Fata Morgana

by William Kotzwinkle

  The old man closed his eyes. The café was quiet, with only a low murmur of voices and the occasional tinkling of silver. “I hear it still, as if I’d known it all my life, and lost it, and found it again, only to lose it once more.”

  Picard stared at the lowered eyelids of the old man, and listened for the haunting melody, hearing nothing but feeling it nonetheless, a tiny tune played along the nerves, as memories that weren’t his own assailed his heart, filling him with the sense that he’d known it all before, that he’d been upon this case a hundred, a thousand times, that he’d tracked Lazare down through the ages, from one land and time to another, pursuing him ever and endlessly, accompanied by a tune, a haunting tune.

  The old man hummed it softly, his eyes still closed, his gnarled fingers tapping the time lightly on the tabletop, the tune like the simple music of a carousel. Picard felt suddenly and hopelessly lost, upon a wooden horse which could never overtake the golden coach ahead of it on the wheel. Inside the fairy coach, Ric and Renée Lazare, forever free, mocked and laughed at him, as he spurred his wooden horse in pursuit of them.

  “Enchantment, sir,” said the old man, “the enchantment of the toys.” His eyes, weak and watery, had covered with a thin film of tears, like a man submerged in a fish-bowl, peering out through the glass, and Picard felt similarly immersed, in an ocean of anxiety, but he was determined to find the shore, to learn the secret of Lazare’s past, to know and to win at last.

  “This brilliant apprentice you speak of—how was he the cause of Robert Heron’s sorrow?”

  “The lad was possessed by a desire to be rich. He wanted to be a sort of monarch, covered in wealth. Heron and I argued with him, and Heron tried to make him understand that in the practice of the art one had to transcend the desire for riches, for that desire would find its way into the toys, and cause imperfections. Heron died virtually penniless, you know, with only a pauper to tend his grave. His reward, as he often said, was in the realm of the toys, where he was a king. But his disciple wanted to be a king of this world.”

  “A King of Paris, perhaps?”

  “You’ve seen him?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “We lost sight of him before the fair was over. He’d grown impatient with our vow of poverty. And he’d already spied out the deepest part of Heron’s work. He’s a master, said Heron on the night we packed our tents in Buda. God help him.”

  “Was there ever a fortune-telling machine?”

  “According to Heron, all earthly events have their invisible beginnings. Through the toys one touched these unseen elements of nature and discerned the peculiar design of men’s lives. Through the toys one could know the future, yes.”

  “That would be a formidable power.”

  “Robert Heron was a simple man, sir, and sought no such power. It was at his disposal but he did not use it.”

  “And his apprentice?”

  “He comes from Deep Sorrow, Heron used to say. He will return to Deep Sorrow. And he’d wind the little lute player and listen to the song he’d made with his disciple, which haunted him to his grave, and will haunt me to mine.”

  Picard reached into the deep pocket of his Norfolk, and brought out the acrobat he’d taken from Robert Heron’s house. “Is this the apprentice?”

  The pauper looked at the toy in wonder, his bushy grey eyebrows lifting high, as he nodded his head slowly up and down.

  The train rumbled through the night, and Picard, seated alone in the dining car, placed the acrobat on the table and wound him up. The tiny replica of Ric Lazare performed faultlessly on the tablecloth; the night landscape sped by, firefly villages lost in an instant, replaced by somber forest. So Ric Lazare is no fool; of course I knew that. But he is also a craftsman, and craftsmen are the calmest of men, and the most cunning.

  That shoemaker in Montmartre, the one I can never sneak up on, who greets me by name when I walk in the shop, though his back is always to the door. But how do you do it, Monsieur Voutour? The shoes, Inspector, everyone’s shoes have a different squeak.

  The craftsman, always a dangerous opponent.

  Picard brought his thumb and forefinger together and letting his finger fly forward, knocked the little acrobat on the head. It fell over on its back, but a last turn of the idle spring must have been touched; the acrobat’s knees came up, he flipped over and righted himself, standing once again before Picard’s eyes.

