“A miracle saved us,” she later told Franz (for people talk very lightly of miracles), “but let this be a lesson. You can see for yourself: it’s impossible to wait any longer. Lucky once, lucky twice, and then—caught. And what can we expect then? Let us suppose he gives me a divorce. Let us even suppose I catch him with a stenographer. He does not have to support me, if I remarry. What next? I’m just as poor as you. My relatives in Hamburg are not going to help me.”
Franz shrugged.
“I wonder if you understand,” she said, “that his widow inherits a fortune.”
“Why do you tell me this? We have discussed it sufficiently. I know perfectly well that there’s only one solution.”
Then, as she peered through the slippery glint of his glasses deep into the mire of his greenish eyes, she knew that she had achieved her end, that he had been fully prepared, was completely ripe, and that the time had come to act. She was right. Franz no longer had a will of his own; the best he could do was to refract her will in his own way. The easy fulfillment of two merged dreams had become familiar to him, owing to a very simple interplay of sensations. By now Dreyer had already been several times murdered and buried. Not a future happiness, but a future recollection had been rehearsed on a bare stage, before a dark and empty house. With stunning unexpectedness, the corpse had returned out of nowhere, had walked in like an animated snowman, had begun talking as if he were alive. But what of it? It would be easy now and not at all frightening to cope with this sham existence, to make the corpse a corpse once more, and this time for good.
The discussion of methods of murder became with them an everyday matter. No uneasiness, no shame accompanied it; neither did they experience the dark thrill gamblers know, or the comfortable horror a family man enjoys when reading about the destruction of another family, with gory details, in a family newspaper. The words “bullet” and “poison” began to sound about as normal as “bouillon” or “pullet,” as ordinary as a doctor’s bill or pill. The process of killing a man could be considered as calmly as the recipes in a cookbook, and no doubt Martha first of all thought of poison because of a woman’s innate domestic bent, an instinctive knowledge of spices and herbs, of the healthful and the harmful.
From a second-rate encyclopedia they learned about all sorts of dismal Lucrezias and Locustas. A hollow-diamond ring, filled with rainbow venom, tormented Franz’s imagination. He would dream at night of a treacherous handshake. Half-awake, he would recoil and not dare to move: somewhere under him, on the sheet, the prickly ring had just rolled, and he was terrified it might sting him. But in the daytime, by Martha’s serene light, all was simple again. Tofana, a Sicilian girl, who dispatched 639 people, sold her “aqua” in vials mislabelled with the innocent image of a saint. The Earl of Leicester had a mellower method: his victim would blissfully sneeze after a pinch of lethal snuff. Martha would impatiently shut the P-R volume and search in another. They learned, with complete indifference, that toxemia caused anemia and that Roman law saw in deliberate toxication a blend of murder and betrayal. “Deep thinkers,” remarked Martha with a snarling laugh, sharply turning the page. Still she could not get to the heart of the matter. A sardonic “See” sent her to something called “alkaloids.” Another “See” led to the fang of a centipede, magnified, if you please. Franz, unaccustomed to big encyclopedias, breathed heavily as he looked over her shoulder. Climbing through the barbed wire of formulae, they read for a long time about the uses of morphine, until having reached in some tortuous way a special case of pneumonia cruposa, Martha suddenly understood that the toxin in question belonged to a domesticated variety. Turning to another letter, they discovered that strychnine caused spasms in frogs and laughing fits in some islanders. Martha was beginning to fume. She kept brutally yanking out the thick tomes and squeezing them back any which way in the bookcase. There were fleeting glimpses of colored plates: military decorations, Etruscan vases, gaudy butterflies.… “Here, this is more like it,” said Martha, and she read in a low solemn voice: “vomiting, a feeling of dejection, a singing in the ears—don’t wheeze like that, please—a sensation of itching and burning over the entire surface of the skin, the pupils narrowed to the size of a pinhead, the testicles swollen like oranges.…” Franz remembered how as an adolescent he had looked up “onanism” in a much smaller encyclopedia at school, and remained terrified and chaste for almost a week.
