The Fig Eater Read online

  So every witness lied, marvels Franz. A killing took place, visible but invisible to hundreds of eyes. At this moment he rejoices in the Inspector’s learning. He doesn’t write down his words, but commands them to heart.

  “But sir, how could that happen? How could so many people forget the ax blow? It seems uncanny. Maybe they were hypnotized.”

  “The question is, did the witnesses actually not remember what they’d seen? I’m not certain there’s a word for something which is clearly seen but not remembered. It’s not a memory.”

  The Inspector believes the ax stroke was blocked by an impulse of the witness’s eyes or brains before it reached the state of memory. Hid it from whatever root in the mind that stored such an image. Just as he fears his memory of Dora’s corpse will come back to him, unbidden. The incident was verdrängt, repressed.

  But Franz knows something else. The witnesses were beset by abjection. What they rejected was the wait — the infinite suspended space — between the first and final strokes of the ax. How time hurtled then stood still for Queen Mary, waiting for death on her knees.

  Franz takes the queen of Scots as his patron saint of witnesses. Later, he will sense her presence hovering invisibly behind every witness he interrogates, eternally patient.

  Franz and the Inspector walk down the hallway of the Naturhistorisches Museum. They’ve just had lunch together, and Franz is light-headed from the attention.

  “What did he smell like, the Gypsy at Herr Zellenka’s? My mother said Gypsies smell like rancid fat and mice. Is that true?”

  “Gypsies smell like mice? Franz, the man isn’t a character from a folktale.” The Inspector is exasperated.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Nervous, Franz stumbles as they continue to walk in silence. He counts the lamps in the hallway, to distance himself from the Inspector’s rebuke.

  “I’m not angry at you. Try to avoid patterns, Franz. An Investigating Officer never accepts another person’s conclusions or prejudice. You must prove every fact for yourself. This is the best advice I can give you.”

  Franz nods mournfully, his face flushed.

  The Inspector has always prided himself on his ability to listen, as a good Bürger is confident of his business acumen. During interrogations, he can distinguish the different qualities of the witnesses’ silence, as if it were a tone of voice.

  He’s admonished Franz more than once for interrupting him. Don’t be so hasty. Slow down and listen. In the Pythagorean system, disciples would spend five years listening before they were allowed to ask a single question. This was in the fourth century B.C. Another philosopher, Philo of Alexandria, wrote about Banquets of Silence, where even the correct posture for listening was determined.

  In Kriminalistik there is a text on the subject. He orders Franz to read it as part of his lesson. “To observe how the person questioned listens is a rule of primary importance, and if the officer observes it he will arrive at his goal more quickly than by hours of examination.”

  The city is totally silent as its streets are gradually buried by flying dull white powder, as thick and purposeful as Pompeian ash. This is the first heavy snowfall.

  Wally knows Erszébet mirrors her movements and stands at her own window, also watching the snow. She’s never seen Erszébet’s home, but she has a clear vision of her now, holding a blue curtain back with one hand, peering out at the snow’s impenetrable whiteness, imposing its transformation over the landscape, radical as fire. She’s certain their thoughts are the same; snow has buried the fig tree. That part of their investigation has ended. Wally consoles herself with the idea that perhaps the fig was symbolic. Perhaps Dora’s last meal was the murderer’s private joke, which they accidentally intercepted. Perhaps she’s just trying to fit her own story onto Dora’s murder, something she made up.

  Now she worries about telling Erszébet the evidence is entirely lost to them. If there is a fig tree behind Dora’s house, Wally failed to find it. She twice stopped to visit Dora’s mother, but no one opened the door at her knocking. The thick curtains were pulled tight against any escaping light from inside. The garden gate was locked.

  As uncomfortable as it is to anticipate this rebuke, she would gladly endure more severe punishments to keep Erszébet’s esteem. When someone crosses Erszébet, Wally has seen her turn unexpectedly icy, as if some opaque transformation had taken place. A few days have passed without conversation between them, which makes Wally alternately fearful and sad.

