The Mastersinger from Minsk

by Morley Torgov

  “So, Inspector, a second piece of the Russian puzzle —”

  Madam Vronsky was holding both fragments of the envelope addressed to Henryk Schramm up to the light streaming through the windows of her room at the Eugénie Palace, as though the paper were translucent and, thus exposed, might reveal some secret code. “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” she said, pouting, “but the second piece contains nothing more than the name of the sender and his address in Minsk. And here I thought you and I were about to share a moment of high drama. The least you can do is tell me what this is all about. After all, I am appointed your official translator. Which brings up a question: Surely there are others in a cosmopolitan city like Munich who could have translated this for you?”

  “I don’t trust ‘others,’” I replied. “True, Munich is cosmopolitan, but whisper a secret at one end of Munich at eleven in the morning and by noon everyone at the other end will be chattering about it. It’s one of the lessons a policeman learns his first day on the job.”

  “Oh, I see. So you’re worried that if you tell me more about Schramm and this mysterious business with the envelope, an hour from now I’ll be mounted on a makeshift pedestal at Marienplatz shouting the news to thousands of passersby.”

  “You’re pouting again,” I said. “Mind you, you do have a particularly fetching way about you when you’re like this.”

  “Shame on you, flirting with an old woman!”

  She pretended to scold me. I pretended to be contrite. “You’ve always been able to see through me, haven’t you, Madam Vronsky.”

  “If you’re referring to your ambitions back in Düsseldorf … your dream of playing Beethoven’s sonatas as they should be played … yes, I did see through your … shall we be charitable and say your digital deficiencies. And I told you so honestly, did I not?”

  “And that is exactly why I trust you,” I said.

  “But not enough to tell me the details behind these envelope fragments —”

  I threw up my hands in a gesture of helplessness. The fact was that, up to this point, I had chosen not to tell a soul about my discovery of the second fragment. Larger than the first, its torn edges closely matched those of the other fragment. Whoever had possession to begin with must have disposed of the letter the envelope contained, for try as I might I failed to find even the most minute portion. What was especially confounding was that the first fragment had shown up in the lodgings of Wolfgang Grilling, while the second was located — of all places — in the bedroom of Karla Steilmann, tucked away under a neatly bundled stack of letters in the drawer of her night table. I had not the slightest notion who initially would have had access to this piece of mail. Nor had I the slightest notion as to why both Grilling and Steilmann would have had an interest in it.

  Purloined letters were the stuff of playwrights and novelists, an all-too-convenient and rather tawdry literary device I had long regarded with derision. In real life, I told myself, this kind of thing simply didn’t happen.

  Until now, that is.

  “I apologize, Madam Vronsky, I sincerely do,” I said. “Here you are, once more about to do me a great favour, in return for which I’m compelled to stand before you tightlipped and seemingly ungrateful.”

  She gave me a forgiving smile. “Apology accepted,” she said, adding quickly, “though now I understand what Helena means when she speaks of you. She says what you demand most from a woman is a bottomless well of patience. Those are her exact words, not mine, my dear Preiss … a bottomless well of patience. A word of advice, if I may: even a bottomless well may run dry. Ah, but I see that your eyes are fixed once again on these —”

  She held the envelope fragments in the open palm of her hand, the two pieces, when joined, forming an almost perfect whole. “To business, then. The return address reads: Professor M.J. Klayman, care of Imperial Conservatory of Music, Minsk. The penmanship is that of an educated person, done with a certain flourish and meticulous punctuation.”

  “Does the name ‘Professor Klayman’ sound familiar to you?”

  “Again I’m sorry to disappoint you. No it does not. But two things immediately come to mind: Klayman is a fairly common Jewish surname. And any Jew holding a professorship in a Russian institute of higher learning must be a man of remarkable accomplishment. There’s an old saying, Inspector Preiss: In the heart of every Russian there’s a cold spot for a Jew. Of course, it’s possible that this Professor Klayman has converted to Christianity in order to secure his position. After all, here in Germany some Jews have resorted to conversion to advance their careers.”

