THE HOURS BEFORE: A Story of Mystery and Suspense from the Belle Époque

by Robert Stephen Parry

  He is - the point of the weapon just inches from him, rendering any attempt at a struggle utterly futile. Meanwhile, Peters has obligingly opened the French doors and has wandered out into the conservatory, the very place where Hanno had sat earlier - so very close now, their boat at a standstill just yards away. In just seconds, Herman realises, the awful deed will be done, and he is powerless to prevent either this death or his own, unless - and he knows it’s a slim chance - he can pull a trick, just as he has so often done on stage: those moments when he would distract the other person with some odd and unexpected word or phrase.

  But at that, Herman’s train of thought, and Hanno’s long drawn-out moment of sadistic pleasure are suspended, because to their surprise the conservatory doors have opened and Peters has stepped out onto the terrace. Hanno seems confused by the development - since he cannot fire now to dispatch Herman without alerting Peters and frightening him off. To their astonishment, then, Peters stoops and they watch in disbelief, transfixed as he wraps himself in a heavy iron chain that he has evidently already placed in readiness upon the ground - working so quickly - around his waist, around his shoulders, around his legs it goes - then immediately, without even a moment’s hesitation, he shuffles under its enormous weight towards the edge of the parapet and allows himself to topple with a deep and irrevocable plunge into the icy water. It is suicide - and as Hanno draws a breath of astonishment and coughs, in this instant of opportunity, Herman’s memories fly back to a moment of spoken nonsense from his past. He remembers every word of it.

  ‘See, Hanno, it’s not the cough that carries you off, it’s the coffin they carries you off in.’

  ‘Eh?’ is Hanno’s final utterance. For in that instant of bewilderment, Herman has swept the weapon aside and delivered a powerful uppercut to the chin of the would-be assassin, followed a split second later with an equally powerful blow with the other fist to the side of his head. By a miracle of good fortune the vessel does not capsize, and Hanno is unconscious even before the weapon, now discharged into the darkness, has fallen to the floor of the boat - at which Herman grasps his heels in both hands and with one swift and complete movement, tosses his body backwards, headfirst into the freezing waters of the lock.

  Before a further frantic heartbeat has elapsed, Hanno is no more, and Peters is gone also, leaving Herman alone in the eerie silence - alive, trembling from head to foot and sobbing uncontrollable tears at his preservation.

  Chapter 37

  ‘Yes, I believe everything is in order, Frau Weiss,’ the man in the white coat announces, sliding the equipment around and away from Poppy’s face where she has sat for the past ten minutes enclosed in some horrible metal contraption of lenses and handles and out from which bright beams of light are periodically shone from a hot, smelly lamp into her eyes, giving her a headache.

  ‘And if you would like to return at this time the day after tomorrow, young lady,’ the doctor continues, ‘we can perform the procedure you have been waiting for.’

  ‘That is wonderful news, isn’t it, Penelope?’ Frau Weiss exclaims, sensing her pupil’s distinct lack of enthusiasm all of a sudden.

  Poppy has always disliked anything to do with doctors - the white-coated variety at any rate - a scepticism instilled in her by her mother, who had always told her the best healers are not to be found in clinics surrounded by machines and bottles of medicines, but in cheerful, informal surroundings where the touch is kind and the words are easy to understand. And as for this fellow - ‘Doctor Death’ as all the girls call him - he is simply frightening, not least because of his morbid fascination with the female genitalia, compelling him to summon everyone to gynaecological examinations at least every couple of weeks.

  Without any hair or even eyebrows to soften the starkness of his unwhiskered face, and with always a nervous, half-apologetic smile on his lips and a tiny bead of perspiration somewhere upon his brow, the doctor also has the unfortunate habit of placing his nervous, fidgeting hands on her knees as he works, while all the while gazing into her eyes, the windows of her soul through his horrid machine and its piercing lights.

