HS02 - Days of Atonement

by Michael Gregorio

  I climbed the creaking stairway, and began to mount the rickety ladder into the attic. Reaching floor level, I looked inside. Helena was seated on one of the cross-beams of the roof, her back resting against the end wall. A lantern stood on the floor close by. In her lap, was a dull, golden-brown pile of shrivelled russet apples. In her hand she held a cloth. She was polishing them, one by one, until they shone like glass. Fugitive curls peeped out from beneath the white scarf with which she had tied up her hair.

  ‘Husband!’ she exclaimed. She seemed surprised, embarrassed. ‘Is it so late?’

  I looked around, and my heart beat heavily in my chest.

  That was not an attic, except in name. It was unlike any attic I had ever known. I recalled the happy days I had spent as a child in the rambling garret of my father’s house in Ruisling. That place was full of the old, the dusty, the forgotten. There was no order, or organisation in it. Objects fallen out of use, or gone out of fashion, were relegated sooner or later to the attic. A pirate’s treasure trove in the imaginative eyes of a child. My brother Stefan and I retrieved those things from chaotic abandon, fantasising about what they were, and whose they had been, as if they were precious relics from another world.

  That was not Helena’s idea of an attic. Every single thing in her attic was useful. Better kept than any other room in the house, it positively sparkled. It might have been the dispensary in a lazaretto where the physician stores his instruments and plies his cures. It had been like this for over seven months. The instant the French moved out, she ordered me to put up shelves. They formed a pyramid at the gable end piled with jars and pots in ordered ranks, like soldiers on parade. In one of the shelves, a rack had been cut—I had drilled the holes to Helena’s specification. Eggs were arranged in size: duck eggs in the centre, the others falling off in size to left and right, the colours matching, light at the centre, darker to the side, the very darkest nearest to the sloping roof. Jars were spaced like unexploded shells in a military arsenal. Beneath the shelves were sacks containing flour, corn, potatoes, and what was left of our store of chestnuts. Every single thing had its place, from nutmeg and pepper to samples of rare spices in tiny glass bottles, which she had collected in better times.

  I knew the attic well. I knew Helena’s attitude towards it. Sometimes, in lighter moments, when she was in a good humour, I would jokingly make reference to the place. A pound o’ hazelnuts for your thoughts, ma’am? Third shelf, left wall? Right you are, then, ma’am!

  I never felt entirely at my ease when I was obliged to enter there.

  ‘I caught him, Hanno,’ she announced. ‘He’ll steal no more from this house!’

  Her eyes were glistening with excitement, her voice was a triumphant shout, but I was not happy on either count. Her tone was too sharp, her animation too intense. It was more than just satisfaction. With a nod of her head she indicated the source of her victory. As I strained to see, stepping into the attic, she held up her lantern to aid me.

  I juddered with disgust, and had to stop myself from saying so. The spring had sprung as soon as the tiny creature’s front paws touched the trap. A little ball of bread-bait lay off to the side. The full force of the spring had caught the mouse across the back, snapping its spine and cutting the corpse into two distinct halves. Blood was still dripping from the separated pieces, soaking into the flakes of sawdust that Helena had laid all around the trap in preparation for this execution. Clearly, she had not wished to contaminate her spick-and-span attic with a single drop of rodent blood. But there was other meatier organic matter on view. It was not a pretty sight.

  ‘I’ve been after him for a week!’ she said, almost squealing at the memory of the campaign. ‘He has ruined three apples, and nibbled his way inside a sack of flour. And spoiled it, of course!’ She pointed her finger accusingly at the corpus delicti. She was better than half the magistrates in East Prussia when it came to handing down a capital judgement. ‘There’s excrement in the sack! What makes them do such things? Knowing they’ll be back tomorrow to eat some more? It is so disgusting.’

  ‘If that mouse were still alive,’ I said lightly, ‘I’d sentence him to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, but you seem to have done the quartering without any help from me . . .’

  She cut me off. I think she hardly heard me.