  “Would a conservatory in Minsk typically have an opera department?”

  “Most definitely. Opera is very popular in Russia among the upper class. Attending the opera is a kind of status symbol in high society. The women sit fanning themselves, imprisoned in their tight corsets; the men sit perspiring in their evening clothes and military tunics; everyone, having overeaten beforehand, tries desperately not to belch or let wind; and during intermissions they pretend they’re French and fawn all over one another. Why, even your Richard Wagner has had his works performed in Russia, although his experience as a conductor of an opera orchestra there has gone down in the annals as the greatest upset caused by any foreigner since Napoleon’s invasion! It’s one of the choicer bits of gossip to come out of my humdrum homeland in at least a generation, believe me. Oh, but you’ve undoubtedly got too many urgent concerns and too little time on your hands for gossip, so we’ll leave it for another time.”

  “No, Madam Vronsky,” I said hastily, “please … gossip is to a policeman what —” I paused, struggling for a suitable comparison.

  “What mother’s milk is to a baby?” Madam Vronsky offered, coming to my rescue. “Very well, to gossip, then. Maestro Wagner toured a couple of Russia’s major cities several years ago … I think it was during the year 1862 … and tales were circulating throughout the musical world that he was in every kind of trouble imaginable. He had separated from his wife Minna; he was drowning in debt; he’d had some colossal failures in Paris and Vienna, and performances of his operas had ground to a halt. He was desperately in need of a patron but none was then even distantly on the horizon. The journeys by train to Moscow and St. Petersburg were exhausting, what with sleepless nights and unbearable food. His ability to communicate to Russian musicians was limited, some German here, some French there, an occasional bit of Italian, all delivered at the top of Wagner’s lungs on the supposition that the best way to speak to people who don’t understand a word you’re saying is to shout at them. And shout he did, so much so that at one point in Wagner’s first rehearsal with the orchestra in St. Petersburg the concertmaster, a violinist who happened to be fluent in German, shouted back at Wagner. “We’re not deaf, Maestro Wagner,” he said, “and what’s more, we are accustomed to beginning a piece not on the upbeat but on the downbeat. In fact, we are having difficulty following your beat altogether.”

  “Was this fellow — this violin player — insane?” I asked. “Nobody … not even The Holy Trinity … would dare speak that way to Richard Wagner.”

  “Wait, Inspector, that’s not all. A few minutes into the first selection, Wagner’s Overture to Rienzi, the Maestro yelled at the musicians to stop. He ordered the first violin section to replay the passage they had just played, which they did, then demanded they play it again, glaring at them the whole time, watching every move they made as though through a microscope. Signalling the concertmaster to rise from his chair and come forward to the podium, Wagner shouted to the members of the orchestra, ‘You see, this is what happens to a violin section when there is total absence of discipline, of leadership, all the bows going in different directions like bulrushes in a windstorm instead of in unison.’ Pointing accusingly at the concertmaster, Wagner went on: ‘And this one should be in charge of a band of gypsies on a street corner, not sitting at the first desk in a concert hall in St. Petersburg. But then, what else would one expect from a man with a name li
ke Simon Socransky, eh?’

  “With that, Wagner summoned the orchestra manager, declared that he would not proceed so long as ‘that Jew Socransky’ was present, whereupon the unfortunate Simon Socransky was dismissed on the spot.”

  I was shocked that an orchestral player could be sacked in such a summary fashion, but Madam Vronsky explained that musicians were regularly hired and fired at will, even the most senior of them. “It’s a precarious way to earn a living,” she said, “especially when your fortunes on any given day depend upon which side of the bed the conductor arose that morning.”

  “Tell me, Madam Vronsky, how did you come to hear of this incident? You seem to know all the gory details as though you were actually there.”

  “In the world of music and musicians, bad news travels faster than an off-key entrance,” she replied.

  “But if I understand you correctly, hirings and firings are not all that unusual or remarkable,” I said.