  Perceiving how oddly her young charge is behaving as they leave the clinic - and perhaps being familiar with such reservations as the date for the operation draws near - Frau Weiss breaks with convention and takes Poppy to the veranda of the keep for an informal chat and some hot chocolate: a rare indulgence for Frau Weiss, she assures her. It lifts Poppy’s spirits to a degree - for the cheerful spot with its spectacular views is no less inspiring as it had been the other day when she had sat here with her English gentleman, and there are several other members of the Inner Temple present in their distinctive purple garments, seated at a cluster of tables, their faces turned towards the sky, relishing the invigorating sunshine after the long winter months. And as Frau Weiss pours the chocolate and dexterously piles on some lavish helpings of cream with an all-too-obvious familiarity with the practice, it occurs to Poppy that such treats are, for Frau Weiss, probably not quite such a rarity as she would like everyone to believe. The mask of abstinence and self-denial appears to be slipping a little out here in the sunshine.

  ‘And now Miss Peters,’ she says with an attempt at friendliness, gazing over at her with that big sphinx-like face of hers, all so irredeemably ponderous despite her best efforts that it might almost have been carved in stone, ‘I want, please, for you to tell me what it is troubling you. The day after tomorrow is to be the most important day of your young life, when your inner vision will be made to open. It is natural to experience anxiety. But I sense there is more. Tell me, child.’

  Poppy, removing the combs that have secured her hair during the examination, allows her dark lustrous waves to fall once again about her shoulders. Averting her face from the intimidating stare of the older woman as she secures her familiar brocade band upon her forehead, she looks down and considers for a moment, wondering whether she could possibly share the joy in her heart with such an austere person, someone for whom the simple pleasures of human friendship are invariably dismissed as being trivial and unnecessary and for whom, as she discovered only the other day, even the joys of beautiful music were out of bounds. As for the cardinal sin of being in love … well, that would surely be the ultimate folly in the estimation of someone like Frau Weiss.

  ‘The training is so relentless, that’s all, so cold and clinical,’ Poppy replies at length with a note of protest, recalling also the promise she had made to her English gentleman not to proceed with any major undertakings until he returned. ‘I am not sure if it’s all that fair …’

  ‘Fair!’ Frau Weiss counters straight away and with more than a trace of displeasure to her voice, which sounds uncommonly deep at just this moment. ‘This sentimental clinging to the sphere of idle gratification will rob you of your salvation, young lady, if you do not rise above it.’

  ‘Yes, but I am, after all, only flesh and blood, Frau Weiss.’ Poppy replies, undaunted. ‘I still have so much to experience - normal things. I just cannot see why I have to renounce everything like this?’ And she finishes merely with a shrug of the shoulder, continuing with each passing moment to be less and less touched by veneration for the powerful lady in her midst. Perhaps, she reflects, this unfamiliar change in perception is engendered at least in part by the sight of the creamy smudge above her upper lip and which, as Frau Weiss lowers her cup, remains clinging to the small moustache that grows there.

  ‘Karma!’ the woman declares suddenly, evoking the magical word that seems to explain just about everything in this place. ‘Karma - for the soul to repeat its errors again and again, to be bound forever to the wheel reincarnation, to endless rebirth and suffering - unless we seize those opportunities for enlightenment. This is what is being offered to you here. Oh, how often have we gone over this already, Penelope? Men and women in this world are shrouded in ignorance. This is the Veil of Maya mentioned in the scriptures - the veil of emotional falsehood and conceit that conceals the true reality. The
silliness that is troubling you at present, the folly that people call romantic love, it is the worst falsehood of all.’

  ‘How do you know that? How do you know what is troubling me?’

  ‘Because I have seen you with him, that man … I forget his name. The Englishman. I have seen you sitting here with him, gazing into his eyes like a little fool. You must not allow the frail biological needs of womanhood to obstruct you or to blunt your purpose.’

  ‘But surely,’ Poppy continues, ‘love is at the heart of all spiritual teaching, the world over?’

