HS03 - A Visible Darkness

by Michael Gregorio

  ‘There,’ he said, ‘that is more than sufficient.’

  He closed his eyes, and a beatific smile appeared on his face.

  I heard the buzzing of a fly, then realised that he was making the noise with his lips.

  Then, he began to write, dipping his fingernail into the blood.

  Write?

  Do we form our letters, or do they form themselves? Do our eyes contribute to the act of writing? His eyes played no part in it, and the results were adequate proof of the omission. With hesitation and uncertainty, laying fresh blood over stains that were old, dry, faded, he traced three circles and a triangle. With the same mechanical impetus as before, his finger suddenly pointed upwards. He removed his hand, using the napkin to wipe away the blood again. He had, it seemed, finished.

  Dr Rickert glanced down like a man possessed. Two small circles like eyes. A larger circle beneath it, like a gaping mouth. A medium-sized triangle, which might have been a rough approximation of a nose, except for the fact that it was where the right ear would have been. There was not much more to see on that paper.

  But Rickert seemed pleased with himself. ‘Not far,’ he said, tracing out the patterns in the air. ‘Not so far away at all.’ He made a loud tutting noise. ‘I don’t suppose you see it, sir. You don’t know Königsberg as well as I do.’

  ‘Königsberg?’

  He nodded. ‘It should not be difficult to find the man. Can you see the pattern, sir?’ he asked. He edged forward on his chair, pointing out the salient features of his drawing. ‘These circles are the bastions of Königsberg Castle,’ he announced. ‘The large one is the main tower. So, this direction here is south. This triangle lies east of the castle, then, but it is close to the castle wall. Have you ever been down that way, sir? It is something of a maze. Still, this shape is distinct and I can tell you the names of these three streets. They form the Haymarket triangle. Vulpius is right here, on the corner. All the signs point to it . . .’

  I stared at the bloody stains on the paper. Mystic signs. Magical ciphers. Maps written in human blood. ‘I hope you will not judge me rude, sir,’ I was just able to say, ‘but it has been a very long day, and I really do need to catch up on some sleep.’

  I winced as I said it. Even so, I thought, better to rest my head on a pillow where someone else had laid his head for three nights only than to spend another half-hour in my demented landlord’s company.

  ‘Quite right, Herr Magistrate. I’ll make your bill up right away,’ he said, and beamed a honeyed smile at me.

  He did not dip his finger in the blood to make the bill. He did the sum in his head, instead, then explained it to me point by point. Five thalers for my bed, two more for dinner, one for the letters I had asked him to despatch in Lotingen.

  I had already done the sum; our tallies did not match.

  ‘Those ten thalers more,’ he patiently explained, ‘are for services of an extraordinary nature.’

  I paid without argument.

  Later, I lay down on my narrow bed without undressing.

  Alone in the dark, the odours of that house were almost tangible. The musky, sweaty smell left behind by the tenant who had filled that space before me. The heavy, ingrained filth of ages in the mats and curtains. The acidic tang of the chamber-pot which I had removed to the furthest corner. The lingering greasy sourness of the yellow sheep-fat candles with which Dr Rickert lit his abode. The persistent sweetness of the boiled and basted onions. Plus, other traces of the sharp and the bitter which I did not care to identify.

  Somewhere in the night, a dog howled. Somewhere close at hand, another hound wailed back. In Italy, when dogs cry out at night, the people get up from their beds and sit on the doorstep, waiting for the worst. Howling dogs, they say, are the early heralds of an earthquake.

  In Prussia, we think differently.

  Our dogs howl when the Devil comes to call.

  30

  THE LARGE CIRCLE is the main tower.

  Rickert’s words echoed in my mind as I walked into the shadows of Königsberg Castle. The towering brown-brick edifice loomed high above me, cancelling out the sun, transforming the warm morning into a cold and gloomy twilight. All the administrative offices of the occupying forces had been located inside the fortress, including the office of the French military police.

  As I passed beneath the archway, I recalled the February night four years before when I had entered Königsberg Castle for the first time. A necromancer had been waiting for me down in the dungeons, and I had seen him communicating with the soul of a dead man. I shivered at the memory, as I presented my identity papers to the guard.

