“I don’t know. I’ve not seen anything, but of course one wouldn’t be able to see them, only feel them. The feeling is strongest during the closing act. That’s why we leave after the interval.”
“The closing act. Yes. Monsieur Henker.”
“Yes.”
“And you feel he is somehow responsible for these… How did you put it? Aggressive shadows?”
“Responsible?”
“You imply that Monsieur Henker is the cause for this evil you feel.”
Julia clutched his arm. “Good heavens, not at all,” she said. “Herr Henker is a kind and good man. A genuine artist.”
Franz glanced at the white hand on his arm. She released him.
“I beg your pardon,” she said. “I apologize. My…concern for Herr Henker got the better of me.”
“Your concern?”
“If I’m not imagining things—and I don’t think I am, everyone clears out before he goes on: my cousins, the other performers, even the stagehands and the manager—then it’s clear that this malevolence is here for him.”
Franz could not tell if the woman was mad, infatuated, simple, or a combination of all three. He debated how to get her to keep talking, but feared that if he did she would devolve completely into gibberish.
“Malevolence,” he repeated, slowly. “Yes, I understand. If that’s so, mademoiselle, why do they wait?”
“I can’t fathom their ultimate goal,” she said. “The more I talk about this, the crazier I sound. Listen to me, speaking of evil manifestations as if they could be assigned human qualities. Or any comprehensible qualities.”
A thought struck Franz, and he asked, “You say everyone leaves as soon as Monsieur Henker takes the stage?”
“That’s right?”
“Then who brings up the curtain?”
“The last remaining stagehand.”
“And then he leaves?”
“Yes. His name is Jan. A young man, probably only a boy, really.”
“But, mademoiselle… if no one is backstage when The Hanging Artist performs… who brings the curtain down?”
The stage door opened with such force that it nearly knocked Franz over the railing. He dropped the tin collar. The Three Dierkop Sisters paid him little regard.
“Come along, Julia,” said one of them, handing her a hat and pocketbook. “You forgot your coat.”
“It’s not that cold tonight,” Julia said.
“Or something for your throat,” said another. The sisters all wore the ugliest silk scarves Franz had ever seen. “You catch another cold, we’re out of business again.”
Franz picked up the tin collar and offered it to Julia.
“What is this, monsieur?” she asked.
“Protection,” he said.
“From?”
“Ills.”
She took it and went off with her sisters.
“THEN WHO OPERATES the curtain, the lights?”
Jan kept his eyes on The Flying Hurricanes onstage, hands on the ropes and muscles tense.
“I think they’re all drunk tonight,” he said. “I hope they fall into the bloody pit.”
“For Henker,” said Franz, trying to get the youth’s attention. “Someone must remain.”
“We all beat it up front,” Jan said, and began a furious hand-over-hand as the audience laughed at the acrobats’ sloppy tableau. As Jan hauled, the backdrop of an Italian countryside rose into the flies.
“Then you don’t leave the theater,” Franz said, trying to be heard above the brassy blare of the orchestra as the inebriated brothers scampered around.
“We’d be sacked,” Jan said, spitting on his hands and reaching for another set of ropes to lower a backdrop of what should have been the Coliseum, had the scenic artist had any talent.
Another wave of laughter. “One’s of them’s run into another,” Jan said, with satisfaction. The laughter gave way to jeers. “God, I hope nobody’s carrying rotten fruit tonight, who do they think has to clean that up?”
The backdrop camp down with a heavy thump, and Jan wiped his brow.
“Asking an awful lot of questions,” he said to Franz. “Who are you again?”
“A representative of Herr Spindler,” Franz said, adopting his best authoritative tone. “We wish to ensure all is prepared for Herr Henker when he transfers to Die Feier.”
“Well, that’s all I can tell you. This act ends—and thank God when it does—Max and me bring down the curtain, and off we go. We head up to the lobby, wait out there until people start coming out, and then it’s back we go, to clear the stage for the night.”
“If the Traumhalle staff doesn’t run Henker’s act, who does?”
“He has his own people.”
“Ah! You’ve seen them?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know he has his own people?”
“Curtain goes up, doesn’t it? And comes down again?”
“Yes, but…”
“It don’t do it by itself, I can tell you that.”
Schmeide strolled over, walrus moustache twitching.
“Get Number Four ready,” he said to Jan, “and hurry it up, there’s no way these idiots are going to do the Pyramid Inferno tonight. If they do, I want you and Max and the other riggers to have the sand buckets at the ready.”
Jan nodded, then touched his cap to Franz and disappeared into the shadows.
“From Spindler, eh?” Schmeide said to Franz, keeping an eye on the onstage melee. “Thought you were a performer or something.”
“I’m just making sure we have the appropriate amount of—”
“Henker’s not taking his own to Die Feier?”
“Ah, yes, ‘his own.’ Just who are they, and when do they arrive?” Franz peered into the shadows of the wings. “Are any of them here now?”
