Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part Two
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part Three
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Part Four
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Acknowledgement
Also by Leon Garfield
Copyright
FOR KAYE WEBB
A FINE APRIL morning, even though it was Monday. Somewhere or other the sun was shining and birds were singing their heads off; but not in this particular street. It was dark and narrow, with bends as sharp as a pauper’s elbow. It was old, shabby and broken-down, and even the air seemed tired of being breathed and just loafed about, thinking of cabbage and last week’s pickled herrings.
A clock banged out seven; and with a grisly rattle of chains, and a grinding as of iron teeth, the shop doors shook and opened, like so many dirty mouths, and drab boys came out – like pips – exchanged insults, took down the window shutters and went back inside as if jerked on strings.
There followed a haphazard uproar, suggestive of helpless rooms and furniture being beaten to death, and rubbish of all descriptions came flying out, followed by clouds of dust that hung about patiently until the commotion had subsided – and then went back inside again.
One premises alone remained aloof; it was like the still eye at the centre of a storm. Heinrich Ruppert: Fashionable Footwear and High-class Repairs. Nothing stirred; nothing even quivered. It was as if Sunday had been taken ill inside and had had to stay.
One by one, up and down the street, doors slammed shut and a multitude of shoutings and hammerings proclaimed that the day’s work had begun. Fashionable Footwear and High-class Repairs remained as silent as the tomb.
After an interval of several minutes, the shoemaker’s door stirred. A crack appeared, widened, and a head edged out. Two women, on their way to market, went gossiping by. The head vanished and the door shut – so quickly that it was a marvel the head hadn’t been cut off.
Time passed. Again the door opened. Out came the head. Looked both ways. All clear. Relief transfigured the slice of face and, cautiously, the remainder emerged.
It consisted of a boy of about fourteen, carrying, very delicately, a pair of magnificent gold-laced boots. They were tall, stiff-jacked boots of the kind known as ‘hessians’; and, by holding them upright, on either side of his face, he was able to proceed down the street under, as it were, a cloak of invisibility. Even so, at every threat to his privacy – real or imagined – he raised the boots another inch until only the top of his hair appeared above them, like black grass.
The reason for this extraordinary caution was that he owed money all round, and, being temporarily unable to pay it back, was naturally anxious to avoid his creditors.
His debts amounted to forty-five krone, which included three to his younger brother, Friedrich, who was daily threatening to expose him as a liar, a bankrupt and a gambler with certain disreputable youths who hung about round the back of The Angel, in the Marienplatz. All this produced a sinking sensation in his stomach and a sense of deep injury.
He wasn’t so much a gambler as an investor, and quite a shrewd one. Only he’d struck a bad patch. It could have happened to anyone. The thing was, to persevere. All he needed was more capital to recover his losses and end up in profit. It was bound to happen. The layabouts in the Marienplatz were no match – in the long run – for an intelligent businessman like himself. Ten krone, if sensibly deployed, would easily turn the tide. Just ten little krone . . .
Unfortunately he hadn’t got ten krone. He hadn’t even got one, and his credit was exhausted. It just lay down like a lump of lead and grunted:
‘You’ve got a nerve: Shove off!’
As he continued down the street, by stops and starts and rapid little scurries, he was aware of a gaunt figure hastening after him, with bony hand outstretched. It was the spectre of Financial Ruin, and it was breathing down his neck.
But all was not lost. There were the boots. Although his sister had said she was going to deliver them, he’d taken that task on himself. By one of those great coincidences that gives you faith that Someone is watching over you, there was ten krone due for the repair.
Presently, when he was far enough away from immediate embarrassment, he felt able to lower the boots and reveal himself to the passing world. He was poorly but respectably dressed and his face bore some evidence of washing;, only his hair betrayed the ambitious nature of the thoughts beneath it. It was black and stood up in spikes, like a crown.
His name was Hans Ruppert and he was well known as an habitual idler, a loafer and an Atheist who sang rude words to the hymns, loud enough to be heard.
But this was only the outside of him. Within there was a great stillness and mystery, like a deep pond in which golden dreams lurked and hovered, like fish. He was haunted by secret visions of wealth, enormous wealth. He dreamed of possessing inconceivable sums of money that would lift him far above all petty nuisance into a world of influence, power and respect. Gambling was just a beginning. It was nothing. Beyond the Marienplatz he could see a series of brilliant manipulations that would lead him to the heights. He was so sure of his eventual outcome that he was able to escape from his nagging persecutors as easily as if he’d had wings. He often dreamed of flying.
As he walked along, thus absorbed, passers-by either avoided him or were avoided by him; it was hard to say which, as he tended to weave about and execute unexpected little sideways hops. He was following a peculiarly private path that led from particular cobble to particular cobble, and avoiding the gaps. If he could deliver the boots without faltering, then everything would be all right.
‘Look where you’re going, boy!’
‘Sorry . . . sorry . . . You fat old fool!’ (The latter under his breath.)
