He was about to read the third envelope when the taxicab slammed to a halt and the driver opened the door for him. Franz fumbled for the fare.
“All taken care of,” the driver said. “If you don’t hurry, you’ll miss your train. Although if you want to give me a little extra something for the highly professional and discreet way in which I allowed you to ride in peace and quiet, I—”
Franz gave him what little change he had left and ran into the depot.
FRANZ PLOPPED ONTO the plush cushions of the first class carriage as the train lurched into motion, not because he wanted to plop, but because of the suddenness of the train’s departure.
He was winded and not at all pleased at being hustled around as he had, as if by some invisible hand. He felt lucky to have kept all of his things intact, from parcel to envelopes to coat and…
“Your hat,” said Gregor.
Gregor was, in fact, wearing the hat.
He sat opposite Gregor as best he could. Franz snatched the hat from his head.
“Where the hell have you been?” he asked.
“That’s a new way of saying ‘thank you,’” Gregor said. He reached over and pulled up the window shade. The train built up steam and slid out of the depot with a spine-shattering whistle. “First class,” Gregor said. “Wow.”
“Where were you when I needed you?”
“When did you need me?”
“I…” Franz began, but didn’t finish, because he couldn’t think of a moment where he had actually needed the disgusting beast.
“It would have been nice to have had someone to talk to these past few hours,” Franz said. “I thought that was your purpose.”
“Did you.” It wasn’t a question.
“Well, as your purpose has never been fully explained to me…”
“What’s in the parcel?” Gregor asked, picking it up from where it sat at Franz’s side. “Box of chocolates?”
“No,” Franz said. “Give me that.”
Gregor shook the parcel. “A brick?”
“Now, why would I have purchased a brick?” Franz asked. He grabbed the parcel and began to unwrap it. Gregor shifted in his seat.
“First class is no more comfortable than any other class,” he said. “But I suppose it wasn’t designed with the comfort of three-foot-tall vermin in mind, was it? Do you mind if I…” He sprang to the wall of the carriage.
“Don’t do that,” Franz said, swatting at him. “It’s unsettling.”
Gregor sprang to the window.
“And for the love of all that’s good, get off the window,” Franz said.
Gregor sprang to the ceiling.
“Much better,” he said. “So what’s in the parcel? Ah, it’s a book!”
“Brilliant deduction,” Franz said, “particularly coming after I unwrapped it.”
“Smutty?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Is it a smutty book?”
“No,” Franz said, ready to throw the book at Gregor and knock him down.
“What’s it called?”
The door of the compartment slid open and two nuns entered, one carrying a newspaper, the other a bag of walnuts. They sat opposite each other; the nun with the newspaper opened it and used it as a wall while the other went about cracking a walnut by placing it in the hollow of her elbow, making a fist, and bringing her forearm sharply back. She nodded to Franz.
“Walnut?” she asked.
“No thank you,” Franz said. The nun glanced at his book.
“Lovely red cover,” she said. “How Not to Be a Successful Detective, by Irena Baumhover,” she read. “Is it a murder mystery?”
The wall of newspaper came to a snapping collapse, and the other nun glared at Franz. “Murder is a sin,” she said.
The first nun cracked another walnut. “No one’s saying it isn’t, Sister Agata,” she said. “I was just reading the title of this young man’s book.”
“Did I hear you right?” Gregor asked from the ceiling. “It’s called How Notto…”
“You’ve had enough walnuts, Sister Jana,” Sister Agata said.
“They’re good for you.”
“They’re noisy.” Sister Agata turned her steely gaze to Franz again. “As I was saying, young man,” she said, “murder is a sin.”
“This is true,” Franz said.
“Don’t say it in such a patronizing tone,” she said. “It’s a fact.”
“A horrible fact,” Franz said, and tried a smile on her, to no effect.
“A fact can be neither horrible nor beautiful,” she said. “A fact is a fact.”
“Oh, brother,” said Gregor.
“That murder is a sin is a fact,” Sister Agata said, “and even thinking about murder is a sin.”
“You mean contemplating murder.”
“I mean what I say.”
“But not every person who considers murdering another actually… murders anyone at all.”
“Are you the expert?” She rattled her newspaper at Franz. “These murders in Vienna. Sin, sin, sin. On every side.”
Sister Jana cracked another walnut.
“On every side?” Franz asked.
“Don’t engage her,” Gregor said.
“Yes,” Sister Agata said. “All around. The murderer, the victims, the detectives, the public itself… an overload of sin.”
Sister Jana giggled, and Sister Agata slapped her across the face with the newspaper.
“The world is obsessed with Death,” Sister Agata said, straightening her habit and fixing an acid gaze on Franz. “Death in and of itself, naturally, but Death by nefarious means, even Death as an anodyne to Justice. While it is important to be familiar with Death as the natural end to our corporeal Life, that’s about as far as its contemplation should go. What is the fascination, sir? I ask you! What is the fascination?”
