by Dan Vyleta
‘Have you seen Anneliese?’ he asked, but she did not seem to hear, ran to the kitchen, drank from his wine.
‘My uncle is out tonight,’ she announced. ‘I told Vesalius I was eating with you.’ Her eyes looked wild to him, some great disturbance running through her mind. She had yet to remove her coat; it hung open and weary from her girlish shoulders.
‘And Otto?’
‘Gone to work. He kissed me today.’ She winced, unfastened the hook at the top of her blouse, showed him a collarbone marked by a bruise. ‘I closed my eyes and pursed my lips, saying he may.’ She poured more wine, downed it. ‘Turns out he bites. Then he stood waiting, that look in his eyes.’ She blushed. ‘Like he thought I knew what came next.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I–’ She straightened in her chair, patted down some strands of her hair. ‘I ran away, of course. Though first I invited him to my uncle’s party. The big soirée. You must help me tell him.’
‘Your uncle’s giving a party?’ Beer muttered, confused. ‘But you can’t invite Otto. It’s impossible. You must tell him you were joking.’
Zuzka nodded at that, but he could see she wasn’t listening to him. She kept drinking more of his wine, her face flushed, frightened and drunk.
‘I haven’t seen Lieschen for two days,’ he tried again, hoping to call her to her senses, but again she simply nodded, then cut him off, not having heard a word.
‘Three or four years ago,’ she said, ‘Father brought us to Vienna for a week. We went to all the museums, and to the theatre every night. Hamlet was playing. Some famous actor, too old and too fat, bulging out of his tights. I remember his legs most of all, staring at his legs, and at the front.’ She gave a manic sort of laugh and made a gesture down past her abdomen where her legs stretched scissored at the groin. ‘The play was awfully long. One part, though, struck me very much, when the actors performed the play within the play. I found it and read it later, in my father’s library, Karl Kraus’ translation, Dad had marked the section with a postcard from the Alps. The Mousetrap, it’s called: the moment Hamlet lets his uncle know how much he knows. He went pale, poor Claudius, white as a sheet upon his throne. I couldn’t fathom how he did it. The actor, I mean: how he willed the blood to leave his face. I literally thought he would fall over and die.’
Zuzka looked over to him, as if to see whether he was following her line of thought. She seemed reassured when she saw that he did not.
‘You mustn’t say anything to anyone, isn’t that right?’ she asked with great abruptness. ‘Because you’re a doctor, I mean.’
Her eyes, he noted, pointed past him, deep into the flat. All at once he understood. She was thinking of Eva. There was no man easier to blackmail than Anton Beer.
Again she poured from the bottle of wine.
‘But what is it that you want from me?’ he asked, dismayed.
She took hold of his hand, dragged him out of his seat and out of the kitchen, towards the living room, where he slept at night upon the leather couch. She let go of him, threw herself face down upon its cushions, slid a pillow under her hips; her coat and skirt riding up mid-thigh, the stockings drooping on her doughy legs.
‘Have me,’ she said.
It was as though she were asking him for a cigarette, or another glass of wine.
He stared at her stiffly and ran to the window to close the curtains.
‘Zuzka,’ he said, kneeling down beside her elevated bum.
The doorbell rang. They both turned their heads. It was like a scene from some cheap farce.
He thought at first he might be able to ignore it. Beer expected no visitors that night, and it seemed important to see to this: an unhappy girl, hip-cocked, crying, a heave and shiver running through the muscles of her back. But the ringing was insistent, soon joined by the loud banging of a fist. Beer excused himself, rose to his feet and stepped into the hallway, making sure to close the living-room door behind himself. Five steps took him past the coat rack. He looked through the spyhole, then opened the door. It was Teuben, detective inspector of the criminal police.
4
Detective Inspector Teuben made himself at home. ‘Grüss Gott,’ he said, ‘Heil Hitler,’ not raising his right arm; walked into the kitchen first, bent to find a beer at the bottom of the larder, pushed out the cork with a flick of his thumb. Beer marvelled again at the thinness, the redness of his lips; the jet-black wig that cut off in a line above the ears and neck; the awkward physicality in the new but shabby suit. His shoes were wet from walking amongst puddles; muddy footprints soiled the floor.
‘Halfway through dinner, I see. May I–?’ And the big hand reached forward to cram a slice of boiled ham into his mouth.
‘You wouldn’t have any horseradish, Dr Beer?’
Silent, yielding, Beer stepped over to one of his cupboards, and retrieved a jar of pickled Kren, unscrewed it, plunged a little spoon inside. Teuben watched him with open amusement.
‘You’re quite the housewife, Dr Beer. I’m impressed.’
