HS03 - A Visible Darkness

by Michael Gregorio

  The smell of his sweat was more acrid and penetrating than before. Despite the aroma of warm food, I realised that I would be obliged to inhale it the instant I sat down opposite him at that small table. No Essence de Lavande Provençale would save me, and my mind flew back to lunches eaten in peasants’ cottages when I went out hunting with my father and my brother, thirst and hunger sweeping away decorum as the unwashed serfs and their earthy wives rushed to lavish their best on their master and his pampered sons.

  ‘Sit down,’ les Halles commanded.

  I did as I was told. Could I doubt where the power in Prussia lay? He had ordered me to clean myself up for dinner; I had run to obey. If he told me to sit, I sat. While he, in his unspruced filth, looked complacently at my clean shirt, washed face and combed hair, then added harsher salt to the insult of carelessness.

  ‘I did not know that Prussians were such fops,’ he said, grabbing up a bottle in his fist, slopping wine into the goblets. ‘You see the menu before you, Stiffeniis. Pork chops braised in Pomeranian wine. A bit vinegary for my taste, but there you are. Meat sausage in a vegetable broth to follow. Potatoes baked in sea-salt. All washed down with Saxon wine. The best of France and Prussia.’

  He raised his glass. ‘Taste it.’

  As I carried the glass to my lips, the heel of his boot kicked out at my shin.

  ‘Not yet. I want to propose a toast. Here’s to the success of Richard les Halles’s . . . now, what shall I call her? “Shale-drill” sounds tame, don’t you agree?’ He clicked his tongue, smiled, emptied his glass. ‘Coq du mer? Hm, that’s better. Les Halles’s Sea-Cock. With its long scrawny neck pecking away at the sea-bed. Will you drink to that?’

  I raised my glass in the air, then drank a sip.

  He sat forward, elbows on either side of his plate, and a nauseous stinking wave drifted into my face. ‘You should have seen the way it pecked this afternoon! The Baltic tried to resist like a proud old Prussian matron, but I had my way with her. A bit bumpy at first, but once we struck the—what do you Prussians call it, die blaue Erde?—there was no stopping her. As soon as my engineers get their pipes into the water, and the engines start pumping, we’ll be sucking up amber like limonade. When the sorting-racks come into play, a new era will begin on the north coast. I expect to draft a report of my success to Paris within the week.’

  He drained his glass and fixed me with a smile, waiting to hear what I would make of his industrial success.

  I raised my goblet again. ‘I wish that you could build a machine, monsieur, that would suck up all the merde and flies from the streets of Lotingen, my home town. All the citizens, my wife included, would thank you for it.’

  The expression of triumph on his face gave way to dark brooding anger.

  I had surprised even myself by this sarcasm, and I immediately regretted it.

  He jabbed his fork into a chop that was swimming in red wine.

  ‘Give me your plate,’ he snapped, holding out his other hand, opening and closing his fingers impatiently until I obeyed. ‘Bon appétit, Herr Stiffeniis.’

  Without waiting to see how I might react to the food, he hunched over his plate, head down, his knife and fork poking from his closed fists like daggers, and began to wolf his food.

  ‘You come from a family of aristocrats, I have been told,’ he spluttered, glancing up, an over-large piece of meat in his mouth. He chewed it greedily, his lips and his teeth engaged in a complex grinding operation that ought to have resulted in the swallowing of his tongue.

  I had no intention of stepping onto the thin ice of my personal life. I did not wish that man’s ghost to cross the threshold of my home. Not even during conversation at the dinner-table. ‘That is not quite exact . . .’

  Les Halles thrust his fork at my face, a potato impaled on the prongs.

  ‘Don’t lie to me! I’ve got a file. It’s all written down. After the Gottewald massacre investigation, Colonel Lavedrine reported on your character. Reserved in manner, sometimes brusque, it says. A tongue that is sharp, eyes that never flinch. You do not give yourself away, though your heart may be flailing wildly inside your breast.’ The potato disappeared into his mouth. He drew the contour of my face in the air with his empty fork. ‘You eat like a duellist, I would add, elbows close to your sides as you handle your irons, all very trim, no matter how tough the meat may be.’

