Fortune

by Lenny Bartulin

Instinctively, no idea where he was, Krüger tried to lift his head. The pistol pressed him harder. The flintlock creaked, steel and spring stretching, Krüger felt the tensing through his skull; then a click, the pistol primed, alive. He was unable to formulate one succinct thought.

  ‘Nice and calm,’ the voice said. ‘There’s a man at the door, too.’

  In the next bunk, Mr Hendrik said, ‘Not him.’

  The room had gathered a soft, honeyed light from around the cruel lamp. Krüger’s eyes adjusted. He saw an older man with long grey hair and white stubble thick over his chin, face deeply grained. He wore a dark coat with gold military buttons, the shoulders with faded rectangles where epaulettes had once been sewn. His shadow stretched the full length of the room and loomed above them.

  ‘you killed the American?’ he said, the pistol still at Krüger’s temple, though he was looking over at Mr Hendrik now.

  ‘To kill a man is nothing.’

  The tall dark shadow smiled. ‘Well, black man, you’ll be finding out soon enough.’

  THE WORLD IS ALWAYS DIFFERENT IN THE DARK

  Elisabeth von Hoffmann opened her eyes and, for a brief disconcerting moment, had to remember where she was (a hotel, Bordeaux). She slipped out of bed without waking the général. She’d had a dream.

  Elisabeth lit a candle and sat down at the dresser. In the mirror, she gazed at her face. The dream had returned her to a window in Berlin, the day Napoleon Bonaparte marched through the Brandenburg Gate, the day she’d seen the boy, the one who’d looked up at her from the couch. This time, in the dream, he didn’t look up and Elisabeth had waited at the window, desperate for his eyes, for his head to turn in her direction. Somebody was tugging at her arm at the same time (it was the man she’d seen, with the arms pinned like a bird, she remembered). He was trying to pull her away, yet Elisabeth knew that she had to see the boy look up, it was an explicit requirement of the dream, and she couldn’t go before he had. Even inside the dream, she knew that it had happened before in real life, but it was crucial that it happen again.

  She held her ground, resisted, but the boy didn’t turn around. She waited a few moments more, then relinquished to the pull at her arm. She allowed the man to drag her away. That was when she woke up.

  The candle flame on the dresser flickered in the corner of Elisabeth’s eye. She glanced at it, the space of a breath, then looked back into the mirror. Now, suddenly, it was the boy she saw reflected back at her. She blinked and he was gone.

  In the morning, Bordeaux was rainy. By late afternoon, the ships in the port were bare-masted and ghost-like in the grey mist. Elisabeth, Général Fourés and his aide-de-camp, Christophe Bergerard (whom the général had been able to retain), were drinking vin chaud in the hotel, waiting to board.

  ‘It will do you good,’ the général said to Elisabeth.

  ‘yes.’

  ‘I only hope the journey won’t make you worse.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Elisabeth said. ‘A cold. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘you said that earlier and now you look worse. Doesn’t she, Bergerard?’

  ‘Maybe the same, Mademoiselle?’

  ‘Better!’ Elisabeth smiled. She picked up her vin chaud. ‘To your health, gentlemen.’

  ‘To yours,’ Fourés said seriously. ‘I want the colour back in those cheeks!’

  Bergerard finished his wine and stood. ‘I’d better see to our luggage, Général. It’s nearly time.’

  ‘Good, Christophe. And tell Captain Mènard I wish to speak to him onboard.’

  ‘yes, Général.’

  Fourés had been informed of British naval movements in the wider Caribbean and of attacks on French ports and trading vessels. They were to be accompanied by two forty-gun frigates, but the warships would eventually turn towards Martinique, leaving them alone for the last leg of the journey. Général Fourés thought about these things, and distracted himself with them, but really he was nervous because he’d never sailed before in his life. Forty days at sea! Under his cloak, he was sweating. Last night he’d dreamed of sinking ships. He wished for his horse.

  ‘I hope the weather improves,’ Elisabeth said.

  Fourés nodded. They sipped their hot wine and waited for Bergerard to return.

