The Hanging Artist

by Jon Steinhagen

“You know that for a fact?”

  “Actually, yes, I used to work for an insurance company—”

  “You a detective?”

  Franz didn’t know what to say, although he almost answered that he was. This surprised him, and so he said, “In a way. I, er, look into things.”

  “You looking into these hangings?”

  “I just mentioned them because they happened to be on my mind.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why were they on your mind?”

  “I’m sorry I brought them up,” Franz said, exasperated. The innkeeper was doing a better job at getting information out of Franz than Franz was at getting even the simplest opinion out of the innkeeper. “What do I owe you?” he asked.

  “Sure you don’t want a sandwich?”

  Franz said he was sure, paid what he owed, and left.

  Gregor was nowhere to be found.

  It irritated him unreasonably. What good was an imaginary companion if it didn’t show up when he actually needed to talk to someone, anything?

  Particularly when he hadn’t been able to speak for some time: thanks to his condition, thanks to the gradual starvation of air, food, communication. He had learned to live with it, he thought, learned to live with being cut off completely from the world, physically, as he had long felt to be cut off from the world on so many levels…

  But wasn’t he still cut off from his world? He’d been living his miracle for twenty-four hours without so much as a word from his friends and family… from Dora. How was it possible that he had been unable to share his good news? Was he unable? Unwilling? How had a day passed with his only contacts being a giant, disgusting insect and a fast-talking…?

  What was Beide? Man? Woman? Both?

  He reviewed his activities since arising to find himself healed: a conversation with Gregor, another long, deep sleep, an enormous breakfast, and the long visit from Inspector Beide, a visit which had crammed his head with incredible facts regarding an equally incredible situation, in which he was now expected to play an incredible role.

  Incredible.

  Would he accept that role? How could he, in good conscience? Yes, Franz had an inquisitive nature, but never before had he turned that curiosity to the solution of mysteries, unless those mysteries originated from within his own tortured self.

  Now, why did he just describe himself as ‘tortured’?

  If anything, Franz had always considered himself…

  Nothing.

  Insignificant.

  In fact, Franz thought, he was no better than a bug. If he was alive now thanks to some sort of cosmic regeneration—a reincarnation or second chance at life—then by rights he should have returned as Gregor. An enormous, vile insect reeking of cheap cologne.

  But he hadn’t. Gregor was Gregor, and Beide was… disconcerting… and Franz was—what? Beide had called him Lazarus. Franz knew the reference, of course, but his field of interest and his studies had been exclusively of the Kabbalah and…

  He really needed to talk to Rabbi Guttman.

  He also needed something to eat; that beer wasn’t sitting too well.

  He stopped and gained his bearings. He was far from the sanatorium, somewhere in the heart of town. He had broken into a sweat, not because he had been barreling along, lost in his thoughts, but because the early June weather felt like mid-July.

  Was the sun hotter?

  The sun.

  Franz looked down.

  Yes, he still had a shadow.

  “Well, I’m still real,” he said.

  “Assuming you were real in the first place,” a voice said.

  It wasn’t Gregor’s voice; the hallucinatory sidekick had yet to materialize.

  The voice came from a bored-looking little bald-headed man whose impressive mustache had been brushed to suggest a pair of wings, an effect repeated in the tufts of hair on either side of his head.

  The man stood in a dark doorway, and Franz looked from him to the sign on the large window beside him:

  BOOKS AND IDEAS

  E. Murek, Prop.

  Est. 1899

  “Are you E. Murek, Prop.?” Franz asked.

  The little man nodded.

  “Your sign is redundant,” Franz said.

  “One of the smartasses, are you?” Murek asked.

  “Books are ideas, aren’t they?”

  “Books are merchandise,” Murek said. “And evidently you’ve not read enough of them to know that not all books are ideas, although I can name many books that were bad ideas.”

  “Then you sell ideas as well?”