  He turned to the side and spat out the lump of meat in his own mouth.

  ‘Inedible,’ he said, ‘but you eat on.’

  I continued to chew. ‘Our teeth make swallowing easier,’ I replied.

  He managed a smile as he ate.

  ‘We come from different worlds,’ he said. ‘Anyone can see it. I will always be the unrepentant son of a Montgalliard sheep-herder. But you, Stiffeniis, even when you’re hot and dirty, your hands black, hair knotted with sweat, you could ask a lady to dance and she would say yes. Aristocratic, as I said . . .’

  Was it a compliment? Or was it the opposite?

  ‘I own no land, nor have I ever served my country. I detest arms and armies. My principles . . .’ I swallowed hard, having said more than I intended. I certainly did not mean to tell him that I had been disinherited by my landowning father. ‘I chose to study the law, instead.’

  His face became an ugly sneer. ‘What ever you say, you’ll never cease to be what you are. What’s the local term for it?’ His eyes narrowed, his brow furrowed, he chased the word he sought across the ceiling. And all the while, he made the most appalling row as he chomped at his meat. ‘Junker! That is, a proud and privileged troublemaker.’ He might have been reading from a book that claimed to describe the people and the habits of East Prussia. ‘People like you were driven out of France. The ones who dared to stay lost their heads in Paris.’

  I bit my lip. I could have told him a lot about Paris. I had inhaled a new perfume there in 1793. I had seen the French mob murder their king. In the Place de la Révolution, my spirit had been overwhelmed by a bewitching essence: the smell of human blood. An unknown aspect of my character had risen to the surface. I had been fascinated by the simple mechanics of Death. A lever was pulled, the guillotine blade fell, a life was carried off for ever. Nothing was easier, nothing was headier.

  ‘You refuse to believe that men like me will change the Prus sia that you hold so dear,’ he went on, as if my silence pricked him. ‘The new breed of French egalitarians may be rough, but we are ready, monsieur. We know nothing of good manners, and care even less. Our generals are men of the people, yet they can whip the hide off a Prussian army led by men with surnames as long as the Rhine. How did it happen? You do not voice the question, but I can hear it all the same. French peasants with a little technical education will build machines and mould the armies that will sweep your world away. Baltic amber—Baltic “gold,” as you so proudly call it—is just a small part of the process. The Teutonic Knights made Prussia great. Well, now it is ours!’ He halted for a moment, then drank deeply. ‘Its only purpose now is to serve our purpose.’

  I cut a piece of meat with my knife, carried it to my mouth with my fork, and began to chew it slowly. I would not answer with my mouth full. I would not give him that small satisfaction. And yet, I privately conceded, he was right. We were different, and not on account of our table manners alone. He saw Kati Rodendahl as an impediment to his ambitious plans; he wanted to see the murderer caught for that reason alone. Killers and their victims must not hamper the harvesting of amber. French interests would not be sacrificed for anything so human, or so petty.

  ‘My only purpose,’ I said, intentionally echoing his own words, ‘is to end the killing of Pruschewed women

  He clicked his tongue, and shook his head.

  ‘You fail to understand the situation, magistrate. The killer must be found because we want him found. You will find him, because you have been ordered to do so.’

  The words flew out of my mouth before I could stop them. I was thinking of Lotingen, the filthy streets, the buzzing s
warms of flies, the discomfort, the illness that the French had brought upon us like a plague, the threat that they posed to my wife and my children.

  ‘Such blind indifference may work against you in the end,’ I said. ‘As it has done in Spain, sir. If Prussia revolts, well, I hardly dare to think of what we Prussians would be prepared to do. You called us storytellers, and it is true. But you should remember, sir, we like our stories grim.’

  We stared at each other across the table.

