HS03 - A Visible Darkness

by Michael Gregorio

  Dr Rickert did not answer.

  I knocked again, thunder clapped, rain pelted down.

  He did not come.

  I stepped to the window, pressed my nose against the grimy glass.

  The half-moon of a palm and three fingertips had touched the glass and left a streaking mark. I looked at it more carefully, and saw that the striations were red. My heart sank.

  I peered inside again, so far as the dirt and dust on the window would allow.

  The fire was a dull glow, a cooking-pot suspended over it. So, Rickert had returned, and had been cooking soup for dinner. Indeed, the untidy breakfast table I had left behind had been cleared, and freshly set with bowls and spoons. I stood on tiptoe, cleaning the condensation of my warm breath from the glass with the sleeve of my jacket.

  Then, I spotted him.

  First I saw the soles of his feet. His naked calves protruded from behind the sofa, where the rest was hidden. I crushed my face against the window-frame, trying to see around, or beyond, the obstacle. His upper body was twisted, as if in trying to escape he had slipped, then been struck as he attempted to rise again. The cut extended from his left ear, beneath and beyond his larynx. His white face was floating on a dark red lake. So much blood had discharged on the tiles, it was hard to believe that a single drop remained inside his body.

  Frantically, I pushed against the door.

  As I did so, I realised that it had been left open.

  I cannot say which came first.

  The sensation of swimming in a dark green sea. Or the thought which flashed through my mind.

  He is in Königsberg.

  33

  ‘STIFFENIIS.’

  The voice was soft, almost beyond hearing.

  A cloth of some sort clung like skin to my nostrils, mouth and ears. It was damp, and I choked on the mouldy stink of it. I tried to shift my hands, but I could not do so. They had been tightly tied across my chest, and bound at the wrists.

  I was caught up like a fly in a spider’s web.

  ‘Stiffeniis,’ that voice called out again.

  I opened my eyes with difficulty. The cloth binding was tight, but I could just make out something through the weave of it. I might have been peering through a thick fog. A vague dark form towered over me, dimly lit on one side only by a flickering candle.

  Vulpius.

  ‘You thought that you were hunting me,’ he said. ‘But I was hunting you.’

  The last thing I remembered was seeing Rickert on the tiled floor. The front door was ajar. I had ventured in. Then, I had been struck down. Afterwards, I suppose I had been bound and gagged. Unlike my erstwhile host, I had not been murdered.

  Not yet.

  ‘I know that you can hear me,’ he went on. ‘You are here to listen to me, Herr Magistrate.’

  The accusation rose unbidden to my lips.

  ‘You killed Rickert.’

  ‘You killed Rickert, Procurator Stiffeniis.’ His voice was a rasping growl. ‘You listened to him. He would have told you anything for a handful of coins.’

  ‘He thought that he was helping you,’ I replied. ‘He hoped to save you.’

  Silence greeted this remark. When he spoke again, his voice was an angry cascade.

  ‘Helping me? By telling you where I was living? Tracing a map of the street in his own blood? What a remarkable talent I have wasted!’

  I ought to have recognised that voice, but I did not. The cloth had been so closely wrapped about my ears, I had to strain to hear him.

  ‘You knew him,’ I insisted.

  He hovered over me like Death.

  ‘Rickert and I had never met before tonight, Herr Magistrate. Satan told him where to look for me. At least, that’s what he told me. And d’you know what? It may even be true. I have no idea how he found me. What strange times we live in!’

  A violent spasm of shivering shook me.

  At any moment, a knife might slice through my throat. His knowledge of the human body was unequalled. As was his eagerness to kill, dissect, anatomise, mutilate. I gasped for air, but that wet rag clung to my mouth. I was afraid, but it was not fear of pain alone that tortured me. He would decide when to kill me. He would choose the method of my despatch. He would dispose of my corpse as he wished.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ I challenged him.

  My inquisitor did not hurry to reply. Indeed, he seemed to consider carefully before he chose to speak. ‘What do you want from me, Herr Stiffeniis?’

