The Mastersinger from Minsk

by Morley Torgov

  “Why? Is it essential for some reason that you meet them?”

  “No, not essential,” I admitted, somewhat taken aback, “but it would be a privilege … for me, I mean.” Addressing the singers, I said, “I’m Inspector Hermann Preiss, of the Munich Police.”

  The tenor, without waiting for Wagner’s approval, stepped forward, his hand outstretched. “I’m Henryk Schramm.” He beckoned the soprano to come forward. “And this … this is Karla Steilmann!” Schramm said this with such enthusiasm that I wondered whether it was her voice or her beauty that elicited such a show of warmth and admiration from her collaborator.

  Visibly annoyed that these two young people hadn’t waited for him to manage the formalities, Wagner addressed them gruffly, insisting that they depart without further delay given the demands of tomorrow. “Now get home, the two of you. Go! Out!”

  “I do hope we meet again, Herr Preiss,” the young woman said, reducing me with her smile to a mound of wet clay.

  Wagner stood watching with undisguised impatience as his singers made their exit. Then, satisfied that they had left the house, he turned on me and said in an angry voice, “That was most imprudent of you, Preiss, if I may say so. I am not eager to announce to the entire world that my career — maybe my life itself — is so threatened that I require the protection of the police. Do you have any notion at all about how much comfort and joy such a revelation would bring to my enemies? My God, man, a little discretion!”

  “I think you’re overlooking something, sir, with all due respect,” I replied. “It was your idea … your sense of urgency … that brought me here tonight. It was you who invited me to be in this room when I would have been perfectly content to wait in some other part of the house until your rehearsal was finished.”

  Wagner did not take kindly to this response, which was no surprise. To Mecklenberg, who was by now a living portrait of misery, he called: “Is this the best you could secure for me?”

  In a weak voice the impresario answered, “I was assured, Maestro, that Inspector Preiss is the finest in the Munich Constabulary. None better.”

  “He certainly doesn’t impress me as having the attributes of a conventional policeman. Considering the threat made against me, one would expect at least a modicum of sympathy, of respect.”

  “If you are looking for a ‘conventional’ policeman,” I said, “then look elsewhere, Maestro. To borrow your little sermon to your singers a few moments ago … or at least part of it … I have always felt challenged to defy narrow conventionalism.”

  “Is that so, Preiss? Well, then, perhaps that explains the stories about your involvement with the Schumann case a few years back in Düsseldorf.”

  “Stories?”

  “Yes. About how you were apparently so blinded by Schumann and that wife of his that —”

  “You needn’t repeat it, Maestro. What was mere gossip has unfortunately grown into a legend.”

  “Ah, so Franz isn’t telling tales out of school after all.”

  “Franz? You mean Franz Brunner?”

  “Brunner? Who the devil is Franz Brunner? I’m talking about Franz Liszt of course.”

  “Ah yes, the father of the woman with whom you are having an affair … a rather notorious affair.”

  “That is none of your business, Inspector,” Wagner shot back.

  “Everything is my business, Maestro Wagner,” I said. “Your lady friend —” I began to say.

  “I have many lady friends, Preiss.”

  “Your lover, then … Cosima von Bülow, wife of the conductor. I, too, have ears that pick up tales out of school, tales to the effect that your former friend Franz Liszt is appalled that his daughter has left her husband and become your mistress. Maestro von Bülow can hardly be thrilled by these events.”

  “These are personal matters, Preiss,” Wagner shouted. “I repeat: they are none of your business.”

  “The threatening note you received … could it not have been written by Liszt, or von Bülow, or some government official, for that matter? Any one of these persons, it seems to me, might have a powerful desire to bring about your downfall.”

  Wagner fell silent and stood studying me for a few moments. Quietly he said, “I see that you are indeed not a conventional policeman. You seem to know a great deal about what goes on in the musical world, at least here in Munich.”

  “And elsewhere,” I said. “But, to be frank, your activities, Maestro, extend far beyond the boundaries of the musical world. Politics, revolution, creditors and the avoidance of creditors … the very name ‘Richard Wagner’ conjures up as much discord as harmony throughout Europe. I have just mentioned three people who would have ample cause to write that note, but there could be thirty, or three hundred, or even three thousand!”