  When Erszébet learns all her research on figs has come to nothing, she frowns and makes a brief entry in the notebook about Dora’s case. From this point, she will exclude Wally from the progress chronicled in the notebook.

  The day after the snowfall, the front door of the house is wedged shut with ice, but Wally shoves it open, then half slides, half falls down the steps. Vienna has been altered into an unfamiliar place. There are no visible landmarks. Snow covers the street — up to her waist in some places — and thickly disguises windows and doorways. The ground floors of the buildings are unrecognizable. It is strangely soothing after the isolation of the last few days.

  At first she enjoys making her way through the snow, for there are no pedestrians and no traffic. At the end of one street, two figures slip and fall on the ice, moving in irresistible slow motion, the woman’s full skirt flying up just as she falls, transforming her into a dark swinging shape, a bell.

  Tired by the effort of walking, the thick one-two stab of her boots into the snow, Wally begins to stagger. She is standing just off the curb when she hears the crack of a whip, and a huge dragon hurtles around the corner, soundlessly moving straight toward her. She’s immobile, her legs encased in snow, and in the next moment she realizes the dragon is a carved sleigh drawn by black horses.

  How can she place what she just witnessed? The snow’s radiant blankness, its soundlessness, the freezing air — seem to be details torn from a dream. As if she’d fallen asleep and dreamed of being pursued by a fierce animal, then woken to find black hairs curled between her fingers.

  Erszébet began to spend a great deal of time away from the house. The household continued to be immaculately kept, and the meals ordered from the cook still revolved around her husband’s favorite Hungarian dishes. She frequently served tokány, a stew made with veal, sour cream, mushrooms, peas, parsley root, and goose livers. Another stew was prepared with the famous sausage from Debrecen. Shakers of sweet paprika, különleges, and hot, erös, were always in their customary places on the table next to the salt and pepper. She brought home fondant from Lehmann’s and petits fours from Scheidl’s.

  Bouquets of hothouse carnations and roses no longer decorated the parlor table and Erszébet’s vanity table, since she didn’t shop for flowers and didn’t trust the maid to select them. She was oblivious to the cigars and cigarettes that perfumed her clothing, a souvenir of the hours spent with Wally in the various Kaffeehäuser. Her knitting had been abandoned.

  Erszébet continued her watercolors. Some mornings, her husband found damp brushes on the table, but he never saw her at her easel. He considered it indelicate to ask to see a finished painting. He knew this from his work. She left bowls of dried figs sitting out until they were inedible. Just leave them alone, she said when he asked about them, they’re a nature morte for artistic observation. I’m painting them. He noticed the pack of tarot cards was missing from its usual place in the drawer. He later discovered the deck in her satchel. She constantly consulted her book about dream interpretation.

  He added up all these small changes and deviations from their routine domestic life. The error in the situation. He wondered if Erszébet could be in poor health or was secretly troubled by something. He didn’t consider the idea she might be having an affair. Had he offended her? Perhaps he’d been too preoccupied with his work. Another case had come in, a forgery, and he’d spent most of the week searching out a pen-maker familiar with the characteristics of various antique inks. He was also looking for an
other expert who could duplicate sealing wax.

  He doesn’t discuss the fig and the broken glass vial with her. It was just an accident. She discovered the vial in his satchel and was curious about it. That’s what she told him. He identified his uneasiness but kept it to himself.

  Franz is handling the identification of the cloak found in the Volksgarten. In preparation for Dora’s mother, he displayed the cloak on the desk in his office rather than in the grim morgue room. The Inspector was pleased by his choice. It demonstrated a sensitivity that he didn’t think his assistant had yet developed.

  When Franz ushered the woman into his office, she took two steps and refused to move any closer to the garment. She said she could see the thing well enough and it did not belong to her daughter. She took out a handkerchief and, between sobs, asked if they’d made a mistake, perhaps it wasn’t really Dora in the Volksgarten? Perhaps it was another girl?

  Franz was taken aback at her reaction. The Inspector reassured him that hysterical women were always surprising.

