The Experimentalist

by Nick Salaman

  A group sigh arose from a hundred throats, not unlike the sound you hear when someone finds a kitten shivering in the rain. David was in on it, somewhere. She gazed round at the hall, at the people, the Germans in their working uniforms. Then she saw David, suited and spurred, fulfilling his role as a sort of Student Prince bridegroom elect, lurking at the head of the passageway leading to the castle’s buttery.

  ‘…he loves us almost as much as he loves Marie,’ Middleburg continued, ‘and he is a fine young man of good family who will also be working with us as a marketing executive. Soon our heir will have an heir of her own.’

  The shock of seeing David caught up in this charade made Marie gasp. How could he have the nerve to be so two-faced?

  Middleburg beckoned someone forward out of the crowd, and David stepped out of the mass of white-coats to stand beside him.

  ‘No,’ the real Marie found herself saying now in a small voice, though it seemed to have become massively amplified. She supposed she was the real Marie, though by now she could not be sure – she could be anyone.

  ‘No.’ It is sometimes the quietest voice that carries furthest. There was a buzz from the audience of puzzlement, incredulity and, yes, something else: anger. It was absurd, but it seemed they could hear her.

  All the while Middleburg was saying things that made no sense to her, but the audience appeared placated. The screen Marie went ahead and signed anyway.

  ‘Danke schön, meine Kinder,’ Middleburg said, finally, ‘now go and enjoy. Bier und wurst in the bierkeller!’

  The crowd on screen stirred as if a gale were running through a field of flax. They streamed out through the entrance to the broad corridor where David had been standing.

  Marie had to get out; the air seemed heavy as chloroform, the light dazzling, making her feel like a rabbit in a headlight. She would faint if she did not get some air. Everything seemed to happen very slowly. There had indeed been something in the wine. Was it LSD? Why had she thought he wouldn’t do that? He could and would do anything. But why?

  The partition, with its projected film in front of her, rose and at the same time seemed to dissolve as though she were now actually walking through the image and down steps that had been placed to allow her to descend. The hall that she had been watching presented itself as real. Most of the white-coats had already gone but the remaining few turned towards her in amazement. She walked forward into the hall, with Middleburg behind her.

  ‘Where have they all gone?’ she asked. ‘There were hundreds here and now just these?’

  ‘All done with smoke and mirrors, we couldn’t spare them all from their work, it is too important, besides you are such an unreliable guest,’ said Middleburg. ‘Look how many Maries there are.’

  Look look look look look, the voices said, as if from a multitude of Middleburgs. She glanced aside and saw that she too was reflected in a myriad of crystals.

  ‘And which is the real one?’ he asked. ‘Indeed, is there a real one? That is the question we have to ask. That is the question you are asking yourself. For you don’t even have a name. Just … Marie … Marie … Marie…’ Middleburg turned, like a weathercock spinning in the wind, to watch her as she ran, in slow motion as it seemed, down the aisle of the meeting-hall heading for the door out into the garden, while the residual whitecoats moved forward and some reached out to clutch at her as she passed. They appeared not hostile but intense.

  ‘Achtung!’ shouted Middleburg.

  Now the drug was really taking over. She was aware, as she ran down the passage past the kitchens, towards the garden door, that the white-coats were after her. It was like the last scene in Alice when all the characters turn into cards and fall upon her. She burst out of the back door and ran out into the pleasaunce, gulping the evening air as if she were drowning and at the same time looking for somewhere to hide – the gazebo for instance, but her previous visit suggested it provided little secrecy.

  As if at a signal, fireworks started – stranger, more inventive fireworks than she had ever seen. They soared, they crashed, they banged with a brilliance that kept nailing her shadow to the lawn. There was one series that looked like a champagne glass fizzing with effervescence, another set of the figure 25 in the heavens surrounded by writhing serpents, there was one of a girl in a firework version of the dress she herself was wearing, that bore a certain incendiary approximation to her own appearance. And then, all at once, there was the messenger god, Hermes, in his winged sandals, descended from the heavens and blazing like the day. All the while, an unseen choir and orchestra gave a rendition, fortissimo, of the spooky and harrowing ‘Dies Irae’ from Mozart’s last Mass.

  In the son et lumière of this celestial virtuosity, Marie was able to pause as the white-coats paused: first, to look up – the display could not be ignored – and at length, to look around.

  She had thought that the pleasaunce was deserted but she now discovered other figures were there, statues, she thought as her eyes became used to the low lights and half-darkness, lovers everywhere, priapic fauns and shepherds, lovely girls, people entwined, now disengaging, statues that grasped at her as she ran, becoming alive, woken by the terrible secret that she carried, which wasn’t the sin of her father but her own … which was that she didn’t know, had never known, who or what she was, in a country where that is the biggest sin of all.

  She had to be alone. Her eyes moved to the maze. It seemed as good a place as any to escape pursuit. She could at least hide in there and escape later round the back of the castle to find Joe and his car. And if he wasn’t there, he would follow her wherever she was because the Red Indians are good trackers. He had told her so.