  “Ah, but this was both unusual and remarkable, Inspector. And tragic, too. Horribly tragic. You see, Simon Socransky was distraught; after all, he’d slaved for years to achieve the high position of concertmaster, had been obliged to spend much of each year away from home and family in order to hold the post in St. Petersburg, suffered such appalling humiliation right there in front of the entire orchestra, then found himself suddenly and cruelly unemployed. And so he returned to his native city … but in a coffin.”

  “You mean he took his own life?”

  “Suicide. Yes.”

  “Where was he from? Where did his family live?”

  Madam Vronsky paused, rubbing her forehead, a slight frown showing between her beautifully manicured fingers. Slowly she replied, “Well now, Inspector Preiss, that’s an odd coincidence, isn’t it?”

  “What’s an odd coincidence, Madam?”

  “Come to think of it, Simon Socransky was from Minsk.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  "The strangest thing happened today, Hermann. You will never guess in a million years who showed up at our rehearsal!” Helena Becker had a peculiar look in her eyes and I knew instinctively that even if I were to guess correctly, I would not be pleased with the answer.

  “You know how I despise guessing games,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t be so petulant!” she said, giving my shoulder a not-too-gentle poke. “Go on, guess.”

  “Very well. Schubert. Old Franz himself.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Hermann. Schubert died exactly forty years ago.”

  I pretended to be surprised. “He did? Funny, there’s not a word about it in his police record.”

  “What police record? I never knew Franz Schubert had a police record.”

  “Ahah! So the great Helena Becker still has a thing or two to learn about life in the musical world. Your turn to guess.”

  Fascination was written all over Helena’s face now. “Stop being coy, Hermann. What police record?”

  “Tit for tat,” I said. “You tell me who was the mystery guest at your rehearsal, and I’ll reveal the secret about Schubert.”

  “Henryk Schramm, that’s who. Now what about Schubert?”

  Of course there was no police record concerning the late composer, so hastily I fabricated one. “When he was nine years old Schubert stole a tune from Josef Haydn. Now then, what was Henryk Schramm up to?” The expression on my face made it clear that I was indeed not pleased with Helena’s news.

  “Henryk Schramm wasn’t ‘up to’ anything,” she shot back defensively. “In fact, I thought it was rather sweet of him, sneaking in and sitting all by himself in the back row of the hall.”

  “I take it Schramm just happened to find himself in the neighbourhood and dropped in to say hello, eh?”

  “Actually, Hermann, he stayed right from beginning to end,” Helena replied, relishing the feeling of annoyance mixed with jealousy which I tried, but failed, to conceal.

  “And afterward —?”

  “Afterward I was famished. After all, I’d gone straight to the rehearsal from the train without so much as a morsel of food. So Henryk treated me to a light supper at a nearby coffeehouse, a delightful little place that served —”

  “Spare me the menu, Helena,” I interrupted. “I’ve already had the dubious pleasure of being exposed to Schramm’s taste in light suppers. Let’s get to the point, shall we.”

  “The point? What point?”

  “Now who’s being coy, Helena? The last time I saw Schramm was when he burst into my office to inform me that Karla Steilmann had been murdered. He looked like a man who had just seen the sky falling. It was as though a piece of his own life had just been hacked away. And now you’re telling me that it’s goodbye Karla, hello Helena? Simple as that?”

  “Poor Henryk —”

  “Oh, so it’s ‘poor Henryk’ now, is it? Go on, what about poor Henryk?”

  “You are being beastly, Hermann. Really, you are!”