  “No,” Murek said. “The sign was of my brother’s devising. This was his shop. He’s dead, I took over. I’m not the smart one of the family.”

  “But you just told me you are E. Murek.”

  “I am. My brother and I happened to share an initial. He was Emil; I’m Emmanuel.”

  “So that’s why you didn’t have the sign changed.”

  “No, I didn’t change it because that costs money. Are you going to come in and buy something, or stand there all afternoon confirming you’re real?”

  A new thought struck Franz. “No,” he said, “because it’s occurred to me that I can ascertain the reality of this world with one simple test.”

  Franz strode into the bookstore; it fit comfortably in his conception of a bookstore: tables and cases piled high and crammed with books of all sizes and colors and smells, the lighting just dim enough to suggest a great scholar who didn’t have anyone in to clean, ever.

  “Something you’re looking for?” Murek asked, following Franz.

  “Oh, yes,” Franz said. “Do you have Contemplation? It’s a collection of stories.”

  “No.”

  “What about A County Doctor?”

  “I’m sure I must have something in stock with such a banal title as that. Is it a romance?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Who’s the author?”

  “Kafka.”

  “Who?”

  “Kafka. Franz Kafka.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  It was then that Franz knew for certain that he was in the real world.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE THEATREGOER

  LEO KROLOP GIVES the stationer a few coins, pockets the notebook, and leaves the shop.

  It is a beautiful afternoon.

  Leo hasn’t thought any afternoon has been beautiful for some time.

  He shifts his parcels from his right hand to his left—the box of silk handkerchiefs from the haberdasher’s, each bearing his monogram; the ominous brown bottle from the chemist—and turns the corner.

  He uses his free right hand to tip his hand to each lady that passes. His smiles are returned. He feels very smart in his checkered suit. White and black, white and black, white and black. A somewhat garish red necktie fastened by a pearl stickpin. Too warm for the season and a riot of patterns, but it was his only suit, and he kept it clean and pressed, while it kept him feeling like a dandy.

  He hasn’t smiled for some time.

  It feels good to smile, although he does notice some tightness around his mouth, which he attributes to being out of practice in the smiling department.

  He raps on the window of the Traumhalle box office. A young man appears. Leo smiles to him, tips his hat.

  “The man at my hotel telephoned this morning,” he says. “One for tonight. Krolop.”

  “The show doesn’t start for another six hours.”

  “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d collect my ticket now.”

  The young man takes a bored bite from the apple he’s been eating. “What’s the name again?” he asks, shuffling out of view.

  “Krolop,” Leo says, louder. The clerk does not appear. “KROLOP!” Leo shouts, but the clerk has returned, a ticket in his hand.

  “Heard you,” the clerk says, and quotes him the price.

  “It’s already paid for,” Krolop says.


  The clerk gives him a dubious look, takes another bite of apple, and shuffles off again, out of sight.

  Krolop reminds himself that he must remain happy, hopeful, and grateful for the beautiful afternoon.

  The clerk reappears.

  “So it is,” he says, and shoves the ticket through the aperture.

  “May I trouble you for an envelope for that?” Krolop asks.

  Another look from the clerk.

  “I’ll see,” the clerk says, finishing the apple and shuffling away.

  “Never mind,” Leo says, and pockets the ticket.

  It is a beautiful day.

  He hopes it will be the first of many.

  Especially if everything he wants will come to him tonight.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE JOURNEY

  FRANZ HAD A million things to do.

  Perhaps not exactly a million, but close to it, and he wanted to do all of them at once, as all but one seemed extremely important. He had to get in touch with Dora, first and foremost, then certainly Max and Jacob, then his sisters—his father could wait, as Franz was certain the man didn’t care one way or another if Franz was alive or dead, and that was fine with him. And he had to find some way of getting in touch with Inspector Beide: the card he had been given offered no help in this matter, listing as it did only Beide’s name on both sides. That vexed him, as he had several questions and many more points to go over with the inspector before he made a decision about his proposed participation in the case, and he didn’t wish to wait until evening, when Beide had said he or she would return. It was then that Franz cursed Gregor’s absence, because if nothing else he could set the great bug onto some menial tasks and, perhaps, get him to rustle up another astounding meal. Franz was, once again, starving.