  She looked back. Men in white coats were streaming out after her, but not very efficiently. They seemed to flounder around, like robots. There was a mêlée by the gazebo. Joe appeared and fired his starting pistol into the air to distract them from her. There was indeed no sign of David. She heard another shot and saw Joe fall, but she was already running for the maze. She had taken the plan of it home after her first visit and traced its ways, so she would have the advantage over her pursuers – and there was Fist himself, his face contorted with rage, at the head of the hounds, shouting at her – sounds but no words. And now she was in the maze and the pursuit fell away. She had no idea what would happen when she reached the centre and found the classical temple. There would be somewhere to hide. They would not find her there. She ran on, deeper into the labyrinth, surrounded by the high box hedge, forgetting some of the maze-map in her confusion, and then she began to feel that she was being followed by something else. ‘These sensations can easily happen in a maze,’ she remembered reading somewhere. She had liked the thought of it on a hot summer day, with friends, but now…? Another false turn. Did they keep panthers here? Or unicorns? There was something bouncing the turf behind her. Or was it the demon Baron who still haunted Bluebeard’s castle and would not go back into his box? She felt hot breath on the back of her neck, turned a corner, looked behind her in dread, tripped, fell over – and found herself at the centre of the maze where Middleburg had said you learnt what was the worst thing in the world.

  The worst thing in the world was, in fact, Middleburg himself, sitting outside the little Doric temple on what looked like a sacrificial slab of white marble. Inscribed below the pediment of the temple, in Roman capitals, were the words QUIS EST ISTE QUI VENIT. On a tray beside Middleburg was a bottle of champagne and two glasses. In the middle of the glade, near at hand, was a sundial, which wasn’t giving anyone the time of day. She got up, collected herself and tried to stop the tremor in her voice and the shaking in her legs.

  ‘Who is this who comes?’ he translated. ‘Champagne?’

  She shook her head but he poured her a glass all the same. He seemed to find it amusing. Her head was clearing now.

  ‘I confess,’ he said. ‘I do have a machine that blows hot air into your neck just as you pass. It’s located in the hedge on the last straight, to
encourage the sensation of pursuit. A nice touch, don’t you think?’

  ‘How did you get here?’ she asked.

  ‘A secret passage,’ he said. ‘What else?’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I hope you enjoyed the show. I ordered our advertising agency’s film company to produce it with a little help from one of the big studios that we own. Of course we supplied the extras.’

  ‘It was somewhat baroque,’ she told him.

  ‘Time for cards on the table,’ said Middleburg. ‘Close your eyes.’

  He leant over and put his hands on her forehead, shutting out the light.

  ‘Now open them again.’

  She did not know how much time, if any, had passed, but they were back in the original white room with the chairs and the table and a screen, now blank, in front of them. She felt no surprise. He had exhausted her capacity for it.

  ‘Much of what you have seen here is the result of a little magic and a combination of certain Messinger drugs – quite harmless, I assure you. Positively beneficial, some would say. The characters you have met here were mostly actors. The maze was an illusion. The dungeons, the sinister turrets, the great hall, the battlements, the charnel house, the very castle itself – none of them belonged to Gilles de Rais. It is just a turn-of-the-century millionaire’s whimsy. The world is an illusion. It only exists because we are looking at it. More to the point, you yourself are very largely a figment of my imagination because I am looking at you. You have to ask yourself – do you really exist?’

  He paused.

  ‘You said it was time for cards on the table,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know I held any.’

  ‘You don’t. The cards are mine. For a start,’ Middleburg said, adjusting his bottom on the chair, ‘I know I have mentioned it already but I must ask you absolutely to get rid of any idea that your father was a sexual predator and killer or that he was related to the Laval family. And, indeed, dismiss the notion that that poor mad person, who you saw in the castle was your paternal progenitor. In fact, I must ask you to get rid of any idea that you have a father at all. That was all a smokescreen to hide what I am and what I have been. I wanted some mystery and shame to surround you because I, your guardian, was that one thing you thought worse than a killer paedophile. The truth is that I was the Nazi scientist, nominally in charge of that idiot Mengele – though in my defence I have to say I was not aware of the methodology of some of his investigations. It would have been enough, however, to get me the death penalty at Nuremberg. We were all tainted – better to keep you dark and secret where you would become accustomed to shame. So, yes, I acquired you as an infant. And since you are mine, I thought it would be interesting to watch a girl develop into a woman, a whole personality, thinking she is free, while all the time, watching her, playing with her strings. You became my marionette. Using various contacts, I found you somewhere to live and people to look after you. Somewhere nice and out of the way.’

  A burst of cheering arose from the general party buzz beyond the box walls of the maze and a Bavarian brass band began to play. Oompah oompah.

  Middleburg watched for her reaction.

  ‘You might at least look grateful,’ he told her.

  ‘You have cruelly given me no time to think about it,’ she said. ‘I need time. I had a family and now I have none. I thought I had bad blood because I had a sex-crazed father who tortured and killed young people and next I find I have a Nazi famous for concentration camp experiments. And now you tell me I do not have a father at all, though I must have had someone. And you … What are you really? My father or my guardian? Or was that the hateful Brickville?’

