The Fig Eater Read online

  She locates two fig trees near the center of the greenhouse. Has she found the fig Dora ate, Col di Signora Nigra? She angles her head back, squinting up at the tree. Its leaves are small, with three lobes, deeply curved at the edges, and button-shaped buds at the base. She’s irritated her opera glasses have been left at home. She remembers figs can take many sizes and shapes, an elongated gourd or a thick pear, a short turbinate cone like a child’s top. This fruit is a bright greenish yellow, round, with a short stalk. Disappointed, she now recognizes the fig as Blanche Hâtive d’Argenteuil. She finds a sign near the base of one of the trees identifying it as one of the oldest known figs, planted in a garden near Paris during the time of the Roman emperor Julianus Apostata.

  She prepares to paint the fig, setting up her easel in front of the nearest tree. There’s a match for the fruit’s color on her palette, Indischgelb, a bright transparent yellow. She treasures this rare and peculiar paint, its faint odor and curious history. She was told Indischgelb was made from the urine of certain serpents. Later, she learned it was filtered from the urine of Indian cattle fed on mango leaves. Erszébet sucks on her brush, shaping its point with her tongue, then strokes it over the square pan of Indischgelb.

  The sunlight stirs up the invisible vapors of the plants, as if the greenhouse were a huge bowl. It is very hot, and her wool dress itches and feels unfamiliar on her body. She hasn’t before experienced this kind of heat.

  Slow footsteps crunch on the gravel path behind her, the sound magnified by the glass walls. Her knees are suddenly molten. She’s vulnerable, the trees around her flimsy and useless, thin, bare trunks that can’t hide her. The frame of the greenhouse arches over her like a cage.

  She turns to face the man as he steps around the palms. A workman dressed in a stained brown suit, a dull leaf color. Her eyes are filled with the sun behind the man, so his silhouette is dark, his face a featureless shadow. She nervously points her paintbrush toward the trees. She wants him to see her wedding ring.

  “I was just admiring your tree.”

  “A good one. Figured to be forty years old.”

  He hasn’t stepped any closer. She keeps talking, careful not to move suddenly, as if she were a juggler.

  “Do you know what kind of fig it is?”

  “No, but the fruit’s green. Grows two crops a year.”

  “Can you please get me one?”

  He nods and steps into the tall foliage, moving slowly, respectful of the thick leaves.

  She prepares a quantity of red paint on her palette, pure scarlet made with iodide of mercury. She charges her largest brush with the color and waits. It shakes in her hand.

  In a few minutes, she hears the halting rustle of the shrubbery, then the green leaves swing like tassels as he pushes his way out. She can’t read the expression on his brown face. He stops on the other side of her easel, and she keeps it between them, holding her brush with its wet red tip like a spear.

  He holds out his hat to her. Nestled inside the dim nest of wool are two yellow figs, perfect as birds’ eggs.

  Outside, the metal tower sails majestically along between the lime trees in Schönbrunn Park, leaving broken branches and men scrambling after it, as if they were awash in the wake of a passing boat.

  That night, Erszébet dreams she is sleeping under a fig tree. A menacing figure, a woman in a black robe, leans over her. She senses the woman is about to speak, her lips part, but then Erszébet suddenly wakes up terrified, her breath coming in gasps. Fear opens new routes for her blood to take; the throbbing of her heart is mapped out over her whole body. After a moment, she strains to remember the face of the figure in her dream. Was it Dora?

  Her husband is awake beside her. He silently waits for her breathing to slow, then she turns over and abandons him again for sleep.

  The Inspector has just angled his hat on the stand by the door when Franz tells him that they’re to go immediately to the Zentralfriedhof. An outrage has been committed on one of the graves.

  As the Inspector’s fiaker speeds down Rennweg, he recollects Erszébet had told him the Magyar believe that the spirit of the most recent person to die stands at the gates of the cemetery until relieved by the next arrival. A chain, endlessly transformed. Surely the horses would sense such an apparition first, he thinks. Although he chides himself for this fancy, his eyes check both sides of the Zentralfriedhof gates as his carriage quickly passes through. He proceeds along a semicircular arcade, a wall studded with memorials to the eminent dead. Franz and the rest of the men follow directly behind him.