At last the sun began to strike through the crowded chimney pots in a spread of golden fingers that alternately dazzled and plunged back into shade. This was a good sign; gold was always good.
Suddenly the houses ceased; the sun streamed down without interruption; and there before him, in the middle of a gigantic green yawn, stood the Prince-Bishop’s fine new palace. It was like an enormous gilded blister with a liberal discharge of marble stairways, marble urns and marble children, doomed forever to clasp flowerpots, and smile.
Hans Ruppert paused, surveyed the scene and then stumped on, with such reflections as: ‘Little do they know! Some day I’ll be back and buy up this dump like a pound of soused herring!’ He reached the tall iron gates and a soldier came out of a painted box, like a birthday present.
‘Sergeant Wohlgemuth’s boots,’ said Hans Ruppert, displaying them prominently.
‘Guard Room,’ said the soldier, and thumbed him through towards another, smaller gilded blister that seemed just to have broken out on the right.
Hans Ruppert walked on, stopping only for a brief conversation with a marble child.
‘Why don’t you say something?’
‘You will be rich, Hans Ruppert,’ said the marble one, smiling round the side of its pot.
‘Word of honour?’
‘Word of honour.’
Reassured, Hans Ruppert approached the Guard Room. The door was open and an invisible occupant, in the shape of an overpowering smell of yesterday’s wine, came out to meet him.
Three warriors, in crumpled blue, white and gold, glinted feebly within. They looked as if they’d been discarded after a lifetime’s hard use. Two were slumped in chairs and the third was reclining, unbuttoned, on a sofa.
‘Sergeant Wohlgemuth’s boots,’ said Hans Ruppert, and stood them to attention on the crowded table.
They looked remarkably stern, amidst the hopeless conviviality of empty bottles.
Sergeant Wohlgemuth lifted a blurred hand from the sofa. He was a large man, with gingerish hair, an inflammatory face and small blue eyes that would have been piercing if he’d been able to focus them. He and his companions – inferiors, both – had been celebrating his name-day – or somebody’s name-day – all night.
‘Your boots, your honour. They’re mended.’
The sergeant sat up; he rose; staggered slightly but managed to clutch on to the table in time. All the bottles chimed in a congratulatory sort of way, and several fell over. He stared at his boots blankly, as if wondering how they’d got there without his feet. Then he glared at Hans Ruppert and everything came flooding back to him. Whatever it was, it caused him intense grief and distress.
‘Why didn’t she – your sister . . . bring them? I asked her to! I told her . . . Why didn’t she come?’
Hans Ruppert appeared to be giving the matter his deepest thought. It was all very mysterious. He really couldn’t say –
‘The lousy rotten little bitch!’ said Sergeant Wohlgemuth, tearfully addressing his boots. ‘Who does she think she is?’
Hans Ruppert cogitated again. An even bigger mystery.
‘Get out! Get out of here!’
‘Yes your honour! Directly, your honour,’ said Hans Ruppert, thankful to be relieved of any further inquiries about his sister. ‘There’s ten krone to pay for the boots –’
‘I’ll give you boots!’ shouted the rejected lover; and immediately did so by planting his foot, with a speed and accuracy surprising in one of his bulk, up the boy’s backside with the force of a cannonball.
Hans Ruppert rose a clear six inches in the air and felt the blow to the backs of his teeth. For a moment, he believed he’d been killed. He shrieked and fled; not forgetting, in his shattered progress to the gate, to curse the lying marble child, and take a venomous hack at its shins.
‘Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!’ groaned the heartbroken one, collapsing back on to the sofa after his effort. ‘Who does she think she is?’
The bitch in question was Elizabeth Ruppert, a strikingly lovely girl of sixteen, who ruled the household with tongue, tears and temper, which she dispensed like seasoning whenever life threatened to be calm. She held the view that all men were children and needed to be washed, fed and screamed at by the woman of the house, or everything would go to the dogs. There was no mother. Long ago – in the words of a crazy old neighbour – she’d run off to live with that handsome devil, Grandfather Death.
Hans Ruppert, his backside burning like fire and his debts increased by a further ten krone, couldn’t help feeling that his mother was well out of it; and had some thoughts of intruding himself into her grisly love-nest.
He really couldn’t see any other way out of his difficulties. He thought of the river; but you needed a krone even to get on to the bridge. He thought of hanging himself; but who would lend him a rope? It was hopeless. You needed money to live; you needed money to die. He began to wonder if there might not be some stage in between, in which he might remain until all his creditors had crumbled into dust?
If you could sleep for, say, a hundred years . . . having first invested, say, ten krone at ten per cent, in some growing concern? Let me see . . . that would be –?
A smell of fish had begun to intrude on his thoughts, and a remote shouting and screeching irritated him. He looked about him and saw that he was near the Fish Market. He caught sight of Frau Marskin, that pop-eyed cow who lived next door, and to whom he owed eight krone. Hastily he retreated, but at the same time he couldn’t help smiling sardonically at the absurdity of being frightened of Frau Marskin when he’d just been making up his mind to go to that place where all debts were cancelled and all bankrupts freely discharged.