  And with that, I reached for my coat and hat. “It is late, sir. You must excuse me. If you want me, Mecklenberg knows where to find me.”

  Without another word, I turned and made a brisk exit, leaving one of the most vocal men in Germany speechless.

  Chapter Three

  The Munich Constabulary is located at the east side of Karlsplatz, facing the Palace of Justice on the opposite side of the square. With good reason, the Constabulary is looked upon as the ugly cousin of the Palace. While the Palace shines as a tribute to the noblest of Renaissance style, in sharp contrast the Constabulary is an angry-looking edifice, its grey stone façade frozen into a permanent scowl that menaces passersby and forces them to avert their eyes. Even citizens who are entirely innocent pass through its guarded portals feeling they must be guilty of something.

  If the Constabulary’s exterior is forbidding, the interior is even more so. A century of hard use has left its woodwork scarred and blackened. Coats of dark green paint applied slapdash every few years to the corridors have made the place as inviting as a shelter for the insane. Every surface — floors, walls, ceilings — is as unyielding as stone, so that people’s voices and the staccato clacking of officers’ boots on the bare marble floors resound as in a huge hollow cavern.

  My own office, alas, offers nothing exceptional to its stern surroundings: in size and furnishings it suggests that my daily occupation is that of a monk (an irony considering that for the life of me I cannot recall the last time I visited any room or building that has anything at all to do with faith). My “cell” has only one attribute — privacy. Thanks to my seniority, I need share it with no one. In the midst of all this architectural ugliness I at least have the comfort of my own company.

  How odd, then, that whoever a hundred years ago concocted this four-storey pile made certain to provide space on the uppermost floor for a common room (or “lounge” as Commissioner von Mannstein prefers to call it) for senior police personnel. Not that it is elegant, this so-called lounge: a scattering of chairs with straight unforgiving backs and undernourished upholstery; a half-dozen small simple wooden tables whose tops bear numerous hieroglyphics carved by irreverent off-duty policemen. (One such carving is a rudimentary depiction of two dogs copulating, an obscenity that would earn any ordinary civilian a year behind bars but which here, in the common room, is a source of constant amusement, even pride!) A collection of oversized oil portraits of past commissioners decorates the walls, each stern face staring down at us with an expression of extreme contempt. One can peer out at a restricted landscape of Munich through three narrow windows that serve unfailingly to restrict light and air and to keep the city at a safe distance. All in all the room brings to mind the ancient Greek motto: Nothing in excess.

  It was here, in the common room, that I encountered Franz Brunner the morning after my initial exposure to Richard Wagner. Slouched in his chair, feet resting on another chair he’d drawn up, he held half a sandwich in one hand while munching the other half. “Well well, good morning, Preiss,” he called out, his voice thickened by a mixture of bread, cheese, and some garlicky variety of sausage. “Or should I say good afternoon? Isn’t this what they call ‘bankers’ hours’ … in
by noon, out by four?”

  I responded with what had become in recent weeks my standard greeting to the man, “Go to hell, Brunner.” The fact that I was still feeling the effects of the last few grinding days and had therefore arrived for work three hours later than usual was none of his damned business.

  Brunner pretended to be hurt. “And here I was certain,” he said, “that you’d show up this morning with — what? — a magnum of Champagne? A flask of Napoleon brandy? Or at least a handful of decent Dutch cigars, Preiss.” The petulance in his tone made him sound like a rejected ingénue instead of a forty-five-year-old detective whose girth stretched the buttons of his waistcoat to their limit.

  “And why would I want to shower you with gifts, Brunner?” I knew the answer, of course, but was nevertheless curious to hear it from his mouth in order to fuel my loathing for the fellow.

  Brunner didn’t disappoint me. “I thought you’d want to show your gratitude, Preiss.”

  “Gratitude for what?”

  “For putting that little man … what’s his name —?”