  He put the acrobat back into his pocket. Lights had appeared in the dark forest, solitary jewels followed now by shining clusters. Slowly the clusters grew larger until finally a great webbed necklace hung upon the night. Buda had meant many things to him in the past, but tonight it reminded him of the jewels around the neck of the little German princess the Baron had been escorting; and when I took aim the Baron’s waistcoat seemed to be pressed against the muzzle of my pistol.

  Picard walked slowly from the dining car, bending to peer out at the glittering Eastern Railway Station, the train pulling into the very center of the dazzling necklace, more brilliant and beautiful than he’d remembered it, as if enchanted by hidden spirits, or perhaps by the spirit of the brandy he’d been consuming in the dining car. But his heart was always gladdened by big cities, and he knew that in this he and Ric Lazare were similar. We both have a taste for glamor. Impossible to know how such tastes affect the aim. Certainly Lazare seems more ornate and in that way more encumbered, though you cannot consider Renée Lazare an encumbrance. Or if she is, let me be so encumbered, thought Picard, hauling down his valise from the storage rack.

  * * *

  He slept well, had a dream, a wonderful one, of sitting beneath a tree and falling asleep there. This sleep-within-sleep produced a deep sense of well-being, so deep that for the brief moment of the dream he felt like a child again, wholly innocent and wise. At dawn he woke and went to the window of his hotel. It was on the bank of the Danube, facing the Royal Palace. The first rays of sun were now on the water, and barges were already moving through the clear morning. He dressed, and was strapping shut his bag when a servant of the hotel knocked on the door.

  “If Monsieur is going to depart on the steamer...”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  He settled his bill at the front desk, and walked into the street, taking the slow descent to the water’s edge. The cries of the circling gulls echoed over the water and the smell of the river came to him. The pier he sought was enclosed by a wooden gate, and the ticket booth was just beyond it.

  “Destination?”

  “Esztergom.”

  He entered the pier and walked along it toward the gangplank. A smell of fish was in the air, and wet rope, and waterlogged wood. He climbed the gangplank and set his bag on deck, watching the other passengers come on board; no beautiful women at this hour of the morning. They’re all still in bed, preserving their beauty.

  The horn sounded and the lines were cast off. The gulls rose crying and wheeling with the captain as he steered away from shore. Picard walked along the ship’s railing, until he was facing upriver into the wind. Somewhere in these hills, Ric Lazare was born, in the hidden valley called Deep Sorrow. He’d no doubt pay a fortune to eradicate that bit of information from his past.

  Picard smiled toward the shoreline. The wise keep themselves invisible. But passports, visas, they trip a man up. Prince Solonski attempted to beat the game, traveling only with other people’s luggage, had twenty-five passports, all with different names. One shuffles the deck...

  He entered the lounge, where he ordered breakfast and studied a map of the region. Deep Sorrow—so insignificant as to have received no place on the map. But the hotel man thought... around here...

  “Your coffee, sir.”

  Just beyond Esztergom. These hills and valleys change their name with each generation. But in here... a desolate area... well, I’ll soon know.

  He closed the map and opened the memoirs of Celeste Savidant. The shoreline slipped past and Mademoiselle Savidant slowly wrecked the life
of the Due de Rouleau, was receiving her next unsuspecting suitor as the steamer edged toward the dock at Esztergom. The local gulls swooped overhead, leading the ship with silent determination to her berth. Picard descended the gangplank, and went by carriage to number 14 Bajcsy Szilinszky Ut, the Bath Hotel, adjoined to a hot-spring spa. He entered the healing waters immediately after unpacking, and the numerous fatigues of traveling were slowly soothed. He soaked contentedly, and completed the reading of Mademoiselle Savidant’s memoirs; the last beaten prince crawled penniless from her door and Picard stepped out of the steaming bath, leaving the book behind. Some other bather might come upon it and learn a valuable lesson; but one never learns. Celeste Savidant would swallow me up in an instant and I would be like all the rest, crawling broken from her doorstep. I know her building, on the chausée d’Antin. All very amusing, yes, until the victim is oneself.