  ‘Yes - but not that kind of love; not the honeyed sweetness of romance and licentiousness. That is merely a trap. The love of the spirit is different. It is the love of self-sacrifice - yes, even of pain and suffering - the steep and thorny path towards communion with the infinite. For those of us belonging to the Society, it is the way of progress and evolution at every level of our being. Hark! Listen, young lady. What can you hear at present?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, you cannot hear, either, eh, as well as not think straight? Well, I will tell you, then. Listen. The birds, they are singing, yes? With the melting snow and all the sunshine, they sense that winter is finishing, that the days are lengthening and that another round of spring and summer is almost upon them. It is an augury that makes the blood quicken in their tiny hearts. A happy sound, you may say, yes? Many would agree and might feel happy also. But if we pause to consider, we can only be reminded that each and every one of those singing birds is alive only as a consequence of the death of countless other smaller creatures whose bodies have provided them with sustenance. Oh, we might, in our feeble hearts, hope and pretend such a multitude of deaths are not accompanied by any suffering, that they are clean and quick deaths. But again, our better judgement must inform us to the contrary, and that the beauty of the bird song is really built upon a grizzly foundation of brutality, dismemberment and agony experienced by all the tiny creatures it consumes. The songbird, too, in its time of old age, will fall prey to the fox or the eagle, and this usually most gruesomely. All of life is sustained by the suffering of other creatures. Why, even your precious Western science teaches you this, surely - that all of evolution is forged in the crucible of pain. Fortunate it is, that most people are blinkered fools, oblivious to the suffering and misery that is everywhere.’

  ‘But they have love, too - the birds,’ Poppy protests, feeling a chill in the air - because, appropriately enough, with Frau Weiss’s condemnation of nature, the sun has hid its radiant face behind the clouds once more. ‘Every creature has its mate, Frau Weiss, and its offspring for which they feel love. There is innocence in their love, just as there is blamelessness in their brutality. It does not matter if it is a selfish love, or an unwise love, or even an obsessive love, it is always love that unites us to what is sacred.’

  ‘Sentimental nonsense!’ Frau Weiss counters, though not so very convincingly this time, and it seems with some degree of bitter resentment playing at the corners of her eyes. Almost a jealousy. Surely, Poppy thinks, as she gazes back into the tired old face of her mentor - since every line and blemish is visible here in the daylight - surely, even Frau Weiss must have been young once; even she must have loved and lost, once upon a time. But this, if it happened at all, would have been long ago. Trying to reason with her is useless, she concludes.

  And so, without another word, Poppy simply gets to her feet and, without asking leave, turns her back on the woman and walks away, feeling so very disappointed with the person who is supposed to be the very oracle on just about everything - and yet who now, she realises, is simply incapable of comprehending the amazing insights and changes taking place in the mind of her own pupil. And they are insights - her heart touched so recently by the love of another living soul; the experience of her mother’s kiss given to her by that dear man. These are genuine revelations, not ideas passed down in the pages of some dusty old book of scripture. She understands now, feels her need for love with every fibre of her being; and the turmoil that this engenders in her heart is almost too much to bear as she walks slowly up the steps and through the portal into the familiar darkness of the castle keep.

  But just then as she reaches the stairs down to the hall of the old theatre where she resides, a violent arm arrests her progress and almost pulls her off her feet. It is Frau Weiss. How on earth has she gotten here so fast?

  ‘How dare you behave like that - walking away from me like that in front of everybody!’ she roars, furious, gripping her pupil’s arm from the side.

  ‘You don’t understand ...’ Poppy tries to explain but it comes out sounding like an insult against the woman - who then really becomes most disturbed indeed, grabbing Poppy by the hair as they reach the bottom of the stairs, twisting it and dragging her along the passageway to her chambers. Here, once inside, and the door having been slammed shut, the older woman bears down upon her charge with vicious blows and curses; slaps to the face, and even a ferocious punch to the shoulder as Poppy sinks to her knees in terror. The sheer size and bulk of the woman would be intimidating enough at any time, but now, towering over Poppy like this, she is violent as well - something she has never experienced before and which is most awful in its savagery.

  ‘Stupid, brazen little hussy!’ she screams. ‘You will be damned forever if you turn your face from your destiny like this. What - do you want to be just like everyone else - a common woman, a drudge forever - to bleed forever, to bear stupid, mischievous children time after time and to ache and wonder at every handsome face that floats before your eyes? Control your pathetic, juvenile craving!’

