HS02 - Days of Atonement

by Michael Gregorio

  I sat by the window for almost three hours with a quill in my hand, an inkpot and sheet of paper laid out before me, looking over the empty square at the vacant gallows where Junior Lance Corporal Braun-Hummel had been executed. As the town began to wake up, I found that I had managed to compose no more than half a dozen lines of the report that was meant for Dittersdorf’s consumption. I ought to have repeated word for word what I had told him in person the previous night, but writing it out in fair copy was a more complicated business. Lies that fall with ease from the tongue stand out on the page and scream their falsity.

  Indeed, as the hour for my appointment with Lavedrine approached, I left the unfinished report on the table, knowing that I would be obliged to grapple with it again before the day was out.

  It was a quarter to ten when I entered The Bull’s Eye.

  I went there early, hoping to drink a beaker of hot, expensive chocolate in peace while I waited for Lavedrine to appear. But he had arrived before me, no worse the wear for a night of debauchery.

  ‘Would you care to join me?’ he asked.

  ‘No, thank you,’ I replied stiffly, still smarting from the wedge that he had driven between myself and my wife.

  He was in fine fettle, his hair crushed and tousled, as if he had forgotten to brush it, his silver earring notable by its absence. Was it dangling from the ear of Putipù? I asked myself.

  ‘I hope I did not spoil your entertainment last night,’ I said, sitting down.

  ‘Not at all.’ He smiled. ‘Putipù’s, perhaps. They are such possessive creatures. They want our attention all for themselves, do they not? Those from the Mediterranean shores are true divae,’ he said, using the Latin tongue with nonchalant gusto. ‘I had to work hard to be forgiven. I hope your return home was equally rewarding?’

  I bridled at this familiarity.

  Did he not realise the difficulty his intrusion in my personal affairs had caused?

  He appeared to be totally unconcerned. He opened his mouth and sank his teeth into a thick slice of shortcake. Despite the war, anything could be had by a man with French coin in his pocket, even in Lotingen, where the price of sugar had trebled in the space of a single year.

  ‘Heavenly!’ He sighed, reaching for his coffee. That was another imported luxury which very few Prussians could permit themselves. Then, he bolted down the last of his breakfast, washing the crumbs from his lips with the remains of his coffee. ‘Have you seen this?’ he asked, pulling a paper from his pocket, throwing it casually on the table-top.

  The face was monstrous to behold.

  A gaping hole of a mouth, ripping teeth that froze the blood in my veins. The canines were exaggeratedly long, poking from the molars like the tusks of a bloodthirsty walrus. They had pierced the skin of the victim’s neck with the ease of surgical knives. Blood spurted in showers to form a dark red pool, the killer’s lips drawn wide in a hungry grin, eager to feast on human flesh. The victim howled a wordless protest—eyes clenched shut, a grimace of horrid awareness on his face, ruffled hair dripping blood, drops flying off in all directions, like a hound shaking itself dry after a ducking. A struggle to the death. No doubt which was the predator, which the victim. The nails of the killer were curved, like the raking talons of a dragon. The nose was sharp, hooked; the eyes piercing black, with wild, pitiless lights. Pointed ears, a pointed beard, dark hair flying around the head in greasy tangles and bouncing ringlets. A black skullcap. A crude caricature. A Son of Israel. A large crucifix dangled from a chain at the neck of the victim. A Christian child, a baby boy, awash in a sea of his own red blood. A title formed in the same bright colour:

  WHY THEY WANT OUR CHILDREN’S BLOOD

  Beneath the drawing, a short explanation, scientific in tone, horrifying in its details. The Jews were creatures of an alien race. They needed blood—the baptised blood of innocent Christian children—to sanctify their pagan rituals. Their rabbis would defile the blessed Host, stolen for the occasion, then eat the sodden mess to perpetuate their own sort in orgies of unthinkable brutality. They were animals, human in appearance only. How long would the Jews go unpunished for their crimes? A list followed on in alphabetical order of towns where similar outrages had taken place, together with the names of Christian children who had been sacrificed to the Jewish lust for untainted blood. The final sentence claimed that the cynical French invader used these heartless monsters to keep the Prussian populace in check.