  * * *

  “It’s a wilderness,” said the driver of the carriage. “And filled with thieves.”

  “Don’t worry about thieves.” Picard opened his jacket and laid his revolver on the seat beside him.

  “Very well, we go.”

  The carriage was small, light, and the two horses that pulled it were fast. But the road soon became a miserable rutted affair, winding tortuously through the wooded hills. Picard sat directly behind the driver, in the open box, his cape wrapped close around him against the cold. The driver looked over his shoulder. “I know of only one family who lives in here.”

  “Then it is they whom we’ll see.”

  “There were once many more families.” The driver waved his arm toward the gloomy forest, then pointed to a space in the trees, where a road had once been, but where alder bushes grew now, blocking the way. “All abandoned. The life was too hard. Wolves, thieving gypsies, many things.”

  “And who is it that stayed?”

  “A family of idiots.”

  Picard watched the bare forest pass. Snow had not yet fallen, but the wind and sky seemed to promise that it soon would. In a few weeks the road would be impassable, for no team of men would venture back to clear it. I’ve come in time, if there is anything to be found in this sorrowful valley.

  The driver wheeled his carriage into a side road, which was obviously still being used, though it was hedged in close by poplars and other small trees. At the end of the road a crude peasant shack appeared, overflowing with children and ruled by an ape-like father, who stepped defiantly from the porch with an ax in his hand.

  Picard stared toward the man, who stood perfectly still, as if made of Hungarian pig iron. The look in his eyes was related to a time before language, and the ax in his hand had the semblance of a club about it, so much so that Picard felt himself to be in a museum.

  He knew what he must appear like himself, an aristocratic lord come to pick the pockets of the poor. Such has always been the case, and such it is now, thought Picard as he descended from the carriage, for I’ve come to pick your mind, if you have one.

  The master of the hut didn’t move, his expression seeming to reflect only a wish that he had brought another club from the closet of his shack, in order to have something in his left hand as well as his right. That not being possible, he slowly raised his left fist and held it silently in the air.

  Picard twirled the late Baron Mantes’s pistol-cane. I would not hesitate to fire it in your face, he said to the eyes of the ape-browed peasant.

  The peasant’s eyes followed the twirling cane closely, and his fingers opened and shut on his ax handle.

  Picard carefully removed several large Hungarian bank notes from his pocket and flashed them in the peasant’s face, naming the game.

  The peasant’s eyes underwent no transformation. Yes, thought Picard, I understand. Printed papers of any sort are not suitable to put in a pie. But even so...

  The peasant turned his head slightly and grunted toward his shack. A woman came out wrapped in what appeared to be a pig’s tablecloth, through which her large teats were manifesting angrily.

  Picard spread the bills in his hand, holding them toward her. Yes, she has an instinctive understanding about money, perceives clearly that I’m offering the royal issue and not some bandit’s bullshit.

  He called to his driver. “Come here, and talk to this woman.”

  The driver came forward; Picard took the toy acrobat from his pocket and wound it up. The acrobat sprang from his hand, into the woman’s astonished palm, where it landed and kicked again, to the ground. She cried out and her husband squatted down in amazement, astounded by the leaping toy, whose perfect somersaults on the dried grass looked like the movements of a lawn goblin, a creature he’d obviously long been looking for. He hesitated, therefore, to touch the creature, who went on bounding around in the trash of the front yard, his spring carrying him to the edge of a broken eggshell before it wound down, his tiny arm freezing and pointing to the cracked shell, as if trying to reveal something to those gathered on the lawn.

  “Ask her if she knows who made that,” said Picard, pointing to the toy.