‘What do you want, Detective Teuben? It’s late, I’m tired.’
The man smiled, licked the grease off his finger and thumb.
‘Why don’t you have a look at this, Dr Beer?’
From the pocket of his coat, which he had thrown across an empty chair, he pulled out a folded-up envelope. Inside was a typed police report, detailing an assault against a young woman named Gisela Kirsch.
‘She’s a maid in a doctor’s household. Surgeon by the name of Rupp; proud member of the SS. You know him?’
Beer shrugged. ‘I might have met him at a ball.’
‘Ah, the physicians’ ball. How splendid! Middle-aged wives looking like meringues; selling off their daughters to the highest bidder. But I suppose it’s part of the game. Making contacts and all.’ He scoffed another slice of ham, cut himself a piece of bread. ‘The attack took place in the Volksgarten. Miss Kirsch says she “just wanted to take the air”. Middle of the afternoon, would you believe? Not a lot of people around, because of the rain. The assailant dragged her into the bushes. Notice the leather strap he tried to put around her throat. We took pictures of the bruise. It’s a wonder she got away. A hardy girl, big juicy arse.’
‘So now you think you have a serial murderer after all.’
Teuben raised his brows, his hairline twitching with the motion. ‘That’s why I come to you, Dr Beer. The criminological genius, German methods and all. Take your time, though, read it in peace. We can talk about it all tomorrow.’
He stood, wiped his hands on the tablecloth, finished the last of his beer. ‘There’s another reason why I came.’
‘Yes?’
Teuben took his coat over one arm, stepped into the hallway, then turned to walk into the flat rather than out. He was heading for the bedroom.
Beer ran after him.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked, laid a hand on Teuben’s shoulder, stopped him with a sudden tug. The thin lips spread into the knife-cut of a smile.
‘Following a hunch.’
They stood like this for a moment, front to back, Beer’s face close to the spot where neck and throat grew into ear, the detective’s head half turned so as to present a perfect profile, his dark, soft eye and sagging chin, the purple strip of a shaving bruise clinging to the bottom of his jaw. Teuben’s smell rose between them, a masculine mixture, not unpleasant, of aftershave and sweat. The hand Beer had raised to the detective’s shoulder now sat there with the limpness of a lover’s parting touch; its passion spent, it lingered only as a reminiscence, marking time. Teuben stared at this, the doctor’s hand, and waited him out.
It did not take long. Beer withdrew his arm, stuffed the useless hand into one pocket: it found a hanky there, and some old button sewn from folded bits of leather, worn smooth and greasy from long years of use. The detective smiled once more and carried on towards the door; swung it open with a sudden push. Beer followed him into the room, gherkin juices rising to his t
hroat. In front of them lay Eva, stomach down upon his bedding; her neck was bent so that she faced them, the pillow wet with a patch of drool, green eyes large and reflecting back the sudden light of the hallway bulb. A sheet covered her from foot to naked shoulders; the nightgown’s straps pretty with their lace against her pallid skin.
Teuben took a breath and eased himself into the chair that stood by her bedside, level with her chest and face. He reached and touched her, shook her, then creased his brow in wonder.
‘What’s wrong with her? Why doesn’t she move?’
‘She can’t. A temporary condition. I’m treating her.’
Teuben bent forward until his face hovered only inches above her covered back. He sniffed, then straightened. ‘She smells,’ he complained and pulled back the sheet to reveal the first of the bandages, easily visible through the gown’s thin gauze.
‘Please,’ said Beer. ‘She must not be disturbed.’
‘And she really cannot move? Not even her arms and head?’
‘No.’
‘How wonderful.’ He touched her face, ran a hairy thumb along her lower lip.
‘Detective. You mustn’t. This woman is very sick –’
Teuben turned to him then, his thumb still pressed to Eva’s mouth, prising open her lips in a gesture that was openly obscene.