  GRILLED SARDINES

  On a beach in San Sebastián, Johannes Meyer sat and watched the sea for a whole afternoon, boots off and trousers rolled above his ankles, raw toes numb in the cold sand.

  The rushing sound of the waves, his eyes trying to follow, put him in a trance, but he was unable to forget completely about the wicker baskets he’d seen at the docks, filled with anchovies and sardines like briny jewels, and the barefoot fishermen, brown as leather, eyes small and liquid, passing the baskets up from the boats, the fish sliding and glistening, white-bellied and silver and black, streaks of red blood bright at their gills. And the man grilling sardines by the sea wall, the smell of the fragrant, unbearable, oily charred smoke.

  Johannes Meyer fell asleep and woke a couple of hours later, his hunger intact and even more intense.

  The sky glowed at the fold of evening and night. The moon was a perfect, clean white curve. The waves curled and crashed. He thought of the man called Krüger, who’d said that all destinations were inevitable. That the whole earth was a single entity, that each one of us was a mere hair strand of its memory. Johannes had never been to the sea before, but it seemed there was something here that he remembered.

  The second time he went to where the fishermen were, he bartered his bayonet for the grilled sardines. When Johannes tasted the crisp charred skin, the flaking, clean salty flesh and the oil moistening the inside of his mouth, his cracked lips, he realised it was this that he remembered, though he’d never eaten grilled sardines before in his life.

  He asked the man if there were any boats he could earn passage on.

  ‘To where?’

  ‘Anywhere,’ Johannes said.

  The man smiled. ‘Only fishing boats, friend. They do not go far.’

  Seeing how the boy had relished the fish, he gave Johannes a few more sardines.

  ‘For the knife,’ he said. ‘I see now that it is a very good knife.’

  The man went about his work, gutting the soft white bellies and pulling gills, scraping scales. He whistled as he cleaned the fish, called out to people and sold the grilled sardines to them, drank from a wineskin, squirting the liquid into his open mouth. Johannes finished eating and sat for a while in the sun and watched the boats and the fishermen on the docks.

  When the man packed up his grill and kicked sand over the coals, he slapped Johannes on the shoulder. ‘May the Virgin protect you, friend.’

  The high treacherous roads at the border were busy with French troops marching into Spain, but Johannes managed to get through. He made it to the outskirts of Bordeaux. He’d hoped to find a ship there, but barely escaped being arrested in La Brède (gangs were rounding up peasants to replenish the ranks of the Grande Armée) and he had to give the idea up. His luck held for another three hundred miles, but in a little town not far from Paris, the war caught up with him again.

  After his arrest, it was discovered that Johannes was a deserter. Records were summoned and decisions made. A lieutenant by the name of Duval confiscated his collection of beetles and took the notebook with all his drawings. He gave Johannes a uniform and said, ‘A fair exchange, no?’ He didn’t smile. Then he sent Johannes Meyer to Holland, to fight against the English once more.

  THE STORM

  Elisabeth von Hoffmann stood on the deck of the Anne-Laure and looked out over the sparkling sea, calm now after the storm. The sky was an enormous blue dome, the horizon glaring white in every direction. She stood with confidence, tall, proud and not a little euphoric.

  Général Fourés was still in their cabin, suffering. Last night’s storm had emptied both his stomach and spirit. It had done so for many on the ship, even a few of the old sailors who’d seen every kind of sea, but Elisabeth had endured an
d of all the passengers on board today she appeared fresh and even rejuvenated on deck. The sailors acknowledged her, no words, just small smiles and winks.

  Sure-footed, planted, the deepest surges of the ship, the deepest currents of the sea, it had all come up through Elisabeth’s feet and she’d felt as firm as a rod of iron. And supple too, intuitive. If it weren’t for dresses and propriety and women’s shoes, she’d have climbed the rigging barefoot, right to the top of the mast.

  The wind, the waves muscling the ship; last night it had lifted like a wing on the swelling sea, breached the foam ridges of surging heights, and then plunged down the steep trough slopes, crashing into the dark sea valleys, over and over. Down, then up, up again, men scrambling over the deck, pulling ropes, calling out and holding on, the rigging whipped and howling, the long groans of the hull timbers. But Elisabeth had never doubted, not the ship, not her survival. She had no explanation for her certainty.