Franz had an answer for that, but was prevented from giving it, as Sister Agata barreled on. “It’s a sickness, a global sickness,” she said. “And it stems from mockery. We mock the thing we are to be, and since we are all going to be dead one day, we mock Death and being dead. I say ‘we,’ but what I really mean is the rest of you. Everyone else. I don’t mock Death, I daren’t. But all of you? Mock, mock, mock. And this”—here she brandished the crushed newspaper locked in her grip—“is daily evidence of the result of that mockery.”
Crack.
Sister Jana chewed her walnut and said, “What Sister Agata means—”
“I’ll thank you to not interpret what I say,” Sister Agata said. “I speak plainly enough.”
“—is that no one is taking any of it seriously,” Sister Jana finished. A soft pattering on the paneling drew Franz’s attention to Gregor, who was now above Sister Jana, intent on the walnuts.
“But I don’t think that is entirely true,” Franz said, ignoring Gregor as best as he could. “The police are taking it seriously. The citizens of Vienna. Myself.”
“Yourself? In what way?” Sister Jana asked.
Franz wanted to tell her that the mere fact of his presence on that very train, that very day, was evidence enough of his seriousness of purpose. But would she understand the circumstances that had brought him there, when he himself didn’t know if his purpose was of his own volition or the product of some unseen, mysterious manipulation that included in its package the sudden eradication of a fatal disease and the companionship of a conspicuously large scavenging insect?
“Are you a detective?” Sister Jana asked.
“He’s no Christian, I’ll tell you that,” Sister Agata said.
Franz looked at her.
“What does one have to do with the other?” Franz asked.
Sister Agata squinted at him. “Everything,” she said, “has to do with everything, young man.”
Gregor scrambled back to the ceiling.
“Christ,” he said, “it always comes back to religion, doesn’t it?”
Franz felt a prickly, indignant warmth on the b
ack of his neck. He had an answer for Sister Agata, but was again prevented from giving it, as the train, at that moment, roared into a tunnel with a prolonged shriek, and all was blackness.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE HOT COMPARTMENT
“HOW MUCH MONEY did you waste on that book?” asked a soft, lilting voice.
Franz strained his hearing as best as he could over the amplified clattering of the train as it pressed on through the darkness of the tunnel. How had he heard the voice at all?
“I know the author,” the voice said. “She means well, but I have to tell you, she wrote it to capitalize on a trend. That said, you might find it amusing.”
The train burst out of the tunnel, and Franz found himself sitting opposite Inspector Beide. Gregor and the nuns were nowhere to be found.
“What am I imagining and what is actually happening?” Franz asked. “And don’t answer me with another question.”
“Everything is actually happening,” Beide said.
“Horseshit.”
“You wanted an answer; I gave it to you.”
“Did you give me the actual answer, or just the one you thought I might like to hear?”
“Now, how would I know which answer you’d like to hear?”
“I told you not to answer me with a question.”
“That was for your first question.”
Franz threw the book at Beide. She caught it, opened it, and scanned its first few pages.
“Do you really think you’ll need this?” she asked.
“It’s all he had,” he said.
“Who?”
“The bookseller. E. Murek.”
“Oh.” She turned a page. “We’ll skip the introduction,” she said. “Here we are—‘Chapter One. A Mystery. You will not be a great detective if you cannot recognize a mystery or differentiate it from something that is clearly not a mystery…’ Really, Herr Kafka.”
“He sold it to me at the ‘get acquainted’ price,” Franz said. “It was in a wire bin with a bunch of other books.”
“You didn’t open your third envelope,” Beide said.
Franz looked at it. Unlike the first two, there was nothing written on it.
“What’s inside?” he asked.
“Beats me,” she said.
“But isn’t it from you?”
“No.”
“But you left me three envelopes.”
“Yes. But just because I left you three envelopes doesn’t mean that all of the envelopes were from me. Do you understand?”
Franz nodded.
“Then who gave you the third envelope to give to me?” he asked.
“One way to find out is for you to open it,” Beide said.
“And another way for me to find out is for you to tell me,” Franz said.
“Perhaps I don’t know.”
“You know something about it.”
“Perhaps I don’t want you to know.”
“Well, that’s different. Why don’t you want me to know?”
“Why do you think I don’t want you to know?”
Franz felt the heat on his neck again. Was he to go through this every time with the Inspector?
“What’s so important about this envelope?” he asked.
“How should I know? Open it,” Beide said.
“No,” Franz said.
“Now you’re just being stubborn.”
“Can you blame me?” Franz asked. “I’m being treated like a cat’s paw. It feels like every move I’ve made today has been made for me, invisibly, in advance; that something or someone has decided what I should be doing and has been nudging me into doing it. Things have not been as they ought to be. Things and people appear and disappear. My own existence isn’t as it ought to be, either. And you know it!”