He broke into a run. After all, you couldn’t be too careful until you actually got there.
He made for the Marienplatz, partly out of old habit, and partly with the unreasonable hope of being allowed to gamble on credit. If he got there in exactly two hundred paces, everything would be all right. If not, it was definitely the END.
One . . . two . . . three . . . He altered his pace. Four – five – six –
The streets were hopelessly, ragingly crowded. If he passed, say, an even number of men wearing blue . . .?
Fifteen . . . sixteen . . .
Monday morning traffic choked and lumbered every crossing. If he saw more brown horses than grey . . .?
Twenty-two . . . twenty-three . . .
If he should see an odd number of women wearing green . . .?
Thirty . . . thirty-one . . .
Suddenly he heard the distant sound of a post-horn. He glanced at a clock. It must be the Frankfurt coach.
If only he could reach the Marienplatz before the coach arrived.
This last condition proved almost too much for all the complex calculations he was holding in his head.
Forty, was it? He shortened his pace and emptied his mind of everything except the vital calculations. Five to one the browns; ten blues and seven greens. Fifty-one, and if he beat the Frankfurt coach everything would be all right!
The Frankfurt coach! That was the thing! He heard it again, blasting its heart out as it came nearer and nearer to the Marienplatz!
A GRIM AND shadowy figure sat in a corner of the Frankfurt coach, jogging up and down and being tumbled from side to side, while aloft, the guard blew loud and unnecessary arpeggios on his immense horn.
He was all in black, was this shadow: black coat, black breeches, high black boots and a short black pelisse that finished half-way down his backside. From behind, he looked like a gigantic blot of ink; but from the front – which was the aspect he was careful to present to his fellow travellers whenever he felt their sidelong scrutiny – he was a handsome devil of about thirty, with a magnificent black moustache that shone like oil, and a pair of twinkling grey eyes that always seemed to be inquiring:
‘Are we acquainted? Were you expecting me by any chance?’
Most of the time he was friendly and talkative, taking a great interest in everyone and in the passing landscape – with which he seemed unfamiliar – remarking on the prosperous state of the hillside vineyards and the quaint architecture of the old village churches and wayside shrines; but every once in a while, he’d fall into a sudden reverie in which he became more shadowy than ever, and his travelling companions felt they could almost see the deep buttoning of the seat, right through him.
He had a black leather bag which he kept between his boots, where it crouched like a faithful hound with silver jaws; and he had a soft black cap to which was sewn a long scarf – also of black – that somehow suggested the bandaging up of eyes.
It was a very disagreeable cap. Right on the front of it, piped in glaring white, was a death’s head. It seemed to grin hungrily from traveller to traveller, and made a fitting companion for the silver-mouthed dog at his feet.
When he put this cap on his head – which he did whenever the coach stopped for refreshment or to change horses – his own pleasant smile and the dreadful, bony grin seemed to mock each other.
‘I’m not such a bad fellow . . .’
‘Ha – ha – ha!’
‘All I want is to get on well with you . . .’
‘Ha – ha – ha!’
‘Come! Let’s be friends!’
‘Ha – ha – ha!’
As if aware of this warfare between grin and smile, and the disturbing effect it had, he seemed anxious to set his companions at ease. Unasked – nobody would have dreamed of asking him, anyway – he said he was a hussar, lately in the King of Prussia’s service, but now discharged with the ending of the war. He was looking round for something – something to occupy him and make the best use of his abilities. He’d nothing in particular in view, but he was sure he’d find something suited to his talents . . .
‘Ha – ha – ha!’ said the death’s head.
‘No, truly!’ said the smile. ‘I’m quite a simple fellow, really!’
Then he went on to ruminate cheerfully on old battles and the many great men of his acquaintance; while the others in the coach listened politely, and wished the journey would come to an end.
‘No! Really?’ they said. ‘What an interesting life you must have had! You’ll miss it, won’t you!’
‘No . . . no. The time comes when one wants to settle down.’
But not in our town! thought the travellers, with unchanging smiles.
However there was amongst them, a child travelling in the care of grandparents, who was too young to be polite, and too old to be made to hold his tongue. The black hussar fascinated him and reminded him of all the old tales with which his head had been stuffed.
‘I know you!’ he cried. ‘You’re the soldier who made a bargain with the devil so you could be rich!’
‘Ssh! Ssh!’
‘He did! He did! It’s true, isn’t it? You made a bargain to wear the devil’s cap and cloak for all of seven years . . . until he comes to fetch them back!’
‘Ssh! Ssh!’
‘Ah! You’ve got it all wrong,’ said the hussar, with appropriate gravity, after he’d got over his surprise. ‘The fellow you mean wore a green jacket; and anyway, he was a taller man than me. And, if I remember rightly, it was Grandfather Death he made a bargain with, and not the devil.’
‘How do you know that? Have you seen him?’
‘Oh yes,’ said the hussar, with the merest suspicion of a wink round the coach, which suggested that he was good with children.
