The Fig Eater Read online

  After his search through the city’s servant registry failed to produce Rosza’s name, Franz began to look for a contact to lead him to the missing promeneuse. He waited until a sunny day during the week to venture into the Volksgarten, when the park is an island of women and children. He walks self-consciously among them, a young man with police papers concealed in his pocket. It’s after mid-September, and the weather is still so warm that jacketless boys in short pants and shirts chase hoops and balls. Girls in pinafores and hats take turns skipping rope or wander arm in arm down the paths. Their governesses sit complacently on benches and wire chairs, immobile as a choir, raising their voices only when their charges leave the paths for the grass or climb the ornamental marble balustrades.

  Near the Temple of Theseus, he sees a girl he guesses is about the age of Dora’s brother. No sooner has he asked her a question — did she know Otto and Rosza? — than a woman stalks over and indignantly yanks her away, without even giving him a chance to explain or produce his documents. Another girl rolls her hoop straight at him, and it bounces off the back of his legs. Now he’s the object of everyone’s attention, and his face heats until he believes it is a red balloon balanced on his neck. He senses the line of their eyes following him as he steps over the circle of metal fallen at his feet and walks to the temple, fumbling with a cigarette.

  Later, he goes by the line of governesses twice before getting up the courage to approach them. A young woman at the end of the bench has a kind face, so he speaks to her first, introducing himself, pulling his official papers from a pocket. Her name is Eva. She squints at the documents, she probably can’t read, won’t admit it to a policeman. Flustered, she gives the papers to the woman sitting next to her. The papers are silently passed from hand to hand before they are gently returned to him.

  As he explains his mission to Eva, he also addresses an audience, as all the women on the bench turn their heads to examine him, a row of skeptical faces below the larger ovals of their hats. Under their intense scrutiny, his face is rinsed with red into the pale roots of his hair.

  Several of the women cross themselves when he mentions Dora, and yes, they had seen her in the Volksgarten, sometimes with her brother and Rosza.

  Do you know where I can find Fräulein Rosza? he asks.

  They shake their heads and excitedly debate his question. Where is Rosza? One elderly woman remembers her in the Hofgarten with two boys. Not today, not recently. They suggest Rosza may live with a family in the neighborhood. A governess usually has a small room at the top of the house. In less well-to-do homes, she might cook and clean the house, take care of the children, and sleep in the kitchen.

  Does anyone know Rosza’s address?

  The interview isn’t going the way it should; he can feel it slipping away from him, reshaped by their excited chatter. He’s made a mistake. In a group, a single person will rarely volunteer information. To compose himself, he remembers a sentence from Kriminalistik. “Tact. . . . Whosoever does not possess it will never make an Investigating Officer, though he be endowed a hundredfold with all the other necessary qualities.”

  He offers his arm to Eva so she’s compelled — giggling and blushing — to walk with him toward the temple. He then separately promenades and questions each woman in turn: Fräulein, do you know Rosza? What time of day would I find her here? Where does she live? Do you know anyone who was a close friend of Rosza’s, of Dora’s? Did you see Dora with anyone, a stranger, in the park? Have there been Gypsies around? May I speak with your children?

  No one has a photograph of Rosza, and although she is described as pretty, their hesitant descriptions cannot print a picture of the woman in his mind.

  With an exhausted little bow, he hands each of them an engraved business card and wishes them good day. Now he has enough information to realize Rosza will be located only by luck.

  Franz makes similar excursions to the Augarten, Hofgarten, Stadtpark, the Belvedere, the Prater, and the inexpensive tea-and-milk rooms frequented by governesses, nurses, the caretakers of children and the elderly. Over the next few months, various women will approach him on the street in a familiar way, and he will stammer for a moment before remembering their encounter in one of the parks.