  Two smaller circles . . .

  Every time I came to Königsberg in search of a murderer, I was obliged to deal with evidence of a sort that no sane man should act upon.

  Did the Haymarket triangle exist, as well?

  The police office was on the far side of the square. I entered, identified myself, showed my papers, asked my questions about Vulpius. He had been reported by the Königsberg night-watch in the company of two women near the Grünen Brucke bridge, more or less in the same spot where two female corpses were later found. They knew that a man named Ludvigssen had accused Vulpius of having stolen two sheets of paper from the university library. They knew nothing more than I knew.

  ‘Was Vulpius ever traced?’ I asked the clerk.

  The French soldier looked at me, then elbowed the man sitting next to him.‘Well, if you’d care to wait, Monsieur Magistrate,’ he replied, grinning savagely, ‘we’ll order the 12th Dragoons straight back from Spain to look for this thief who stole two bits of paper belonging to . . . what was his name? Professor Gant?’ I could still hear their laughing when I left the room.

  I stood once more in the cobbled square outside the fortress.

  The Haymarket triangle lies east of the castle wall . . .

  I had no other lead to follow. I went the way that Rickert had indicated. The area was dirty, badly run down, with evident signs of the heavy French bombardment still in evidence. The houses were ancient—some were made of wood which was rotten, frail and slanting. The streets were narrow, many cobbles were missing, having been used as missiles during the rioting. And yet, for all the dirt and broken panes of glass, there were house wives slopping soap and water on their doorsteps, and sweeping dust into the gutter with their brooms in the interests of cleanliness.

  I stopped and surveyed the scene.

  The jutting corner-house at the lower point of the Haymarket triangle was the one that Narcizus Rickert had described to me the night before. I felt sure that he must know the place. Even so, I crossed the road and stopped in front of the house. Several rugs were draped over the railings, and a middle-aged woman was rolling up her sleeves. The hairs on her forearms glistened in the early morning sun like fields of corn, and in her right fist she brandished a carpet-beater.

  ‘Does Herr Vulpius live here?’ I asked with no preamble.

  Bunching up the fat around her eyes, the woman peered at me through two tight slits. ‘Are you a friend of his?’ she retorted.

  I was stunned. Rickert had evidently drawn blood from the correct vein.

  ‘Is he at home?’

  ‘Doubt it,’ she said.

  I was surprised at the news. It was not yet nine o’clock.

  ‘Has he gone out already?’

  ‘Gone out? Who knows if he’ll be back? Comes and goes, he does,’ she said dismissively. ‘People go missing all over the place in Königsberg.’

  ‘Has something happened to him, d’you think?’

  She put her hands on her hips, and stared at me. ‘I was talking of fly-by-nights that don’t keep up with their rent! Herr Vulpius is usually as regular as clockwork. I will say that for him. But you can never tell.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said.

  ‘You might well say ah!’ she muttered sarcastically. ‘Left all of his stuff, he has. Gone off, the Lord knows where. I can’t throw his things in the street, can I? Too
much of it for a start. Books, clothes, and I know not what else! I can’t afford to be prosecuted if he takes it into his head to come back again. Nor can I let his rooms to any other tenant while they are still occupied. Maybe I should get the police to look for him.’

  ‘I am the police,’ I said. ‘And I am looking for him.’

  Her sour expression softened in a flash. ‘What did you say that your name was? Mine’s Poborovsky. What’s he done? I won’t have criminals in my house.’

  Frau Poborovsky laid her hand upon her breast as if to calm herself.

  ‘It’s nothing so terrible,’ I reassured her.

  ‘You’d better come in, then,’ she said.

  It was a decent house. A respectable, clean-looking house. There were religious prints and framed psalters on the whitewashed walls. The furniture in the raftered living-room was old, but solid: black wood dressers, matching high-backed armchairs with Berlin bead-work seats.

  She did not invite me to sit down, however.

  ‘He’s been living up on the first floor almost twelve months,’ she said, nodding at the ceiling above her head. ‘Never once invited me in. Do you want to see the apartment, sir, before you call the bailiffs?’