  The driver spoke to the woman slowly and gently, and she answered him, a satisfied smile on her face. The driver turned to Picard. “She says that she does, but she can’t tell you his name, because he’s a gypsy magician who would put the evil eye on her.”

  “Of course,” said Picard, handing her one of the bank notes.

  “Zoltán Lajos,” said the woman, receiving the money. Her husband was flat on the ground, staring into the face of the acrobat. His children were seated around him, with less fear of the little creature. They knew it for the toy it was, and the oldest boy took the acrobat in his hands and wound it again.

  “Ask her where Zoltán Lajos is from.”

  The driver spoke to the woman and she shook her head. Picard crossed her palm once more and she began talking in a guttural, nearly primeval dialect, the driver translating.

  “Zoltán Lajos is from Dog Slope Mountain. She’s seen him in the town of Dunabogdany. This was many years ago when she was young and beautiful.”

  “A toy like this,” said Picard, to the hotel clerk in Dunabogdany. “Very detailed, complicated workings. Made by a man called Zoltán Lajos.”

  The hotel clerk examined the piece for a moment, then handed it back. “Our Mother of Holiness Church. They have such a piece there. They wind it and play it for weddings. It’s supposed to bring the couple good luck.”

  “And does it?”

  “I was married there and my wife left me for a fiddler.” The clerk smiled. “Good luck for me, yes. Bad luck for the fiddler.”

  “This church...”

  “Just beyond the square.” The hotel clerk pointed, and Picard left the hotel, crossed the square and entered the church. It was quiet, nearly deserted. He walked up the aisle, past a few kneeling women in black, and entered the south vestibule. It contained only the usual announcements, some folding chairs, a small painting of the risen Christ. Picard crossed in front of the altar and entered the north vestibule, which held several glass cases filled with objects of importance in the historical life of the parish—antique vestments, a piece of timber from the original and now vanished church which the present one had replaced, an elaborate music box on which two dancers stood, their arms around each other. They were dressed in the costume of bride and groom and the handiwork in the figures was that of Robert Heron, or a close disciple. Picard exited by the vestibule door and crossed the stone walk toward the parish house, a sleepwalker’s air around him again, for he knew little of churches and their ways. The café was his church, and good food his communion.

  * * *

  “What is your interest in Zoltán?”

  “I’m from the Paris police,” said Picard, showing his identification to the abbot.

  The abbot nodded his head. “He made wonderful toys for the children, for the whole community. He was much loved when he lived here, for he had a gifted and generous nature. But his heart was angry. It caused his undoing.”

&nbs
p; “In what way?”

  “He quarreled with a man, a local gambler. They fought. Zoltán stabbed him, the man died.”

  “Was Lajos imprisoned?”

  “Certainly.”

  “In the state prison at Vác?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Was he born in this region, Father?”

  “He came to our town with the gypsies many years ago.”

  “He doesn’t look like a gypsy.”

  “No, he does not. But then, he never said he was. He said...” The abbot hesitated.

  “Yes, Father?”

  “He said he was Egyptian.”

  “I’m told he possessed the evil eye.”

  “His greatest evil was his temper. It brought ruin to his soul.”

  “But what of this power he is supposed to have, to bring harm to others at a distance, by manipulating—the forces of nature.”

  “If he had such powers why did he stab Anton Romani in a public tavern?”

  “Thank you for your help, Father,” said Picard, standing.

  The abbot rang his bell and the housekeeper came to show Picard out, down the long hallway of the parish house. His eyes were drawn to the painted dome of the entranceway—a pastel fresco to which age had given a luminous patina. Angelic spectators looked down at him from the rim of the inverted bowl, and Picard could not help smiling. It looked for all the world like a great crystal ball. In the center of it floated a pair of crossed golden keys, like signposts toward heaven. He pushed out through the door. He too possessed a key now, the master key needed to turn the lock on Ric Lazare. The toast of Paris had made the unfortunate mistake of killing a man in the open, with witnesses enough to convict him.

  * * *