The Emperor of all Things

by Paul Witcover

‘I will tell what I know,’ he repeated.

  ‘But what do you know, after all? Only that his foot became caught in the train. You do not know how he came to be in that position.’

  ‘It seems clear enough. He sought entrance to the clock – which he promised your father not to do. Is that not the case, Herr Gray?’

  Corinna replied before I could. ‘He climbed to the proscenium because I asked him to. What happened is my fault entirely!’

  At this I protested, of course. ‘She’s lying,’ I ground out between clenched teeth.

  ‘I’m not,’ she insisted. ‘Herr Gray is only trying to protect me by taking the blame onto himself, as any gentleman would.’

  ‘Protect you from what?’ Adolpheus demanded. I confess I was curious to learn this as well; looking back at her over the dwarf’s shoulder, I saw her raise an admonitory finger to her lips. Clearly, she had something in mind, though I could not guess what it might be. But I held my tongue.

  ‘The truth is – you will think me wicked, Adolpheus – but the truth is that I teased him mercilessly, challenged him again and again to scale the tower. Every boy in Märchen has made the climb, I told him. Are you, a grown man, afraid to match them? I don’t know why I did it; I try to be good, but there is something in me that likes to stir things up, some devil that delights in mischief.’

  ‘I’m disappointed in you,’ Adolpheus said. ‘And in you as well, Herr Gray. To allow a young girl’s teasing to provoke you into breaking a solemn promise. You should be setting this one a sober example, not encouraging her waywardness.’

  Again Corinna spoke up before I could. ‘He didn’t want to go,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t going to, no matter what. But then I promised that I would reward him most handsomely if he scaled the tower and returned to the ground before the automatons had completed their course. I was only teasing, I swear it, but up he went like a jackrabbit. You know the rest.’

  ‘What did you promise him?’ Adolpheus asked. ‘That is what I would know.’

  At this, Corinna burst into tears, or seemed to, letting the stepladder fall behind her as she turned towards one wall and buried her face in her hands . ‘Oh, I cannot say. Do not ask it of me, Adolpheus! I am too ashamed.’

  Needless to say, this had the effect of encouraging rather than deflecting Adolpheus’s curiosity. He stopped and half turned to look behind him at the weeping Corinna – in the process grazing my boot against the wall, so that I had to bite my lip to hold back a cry. ‘If you will not tell me,’ he said to her, ‘I will require it of Herr Gray. He, I feel sure, will know his duty.’

  ‘No,’ she said, seeming to dry her eyes, though she would not meet Adolpheus’s demanding gaze – or my own uncomprehending one. ‘I will tell you. I promised him … a kiss.’

  Now, indeed, a cry escaped my lips, but of surprise rather than pain. Yet I don’t believe Adolpheus heard it, for he had thrown back his head and was roaring with laughter. ‘A kiss!’ he managed to gasp out. ‘Bless you, a kiss!’

  This response provoked Corinna to anger. ‘Yes, why not a kiss? What is so funny about that, I should like to know! Am I so hideous, that no one would want to kiss me?’

  But Adolpheus did not reply. Still laughing, he turned and continued towards the inn.

  Corinna followed, furious now. ‘Answer me, Adolpheus! Adolpheus!’

  He paid her no heed. As for me, I was at a loss to explain why she had concocted such a story to account for my presence upon the proscenium. Adolpheus might find it amusing, but I felt sure her father would have a different reaction. That she had some scheme in mind was obvious – but what? I grasped that she had not wanted me to reveal what we had seen, yet I could not guess her reasons. Indeed, I could scarcely credit my own eyes. That the automatons should resemble the townsfolk of Märchen seemed possible – though it meant Herr Doppler had been less than truthful when he’d told me that no one had touched the inner workings of the clock since Wachter’s day. But that someone could have prepared an automaton to resemble me in the relatively short time I’d been there – why, that was beyond credulity. I supposed a skilled craftsman working diligently from the moment I’d set foot in town could have made such a thing, but why? For what purpose? Howsoever I racked my brains, no answers came – at least, no sane ones.