  He passes the monuments of Brahms and Beethoven in the musicians’ corner, landscaped with the design of a colossal harp in low shrubbery. With the approach of winter, the gravestones mirror the clouds — the same gray opacity — as if they too were temporary, but set in the ground’s embrace. Anticipating the disturbed grave, what will probably be a gruesome scene, he feels a claustrophobic weight settle over him. At the end of a long avenue of bare locust trees, a group of men mill around a grave, the only movement in this still place.

  Two grave diggers and the cemetery superintendent silently step back as Franz and the Inspector approach. Small clods of dirt are scattered over the site, although the grass looks undisturbed. The Inspector is startled to read Dora’s name on the gravestone. No one relayed that piece of information.

  The superintendent, a grizzled older man, hesitantly removes his hat and steps forward. “I sent my men for you right after they’d told me the grave was disturbed. First thing I did, sir.”

  The Inspector thanks him for his trouble. However, he’s arrived too late, and the men have already trampled around the grave, confusing their footprints with those of the intruder. He smothers his vexation.

  “I’ll need all your boots later, to make casts of their prints,” he says evenly. “Please, all of you move back so I can examine the area around the grave.”

  One of the men discovers footprints in the soft earth near the road. There’s one clear impression of an entire boot, and the Inspector decides to copy it. He tells Móricz to gather some twigs. Franz runs to the fiaker and returns with his kit. Someone else brings a bucket of water, and a handful of twigs and a short length of string are tossed in to soak.

  With tweezers, the Inspector carefully removes large pebbles from the bottom of the footprint. Then he steps aside and motions to Franz. He wants him to take over. To steady his nerves, Franz squats over the print, studying it for a moment before he delicately blots it with thin paper. Mimicking the Inspector, he holds out his hand without looking up, and a pump bottle is placed in his palm. He sprays the footprint with a thin layer of shellac, gentle as a woman applying perfume. He waits a few minutes for it to dry, standing around the print, joking with the Inspector. It’s cold enough now that their breath also turns to smoke after they’ve finished their cigarettes.

  Handfuls of plaster are stirred into the bucket of water until the mixture is as thick as cream. Franz spoons it over the footprint, carefully lays in the wet string and twigs, and covers them with a second layer of plaster. In fifteen minutes, he digs around the plaster to loosen it, then grasps the protruding string and pulls up the stiff white footprint. He scratches his name, the date, and the location on the top. A fossilized record of where a man with a size-ten boot had recently passed.

  Franz remembers the Inspector told him casts could be taken from footprints in snow. It seemed so miraculous, like walking on water, that Franz hadn’t pressed him for details at the time. Now he knows snow is added to the plaster instead of water, so the liquid will be the same temperature as the footprint. Franz also learned that paste, suet, wet breadcrumbs, and porridge can be used to copy footprints in an emergency, when plaster isn’t available. Using some secret technique, a legendary investigator in Bavaria even managed to take excellent impressions of footprints left in sand on a beach covered by water.

  Acting on a sudden hunch, the Inspector digs a gloved finger into the grass over the grave wher
e a few strands are slightly yellow at the root. The earth underneath is soft, crumbly. He tugs at a clump of grass, and it comes up neatly in his hand. His eyes follow a faint line, a rectangle where the grass has been cut, rolled up off the grave, and replaced so recently it hasn’t yet turned brown. Maybe yesterday or last night. He stands up and quietly tells the men to dig up Dora’s coffin.

  Moving quickly, they spread out a canvas tarpaulin for the dirt and set to work. He shakes his head at the grave diggers’ eager shoveling. Slowly, he says. Be careful. If you see any object in the dirt, no matter how small, let me know. Save everything.

  While they dig, he sends Franz to check the graves nearby, to see if they’ve also been disturbed. He shouts after him, “Remember don’t walk on the graves. Get on your knees and look at the ground first.” Franz doesn’t turn around, and the Inspector can tell by the set of his head that his words have annoyed him.

  Although he’s growing steadily more apprehensive, he resists the temptation to pace while they work. He smokes another cigarette, squinting into the distance, counting gravestones to distract himself. His wife would say this is an unlucky time to dig up a coffin. It’s twelve o’clock, and pripolniza — the evil spirit of noon — rules.