“Chucks,” said Martha, “that’s all medical rot. Who wants to know about cures or about traces of arsenic found in a stinking dead ass. I suppose we need some special works. There is a treatise mentioned here in parentheses, but it is a work written in the sixteenth century in Latin. Why people should use Latin is beyond me. Pull yourself together, Franz—he’s here.”
She unhurriedly put the volume back and unhurriedly closed the glass doors of the cabinet. From the ancient world of the dead came Dreyer, whistling as he approached with the bouncing dog. But she did not give up the idea of poison. In the morning, alone, she again scanned the evasive articles in the encyclopedia, trying to find that plain, unhistorical, unspectacular, matter-of-fact potion or powder that she so clearly imagined. By accident at the end of one paragraph, she came upon a brief bibliography of plausible-looking modern works. She sought Franz’s advice as to whether they ought to obtain one of them. He gave her a blank look but said that if it were necessary he would go and buy it. But she was afraid to let him go alone. They might tell him that the book had to be ordered or it would turn out to consist of ten volumes costing twenty-five marks each. He might get flustered, foolishly leave his address. If she were to accompany him he would of course behave splendidly—naturally and casually as if he were a student of medicine or chemistry—but it was dangerous to go together, and that was why public libraries were taboo. And once you get involved in the book racket and begin running from shop to shop, the devil knows what kind of nonsense might ensue. In her mind she now reviewed the little she had known before and the little she had dug up about poisoners’ techniques. Two things she had gleaned: first, that every poison has its echo—an antidote; and, secondly, that a sudden death led to an inquisitive zestful autopsy. However, for quite some time longer, with the obedient cooperation of Franz (who once quite on his own, the dutiful darling, bought at a street stall The True Story of the Marquise de Brinvilliers), Martha continued to toy with the idea. The most attractive poison seemed to be cyanide. It had a brisk something about it with no romantic trimmings: an ordinary mouse that has swallowed an insignificant fraction of one gram falls dead before it can run thirty inches. She saw the stuff as a pinch of colorless powder which could be dropped unnoticed with a lump of sugar into a cup of tea. “It says here that in certain cases cyanide cannot be traced in the cadaver. What certain cases? Tell us! Oh, it would be simple,” she said to Franz. “We’d have tea together in the evening with those delicious little éclairs Menzel makes, and he’d swallow his sweet tea and cream—you know the quick way he does it—and suddenly—poof!”
“Well, let’s get that powder,” he replied. “I would get it if I had any idea how and where. Should I go to a pharmacy, or what?”
“I don’t know either,” said Martha, “I’ve read in a detective story about shady little cafés where one gets in touch with sellers of cocaine. But that’s a long way to the stuff we need. Poisons are out, I’m afraid, unless of course we managed to bribe a doctor so that he would not dissect him, but that’s too risky. Somehow I was absolutely certain they existed, those absolutely safe poisons. How stupid they don’t. What a pity, Franz, you’re not studying medicine; you could find out, you could decide then.”
“I’m ready to do anything,” he said in a strained voice, for at that moment he was bending and pulling off his shoes—they were new and pinched. “I’m game for anything.”
“We’ve wasted a lot of time,” sighed Martha. “Of course, I’m no scientist. I’m only a woman.”
She carefully folded on a chair the dress she had taken off. The Fe
bruary wind was rattling the windowpane, and she shivered as she stepped out of her panties. In the beginning of the winter she had started putting on warm underwear for her visits to him, but he had hated her incongruous appearance in those oatmeal tights which were almost as long and as tedious to peel off as his own and made her hips and bosom appear like those of a certain particularly offensive, dully rounded dummy in the store opposite the service lift. And after a while she stopped wearing anything but his favorite frills against her gooseflesh.
“One must study poisons for years and years,” she said, tidily rolling down her stockings, which she wanted to keep but did not want to tear. “Hopeless, hopeless,” she sighed as she loosened the bedcovers (it would be warmer today between sheets, though she knew he preferred the couch). “You will be a chemist of genius with a long white beard when at last we offer him that cup of tea!”