  ‘You have been murdering women on the coast,’ I accused.

  ‘Is that what I’ve been doing?’ he spat back sharply.

  Was he toying with me?

  He repeated every word that I said. Like an echo running round the dome of an empty church. My voice returned to me, a pale, thin shadow of its former self. I spoke, and he repeated what I said. He did not answer my questions. Instead, he asked a question of his own.

  ‘You killed them, Vulpius.’ I stepped out onto thin ice. I was determined to use his real name, no matter how he might try to disguise his identity from me. ‘Or should I call you Dr Heinrich of Nordcopp?’

  ‘Heinrich, Vulpius,’ he murmured, conceding nothing.

  ‘You killed Rickert,’ I pressed on, ‘and you’ll soon kill me.’

  ‘Kill . . . you?’ his voice faltered, as if the idea had come to him that instant.

  I retched, but nothing issued from my mouth. I swallowed acid, sank back in a faint.

  Had the bindings loosened as my body shook?

  I tried to move my hands.

  Pain exploded, as his boot cracked down on my shin.

  ‘Bones are made of calcium,’ he growled. ‘They are brittle. Do not provoke me, foolishly trying to free yourself before my eyes. I need no encouragement to cruelty. You should know that by now.’

  I gritted my teeth. He was a doctor, a surgeon. He had vast experience of pain. He knew the fragility of human limbs. I had seen the callous professional indifference with which he lopped them off.

  ‘My bones are not so weak as Erika’s,’ I said, despite the throbbing ache. ‘Is that why you let her live? Is that why Erika’s body interests you so much? Because she is so different from the others, the ones that you have murdered?’

  Again, he said nothing.

  Was he gratified to hear that his crimes were known to me, at least?

  ‘I know you,’ I said more boldly. ‘I know what you can do.’

  ‘Do you really?’ he replied sarcastically.

  ‘I know your house. I visited your surgery,’ I pressed on. ‘I know about the amber that you covet. The worthless bits you showed to me in Nordcopp; the treasures that are hidden here in Königsberg. Amber stolen from women that you murdered and butchered ruthlessly. Using Erika Linder as your go-between. Promising to cure her in exchange. She told you what the women had found in the sea.’

  I paused for an instant, but he said nothing.

  ‘She has been arrested,’ I went on quickly. ‘She is in the hands of the French. She will tell them everything. Just as she told Gurten and myself. You approached the women. You took what you wanted. It was so easy for a doctor. You stole their amber, then you robbed them of their lives without a second thought!’

  The bonds cut sharply into my wrists and throat. That foul rag was choking me. I shifted my head, trying to ease the pressure on my lips, struggling to breathe. If I could have freed myself, I would have murdered him.

  ‘You have been slaughtering women here in Königsberg, too. Two girls from Nordcopp stole amber relics from the local church. Megrete and Annalise. They did not dare to try and sell those pieces there, of course. But here in Königsberg they thought that they were safe.’

  He seemed to be listening, waiting for me to go on.

  ‘Was that what you were celebrating when you were stopped by the town watch last April?’ I probed more gently. ‘That night you intended to lay your hands on amber of incredible value for the price of their two miserable lives. Amber fro
m the collection of the venerable Jakob Spener.’

  Silence.

  Would my throat be slit without an answer? Without knowing why he had hacked those women to pieces?

  ‘Johannes Gurten knows,’ I blurted out.

  Doubt seized me by the throat. I had sent my young assistant to Lotingen. His work done there, he had taken it on himself to return to Nordcopp.

  ‘Have you murdered him as well?’ I asked.

  Silence hung as heavy as an axe above my head.

  Suddenly, he spoke up: ‘You are well informed, it would appear.’

  His voice was calm, his tone distant. Dr Heinrich’s reserved detachment had surprised me the very first time that I spoke with him. We were fellow Prussians, and we were obliged to serve the French in a professional role, yet he avoided any reference to the unsavoury fact which united us, as if it did not interest him at all. Now, I thought, I understood his motive. He was working for himself alone. By seeming to help the French, he had acquired the freedom that he sought.

