Count Luna Read online

  For his business continued to prosper, partly due to the continued tension in the international situation. The idea that international tensions had a depressing effect upon business was an obsolete notion. In reality, more money was made because of the tensions. But Jessiersky had not the slightest interest in this kind of tension. The strain of his own life was quite enough for him. In fact, it was fast becoming too much for him and he could stand it no longer. Simply in order to make something happen, no matter how pointless, he resolved to look up the Millemoths once again.

  He could have taken the car. But this time, too, he went on foot, as though he were going on a forbidden errand as in the days of the Third Reich. On leaving his house, he had a distinct feeling that he was being watched. Only now it was not the agents of the Third Reich he suspected of being interested in his doings; he felt that he was being shadowed by Luna — a threat more sinister still.

  It was a Friday afternoon and the traffic was unusually great. There was an air of frenzy about it, for everyone was hurrying to wind up his business as quickly as possible to get off for the weekend. It was not so much the roar of the cars and trucks and motorcycles that got on Jessiersky’s nerves as the idea that he could be watched from all these vehicles without knowing whose eye was focused upon him. It seemed to him that there were thousands of eyes. The countless motorcycles, in particular, made him feel as though he were surrounded with a buzzing swarm of unearthly insects. The people on the motorcycles, ostensibly quite harmless businessmen, engineers, and workmen, were like spies in disguise who kept circling about him.

  There was no response when Jessiersky rang the doorbell of the Millemoth apartment. He learned from the janitor that they were out of town.

  “Where did they go?” he asked, outwardly calm, inwardly controlling an urge to box the fellow’s ears in place of those of the departed Millemoths.

  To Deutsch-Altenburg, the janitor told him, where Frau Millemoth was taking the baths.

  “Is that so?” said Jessiersky. “What kind of baths? What for, or rather why does she need them?”

  That he could not exactly say, answered the janitor. And unfortunately the Millemoths’ tenant, who might have been able to give him more details, seemed not to be at home.

  “Herr Berdiczewer?” Jessiersky asked, trying to recall the story the Millemoths had told him about the man.

  No, that one, thank God, had departed. The janitor, who at the time of the Third Reich had been a good party man, then went on to inform him that a Sudeten German was living with the Millemoths now, a man by the name of Perwein, a very fine fellow indeed. And as he began to list his fine qualities, Jessiersky wondered whether the Millemoths, and Luna, too — in particular, Luna — had not seemed at least as suspicious to this janitor as Herr Berdiczewer. “But Count Luna,” Jessiersky said, while he took out his wallet to tip the janitor, “doesn’t he also live with Herr and Frau Millemoth?”

  “Oh, my God,” said the janitor, taking the tip, “our Count Luna! That’s quite some time ago, I’m sorry to say. . . .” He waved his hand in a gesture of regret.

  “But doesn’t he come to call from time to time?” asked Jessiersky, watching the janitor closely.

  “To call?” exclaimed the janitor in amazement. “But how could he? From where?”

  Jessiersky did not answer at once. Finally he said: “And Herr and Frau Millemoth, you say, are in Deutsch-Altenburg?”

  “Yes, that’s correct,” said the janitor.

  Jessiersky studied his expression for a moment longer, then inquired where he could make a telephone call.

  Two houses down there was a telephone booth, the janitor told him.

  Jessiersky hurriedly said good-bye and left the building. The janitor looked after him uneasily.

  From the telephone booth, Jessiersky called his house and ordered the car to be brought to him.

  The chauffeur drove up in the car ten minutes later. Jessiersky sent him home and then, seating himself at the wheel, set off for Deutsch-Altenburg.

  Just beyond Schwechat, the flat countryside around him began to spread out in the light of the sinking sun. To the left there were a series of wooded terraces sloping down toward the Danube and continuing on out of sight beyond the river into the Marchfeld. On the right, though far in the distance, the land was bounded by a low range of mountains. Gray cloud islands with luminous red towers rising up from them floated on the horizon.