  My return to the Hearth and Home was a humiliating one. Corinna, looking daggers at Adolpheus, held the door open for him to carry me through. The taproom was crowded and noisy, much as it had been the night of my arrival. And, as had been the case that night, all conversation ceased at my entrance. But unlike that night, the silence was followed by raucous laughter as the spectacle of a dwarf carrying a full-grown man in his arms registered on the patrons.

  ‘Behold,’ shouted one wit, ‘the watchman bears the clockman!’

  ‘Got too much time on your hands, Dolph?’ contributed another.

  ‘Quiet, you dolts,’ Adolpheus roared. ‘Can’t you see the man’s been hurt? Someone fetch the doctor!’

  At that moment, Inge entered from the kitchen with a tray of glasses. Seeing us, she gave a little shriek and dropped the tray. The sound of shattering glass provoked greater mirth from the denizens of the taproom, which in turn set Hesta, already roused from her slumber by the hearth, to barking.

  With a growl of annoyance, Adolpheus carried me across the room and up the stairs. Inge, recovered from her surprise, bustled after us, bombarding Adolpheus with questions that, for the moment, he ignored. Corinna followed her, and, last of all, came a still-barking Hesta. I had the uncanny sense that this, too, was but a grouping of automatons. Shakespeare wrote that all the world’s a stage, but at that moment it seemed to me a clock.

  The door to my room was locked, and though I had the key in my pocket, I could not get to it easily from my current position, and so Adolpheus stood to one side as Inge used her master key. The dwarf’s arms were like bands of iron; despite the distance he had carried me, I could not feel even a tremor in his muscles. It seemed that he could bear my weight for hours more if need be.

  ‘Ach, Herr Gray,’ Inge said as she pushed the door open, letting a heavy exhalation of heat roll from the room, ‘what have you done to yourself now?’

  ‘The fool climbed the clock tower,’ Adolpheus answered as he shouldered his way past her.

  ‘Lord bless us!’ Inge responded, entering the room behind him. ‘Did he fall?’

  ‘I simply wished to examine the automatons more closely,’ I explained, tired of other people speaking for me, ‘and my boot became caught in the mechanism.’

  ‘You’re lucky to be alive,’ the landlady stated. ‘That clock has ways of defending itself.’

  ‘That’s ridicu— holy Christ in heaven!’ A wave of pain overwhelmed me as Adolpheus none too gently, whether from weariness or exasperation, deposited me onto the bed.

  ‘Apologies, Herr Gray,’ he said cheerfully.

  ‘Adolpheus, you clumsy idiot!’ cried Corinna, who had followed Inge into the room. ‘Are you trying to kill him?’ She rushed to my bedside as though to protect me from a murderer. Ignoring the hurly-burly, Hesta went straight to the simmering furnace and flopped down onto the floor in front of it.

  ‘That’s enough from you, young lady,’ Inge said sharply. ‘Herr Gray left in your care, and see how he returns!’

  ‘Are you saying it’s my fault he was hurt?’ Corinna demanded, pulling up short and turning to face the landlady, an incredulous look on her face.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Adolpheus asked. ‘After all, he would not have climbed the tower had you not tempted him with a kiss.’

  Corinna flushed, and whatever she had been about to say went unsaid; in the heat of the exchange, she had, or so it seemed to me, forgotten what she had told Adolpheus earlier, but now the memory of it left her quite unable to speak.

  ‘What?’ cried Inge at this news. ‘Why, you shameless hussy! A kiss, indeed! Your father shall hear of this, I promise you.’

  ‘But Frau Hubner …’ Suddenly
she looked near tears. Real ones this time. Corinna’s customary self-possession had the effect of making her seem older than her years, but now that façade was stripped away, revealing her youth and innocence. It wrung my heart to see, yet what could I say? She had invented the story of a kiss to stop me from telling Adolpheus the real reason for my climb; for whatever reason, she wished to keep what we had seen a secret, and I had no sense now that her wishes had changed, even if circumstances had taken an unforeseen turning.

  ‘But nothing,’ Inge said. ‘Get downstairs with you this instant. You’re late for work as it is, and that crowd of drunks is probably robbing me blind.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I said now! You, too, Adolpheus – Herr Gray is not a sack of potatoes to be thrown down so roughly. He requires a woman’s touch.’