‘Where? Where?’
‘Oh. In Hamburg. I met him there.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Very rich . . . and very troubled in his mind.’
‘Why? Because he was rich? That’s silly!’ (‘Ssh! Ssh!’) ‘If I was rich, I wouldn’t be troubled. I don’t believe you!’
‘But his time was up, you see. He was expecting old Grandfather Death at every minute.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘I don’t know that,’ said the hussar; and smiled gently at the grandparents, who unaccountably whitened to the bottoms of their wrinkles.
‘Yes you do! Yes you do!’ screamed the child in a temper, as he felt that something was being kept from him. ‘You do know!’
So the black hussar, with a good-natured chuckle, leaned sideways and neatly extinguished the angry child under his cap with its death’s head, making of him for a moment, a jumping, diminutive Death, such as goes to carnivals and suffocates babies in their cribs.
Then the hussar, who travelled under the name of Captain Hildebrand von Stumpfel, late of von Reusch’s Hussars – in which regiment he’d served as Quartermaster – retrieved his cap and set it on his own head. They were crossing a long stone bridge. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The coach was approaching its journey’s end.
HUNDRED AND NINETY-EIGHT . . . hundred and ninety-nine . . . two hundred! He’d done it! Everything had worked out exactly right! It was amazing. He’d never known such a thing happen before. This time, surely, it must mean something!
With an uprush of confidence that was next door to a certainty, Hans Ruppert limped into the uproarious Marienplatz with such a smile on his face that you might have thought he owned it and had come to collect his rent. He glanced, still smiling, towards The Angel where his victims were doubtless gathered, little knowing that they were about to be cleaned out.
As usual, the square was crowded. Ancients, loafers and derelict whistling boys everywhere. Solitary boys, much given to kicking at doors and walls; pairs of boys, and boys in sinister lounging conspiracies; and rising at regular intervals, pretty, foul-mouthed fishmongers’ girls, squatting on mounting-blocks and flashing their dirty wet hair.
‘Wotcher got? Wotcher got? Give us a krone fer a kiss!’
You needed money for everything – even a kiss.
‘Wotcher got? You dahn there! Got a krone fer a kiss?’
Hans Ruppert looked up; and a lass with eyes as slippery bright as oysters and a mouth like a bee in a rose looked down. Soon, in a little while, he’d be able to buy up her and all the other mermaids as easily as a pound of sausage. But first he needed ten krone, and he returned to searching among the cobbles for the tell-tale glint that would be in one of the deeper cracks.
‘Give yer a cuddle, too!’ bargained oyster eyes, who hadn’t been touched since half past seven, and felt the shame of it.
‘Tell you what,’ said Hans Ruppert. ‘You give me a krone, and I’ll give you a kiss. Can’t say fairer than that!’
Before the mermaid could either close with the offer or reject it, there was a blast like the Last Trump, and the Frankfurt coach came lumbering tipsily into the square.
At once there was a rush of inn-servants, a rush of ostlers and, above all, a rush of boys. Horses seized and dragged to a wild, protesting halt. Warfare between boys and ostlers. Boys jumping up like fleas. Doors dragged open; boys climbing everywhere and hanging on until the coach seemed to have passed through a forest of monkeys and come out with a windfall from the trees.
One by one the travellers crept out, dazed and shaken and looking forlornly back, as if for a missing arm or foot. Boys all over, like ants.
‘Where to, yer honour?’
‘Carry yer baggage, ma’am?’
‘This way – this way! Foller me!’
Warfare now between boys and boys, friendships forgotten and conspiracies blown to the winds. Fists, boots and elbows everywhere, and hoarse cheers from the squatting mermaids who foresaw, in various dark corners and damp alleyways, money for old rope. Thus modestly did they rate their favours and charms.
‘Carry your baggage, your honour?’
Hans Ruppert was in there with the best of them, shoving and pushing less determined rivals out of his path. He stood panting at the door of the coach. A last traveller had stepped down. He was all in black, such a black that he looked like a hole in the day.
‘Where to, your honour?’
The traveller looked down at him. He had bright grey eyes that twinkled and seemed to inquire:
‘Are we acquainted? Are you the one I was to meet?’
Involuntarily Hans Ruppert nodded, as if he suddenly felt that he and the traveller had been destined to meet, and that this was the final consequence of all his calculations. The traveller would give him ten krone . . .
He stood there, quite bemused at the way things were working out. Then an elbow like iron caught him in the ribs and a hideous voice croaked:
‘Where to, Captin? Carry yer baggidge?’
It was Mary the Monster, an ancient woman of malign aspect who trudged about the Marienplatz with her head in a dirty woollen helmet and her feet screwed into a giant’s boots. She always dragged behind her, by means of a stick hooked round a nail, an old wooden box.
Hans Ruppert, who had been momentarily winded, gasped. He was amazed and indignant at this bare-faced interference with what was plainly his personal destiny. He informed the old woman that the traveller was his. He had already secured him. Therefore would she have the goodness to shove off?
