What do you mean by my kind?
Oh, the delicate sort. They cherish all their appendages, and extrude parts of themselves into each other’s orifices. Female, for the most part, as you may have noticed. I’ve left all that above me long ago. But you’re still immature, inspector. You bear the hallmark of a living man—loneliness.
Sir, I disagree that the dead are less lonely than the living. Up there in the graveyard, all they do is play pranks together and—
Exactly. Up there. The farther down you go, the more solitary it gets.
What about Baal’s harem?
Oh, he ate them all.
The inspector said nothing. In resentment and despair he soon set out to expand his map, not that he would ever record the existence of the “romantic place,” which was too interesting to be destroyed. By now he had explored all the way to the horned long barrows of Bryn Celli Ddu. But often he returned to that black garden where the skulls basked like crocodiles, and the lovely blue undead women loitered in the grove of hand-trees, and there he tried calling on the demon Brulefer, who granted his prayer, so that all those women loved him happily. The deeper down he went, the more he began to believe, if only to console himself, that he must be digging for something, perhaps the water of life or death, although the glowing, coagulating atmosphere he swam into down there addled him so much that he sometimes hardly gathered what he was about; nonetheless, you will be relieved to know that he remained capable of mapping and memorizing everything. Just as Bohemia’s crown jewels lie hidden underground near Saint Wenceslas’s tomb, so the precious matter of the vampires and their kin entombed themselves right beneath the cemetery of H——, which after all is the center of the world. And now the inspector began to uncover more such secrets, each of them more charming than the last, and the deeper he went, the more bewildered he became, while by now the King Vrykolakas’s minions had discovered the golden pentacle, which once again (although the king himself was certain) they could not prove to be the inspector’s, but it was certainly a dangerous item; it would have burned them had they touched it; to pick it up they had to pass a stick through its necklace-chain. Depositing it in the ribcage of old Jette, whom none of the undead had ever found a prior use for, they rendered that poisonous thing halfway safe, even though the more sensitive ones among them could see its baleful golden glow right through Jette’s coffin.
They were fairly sure but not positive.— You deserve a rest, said the King Vrykolakas to the inspector. Why don’t you go up to your coffin for a year or two, while I take my nap?
Chuckling, he watched the inspector’s glance flick toward the map, then away. What did he care? Even Trollhand was in no position to threaten the cemetery frontier. And the inspector watched him watch. Since the King Vrykolakas knew his secret, what was supposed to happen? The inspector did not dare to take it with him, but he felt confident that he had most of it memorized. Of course he had better visit Father Hauser sooner rather than later; in case he too became stupider.
He clambered back up through the ooze. In the chamber he had left, his host was already snoring like a goodwife’s iron pot bubbling day and night on the stove.
8
It happened during the twentieth Mansion of the Moon: Abnahaya, which strengthens prisons. By now the inspector wore the generic fangs of a dead Bohemian. When he blasphemed, it no longer brought him any pleasure. His position felt as cynical as the policy of the angels. Sometimes he dreamed that he had forgotten the way to his tomb, but found himself twitching strangely and counting pebbles whenever he entered a graveyard. He yearned to give himself to the green darkness of oak leaves, which unlike the living or the undead would accept him without conditions.
His pentangle was gone. This alarmed him, but not so much as he might have expected. Just before dawn he set out with his Saint Polona medallion, but it had lost much virtue, and he was in agony by the time he reached the sexton’s toolshed. A witch was hurrying away from the daylight, clutching something wrapped up in a dirty cloth. He knew her; she must have just dug up a dead man’s head, and today would be planting black beans in his eyes, mouth and ears, to make herself invisible. Well, Trollhand could burn her. The inspector drew on his mendicant’s cloak, which used to stick to his oozing flesh but which now hung quite loosely, and when he regarded his hands he saw why; they were semiskeletonized.