  I had no intention of calling anyone, certainly not the bailiffs.

  I followed her bulky bottom up the narrow staircase.

  ‘Do you know Narcizus Rickert?’ I asked, while she searched through the large assortment of keys that dangled from her chatelaine.

  She looked at me with a frown. ‘Who, sir?’

  ‘Herr Doctor Rickert. He rents rooms to students, too,’ I said. ‘Is he a friend of yours? Or of Herr Vulpius?’

  ‘Don’t know no one of that name,’ she said with a shrug. ‘We are so many in this trade. And Vulpius don’t have visitors, sir.’ She turned and stared me. ‘Now don’t you think that’s strange? A young man with no friends?’

  How had Rickert found the address, I wondered. Was he personally acquainted with the ‘idolaters of Kant’ that he had spoken of? Was that why he had sent me to the Kantstudiensaal? I was lost for any other explanation.

  ‘Did Vulpius come to you from the university?’

  She squinted. ‘How should I know where he come from? Word gets out. I’ve no idea, and never asked.’

  As she turned the key in the lock, I asked: ‘How long has he been gone?’

  ‘A week, ten days . . .’

  ‘And he has disappeared before, you say?’

  She looked at me for some moments, as if considering what to confide.

  ‘He’s like the lark in spring,’ she said. ‘A few days here, a few days there. A few days missing, then he’s back again.’

  I would have liked to examine the room alone, but there was no avoiding Frau Poborovsky’s company. She seemed to be as curious as I was. There was an observable hesitancy in the way she advanced so timidly into what was, after all, her own property. Clearly I had provided her with an undreamt-of excuse to explore the room of her absent lodger.

  ‘Just look at the dust!’ she exclaimed.

  I looked, but I was not so shocked.

  Vulpius was relatively tidy, so far as I could see. There was a large bed in the corner. The sheets were thrown back, and one of the blankets was trailing on the floor. A small table and three chairs were positioned by the window. The table was piled high with books and papers and an empty plate, as if he ate and studied at the same time. Shirts and stockings were scattered haphazardly over the backs of chairs and on the carpets. I stepped across to the table, and began to handle the books, looking at the titles, while Frau Poborovsky slid open the drawers of the dresser to see what Vulpius kept inside.

  Would I find the stolen manuscript pages of Immanuel Kant hidden somewhere in the heap, I wondered. Goethe’s Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister, a recent publication by Schiller, novels and romances by other lesser names. Anthologies of poetry, a number of philosophical tracts. I picked up Göckel’s Lexicon Philosophicum; evidently Vulpius knew Latin. There were patriotic pamphlets, too. Fichte’s Address to the German Nation, plus other more incendiary appeals to Prussian national sentiment.

  A folded newspaper caught my attention. It was a copy of the Königsberger Zeitung. A brief item on the front page had been boxed off with a bit of red wax crayon, as if the contents had meant something to the reader.

  FRENCH REQUEST ASSISTANCE

  A murder on the north coast. A young woman. No name has been released, but the French authorities in Königsberg are treating the matter seriously. General Malaport, commander of the Königsberg garrison, has requested the help of a Prussian magistrate with local knowledge to investigate. It is thought that a request will be made to the district of Lotingen. An able magistrate is living there, a young man who made his name in Königsberg four years ago, when he was called to assist the aged Professor of Philosophy, Immanuel Kant.

  Readers will recall that four people were murdered in our city in the winter of 1804 . . .

  The article reported at length on the facts relating to the events four years before, rather than saying anything about the murder on the amber coast. And yet, one thing was inescapable. I felt my heart and pulse begin to race. Vulpius had underlined Lotingen. I had been chasing him for one day only, but he had been collecting news regarding me for a longer period.

  Another news-sheet had induced Vulpius to use his red wax crayon again. Le Clairon militaire du Baltique was produced on rag paper of the poorest quality. A single large sheet folded in the middle, then folded again. It was cleverly printed in disjointed quarters, so that the reader could read four pages in a row, then turn the entire page, fold the paper the other way, and read the remaining four. I might have missed the inner fold, except for the fact that my eye was caught by the sequence of letters which formed my own name.