  But what if Gregor’s hallucinatory presence had only meant to sustain him through his first twenty-fours of astonishment at recovery? What if Gregor was never to return?

  Perhaps that would be a good thing, after all. It would be a bad sign to become dependent on an incredible apparition.

  Franz bounded up the steps of the sanatorium, marveling that he was bounding, as he hadn’t been able to bound in longer than he could remember.

  The reception hall was teeming with people, orderlies and inmates and sickly people dressed in clothing that no longer fit them, some clutching walking sticks, some already in bath chairs. Franz skirted past the electric lift and took the stairs to the third floor, again bounding, and relishing it.

  He opened the door of Room 301.

  He was greeted with the sight of a middle-aged gentleman receiving an emetic from a nurse. The nurse and the gentleman started at his energetic intrusion, and the gentleman promptly vomited into a basin in his lap, presumably held there for just that purpose.

  Franz shut the door.

  There was a man vomiting in his room. He could still hear the poor soul retching.

  Franz took a moment to sort through his confusion, checked to see if he’d mistaken the room—he hadn’t—and reasoning that not everything of late had appeared to be as it should, he waited for silence and opened the door again.

  The nurse and the gentleman again started at the intrusion. The nurse strode to the door, but Franz shut it just in time, catching a glimpse of the gentleman embarking upon a second round of vomiting as the basin slid from his lap to the floor.

  Franz retreated to the ground floor as fast as he could.

  Don’t tell me I was never here, he thought as he made his way to the reception desk. As he approached, a young, smartly dressed man dispatched an infirm guest to the care of a white-coated attendant, made an entry in a large leather-bound book, and appraised Franz as he approached.

  “Where are my things?” Franz asked.

  “I beg your pardon?” the young man asked, adjusting his spectacles.

  “I was in 301,” Franz said. He put the parcel he had been carrying on the desk.

  “Herr Kafka?” the young man asked. “I was under the impression you’d gone.”

  Franz was relieved to be recognized. “No, I haven’t died,” he said.

  “Of course not,” the young man said. “I mean I was under the impression that you’d left the sanatorium.”

  “I had, for a few hours,” Franz said, “but… remind me of your name?”

  “Tomas, sir.”

  “Yes. Tomas. I remember you. Anyway. I went out for a few hours, but only for a stroll. I’m better, you see.”

  “Yes, sir. Congratulations. We’re very pleased.”

  “But I had meant to return. And I did. Just now. And there’s someone in my room.”

  “Of course there is, sir. You’ve been discharged.”

  “By whom?”

  Tomas consulted the great book and followed his finger down the column on the page.

  “It just says ‘discharged,’” Tomas said, and showed Franz the entry which, sure enough, read DISCHARGED. “I hope your stay with us was completely restorative.”

  “Yes, yes,” Franz said, “you’ve no idea. But the thing is, I didn’t—I mean, I haven’t packed my things, I haven’t settled up.” He caught himself, then, because he realized he might not have the means to pay for his stay; after all, he’d been languishing in the sanatorium for eight weeks, and he had no illusions that his medical and physical upkeep had been anything other than expensive. Had he enough money to pay his bill? He had only a few marks in his wallet. He had concluded, weeks ago, that his condition was irreversible, and that needn’t concern himself as to how or by whom his expenses were to be paid once he had succumbed.

  Franz’s old friend, panic, revisited him.

  Tomas busied himself with the book.

  “It says ‘paid,’” Tomas said, and before he could turn the book for Franz’s inspection, Franz said, “All right, yes, fine, that’s correct, wonderful, but my things…” He fell backwards over a pile of objects.

  Which turned out to be his luggage.