Meanwhile, slowly and meticulously, Franz was draping his jacket over the broad shoulders of a special hanger (filched from the store), after having removed and placed on the table a wallet containing a five-dollar bill, seven marks and six post stamps; a little notebook; a fountain pen; two pencils; his keys; and a letter to his mother he had forgotten to mail. Ruminative, naked, morose, he sniffed one armpit, and tossed his undershirt under the washstand. It landed on the floor next to a rubber basin with Martha’s rather depressing paraphernalia. He kicked the undershirt into a corner—she could wash it for him after tomorrow, with the socks, which were still comparatively clean. Well, to work, old soldier. Because he wore glasses even for love-making, he reminded her of a handsome, hairy young pearl diver ready to pry the live pearl out of its rosy shell as in that Russian ballet they had seen together, or that picture of conches facing the last page in volume M. He took off his wristwatch, listened to it and put it on the night table, near the alarm clock. There was less than half an hour left; they had dwelt too long on the cyanide.
“Darling, hurry up,” said Martha from under the blankets.
“God, what a corn I’ve developed,” he grunted, placing his bare foot on the edge of the chair and examining the hard yellow bump on his fifth toe. “And yet it’s the right size of shoes. I don’t know, maybe my feet are still growing.”
“Franz, do come, dear. You can inspect it later.”
In due time he did in fact give his corn a thorough examination. Martha, after a brisk ablution, lay down again, replete with physical bliss. The callus was like stone to the touch. He pressed it with his finger, and shook his head. A kind of listless seriousness accompanied all his movements. He pouted, he scratched the crown of his head. Then, with the same listless thoroughness, he began studying the other foot, which seemed smaller and smelled differently. He just could not reconcile in his mind the fact that the size was correct and yet the shoes pinched. There they stood, the rascals, side by side. American type, knobby-nosed, a nice reddish brown. He eyed them suspiciously—they had cost quite a lot even with a Rabatt. He slowly unhooked his glasses, breathed on the lenses, his mouth forming a lower-case o, and wiped them with a corner of the sheet. Then, just as slowly he put them on.
Martha looked at the clock. Yes, it was time to get dressed and go.
“You absolutely must come to supper tonight,” she said, pulling up her stocking and snapping her garters. “I don’t mind so much when there are guests but to sit alone with him—I can’t bear it any more.… And put on your old shoes. Tomorrow you’ll go and have these stretched for you. Free, of course. Every day is precious, oh, how precious!”
He was sitting on the bed, clasping his knees and staring at a point of light on the decanter that stood on the washstand. With his round head and prominent ears he seemed so special, so lovable to her. In his attitude, in his fixed gaze, there was the immobility of hypnosis. It crossed her mind that one word from her at this very moment could make him rise and follow her—as he was, as naked as a little boy—down the stairs, through the streets.… Her feeling of happiness now attained such a degree of brightness, and she imagined so vividly the regular well-planned, straightforward course of their common existence after the elimination, that she was afraid to disturb Franz’s immobility, the immobile image of future happiness. She quickly finished dressing, slipped into her coat, took her hat, threw him a kiss, and was off. In the front hall, before a slightly better mirror than the one in her lover’s room, she powdered her nose and put on her hat. How becomingly her cheeks were burning!
The landlord emerged from the toilet and made her a low bow.
“How is your wife feeling?” she asked, looking back as she took hold of the doorknob.
He bowed again.
She reflected that this wizard-like old codger was sure to know something about methods of poisoning people. It would be curious to know what they do, he and that invisible old woman of his. And for a few days longer she could not rid herself of the dream of magic powders instantly dissolving in death’s nothingness, even though she knew already that nothing would come of it. A complicated, dangerous, outdated practice! Yes, that was it—outdated. “Whereas in the middle of the last century an average of fifty cases of poisoning were investigated annually, statistics show that in modern time—” Yes, that was the point.
Dreyer raised the cup to his lip. Involuntarily Franz met Martha’s eyes. The snow-white table described a slow circle with a crystal vase for hub. Dreyer put his half-empty cup down, and the table stopped revolving.
“… The light there is not particularly good,” he continued. “And it’s cold. The resonance is terrific. Every bounce makes an echo. I think the place used to be a riding school. But of course that’s the only way to keep in training. One’s serve does not fall apart during the winter. In any event (a final swallow of tea) spring, thank Heavens, is in the air, and it will soon be possible to play out of doors. My new club comes to life in April. And then I’ll invite you. Eh, Franz?”