  Erszébet’s whispers echo up the elaborate staircase in the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien. She encourages Wally to return to Herr Zellenka’s.

  “Jószef is a Gypsy, so if he stole the thumb, it will be hidden in his room. There might be other charms, a jar of ashes or an amulet, some strange object. Or a paper with pictures on it, since no Gypsy can read or write. I promise you, there won’t be much to see.”

  Wally is reluctant. The Zellenkas’ house is an unpredictable place. “I don’t know how to find anything.”

  “My husband said Jószef lives in the stable. He drives the fiaker, so if the horses have been taken out, you’ll be perfectly safe.”

  Wally is silent. They proceed to the exhibition hall at the top of the stairs.

  “I’ll wait outside their house in the fiaker. You can search his room in the afternoon, so there will still be light. Nothing can happen to you.”

  When she still doesn’t answer, Erszébet abruptly leaves her, passing into the next room, the angry tap of her umbrella escorting her across the marble floor.

  Wally follows her into a place filled with the somber presence of metal, battle trophies captured from the Turks. It’s as if she’s walked into a huge and silent engine. A machine of war. On the walls are curved scimitars, Kurd lances, hanjars, shields, swords, daggers, wheel locks, and flintlocks for muskets. Suits of armor are ranged against both sides of the door, none of them taller than she is. As she moves around the room, the light wavers and changes shape, as if the objects it strikes were submerged in water, touching a knifepoint, the cheek of a shield, the curve of scales on armor, the dull nest of mesh under a helmet. On the ceiling, an ancient banner of crimson silk bearing the hand of Muhammad is a relief in its simplicity.

  One case is filled with dark lengths of what looks like rope, and when Wally gets closer, she discovers rows of neatly braided horse tails, jeweled at the ends where they were cut from the animals’ bodies.

  Inside another glass case there’s a skull balanced on a peg, its rough surface the color of tobacco. A folded shirt and a cord are displayed next to it.

  Her face floats above the skull, a pale moon reflected in the glass. Erszébet’s head suddenly appears behind Wally’s shoulder, her eyes sunken into black half circles below the brim of her hat. She translates the card in the case.

  In 1683, when the Turkish general Kara-Mustapha was defeated in battle outside Vienna, the Sultan sent him the silk cord. Mustapha hung himself with this cord, wearing this shirt. A suicide on a point of honor. The skin was stripped from his face as proof of his death.

  Wally squints at the skull, looking for marks made by the flaying knives. Erszébet’s voice is close to her ear.

  “When Kara-Mustapha was defeated, he destroyed his two most precious possessions to keep them from the infidels. His beautiful wife and his ostrich.”

  “You would never find a skull displayed like this in the British Museum,” mutters Wally, moving away.

  After the dark rooms of the Historisches Museum, the intensity of the winter light outside narrows their eyes. It is an afternoon of burning sky. Wind rolls a man’s hat over the thin snow in front of the Rathaus Park. No one runs after it. Erszébet tightens her hat veil under her chin and takes Wally’s arm as they descend the steps.

  “Gypsies hate the wind. They’ll do anything to avoid it. They also believe certain days of the week are unlucky, but time can hardly be avoided like the wind.”

  Sometimes Wally can recognize the distance between them, the boundaries on the map of their ages and characters, nationalities and languages. Once Erszébet smiled when Wally, not understanding something, asked her to explain herself. A characteristic of Magyar, my first language, is its inexactness, she said by way of explanation. My husband comments on it all the time. He wonders if I listen in the same way. I tell him everything is in the interpretation. He calls it the error in the situation.

  Erszébet has it in her character to punish, to pay back for infractions, disagreements, trespassing. In this way, she is as straightforward as a superstition. What will happen as a result of an action can be predicted. A magpie indicates a guest will arrive. A bat is a sign of misfortune. It is bad luck to start a journey on Friday. A dog’s howl signifies an approaching death.

  She is as secure in her beliefs as if a vision had authenticated their correctness. Wally imagines Erszébet underwater and then resurfacing, transformed but unable to describe what it was she encountered in that dim place without breath.

