by Dan Vyleta
Shyly, compulsively, and only dimly aware that someone was talking to him, he craned his neck to once again scan the audience. He saw fingers pointing, was distracted for a moment by the row of sketch artists who sat to one side with large pads of papers hoisted on their knees, then found himself drawn to a young man with feverish eyes who sat in the first row and who was missing not only a leg and an arm, but one entire side of his body, including his shoulder, half his chest, and some of his abdomen. Karlchen heard someone call his name but could not wrest his eyes from this half man, occupied by the question of how his body looked under the shirt (the man kept it from gaping with the help of some clothespins).
He looks like a fish ate him, it ran through him. Or a whole swarm of fish. And he kept on staring at the horrible eroded edge of his torso, and the place where his rib cage should have flared.
“Young man,” the voice spoke again, and he turned at last, reluctant, looked up, and saw that one of the judges, the one in the middle, was speaking to him. “Did you hear what I said?”
Karlchen nodded, blushed.
“You will tell the truth, then?”
Again the boy nodded.
“You must speak up. So the stenographer can record your answer.”
“Yes,” he said, and then again, afraid he had not been loud enough. But each time, what emerged from his lips was little more than a yelp. Behind him, in the sea of sounds that was the audience, he could hear the rising tide of discontent.
4.
The boy was questioned in the late morning of the third day of the trial. The first day had almost entirely been taken up by formalities, including the swearing-in of the jurors, the reading of the arraignment, the opening statements, and the defendant’s plea. It was only towards the late afternoon that the first witness had been called. But despite the fact that there was nothing in the arraignment, the speeches, or indeed the statement of this first witness that could be of surprise to anyone who had read a newspaper in the week or so coming up to the trial, the rows of the criminal court were packed to the last seat. Indeed there were reports about a lively and somewhat shameless trade in admission tickets being conducted not ten steps from the great hall’s front doors. All this frenzy was owing to the fact that the first day was widely regarded as the earliest opportunity to meet all of the trial’s major “actors,” about whom there had already been so much talk.
Apart from the defendant himself, interest on this first day had centred on the figure of the prosecutor on the one hand and Wolfgang’s defence lawyer on the other. They were, it was decided, a study in contrast, a contrast that extended to the physical, political, even spiritual dimensions. Representing the State was one Julius Fejn. Dr. Fejn was widely believed to be either one-quarter or one-half Jewish, which is to say (by the system of classification only so recently lifted) a mongrel, who had however survived the war years with minimal inconvenience thanks to the intervention of his wife, who was the daughter of a well-respected opera critic and consequently well connected. In any case (it was said, in tones ranging from surprise to a sulky sort of anger) Fejn did not look Jewish, was blond, tall, with a burgher’s girth and heavy jowls, and the cutest little button of a nose in his fleshy, ruddy, but otherwise remarkably patrician face. When he spoke, it was with a sonorous, clear, if somewhat lazy delivery that in times of great excitement embraced the ghost of a lisp. It was in this lisp that the connoisseurs of such matters (there was amongst the audience more than one) located something affected, overdone, in bad taste, and consequently Jewish, even though the voice held, of course, no hint of a Yiddish intonation and Dr. Fejn spoke in the purest of German, conscientiously inflected with a touch of Viennese.
Dr. Fejn was facing off against quite a different sort of man, a short and tidy figure who looked as though he had been starched and pressed along with his clothes: a sort of Robespierre of defence lawyers, unyielding in his thought and habits, who had a manner of speaking to witnesses in a dry, flat, quiet voice that invariably succeeded in suggesting that they had not only insulted him, personally, but the moral order of the universe as such (and, really, that these were one and the same). His name was Ratenkolb. He too was rumoured to have been a “victim of recent events,” and indeed it was said that his father, a Socialist, had been jailed immediately after the annexation, had caught a chill in prison, and had died as a consequence (albeit a year later and once again a free man). Dr. Ratenkolb had not maintained his practice during the war years, though whether from choice or because he had been blacklisted was a matter of dispute.
