by Jody Sheilds
Wally remembers Erszébet helped her into the fiaker first. Then she stepped around to give the driver directions. She didn’t hear what was said.
Opposite the opera house on the Kärntner Ring, she sees an enormous phantom shape that must be the Heinrichshof apartment house. Then the ornate bulk of two hotels — the Grand and the Imperial — sail past, blind and solemn as ships.
The fiaker turns into Stadtpark.
The road twists through thick woods. The fog has lifted here, leaving a few wispy rags of its passage in the hollows. In the distance, Wally can see faint dots, as if an enormous chandelier had collapsed among the trees. She guesses it must be the light from the sulphur torches around the lake. They travel deep into the park before Erszébet orders the driver to pull over on an empty road.
When the carriage door is suddenly opened, the bolt of cold air makes Wally shrink back against the seat. Herr Zellenka stands outside with his hand on the latch. He bows his head, as if he were a suitor.
“A strange meeting, but I’m here at your request. May I help you?” His voice is mocking.
Erszébet says she’d prefer to talk with him inside the fiaker.
He laughs. “Madame, I’ve followed you into the park. You can at least oblige me by getting out of the fiaker. You’re quite safe. The driver can wait for you. Here, I’ve brought an extra cloak. We can walk together.”
Wally is enfolded within Erszébet’s hesitation, the driver’s puzzlement, Herr Zellenka’s measured impatience. Behind that, she is afraid.
The carriage dips as Erszébet gives him her hand and steps out.
Wally hesitates. Seeing the two of them standing next to each other, she senses something, a complicity or physical familiarity between them. Erszébet extends her arm. Come down.
Wally gingerly descends from the fiaker. Since Erszébet is warmly dressed in a heavy fur cloak, Herr Zellenka smoothes the one in his arms over Wally’s shoulders. He smiles at her. She glances at him, then quickly looks away.
“I suggest we keep moving to stay warm. We could go closer to the lake if you like.”
Erszébet tells their driver to wait for them. They won’t be long. He nods and takes out a cigar.
Herr Zellenka acts as if he’s on a pleasure excursion. He gallantly takes Erszébet’s arm, helping her over the frozen ruts left by carriage wheels in the snow. Wally walks behind them, moving automatically. The air is so cold it magnifies the brittle sound of their footsteps. Wally can’t think; there’s only room in her head for fear. What is her place here?
“Your letter explained you had news that would interest me, although I didn’t expect it would be delivered by two charming ladies. What could you possibly have to tell me?”
“We’ve spoken to Rosza. We’d like to hear your side of the story.”
“My story? I don’t understand.”
“Rosza told us about your relationship.”
“I see. No harm in helping the less fortunate, is there?”
He speaks slowly, in no hurry to respond to Erszébet, as if the answer might float from the peace of the winter night around them.
“Rosza was grievously injured. She had no money, nothing. But her employer, a dear friend of mine, couldn’t bring himself to help her. I pity his lack of conscience. We argued about the woman.”
When he moves his head and shrugs his shoulders, Wally is conscious of his height. He looms above them.
“Ladies, it’s a cold evening in the woods. Can you put your mind to the point?”
Resolute, Erszébet doesn’t back down from his scorn or his gestures, which are exaggerated enough to be threatening. A man and two women.
“We have another reason to be interested in your relationship with Rosza. We believe it’s connected to Dora’s murder.”
“Clever guesswork, in the way of women.” He speaks so softly Wally must keep close in order to hear him. “You’ll be my jury?”
He turns and grins at Wally, including her in the question. She shapes her dry mouth into a tremulous line. Next to him, Erszébet is a dark triangular shape in her cloak. They both seem foreign to her.
“What can you do? I’d be surprised if you even understood the gossip you heard correctly.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
His laughter booms, heightened by the freezing air. Then the three of them are plunged into stony silence.
“You met Dora when she was a girl.” Erszébet’s words are now carefully neutral. “What was she like?”