“Only us as work here are here. Listen, the Hanger’s got his secrets, he doesn’t want anyone to know how he does what he does, I’ve seen plenty of magicians and tricksters, and I know how they are. Let them have their secrets, is what I says.”
“But his so-called people…”
“We had an agreement when he began,” Schmeide said, “that we’re to clear out when his act begins, that his own people would handle the technical aspects of his performance, and then we can come back.”
“You allowed that?”
“There was a little extra in it for us,” Schmeide said, rubbing his fingers together. “Something you should know over at Die Feier. How is old Spindler? I remember him from his days as prompter over in the old…”
There was a racket as one of the Flying Hurricanes flew into two others at the wrong angle and all three fell into the backdrop, tearing a hole in the canvas. Roars of laughter. Had Schmeide been equipped to emit steam from his ears, he would have. He turned away from the mess.
“That’s going to cost them,” he said through clenched teeth. “Look,” he said to Franz, “if you’re so interested in how many people the Hanger’s got working for him, stick around. Never agreed that you’d be up front when he does his act, did he?”
“No, he didn’t, but—”
“Well, there you are. Excuse me.”
The Flying Hurricanes were, after all, attempting the Pyramid Inferno. Schmeide started directing the stagehands to get as many sand buckets as they could and be at the ready.
Franz turned and ran up the spiral staircase to the line of dressing rooms. All were empty, including that of The Hanging Artist.
The audience’s laughter had now turned into cries of concern as a flash of orange light came from in front of the backdrop. Franz cast a quick look down and then went into Henker’s room. There was nothing there, not even a sign of the man himself. The room was as stark as a disused closet. Had Henker already gone down to the stage floor?
An urgent drumroll rose and fell as the acrobats persisted in their folly.
Franz ran to the staircase, caught his foot on something, and fell halfway down the stair
s, knocking his head on the steel axis. He clutched his head in agony, hauled himself up, and discovered he had snagged his foot on a thick coil of metal.
A tin collar.
It had worked its way around his ankle in the fall, and he was caught in the grillwork of the top step. Practically upside down and on his back, he reached up to the railings and hoisted himself into something like a sitting position, and then faced the problem of how to uncouple himself from the stairs while both hands were busy elsewhere.
His first cry for help came at the exact moment the orchestra struck its final, deafening chord and The Flying Hurricanes came staggering offstage, cursing at each other.
Franz felt more than saw the curtain come down, and cried out to the acrobats as they headed out the stage door, unaware of anything except their own drunken remonstrations. He pulled himself up again, and saw Jan run from the ropes to the stage door, which banged shut behind him.
Then the entire backstage was plunged into darkness.
He listened as he had never listened before, and heard movement in the pitch black from every corner. Franz couldn’t know if it was real, or thanks to Julia Dierkop’s frightened suggestion. He broke out into a sweat and groped for the railing.
Below, he heard the gramophone playing “Gigolette.”
The Hanging Artist’s voice came to him in fits and starts.
“…I propose to hang myself…”
Franz managed to hook an elbow around a metal support. He stretched for his ankle with his free hand.
And sensed something moving towards him from above.
Please let it be Gregor.
“…the sins that live in my thoughts, my desires, my regrets, my hurts, my slights, my envies… Are these sins or are they demons…? They are both…”
Something was above him, looking down at him. He knew it. He froze, his back aching from the strain of holding the railing and reaching for the tin collar that kept him fixed to the top stair. What was above him? And why did he have the feeling—no, he knew—it was watching him?
Then he realized that if he did manage to free his leg, he could very well tumble down the stairs to his death, if not down the spiral then off the side to the hard, dusty floor below.
Whatever was above him was now moving.
The gramophone again: “Yes, We Have No Bananas!”
Franz heard the thing in motion, feeling as if it were a liquid mass, hidden by the inkiness of the upper corridor. Not unlike rapidly rising bread dough, growing larger, rolling on…
It was going to roll down on him, smothering him.
“…does the sight of this strike fear in your heart? Terror? Be calm. Be sensible. Be joyous. Whoever turns his mind to true goodness will be met with fortune and honor, and forever be free of sinful shame…”
Franz closed his eyes and summoned the strength to cry out. He could not. Whatever was above him, expanding, obliterating, had found him, he knew it.
“…you, sir… the gentleman right here, in front of me… please… oh! Ladies and gentlemen, we seem to have a celebrity with us tonight…”
The gramophone: “Tutankhamen.”
Franz clung to the railing, his leg going numb. If he had heard right, Yitzchak had done as he had promised, and was now onstage with Henker. If Franz could cry out, he would risk interrupting the performance, and Yitzchak would not be able to—
There was a new danger in the dark. One thing, two things, many things filling the backstage area and the deep, heavy darkness. Things that hurried.
On wings.
Unseen creatures, stealthy and silent but for the nearly imperceptible flutter of their wings, swirled and swooped around him. Bats?