  “Mecklenberg —”

  “Yes, Mecklenberg … for putting him on to you. I mean, it’s common knowledge that Chief Inspector Hermann Preiss is the darling of artists of all stripes.”

  I knew what was coming next. Detective Franz Brunner never passed up an opportunity to remind me of the city where my career had its beginnings and where one case in particular in which I was deeply involved ended in an unsolved murder that has haunted me ever since. “Wasn’t it Düsseldorf? There was that madman, uh, Schumann, some sort of crazy musical genius. Murder, attempted suicide; you must have had your hands full. None of that nonsense ever got solved, did it, Preiss?”

  In a calm unruffled way that I knew was bound to irritate him I replied, “Allow me to congratulate you, Brunner. If nothing else, you are blessed with the gift of consistency.” I paused for a moment to let the insult sink in, then said, “Look here, Brunner, whether or not you choose to believe me, I am sorry about what happened, I mean that business at Friedensplatz. I give you my word; I had nothing whatever to do with the commissioner’s decision to remove you from the case.”

  Still slouching in his chair, Brunner eyed me with disdain. “Well, Preiss,” he drawled, “not only will your name presumably become hallowed in every whorehouse in Munich; I imagine your many friends in the artistic community, knowing their moral standards, will similarly toss rose petals in your path, especially an upstanding citizen like Wagner.”

  “You’ve heard of Wagner, Brunner?”

  “Don’t look so astonished, Preiss,” Brunner said. “The man’s notorious. His music’s outrageous too.”

  “I wouldn’t have dreamed you’re a music-lover, Brunner,” I said.

  “I’m not,” Brunner said flatly. “Wouldn’t give a pinch of snuff for the best of it, if you want the truth.”

  “Then I really am astonished,” I said. “I could swear I saw you dancing with some woman —” I made a gesture indicating grossly oversized breasts “— one day during Oktoberfest. Yes, a Saturday it was. A street dance. I think you were wearing lederhosen. I must say, Brunner, you showed a rather pretty leg, as they say.”

  “Damn you, Preiss!” Brunner said, sitting up and slamming the uneaten half of his sandwich onto a nearby tabletop. Jabbing an index finger in the air in my direction he repeated, “Damn you!”

  “Please, Brunner, a little restraint. We are officers of the law, brethren on the side of the righteous.”

  “Brethren my ass!” Brunner shouted. “I will go to my grave, Preiss, and still not understand why that bastard von Mannstein saw fit to import a man like yourself — a policeman from the backwaters of Düsseldorf — into Munich. I’ve given fifteen years of my life —”

  “Oh please, Brunner,” I interrupted, again deliberately keeping my voice even, “not this conversation again.” We had been through this subject several times before and each time I’d been obliged to remind Brunner that both of us, along with several others, had submitted written applications stating our credentials and our visions of the future of law enforcement in Munich; both of us had been subjected to lengthy, even gruelling, interviews with the Police Commission Board; and in the end it was I who emerged with the appointment of chief inspector. “You may whine and wail all you like, Brunner,” I said, “but I won this post fair and square and I’ll be damned if I’ll allow you to saddle me with guilt because of your failures.”

  An unswallowed portion of sandwich spewed forth from Brunner’s mouth. “Failures! Failures! You arrogant son-of-a-whore, Preiss!”

  This brought a slight smile to my face. “How did you know, Brunner? Yes, I am arrogant, unabashedly arrogant, as it happens. And what’s more my friend, I am also a son of a whore … or so I was told. I’ll be honest with you. I will go to my grave someday and not be sure who sired me. Permit me, Brunner, to congratulate you on your perspicacity.”

  Brunner eyed me with suspicion. “On my what?”

  Before I could define perspicacity for Brunner the doors of the common room were thrust open and in strode Commissioner von Mannstein, followed by a heavyset man whom I immediately recognized as the mayor of Munich (his handlebar mustache and chest-length beard were more renowned than his record as the city’s chief magistrate). Brunner and I automatically shot to our feet and stood to attention. In unison (for once) we said, “Good day, gentlemen.”