He says nothing. They continue walking.
“Dora seemed happier when she was with me,” he says finally. “When I was away, she became ill. I was happy to think I could affect someone that deeply.”
Wally realizes the man is talking to himself, as if justifying his own behavior.
“Since I was an intimate friend of her father’s, our families spent a great deal of time together. My children adored Dora. I was confident she returned my affection. She never discouraged me. She wrote me letters whenever I traveled. I gave her jewelry.”
Wally’s body is numb, her face solid, cold, masked by winter air.
“This was all done with her father’s knowledge and agreement. Of course, we never spoke of it directly, but there were no secrets between us gentlemen, you understand. We were respectful of each other.”
“And Dora’s father was involved with your wife?”
“That is correct. How could I object to my wife’s behavior, when I had romantic feelings for Dora?”
As they approach the top of a steep hill, the airy shape of a waltz coils into their ears. They rest for a moment, their breath clouding around them. The lake is visible in the distance, a frozen and substantial gleam. The torches around its edge banish the shadows of the trees into the woods and illuminate the tiny figures of a few skaters lazily rotating on the ice. The scene looks enchanted, and Wally half expects some shaggy fairy-tale creature to emerge from the trees and carry off one of the skaters.
He continues. “Dora and I had an argument, a misunderstanding. We were walking by a lake. She was so angry she struck me. I was at fault, I admit.”
They make their way down the hill, the ice on the road sharp as rocks. Erszébet slips, and he catches her elbow, steadying her. She gently takes her arm away from him.
“Dora wouldn’t speak to me for weeks. She returned my letters. I began to think her mother was suspicious of me, I came over for Jause so many times. And I tell you, no woman had ever treated me like that. I was sick with love. Even my wife began to feel sorry for me.”
He’s silent. The women say nothing. He stops walking and reaches into the pocket of his coat for cigarettes. He courteously offers them his cigarette case, a thick square of gold. Remembering Rosza, Wally recoils when he puts the burning allumette near her face. He doesn’t notice her reaction and eagerly continues speaking as if they are good, sympathetic friends.
Erszébet knows he’s enjoying himself. A confident and boastful man.
“Dora was angry with me. She was proud and very stubborn. Do anything to me, I begged her, but don’t leave me. Punish me, do as you like. We were in the Volksgarten that night, the only place where we had privacy. She slapped me. I dared her to slap me again, and she did, even harder. It was part of our little romantic game. It was always exciting.”
He looks away from them, presumably descending into some treasure house where the memory of the physical pleasure of Dora’s body waits for him. The reflection of the torches on the ice ricochets a faint luminosity onto his face. He sadly shakes his head and travels back to them.
“I ran and hid in the shrubs. She found me. She fell on me, attacking me with her fists, a stone, whatever she could find. I didn’t touch her or try to stop her. You understand, I didn’t fight back? That isn’t what she wanted of me. I ran; she caught me. She scratched my face, she bit my chin, my ears. She was possessed. I didn’t make a sound. She called me the foulest names. She was relentless, her breath was like gunfir
e in the park. I only wanted to please her. I would have taken a knife for her, anything.”
The three of them stand in a loose triangle. He lights another cigarette. A shower of red ash falls down the front of his coat. Wally can’t bear to look at him, but she can’t look away. She smells his sweat. When he turns toward the lake, one side of his face is striped with weak light.
Erszébet remembers the devil has no backside, only a front side.
“Dora and I rolled over and over on the grass, fighting. Her hands were on my neck. I remember I roughly pushed her away. Then everything was quiet. I sat up and Dora was beside me, not moving.”
“So you killed her.”
“My memory is that her death was an accident. No one would believe anything else.” His cigarette is forgotten in his hand.
After a moment, he drops the cigarette and grinds it out with his boot. Then he’s silent, absently patting his pockets for his case when Erszébet moves over to him so they’re face-to-face. He looks at her, puzzled.