  ‘Hanno Stiffeniis has been ordered to conduct the murder enquiry . . .’

  One thing was clear to me. The French had made a hullabaloo of my name and my history, perhaps to make my name digestible to French officers who might, otherwise, have made life difficult for me. At the same time, they had exposed me to the criticisms of my fellow-countrymen, who would damn me as a traitor.

  Magistrate Stiffeniis–a married man with three young children– is a long-time resident in Lotingen in the canton of Marlbork. His wife, Helena, is expecting a fourth child late in the summer. Just last year, together with the eminent Parisian criminologist, Mon. Serge Lavedrine [who is currently attached to the 7th Chasseurs as a colonel], Magistrate Stiffeniis investigated the massacre of three small children in Lotingen, and was instrumental in cancelling out the vile, false accusations which had been brought against the French garrison there. Local insurgents had spread rumours which enraged the town’s inhabitants, suggesting that the massacre was the work of French soldiers. General Louis-Georges Malaport speaks highly of the Prussian magistrate, and says that he is confident that the current scare on the north coast will soon be brought to a successful conclusion. Mon. Stiffeniis is a man of sound judgement and worthy of our trust . . .

  Me. My family. The fact that Helena was pregnant.

  The same facts had been reported in the nationalist broadsheets that Gurten had brought to Nordcopp. The French article had been printed before, however. It had been issued the day after I met General Malaport in Lotingen. It was not a coincidence. The Clairon militaire had provoked the Prussian nationalists to respond.

  Who should I fear the most, the French, or the Prussians? Or Vulpius, perhaps, who seemed to have taken such an interest in me?

  I turned to Frau Poborovsky, who was holding a pair of stockings against the light.

  ‘Can you describe him, ma’am?’ I asked.

  She turned to look at me. ‘Vulpius? Describe him?’

  ‘Physically. His build and general appearance, I mean.’

  She paused to think, a finger on her lips. ‘Well, he’s quite tall. Your height, more or less. Slender figure, a bit thin and wiry for my taste, but he has a
good pair of calves, I’ll say that for him.’

  ‘The face, Frau Poborovsky. Is there anything that distinguishes him?’

  She rubbed her hands together. ‘He is quite handsome. Charming manners, too. Thin lips, a shapely nose, a good square chin, good teeth, a broad brow and . . . oh yes.’ She pointed her finger toward me. ‘His smell, sir. I could smell it on his hair and hands. It lingers in the air when he’s at home.’

  ‘What smell?’ I asked.

  She brushed her dress off, as if the smell were clinging there as well. ‘Wax, I would say, sir. Once I told him that he smelled like a church at Christmastide.’

  I needed something more visible than a smell to go on. I drew out my sketching-pad and turned to the page which held the face of the man that Ludvigssen had described to me.

  ‘Is this him?’ I asked her.

  The lady’s eyebrows rose in perfect arches. ‘This, sir? Vulpius?’ she said. ‘As similar as a cat and a mouse, perhaps.’ She clasped her hands and her shoulders drooped. ‘This man’s eyes are round and small. Herr Vulpius has a pair of eyes . . . well, they are very different. These lips are thick . . . Oh no, sir, this cannot be Vulpius. You are looking for the wrong man.’

  I had realised that Ludvigssen had been of no great help. But how inaccurate had he really been? And how precise was Frau Poborovsky being now?

  I went across and opened up the tallboy dresser. The smell seemed to unwind and unfold from the cupboard, like a snake uncoiling. It was not the sour smell of camphor which Helena and Lotte used at home to ward off moths. This smell was sweeter, almost medicinal, and there was a mild aromatic edge to it.

  I hesitated.

  Was it similar to anything I had encountered in the house of Dr Heinrich? I inhaled more deeply, held it in my nose and throat, then let it go. It was not dissimilar, I thought, though I could not be more precise. I looked more attentively at the contents of his wardrobe. Vulpius dressed well, though there was nothing remarkable about the long brown winter cloak, the green velveteen frock-coat, or the blue fustian jacket which were hanging there. Beneath the long tails of the overcoat, I noticed a round box the size of a skillet. I bent down, removed the lid. Empty.