  The men have now removed a mound of earth, and the entire coffin is visible at the bottom of the hole, still intact after nine weeks underground. They continue to dig, uncovering its four sides, the carved details packed with dirt. The coffin had been painted to look like tortoiseshell, and when the Inspector peers down at it in the grave, it appears to be the richly colored carcass of some creature or giant insect. Without a word, one of the grave diggers swings his legs over the edge of the hole and jumps in, landing with a thud on the head of the coffin.

  The Inspector winces. He assumes the girl’s body has recently been disturbed. His first impulse is to blame some supernatural force. A murder victim has been known to return as one of the living dead, a revenant. No, the logical explanation is that it has something to do with her murder. He tries to strip the event of his reaction, see if a structure is revealed.

  The grave digger is still crouched on the coffin, scraping dirt from around its sides with his hands. Franz tosses him something, a long canvas belt. Then a second belt. The grave digger wedges the belts under the head and foot of the coffin. The superintendent and Móricz help him clamber out of the hole, their dirty fingers leaving brown stripes on his bare arms as they pull him up.

  The grave digger and the two cemetery workers grab the belt and hoist the coffin until it’s clear, free of the earth. As if bringing a huge and awkward fish into shore, they drag it over to the tarpaulin. The coffin’s latches are open, perhaps from scraping against the sides of the hole. The Inspector realizes he should have checked them while the coffin was still in the ground. He kneels and examines the latches, crusted with dirt but unbroken. The grave diggers watch him uneasily, conscious they’re about to do something shameful. They’re Sardeckelaufmacher, men who open coffin lids.

  “Shall we unseal the coffin here, sir?”

  The Inspector nods. “Don’t touch the latches or handles. There may be fingerprints.”

  The grave diggers wrap a cloth over the edge of the coffin lid and hook their fingers around it. With an effort, they pull up, and the lid opens an inch. They turn to the Inspector and wait, wanting him to instruct them again. He avoids looking at Franz and resolutely fixes his eyes on the coffin.

  “Go ahead, open it slowly.”

  The smell reaches them first. Franz covers his nose.

  When the coffin lid is thrown back, the Inspector sees only the pale lining, intricately pleated around the dark shape of Dora’s body. He refuses to look at her swollen face, although he senses her perfectly arranged hair has come loose from her scalp, like a torn pocket. What catches his eye is a soft mass of flesh that is recognizable as her hand, wrenched into an odd position. It’s bent back, and her thumb has been cut off. There’s a round circle of black where her thumb was, and a white spear of bone sticks up out of its center.

  CHAPTER 5

  It’s after midnight when Erszébet finishes the last page in her husband’s notebook, which she’d slipped out of his jacket. He’s asleep upstairs. She’s at the kitchen table with the notebook, a pen, and her watercolors, copying his words into her book. His orderly writing has revealed the facts and progress of his investigation of Dora.

  The murder exists in this disjointed state, his impressions, words spread over paper. Reading his notes, she can decipher his attitude toward certain individuals, even though it isn’t explicitly stated. Perhaps his judgment isn’t obvious to him. He can’t see it. She’s familiar with the way this obliviousness works visually, how the eye can uncover a hidden image. The painter Thomas Gainsborough would dip a sponge tied to a stick in watery color and then swab it over paper, not consciously painting any particular subject. Later, he’d transform these amorphous clouds of color into something recognizable — rocks, mountains, sunsets. He’d tease landscapes from blobs. Gainsborough called these pictures his “moppings.”

  A door opens. Sudden light on the stairs transforms them into a jagged silhouette. She quickly slides a sheet of paper over the notebooks. Erszébet, are you coming to bed? her husband asks. Yes, in one minute. My paper is wet. He makes a suggestive joke about what she’s just said. She turns and smiles over her shoulder at him, even though he can’t see her from where he stands on the stairs.

  “I’m coming right up,” she says. “Just wait.”

  She doesn’t make a sound when her hand accidentally strikes the jar in front of her, sending violet-colored water across the table into her lap.