“Go on. Run ahead of us. We’ll give you the count of ten.”
He studies her for a moment in surprise, then something in the expression on his face makes Wally take a breath and step back. In the distance, the carriages rumble away down the road.
“So, it’s my turn?” His voice is taunting.
He slowly walks away, then he veers off the road, falters through a snowdrift, and disappears into the woods.
Wally watches Erszébet. In front of Wally’s eyes, she suddenly appears taller, her cloak loose and swollen around her body. She calmly strips off her gloves and throws them on the ground. She removes her hat, drops it, and claws her long hair free. After a moment, Wally does the same. Without a word, Erszébet strides into the trees after him. Wally follows.
At first they move slowly, they can’t see his tracks, their eyes are still fixed to the muted iridescence of the lake. Once they’re in the darker realm of the trees — where the light is suffocated — their eyes adjust, as if they’ve adapted to breathing underwater. Their breath hangs in front of them, frailer than ice. Now the moonlight is brilliant. They begin to run, branches tearing at their faces and cloaks. Wally has no sensation of pain. They find his path, a violet-colored surface of broken snow churned up by his boots.
Wally is light and nimble, not cold, conscious only of moving forward. All fear has left her. She hears him laugh.
They see him.
She is ahead of Erszébet, the woods fracturing into black and white around her. His tracks lead around a tree. She’s close to him, his strained breath in rhythm with her own. She clutches at his running dark figure, and the heavy weight of his coat surprises her when she pulls it with her hands.
He crashes to the ground and stays there. Wally wonders why he’s waiting, and then suddenly Erszébet is above him. She watches in shock as Erszébet’s hands scratch at his face, tear at his eyes. His body jerks and he moans. He pushes himself up, but Erszébet holds him down by his coat. Her mouth hooks the side of his neck. She can’t move fast enough for her fury. Rage is a chain linking them together.
Let him get up.
The women are hunched over, unsteady, their breath shaking their bodies in unison. Wally doesn’t recognize Erszébet.
He staggers to his feet, holding his hand to his head. He runs blindly forward, zigzagging, as if searching for the road. Once he looks over his shoulder at them, and his white face seems strangely misshapen, his mouth a hole.
He trips and falls forward, striking his head on something — the black shape of a rock — as he lands heavily in the snow.
The place where he fell this second time is brighter, a clearing between the trees.
Wally sees everything as if in slow motion. She’s petrified, powerless to move, to do anything. The sound of their breathing — automatic, savage — echoes between the trees, fills the space above their heads.
They stand over him. His body is motionless, a bent, strangely postured figure in the snow.
Erszébet throws back her head and her voice is a high shriek that ends in a laugh.
Her blood pounds through her body like a stake, the only thing holding her up.
At dawn, two officers arrive at the Zellenkas’ house to relieve Franz and the Inspector. Herr Zellenka never returned. His wife slept through the night.
Numb and exhausted, the Inspector arrives home. He enters the bedroom, Rosza’s letter still in his pocket. Erszébet is awake and tenderly helps him undress. He groggily wonders if she’s slept at all; she seems completely alert. And somehow her ordinary day face has changed.
He hands her Rosza’s letter. Even in his state of fatigue, he doesn’t want to watch as she reads it. He’s afraid. He feels his perception has been altered. As if he looked through the telescope in the Stephansdom and the landscape was intensely, unnaturally bright, almost real — but wrong. What is this wide net that he stands on, the edges of it becoming visible as it is hoisted up around him?
The room is silent as she reads the letter. Then she laughs, and his relief is overwhelming.
So you’ve found Dora’s murderer.
She pulls him into the depth of an embrace.
Franz and the Inspector search Herr Zellenka’s bedroom and seal his clothing in paper bags. They take his hairbrush, his collection of walking sticks, his monogrammed personal items. They strip the linens from his bed and carefully roll up the carpet in his dressing room.