  ‘We are always looking out for danger,’ he replied sharply. ‘We crush resistance without thought or pity. But this is petty politics, monsieur. I am interested in one thing only the amber of Nordcopp.’ He let out a long sigh. ‘I hate the stuff. Indeed, I cannot see its graces. What is it, after all? It is resin, nothing more. Centuries ago, it dripped from trees, then it solidified. Occasionally, a creeping insect was trapped inside. Which makes it more revolting, I say. The death throes of an ant, the agony of a spider! Only a mind profoundly cruel can admire it. And as for women wearing it upon their bodies . . . Amber does not come from the sea, it comes from Hell. It is the colour of sulphur.’

  Of blood, I thought.

  The sights I had seen that day came flooding back. The amber beads that Marta Linder had laid before me on the table. Like large red drops of congealed blood. Men’s eyes lit up greedily, as if inflamed to possess them. Erika had attacked me like a ravenous hawk to get her hands on the amber containing the wasp and its eggs. She would have murdered me to have it. Certainly, she would not have hesitated to offer me the dubious joys of her tiny, monstrous body.

  Les Halles wiped his mouth, planted his elbows on the table, and stared at me again with hard, stubborn eyes. ‘So, let us be practical, Herr Magistrate. What have you found out today? What am I to tell General Malaport of his protégé’s doings?’

  I bit my tongue, and sat back in my seat.

  It was time for the redde rationem to begin.

  I could not refuse to answer him. Nor would sarcasm protect me. I told him first of my meeting with Hans Pastoris, and then of the woman working there, Hilde Bruckner, the friend of the girl who had been murdered.

  ‘Her face has been ripped to shreds,’ I said at one point.

  Les Halles looked over the rim of his glass. ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘Gunpowder destroyed that woman’s face. She was using it to search for amber.’

  I saw him stiffen. ‘The woman is alive. Or am I mistaken?’ ‘You are not mistaken,’ I nodded. ‘So, what connection do you make between the cases?’ he growled. Clearly, the mention of gunpowder was not to his liking.

  ‘You mentioned it yourself a moment ago,’ I said. ‘Amber. The woman working for Hans Pastoris was looking for it; the woman who died had already found it. But I was wondering whether what had happened to them both is indicative of a general trend . . .’

  ‘I see no link.’ He smiled back. ‘Kati Rodendahl was mutilated after she was dead,’ I replied. ‘She did not blow herself up. But that is not my point. The point is this. Amber means wealth. Every man and woman on the coast wants their share. No, I was thinking of the person who provided that woman with gunpowder. As I have been informed, a French soldier . . .’

  A riotous laugh erupted from les Halles. He choked, coughed violently, and I was bombarded by a hail of half-chewed bits of bread. ‘Good God, Stiffeniis!’ He raised his wine-glass and took a mighty swig. ‘You almost did for me there. Still, I expect no less from you, I admit it.’

  ‘No less?’ I echoed, puzzled. ‘It was only a matter of time before you put the accusation into words. I warned General Malaport of the risk. He’ll throw the blame on us, sir. That is what I said. What else would one expect of a Prussian magistrate?’ He slammed his fist on the table, rattling the crockery. ‘Your French is excellent, monsieur, but do you know the popular expression among Parisians about going to work on your own balls with a hammer?’

  I did not, and I told him so.

  ‘You are the hammer; the balls belong to us!’ He shook his head, then drank more wine. ‘Soldiers are the same the whole world over. It is more than possible that my men trade gunpowder for sexual favours, but that doesn’t mean . . .’ He did not finish what he meant to say. He leaned forward, his face inches from my own. ‘What we saw laid out on that table last is altogether different. It goes beyond amber. The killer was interested in her body. He took what he wanted, and he left the rest. Including the amber. He left her corpse on public display. Now, that’s what I call evil. He meant to put the fear of God in every woman working on this coast. He intended to unleash terror, and chaos. Now, why would we want to do that?’

  I had a theory. I had heard it from the mouth of Hans Pastoris in Nordbarn. The French were trying to make the women flee, rather than be obliged to drive them off the coast.

  ‘Two of your soldiers, Pillard and Margiot, did exactly that the other day in Nordbarn,’ I replied. ‘They terrified the women there, talking openly of the girl who had been murdered . . .’