  And now the storm seemed to her a culmination, the end of an old life and the beginning of something new. She was at the mercy of wind and water and there were no fixed points. And she wasn’t frightened, because she was free.

  THE DEBT AND THE PRICE

  Some time later, when things had settled, Krüger took a position teaching German at the local school in Borken. The council itself had approached him and made the offer.

  The five children who came to his class (aged between six and ten) were unenthusiastic. They weren’t interested in learning to write and speak grammatically. Their parents were mostly poor farmers and made them work before and after school. None of them would be there long enough to learn much, and nobody they knew spoke that way besides.

  Krüger discovered that what they liked best was having stories read to them and soon that became the whole lesson, which made things easier for everyone. His heart wasn’t in the teaching, it was an agony, but reading the stories had turned into an unexpected pleasure. The narratives surprised him with their artistry and craft, and then there was also the particular feeling of joy when he saw the children so enraptured, hanging on every word he read, their faces raw with tension, every heart hooked in a bundle of lines running to the book in Krüger’s hands.

  He still had a room at the same inn where the bounty hunter had come that night and arrested Mr Hendrik (how the man had discovered them, Krüger still had no clue). He spent his evenings choosing stories to read for the children. He waited for Mr Hendrik’s trial. He ate only a little bread and cheese, sometimes an apple, drank white wine, which he indulged in (it was crisp and sweet and pale yellow like straw) for only then could he sleep. He tried to write, but each word was like a hair plucked out of his arm.

  The whole town knew what had happened, of course, but it was impossible for these upstanding folk to imagine a Prussian involved in gruesome murder, such as the case was. Krüger was seen as an unfortunate and innocent bystander to the whole business.

  ‘The Negro and the American were a party,’ the carriage driver said when the trial finally began. ‘They’d paid for the journey together.’

  ‘How would you describe their relations?’

  ‘They were plainly in a state of some animosity towards one another.’

  ‘And Herr Krüger?’ the magistrate said.

  ‘Herr Krüger joined the coach separately. He kept to himself and read his books.’

  Nobody questioned why Krüger had helped the lame Negro get all the way to Borken (‘Because he’s a good Christian!’ they said). The verdict was speedy and unanimous. The murderous, crippled Negro was sentenced to death by hanging.

  Weeks passed and then months, and they were still waiting for the executioner to arrive from Recklinghausen. And then that moment inevitably arrived, too.

  Krüger went to see Mr Hendrik. He had no idea what to bring. He brought an apple and a piece of cheese and a bottle of white wine.

  The gaoler led him along a short corridor of cells and then unlocked a heavy timber door. Inside, Mr Hendrik was lying on empty grain sacks on the flagstone floor. As he dragged himself up, the gaoler locked them both in together.

  The cell was cold. Mortar crumbled out of the damp walls. Mr Hendrik was thin and sallow and there was a patchy beard over his chin. They’d taken his clothes, shoes, given him a coarse grey woollen tunic and pants, all of it filthy. There was a slop bucket in the corner, straw over the floor. His lame and broken leg was swollen around the knee and he held it straight out before him, gently rubbing his thigh.

  ‘Tomorrow then,’ Mr Hendrik said.

  Krüger hesitated. ‘yes.’

  Mr Hendrik stopped rubbing his leg, stared down at it. ‘So,’ he said. Then to himself, in Surinamese, I have run further than any of them.

  Krüger reached into his pockets, took out the apple and the piece of cheese and put them down next to Mr Hendrik.

  ‘Do you still have the Bible?’

  ‘yes,’ Krüger said. ‘I’ve spent nothing of it.’ He wanted Mr Hendrik to know.

  ‘you will buy Josephine with the gold.’

  Krüger said nothing, only looked at Mr Hendrik blankly.

  ‘She will not run with you,’ Mr Hendrik said, ‘you cannot save her. you must buy her from Captain van der Velde. To free her you must own her. It is the only way she will understand it.’

  ‘your sister is on the other side of the world.’

  ‘And she is waiting for me. Now you.’

  Somebody walked past the door. They listened to the footsteps fade.