As for the presiding judge, the case had originally gone to one Klemens Meutziller, a fearsome tyrant of a man who had a habit of clearing the courtroom at the slightest provocation and who was known to bully prosecutors, defence lawyers, and witnesses alike, all in the name of common sense. And generally the Right Honourable Dr. Meutziller was said to hate any kind of verbiage and florid speech, as well as any kind of posturing. But just a few days before the court date the judge had suddenly taken ill, and quite seriously at that. Consequently the case went to one of the assistant judges on the case, a certain Bratschul, Alois by Christian name: a timid, indecisive soul who had earned his appointment more through societal connection than any show of legal brilliance, and suffered from some kind of gastric condition that often saw him squirm in his judge’s chair with a mild-mannered impatience. It was therefore expected that rather than embracing the strong, some might say inquisitorial, role accorded to him by the Austrian legal system, he would sit back and allow prosecution and defence to dictate proceedings to a considerable degree.
All this, and much more besides, Anna Beer had learned from Sophie Coburn, who, despite her fragmentary German, seemed to have an impressive array of sources at her command, as well as a willingness to fill in the blanks with bold intuitive steps. Some other details Anna had learned by herself. She had not at first wanted to come to the trial at all, but the boredom of her situation, as well as the fact that it would have been impolite not to make use of the much-coveted entrance ticket Sophie had procured for her, convinced her otherwise. After her initial visit, midway through the opening afternoon, she found herself returning to the trial day after day, until her fellow spectators became as familiar to her as the judges and jurors, and she was able to pick out new faces and mark conspicuous absences almost as well as Sophie herself.
Anna had come to distinguish three distinct groups in this audience, though they did not, of course, identify themselves as such and sat scattered throughout the hall. The first—perhaps the largest, if also the quietest—was made up of men and women who all shared in a somewhat unhealthy and, as it were, downtrodden appearance. Quite a few of them appeared to be crippled, while others had the air, if not always the scars, of having endured violence of some form or another; were pale, thin, badly dressed, and sat on the benches with quiet, unmoved faces, their hands in their laps. There were many older people amongst this group. Though they tended to betray little emotion throughout the trial, it was understood that they were, to a man, hostile to the accused and had come to witness his condemnation.
The second group, on the other hand, were uniformly young men, many of them well turned out, with hale and pleasant faces. They were, as a group, broadly sympathetic to Wolfgang and in sympathy with one another; indeed many of them seemed to know one other and exchanged looks, sometimes handshakes, albeit in a strangely guarded, even furtive manner that ran counter to their general mood, which was confident and cheerful. It did not take much imagination to picture them dressed in uniforms; in the right sort of setting they would have made quite a dashing impression.
In addition to these two there was a third, more varied group, less committed in their sympathies, that treated the trial quite openly as a form of entertainment. These more casual spectators often took great care over their toilette and came dressed as though going to church or even the opera. The majority were women. They tended to come early and secure the first few rows. A nu
mber wore jewellery and a handful brought their lorgnettes so as to better study the scene before them. There was, amongst this group, a lot of whispering and coughing, and the occasional request, not always voiced politely, to remove a wide-brimmed hat that was blocking the view.
Chiefly these young and well-to-do women seemed interested in the accused and often focused their attention solely on him, though he sat with his back to the audience and could, at best, only be studied in quarter profile. Anna could well understand their interest. Wolfgang had surprised her on his first appearance: was handsome, tall, and long-limbed, given to moods, and at times appeared bored; was hostile and scowling during one witness statement then boyish and distracted during the next, digging around in his pockets or nervously playing with a deck of cards under the little desk behind which he had been placed.