Creeping into the church, he found it disagreeably warm, for he had grown accustomed to the delightful coolness of muck and clay. Naturally, he did not permit this discomfort to distort his projects in any way.
Father Hauser was in bed at home. But his good friend Trollhand was there, dozing in the rearmost pew, wrapped in his black-and-red cloak, with a heap of sharpened stakes at his feet. Since his salary was low except when there were dogs and rats to catch, he often preferred to sleep in the church, in order to avoid his hungry wife and children. The inspector stood over him, longing to eavesdrop on his thoughts, for suddenly it came to him that the only key to understanding himself he now possessed was this Hans Trollhand. Perhaps he felt this because they had been friends together, or it might simply have been that Trollhand was the first living person he had seen in a long time, and the inspector still thought of himself as in a way living. Or it might have been that his assignment, which nowadays we would call espionage, had rubbed off on him, although in fact everybody in H—— does much the same; practically every night Doroteja caught somebody listening at her keyhole to the sounds she made when she was combing her hair.
Trollhand uttered a cry when the inspector touched his shoulder. After all, it had been awhile since they had met. The inspector began to tell him his great news, only to discover that he seemed to have lost his tongue.
Are you the inspector? Trollhand demanded. Why don’t you say something? For all I know, you’re some ghoul who’s gotten hold of that cloak. Speak to me, damn you!
This insulting treatment enraged the inspector, who, after all, had given up quite a lot for his fellow men. But he bit what remained of his lip, and gestured that he wished for something to write with. Narrowly observing him, Trollhand said: I don’t have much truck with reading and writing. Now, are you the inspector or aren’t you? Nod your head yes or no.
The inspector nodded once. The man’s ignorance revolted him, not that the King Vrykolakas had been any better. Was there nothing but one kind of self-satisfied cunning stupidity or another? Neither one of them even cared about the demon Brulefer, much less Trimsael or Humots.
Trollhand then insolently said: And have you ever met the Angel of Death, old boy?
Suddenly the inspector was overcome with indifference. Not only are the lusts of the living never satisfied, he said to himself, but they grow and grow, just like the death within them. How many of us has he staked and burned, thanks to my efforts? And now he wants to mock me.— Turning away, he shambled back to the cemetery. So many birds, so many insects! Blackbirds were nesting where the archers used to shoot. A pigeon trilled within a dead knight’s blind arch. But it all hurt him. He longed to be as supple as a lizard in a shady crevice, the way he used to be when he was alive. As he drew near he began to perceive the shining of the golden pentacle coming up through the earth of Jette’s grave. Since none of the undead could possibly be on watch, he dove down to retrieve it, and at once he felt more together, so to speak. The sun scarcely annoyed him, and vapors no longer rose from his cloak. He could have returned straight to Trollhand, in order to express himself to him with greater success, but instead he decided to visit Doroteja, who was always kind to everyone.
Of course the sun was higher now, and people saw him. The kerchiefed women, already kneeling down in the fields while two matrons approached with baskets, rose up to scream; men threw stones, and someone ran off to fetch the priest. Not wishing for Doroteja to get burned for a witch, the inspector gave it up, wondering: Am I the only one who is not incapable of love or of facing truth? He spat, dete
rmined not be reconciled with any of them. Having inhaled all those secrets issuing out from between the King Vrykolakas’s teeth, having betrayed many a fetching vampiress, even the innocent ones who still wore their white shrouds, he must have done enough. So he returned to the cemetery, returned the pentangle into Jette’s eternally unconscious keeping, and descended into his own grave. By now he felt too weak to return the black cloak, so there it lay in full daylight on top of his tombstone.
When he had rested for a night or two, he called upon Humots, who stood ready to bring him any book of his desire. So he asked for the Secret Book of Angels, which contained rules for every situation, especially the postmortem ones. He said: I hope to learn what belongs to me.— Humots twinkled his red eyes at the inspector, then flew up toward heaven with a great buzz of blackish-green insect wings. And the inspector waited.