  ‘You should not be hard on Brickville. He is my partner in charge of the UK and Europe, and wonderfully attentive. A very necessary man. He kept an eye on you for nearly twenty years. But I am, and always have been, your actual – if unofficial – guardian.’

  ‘I prefer to call you my voyeur, peeping in at my life, stalking me and watching me as if I were your guinea pig. You have been throwing the dice. I suppose you got into the habit of experimenting on living people in the concentration camps. I have been your creature, haven’t I? Running free but not free?’

  He ignored her question. ‘Your parents were good-looking, doubtless intelligent people,’ continued Middleburg, almost as though he did not hear her, ‘but they died. I do not even know their name. So really, you only have me. I have been more than a parent. I have been, if not God, at least your guardian angel. Your name, incidentally, is not Marie. It is Lily. You were born of destruction; so much was destroyed in Germany. You were the one thing I brought out, the only thing except my genius and my secrets. You think you are yours but you are mine. I invented you. I re-created you. You were indeed my creature, my Coppelia, my marionette. You cannot exist without me. You have no record, no name, no passport, no identity, no past and no future unless I say so. Nothing can happen to you unless I let it happen. I have been your undiscovered god.’

  ‘I am Marie not Lily. Lily is my daughter’s name.’

  ‘You have no daughter. Where is she? Do you have her birth certificate? Her identification?’

  ‘No. But she is here.’ Marie’s hand was on her heart as her eyes filled, against her will, with tears.

  ‘You are mistaken. I have no knowledge of her.’

  ‘You cannot do this,’ she said. ‘I will go to the police.’

  ‘They will deport you – and to where? The puppet master can do anything he likes. The puppet cannot take a step, cannot move without him.’

  ‘But where is the puppeteer without the puppet?’ She thought she had scored there. His next words struck a shard of ice into her heart.

  ‘I do have another ward. A little girl of six. She had no father or mother but as far as I could ascertain they were in good health and were handsome. I have arranged for her to be looked after in a remote castle by two elderly sisters and an affectionate nanny. Perhaps, in due course, if things work out, you might be interested in meeting her. Comparing notes, as it were.’

  The full extent of her and Lily’s predicament now fell upon her like a dog from an aeroplane. Whichever way she turned, the options were closing. David would extricate himself if he wanted to, he was good at that, and what about Joe? He was already walking wounded in all likelihood; maybe he wasn’t even walking.

  Middleburg, as usual, guessed what she was thinking.

  ‘I am afraid you must give up any hopes of your vintner boyfriend, presently in hospital, he would lose the TOJI as well as the Messinger business if I gave the word and without that he would be reduced to scratching around or even bankruptcy. He has already invested more than he can afford in his company. The word would be out. The office and the Rolls would have to go and really he would be in no position to marry or even cohabit. Such a shame because he seems an honest fellow. And he loves the wine business.’

  It seemed she did not have a choice. The only way to destroy Middleburg would be from inside. There was no point in asking what he wanted from her. He wanted everything.

  ‘It sometimes happens to the ventriloquist that he develops a bond with his dummy,’ he said. ‘Or the puppet-master with his doll.’

  Yes, she thought, and then maybe it is the dummy who haunts the handler, answers back and takes control. She had seen a short story about it. It gave her a flicker of hope.

  ‘I propose to make you my heiress,’ he continued, calmly. ‘I love you now as if I had made you myself. Like a father, if you will.’

  ‘You’re clever enough to know that I must hate you. Why make me your heir? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Is that it?’

  ‘I have heard it said.’

  ‘Are you agreeing that I am your enemy?’ she asked. ‘Or that you are mine? What is it you want from me?’

  ‘This is an experiment,’ he told her. ‘Not a romantic novel.’

  ‘If you make me your heir, shall I be free to do as I wish?’

  ‘Free to do as you
think you wish,’ he said.

  ‘The Holdsworths must go.’

  ‘They have gone already. I have hired the Grimshaws.’

  ‘Do I have any choice?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you think? You have to marry David Drummond. That is part of the experiment.’

  ‘Yours or mine?’

  ‘Everyone’s life is an experiment. But to be able to experiment with another person’s life, that is unusual. Almost as interesting as the things I used to do in my laboratory outside Berlin.’

  ‘And what is my real name?’

  ‘I really couldn’t tell you what your name was. It is Messinger now. It will be Drummond in three weeks’ time.’

  Truth with Middleburg was like a Russian doll; each lie had another one lying inside it. She wondered for a moment whether he really was in love with her. That would be a tragedy for both of them.

  ‘You talk of an experiment. How will it end?’

  ‘I cannot tell how it will end until it ends. That is the point of the experiment. The experiment has a life of its own. It has a kind of beauty. It is looking for a truth.’

  She had a moment of inspiration. Perhaps he wasn’t the head man after all? Perhaps there was another someone experimenting with him.

  ‘Who commissioned the experiment?’ she asked.

  ‘You do not need to know that. The instructions were clear on that point.’