  ‘That’s five pounds less for the children!’ she exclaimed, her voice agitated and unsteady, as if she were about to burst into tears. Her joy had left her in an instant. ‘And Mother Albers told me that the French have been there twice this week. She brought us some potatoes, a few eggs, not much else. No meat, no bacon. Not even a scrawny chicken. What are we going to do?’

  I moved slowly towards her. She was more upset than she showed. I slid down the wall, and sat myself on the floor, resting my shoulder against her knee, caressing her hand, which still held one of the precious russets.

  ‘I’ll speak to Knutzen first thing,’ I said to calm her. ‘He may be able to lay his hands on something . . .’

  ‘That villain sells his ducks to the French,’ she objected. ‘The rest goes to feed his own children. I have to be more careful. More attentive. What do you think, Hanno? If I were to wash the woodwork down with vinegar, would the acid keep them away? Mice and rats avoid clean places. Filthy brutes!’

  Her voice rose angrily as this monologue proceeded.

  I raised her hand to my lips, and held it there, hoping that the storm would pass. I felt helpless. Our supplies were not enough to guarantee tranquillity. Her fears went beyond any simple remedy that I could provide.

  ‘If Knutzen can’t help, I’ll find someone else,’ I promised. ‘We could always leave that corpse where it is. At least the other mice will learn to fear the implacable lady who rules over this domain.’

  I tried to smile, but Helena drew her hand away from mine. She rested her head against the wall, and closed her eyes. She looked tired, totally worn out by her efforts.

  ‘Do you think that Lavedrine might help us?’ she asked after a long silence.

  I felt an electrical jolt along my spine.

  ‘Lavedrine?’ Her face was an impenetrable mask. ‘How could he help us?’ I asked, struggling to remain calm.

  ‘He might find us food, if we needed it. He has been here. He has eaten at our table. He has met our children. When he came, I got the impression he would have liked to stay. As a lodger, I mean. Many French officers pay for their food and board. He would do the same. I thought he was going to ask . . .’

  ‘But he did not,’ I interrupted her. ‘An hour of distraction was all he wanted. He was upset. We had seen such . . . such dismal sights. And Lavedrine already has a lodging. I don’t believe he is looking for a new one. There is no immediate need to ask for his help. Or anyone else’s,’ I said bitterly. ‘Should the need arise, I’ll make provision, I promise you.’

  I took her hand again. ‘But now, I must ask something of you. The idea came to me last evening, while we were sitting by the fire. You said that you wanted to help me.’

  Helena’s eyes flashed into mine.

  ‘What do you want of me?’ she asked.

  I slipped my leather bag from my shoulder. Pulling out my album of sketches, I turned away as I flicked through the pages looking for the one I wanted. Then, I shifted from the floor, and sat beside her on the crossbeam, my shoulder pressed against hers. I wanted her to feel my warmth beside her. I had asked for her help, but how would she react to the sudden shock of seeing that woman’s face?

  I raised the lantern and held it up over my drawing. ‘This is a tentative portrait of Sybille Gottewald,’ I said. ‘I want you to tell me where I am right, and where I may have gone wrong. Can you do that for me?’

  Helena did not say a word. She took the album from my hands and stared at the charcoal face looking up from the page. She held the picture close, then moved it further away, stretching out her arms, as if to judge the effect at a distance.

  ‘Hardly more than a jotting,’ she
said uncertainly. ‘How did you come by it?’

  I told her briefly, without entering into details.

  ‘Indeed, a very rough sketch,’ I said. ‘Is there anything at all which reminds you of the woman that you met?’

  She looked at the drawing again, studying it attentively.

  ‘Frau Gottewald had a more pronounced forehead. A broader brow. More square, angular. Here, you see? At this point. And here.’ As she spoke, she traced the lines with the nail of her forefinger. ‘Less rounded here . . . and as for the eyes . . .’

  I placed my hand on hers.

  ‘I was not able to draw the eyes,’ I said carefully.

  ‘Her eyes were chestnut-brown with hazel flecks . . .’ A violent spasm shook Helena’s shoulders. ‘They exist no more?’