  A passing orderly helped Franz to his feet, and Tomas, after confirming that Franz was unharmed, reached under the counter and produced a large envelope, upon which the single letter K was written in black ink.

  “I’m glad you returned, however, sir,” Tomas said, handing Franz the envelope. “This was left for you.”

  Franz took the envelope. “By whom?” he asked.

  “I’ve no idea, sir,” Tomas said.

  Franz didn’t want to press the point, because something told him that there would be no answer of any satisfactory nature.

  A thin man with a black mustache like a boot brush approached Franz and removed his cap. “Hey,” he said, “taxi’s waiting. Meter’s running.”

  “Taxi?” Franz asked.

  “You know what a taxi is, don’t you?” the man asked.

  “Yes, but…” Franz stammered.

  Tomas stepped forward. “Your taxi,” he said. “Everything is ready and waiting for you, Herr Kafka. Have a pleasant trip.”

  Franz began to resign himself to Fate. “Thank you,” he said, “I will. Where am I going?”

  “The train station, naturally,” Tomas said, giving the impression that humoring morons was the least favorite part of his job.

  “Of course,” Franz said, “because that is where one goes if one is to catch a train. Now then, if I could get some assistance with my—”

  But his luggage was gone.

  THE ENVELOPE CONTAINED a letter and three smaller envelopes.

  The letter read:

  Herr Kafka,

  I, personally, think you have made the right decision, and you should remember this whenever anyone tells you different, especially yourself, as I know you will sooner or later. That said, I will be in touch with you at some point to discuss anything you wish to discuss, as I’m sure you have many things you wish to discuss, because who wouldn’t? I say this knowing full well that I also wish to leave you to your own devices, whatever they may be. You might not have any devices, and that’s perfectly
acceptable, even encouraged, because I want you to feel like you have a free hand in regards to your investigation, and I am so excited to be writing those two words, YOUR INVESTIGATION, because that’s how I want you to see it, as an investigation that is entirely yours, to make what you will of the facts and the circumstances and the people and all sorts of other things that are going to be involved, and are already involved, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

  I’ve taken the liberty of making some arrangements for you: you will find three envelopes with this brief (ha ha) note; the contents of each are specific to the corresponding directions written on the front of each. Enjoy. Is ‘enjoy’ the proper entreaty? Possibly not, although I do hope you find some enjoyment in the investigation, grave though its implications might be, because I, personally, feel that any journey lacking joy, at some point or another, is not a journey at all but a burden, and…

  There I go again. My apologies and my best wishes for a speedy conclusion.

  Although I don’t mean to imply that I want you to hurry. ‘Hurried’ is the progenitor of ‘slipshod.’

  But, of course, time is also of the essence, because the faster an end is put to these grisly killings, the better.

  Either way, I have complete faith in you and your abilities, whether those abilities exist or not. I’m sure they do. And even if they don’t, I believe in you.

  Your servant,

  Beide.

  FRANZ INSPECTED THE three envelopes.

  The first read: TRAIN TICKET (VIENNA) AND A LITTLE MONEY FOR A SNACK OR A MAGAZINE OR BOTH OR NEITHER. So he was to go straight to Vienna, no chance to return to his home in Prague. He had feared as much; he didn’t want to plunge right in—but on the other hand, he hadn’t exactly decided he was going to do this yet, had he? Had he been leaning towards acceptance? He eyed the parcel next to him on the taxi seat: yes, he had been leaning. But leaning was not plunging.

  He read the second envelope: YOUR LODGING (MONEY): FRAU ALT’S EXCLUSIVE THEATRICAL BOARDING HOUSE. DON’T USE YOUR OWN NAME UNLESS YOU TRULY CAN’T THINK OF A PHONY NAME FOR YOURSELF. ADDRESS INSIDE. He opened the envelope and found a card clipped to the wad of cash. The address was in central Vienna. A theatrical boarding house, and an exclusive one at that? And why shouldn’t he use his own name?