Scorning to answer, Mary the Monster – who had a destiny of her own – applied her elbow again and began to tip the traveller’s military-style trunk into her box, which did duty as a cart.
‘Take yer to The White Lamb, Captin?’
Hans Ruppert, feeling a perfectly suffocating sense of injury, attempted to remove the trunk from her grasp. Mary the Monster rewarded him with a sharp kick. He returned it, almost losing his foot in the yielding filth of her clothing.
She called him a vicious little bugger and began to drag the trunk away. Hans Ruppert countered by calling her a stinking old thief, and grabbed her by the skinny shoulder, that felt like a broomstick.
Undaunted, Mary the Monster fetched him a stinging clout round the ear and called him a creepy little shit. Hans Ruppert promptly offered to push her face in the same; on which Mary the Monster, hobbling along as best she could towards The White Lamb, appealed, in a series of hideous shrieks, to the trunk’s owner and the world at large, to behold that she was only a poor, God-fearing, innocent old soul, who was on the point of being murdered where she stood.
However, the trunk’s owner, despite his grim appearance, was a peaceable fellow at heart. He felt unequal to do more than hover in the wake of the business disagreement, while everyone else made way and cheered the parties on. Even the gamblers came out from the back of The Angel, and laid odds on the outcome of the dispute.
Generally it was felt that the advantage lay with the lady, who was as tough as old leather and had a tongue on her capable of rotting stone.
On the other hand, the boy wasn’t doing too badly, considering how the old woman must have stank. He’d got her round the middle and was heaving her from side to side. It really was a most extraordinary sight, like a weasel who’d got hold of an enormous bat, and was shaking it and shaking it while it flapped and spat and screamed and swore.
He gave her an almighty heave; and when she was right at the top of it, she ducked her head sharply and bit him. He felt her horny gums fix over his finger and squeeze. He let go and she began to slither all the way down. He grabbed at her clothing. It was greasy, almost sticky – like a spider’s web. It ripped apart and dimly revealed an ancient pair of legs, all yellowy-white like long-buried bone.
Then the lady, her modesty outraged, gave tongue to such a stream of comprehensive abuse that the noisy Marienplatz fell silent in a kind of unwilling admiration. She dredged up from her mind every foul thing that was in it – and there were a great many! – and finished up, as a pinnacle of wrath and contempt, with:
‘You dirty little PROTESTANT, you!’
To which Hans Ruppert, with a recklessness born of fury and despair, replied:
‘You dirty old CATHOLIC, you!’
Alas for Hans Ruppert. There was no taking the word back now. Everyone had heard it. You could tell that by the awful murmuring. You could tell it by the sudden glittering of eyes and the bunching up of fists. You could tell it by. the slow, terrible grins.
Someone threw a stone.
‘That’s right!’ screeched Mary the Monster, ostentatiously crossing herself and making her escape. ‘Do the bleedin’ little ’eathen in! Kill ’im!’
Then the Marienplatz boys – the derelict boys, the boys in their pairs and conspiracies, the boys who, until that moment had been engaged in activities that would have whitened their mothers’ hair – became as it were a single Catholic Boy, and began to advance upon the terrified heathen with a very unmistakable intent.
Hans Ruppert, who had been offering his life, his soul and all his worldly goods in exchange for the little privilege of being somewhere else, found himself pressed up against a doorway and tried to render himself down to the thinness of a hinge.
No one was deceived.
‘Knock ’is teef aht!’ advised the mermaid with oyster eyes, revealing, through eagerly parted lips, that she’d suffered some dental misfortune herself. ‘Go on! Give ’im a krone’s worf fer me!’
She felt quite soiled by the thought of how closely she’d come to selling her kisses to a Protestant.
‘Bash ’is fice in!’
Hans Ruppert, to whom the world had shrunk to the compass of one large, murderous grin, shut his eyes.
‘I’m going to die,’ he thought. ‘And it’s not costing me a krone!’
Then he gave up thinking altogether as there came down on him such a crowded storm of boots, fists, sticks and other weapons of unimaginable hardness, that it was a marvel they all found their way in. Perhaps they were taking it in turns? You could hear them, if you wanted to.
‘Go on! ’it ’im wiv’ this! ’ave a go!’
You could also – if you listened carefully – hear another voice (surely that shrill, screaming thing wasn’t his own), pleading to be let alone. They were hurting him; they were likely to do great damage to him. They were tearing his clothes, which were the only good ones he had. Please, please, screamed his voice, whatever he’d done to distress and upset them, he’d never, never do it again. On his word of honour . . . And all the while his voice was going on and on, a pair of hands was frantically fighting to cover more than was possible, and a pair of legs was going like engines for no purpose their owner could readily discern.
However, occasional grunts and cries announced that others had discerned it and there was a general tendency to avoid the vicious little swine’s flailing boots.
At last they stopped hitting him and started spitting instead. Warmish wet drops were spattering all over him. How horrible! He’d never get clean. They were really soaking him. He opened an eye. They’d gone!