  Von Mannstein gave us a stiff smile. “At ease, gentlemen,” he said, then stood aside and made a polite gesture in the direction of the mayor. “It is my high honour,” the commissioner said, “to introduce to you our distinguished mayor, the Honourable Klaus von Braunschweig.”

  I offered my hand first. “I am honoured, sir,” I said.

  Brunner hastily wiped his right hand, which only moments ago had borne visible traces of bread, cheese, and sausage, on the side of his trousers, then he too offered his hand and acknowledged the honour.

  The commissioner turned to Brunner. “Brunner, you needn’t trouble yourself to stay, thank you. Oh, and when you leave would you be so good as to lock the doors behind you. We require a few minutes of absolute privacy up here with the chief inspector.”

  Bile is said to be an aid in the digestive process, but when a malfunction occurs — as it was now occurring somewhere within Franz Brunner — the result is frightening to behold: redness of face; profuse perspiration on forehead and upper lip; twitching of veins in temples, eyes fiery. Clicking his heels, Brunner responded, “As you wish, gentlemen.” Each step on his retreat from the room was like the blow of a hammer against the uncarpeted floor, the slamming of the doors behind him like a rifle shot.

  Pausing first to make certain Brunner was well away, the commissioner spoke up. “Preiss, Mayor von Braunschweig and I have a matter of utmost importance to discuss with you. Please understand that this discussion must be kept in the strictest confidence. Indeed, there will be no written record unless and until His Honour the Mayor expressly authorizes such a record, in which event I and I alone shall open and have custody of the file. Do I make myself clear, Preiss?”

  “Absolutely, sir,” I said.

  “Good. I know we can depend on you, Preiss. Now then, I will ask the mayor to lay certain facts before you, describe the problem those facts present, and inform you as to what is required of you. I suggest the three of us be seated.”

  There must be a special school, or perhaps conservatory, where politicians learn how to clear their throats in order to add portent to what they are about to say. If that is the case, then Klaus von Braunschweig, mayor of Munich, must have graduated with highest honours. What seemed like a full minute went by before his vocal passages were sufficiently clear to permit the utterance of words, during which I found myself leaning forward in my chair in a state of suspense, as though I was about to be dispatched on a mission in outer space.

  “Chief Inspector Preiss,” he began solemnly, “our fair city has in its midst an abomination,
a thorn in its side, an agitator, a subversive, a disease who must be rooted out, eradicated, driven from the gates of Munich for all time.” There followed a brief dramatic pause, then he continued, “Does the name Richard Wagner mean anything to you, Preiss?”

  I frowned, pretending to rack my brain, my eyes fixed on the ceiling. Slowly I replied, “I suppose that, like many people, I’ve heard the name mentioned from time to time, usually in connection with music … you know, opera, that sort of thing. He’s reputed to advocate some rather radical ideas about music that have raised quite a few eyebrows.”

  “Yes, but the trouble is,” von Braunschweig said, “that his radical ideas are not confined to music and the eyebrows he raises are not those of his fellow musicians alone. Maestro Troublemaker fashions himself an expert on social and political issues. Writes these damned articles in newspapers here and abroad about freedom and the necessity to revisit and revise laws and regulations that are well-established and are the very fabric of German society. What’s even worse, Preiss, is that the man has the gall to suggest that art is what German culture is all about. Art! My God, when was the last time an artist led an army to victory on a battlefield, I ask you?”

  “You appear,” I said, “to take this entire Wagner business very personally, sir.”

  “And with good reason, Preiss,” the mayor said. “You see, the eyebrows that have been raised by Wagner’s activities belong to the highest government officials in Bavaria. And they have made it all too plain to me that if Munich is to continue to enjoy the blessings of tax contributions from the state treasury, money that is urgently required to maintain our fine institutions, our magnificent boulevards and parks, then we must get rid of this man Wagner or at least silence him once and for all. You say I take it personally, Preiss? That is an understatement.”

  Commissioner von Mannstein gently laid a hand on the mayor’s arm. “I have to mention to the chief inspector another troublesome aspect, Your Honour … that is, if you will permit me —”