HS02 - Days of Atonement

by Michael Gregorio

  I loaded our bag, took Helena’s hand, and helped her up. She sat trembling by my side, as I cracked the whip. Whether moved by fear, or excitement, I could not say. Unused to handling a horse-drawn vehicle, all my attention was concentrated on the busy streets. A huge fellow, wearing a skullcap and a leather apron, the carcass of a sheep slung over his shoulders, cut across my path, causing me to brake violently. I cursed and waved my whip at him. The butcher smiled, nodded thoughtfully, then went about his business.

  Afterwards, we made better progress, following a high, winding wall to the top of the hill. A sign was fixed beside the main entrance. Dr Schubert’s Mesmeric Institute for the Insane. Did the coaching-master believe that I had come to commit my wife? As the trap pulled up, a little man in a slouch hat and rags ran out of the door, and grabbed onto the reins, steadying the horse, holding out his other hand. I gave him one of the Russian kopecks which I had received as change when I paid for the hire of the vehicle. The man nodded towards the entrance, making a gesture of pulling a bell-rope. While helping Helena down, I heard the sound of bolts being drawn and the door opening.

  Lavedrine came bounding towards us.

  Despite the cold, he was wearing no jacket, only a white shirt, dark trousers, and a long green apron stretching down beneath his knees. His hair had been shaved away to a silvery stubble. He looked like a field after harvesting. The absence made his eyes, ears, nose, and lips seem larger, more pronounced and sensual.

  ‘Frau Stiffeniis,’ he cried warmly, reaching for Helena’s gloved hand, raising it to his lips. Then he turned to me. ‘Hanno, thank you both for coming so soon.’

  I shook the hand that he offered. With the other, I pulled his letter from my pocket, and waved it in the air.

  ‘Bring Helena to Bialystok,’ I recited, not needing to read. ‘Frau Gottewald is here.’

  Lavedrine’s warm smile faded. ‘I will explain as we are making our way,’ he announced. Then, he took Helena’s arm and led us into the building.

  A woman large enough to be a wrestler closed the door and turned the key in the lock. Putting her key away in a belt hidden beneath an enormous stomach, she eyed us from beneath her black cowl, as if we were newly arrived patients, eager to run away. Lavedrine had left us standing in the hall, mumbling something about a pass-key and a report.

  I took both of Helena’s hands in mine, and pressed them gently.

  ‘It does not seem such a horrid place,’ she murmured.

  The walls were tiled up to the ceiling in sparkling white. The floor was tiled in dark green, like the sea. At waist height, a row of blue tiles had been set into the wall.

  ‘As institutions go, it is paradise,’ I replied.

  I had been expecting worse. Asylums for the insane in Prussia are often places of extreme squalor and total abandon, where murder among the warders is as common as madness among the patients. But everything here seemed to be functional and clean.

  ‘This way, ma’am,’ Lavedrine called, emerging from the room, a large key in his hand, offering Helena his arm again. He might have been bent on coaxing her to go along with him, though she was more than willing to be led. Even so, her anxiety was plain to see.

  ‘Is Lionel the master of the house yet?’ Lavedrine asked conversationally.

  Helena tried to report on the cat’s success with the children, but wild howls and lurid screams assaulted our ears as we proceeded down the corridor. She stopped, her eyes darting around with terror.

  ‘Do not be afraid,’ Lavedrine said, increasing his pace as he led her on.

  The tall windows on the left were barred. The cell doors on the right were bolted. Now and again, he used his pass-key to open an iron gate which blocked the corridor, locking it carefully once we were through. There was a sort of round, glass porthole in each cell door, such as one might find on a sailing ship. Large enough to see through, small enough to prevent escape. At the sound of our voices and footsteps echoing off the tiled walls and floor, appeals for help and shrieks of abuse followed our progress. Being watched was not a pleasant experience. Howling mouths, fearsome bleeding teeth, hostile glaring eyes.

  We stopped in a high domed hall, which must have been the heart of the building, four corridors shooting off, as it were, to the points of the compass. In the centre was a long wooden table covered in beakers, glass jars, and other containers turned upside down, which had been laid on cloths to dry.

