The Emperor of all Things

by Paul Witcover

  Voices chorused a welcome: ‘Doooolph!’

  ‘I’ve been known to look in from time to time,’ he confided to me in English with a wink and a grin as he tugged off his gloves.

  My eyes had cleared, the dizziness lifted, and now I saw that there were a dozen or so men seated at tables in the inn’s common room, and an immensely fat, middle-aged woman who stood behind a long and unoccupied bar. All their eyes were fixed on me through a drifting bluish haze, but I sensed no animosity in their regard; thanks to Adolpheus, I had been accepted, accorded the provisional status of guest rather than intruder. I nodded a generalized hello, and the buzz of conversation resumed.

  A medium-sized but rotund brown and white terrier, which I assumed was the same dog that had barked at my entrance, came waddling up like a sausage with legs, and Adolpheus chuckled and scratched behind the animal’s foxlike ears. ‘Hello, Hesta, old girl.’

  The dog had but a single eye; the other, to judge by the scars surrounding the empty socket, had been lost in a fight. She wagged her stubby tail, basking in the attention, then gave my outstretched palm a sniff and allowed herself to be patted on the head before retreating, satisfied, to what was plainly her accustomed spot before the fire.

  ‘It’s she who truly owns the place,’ said Adolpheus, tucking his gloves into the pockets of his cloak. ‘The great Frederick himself couldn’t stop here if Hesta didn’t approve.’ He unfastened the cloak and shrugged it off, then handed it to me, indicating with his eyes a row of wooden pegs along one wall, above his reach, where other cloaks were hanging, dripping onto the wooden floor. ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I told him in my rough German. At his raised eyebrows, I added, ‘You see, I am as adept in your language as you are in mine.’

  ‘Then perhaps we can misunderstand each other equally,’ Adolpheus replied – in German – with a laugh. He had taken off his hat and tucked it beneath his arm, revealing a full head of hair the same reddish-brown as his beard.

  I hung the cloak on an empty peg, then hung my own beside it. I shrugged out of my rucksack and stamped clinging snow and ice from my boots, toes tingling as they began to thaw. Meanwhile, the woman from behind the bar came forward to greet us. I tried not to stare, but I had seldom seen a woman – or man, for that matter – of such prodigious girth. Her bare arms were the size of hams; her neck and chin were lost in rolls of rosy pink flesh; the movement of her bosom beneath the tent of her blue and white smock, with its colourfully embroidered designs of mountain wildflowers, was positively oceanic. Seeing her across the room, I had assumed she was in her mid-to-late forties, perhaps somewhat older, but up close she appeared younger than that – or, no, not younger, but as if the range of her possible ages was wider than I had at first supposed, just as she herself appeared to widen as she approached, glowing with health and vigour. Her cheeks were like firm red apples, her eyes were blue as gentians, and thick brown braids, like wreaths of fresh-baked bread, curled about ears that were translucent, pink, and incongruously small, like souvenirs of a dainty girlhood otherwise unimaginable.

  ‘Well, and who’s your handsome friend, Dolph?’ she asked in German, appraising me with a frank and, or so it seemed, flirtatious stare. She was nearly my own height, but she must have outweighed me by two hundred pounds or more. She smelled like beer and bread. What would it be like, I found myself wondering, and not entirely without interest, to bed such an enormous woman?

  Adolpheus introduced me as Michael Gray, a journeyman of the Worshipful Company. The woman’s name, I learned, was Inge Hubner.

  ‘A pleasure to meet you and enjoy such warm hospitality,’ I told her with a gallant bow. I spoke in German, and the rest of our conversation took place in that tongue; indeed, unless I mention otherwise, you should assume that all the conversations I report to you were conducted thus.

  Inge laughed, her chins jiggling. ‘You’re a long way from home, Herr Gray . But I’ll bet I can guess what brings you to Märchen. You’ve come to try your luck with Wachter’s Folly, haven’t you?’

  ‘She means the clock,’ Adolpheus put in. ‘That’s what we call it hereabouts, after its maker, Jozef Wachter.’

  ‘I should very much like to meet him,’ I said.

  ‘Why, you should very much not !’ Inge said. ‘The man is dead and gone almost half a century now, with that old clock, his monument, growing crazier by the year … by the day, I sometimes think. Can you set it to rights?’

