to the Inspector’s fist on the door, even though light is visible behind the curtains in the windows. Finally the door opens a crack. He urges Fräulein Yella — the stubborn shadow blocking the light from inside — to admit them at once.

  Frau Zellenka lazily looks up from her cigarette when they’re ushered into the parlor. Franz blinks, dazzled by the brilliant colors after the dim carriage.

  My husband is not at home presently, she says. Pity, they’ve just missed him. And she isn’t certain when he’ll be back. Or where they can find him. She offers coffee and slivovitz. Her vexed expression deepens when she understands Franz and the Inspector are prepared to wait for her husband. She doesn’t ask why it is urgent they speak with him, and the Inspector doesn’t volunteer any information.

  The Inspector begins to wonder if she’s stalling them for a reason. Perhaps her husband has fled. His anxiety makes him feel transparent and frail. He calms himself with a deep breath.

  Frau Zellenka sits with them for another hour and then excuses herself and proceeds up to bed. It is just before midnight.

  After she is safely upstairs, he uses her telephone to call Erszébet. He imagines an invisible impulse traveling to the switchboard and then to his house, where it will end, cradled in his wife’s hand.

  There is no answer.

  Puzzled — and then alarmed — he calls her several times during the long night, while Franz dozes on the settee.

  That same evening, Erszébet leaves the house early to avoid telling her husband where she’s going. She’s afraid he might return early, and she doesn’t have the strength to lie to him. Secured in her bodice is a protective charm, Mandragora officinarum, a piece of mandrake shaped like a little man.

  The fog slows her fiaker and her perception of the time it takes to inch from narrow Schreyvogelgasse to Kärntner Strasse. She believes she’s alone on the streets.

  She hurries through the Café Gerstner, where Wally waits, slouching over a corner table. Sulking, the girl doesn’t look up until Erszébet silently glides out a chair and sits down. A saucer on the table is overflowing with the ends of Russian cigarettes.

  Wally leans back in her chair and stares at Erszébet. You’re very late, she says in English.

  “I’m sorry. The fog is terrible.”

  Erszébet settles herself, orders a Schlagobers and a Kirschenstrudel and takes out her tarot cards. She shuffles, places her right hand on the deck, and closes her eyes to concentrate. She tenderly draws the top card, flips it face up on the table. Number fifteen, le Diable.

  Interested, Wally bends over the card, her sulk forgotten.

  “What does it mean tonight, that card?”

  “You should ask what my question was, that’s the important point.”

  Seeing Wally’s face, she quickly touches her to reassure her, bring her back to attention.

  “No, no. Don’t act like that. I didn’t mean to correct you.”

  I need her, she reminds herself. She must stay with me. There isn’t much time, and I’m very tired. “The card says the devil loves his own,” she explains. “You serve him when you serve your lowest instincts. This is temptation.”

  The waiter brings their order, clatters down the coffee and sweets, slops a little thick cream on the table. Wally draws her finger through it.

  The card is as real as the cup in my hand. Unnerved by the card’s prediction, Erszébet turns away from it. There is something to fear.

  As if the girl has read her mind she says dismissively, it’s only a card.

  Erszébet leans forward and takes Wally’s hand.

  “Listen to me. I’ve done something that may make you angry. I wrote Herr Zellenka a letter. He’ll join us here tonight.”

  Wally is astonished. “He’s coming here?”

  “I thought it would be best to meet in public. I’m going to tell him everything we know and see how he reacts.”

  “But why didn’t you talk to me about it first?”

  Blinking back tears, Wally frowns into her cup, swirls the dark liquid around, edging it close to the rim, almost spilling it.

  Erszébet waits until Wally’s curiosity overcomes her anger. She takes her time letting the older woman know this. Wally is relieved the intimate conspiracy between them is restored. She eagerly reenters their charmed circle.

  “So if he answers our questions, will the investigation be over?”

  “Yes.”

  Erszébet orders an expensive bottle of Tokaji. They drink it slowly; the wine is heavy and sweet. It’s made from grapes called aszú, she says. They’re picked as raisins.

  They’re becoming intoxicated, drinking the rich wine, eating nothing but cake. An hour goes by. Wally studies the tarot card with the image of the devil. A waiter brings fresh glasses of water and a second bottle of wine. They don’t mention Herr Zellenka again, but Wally is distracted, glancing continually at the door. She waits for a sudden tap on her shoulder.

  They smoke, play a few hands of tarok. Erszébet calls Pagat Ultimo, even though she isn’t concentrating on the game. She imagines all the noise in the room will quiet at the entrance of a sinister figure, Herr Zellenka. She strains to detect a change in the tide of conversation.

  More time passes. It’s very late. Without a word, Erszébet begins to pack up the cards. She is serenely confident that ráböjtölés, the black fast, will give her an answer. If not tonight, then surely later. Disappointed, Wally retrieves her red cloak, and unsteadily crosses the room.

  During the hours they were inside, the fog thickened. When they step out into it, all the comfort of the café is instantly wiped away. The golden stripe of light on the walk is broken by the bodies moving across the glass do
or behind them, like moths against a lantern. Wally’s shadow shows violet around its edges.

  Several fiakers wait on the street, and Erszébet searches for an empty one.

  A man in a dark coat suddenly steps in front of them. They didn’t hear his footsteps.

  He holds his hat in his left hand. The man who received her letter. It takes Erszébet a moment to recognize him. He danced with her in the Sophien-Saal during Fasching. He left the mark of his sweat on her skin.

  “Ladies, will you join me?”

  Erszébet shakes her head and links her arm through Wally’s.

  “No, you’ll follow us.”

  They sit in heavy silence inside the carriage. Wally hunches down in the seat and looks out the window. The streets are a pale gray blank. Because of the fog, she can’t tell if Herr Zellenka is following them. In front of the Reischsrat, she glimpses the colossal figure of Athena, the goddess’s stern features unrecognizable, masked with snow. She imagines Dora, her face sliding into shapelessness during all these months underground. She imagines the fig tree, its dark leaves and knobs of budded fruit muffled in darkness. Everything’s buried.

  Wally is possessed by such lassitude she can barely speak. She feels that the curve of her lips was put there with a chisel. Frozen clods of snow kicked up by the horses thud rhythmically against the carriage. Its drowsy movement rocks her back and forth, and she struggles against its feeling of ease, of well-being. Where are they going?

  Erszébet hasn’t said a word to relieve her apprehension. The quiet between them seems unbridgeable, almost solid. We’re frozen in place, Wally thinks. Erszébet sits with her hands inside a fur muff on her lap. When she turns from the window, her face has a hard expression. Even her eyes seem dulled, as if she barely recognizes Wally.

  “Don’t worry. The driver knows where to go.”