  Corinna, after a plaintive glance at me, eyes brimming with tears, turned and left the room, her posture one of abject defeat. Adolpheus followed almost jauntily. ‘Well, clockman,’ he said in the doorway, ‘I’ll look in on you later, assuming there is anything left of you after Herr Doppler is through.’ He shook his shaggy head and chuckled. ‘A kiss indeed. That girl is a menace.’

  ‘She is innocent,’ I responded.

  ‘And all the more dangerous for it, as you are about to discover.’ He jerked his chin in my direction and added, ‘If the lesson hasn’t sunk in already.’

  ‘Ach, don’t pay him any mind,’ Inge said after Adolpheus had departed. ‘He is just jealous.’

  ‘Jealous?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Of course jealous,’ she answered. ‘Do you think anyone has offered to kiss him lately? Or ever?’

  I had to laugh.

  Inge smiled, her apple-red cheeks dimpling. ‘That’s more like it. Don’t worry about Herr Doppler. He knows his daughter’s tricks and fancies. You are not the first she’s led astray.’ The landlady leaned over the bed, her abundant breasts seeming about to spill out of the top of her blouse like ripe fruits from a cornucopia. The heady aromas of the kitchen wafted from her as if from an open oven, and once again they proved to have a stimulating effect, which I shifted my position on the bed to disguise, though I could see by Inge’s glance that my condition had not escaped her notice. ‘Your poor foot,’ she said, laying a massive hand on my leg, above the knee; I could feel the heat of her through my clothing, as if she and not the tile stove were the source of the room’s excessive warmth. ‘Can I do anything to ease your pain until the doctor arrives?’

  I had the distinct impression that she was not referring to my foot at all . But just at that moment, the gentleman in question knocked at the open door. He was a small man, though of course taller than Adolpheus, but slight as a reed and pale as parchment, as if he had no more than a trickle of blood in his veins. He peeked into the room, blinking owlishly behind a pair of spectacles. He was dressed in black, which made his skin seem all the paler; his powdered grey wig, of a style long out of fashion, was tilted askew, as though he had jammed it onto his head while rushing out of the door. I did not think I had seen him before, though there was something familiar about him.

  ‘I was sent for,’ he said defensively, as if afraid his presence would be questioned.

  ‘Come in, sir, come in,’ said Inge, straightening and stepping back, her hand sliding from my leg in a kind of caress. ‘Your patient awaits.’

  The doctor entered, holding a small black bag very much like my own tool kit before him in the manner of a shield. ‘How do you do, sir,’ he said with a somewhat convulsive bow in my direction.

  ‘Not too well, I’m afraid,’ I replied, indicating my foot.

  ‘This is Herr Gray, Doctor,’ Inge said.

  He repeated his bow. ‘I am Dr Immelman.’

  ‘A Jew,’ Inge added in a stage whisper, as if this fact were significant.

  ‘A convert,’ the doctor was quick to amend, as if this, too, were significant, indicative of superior, if not occult, knowledge.

  ‘It is your medical rather than your religious practices that concern me,’ I told him with an attempt at levity that appeared to fall flat.

  ‘We may be a bit out of the way here in Märchen, off the beaten track so to speak,’ he said as he approached the bed with that same tentative air, ‘but I think you’ll find my skills more than adequate.’

  ‘I have no doubt of it, Herr Doctor,’ I assured him. ‘It was merely a joke – a poor one.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, nodding sagaciously. ‘A joke. Of course.’

  The concept seemed foreign to him.

  ‘Well, Dr Immelman,’ Inge broke in, ‘will you need my assistance? Is there anything I can get for you?’

  By now Immelman had reached the bed. He settled his black bag upon the edge of the mattress and adjusted his spectacles as he looked me over. His bloodless face and pale, high forehead were slick with sweat ; he almost seemed to be melting, as if made of wax or ice. ‘That boot will have to be cut away,’ he said. ‘I will need hot water and bandages, Frau Hubner. And a bottle of schnapps for the patient, to dull the pain.’

  ‘I’ll have them sent up at once,’ she replied. ‘I’ll leave you in the doctor’s capable hands for now, Herr Gray. Later I will bring some food and sit with you awhile. Come, Hesta,’ she added, and the dog rose from the floor and followed her out of the room.