  Poppy, utterly terrified, cowers at the feet of her attacker, penitent and hoping only that the blows and curses might cease, until, not venturing even to stand lest it be construed as a further act of defiance, she simply crawls to her prayer mat. Here, pulling her limbs into the familiar position of meditation, not daring even to look back over her shoulder, she continues sobbing, feeling so wretched, so fearful, but hoping the gesture of contrition will at least be sufficient to spare her from any more violence.

  ‘Good - that is far better, young lady,’ Frau Weiss declares with satisfaction and in a voice, mercifully, that has regained some measure of composure as she comes to lean over Poppy’s shoulder from behind, her face very close - too close. And then, gripping the lobe of Poppy’s ear between finger and thumb and twisting it painfully, she murmurs, ‘I suggest that you change at once into the proper clothing suitable for your practice, not that ridiculous frock you have taken to wearing lately that’s almost up to your knees. That should have been taken from you weeks ago. I shall not abandon all the labour we have undergone together - be assured of that. Take up your beads and repeat your mantra another thousand times. Then go over your special postures and vaginal practices once again. The moment when you will be given to Rascham is almost upon you and you must prepare.’

  At which Poppy, without anyone to turn to for solace in the vastness of the great empty chamber, simply obeys - for in the private observance of her mantra there is at least some peace and privacy; and into this beckoning solitude she plunges herself with the instinct of a cornered animal curled up in the very extremity of fear.

  Deborah has taken herself out from the city centre to the Prater, the wondrous estate of meadows, woods and parks, once an imperial hunting ground but these days aspiring to nothing more grandiose than the pursuit of popular entertainment and all the bustling enterprise of a noisy joyous fairground - and home, moreover, to the famous Riesenrad, that giant Ferris Wheel with its rickety wooden cabins rising and creaking into the air. ‘What an astonishing sight,’ Deborah thinks as she gazes up, the dominance of it in the landscape - far higher than even the oldest chestnut trees that line the glorious avenues and walks of the park.

  It should lift her mood, coming here, or so she had hoped; but if anything it makes her feel even more isolated. She cannot afford to ride in the big wheel, and her eccentric and dishevel
led appearance renders her at best a figure of curiosity, at worst, one of ridicule or outright hostility. Anything goes at the fairground, of course, even here in this city of such formality and decorum, and she really should not feel surprised at their laughter and jibes, especially those of the young. She manages to ignore them most of the time. And it is then, by contrast, that she notices one person in particular, one who is certainly not likely to be prone to any outburst of wasteful levity: a young woman, seated alone close to the main gates and busking on an accordion, a hatful of coins at her feet as she runs through a selection of popular folk melodies. And very well she plays, too, for one who, by the assertion of a small weather-stained placard at her side, is totally without sight.

  ‘Dankeschön,’ the girl calls out, raising her face and sensing Deborah’s presence at her side; anticipating a coin or two to be added to those already in the hat.

  ‘I have no money for you,’ Deborah states, resolving to take a seat on a bench close by, almost at the girl’s side. ‘If you could see me you would understand. I am as poor as you, my dear. Though I shall not complain.’

  ‘Nor should you,’ the girls states, ceasing her melody for a moment, ‘since you have eyes to see? That is the finest of treasures. What is money compared to the priceless miracle of sight.’

  Deborah waits until the girl has completed another short piece, the inevitable question the dear child will no doubt have been asked so many times already shaping itself upon her lips: ‘How? How did you lose …’

  ‘I do not remember how,’ the girl replies, as she lets the accordion rest in her lap. Her eyes, which are blue and exquisite, are lifted now in Deborah’s direction - albeit without focus - and as she speaks, one hand clutches intermittently at a cane by her side. She would be no more than about twenty-five years of age, and is clearly desperately hard up - humble in her dark skirts and jacket of calico, her untrimmed bonnet of simple velvet. ‘Do not feel sad, that you cannot give me money,’ she adds. ‘I am sure there is kindness in your heart, that you have stopped to speak to me.’