  ‘Do you really think, Herr Magistrate, that they would brag if they had something to do with it?’ he asked sarcastically.

  ‘You threw a Pa ri sian saying at me,’ I replied. ‘Very well, sir. Let me throw a Prussian proverb at you. “Put a wolf in a hen-house, leave the door open, you know which way the hens will run.” I do not point my finger against the French . . .’

  I heard no noise, but les Halles jumped up, raising his finger to his lips.

  ‘What is going on out there?’ he murmured.

  In that instant, a fist rapped sharply on the wooden door.

  Les Halles strode over to the door, and threw it open on a sea of faces.

  The men drew back, as if they were contrite for having disturbed him.

  I caught my breath: a different message was written on their faces.

  ‘What is this fracas?’ he growled. ‘A problem with the barge? God be damned, I don’t intend to go back in the sea at this hour . . .’

  ‘Not the drill, sir,’ a voice cried out.

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘A man has come. From Nordbarn, sir.’

  I knew what had happened before I heard it from the soldier’s lips.

  14

  ‘I KNEW THAT there was something strange in there. The pigs would not come out. They had already feasted.’

  The voice of Adam Ansbach was thick and heavy, a sort of rasping, country sing-song. The young man had discovered a body in the pigsty, and he would lead me back the way he had come. His mother’s farm was half a mile from the hamlet of Nordbarn, he said.

  Colonel les Halles would not be accompanying us.

  ‘“To each man his own task,”’ he said tritely. ‘Another proverb, Stiffeniis. Latin in origin, I do believe, though mighty popular with engineers. It looks to me as though your hard day’s work will continue on through the night. Report to me as soon as you return.’

  The women had been summoned from their cabins down on the shore. While I was in my hut, gathering my bag, I heard the roll of names being called. Over a dozen had been read off the list when I heard the ominous silence.

  ‘Ilse Bruen?’

  No answering female voice cried out.

  ‘Ilse Bruen?’

  The name hung as heavy as the pillow of fog which had slunk in from the Baltic Sea to suffocate the land.

  ‘Provide horses for the procurator and his guide,’ the colonel ordered.

  I was glad of the offer though my guide was not so pleased, as I was soon to realise. He had little experience of saddle-riding, he said, and all his attention was given over to that difficult task.

  ‘Can we go no faster?’ I asked impatiently.

  ‘Need to be careful cutting through the dunes, sir,’ he warned. ‘If the animals put a foot wrong in the fog, we might not get there. Follow hard on the tail of my mount, if you will. Should you lose sight of me, stop at once and call for me to come back. There are shifting sands off the main track. The French colone
l would not be happy if we lost his horses.’

  I took him at his word and rode attentively in his wake.

  The fog was like a wet cloth that wrapped itself around our faces. The air was perfectly still. The horses made next to no noise on the damp, shifting sand. It might have been quicker to walk, though we would have been exhausted by the time we got there. I found it hard to believe that the boy had run all the way from the farm to the coast without a light if the way was as dangerous as he claimed.

  We had been riding ten minutes or so when he fell back to ride at my side.

  ‘The going’s safer here, sir,’ he said.

  We rejoined the rutted, sandy track that I had walked that day to Nordcopp and back. While taking the short-cut through the dunes, I had wondered whether he might be exaggerating the danger as a way of avoiding the questions that I wished to ask him.

  ‘We are getting close to Nordbarn Sheds,’ he announced, his voice uncertain, low, as if the silence of the night imposed it.

  ‘The place where Pastoris works,’ I added, meaning to show him that I knew the general direction we were taking.

  ‘Pretty close, sir. Our farm is more to the east, a bit further on . . .’

  ‘Are you ready now to tell me what you saw this night?’ I interrupted him.

  As I spoke, I was seized with doubts.

  Had anyone told him who I was? Had the French bothered to mention that I was an investigating magistrate, that I would have to ask him questions, and that he was obliged to answer me?

  He did not answer me, in any case.