  ‘Where did you find it?’ I murmured.

  ‘Pinned to the door of my house this morning. They could have saved themselves the trouble. Lotingen is papered with them. Very soon after the massacre, they started to appear all over the place. I have twice issued orders for the troops to collect them up and tip them on a bonfire. However, given the nature of the accusation, I wonder whether I have improved the state of things. Any Prussian with a mind to do so will accuse us of trying to cover our tracks. The Jews are in cahoots with the French, whose revolution gave them civil rights. Have you ever heard such nonsense?’

  He did not wait for my reply.

  ‘Time to go,’ he said, standing up, leaving an inordinate sum of French coin on the table as payment. ‘The situation grows more complicated by the day,’ he said, sweeping up the handbill and ramming it into his pocket. ‘If any other persons were to die . . .’

  He did not complete the warning. Nor did he need to. I foresaw only too well the consequences of finding Frau Gottewald. Alive or dead, she would breathe new life into the passions that her disappearance had excited. What she herself might say hardly mattered. The Francophobes, the Prussophobes, the haters and baiters of the Jews would have a field day.

  ‘Let’s see if your presence will help to loosen this Prussian tongue,’ he said as we walked along the street.

  I looked up at the sky. Fog had given way to tumbling steel-grey clouds, one or two with silvery edges. They washed over the town in rapid sequence, carried on the strong breeze, wave upon wave of them, reminiscent of the incoming tide on the nearby Baltic coast.

  We were heading for the port.

  The house of Leon Biswanger was in the new part of Lotingen, Lavedrine said.

  In recent times, King Frederick Wilhelm III had held on stiffly to an uncomfortable position of non-alignment and non-aggression. Before Jena, the economy of the town had prospered as a result. We were only eight miles from the coast, our harbour was deep and frequently dredged, the river wide and gentle enough to take seagoing ships, while the wharf was a solid, respectable crescent of three- and four-storey warehouses. Grain had been imported from Russia through Lithuania, stored for a month, then exported again to Britain at a profit. Until the invasion, the French emperor had not been able to contain us within his rigid ‘continental system’, as the newspapers called it. But grain was only one of the commodities that fed the growth of Lotingen. Linen, wool, weaving, amber, timber—all of these were valued by the French themselves. They were the local riches, and many men had made a fortune from them. Down by the riverside, a bustling new hamlet had grown up in the service of trade, and it was in this direction that we headed. There was a solid wooden bridge that crossed the river upstream from the dock, and we crossed it, holding on to our hats against the stiffening wind.

  If the French bombardment of the old town had caused great loss, there was little sign of it in that district. The damage had been quickly repaired in the pressing interests of business. On the far side of the river, there was not a trace of destruction as we walked the length of the unpaved street. Nor as we stood before Leon Biswanger’s freshly polished front door, which was at the farthest end. There were no signs of forced French entry, no split wood, no broken lock hanging uselessly from a twisted nail. If there had been a war, it had not forced its way over that man’s doorstep. Indeed, the extensive workshop or storehouse attached to the side of the house gave every appearance of having been newly constructed. Despite its size, there were only two small windows in the wall that ran along the road, and they we
re tightly shuttered. Whatever Biswanger kept in his storeroom, it needed neither air, nor light.

  ‘What smell is that?’ Lavedrine asked, his nostrils quivering.

  It was sickly-sweet, like rotting beetroot, something organic that had been left to soak in water. Jute, perhaps, or hemp. Sack and rope were products for which Lotingen was justly famed.

  ‘These warehouses are packed to the roof with the riches of the Baltic Sea, and many another sea besides. Whatever it is,’ I added, ‘it’s pungent stuff.’

  ‘I’m surprised the neighbours haven’t complained.’

  I smiled to myself, thinking that the Frenchman’s flat nose was not the sharp one of a tradesman, as I knocked three times on the door.