  ‘I still don’t know why you mutilate women,’ I said.

  ‘Is that all you want to know?’

  ‘That is all there is to know!’

  I could barely see his outline through the gauze which masked my eyes.

  ‘Don’t you want to know what I discovered about you, Herr Magistrate Hanno Stiffeniis of Lotingen?’

  There it was again. He answered me with a question, throwing my arguments arrogantly in my face as if they were his own. What more did he have to hide? Why torment me before he murdered me? Was this another aspect of his malevolence? First, he would amuse himself. Then, he would kill with whatever came to hand, wherever he happened to be. A windswept beach, a stinking pigsty, on the muddy banks of the River Pregel, in the tiny house of Narcizus Rickert.

  I felt a tremor shake my limbs. Having killed me, he would take what he desired. Cutting, hacking, carrying off the bits that fired his madness. I had to humour him. And yet, exasperation got the better of me.

  ‘What can you know of me?’ I protested. ‘I told you very little when we met in Nordcopp. You know only what les Halles and the French have decided to let you hear. A Prussian magistrate sent from Lotingen to investigate the crimes of which you are guilty.’

  I heard the squeak of tensing leather.

  He seemed to be crouching close beside me.

  His breath was warm. It penetrated the cloth that clung to my face.

  ‘I saw the newspapers in your room, but they could tell you nothing . . .’

  ‘I knew of you before they sent you to the coast,’ he stressed. ‘I learnt of you from a different source. A most reliable one . . .’

  The odour of his body was stale, musky. There was not the slightest hint of wax. Frau Poborovsky had said that she could smell it always on his hands, hair, and clothes. He had not been to work in the last ten days. Had the smell faded away? Had he sloughed it off, as snakes are said to change their skins?

  ‘You went to the Kantstudiensaal yesterday,’ he said. ‘I followed you there. You did not find what you were looking for. That particular manuscript had been removed for safe-keeping, let us say.’

  ‘You stole it. Then, you sent Ludvigssen those crushed insects . . .’

  ‘Could Kant’s legacy be trusted to a drunkard?’ he snarled suddenly. ‘The French would have closed the place. The Albertina is in their hands already. They have laid their greedy paws on everything else. Now, instead, the Kantstudiensaal is open. Kant’s books and his manuscripts are cared for in the manner that they merit. The true spirit of Prussia will be preserved. For ever . . .’

  ‘Like flies in amber?’ I hissed.

  The dark shape of his head loomed close to my face.

  He let out a heavy sigh.

  ‘Now you are beginning to make some sense, Herr Stiffeniis.’

  ‘That document you took from the archive,’ I said. ‘It was something Immanuel Kant had written about amber. Why did you remove it? Why remove that document, and no other?’

  The sound of our breathing was audible.

  I sucked air in gasps through the stifling gauze; he breathed slowly, regularly. There was no doubt in my mind. My life could be snuffed out at any instant, and at the slightest provocation.

  ‘I thought you might have understood by now. Professor Kant was the first to comprehend the significance of amber,’ he said at last. ‘He saw the way ahead. Late in life, but he saw it. He understood what others have always failed to see. What you have failed to see . . .’

  His voice faded away.

  ‘I read the note in Ludvigssen’s catalogue,’ I said. ‘There was nothing of a scientific nature in what Kant had to say.’

  ‘Regarding a piece of amber shown to me by Wasianski,’ Vulpius recited precisely. ‘Kant had never taken much of an interest in the natural sciences. But when Wasianski showed him that unusual piece, it was as if the golden light of the amber had illuminated him. The note is very short—two pages—you are right about that. But what intuition! No one has ever explained who and what we Prussians are. Nor what Prussia is. But then, Professor Kant turned his mind upon those questions.’

  I heard the scrape of a boot, the swish of clothes as Vulpius moved away. Some moments later, the sharp crackle of a piece of folded paper being opened.

  ‘And you hold the key to his meaning, Stiffeniis.’

  He began to read, and I was obliged to listen.