  Dr Immelman pulled up a chair and sat down near the foot of the bed, facing me but keeping his gaze fixed on my boot. ‘You will let me know if there is any pain,’ he directed, reaching out with long, slender fingers, like those of a pianist.

  I swore as he began to manipulate my ankle; his touch was gentle enough, but even so the pain was severe. He drew back at once.

  ‘Is it broken?’ I asked him.

  He withdrew a handkerchief from within his black coat and mopped his perspiring face, then tucked it back inside. Now his gaze did meet my own, but only, as it were, glancingly. ‘I cannot say for certain without removing the boot. It seems likely, however.’

  I swore again.

  ‘How were you injured, Herr Gray?’ Immelman asked. ‘I was told only that my services were required.’

  ‘I climbed the clock tower, and my foot became lodged in the train along which the automatons move.’

  Now his gaze returned to my own, and this time it did not waver. ‘Why would you do such a foolish thing?’

  I shrugged but did not look away. ‘It seemed a good idea at the time.’ I didn’t want to say anything more concerning the automatons, not only because of Corinna’s apparent desire that I should keep quiet about their resemblance to the people of Märchen, but because I was convinced that I had seen the good doctor – or, rather, his wooden counterpart – among them. Yes, I remembered the sight of him quite clearly; he had preceded Adolpheus in the parade, that black bag of his held before him in the same fashion he had held it just moments ago, before setting it down on the bed. The recollection made it impossible to view the man with equanimity; despite his timidity, there was something uncanny, almost sinister, it seemed to me, about his presence now, and I experienced once again, more intensely than I had in the taproom, a sense of – how to describe it? – misalignment , as if I no longer fitted properly into the world, or as if the world had undergone some subtle change, one that had left it less friendly to me, less, well, like home. The sensation was all the more troubling in that it was so inchoate, a pervasive wrongness I could neither explain nor explain away.

  ‘You are the English clockman,’ Immelman said. ‘You have come to learn the secrets of our timepieces, no?’

  ‘I hope to be permitted to study them,’ I allowed.

  ‘You have a strange way of going about it, climbing the tower like that. It is not the sort of behaviour likely to be rewarded by Herr Doppler.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘I think it was no idle action.’ Immelman glanced to the door, then leaned towards me, his voice a confiding whisper. ‘I think you saw something that … astonished you. Something that provoked you to
make the climb.’

  ‘On what do you base your diagnosis?’ I asked. ‘Have you yourself seen something astonishing?’

  ‘I have seen many such things in my time here,’ Immelman replied, once again casting a nervous glance towards the door. He licked his thin lips. Then, as if coming to a decision, he addressed me in English. ‘Sir,’ he said, pitching his voice lower still, ‘you are in grave danger. Märchen is not what you think. Nothing here is what you think. You must be on your guard if you ever wish to leave this place alive.’

  I confess I was too taken aback to make an immediate reply. It was not only the shock of being addressed in my native tongue, but the warning thus conveyed, which, though it had come out of the blue, was uttered with such conviction that I did not doubt the man’s sincerity. But of course sincerity is no guarantee of truth. No one, after all, is as sincere as a madman.

  ‘They have tried to keep us apart,’ Immelman went on, his words spilling out in a breathless rush. ‘This is not your first injury since you arrived in Märchen, yet only now have I been given the task of treating you. Do you not find that strange?’

  ‘They? Who is this they ?’ I found my voice at last.

  ‘Herr Doppler and the rest. They are afraid I will warn you, as indeed I have. Afraid I will help you escape, as I should like very much to do. Yes, and go with you, away from this cursed place for ever! They wish to keep you here, Herr Gray. They have need of you. Just as, years ago, when I was as young a man as you, they had need of me.’

  The disarray of the doctor’s clothes and wig, which I had at first taken as evidence of a certain absentmindedness often to be met with among medical men, now began to suggest a more troubling interpretation. Inge had told me that the long months of isolation imposed by Märchen’s heavy snowfalls sometimes induced a kind of mania in the townsfolk. Was that the cause of Dr Immelman’s odd behaviour? His eyes had a wild cast behind his spectacles, and his skin glistened with sweat; he looked sickly, feverish. I responded reasonably, hoping to calm him. ‘If my skills are required, Herr Doppler need only ask. Instead, he has denied my every request.’