  ‘With God’s help,’ I made modest answer.

  ‘Worshipful indeed!’ Her blue eyes twinkled with a teasing good humour that brought a blush to my cheeks – and even in those days, I was not a man given to blushing.

  Adolpheus chuckled. ‘You’re embarrassing the lad, Inge.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ She winked at me, and for a moment I was afraid that she was going to reach out and give my cheek a pinch. ‘Have I embarrassed you, Herr Gray?’

  ‘Not at all, Fraülein—’

  ‘Herr Gray!’ interrupted Inge with a little shriek, as though scandalized; she held up her hand to display a fat gold band around a sausage-sized finger. ‘I’m a married woman!’

  ‘My apologies, Frau Hubner.’

  ‘Just call me Inge; everybody does. Now, I suppose you’ll be wanting a room? At this time of year, you can take your pick. Six pfennigs a night; eight, with meals included. You’ll do no better, I promise you.’ She grinned; her teeth were small and white, like kernels of Indian corn. ‘The Hearth and Home is Märchen’s only inn.’

  ‘And a fine one, by the looks of it,’ I said, nor was I flattering my hostess. The common room was clean and comfortably appointed. It had an atmosphere of cosy geniality, from the fire roaring in the large stone fireplace, to the mugs lined up above the mantel, to the oil paintings – of pristine Alpine vistas full of tumbling waterfalls, stark precipices, stands of pine, verdant meadows dotted with wildflowers, and wide, blue skies – hanging on the oak-panelled walls; all affirmations of the town’s prosperity. The men gathered companionably at their tables gave me the impression of belonging nowhere else, and the steady murmur of conversation and laughter that rose from them seemed as intrinsic to this place as the crackling of the fire. There was even a cuckoo clock behind the bar; its hands indicated eighteen minutes past the hour of seven. Fishing out my pocket watch, I was surprised and impressed to find only a small, but quite acceptable discrepancy between them.

  ‘Not every timepiece in Märchen is in need of repair,’ remarked Adolpheus. ‘Herr Gray, I’ll leave you in Inge’s capable hands. Once you’ve got him settled, Inge, I’ll have a cup of your excellent mulled wine.’

  ‘I’m grateful to you, Adolpheus,’ I said. ‘You must let me buy that wine.’

  ‘With pleasure.’ He gave me a smart bow, which I returned. Then the little man moved off towards one of the tables, still walking with his lopsided gait. Only now did I perceive that he was crippled; one leg was shorter than the other, and his right shoe had been built to correct the defect, which it did but imperfectly.

  ‘I’ll take you upstairs,’ said Inge. ‘Don’t worry about your cloak; it’s safe where it is. You’ll find no thieves in Märchen.’

  I followed the ponderous sway of Inge’s massive hips up the creaking stairs and down a passage lit by the candle she held before her. She unlocked a door at the end of the corridor and went in, hips squeezing past the sides of the frame. After a moment, the tremulous light within grew stronger, and she called my name. Was it my imagination, or did she press herself against me as I entered the small room? It was impossible in any case to avoid her. As I brushed by, breathing in her yeasty smell, I had the sense that, if she chose, she could engulf me like rising dough swallowing a raisin. The image, however ridiculous, was not entirely without appeal. Again, I felt myself blushing. Nor was that the only physical response she had provoked. I like women with meat on their bones, yet I had never imagined that my tastes ran to such an extreme.

  I turned away as soon as
I could, embarrassed by an attraction I couldn’t account for, and set my rucksack on the wooden floor, leaning it against the wall to one side of the door. Inge gave no sign of having noticed anything amiss. Perhaps she, too, was embarrassed.

  The room may have been small, but it was neat and snug, with a narrow bed along one wall, a painted cupboard whose insides smelled of cedar and saxifrage, a boxy ceramic stove so hot that the air around it shimmered, making its diamond-patterned red and white tiles seem to undulate, and a table upon which sat a wash basin, a covered pitcher of water, and an upside-down glass, along with a folded towel and an oil lamp that cast a shivery light. There, too, Inge had set her candle. The chamber pot, she told me, was under the bed. Outside the window, the snow was coming down so thickly that I couldn’t make out the street below, only the smudged glow of street lamps that might have been wrapped in muslin.