  Franz walks all along the Franzenring, the street that borders the Volksgarten, before he turns on Volksgartenstrasse. He’s spent the day interviewing the Herrschaftsportiers, the stout men in ornately decorated coats who guard the doors of the government buildings, hoping one of them might have seen Dora or observed something suspicious. The arrogant Herrschaftsportier on the steps of the Justiz Palast demands to see his identity papers and a police letter. After these formalities, he shows the man Egon’s photograph of Dora. Her eyes are closed, and she appears to be sleeping. The paint and the cloth around her neck cover the bruises, the souvenirs of violence.

  In spite of his official documents, the Herrschaftsportier looks at Franz suspiciously and turns aside his questions with curt words. No, he doesn’t remember the girl in the photograph. Why should he? What he doesn’t say, but Franz begins to understand, is that a girl is beneath notice for someone in his position. He guards the doors for men.

  Franz receives the same response from the other Herrschaftsportiers. Discouraged but polite, he always thanks them.

  His official papers are of no use at the Kinderklinik, where his request to meet with one of the patients — Otto, Dora’s brother — is flatly rejected.

  This is a tuberculosis clinic, the disdainful head nurse tells him. An interview with the boy is out of the question. And I wouldn’t linger here if I were you, young man. Everyone here is contagious.

  Franz thanks her even more briefly than the Herrschaftsportiers and makes his way to the door, his cheeks burning.

  Fruit is stacked in great pyramids on rafts and floated down the Danube to Vienna, where it is delivered to the Hoher Markt. Peasants make half a day’s journey to arrive at the Markt at two o’clock in the morning, their carts loaded with cheeses, mushrooms, truffles, all kind of meats and vegetables. Like an occupying army, they quickly fill the square, erecting canvas awnings to shelter their booths and tables. By sunrise the square is thronged with shoppers, mostly women, who maneuver their baskets around the tables, the great stacks of potatoes, beets, cabbages, and horseradishes, the rough heaps of firewood.

  Erszébet buys melons and fresh duck from Hungary. Today there’s also pheasant from Bohemia, and she selects two fine birds. Another stall sells nuts, dried figs, Turkish apricots, dates from Egypt. Are fresh figs grown here? she asks the owner. None that he knows of. It’s too cold for the trees in Vienna. They won’t survive the winter freeze unless they grow in a greenhouse. He waves his thick hands over his boxes, waiting for her to select something. There’s plenty of other fruit, he says, try these sugared peaches. She buys a bulky wreath of dried figs, one hundred of them flattened, strung on reeds, and tied in a circle. They’re shipped from Greece, the islands of Andros and Syros, he tells her as he wraps them in rough paper.

  She edges through the Markt, closely followed by a uniformed Dienstmann who reverently installs her purchases in a little wooden cart pulled by a large dog. At other times, she has hired a Dienstmann to buy her theater tickets, deliver letters and packages, pack trunks, and even prepare fruit for canning.

  In the kitchen, Erszébet snips the thread of reeds holding the figs, and they tumble loose on the table. They’re heavy and dry, their wrinkled skins amber brown or gray violet, with the dull sheen of honey. Hidden inside is rose brown pulp and seeds small as grit. She arranges the figs in a silver bowl on the dining-room table.

  Her husband says nothing about the figs but doesn’t eat them. He watches her eating one fig, then two more, grinding the seeds between her teeth, the sound echoing in her head, perhaps the last sound Dora heard before there was the thunder of blood in her ears.

  On another day, Erszébet talks to a genial woman with a fruit stall in the Naschmarkt near the river Wien. Locoum
figs are considered the finest, she tells Erszébet, wiping her red hands on her apron. Imperials, London, Choice, and Prime are the four different grades. See, these figs are packed in the English way? She tilts the box to show her. The fruits have been shaped into squares and wedged so tightly together they’re as precisely flat as a checkerboard. The box has eleven rows of five figs and weighs three kilograms. A layer of laurel leaves or Calaminta nepeta protects the fruit against insects. Erszébet buys a dozen boxes.

  She asks the cook to prepare the figs into a pudding. Dried figs, chopped very fine, 450 grams. Four tablespoons butter, four eggs, 170 grams powdered sugar, half a liter of milk, 100 grams cake crumbs. The ingredients are mixed together, put in a bain marie for three hours. She serves it with whipped cream, Schlagobers.