  ‘I was invited to see this hospital by the German physician who runs it,’ he said, his attention carefully directed at Helena. ‘He thought that I might be interested to study the methods they are using here. Magnetism is employed to cure just about everything, from epilepsy to . . .’

  ‘Sybille Gottewald,’ Helena snapped, as if she had run out of patience.

  Lavedrine pulled out a chair from the table, and invited Helena to sit.

  ‘Very well, this is the story,’ he began. ‘Doctor Schubert admitted a woman a couple of weeks ago. She had been discovered in a nearby village by the serfs. They woke up one morning, and there she was, resting her back against the wall of one of the cottages, staring up at the sky. They thought she had run away from her master. She was a bundle of rags, starving and terrified. They brought bread and water, but she would not eat or drink while they were watching. Her face and arms were covered in cuts and sores. Her legs were horribly swollen. She must have been in pain, though she seemed to feel nothing. She was wearing a pair of broken boots she had probably stolen from a soldier’s corpse, but she’d been walking in the snow without shoes, the doctor says. Her feet are black with frostbite. She has lost a couple of toes. The peasants who found her were frightened. The punishment for hiding a runaway serf is a public whipping. So someone told the estate manager, who called the gendarmes, and they, in turn, sent for Doctor Schubert.’

  ‘Did she tell them her name?’ Helena interrupted.

  Lavedrine shook his head.

  ‘Has she spoken about what happened in that house?’

  ‘They have tried all the languages commonly employed in Bialystok. Russian, Lithuanian, Czech, Slovak, German. Hebrew, of course. But she would answer to none of them. The doctor believed she was physically impaired, but tests revealed that her hearing is above average, and that she could make sounds if she wanted. Indeed, one of the warders found her with a book that had been left in the bath-house . . .’

  ‘A book?’ I interposed.

  ‘The minder did not know whether she was reading, praying, or simply mumbling. It was a German translation of the Torah.’

  ‘What makes you think that she is Sybille Gottewald?’ Helena’s voice was calm, though I heard a tremor of impatience in it. ‘Thousands of women have fallen victim to war and misfortune.’

  Lavedrine smiled and his eyebrows arched. ‘This is the true Helena Stiffeniis that I remember!’ he said with vibrant enthusiasm. ‘She boldly says what must be said. Oh, I know what you are thinking. Such a waste of time. All this way for nothing. Forcing me to leave the children . . .’

  ‘All this way, indeed!’ I echoed sarcastically. ‘Are you trying to suggest that this woman has walked to Bialystok from Lotingen? In winter? I remember examining a female corpse in an abandoned warehouse some time ago in Lotingen. We both agreed that the body was Sybille Gottewald’s.’

  He looked up at me. ‘I recall why we presumed that it was her. In the first place, no other woman had been reported missing. In the second, Gummerstett’s warehouse was an ideal place to hide a corpse. We concluded that the body was probably hers, because we were desperate to find her. Dead, or alive!’

  ‘Are you suggesting . . .’

  ‘We found what we were looking for,’ he interrupted. ‘We made no real attempt to identify that body. She could have been anyone!’

  ‘A nameless woman who does not speak? Who may, or may not, be able to read? If you have nothing more than sand on which to build your castle . . .’

  ‘I have these,’ he said, putting his hand once more into th
e pocket of his apron. A moment later, he held up a pack of playing cards. They wore worn and torn, very old and dirty. He toyed with them, moving them from one hand to the other like a card-sharp, but not a very good one.

  ‘I do not understand you,’ I said, truly puzzled.

  He flicked the pack with his thumb, looking at Helena, then set three cards face down on the table with an impertinent snap, as if we were about to play whatever game he had got into his head.

  ‘These cards are grouped in suits,’ he explained. ‘Families, if you like. There is a family of farm tools, a family of farm clothes, a family of farm boots, and, well, a family of farmers. There are seven cards in each suit, and each suit is duplicated. Fifty-six cards in all. There are many ways to win the game. You may, for example, collect all the shoes, all the clothes, all the tools. Or . . .’

  Suddenly, he looked from Helena to myself, patting those three cards on the table with his hand.