  The man who opened it was small and robust with large, paw-like hands, a large square face, and grizzled hair turning white, like a dusting of snow, cut close to his scalp. There was a worried, guilty look on his face even before he spotted Lavedrine standing at my side.

  ‘Good morning, Biswanger,’ Lavedrine began, with a most un-German emphasis on the final syllable of the man’s name.

  Biswanger blinked uncomfortably.

  ‘This gentleman is Procurator Stiffeniis,’ Lavedrine continued. ‘You have heard of him, no doubt. We need to clarify a few details regarding the letting of that cottage to the Gottewalds.’

  He left Biswanger to take this information in. The man had not been summoned to appear before us, the Law had come to him. And for the moment, it was wearing carpet slippers and felt gloves. Biswanger took a step forward, glanced quickly up and down the road, then waved us in without a word, shifting his bulk to one side in the cramped hall.

  Clearly, he was not happy about this unexpected visit. As he led us into a cold reception room, and invited us to sit down, his face was a rigid mask of deference.

  There was a strange, sombre atmosphere about the room. Plain whitewashed walls, a simple floor made of red bricks set in a chevron pattern. Nor was the house furnished in traditional Prussan style. There were no heavy curtains hanging to keep out draughts, no reed matting covering the floor. Unlit logs were piled up neatly in the chimney grate. A single Pietist print in a simple wooden frame hung on one wall—Christ Beheading Satan with the True Cross. That chamber was unused, it seemed, except for receiving visitors, then sending them quickly on their way again.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ Biswanger asked, his eyes fixed on me, his bass voice brusque, as if he had no time to fritter away. ‘I told this French gentleman everything I know about that family of unlucky wretches.’

  ‘Important details sometimes return to the mind on second telling, Biswanger,’ Lavedrine interrupted with an acid smile. ‘Is that not true, Stiffeniis?’

  Lavedrine turned to me with a show of the same perfect understanding we had used while interrogating Franz Durskeitner. But we had not agreed on any strategy, and I wondered which tactics the Frenchman had hidden up his sleeve.

  As we sat there, studying each other across the plain pine tabletop, Lavedrine and myself on one side, Biswanger on the other, my attention was attracted by the only piece of ornamentation in the room. It occupied the centre of the table. A brass bowl on three short legs, the lid engraved and pierced with small, round holes. It reminded me of the incense-burner found in churches, though it gave off a strong persistent whiff of camphor, or some other household disinfectant. This was the only evidence of a female presence in the room. There were no embroidered cushions, no linen antimacassars, no decorative tablecloth. No dried flowers in a vase, no sprig of herbs. Nothing perfumed, except for the unmistakable smell contained within that metal casket on the table.

  Was Biswanger a widower? I wondered.

  ‘Let us pretend, Herr Biswanger,’ Lavedrine went on, ‘for the sake of my Prussian colleague here, that our first conversation about the Gottewalds never took place. I would like you to tell him everything that you told me. If you would be so kind?’

  Leon Biswanger nodded his head, but he did not speak.

  ‘Begin by telling us how you happened to meet Major Gottewald,’ Lavedrine prompted, ‘and what you agreed upon between yourselves in the way of business.’

  I saw a range of expressions flash across the man’s pale face, as though some inner kaleidoscope had been shifted by a hand not his. He seemed to flush, then fade, then plump himself up for what he was about to say, a look of blank determination settling on his mouth.

  ‘I wouldn’t want you gentlemen to think that I’ve been reticent,’ he began. ‘Nor that I do not wish to help. This investigation of yours must be difficult, I do not doubt.’ He looked down at the table and shook his head in sympathy. ‘The thought of what has happened in that cottage! Who’d ever have imagined such a thing in Lotingen?’