It had begun to rain. In fact, it was raining quite heavily. The Marienplatz boys had sensibly retreated for cover. Nobody likes to get wet. They were huddled in doorways; they were crouching under the Frankfurt coach. Mary the Monster, having delivered her ‘Captin’, had made a house of her box and was sitting, contemplating her earnings, which, from time to time, she tested against her gums. It was a wet and peaceful scene.
The ruined financier began to crawl away. A few desultory stones accompanied him; but nothing more.
He thought that, if he could get to the end of the Marienplatz before he could count to fifteen, he would survive. He did it in nine. He survived.
He began to limp and stagger through the streets, avoided, as usual, by passers-by. He was a singularly unwholesome sight, being bruised and swollen wherever it was possible for a mortal boy to be bruised and swollen. He looked like several boys, imperfectly rolled into one.
If the rain stops by the time I reach the Rosengasse, he thought, then everything will be all right; the rightness, this time, included in its notion of wealth a vision of the Marienplatz boys being fried in oil till they were crisp.
The rain stopped, and, with the faintest glimmer of returning confidence, Hans Ruppert turned off the Rosengasse and hobbled into the maze of alleys that formed the Protestant ghetto of the staunchly Catholic town.
Such of his creditors who happened to look out of their windows as he passed by, failed to recognize him. There wasn’t all that much left that you could have recognized. But it was a good sign. Any moment now, things would take a turn for the better. When you came to think of it, there wasn’t any other direction available for them.
At last he stumbled back inside his house, where he was, so far as he could make out, greeted with more horror than concern. You would have thought they were more sorry for his clothes than himself. His father stared; his brother whistled, and his sister screamed.
What in God’s name had happened to him?
Hans Ruppert did not see what God had to do with it. He had long since given up any such belief. If there was a God, then that God must certainly have had it in for Hans Ruppert; which, when you thought of how the unworthy prospered, made you sick.
‘Well?’
Hans Ruppert groaned. There was no doubt that the truth would have involved him in some rather difficult explanations and he would end up by having to admit that he’d been beaten because he was a Protestant, which he found to be deeply humiliating. So he explained that he’d been knocked down by a wine barrel that had tumbled off the back of a cart. He was lucky to be alive. Expecting confirmation of this, he met his family’s gaze unflinchingly.
‘The money for the boots?’ demanded his sister. ‘Where is it?’
‘It must have got stolen while I was lying in the street.’
‘Lying?’ repeated his sister, with unnecessary emphasis.
‘In the street,’ said the boy of visions; and reflected that, if only he could lay his hands on ten krone, he’d be well on the way to disposing of Elizabeth as easily as half a pound of Wurtzburg ham.
CAPTAIN HILDEBRAND VON Stumpfel, having fixed his headquarters in an upstairs room of The White Lamb, (Good Food; Clean Beds; Traditional Hospitality), watched the conclusion of the disturbance in the Marienplatz with an interested smile. Then he unpacked his trunk, set up one or two ornaments – including a miniature of the King of Prussia and another of himself with a fellow officer – and, in a word, made himself a neat and comfortable billet. Even The White Lamb itself, that swung rustily back and forth on a sign outside the window, seemed eager to jump inside and, regardless of the proprieties, partake of the cosiness created by this black sheep.
Although Captain von Stumpfel was a wanderer over the face of the earth, living, it seemed, on air, he had a real gift for making a home in a matter of about half an hour. In one sense, nowhere was his home; in another, everywhere was.
He sat down on the bed and opened the black bag with silver jaws, from which he was never parted. Thoughtfully, he went through the contents – though he knew them by heart – and then, presumably satisfied, he replaced them. He stood up; adjusted his cap and improved his moustache in a small, silver-backed travelling-glass, and went downstairs to inquire the way to the Rosengasse.
He stayed out all day and did not return to The White Lamb until it was nearly midnight; by which time the landlord, who had not liked the look of him, had given him up for lost.
He looked well-pleased with himself, as if, in the landlord’s expression, he’d lost a button and found a florin. He wished the landlord and three soldiers present (among whom was Sergeant Wohlgemuth who drank on credit as he appeared to have a religious objection to parting with money), a very good night. He took a candle and went up to his room.
‘So that’s him?’ murmured one of the soldiers, when the black hussar’s door had been heard to open and, after a short interval, shut.
The landlord could not deny it. Unless the hussar had a twin brother, that was him. It was plain that Captain von Stumpfel had been the subject of recent conjecture in the parlour.
‘Quiet, ain’t he?’
Once more the landlord felt unable to deny the justice of the observation. He was quiet.
‘Von Stumpfel. Must have some money, eh?’
The landlord, feeling that this, somehow, redounded to the credit of his establishment, agreed; and Sergeant Wohlgemuth, who had been immersed in private, melancholy thoughts, rose to the surface and looked interested. He hiccupped and said: ‘Fat-arsed Prussian swine!’
‘That bag he was carrying,’ pursued the first soldier. ‘Real silver clasp. Must be worth a krone or two. Wonder what he keeps in it?’