  ‘Quite a blizzard,’ I commented, taking the opportunity to place my damp hat upon the edge of the table nearest the stove.

  ‘Blizzard?’ Inge scoffed. ‘Why, this is but a flurry!’

  ‘Will it last long?’

  ‘A day, a week; who can say? Perhaps it will be over by morning. Perhaps not until spring.’ She gave me a wink. ‘You may be with us for a long while, Herr Gray!’

  I confess I hadn’t considered the possibility of becoming trapped here. The prospect was worrisome. ‘Surely there must be means of transport up and down the mountain.’

  Inge shrugged. ‘We’re self-sufficient here. We have to be. For us, winter is a siege. All summer long, we lay up supplies. Then we sit tight and wait the winter out. But if someone wants to tempt fate and go down the mountain, who can stop them?’ She twisted the front of her smock in her beefy hands. ‘Sometimes people go a little … mad. The shadow of the glacier falls across their souls. A desperation fills them, a desire to be gone from the endless snow and ice, the howling winds, that clock that keeps its crazy hours. It’s a sickness, a fever. Some flee suddenly, in the dark of night; others plan obsessively, in minute detail, before setting out. Either way, few who descend the mountain in the dead of winter reach the bottom alive.’

  ‘How horrible! Does it happen often?’

  ‘Often enough. Herr Hubner, my husband, disappeared seven winters ago. His body has yet to be found.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It must be terrible not to know what happened, whether he’s dead or alive. I suppose that’s why you still wear your ring: a token of hope that he might return one day.’

  Inge laughed, her teeth glinting like seed pearls. ‘The explanation is not so romantic, Herr Gray! I wear my ring because I can’t get it off my finger – I was but skin and bones all those years ago, when I first put it on. Besides, in my profession, a wedding ring is an asset. It lends a certain … respectability. But truthfully, if my husband were to walk into Märchen tomorrow, I’d kill him myself, the swine. He robbed me, you see. Emptied the till when he left – took every last pfennig. I know what you’re thinking. How can it be robbery when it was all his own property?’

  ‘I’m no lawyer, thank God,’ I told her, for I had not been thinking any such thing.

  ‘He left me nothing,’ she insisted. ‘Only debts. I would have lost this place if not for Herr Doppler, the burgomeister.’ Inge shook her head as if reluctant to let go of the subject. ‘Never mind. He won’t be back. He didn’t make it down the mountain.’

  ‘If his body was never found, how can you be sure?’

  ‘I saw it in a dream.’

  ‘And do you always believe your dreams?’

  ‘You may be an educated man, Herr Gray, but you don’t know everything. I watched Hans fall; I saw him lying broken at the bottom of a crevasse. He wasn’t dead, either; not yet he wasn’t. Just paralysed. Eyes aglitter with pain and terror, he was gazing up as the snow fell down, covering him like a shroud. That was my dream.’

  ‘It sounds more like a nightmare.’

  ‘I’m not ashamed to admit that I woke up with a smile,’ Inge said, and for just a second, or so it seemed to me in the shifting light, her eyes became coals of feral satisfaction, like a cat’s. ‘It was the answer to my prayers, that dream. Haven’t you ever had such a dream?’

  ‘I have many dreams,’ I told her. ‘In some I fly. In others, beautiful women desire me. Once I took a journey to the moon! Alas, none of them are real.’

  ‘Perhaps they are more real than you know.’

  I laughed. ‘Do you suppose I visited the moon after all?’

  ‘Or the moon visited you. Some believe dreams come from there.’

  ‘The moon is a globe of rock, Inge. I have examined its bleak surface through a telescope. It is a dead place, a battered wasteland, as though a great war was fought there long ago. A war that left no survivors.’

  ‘I didn’t say I believed it,’ she answered. ‘Still, I don’t suppose you’d deny that God can send us true dreams if He wishes it.’

  ‘By all means. But why should He wish it? Is there some flaw in His design that requires personal intervention?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, Herr Gray. I’m a simple woman. I only know what I saw.’

  ‘But then why not go to the spot you dreamed of and dig up the body? Get your money back?’

  She wagged a finger under my nose. ‘Now you are teasing me. The dream didn’t supply me with a map. I saw a crevasse, one of hundreds. Every year there are avalanches. Crevasses fill up. Others open. Should I waste my time searching for something that might not even exist any more? No, I have an inn to run.’ She picked up the candle from the table. ‘Now, shall I have some supper sent up, or will you eat downstairs?’