  She slips both notebooks into the dry pocket of her damp robe.

  The two women are in das Gewölbe, the front room at Demel Konditorei. At Erszébet’s recommendation, Wally had ordered a Sicilienne, raspberry and vanilla ice cream with raisins soaked in Malaga wine. When Wally lifts her spoon, it registers as a blink of silver in the mirrors behind her chair and across the room from their table. I have news, she announces. Dora tried to kill herself. Her mother told me. She said a man gave Dora jewelry, but she didn’t tell me his name. But she doesn’t know who Dora would have met in the Volksgarten.

  Erszébet is quiet, her expression doesn’t betray any emotion, even curiosity. Although she’s disappointed at her reaction, Wally waits. She holds the spoonful of ice cream unswallowed on her tongue until Erszébet chooses to speak. A cold test.

  “And what did she say about Dora’s brother?”

  “He was sent away after she died. To the Kinderklinik. She said it was her husband’s idea. Otto may have tuberculosis.”

  The boy is suddenly gone from the house. Perhaps someone wanted to stop him from talking, Erszébet suggests. My husband hasn’t mentioned him. I’m not a woman who makes wagers, but I could wager Otto’s disappearance is what he calls the error in the situation. Erszébet’s eyes drift from Wally’s face as she calculates.

  “What about the man who gave Dora jewelry? How can we find him?”

  They agree that next time Wally will persuade Dora’s mother to reveal who gave her daughter gifts.

  Then Erszébet explains how she copied information from her husband’s notebook while he was sleeping. He nearly caught me, she laughs. But I’ve discovered new evidence. A man named Herr K. and his wife both befriended Dora. Frau K. and Dora’s father are having an affair. The K.s’ real names are unknown; they were written in code. I don’t know why. No one has been able to contact Rosza, Dora’s promeneuse. Dora and her father were strangely intimate. She was suspected of being a hypochondriac. No witnesses to the crime have been found yet.

  The women plan to unmask Herr and Frau K., and find Otto and Rosza, the promeneuse.

  Erszébet doesn’t tell the girl that when she finished with her husband’s notebook that evening, she went upstairs and got into bed with him, her heart still racing from his interruption while she stole his words. In the bedroom she t
ranslated her nervousness into abandon, concentrating on one small area of his body.

  Dora’s missing thumb wasn’t found in her coffin or in the dirt around it. The Inspector and his men also searched above ground, sifting through the loose earth around her grave, parting the intricate webs of grass with careful fingers.

  Because of the condition of the grave site, the Inspector believes Dora’s coffin was probably exhumed during the previous day or two. The graves nearby were undisturbed.

  When questioned, the Zentralfriedhof watchman said no, nothing unusual had happened, I’d notice if someone came in here after dark, I’d see their lanterns. The Inspector doesn’t argue, even though it seems unlikely he’d see anything, since the cemetery is vast, holding over half a million graves. None of the other grave diggers or groundsmen recalled anything out of the ordinary. What these men witnessed every day was a procession of black-clad mourners moving slowly across the cemetery, transient figures less permanent than the landscape of gravestones, which they’d memorized.

  Franz looked through the cemetery register and established that neither Dora’s family nor the Zellenkas had visited her grave during the last seven days. He carefully copied down the names of mourners who had paid respects to loved ones near Dora’s grave, and the Inspector allowed him to conduct the interviews alone. Franz wondered if he knew how difficult these interrogations would be, since the mourners were immediately suspicious of his motives, even when he asked the vaguest questions about the appearance of the grave and other visitors they may have noticed in the cemetery. The Viennese have a fetishistic regard for a beautiful corpse, schöne Leiche, and an elaborate funeral.

  Wally’s glass of coffee slips out of her hand and thunks onto the metal café table. Someone had stroked her shoulder. She looks up to see the Mehlspeisköchin from Dora’s house looming over her.

  “You’re here.”

  When the pastry cook drops down into her chair across from Wally, the great circle of the Riesenrad, the Ferris wheel, is positioned just behind her head like an iron nimbus. Wally is touched by what must be the woman’s best clothes, a clean apron tied over a thick, full skirt, an embroidered kerchief over her head. She is unable to associate her clothing with any particular country.