  He looked up suddenly, rubbed his hands together. He darted a glance at the Frenchman, then spoke directly to me, as if Lavedrine had ceased to exist. ‘What it was, sir, it was being hauled in to speak to a French official in a French police office like that. Made me nervous, it did. I work with everyone, I do. Frenchmen, Prussians, traders from all over the place that are passing through. I’m not ashamed to admit it,’ he hurried on, ‘I’ll do a deal with any man, if he’s honest. Anything to help the nation, know what I mean? Still, it isn’t easy. You know better than I do, sir. If a Prussian goes strolling into a French police station bold as a cider barrel, his neighbours are going to think the worst of him. They are bound to say that he’s a sneak. Or worse!’

  He let out a melancholy sigh, but I said nothing to help him. I found it hard to imagine him telling Lavedrine what he had just told me. He had not looked once in the Frenchman’s direction from the moment he opened his mouth. He cleared his throat, as if to shift a fishbone. ‘I thought that I had done my best by them, sir. Given them all I had to give, so to speak,’ he confided.

  ‘Indeed, Herr Biswanger,’ I said. ‘By way of business, then, you agreed to rent that house to Bruno Gottewald. You met him, I take it. You spoke to him . . .’

  ‘Very little, Herr Procurator,’ he interrupted, shaking his head. ‘Half a dozen words, no more. Just the time to finalise the details.’

  Lavedrine watched silently. This was a conversation between two Prussian nationals.

  ‘Which “details”?’ I asked.

  Biswanger nodded his head, and began to speak. His account was short, concise, and plausible. Early in August, he said, a Prussian major named Gottewald came to seek him out. The man had just arrived in Lotingen with his family, and knew that Biswanger had a cottage to rent. The soldier expressed the very greatest urgency in wishing to find suitable accommodation for his wife and children. Out of the town, he said. Somewhere quiet, preferably in the country. Gottewald told Biswanger that he would be leaving soon to join his general in a distant outpost, and wanted to see his loved ones comfortably settled before he set out.

  ‘Why did he come to you?’ I queried.

  ‘I did not ask. He did not tell me. I am well known in Lotingen.’

  ‘So Gottewald came looking for a lodging, and you offered to show him that house in the wood.’

  ‘No, sir,’ Biswanger countered. ‘He asked for that cottage, and no other. At the time I was handling a number of other properties. They were larger, more expensive, of course, but that was the one he wanted.’ For the first time, he glanced over at Lavedrine, then back at me. ‘I told him, sir. I warned him. Out there in the country, all alone, I said, your wife would be happier in town, sir! An’ what do you think he said to that?’

  I waited without answering.

  Biswanger shook his head. ‘His wife decided, sir. She insisted that she wanted to live off the beaten track. In a quiet place. That cottage was ideal, he said: the fewer the neighbours, the better!’

  ‘It really could not have been any quieter,’ Lavedrine murmured, unable to resist the obvious. Something in his tone told me that he was not thinking from the point of view of the victim; he was considering the vulnerability of that isolated house
as the murderer must have seen it.

  ‘Did he seem to be afraid for his family? Or for himself?’ I asked.

  ‘Not at all, sir,’ Biswanger replied promptly. ‘As I told Colonel Lavedrine, Major Gottewald was in a hurry—that was the house he wanted.’

  ‘How long had the house been standing empty? Who used to live there?’

  I was wondering whether the Gottewalds had been murdered by mistake. After all, the previous occupants might have been the real object of the attack.

  ‘No one has dwelt there for years,’ Biswanger answered, promptly stamping on my hypothesis. ‘Not since the days of the Wolfferts. Ten years, or more, I’d say. The family living there at that time must have been tied serfs. I’ve no idea who they may have been, or where they might have gone.’

  ‘The house has been recently refurbished. Did you buy it, Biswanger?’

  Lavedrine must have read my thoughts. He had awakened from apparent distraction to fire this question at the man.

  Biswanger shifted heavily in his seat, looking from Lavedrine to me, then back again. Then he stared at the back of his pudgy hands, turning them over to examine the palms before he found the answer that he was looking for.

  ‘The house has been set in order in recent times,’ he said, looking at neither one of us. ‘After Jena, as a matter of fact. It’s a bit out of the way if your business lies in town. Then again, it stands on the Danzig highway. Not bad, if your interests point that way.’