  Without being aware of it, she has started to consider Erszébet a seer.

  Others might believe Wally has been bewitched, judging by her nervous wait for Erszébet’s approval, the way she studies the woman’s face and gestures, her smile.

  However, at this moment, when Erszébet urges Wally to search Jószef’s room, will you do it? Wally doesn’t answer. Her hesitation, like a pause in music, forces Erszébet to fuse all her attention on Wally.

  Erszébet doesn’t look away.

  “Yes, I’ll go to his room,” Wally finally answers.

  “Good. Tomorrow, csütörtök, will be fortunate for us.”

  Wally rolls her head back against the padded red leather upholstery, which relieves the ache in her neck. She’s waiting in a fiaker outside Erszébet’s house. Time passes slowly until Erszébet gets back into the carriage with a large flat parcel. This is your disguise, she says. Go ahead, unwrap it. Inside there’s a thick pad of paper and colored pencils, which will be Wally’s excuse in case she’s caught trespassing. She’s an artist, sketching the fine homes in the neighborhood. Today the Föhn wind is a presence in Vienna, turning the temperature freakishly warm. A day for an artist to work outdoors.

  The driver whistles the horses over to the side of a street near the Zellenkas’ house. Erszébet squeezes Wally’s hand encouragingly. I’ll be waiting nearby. Remember, even a pebble in a Gypsy’s room can be significant. Sharpen your eyes.

  The outside gate is unlocked. Without looking back, Wally pushes it open and walks confidently past the Zellenkas’ house. She enters the garden and finds it altered from her night memory into a place where trees are fixed in their leaflessness and color fills in shapes — a parterre, a row of dwarf conifers — she’d only guessed at before. She recognizes the white statue of a nymph and an urn.

  The stable is a large stone building on her left, empty of both horses and carriages. There is straw on the paving stones by the door, a haphazard spill of stiff, pale gold threads.

  A dog begins to howl.

  She stops. Fear makes her body suddenly hollow, threaded by the pulse of her heart. She waits. Erszébet told her that when Gypsies break into a house, they’ll rub their shoes and trousers against the sexual parts of a bitch in heat, to pacify the watchdog.

  She pieces the sensations of her body back together. She slowly walks around to the stable. She guesses the outside door must lead to Jószef’s room. Before touching the doorknob, she loo
ks at it closely, to see if it was sprinkled with powder. Erszébet told her to check for this. She also examines the threshold for dust or broom straws that her feet would disturb, another trap set for unobservant intruders. Her investigation has the charm of a fairy tale, the clues as cryptic as crumbs on a path, a broken chair and a bowl of cold porridge, a boy with a bone for a finger.

  No response to her knock on the door.

  Inside the room, she’s aware of a curious, intimate smell, although it’s as bare as a prison. No one could hide here. She expected to find strange stones and roots arranged on a table, sinister dried objects nailed to the wall, a cabinet of curiosities. Relieved, she sets her pencils and paper on the table.

  The blanket on the bed is rough wool; she can’t bear to handle it. She pulls it off and tosses it in the corner. The mattress is surprisingly awkward, stuffed with straw, and she struggles to hold an end up, exposing the bare slats of the bed underneath. Nothing to discover. Under the bed there’s a moldy-looking bloom of dust she won’t disturb.

  She’s reluctant to handle the bright jacket hanging on a peg. Even wearing gloves, the contact seems too intimate. She recalls the man who wore it as a frightening figure, his metal nose like a toy on his face. It takes her a few minutes to examine the entire garment, turning the sleeves inside out, pressing her fingers into the pockets and all along the lengths of the hems, feeling for a lump or a slip of paper. It would be easier to just take the jacket with me, she thinks.

  While searching the room, she listens for noise on the paving stones outside, so she doesn’t notice when a shadow breaks the light through the open door. She looks up when heavy boots scrape the step, the sound filling the room so the man in the doorway seems immense, a dark shape. She drops the jacket and grabs the edge of the table, upsetting it with a crash.