9
The Romanians say that a vampire can go up into the sky by the thread that a woman weaves at night without a candle, and thus he eats the moon. Perhaps Humots ascended in some such fashion, and then some malicious angel snipped the thread, for he never came back. The inspector lay at rest, and sometimes he dreamed of Doroteja trying to stab him through the heart with a silver hairpin while sometimes he dreamed of Doroteja smiling at him with nearly closed eyes. And so his mission became to him like a vampire’s tomb so overgrown with underbrush that not even Trollhand could find the way.
10
Richter von Lochner had once succeeded in forcing a witch to confess (a triumph of his jurisprudence) that she had flown her broomstick to Prague, and there been conveyed by certain sinful creatures into that secret tunnel about which Father Hauser had so often preached; it runs from the Jewish Ghetto all the way to Jerusalem—and, as anyone might expect, makes a special detour to the churchyard here in H——, where the greatest battle ever between good and evil is eternally taking place. Thanks to the inspector’s efforts, the fact of this battle was now proved, as a result of which the priest and the judge both expected to melt down many more scrap-hearts in the furnace of piety. But then the inspector stopped coming. He never drew out for them his subterranean map, or informed them of the whereabouts of the King Vrykolakas, whose staking would have been a grievous loss to hell, or even gave them more names of pranksters from the cemetery. Even on Saint John’s Day, when our vilest witches creep out naked to gather certain herbs whose magic will steal the milk from their neighbors’ cows, the inspector never appeared to finger them.
Just as the surgeon, when called upon by the magistrate, will conscientiously slit open a comatose vampire’s chest to discover how fresh and lively its blood may be, so Father Hauser now called upon himself to examine the inspector’s heart, or as I should say his soul; for he had heard from Trollhand about that ambiguous visit to the church; who had it been exactly? And why was that stinking black cape lying on top of the inspector’s grave? The other vampires wondered much the same, but as usual there was nothing to prove the inspector’s guilt to either party; the golden pentacle blazed on within Jette’s skeleton; Kobold paid a visit to the inspector, who lay in his rotten box with his arms folded and declined to answer. Meanwhile, day came, as it always has so far, and so the priest and Trollhand set out for the cemetery, that thriving heart of the town, where Doroteja used to sing and dig in hopes of undoing her miscarriage, where Michael Liebesmann happily recovered his wife Milena, where our inspector had gone in order to advance his career, and witches and warlocks came to harvest the materials of their commerce. Come to think of it, the cemetery was the only important place in H——.
This occasion, of course, did not at all resemble the occasion when the whole village turned out for the opening of Milena’s grave. Trollhand doffed his official cloak. Not even the surgeon and the drummer boy were invited. The people were in the fields. Father Hauser believed as much as ever in the inspector’s loyalty, although Trollhand, having seen so much evil in his life, said: Forgive me, Father, but what lasts forever? Even undeath is turning out to be temporary, thanks to these new police methods of ours.
You’re quite proud of the inspector, aren’t you, Hans?
Well, said Trollhand, he’s put food on my table. For every one I stake, the mayor gives me a silver thaler, although last year one of them was counterfeit.
Blackbirds and starlings rose up over their heads when they dug him up, and as he appeared distinctly evil, they finally put a stake through his heart, in order to teach him that the tunnel to heaven is far narrower than a corseted woman’s waist. The priest, who was so well regarded that on cloudy days one could practically see his halo, held it to be for the best. Although Richter von Lochner had uttered no promise on the subject, in his Christian mercy he did presently command that the inspector’s remains should rest beneath a cross made of wild rose thorns. Perhaps you consider this an inadequate reward. But as is said about devils in the ancient Grimorium Verum, this sort of creature does not give anything for nothing.
Father Hauser offered up three prayers, for the inspector had certainly abated the nuisance, even if not permanently; and so tranquillity welled up out of the grave-riddled earth of Bohemia, seeping and creeping across the entire carcass of the Holy Roman Empire, until by 1855 Bavaria found it practical to recommend the amalgamation of commercial codes throughout the German states.