  ‘What do you make of these?’ he asked.

  With a flick of his wrist, he turned the cards face up.

  A cry escaped from Helena’s lips. Blood began to thunder in my ears.

  The pictures on these cards were rubbed, scuffed, faded. They had been handled endlessly, by numberless hands. Three children, two boys and a girl, each dressed in the rough clothes of peasants. The little girl was holding a bunch of flowers. Each child was grinning. I would have called them ‘happy’ children. But any notion of happiness had been cancelled out by a mark with a pointed stone, or a sharp fingernail. A gash at each infant throat had been incised with such force that the head appeared to be severed. There was nothing accidental in it. Those marks had been made with a destructive violence that was unequivocal.

  ‘This deck belonged to one of the nurses,’ he went on blandly. ‘She accused the woman I was telling you about of having stolen her cards, and asked the inmate why she had ruined the pack. The nurse reports that the woman answered her. Berit milah. That was what she said. The warder is Jewish; she recognised those words. They refer to the ritual circumcision of infant boys.’ He sought out my gaze. ‘You realise now why I sent for Helena, do you not, Stiffeniis?’

  Aaron Jacob had told me the meaning of that phrase. And he had described to me what had happened that night.

  ‘Jewish women are no rare thing in Bialystok,’ I said, unwilling to concede that Lavedrine might be right. ‘Our driver called it the Polish Jerusalem.’

  ‘There are more points in my favour,’ he insisted, jumping to his feet, counting them off on his fingers. ‘This woman has certainly given birth to children, but she is all alone. She reads German, and knows some words of Hebrew. The cards show three young children—two boys and a girl. Consider the symbolic “slitting” of their throats. Think of her age, her state of person, her state of mind. All this may be, as you suggest, Stiffeniis, no more than coincidence, but . . .’ He stopped, and turned to Helena. ‘That’s why I requested you to come,’ he said. ‘You have seen her, Helena. You can tell us if this woman is truly Sybille Gottewald.’

  Screams and cries rang out all around us, muffled by the walls, but not a breath was heard in that room.

  ‘What do you intend to do if she is?’

  Helena was looking up at Lavedrine as she spoke. Her hood had fallen back onto her shoulders. The whalebone clip he had given her as a parting gift stood out starkly white against the chestnut colour of her hair. Lavedrine spotted it straight away.

  He let out a loud sigh. ‘I am not interested in justice, Helena. It is no concern of mine. I am only interested in my chosen field of study. I intend to examine this crime in all its aspects, and make public what I learn from it. Something that will shock the stuffed wigs of the Academy of the Sciences, and leave them gaping like fish. I mean to make a mark, and introduce new methods to the study of crime and criminals. With your help, I will return to Paris, and pick up my career again.’

  Helena seemed to be turning over in her mind what he had just told her.

  ‘If I do recognise her,’ she said at last, ‘Hanno, or some other magistrate, will be required to try her. She will be condemned. She will hang . . .’

  Her breath died away as she said it.

  Lavedrine closed his fist and tapped his knuckles two or three times on the table.

  ‘Your husband and I follow different professions, Helena,’ he said, finally. ‘I hunt criminals with the aim of studying them. The magistrate’s job is to judge and condemn without passion.’ He turned to me for confirmation. ‘Wasn’t that what Kant intended when he put the idea into your head?’

  ‘Where is the woman?’ Helena murmured.

  ‘In the bath-house,’ he said. ‘It might be best if you saw her there. She will be surprised to see you, but that will be to our advantage. I am counting on it.’

  ‘Tomorrow will be soon enough,’ I interposed. ‘My wife needs to rest . . .’

  ‘I am not tired. I have come for no other reason,’ Helena interrupted sharply.

  Lavedrine towered above her, offering his hand. His eyes were bright, attentive. Triumphant, like a hawk measuring his prey.

  ‘Naturally, Helena. I knew that you would wish to help,’ he said.

  Helena took his hand, and rose. Her eyes never flinched from his for one instant. She did not immediately release his hand, as she stood before him.

  ‘I wish to be alone with her,’ she said.

  I saw the shock register on his face.