  ‘I’ll be down in a moment,’ I said. ‘I’m starving.’

  ‘A bowl or two of my stew will fix that.’ Inge removed the key from the door and handed it to me. ‘As I said, you’ll find no thieves in Märchen, but if there are any valuables you’d care to safeguard, purely for your own peace of mind, I keep a strongbox.’

  ‘Just my tools,’ I told her, glancing towards the rucksack. ‘But I carry them with me at all times. And this as well.’ I patted my hip, where I wore a long dagger in a leather sheath.

  ‘Och, you’ll not need that pigsticker here,’ Inge protested.

  ‘I’m sure I won’t, but I feel safer with it just the same.’

  ‘Well, as long as you keep it sheathed. I don’t want you waving a blade around under my customers’ noses!’

  ‘Not unless someone’s waving a blade under mine.’

  ‘Then we’ll have no trouble, Herr Gray. I’ll leave you to get settled in now.’ Executing a curtsy, Inge withdrew, shutting the door behind her. The floorboards trembled to her retreating footsteps.

  I strode to the door and locked it. I thought it odd that my hostess would confess to having been robbed, albeit by her own husband, and then assure me that there were no thieves in town. But then, Herr Hubner wasn’t in town, was he? Whether his corpse lay entombed in ice at the bottom of a crevasse, or, more likely, he was enjoying a new life, with a slimmer wife, somewhere far away, the man was not to be found in Märchen. And if he knew what was good for him, I thought, remembering the fierce look that had kindled in Inge’s eyes, he never would be.

  Alone, I performed my ablutions, then poured a glass of water and gulped it down. The water tasted pure, ambrosial; so cold, despite the heat of the room, it made my teeth ache down to the roots. Drawn, no doubt, from some pristine mountain spring. I poured a second glass. The contents glittered in the lamplight and went straight to my head like a liquor distilled from glacial ice, frozen instants aged to a ravishing potency. I leaned into the table, steadying myself against the prickly aurora that crystallized behind my eyes. It melted away in a slow, shimmering ebb, leaving me dizzied, breathless. My heart tolled in my chest.

  A dazed weariness stole over me, all those miles I’d climbed catching up at once. That, and the stifling heat. I made my way to the bed, intending to sit for a moment before returning to the common room for a bowl
of Inge’s stew, but the downy mattress had other ideas, seeming to pull me in as I had imagined Inge herself doing. I let myself fall back into its embrace, closing my eyes, in my ears a soft hissing that, already half asleep, I attributed to snowflakes expiring against the windowpanes over my head rather than to the efficiency of the stove.

  I awoke to a faint, persistent rasping, as of something heavy being dragged across the floor. Someone was in the room. But the lamp had gone out; I couldn’t see a thing. I listened as the sound continued, seeming to draw nearer by slow inches – drag, pause, drag, pause – until it reached the foot of the bed. Then it fell silent.

  I held my breath. The only sound was the hissing of the stove. Had Inge sent a man to murder me, intending to steal my possessions? Such crimes were not unheard of. Or was the purpose of this visitation to administer a beating, a warning from the wizard I had been following to meddle no more in his affairs? Either way, I would not be an easy victim . I drew back against the headboard, pulling my dirk from its sheath. ‘Who’s there?’ I growled. ‘I’m armed, I warn you.’

  A light kindled, like no earthly light I had ever seen. This was no enemy of darkness, no flame of lamp or candle to send shadows scurrying like bedbugs or blind my eyes. It was as though a star had drifted down through the ceiling, shining with a cool, silver-blue radiance that penetrated the dark without dispelling it, revealing the bed, the cupboard, the blade I held in a trembling hand … which shook not just from fear but because the temperature had plunged in an instant. Only, there was no star, nor any other single source of light. Rather, the light seemed to be an inherent property of the objects themselves. It covered their surfaces in a frostlike rime whose glow radiated outwards like a visible manifestation of the cold I felt so keenly that my teeth had begun to chatter. Even the stove seemed a font of frigidity now, and the fog of my breath glimmered as if with crystals of ice. It was beautiful but also terrible, like a glimpse into some wintry netherworld.