This last detail—the card playing—was, Anna observed, noticed by more than one juror. Their reaction was hard to read: some seemed to judge him a frivolous young man, and hence guilty; others looked on with greater charity and rather seemed to wish they had a deck of cards to play with too. As far as the general disposition of the jurors was concerned, the older and less educated amongst them, along with the stout banker’s widow who was the sole representative of her sex, seemed to incline towards Wolfgang and to take an almost paternal interest in him; while two or three of the younger men, who looked, at times, as if they would not mind doing away with their own fathers given half the chance, were consequently amongst the most judgmental of those in attendance and seemed to already have consigned Wolfgang to the gallows. It was, Anna would reflect in the evenings, a mystery how any sort of verdict was to be distilled from all these disparate elements and impressions.
5.
At the point the boy was called in, a new and unprecedented sense of suspense hung over the room. The cause for this excitement was as follows: Earlier that morning a string of policemen had been questioned about the defendant’s confession. This confession had already been the subject of several newspaper reports and was generally regarded as unassailable proof of the defendant’s guilt, especially since the defendant had not withdrawn it but simply insisted “that it did not count for a thing.”
But strange to say, that was precisely how things turned out. According to the arresting officers the accused had made an oral confession no sooner had he been picked up by the authorities for shuffling around the city with bare, bloody feet and behaving like a drunk. He had, they said, “spilled the beans at once,” which is to say even before they arrived at the station; had insisted on his guilt with particular vehemence and in “colourful language”; beaten his breast, cried, threatened to kill himself, and generally made quite a spectacle of himself. The confession had then been typed up “straight away” and allegedly been signed. But precisely this document now appeared to have been “misplaced.” No trace of it could be found either in the investigative file or at the station house itself. A carbon copy existed and was produced but proved to be unsigned. The overall impression was that the original had also never been signed, and that, assuming a confession had been made at all, it had only been made orally, and that by the time the document had been presented to the defendant (the carbon was dated two days after the incident) he had refused to sign. It was at this point that the prosecution called Karlchen as their next witness.
The initial impression made by the boy was a negative one. He looked small, distracted, even neurasthenic; was fidgeting in his seat and craning his neck around its backrest; kept scanning the audience as though he were expecting one of the spectators to come forward and help him out of his predicament, and staring at a young crippled man whom he seemed to regard with enmity and fear. While many in the audience felt a certain sympathy for the boy, few were inclined to consider him a reliable witness. The thought must have occurred to the prosecutor, who, after all the judge’s questions had been met with what now seemed like an obstinate silence, rose, smoothed down his robes, and begged the judge’s permission to “have a go” himself.
“So,” he said, in a kindly, self-assured voice, “it’s not how you’d expected, eh?”
The boy did not answer.
“More people than you bargained for, I suppose. And those lorgnettes! You must feel like an exhibit.”
Again he received no answer. The prosecutor followed Karlchen’s gaze, adjudged its subject.
“Does that man frighten you?” he asked. “I am sure he does not mean to. All it is, he’s lost an arm and a leg. Well, and a bit of the trunk too, I suppose.” (Laughter in the audience.)
“There now, I believe we have made him blush. Let’s give him a rest, why don’t we? Why don’t you look at me instead? I am not all that frightening, am I? Yes, that’s right, turn your head forward. Can you see those gentlemen to the right? On the rostrum? No, not the judges. Over there, I mean, to your right. Those are the jurors, the men—and the woman—who will be asked to hand down a verdict in this case. You see them? All they want is for you to tell them what you saw on the twenty-fifth of June of this year. Nothing more, nothing less. You will manage that much, won’t you? Of course you will.
“But I see it’s not a good place to start. Well, then. ‘Karl Theodor Heinrich.’ Isn’t that what the judge just called you? That’s a very grown-up name. In fact it’s three very grown-up names. Quite a mouthful, really. I don’t suppose they call you that at home? They don’t, do they? I see you are shaking your head.
“Come, now, won’t you tell the jurors what they call you at home?”