JUNE EIGHTEENTH
So long as there is an Emperor, there is still an Empire, even if he has no more than six feet of earth belonging to him, for the Empire is nothing without the Emperor.
Charlotte (Empress Carlota)
1
If you appreciate the way that the double-headed Austrian eagle manages to bear both sword and orb in its claws, then you may well be an adorer of the fleet, like Massimiliano, whose bedroom resembled a ship’s cabin. How he loved to sail around Istria! Archduke and Admiral, lepidopterist and orange-gardener, he might have lived contented, had not his wife persuaded him otherwise. Indeed, he used to say that all he wanted out of life was a castle and garden by the sea. Instead, he entered a story told on tin-coated iron. (He was not unlike the Holy Child of Atocha, who was carried to Mexico by the Dominicans.) Once more he gazed back into the pale blue harbor, with Trieste glowing white on the underside of that blue peninsula. Then the Novara carried him away. He became Maximilian. Charlotte stood beside him on the foredeck, excited to finally become Carlota. To this day some Italians remain proud of him, at least to an extent. In Trieste his verdigrised statue stands high upon a cylindrical and octagonal bronze plinth studded with high-breasted angels, and there is even a bare-chested youth whom I first took for an Egyptian in a quasi-Pharaonic headdress, although now I wonder whether he could be one of the Emperor’s grateful Mexican subjects?
A soldier from the Confederate States of America once observed: Owing to some radical defect in the Mexican character unfitting them for self government the country has been cursed by one of republican form . . .
Fortunately, Maximilian now prepared to govern for them. He made it understood that his measures would have an entirely friendly character.
We remember him for many good qualities, not least his china blue eyes and beautiful teeth.
2
Matters ran on pretty well for the first two years, wrote an Englishman in his service. French bayonets kept the country quiet, and the roads open. But presently certain Mexicans began to fall short of their Emperor’s hopes. I cannot tell you whether the blue and red of Maximilian’s army were inappropriate colors for those latitudes, or whether his desire to lead the natives out of anarchy exceeded their benighted comprehension. He assured them: No Mexican has such warm feelings for his country and its progress as I. I wish you could have seen him with his blank white forehead and his nautical side-whiskers and his squinting eyes, whose gaze was outglittered by the watch-chain peeping out of his dark vest. Beside him, Carlota in her white wedding-cake dress smiled nervously upon the world. He determined to keep only Mexicans in his
government, wore white, abolished inherited debt, enacted ten-year serfdom for negroes, but only under certain conditions and with the best intentions; imported pianos, upheld the nationalization of Church property, established a minimum wage and collected butterflies. Soon the Empress was writing to France: We see nothing to respect in this country, and shall act in such a way as to change it. He restored the Palacio Nacional. His soldiers dug ever more convoluted earthworks isolated by ditches; established outlying piquets whose sentries lay ready to fire upon silence; rigged up abatis of prickly pears; marched out battalions of jet-black Turcos in Zouave dress; levied any number of ablebodied natives to serve in his Guardia Rural, while Carlota, twenty-five years old, clasped her lovely long-fingered hands, assuring her acquaintances in Belgium: If necessary, I can lead an army. Do not laugh at me. Meanwhile her husband, who was already going bald, signed the October Decree, which saved the inconvenience of trying guerrillas before executing them. But no matter how valiantly he led, anarchy marched along at his heels. Indeed, so singular is Mexican gratitude that he was practically alone even before the French troops sailed home; then he found himself defeated, surrounded, betrayed at Querétaro, and imprisoned in that half-devoured city, brought to trial at the Iturbide Theater (in absentia, since they had courteously granted him a certificate of illness) and duly condemned to be shot on the nineteenth of June, 1867, along with his generals Mejía and Miramón.
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