The examiner in the laboratory performs tests on Zellenka’s clothing and finds a pale silk thread deep in the pocket of a certain summer jacket. The thread appears to match fibers taken from the cloak found in the Volksgarten, which Dora had borrowed from his wife. The identification is as close as their tests can prove.
Wally returns to England. That summer, she visits Brighton. On the beach she sees a woman walking at a distance. She is certain it is Rosza. But as she watches, the woman crouches over on all fours, like a beast — her silhouette grows shaggy, immense — before she stands up again, a woman in a gray dress, her skirt blown by the wind.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is a work of fiction, although some of the characters were inspired by historical figures. The details about crime investigation and life in Vienna are based on period sources.
I would like to acknowledge the invaluable information on the folklore and customs of Hungary in A magyar nép hiedelemvilága, Hungarian Folk Beliefs, by Tekla Dömötör, from the 1981 translation by Christopher M. Hann (Corvina Books and the University of Indiana). The lines in italic on page 17 are from this text. The lines in italic on page 11 are from Hungarian Peasant Customs, by Károly Viski (Dr. George Vajna & Co.). I have also quoted extensively from System der Kriminalistik, by Hans Gross, published in 1904. Information about Dora and her family was drawn from Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, by Sigmund Freud (Collier Books), and Freud, Dora, and Vienna 1900, by Hannah S. Decker (The Free Press, a division of Macmillan, Inc.).
A number of people have contributed to this book. At Little, Brown, a particular thank-you to Judy Clain. My appreciation also goes to Betsy Uhrig and Sandy Bontemps.
I’m also thankful for the help of Simon Taylor and Jo Goldsworthy at Transworld Publishers in London.
A special acknowledgment to Susan Bachelder.
I should also like to thank the following for their kind support: Karen Blessen, Marilyn Cooperman, Grazia D’Arnunzio, John Dugdale, Mark Epstein, Patricia Halterman, Trevor King, Allison Leopold, Nancy Manter, Lee Mindel, James Perry, Ana Roth, Ann Shakeshaft, Edna and Leo Shields, Lori Shields, Valerie Steele, Sally Willcox, Jane Wildgoose, and Laura Williams. Thanks also to the corporation of Yaddo for their generosity.
Finally, I’m glad to express my profound gratitude to Anne Edelstein.
The Fig Eater
by Jody Shields
A READING GROUP GUIDE
“When I set myself the task of bringing to light what human beings keep hidden within them, not by the compelling power of hy
pnosis, but by observing what they say and what they show, I thought the task was a harder one than it really is. He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore. And thus the task of making conscious the most hidden recesses of the mind is one which it is quite possible to accomplish.”
—Sigmund Freud in
Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria
Jody Shields on writing The Fig Eater
First there was Dora. Or Dora as a patient described by Sigmund Freud in his Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, published in 1905.
A teenager at the time of her analysis, Dora was the central character in this celebrated — and deeply criticized — case history, which was one of Freud’s resounding failures. The analysis had started well. After his first session with Dora, Freud confidently wrote, “The case has opened smoothly to my collection of picklocks.”
Inspired by this observation, I began to imagine Dora’s sordid, tangled situation with her family as a mystery that the psychoanalyst would “solve.”
I started writing The Fig Eater — and soon discovered that Dora was missing from the book. She had been murdered. Unintentionally, I had reversed Freud’s case history, and the absent Dora was described by her family and friends.
The Fig Eater was also informed by other books that I discovered by happenstance: The memoirs of a governess who worked for Hungarian nobility. A book by an aristocratic British officer stationed in Vienna during the early 1900s. An account of a journey in Eastern Europe by two intrepid lady travelers. Baedecker Guides and Hungarian cookbooks. Gypsy histories. A photography book supplied visual information, from the surprising profusion of dogcarts on the streets of Vienna to the shape of the topiary trees in the city’s gardens. The character of Erszébet, the Inspector’s wife, was shaped by one of the few books available in English on contemporary Hungarian folklore, a fortuitous discovery.