  ‘I’ve been wanting to bribe the gaolers,’ Krüger said quietly, ‘to get you out, but I wasn’t—’

  ‘No!’ Mr Hendrik said, frowning, pointing at Krüger. ‘you would lose the money and achieve nothing.’

  Krüger nodded. ‘yes,’ he said. In the cell, standing before Mr Hendrik, he felt it for the first time now, truly, that there was some purpose to his life. How could it possibly be this? But there it was.

  He said, ‘How will I find her?’

  ‘There is a man in Paramaribo who will help you. His name is Bayman Quince Rotterdam. Can you remember?’

  ‘yes.’

  ‘Everybody knows who he is. you can ask at any tavern. He is a sly, corrupt old black devil and he’ll want to be paid and fed, but he will lead you to Josephine.’

  Krüger took the bottle from his coat pocket and sat down next to Mr Hendrik. He leaned back against the cell wall and handed the doomed man the wine. After Mr Hendrik had drunk from it, he put the bottle to his own lips, but the wine was tasteless.

  ‘you must do this for me,’ Mr Hendrik said.

  ‘I will do it.’

  ‘your word? This is what your people give?’

  ‘you have it.’

  Mr Hendrik reached behind his head, took the obia from around his neck and gave it to Krüger.

  ‘Remember to believe,’ he said.

  Mr Hendrik was hanged the next morning. Krüger did not attend because he had already gone. Apart from the gaolers and the executioner from Recklinghausen, there was nobody else to come.

  Mr Hendrik was buried in an unmarked grave in a field beyond the cemetery reserved for suicides and the variously mad and possessed.

  It rained in Borken for the rest of the week.

  THE SHRUNKEN HEAD

  Claus von Rolt was asked (by a syrupy-eyed old general in exile) to accompany the Prussian envoy Ludwig von Kleist to London on a secret mission to secure armaments and raise funds for a planned rebellion against the French. Rolt was known to have spent time in the English capital and, along with his contacts, exemplary English and reputation for charm and wit, it was hoped his presence would soften the brusque military manner of von Kleist. Rolt accepted, of course, for there was no real choice; there was the appearance of patriotic duty to consider. There was also the opportunity to extricate himself from an affaire d’amour run its course. And there was the possibility of conducting a little business in rare species, London being the epicentre of the trade.

  He packed
his trunk and arrived on a clear, crisp Tuesday.

  It was 4 April 1809.

  Rolt spent most of his days in meetings and dinners with one cabinet minister after another, listening to von Kleist as he tried to sell the Prussian plan and receive a pledge from the English. After three weeks, they were no closer to any kind of commitment, and then they heard the Austrians were in town too, seeking assistance for their own uprising (bigger and better than the comparatively vague Prussian plan). After that, Ludwig von Kleist became quite desperate and pushy. Rolt knew this wasn’t the approach to take with the English. They nodded politely into their soup as von Kleist argued his case. They cleared their throats as the plates were taken from between Kleist’s firmly planted elbows, and they smiled uncomfortably and tried to change the subject, and still he insisted. Finally, they listened to von Kleist beg and were forced to say, ‘We’ll see what we can do,’ and hoped the man would desist from embarrassing himself and those around him any further.

  The shrunken head was in a glass cabinet at Lord Oldham’s house.

  They were in his study, drinking French cognac after dinner, and like all the dukes and lords before him, Lord Oldham had stopped listening to what von Kleist had to say. The shrunken head hung by a braided cord from a small brass hook, like the pendulum in some grotesque clock, a blackened leathery ball about the size of a fist. It had long matted hair and wide, shrivelled lips sewn unevenly together, as were the half-closed eyelids, bulging and puckered around the thread, and the nose upturned like a snout, the nostrils obscenely flared. Its cheeks were sunken and lacerated and the face was dry and tight, knuckled like a ham hock. Claus von Rolt couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  ‘My son brought it back for me,’ Lord Oldham said, noticing the Prussian’s interest and keen for the distraction from the insufferable von Kleist. ‘South America, I believe. They’re into that sort of thing down there you know—lopping off the enemy’s head and usurping its power. If only it were that easy!’