The previous day, at nine in the morning, he had created a minor sensation by appearing in Sports Goods, which he seldom visited during the winter. From behind a stucco column Franz saw him stop to chat with the respectfully bowing Piffke. The salesgirls and Mr. Schwimmer stood at attention. An early customer, who wanted another ball for his dog, was ignored for an instant. “Regards to your cockroaches,” said Dreyer to Piffke cryptically and merrily, and came up to the counter behind which in the meantime Franz had slipped and feigned to be occupied with pad and pencil.
“Work, work, my boy,” he said with the absentminded geniality with which he always addressed his nephew, whom he had filed away in his mind long ago under “cretin” with cross references to “milksop” and “sympathisch.” Then he advanced with humorously outstretched hand toward an unresponsive young man of painted wood who had been changed recently into tennis togs. The shopgirls had dubbed him Ronald.
Dreyer stood before the red-sweatered oaf for a long time looking with contempt at his posture and olive face, and thinking with a tender excitement about the task which the happy inventor was struggling with. From the way Ronald held his racket it was obvious he could not hit a single ball—even an abstract ball in his world of wood. Ronald’s stomach was sucked in, his face bore an expression of inane self-satisfaction. Dreyer noticed with a shock that Ronald was wearing a tie. Encouraging people to wear ties for tennis!
He turned. Another young man (more or less alive, and even wearing glasses) dutifully listened to the boss’s brief instructions.
“By the way, Franz,” added Dreyer, “show me the very best rackets.”
Franz complied. Touched, Piffke watched with a melting gaze from afar. Dreyer selected an English racket. He gave the amber strings a couple of twangy fillips. He balanced it on the back of his finger to see which was heavier, frame or grip. He swung it in a passable imitation of a good player’s backhand drive. It was a comfortable thirteen and a half.
“Keep it in a press,” he said to Franz. Emotion clouded the young man’s glasses.
“Token of affection, modest gif
t,” said Dreyer in an explanatory patter and, casting an unfriendly last glance at vulgar Ronald, he walked away, with Piffke trotting beside him.
Although strictly speaking it was not at all part of his job, Franz embraced the wooden corpse and started undoing its tie. As he worked at it, he could not help touching the stiff cold neck. Then he undid a tight button. The shirt collar opened. The dead body was a brownish green with darker blotches and paler discolorations. Because of the open collar Ronald’s fixed condescending grin became even more caddish and indecent. Ronald had a dark-brown smear under one eye as if he had been punched there. Ronald had a pied chin. Ronald’s nostrils were clogged with black dust. Franz tried to recall where he had seen that horrible face before. Yes, of course—long, long ago, in the train. In the same train there had been a beautiful lady wearing a black hat with a little diamond swallow. Cold, fragrant, madonna-like. He tried to resurrect her features in his memory but failed to do so.
9
A purposeful gaiety, a dash of excitement now marked the rains. They no longer drizzled aimlessly; they breathed, they spoke. Violet crystals, like bath salts, were dissolved in rain water. Puddles consisted not of liquid mud but limpid pigments that made beautiful pictures reflecting housefronts, lampposts, fences, blue-and-white sky, a bare instep, a bicycle pedal. Two fat taxi drivers, a garbage collector in his sand-colored apron, a housemaid with golden hair ablaze in the sun, a white baker with glistening rubbers on his bare feet, a bearded old émigré with a dinner pail in his hand, two women with two dogs, and a gray-suited man in a gray borsalino had crowded together on the sidewalk looking up at the corner turret of an apartment house across the street where, conversing shrilly, a score of swallows swarmed. Then the yellow garbage collector rolled his yellow can up to the truck, the chauffeurs returned to their vehicles, the baker hopped back on his bicycle, the pretty servant maid went into a stationery store, the women trailed off behind their dogs, which were beside themselves with new scents; the last to move off was the man in gray, and only the bearded old foreigner with his dinner pail and a Russian-language newspaper remained in a trance gazing up at a roof in remote Tula.
King, Queen, Knave Page 16