Courteously the landlord suggested that the interested party might inquire for himself. He had intended this, not so much as a piece of sincere advice, but as a harmless little joke between friends.
However, no sooner had he spoken, than he perceived, by certain knowing looks, secret smiles and upward jerkings of their heads, that the three soldiers were not at all averse from the idea of invading the hussar’s room. They had, after all, been drinking pretty steadily and were, consequently, in an undaunted state of mind.
So the landlord, mindful of traditional hospitality, the sanctity of the guest beneath his roof, and the safety of his premises, glanced rapidly round the dim glowing parlour for something to distract the three soldiers, who, anyway, ought to have been back in barracks an hour ago.
He caught sight of the dim, pale potboy, who was lurking in shadows, waiting to clear away. A frail piteous child, employed out of the goodness of the landlord’s heart; well out of it.
‘I wouldn’t,’ said the landlord, holding a finger to his lips and winking heavily in the direction of the potboy to indicate that he was inviting his friends to join him in a little innocent amusement at the child’s expense, ‘I wouldn’t care to look inside that bag for all the geese in Strasbourg!’
He winked again, and went on to give it as his opinion that Captain von Stumpfel was none other than the devil, and that his black bag was a convenient receptacle for souls.
‘It was a little fatter when he came back with it. And, didn’t you notice – it wriggled?’
The potboy, an impressionable child who’d been brought up to be frightened of everything, grew eyes like dirty saucers.
‘He shrinks ’em, you see. Right down to the size of thumbnails. Stands to reason. That’s how he gets ’em all in. Mark my words, if you was to open that bag, you’d find it full of little black wriggling things. Hundreds of ’em! Souls! Protestant souls, as likely as not. Ugh!’
The potboy emitted a highly satisfactory moan of terror and, to the landlord’s relief, the two guardsmen exploded into their wine with suppressed laughter.
But Sergeant Wohlgemuth was not so easily deflected. He was made of sterner stuff; possibly because he’d drunk rather more of it.
‘Fat-arsed Prussian swine!’ he repeated, and glared up at the ceiling.
Then he made a gesture, the meaning of which was horribly plain. He drew his finger across his throat.
Suddenly, in the passing of a moment, the parlour of The White Lamb had become a hideous place. All warmth, all comfort and all tipsy amusement had fled; and the idea of Murder – the murder of a sleeping stranger – stalked inside. It moved among the shadows, it burned in the two lamps; it glared from the bulbous pottery faces on the wine jugs, and it became exceedingly familiar and suggestive with such domestic articles as a breadknife lying on the counter, a meat chopper and a poker with a great iron knob.
The landlord, really frightened, attempted to laugh it off; but it wouldn’t do. There was something about the idea that fascinated the will, making all seem accomplices to an invisible leader . . .
‘What was that?’
‘Thunder. There’s a storm coming.’
‘It sounded like –’
‘No! He’s asleep –’
‘– It’ll be a long one. He won’t wake up again!’
‘No – no! Listen!’
This time it was the rain, pattering down against the window. It sounded like the beating of innumerable trapped birds. Silvery flowers began to grow all over the black glass . . . then they turned into eyes, weeping eyes.
Suddenly there was a huge flash of lightning. The parlour jumped out of its comfortable gloom into an unnatural day – stark and livid. All present were rendered bloodless by the brilliancy of the glare which lingered to cast such tremendous shadows on the wall that one supposed they would never wash out. Shadows of three men, humped like monsters; and of a fourth, grasping a chopper.
The potboy, half out of his mind with terror, interred his head under a table and crossed himself till he was an absolute cemetery of holy defence. He wondered if there would be much blood and if it would be hard to clean up.
The glare faded – but not the images it had cast up, which remained on the inner eye – and then the thunder bellowed! The two soldiers stared at one another in alarm.
The man upstairs must have woken up. No one could have slept through such a racket. Even the dead must have been roused. Shakily, and sweating with relief, the landlord re-filled the glasses.
But Sergeant Wohlgemuth, to whom possession of the chopper seemed to have communicated some steadfastness of purpose, remained unmoved. He drank the wine contemptuously. His thirst had taken another turn and it was plain that all the wine in Christendom wouldn’t have quenched it.
‘Are you coming?’
‘But – but he’ll be awake!’
‘Well? There’s three of us, ain’t there?’
But even as he spoke, with his foot on the stair, it became uncomfortably clear to the worthy sergeant that there was no longer three. There was, in fact, only one. Himself. He was alone in the enterprise.
Now there was, in this bold and violent man, a streak of caution that, ordinarily, only showed itself in his financial dealings. As the storm blundered in the night and The White Lamb trembled with innumerable alarms in the shape of glasses and bottles that shook on the shelves, he couldn’t help meditating on the possibility of the hussar (treacherous dog!) being up and waiting for him behind the door. He saw, in his mind’s eye, a bloody, hacking tumbling down the stairs, with arms half off and faces laid open to the bone.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t turn back. Unless he did something violent, something really violent, those cowardly swine wouldn’t respect him any more. Unless he showed himself as a man to be feared, a man who was capable of anything, they wouldn’t be so happy about paying his bills and forgetting about what he owed them. Damn them!