  Was it the confusion in my head? The pain in my skull? The muffling curtain about my face? His voice worked its way inside my brain. Professor Kant might have been reading to me from beyond the grave.

  ‘Wasianski showed me something memorable today,’ he read.

  I thought at first that he had caught a butterfly, the way he held it tightly trapped inside his closed fist. And yet, it is winter. Some worm, or creeping thing, I thought, as we sat together before the parlour fire. As a special favour, Wasianski reported, a friend had left an object in his keeping for the day. Wasianski wanted me to see it. The next morning, the owner intended to sell the treasure in the Kneiphof district.

  ‘Dear Kant,’ Wasianski began, ‘have you ever seen the like of this?’

  His voice was trembling with excitement as he showed me what was hidden in his palm: a piece of amber, the size of a large plum. It glowed like a small transparent sun, the glistening, yellow colour of honey fresh from the hive.

  And there was something darker at the core . . .

  It took my breath away.

  ‘It is from the Baltic,’ Wasianski said. ‘Just look what it contains!’

  I had never seen anything so luminous. A living flame enclosed within, it seemed to spark and flare as it refracted light. I had seen slight fragments of vegetation and minute flies contained in shards of amber, but never anything to equal it.

  The insect swept every other thought aside. Not for an hour. Nor a day. But for many weeks altogether.

  Had such a brute once taken wing on Prussian winds? It was horrid, fascinating. Longer than my thumb, it might have been made of the hardest steel–a suit of armour with six legs, a single horn, two sets of wings.

  Where had it come from? When had it lived? What dangers had it outfaced before it drowned in liquid amber? Invincible, aggressive, cruel, there was no hint of conscience in that design. It was fashioned for survival. Nothing more.

  Could God invent such a thing?

  ‘It is our history,’ I said.

  But even as I spoke, another thought was taking shape in my mind. An idea which induced a sense of stupor and fright. Planted there by a young man who came to see me recently, having just returned from France. His words echoed in my head; that monster of Nature glistened in my hand. I saw what Wasianski could not see. I saw what no man had ever seen before, I think. I alone had spoken to the youth. I alone had listened, as he walked with me around the Castle Walk that foggy afternoon. He had opened up his heart to me. I had looked into his thoughts, and what I saw there was dark, cruel, primitive.
I had the same impression as I gazed upon that insect trapped in amber.

  The fixation will not let me be.

  Is it possible, I ask myself? His dark soul; that extinct creature frozen in time? Not a vision of the past, but of a possible future?

  I must speak to him again. I must know what has become of him.

  I stare at the creature trapped inside this stone, and I see a visible darkness. What would happen if this monster were to free itself and fly away? What if it is nesting now in his mind and in his soul? What would the consequences be for all of us?’

  ‘This document is dated November 1803,’ Vulpius added. ‘That is, a short time before the killings began in Königsberg, and Professor Kant sent for you. You will see the connection, I think. When the French ordered you to go to Nordcopp, it seemed as if the ghost of Kant had issued you a further challenge. But you did not see it that way. Betraying yourself and the “darkness” that Kant had seen inside you, you set yourself to help the French, enabling them to possess our amber and crush our primitive hearts.’

  And for that sin I must pay with my life.

  And yet, his reasoning was false. I had not betrayed Kant. Nor helped the French to take possession of my country.

  The words tripped lightly from my lips.

  ‘I am not helping the French . . .’

  ‘Just listen to yourself, Herr Magistrate!’ he snarled.

  I had set my foot on a slippery rock.

  ‘Prussian women were being murdered on the coast,’ I said, changing direction quickly. ‘That was all that I knew when I was ordered up to Nordcopp.’

  ‘You did not know that the French were building machines? That they were planning to strip the coast of amber?’ he stormed, his anger mounting. ‘You have seen them at work, Herr Magistrate. Their theft grows day by day. Yet you ignored what they were doing.’

  ‘I saw how Prussian women were being butchered . . .’

  ‘They had to die,’ he snapped impatiently.

  ‘Why?’ I shouted. ‘Why?’