And what of the heavy, looming thing above him?
Franz could no longer sense it. He made a final effort to free himself.
“…take your time inspecting it…”
Franz yanked himself up the stairs, managing to seat himself one step higher.
“…you may search me…”
Franz caught hold of the tin collar around his ankle and tried to work himself free.
The numbness turned to pain.
“…that is all, and thank you…”
The invisible flying beasts around him disappeared, and, as Franz worked the collar around to its open end and align it will the railing support, he encountered a new horror: that of the blackness closing in on him; not just from every corner, but from above and below, and from every angle. A gradual, inevitable pressing.
His shoe. He could free himself if he could just get his shoe off…
“…The gallows!”
Henker’s noose would be flying through the air now, up, up, to wrap itself around the gallows…
Franz tore at his shoelaces. Why so goddamned many?
“…do I deserve to live? I leave that to you.”
Franz felt the knot that kept his shoe anchored in place.
The theater was pressing down on him, watching him as it moved, relentlessly.
The gramophone screamed.
Ev’rybody shimmies now
Franz ripped the lace apart.
Ev’rybody’s learning how
His foot slid from the shoe.
The tin collar gave, and his ankle passed through it.
Franz fell backwards.
’Cause everybody shimmies now
A chair, kicked away, falls to the stage.
A sharp snap.
A collective gasp from three hundred people.
Franz reached out for the railing as his legs sailed over his head.
The gramophone: swish swish swish, the needle stuck in the record’s dead space.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
A NOCTURNE
WE SEE TWO young men, one bareheaded, one in a straw hat, to what we must assume is the latter’s home.
“You’ve not said a word since the theater,” says the young man in the straw hat.
“Forgive me,” says the hatless man.
“It wasn’t very nice, was it?”
“I wasn’t expecting it to be jolly.”
“The acrobats were immensely entertaining.”
“They were drunk.”
“We mustn’t linger here.”
“I’ll say good-night, then.”
“Let’s walk on a bit.”
“Not for too long.”
“No, just around the block.”
“Your father gave me the fish-eye when we left.”
“He can’t understand why I haven’t asked the bootmaker’s daughter to marry me yet.”
“I don’t think anybody besides me can understand.”
“Yes, well… let’s not talk about it.”
We see the young men walk away from the house and down to the first corner. We see them turn right.
“I know it was ghastly,” says the young man in the straw hat, “but don’t let it get you down. It was only a trick.”
“And all that gibberish about inner demons?” asks the hatless man.
“Oh, I listened, I listened.”
“He was looking at us.”
“That’s just your imagination.”
“No, he was looking at us, at me.”
“This is the last time I let you take me to the theater. It’s the cinema from now on.”
They turn right at the next corner.
“It does seem to be one way to quiet them,” the hatless man says.
“The inner demons?”
“Fool. My parents.”
“There are other ways,” says the man in the straw hat.
“Have you ever considered…?”
“Of course I have. But then I met you.”
They walk on a little in silence, and turn right at the next corner.
“Don’t you go getting any ideas,” says the man in the straw hat.
“I don’t own a rope,” says his companion.
The young man in the straw hat laughs.
“But what if we’re the ones who are
wrong?” asks the bareheaded man.
“Has it felt wrong to you?”
“Yes.”
“Go to Hell.”
“And no.”
“It can’t be both, you know.”
“Yes, it can.”
“Let’s not talk about it.”
“I don’t have your confidence.”
“I’m not confident at all.”
“Then I lack your assuredness.”
“Assuredness?”
“About us.”
They turn right at the corner. We see them approach the house again.
“It’s hopeless,” says the hatless youth.
“Come over here, in the shadows,” says the man in the straw hat.
“No.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t want to risk it. Not tonight.”
“Just a kiss, fool.”
“No.”
The young man in the straw hat climbs the steps and lets himself into the house.
“See you later,” he says. He takes off his hat as he enters the house.
The hatless man hears the lock click, sees the light behind the transom go out.
We see him shove his hands in his pockets and walk away.
He walks to his own home and into the building.
We see him pause on the first floor landing, outside his door, behind which his parents are dozing in the parlor, waiting for him to return.
We see him climb the stairs to the second floor.
We see him climb the stairs to the third floor.
To the fourth floor.
The fifth floor.
He climbs five narrow steps to the door to the roof.
He opens the door.
Birds flutter from the roof as he walks across it, his step quicker.
We see him step off the edge.
WE SEE A hot, bright room full of hot, bright men.
We see beer, billiards, clumsily made sandwiches heavy with meat.
We see cigars, and the bluish haze the cigar smoke has produced for the past two hours.
We see a handsome gentleman take a half dozen exaggerated bows in response to the whooping cheers and thunderous applause of his companions.
“That’s him, all right,” says one.
“You could be his understudy,” says another.
We hear the cruel laughter.
The Hanging Artist Page 20