  ‘It is too dangerous,’ I protested, stepping between them. ‘That woman is being held to protect her from herself. To protect others from her.’

  But Lavedrine regained his ascendancy quickly.

  ‘I guarantee that nothing will happen,’ he said. ‘Trust me.’

  ‘You are not obliged to see her, Helena,’ I insisted, laying my hand over hers.

  She slipped her hand from mine, touched my lips to silence me.

  ‘I want to see her,’ my wife said quietly.

  43

  WE SET OFF down a different corridor.

  Low, barrel-vaulted, narrow, darker. There were no bars, no windows, very few doors, and everything was strangely silent.

  From out of the twilight gloom, a warder came towards us. She was walking on tiptoe, and stood aside to let us pass. But Lavedrine stopped beside her, stepping closer, saying something in a low voice. The woman’s eyes darted inquisitively at Helena, then at me, then back at Lavedrine.

  She bowed her head in deference to his authority.

  ‘I’ll tell the bath-maid,’ she whispered, glancing at Helena again, examining her from head to toe. ‘She’ll need a waxed coat and a hood. Those are the rules.’

  ‘Very well,’ Lavedrine replied, cutting her short. ‘Come, Helena. Frau Barenstoft here will lead you in, and help you change. The atmosphere is hot and damp where Frau Gottewald is being treated. It would soak that fine cloak of yours in an instant. Stiffeniis and I will be close, I promise you.’

  ‘Not too close,’ Helena replied. ‘I wish to speak to her alone. I told you that.’

  ‘As we agreed,’ Lavedrine assented.

  ‘You must call for help if you need it,’ I added sternly.

  Frau Barenstoft smiled. ‘There’s no danger, sir,’ she said, making a curtsy to Helena, inviting my wife to follow her.

  As the door swung closed behind the two women, we stood in the corridor, watching through the window-glass. Frau Barenstoft stopped before a large cupboard, then turned to face Helena, indicating that she should remove her heavy travelling cloak. As she did so, the woman reached into a cupboard, came out holding a shimmering, sand-coloured canvas garment, and handed it to my wife. Helena looked bewildered as she donned the robe, and she put on a matching waterproof hat like a sou’wester with a peaked brim and a flap behind which covered her ears and neck. A moment later, they turned away from us. Frau Barenstoft stopped before a white door, went inside for a moment, then came out and nodded, signalling Helena to go in alone. Without a word or backward look, my wife
pushed open the door of the cubicle and disappeared from view.

  For an instant, a wave of panic swept over me. I felt as though I had lost her. She was out of my sight, beyond the range of my help, in an asylum for the mad. In a room where some mysterious medical treatment was taking place.

  Frau Barenstoft came calmly out of the dressing room.

  ‘Will there be anything else, sir?’ she murmured.

  Lavedrine shook his head, and she walked off quickly into the gloom.

  ‘Come, Stiffeniis,’ he urged. ‘We must keep a watchful eye on our own dear Helena.’ He took my arm, pushed open the door, and led me towards the one through which my wife had disappeared.

  Our own dear Helena . . .

  ‘You promised to leave her alone,’ I protested.

  Lavedrine held more tightly onto my arm. ‘For safety’s sake, we will not let Helena out of our sight.’

  I needed no prompting to keep my wife from harm. And I was curious to see the woman that Lavedrine described as Sybille Gottewald. We sprinted towards the door that Helena had passed through. It was wider than a normal door, painted white, divided into two halves, a round spyhole of curved glass in each half. Lavedrine looked through one window, I peered in through the other, standing shoulder to shoulder.

  There were three large metal boxes inside the green-and-white tiled room. They had been lined up against the far wall, each one like a large brass coffin mounted on a stand. The dull burnished metal was heavily studded, a variety of tubes set into the upper lid of the casket. The arms and the body of the patient were constrained inside, while the head protruded from a hole, resting on a sort of brace which held a pillow. There was another woman sitting in a chair by the far wall, who was evidently the guardian of the place. Her size reassured me, as did the fact that she was comfortably asleep, her chin sunk onto her breast.

  Helena sat on a three-legged stool beside one of the contraptions, in which a person had been imprisoned. There was no other patient in the room.