  ‘There was very little light,’ I answered evasively. ‘It is all guesswork, more or less.’

  ‘This sketch confounds my memories,’ she said, after another long silent analysis of that drawing. ‘Rather than help, it seems to me to suggest different nuances from those that I recall.’

  ‘Tell me what you can remember,’ I coaxed. ‘You spoke of fear on her face, of the fright in her voice, but I need physical details if this sketch is going to be of any use. If I could get a good likeness, a printer may make woodcuts which I could display around the town.’

  Helena handed the sketch back to me. She laid her head on my shoulder, and placed her arm around my neck, looking down as I rested the album on my knee and took out the graphite stick.

  ‘Frau Gottewald’s eyebrows were more slender,’ she murmured, her breath warm against my ear. ‘Like the wings of a gull in flight.’

  For the next half-hour we worked, and in all that time she never called that woman by any other name. Frau Gottewald, she said. Sometimes as she spoke, I heard a tremor of compassion in Helena’s voice. Frau Gottewald’s brow was broader, she whispered, encouraging me to shape and form that brow exactly as she wanted it to be. The eyes of Frau Gottewald were smaller, and more widely spaced. Her nose was slender, longer than I had drawn it under Aaron Jacob’s tutelage. The cheekbones were pronounced, and of a rare and delicate beauty. The mouth was a sensuous, delicate bow with worry lines etched at either corner, and the chin was smaller than in my rendition, more pointed and ever so slightly dimpled. As she instructed me, I added detail to the hair, which was dark brown, parted in the centre, pulled back on either side exposing shapely ears. Frau Gottewald tied her curls up behind, said Helena, with a velvet bow.

  We sat in silence, looking at that face.

  Helena’s hand gently took the portrait from me. Taking hold of the graphite, she made a final bold stroke connecting the eyebrows.

  ‘There! Now, it truly does resemble Frau Gottewald’s face,’ she said.

  Her voice was calm, and she seemed at peace with herself. All the anxiety and tension that had worried me when I stepped up into the attic had melted away. The dead mouse, the lost apples, the damaged flour, all forgotten. A sort of quiet contentment seemed to hold her in sway as she looked down at the face of the woman that we had drawn together in my album.

  ‘Will this help you?’ she asked. ‘More than the other one, I mean to say?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I murmured, unable to drag my eyes away from the portrait.

  Helena jumped up in sprightly fashion, walked to the centre of the room, then dropped to her knees beside the mousetrap. She let out a little squeal of renewed delight. ‘I’ll put these titbits out in the garden,’ she said, reaching for a dustpan and a short broom. ‘There’s a tabby cat that often comes our way. He has to be fed as well, you know.’

  My wife was in a bright mood for the rest of the evening. She often smiled in my direction, as if we shared some special, private bond. As, indeed, we did. Together we had drawn the face of Sybille Gottewald, as Helena wanted it to be.

  I could think of nothing else all night.

  It was as if that portrait were smiling into my eyes, inviting my confidence and complicity. The face that we had drawn was markedly different from the jotting I had made at the prompting of Aaron Jacob. It was more precise, more lifelike. A person, rather than a vague, inaccurate impression of a human face. I had noted the particularity at once, though Helena did not seem to see it. Nor did I dare to mention the similarity. That woman’s face tortured me all evening.

  As line was added to line, shade to shade, I recognised the face that we had drawn. Apart from the continuous curve of the eyebrows, that portrait might have been of Helena herself.

  30

  KINDERGARTEN—3 P.M. Something to show you.

  The note was not signed. Nor was it sealed. Brief to the point of rudeness, as if scribbled by someone in a hurry who believed he knew me well enough not to bother with a signature. But I was expecting a note from no one, and could not guess why that person might have chosen the Pietist Church of Christ Arisen for a meeting.

  ‘Who brought the message, Knutzen?’

  My clerk shrugged his shoulders. His square peasant face was set in an expression of studied consternation that was habitual.

  ‘Someone pushed it under the door,’ he repeated obstinately. ‘It was there when I came this morning, sir.’