Beide crossed her legs and looked out the window. “It’s lovely this time of day,” she said. “The way the sun works its way over the hills as it sets. I’ve always loved the hills. The Kahlenberg, the Leopoldsberg… and, of course, the sheer majesty and mystery of the woods. I love making this journey, love it going either way, I haven’t a preference. I love the journey north, and I love this, the journey south. Any time of day. I don’t know why.
“People live there, in the woods, on the hills; people I’ll never meet, never know. I’ll never pass them on the street, as I might do in the city, our destination. But even seeing people on the street, well—I won’t know them, either, even though I’ve seen them and witnessed their existence.
“Are they like me, like you? On some level? I’m sure they are, even if there’s no way I could ever prove it. I assume all of them, country folk and city folk alike, are stuffed with the same essential clockwork as I: they hunger, they envy, they desire, they need, they love, they hate…
“And this train races us along, past the hidden strangers to the unhidden strangers; this train, this railway that wasn’t here fifty years ago. We’ve found a way to cut right through it all, to connect one place to another, to get us from one group of people to another group of people, faster and faster still. It’s stupendous. And frightening. Why should that be, Herr Kafka?”
“It’s a mystery to me,” Franz said. The heat in the compartment was stifling.
“Good,” Beide said, tossing the book back to Franz. “According to the first chapter of Fraulein Baumhover’s book, you’re on the way to being a great detective.”
For some reason, this angered Franz.
“Your face is so red,” Beide said.
“Like a furnace in here,” Franz said. He pulled the strap that lowered the window, but he gained no relief, as he caught a blast of soot square in the face. He moved aside and struggled to raise the window again.
“Would you like some help?” Beide asked.
“I’d like some square answers,” Franz said, shoving at the window, which would not budge.
“Square answers? As opposed to ovoid answers?”
“Honest answers, no tricks.”
“Perhaps if you didn’t slam it like that…”
“What am I to do for money while I’m investigating your case?” Franz asked, slamming at the window frame.
“You’ve been given money,” Beide said.
“Will there be more? I have to live, you know. Will you arrange to have my pension forwarded to me? And even then, it’s not the most luxurious sum…”
“Your needs will be met.”
“And what of my friends, family? Dora? Every time I want to get in touch with any of them, something happens and I’m prevented from doing so.”
“That might be for the best.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Herr Kafka, quit fooling with the window and listen to me.”
Franz sat down, out of the blast from the window. Beide had changed while he had been busy at the window, had returned to being male. Franz blinked, just to assure himself, but he had not been mistaken: Beide was a man.
“Your involvement in this case,” Beide said without a trace of a smile, “could be dangerous.” He waited to see if his statement made any impact on Franz. “I thought we had been through this. Murder is a dangerous business, especially when you, as yet, do not know what you are dealing with. Would you place your friends in harm’s way? Willingly? Or your sisters, your mother? Never mind your father, I know your feelings for him. But think: would you want Dora to be in the path of danger?”
Franz dropped his gaze to the unopened envelope on the seat. A gust caught it, and it fluttered up; he caught it.
“One last question,” he said, looking at Beide. “You… how do I put this? You change. Physically. And in other subtle ways. I have never met anyone like you, someone who is one thing and then the other.”
“Yes you have,” Beide said, sitting back.
“No. No, I haven’t. Not in this way.”
“Maybe you have and just didn’t recognize it. What is your last question?”
“How,” Franz said, measuring his word
s, “am I to treat you?”
Beide smiled. “Like anyone else.”
Franz looked again at the unmarked envelope, which flapped in his hand like a captured bird.
“Open it,” Beide said. “For all you know, it could be the solution to the crimes.”
“I hardly think that’s possible. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here, alive, healthy, famished, on this train, here with you, heading straight at danger.”
“But how do you know?”
Franz frowned and let go of the envelope. It zipped out the window.
Beide merely looked at him.
“I know this game,” Franz said, standing. “Or I should say I’m learning your little game.”
“What game? There’s no game.”
Franz smiled.
“The tunnel trick,” he said.
“Tunnel trick?”
“And there’s one coming, I saw a glimpse of it when I was at the window.”
“What tunnel trick?”
“Oh, I’m way ahead of you. Goodbye, Inspector.”
The train entered a tunnel, and the compartment was plunged into darkness.
Seconds later, the train emerged, and the compartment was flooded with the light of the afternoon sun.
“Was something supposed to happen?” Beide asked.
Franz sat down.
“Never mind,” he said.
The train passed through a grove of tall trees, flitting past the western sun and causing a startling strobe effect in the compartment. Franz felt for a dizzy moment as if he were looking at a zoetrope of Beide, and shut his eyes. It was only for a second, but when he opened his eyes again he was alone in the compartment, the window closed. He stood up, tried the window and, when it didn’t budge, crossed the compartment to the door and found that it, too, was locked.
What was left of his rational mind did its best to convince him that he had been asleep the entire time, that he had been lulled to sleep by the rocking of the train, and Inspector Beide, Gregor—even the nuns—had been a dream. He went to sit.
And stepped on a walnut shell.
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