  Her husband enjoys the dessert until his teeth crush the fine seeds and he recognizes the fruit. He gives Erszébet a curious look. She smiles back.

  Erszébet has the habit of taking up one obsessive pursuit after another. For a time, she constantly visited the exhibitions at the Sezession pavilion across from the Naschmarkt. She admires the building’s peculiar ornamentation, a sinuous bas-relief of trees. The masks of three snake-curled women guard the portal over the door, a Medusa in triplicate. The building is crowned with a huge dome, transparent as filigree, which appears to be stitched together from gold laurel leaves. Certain wags call it “the cabbage.” When a young Sezessionist artist who exhibited there was arrested for making pornographic drawings of his schoolgirl models and his work was burned before a judge, Erszébet was distraught for days. Later, her husband discovered all her souvenirs of the artist ripped to shreds in the bottom of a drawer.

  At one time, she collected Venetian glass, filling the credenza in the dining room with shapes in molten colors like precious edible things, brittle candies. But she grew bored with them. They’re pretty enough to break your teeth on, she said dismissively. When her husband pointed out the pale dust cloaking their shine, she only shrugged. Yes, I know they need cleaning.

  Cracks and chips mysteriously appeared on two of the vases that she’d formerly prized.

  He was relieved when she began painting again, although her search for subjects — landscapes, plants — took her away from the house. She gave only vague answers when he asked where exactly had she spent the day?

  Once, he stroked her paintbrushes with the tip of his finger to see if they really were damp when she returned from one of her artistic expeditions.

  Erszébet’s capriciousness led her to hire and swiftly dismiss a succession of maids, none of them alike in their character or appearance. The new maid, a dour woman from Hajdúság in eastern Hungary, seemed to please her, although it irritates him to be left out of their conversations in their own language. He’s uneasy in the maid’s company but would never say a word against her. He understands that his tolerance of these servants somehow secures his own place with his wife. There are decoys working in the household.

  Erszébet discovers references to the fig in mythology as well as in accounts of trade and horticulture in the ancient world.

  The Greeks believed the first fig tree grew in Phykalos by command of the goddess Ceres, her gift to the inhabitants. In the regions of the dead, Tantalus was condemned to stand in a pool, forever grasping at the “pomegranates, pears, apples, sweet figs, and dark olives” just beyond his reach. According to Roman legend, Romulus and Remus were nursed by a she-wolf under a sacred fig tree.

  Cato knew six varieties of fig. Two centuries later, Pliny cataloged thirty kinds of figs, their names taken from the places they grew or the individuals who cultivated them: Rhodian, Hyrcanian, Lydian, Herculean, Pompeian, and Livian figs.

  Herodotus noted that Kroisos was warned to avoid war with “barbarians who knew neither wine nor figs.” In his time, the fig had not yet reached Persia or Babylon. Later, the Arabs came to revere the fruit. According to Zamakhschari, an Arab scholar who wrote on the Koran, the prophet Muhammad said, “If I should wish a fruit brought to Paradise, it would certainly be the fig.”

  In the sixteenth century, Cardinal Pole brought fig trees from Italy and planted them in the gardens of the Archepiscopal palace at Lambeth.

  The botanical classification of the fig remained to be discovered by others.

  That winter, Wally had arrived in Vienna to work as a governess with no introductions except to the family who employed her. She met other governesses in the parks with the children but refused to socialize with them, spending her time alone in various kaffeehäuser around the city. She took lessons at the Military Swimming School & Bath near the Kronprinz Rudolf Bridge and traveled by rail to Baden for elaborate mineral-water treatments at Sacher’s Helenental Hydropathic.

  Because of illness, the family she was staying with had temporarily left the city in June, so Wally had time to explore. She’d take the Humber bicycle from the stable and wheel it to the Prater, where the Vienna C.T.C. had laid a winding track along the banks of the Danube.

  At the highest point of the track, Wally would unpin her braids and hook her hat over the bicycle’s handlebars, so it bounced crazily as she sped downhill, scarcely able to breathe with fear and excitement, the Danube a streak of silver at her side, solid as the wind on her face.