It was a pity about the hussar; there might have been money in that. But it was blood that mattered most; and his thoughts turned naturally to that other one who had crossed his desires. He left the stair and lumbered towards the door.
‘Where are you going?’
He turned, with an expression of frightful bitterness and rage.
‘Bitch!’ he snarled. ‘That lousy, rotten little Protestant bitch!’
His companions divined that he was referring to Elizabeth Ruppert, the shoemaker’s daughter who had, only that morning, had the impudence to disappoint him.
‘I’ll kill her!’ he shouted. ‘I’ll smash her head in!’
He flung open the door. The wind rushed in and Sergeant Wohlgemuth, waving The White Lamb’s chopper, rushed out.
Upstairs, the black hussar, disturbed by the banging door, went to the window and looked out. He saw the burly figure of the sergeant, meat chopper in hand, reel and stagger across the Marienplatz, kicking up silver bursts of water as he went.
He frowned thoughtfully and then returned to the curious activity in which he’d been engaged. He had taken a leather-covered notebook from his black bag, opened an inlaid writing case and set up his candle as if for study. He leafed through the notebook until he came to an empty page. Then, with a quiet smile, he settled down to make certain calculations regarding the span of a human life. It did not take him long as the notebook was filled with similar arithmetic . . .
THE RAIN PELTED, the wind swore and ceaseless lightnings – like blinding skinny fingers – wrote terrible words across the sky.
Murder – murder!
Then the thunder, as if for benefit of those who could not read, bellowed aloud:
‘Murder – murder!’
On which the sergeant insanely put his finger to his lips as if to hush that enormous voice. But it would not do. If not the thunder, then the rain hissed it; if not the rain, then the wind howled it; if not the wind, then the swinging shop signs, that leaped on their rusty gibbets, screamed it:
‘Murder – murder!’
There was no escaping it; it was everywhere in the night. It was in the storm, which, in its activities, bore a supernatural resemblance to the sergeant himself.
It blustered through the empty streets – as did the sergeant; it glared suddenly and frighteningly in at windows – as did the sergeant; and it lifted the tiles off roofs only to hurl them down again with astonishing force – as the sergeant would most certainly have done had he been able to reach.
As it was, he contented himself with smashing at the heads of iron posts with his chopper, so that his progress was marked by menacing clangs and little glares of sparks that were drowned as soon as they were born, in the black, teeming rain.
At last – by that strange Providence that guides madmen and drunkards to their destinies, he found himself in the maze of filthy little alleys where the bitch he was going to kill, lived.
Here, by reason of their narrowness and frequently obstructing bends, the streets were turned into dirty running rivers, along which tattered fleets of rubbish sailed, only to be wrecked against projecting steps and among the bars of basement windows, where they formed sodden islands, later to be settled by emigrant mice, rats and bedraggled cats.
The sergeant hesitated, not out of any apprehension, or even remorse. He was momentarily at a loss. Which, among all the shadowy, tumbledown hovels, was her house? Then the lightning blazed – and he saw the signs.
‘Murder – murder!’ shrieked the wind; ‘Murder – murder!’ bellowed the thunder; and down came the darkness as if to cover the deed with its huge black wings. It made a sound: a curious thin whistling, like an invisible winged worm . . .
What was that?
Hans Ruppert, lying in his bed under the bench in his father’s basement workroom, looked up towards the ceiling. It was covered all over with cracks and bulged like an enormous toothache. For a moment, he thought it was going to come down on him at last. He waited, prickling with alarm. No. The noise must have been outside.
He closed his eyes, eased his aching limbs and tried to return to his Joseph-dream of suddenly revealing himself to his unhappy family as a youth of wealth, eminence and immense secret power.
At the stroke of a pen, he would remit their shameful taxes and free them from all persecutions. He would bring light into their dark lives; and, with an infinitely compassionate smile, he would brush aside their gratitude and accept his sister’s weeping apologies for ever having doubted his word.
And more; he would stretch out his hand over all the community, forgiving his creditors and even admitting into his presence that interfering fat cow, Frau Marskin, who, whenever she called, looked straight at him with eight krone eyes.
He smiled; and then, as sometimes happens – even to the most secret of millionaires – he began to cry. He managed it very quietly, as he did not want to be heard by his brother Friedrich, who would immediately jump to the wrong conclusion and go on about his three krone again.
It was not fear of the storm, nor the pain of his bruises, nor any of the other misfortunes of his unlucky Monday that oppressed him. It was a sudden and overwhelming sense of hopelessness that seemed, as it were, to have drained his inward pool and left his dreams to gasp, flounder and die.
There was nothing – nothing – nothing! They would – all of them – live out their lives in this dark, cruel place, without money, without dignity, without hope. This was absolutely certain, no matter what the signs and omens said.