‘Dr Beer,’ he said with some formality. ‘The last time I was here you told me this woman was your lover, and asleep. You lied very well. I had my suspicions, of course, but told myself to let it go; what use was it to me to see you troubled, and besides what good is a man who doesn’t whore? In short, I had other things on my mind. But then, some days ago, I find myself thinking about this woman in your flat. I only had the briefest glimpse – a shorn, dark head, a skinny arm, sleeping soundly in your bedroom – but something stuck with me, some sense of line’ – he gestured through the air as though he were a painter – ‘and I find myself thinking perhaps I’d like to meet the girl myself. So I make enquiries. It doesn’t cost anything, I’m the police, so what the hell. The name was fake, of course, I half expected it, though common enough in Vienna that we tracked down two and asked them awkward questions just to make sure. Then, this afternoon, just after I have taken down Fräulein Kirsch’s statement and hence was thinking of paying you a visit, I remembered that Speckstein mentioned a divorcee in this building whom he suspects of “unlicensed prostitution” in his stuck-up little phrase. Teaches English, a deaf old crone as chaperone who wouldn’t know it if she banged an army out back. I go for a visit, profess an interest in some foreign tongue. Turns out she’s a handsome little lass with a gorgeous head of hair; skinny, shapely, knows how to smile. So for a moment I think it’s her, I’ve solved your riddle, and am even a little disappointed. The divorcee is pretty, don’t get me wrong, but in the light of day she lacks the mystery that I remembered: she wasn’t worth, in short, wasting my thoughts on for nigh on a week. Just to make sure I tug at her hair. We’re face to crotch by then, she thinks me a customer, looking lovely with her lips around my swollen cock. And what do you know: it’s not a wig. I nearly yank her head off, I do, and with it my pecker, she bites down in pain. So I apologise and let her finish; have a think. I’ve a good mind to come over straight away, put a boot right up your bum, but then it’s office hours and your patients might be in the way. So I tell the driver to take me back to the station. I pick up the report – two birds, one stone – go out for a beer, make bets with myself what it’ll be. Most likely, of course, the bedroom is empty; crumpled bedsheets needing a wash and the wardrobe filled with Frau Beer’s old frocks. At worst, I figure, I’ll get a new name out of you, and an address that fits the bill. But then, there’s a chance there is more to it after all: the shorn-haired girl caught sleeping in your bed. I drink a second beer and wonder is she a Gypsy – a thief, a bum, a Communist? – run away from one of our camps? And then – I order a schnapps to congratulate myself! – I remember you worked at the hospital, keeping tabs on the mad. So all of a sudden I have this romantic notion that you have a nutcase here, pretty like the night. And just like that everything makes sense: your sudden resignation, wife gone to Switzerland, the quick, confident lie. You are screwing a loon, the type the propaganda tells us we’d do best to put a bullet through their heads. I took a cab here, will you believe it, rather than waiting for a station car to be available. Excited like a little boy.’
He laughed, straightened and withdrew his arm, wiped his wet thumb on his tie. ‘But this, Dr Beer, this I didn’t expect! A girl who can’t move, big old plasters on the back. Pretty like an altar boy chewing his first wafer. And anything you say about it, Dr Beer, it’s bound to be horse-shit, so please don’t even start.’
He stood, rounded the bed, slipped a hand under the sheet and took hold of one of Eva’s feet. ‘You haven’t just shot her full of morphine, have you? No, you’d keep her tied in that case, making sure she didn’t wake and make a nuisance of herself; and I can’t see any straps.’
Through all of Teuben’s speech, Beer stood head bowed, helpless, the taste of gherkins in his mouth. He dearly wished to spit and wash his mouth; to strike Teuben, push a spike through both his eyes. His right hand remained clenched around the contours of the leather button. It seemed scarred to him, sown together from leftover scraps. A surgeon’s fingers might have admired the stitching.
‘Tell me,’ Teuben said, still holding on to Eva’s foot, and raising her leg beneath the bedsheet. ‘Is it still customary to examine female patients through their clothing? I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when our old coroner told me. He was talking about the difference between the live patient, and the dead.’
His eyes found Beer’s. There was no malice in them, the doctor thought, just hunger. It took him a moment to gain control of his voice.
‘It’s no longer customary. Not among the younger generation.’ He paused. ‘Don’t hurt her.’
‘Hurt her? But why should I? She’s – perfect. God’s idea of woman, when he whittled on that rib.’ He smiled, pleased with himself, red lips parting over neat white teeth. ‘Leave us, Dr Beer, why don’t you? Fix some coffee, perhaps, and a glass of brandy.’
Beer remained where he was, halfway between bed and door, feet spread wide for balance. He became aware of his own breathing, the detective’s gaze upon him, awaiting his reaction. Beer had a strange sensation as of a noise rising in his ears, like the shouts of many voices, the words just out of earshot and conjoining into the seashell whisper of the tides.
‘You can’t,’ he said. ‘I won’t.’
Teuben shook his head, raised a hand to scratch within his wig.
‘Dr Beer. There is only one way this can end. If you were doing something legal, you’d have thrown me out by now, made some noise about your rights.’
‘She has an acute infection. She could die at any moment.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘Have a look then.’
The doctor stepped up to the bed, and folded over the lip of the sheet, revealing the back of the nightgown. The voices grew louder in his ears; he wondered what would happen if they suddenly broke into intelligibility. With swift, tender movements he undid the topmost clasp and pointed to the bandage.