  Moving this fast, she could barely sense the bicycle beneath her.

  Wally believed she had been embraced by a community of women when she discovered this secluded area of the park, since the Bicyclistinnen rode on the track. When the women approached each other on their bicycles, they would slow down, lift their veils, and exchange a greeting, as if they were coconspirators.

  One hot day in July, Wally had stopped her bicycle at the bottom of the hill after a wild ride. Exhilarated, breathless, she thought she was alone. Suddenly, a woman stepped from the shadows at the side of the track, startling her. It was Erszébet, and she congratulated Wally on her riding skills. They gradually became friends.

  Wally never bicycles on the streets, although there is less wheeled traffic in Vienna than London. Automobiles are rare, and she’s noticed small carts pulled by ragged boys or muzzled dogs even in the heart of the city. When she first arrived, she was surprised to see pedestrians wandering freely on the streets — rather than the sidewalks — barely breaking stride for a speeding wagon or fiaker. Without lowering their parasols, women stepped blindly off curbs onto the cobblestones. She regards this as primitive behavior.

  Heads will always turn for a nobleman’s carriage. The families of Prince Trauttmansdorff, Prince Esterházy, Prince Auersburg, Count Pálffy, Baron Rothschild, and Princess Pauline Metternich keep their equipages in town, and when they tour the Haupt Allee in the Prater, their carriages are preceded by uniformed runners with silver walking sticks.

  On state occasions, Emperor Franz Josef rides in a coach accompanied by ten footmen in white periwigs, forty lackeys, and eight marching heiduques. A member of the Hungarian Honor Guard stands at each side of the coach, a panther skin over the shoulder of his scarlet and silver uniform.

  Wally arrives early at Gerstner’s on the Kärntner Strasse and takes a table in the back. Everyone sitting around her is idle with newspapers or card games. It’s just four o’clock. After too many critical eyes are directed at her, a young woman sitting alone, she pulls cigarettes from her reticule. She orders a Kaisermelange, black coffee with an egg yolk and brandy, and a sweet, gebackene Mäuse, which curiously translates into English as “baked mice.”

  When Erszébet arrives, Wally greets her loudly — in English — so the other patrons will recognize her as a foreigner.

  Erszébet sits down and strips off her gloves. “I asked my husband if they found anyone who saw Dora that night in the Volksgarten.”

  “Yes?”

  “They haven’t found any witnesses. They questioned the chestnut seller and the lamplighter. There is also a Slav shoe-shine man who always stands near the park entrance. When the police found him, he claimed he hadn’t seen anything, even after
they took his polishes and locked him up for two nights. The man claimed he never looked at women’s faces, only their feet.”

  “Did they show him Dora’s boots?”

  Erszébet laughs. “The police didn’t think it would be useful information. I’m not so sure. When I was a child, I saw the shoes of a saint. Do you have a Saint Lucy in your church? She traditionally appears on her namesake day, December thirteenth, to check children’s behavior. One of our servants disguised herself as Saint Lucy in a long sheet with a sieve over her face. I remember she held a rolling pin, like this. She was frightening. She questioned me, Did I do my household tasks? Was I a good girl? When my mother pushed me forward to recite my prayers, I burst into tears and fell at Saint Lucy’s feet. I was so astonished to see muddy shoes under her disguise I stopped crying.”

  The Speiseträger brings more coffee and glasses of water. They’re quiet until he leaves the table. Then Erszébet reads from the notebook she’s started on Dora’s case. “A fresh fig was the last thing Dora ate. The murderer gave it to her. The fruit sellers in the markets have no fresh figs. Only dried ones are available. So the fig was grown here in Vienna. I can identify the variety of fig since I saw it in the vial. We need to find the tree.”

  “Maybe her family has a greenhouse. A fig could grow there,” Wally suggests. That would be easy.

  “It would be a clue hidden in the most obvious place.”

  “Not obvious to everyone. The murderer is the only one who knows about the fig.”