  “I don’t have time to be nice!” I yelled. Then, ashamed of my ill-temper, I said in a calmer voice, “Helena, please try to understand: Am I jealous when a handsome talented fellow like Henryk Schramm shows interest in you? Yes, yes, and yes. There, you can put that admission on record. But if I’m impatient, angry … beastly, as you put it … it’s because the sky seems to be falling for me. I’m besieged from every possible quarter. I have a monster-genius who is under threat of ruination from an unknown source; a tenor who we think is Jewish willing for some strange and possibly perverse reason to play a leading role in an opera by a notorious anti-Semite; a soprano on the loose somewhere out there who may be wreaking havoc on a path of extreme revenge; three murders to date and, God knows, more to come; a mayor and police commissioner who have dumped the future of Munich on my doorstep; a wily French horn player whom I would gladly strangle except that I need his co-operation to locate the aforementioned soprano; and, lo and behold, a corrupt detective for a partner who would love nothing more than to see me burning on a funeral pyre. There you have it, Helena.”

  I expected — or at least hoped — that this spewed recital of my troubles would elicit some decent show of sympathy on Helena’s part. What I received instead was an incredulous stare. “Why, Hermann,” Helena said, “in all the years we’ve known each other I have never seen you wallow in self-pity.”

  At this I flew into a carefully manufactured rage. “Self-pity! Self-pity! Is that all you have to say to me? It’s not self-pity I’m wallowing in; it’s a sea of evil I’m drowning in! The one person I hoped would throw me a lifeline was you, Helena. Instead, what do I get? Sympathy? No. Support? No. Understanding? Not even a smidgen.” I paused, looked away, and added in a low voice, “Not even a measly offer of help.”

  By now a dark cloud hung over our conversation but something told me a silver lining was about to show itself. And it did. Reaching out and taking my hand in hers, Helena said, “I apologize if I offended you, Hermann. How can I help?”

  How quickly I managed to make it to shore from my “sea of evil”!

  “Schramm,” I said. “A moment ago, I asked you what he was up to and you rushed to reply that he wasn’t up to anything. I believe otherwise, Helena. You see, I have a theory about Schramm. I suspect his real name is Socransky and that he’s related in some fashion to a family by that name that lives in Russia, in the city of Minsk to be exact. What is questionable is why on earth this man would go to great lengths — as he has obviously done — to win a role, not an ordinary role, but the major role, in a Wagner production. There is something undefinable about Henryk Schramm … a fog I’ve thus far failed to lift, a shell I’ve failed to pierce. At the moment facts are in short supply, so I have to rely on my instincts, and they tell me our friend Schramm is here in Munich on some mission, that he has an agenda which involves Richard Wagner, but not in a good way.”

  “It sounds preposterous, Hermann,” Helena said. She gazed at me as though she were attempting to diagnose an illness. “Perhaps you’ve been overworking and n
eed a rest and a change. I’m completely free this evening. Why don’t we —”

  “Thank you, Helena, but that’s not the sort of help I have in mind.”

  Unaccustomed to this kind of rejection, Helena eyed me coldly. “Then what do you have in mind?” At the same time she removed her hand from mine. Suddenly it was as if the distance between us could be measured in kilometres. “You’re not suggesting —”

  “Believe me, Helena, nothing is more painful for me than the thought of you and Schramm …”

  “You can’t even bring yourself to finish, can you?”

  “You did offer to help —”

  “I have my limits, Hermann, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “I need you to do what I cannot do, Helena. I need this!”

  Helena looked away, as though she couldn’t bear the sight of me. There was a long minute of silence.

  Finally she spoke. “Damn you, Hermann Preiss!” she said.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  If there is one skill my years of training and experience did not impart it was the skill — or to give it its due — the art of diplomacy. Whether dealing with authorities or dealing with the underworld, I have always found it difficult to substitute euphemisms for blunt truths, or to circle around a potentially dangerous problem in hopes of overcoming it by attacking it from the rear. Not that I am above a little obfuscation now and then, mind you, whenever it suits me. How then, I asked myself, was I going to deal with Richard Wagner and the matter of reinstating Thilo Rotfogel as principal French hornist in the opera orchestra?

  I thought of various approaches:

  “Maestro, remember Cornelia Vanderhoute? Well, I have reason to suspect that she is out to ruin you … no, to kill you … and the only person who can lead me to wherever she is in hiding is —”