‘Go on, peel it back. It’s loose, so the wound can breathe.’
Teuben reached forward with surprising delicacy. He raised the corner of the adhesive tape with one fingernail, then peeled it back slowly, trying not to hurt the skin. The bandage came off, revealing the crater of the wound, looking fresh and pink like the gums of a newborn. Inside the half-inch hole there was a wriggle of movement. Teuben bent closer, trying to see, then leapt back to the window, his face suddenly pale.
‘Maggots!’ he said, appalled.
Beer readjusted the bandage, buttoned up the gown. They stared at each other across the bed. Teuben looked thoughtful, white under his wig. All his blood seemed to cling to his lips.
‘But what is that noise?’ he said, and turned around to the wi
ndow.
‘You hear it, too?’ Beer asked, surprised. Just then a whistle joined the hubbub of voices. It sounded from outside.
The two men stepped to the window. All was quiet in the street, two lamps casting cones of light on to the pavement. A flow of pedestrians, not all of them in coats, was heading for the building’s front door, which had been propped open with a brick.
‘It’s coming from the courtyard. That’s a police whistle, that.’
Teuben turned abruptly and headed for the corridor. Beer followed close behind, cast a parting glance at Eva, her eyes open and unmoved. Her foot was sticking out the bottom of the sheet where Teuben had held on to it, the toes curled inwards, into the sole.
In the corridor the two men ran into Zuzka, emerging from the door to the living room. Teuben stared at her, standing there in her grey woollen dress, one stocking flapping down around her ankle, then burst into a sudden laughter.
‘You’re full of surprises, Herr Doktor.’
Zuzka brushed past him, took a hold of Beer’s arm. He noticed with irritation that there was a stiffness to her walk that recalled one of her earlier symptoms: she dragged the left leg. It struck him as a bad moment to indulge in childishness.
‘There’s been a murder,’ she murmured, fear in her eyes. ‘Across the yard. Lieschen–’
A gust blew from the living room behind her (she had opened the window to have a clearer view of the yard) and carried with it the sharp trill of a police whistle, unmistakable now in its pitch. Even Teuben started at its sound. Without another word all three of them rushed forward, out the front door, and could soon be heard running down the stairs. Outside they were met by a dense crowd of neighbours and strangers, held in check by the police.
5
Zuzka stood in the yard and shivered. She had left her coat in Beer’s living room upstairs, where she’d taken it off and flung it to the floor some time after the doctor had run to answer the door, hoping he would see it upon his return and read it as a clue to her displeasure. It had been a long half-hour that she’d spent, alone, having offered up her virtue and been spurned. She’d lain on the couch and cried a little, embarrassed, stung at having been abandoned at a moment such as that, abject and unhappy, though some small part of her was listening, exercised as to who had dared to ring the bell. It was a single man who entered the flat, and from the few words that carried from the kitchen she formed the dim understanding that it was a policeman working on the killing of the dog. When he and Beer walked past into the bedroom, she opened the door a little and thus overheard much of the policeman’s long and filthy speech, then grew aware of the hubbub of voices floating up from the yard. Distracted, her mind clinging to the image of a woman kneeling before a man’s unbuttoned fly, she ran to the window and drew back a corner of curtain. Right away – before, even, she’d become aware of the crowd that pressed together in the rectangle of yard – her eyes sought out the flat inhabited by Lieschen, marked as it was by the sudden flash of a photo camera inside. Even after the flash the flat stood brightly lit. There was no mistaking the uniform of the man who leaned against the window, staring down on to the crowd. A second flash, behind him, lit up the kitchen and threw his shadow across the yard. The crowd stood with their heads thrown back, staring up as though they were admiring a firework display. Two further policemen, their hands busy with their truncheons, secured the door to the back wing. Zuzka opened the window; snatches of conversation drifted up to her. The word ‘murder’ hung in the air: ‘once again with a knife’; someone talked loudly about ‘the Zellenwart’s dead cur’. She listened further, the cold contracting her fair skin. ‘Lieschen,’ somebody said, and again, ‘Lieschen,’ fingers pointing at the flat. She recognised among the crowd the man from the hospital gardens with the scar and the dead eye. He was eating a sandwich, talking as he chewed. Vesalius was there, and old Frau Novak; the Bergers; the Obermanns; the English teacher with her head of auburn locks. Half the crowd was smoking. In the half-dark of the yard the glow of the cigarette ends hung like fireflies on a summer’s eve. A group of men were shouting questions at the policemen guarding the back entry. A schoolgirl laughed and was loudly told to shut her trap.