  Gudjøn Knutzen divided his day between sharpening my quills, brushing dust from one corner of the room to another, and showing people into my office, but his heart was with his pigs, ducks, and milking cow. Defending his plot of cabbages from thieves was his only thought. On these resources, his large family eked out their survival. Certainly, they could not have lived on his salary as the Procurator’s scrivener. Prussian civil servants, myself included, had seen their salaries sliced by half after the recent war. The other half had gone to France in the form of war reparation, and to the king, who was trying to set the country straight and repair the damage after the invasion. Knutzen had worked in the Procurator’s office in Lotingen for thirty years by virtue only of the fact that he could read and write. But necessity had driven him back to the soil. He was more passionate about his livestock than he was interested in my papers, and this attitude showed in his dirty shirt, slop-stained trousers, and mud-coloured boots. Day by day, he looked more like a swineherd.

  Four months after Jena, I reopened the Procurator’s office, and Knutzen hastened to take up his post again, bombarding me with requests for four months’ salary which I was unable to satisfy. As a result, he now presented himself at work only three days a week, ‘in lieu of lost pay,’ as he quaintly put it. Even then he appeared only briefly, and I could hardly reprimand him for it.

  On this particular day, it was almost ten by the time he decided to show his grubby face. I had been there an hour myself when he came, pulling that note from his pocket as he entered the door. He had been there before me, it appeared. Finding the office empty, he had stuffed the note in his pocket and gone about his business.

  ‘One of the pigs is ill,’ he said to explain his absence. ‘If that sow dies, there’ll be hell to pay. The French have put their mark on everything for requisitioning.’

  In Knutzen’s eyes the health of his pig was of a personal and national importance that far outweighed any criminal investigation I happened to be engaged upon. And his announcement of the French interest put paid to those hopes I had expressed to Helena that Knutzen might be able to make up the shortages in our own food supply.

  ‘Just about anyone could have left that note, Herr Procurator. I can ask . . .’ Knutzen began, then decided for himself that it was hardly worth the effort of trying. He shook his head. ‘It’s useless, sir.’

  Five minutes later, I called for him again, but he did not come.

  That sick pig had a lot to answer for.

  I turned my attention once again to the anonymous note. The cemetery behind the Pietist chapel was little frequented, except by the grieving parents of children who had recently died. If the writer harboured evil intentions, I would be likely to find myself alone and in a difficult position. Unless . . . A name suddenly o
ccurred to me. If Dittersdorf had sent that message, why did he want to meet me there? He had had the Gottewald children interred in that cemetery. Did he want me to see the grave?

  I determined to go, but first, a number of things had to be settled.

  The judicial life of Lotingen had not been snuffed out by the massacre of the Gottewalds, or the discovery of the female corpse in Gummerstett’s warehouse. In lulls between active duty, I had completed my reports to Dittersdorf and the French, regarding my journey to Kamenetz. They were stacked on my desk, together with other reports relating to events in the town. I began at the top of the pile, reading the imprisonment order for the baker’s boy, Pincheas Redem, who was guilty of stealing two sacks of corn from his master. As I glanced over the sentence, I pondered for a moment on those sacks of grain. How many pounds of flour would they yield? Despite the statutory six lashes of the cane, and belated promises by his master of forgiveness, the thief still refused to say where he had hidden the goods.

  ‘What a waste!’ I thought to myself. Rats or rot would destroy the contents long before he was released. I was tempted to question Pincheas Redem again, and throttle the information out of him. If the sacks were found, the French would get their hands on them. If I could get to them first, the baker might be persuaded to make the best of a bad job and let me have a portion of the flour. That would change the expression on Helena’s face. There’d be no more idle talk of appealing to Lavedrine for salvation.

  I hesitated one moment, then signed the imprisonment order, and moved on to the remaining documents: petty theft of linen from a washing line, a contested will, a dispute resulting from the fencing of fields after the war. Domestic strife had taken hold of East Prussia again, and I was comforted by the stupidity of it for the best part of the morning and the early afternoon.