The boy listened to all these explanations and questions with the air of someone gagging on his own breath. His mouth was wide open, his ears were burning red. In his desperation he once again turned to the audience, shook loose the vision of the crippled man, and at last found what he was looking for. A young girl, witnessing his predicament, had convinced her father to let her clamber onto his lap so as to be more visible and now stood up to attract the boy’s attention. Her face was a pale mask of the most intense concentration; her hands bunched into fists and raised up before her—not as a threat, but rather in entreaty, their knuckles buried deep into her cheeks. It was as though she were willing her little friend to speak. And strange to say, the boy, upon finding her and exchanging that first gaze, calmed down almost at once, turned back to the prosecutor, and answered his question.
“Karlchen,” he said. “They call me Karlchen.”
A sigh went through the audience, of almost physical relief. The prosecutor straightened, took a second to flash a smile of good-natured triumph at the jurors, then bent forward towards the boy.
“Of course they do. They used to call me Julchen, you know. From Julius. I never much cared for it.” He laughed and invited the audience to laugh along. Some spell of tension had been broken. “Well, now, Karlchen. We want to talk about the events of the twenty-fifth of June. But I see you are still a little nervous. Let us start somewhere a little easier, then. To talk ourselves warm, so to speak. It’s what my mother used to say, that the tongue’s a muscle like any other. For instance, can you tell us what you had for breakfast this morning?”
The boy considered it, a little taken aback by the inquiry. “A slice of bread with butter. But I didn’t finish it. Half a boiled egg; I shared mine with Franzl. And some milk.”
“Franzl? That’s your brother, I take it. Did he also eat just one slice of bread?”
“No. He had two. And the rest of mine.”
“How about the way here, then? Did you take the tram?”
But no, the boy had not taken the tram, he had walked with his father. What route had they taken? And how long until they’d arrived? And in the courthouse itself, what had Karlchen noticed? For instance, at the doorway, did they turn right or did they turn left; and how many staircases did they pass?
The prosecutor kept up this ream of questions for some minutes, while the boy gave increasingly precise, and at times very detailed, answers. The point of the exercise, naturally, was to
impress upon the jurors that, far from being the nervous, shifty, dim-witted child they might at first have taken him for, Karlchen was in fact a sharp observer with a good memory, and as such made an excellent witness. The defence lawyer, Dr. Ratenkolb, was consequently none too happy about this line of questioning, and at several points seemed about to object that it was irrelevant, but Anna could see that he feared to alienate both audience and jurors, who were enjoying the interlude. So he sat, frowning at the boy with some severity, and held his peace. At long last, though, Ratenkolb could no longer hide his irritation. He jumped up from his seat and shouted that “this game has gone on long enough” (though he did not, of course, actually shout, but rather spoke in a precise, irritated voice that was as good as shouting, only quieter). Sighing on his chair, the presiding judge agreed and instructed Dr. Fejn to “please move to the matter at hand.”
The prosecutor, at any rate, was almost done with the preliminary part of his interrogation. He had arrived by now at a summary of Karlchen’s last birthday, or rather at a detailed list of the various and, it must be said, rather shabby presents he had received.
“You are twelve, then,” Fejn finished, not at all ruffled by Dr. Ratenkolb’s complaint, and knowing full well that the number was wrong.
“Ten,” the boy corrected, looking pleased.
“Why, of course. It’s just that you remember everything so well. Do you know who Hans Gross is? No? Well, I suppose he is dead now. He was Europe’s premier authority on crime. Still is—ask any policeman! A good Austrian, incidentally, from Graz. You know what he said about witnesses? He said—” (At this point he took up a book he had lying on his little desk face down to mark the passage in question.) “Here it is: ‘Experience shows that in many situations the most reliable witness of all is a healthy boy between seven to ten years of age who knows nothing as yet of love and hate, ambition and hypocrisy, nor of the considerations of religion, rank, et cetera.’”