  In Maria Ellend, a village between Fischamend and Petronell, he came around a curve just as an oncoming truck was rounding it from the opposite direction. Suddenly a motorcycle with two peasant boys appeared directly in front of him. The driver, who was trying to pass the truck, had become blinded by the light of the setting sun and was about to crash head on into Jessiersky’s car. Jessiersky quickly pulled the machine as far as he could over to the right, with the result that the motorcycle struck his car somewhere close to the left front wheel, shot up high in the air, its wheels still spinning, and then fell to the ground back of the car. The motorcycle driver was hurled against the windshield of the automobile, and the sidecar passenger thrown across the top; Jessiersky’s car, after rolling over the shallow macadamized ditch of the highway and mowing down one of the sparse acacias in front of a house, came to a standstill.

  Jessiersky shook off the glass splinters he had been showered with and climbed out of the car. A number of people came running to see what had happened, and the passing cars drew up along the curb. The two motorcyclists were obviously seriously injured. One of them was lying motionless on his back like a dead frog; the other, with his hands over his face, was rolling on the ground, screaming with pain. Jessiersky’s face, neck, and wrists were bleeding from many tiny wounds caused by the glass splinters. The radiator of his car was smashed in and the chassis was also undoubtedly bent. Only the motorcycle itself was practically unhurt.

  The crowd immediately blamed Jessiersky for the accident although — or, perhaps, just because — it had quite obviously been the fault of the cyclists. He, therefore, hurriedly called up his lawyer in Vienna and asked him to come at once to the scene of the accident. The lawyer appeared after three-quarters of an hour, but by that time it was dark. The cyclists had been taken into one of the houses. Jessiersky had been bandaged up by the local doctor who had not failed to advise him to drive a little more carefully the next time. The police had already been functioning for a considerable while by the light of the headlights of Jessiersky’s car as well as with their flashlights. Later a fair copy of the report was made in the village inn, and an ambulance appeared to take the motorcyclists to the hospital.

  Jessiersky left his car behind in the village. He had tried to drive it, but it clattered like a coffee mill, and he had discovered that, on top of everything else, the axle was bent.

  He returned to Vienna with his lawyer and discussed the matter with him at length for another hour. He was angry because the police, as well as the inhabitants of Maria Ellend, had sided with the motorcyclists.

  “That surprises you?” asked the lawyer. “I would have been surprised if they hadn’t.”

  “Now the last straw,” said Jessiersky, “would be if the court should be against me.” His plan to call on the Millemoths was all but forgotten. For the moment he was thinking neither of the nocturnal visits at the Strattmann Palace nor of the possibility that the unknown caller might be Luna. All this had simply gone out of his mind.

  When he arrived home, it was already past midnight and the house was completely dark. He unlocked the entrance door, went straight to his dressing room, and looked at himself in the mirror. Despite the bitter resentment seething within him, he could not help laughing. He face was dotted with bits of adhesive tape. He lighted a cigarette and blew the smoke against the mirror. Then it occurred to him again that the collision might cost him a pretty penny, particularly if one of the motorcyclists should die. For then this pers
on, dead as he was, would rise up and attack him, just as Luna, dead as he himself had assumed him to be, had already risen up to attack him.

  At this moment he again heard the footfalls.

  But this time he heard them not from two stories up — as he had in the library, months before — but from the next floor, the one just above. And again, they came from the back of the house, passed over his head, and turned down the stairs. The chandeliers over which the steps passed jingled much more clearly this time. For here, on the third floor, the chandeliers were not made of crystal, as they were on the second. Both Jessiersky’s dressing room and his bedroom had metal chandeliers; and the jingling was no longer the jingling of glass; it had a metallic ring — as though a man in armor were walking through the house. There was an armed man up there, and since he wore armor, it must be Luna, for who else would wear armor here? Surely not a lover of the chambermaid, or an admirer of the scullery maid! Indeed, Luna, though related to the wretched Millemoths, did not hesitate to face danger! After all, he was a descendant of the Count de Gormas and of the Portuguese Infanta. He was a Knight of Malta, and because he might have to do battle when he came here, he had put on a complete suit of armor, such as the Knights had worn when Valencia was sacked, or Rhodes was lost under the Grand Master Villiers de l’Isle Adam. His spurs had a golden ring . . . and a pale glow shimmered like moonlight about him. . . .

  Unconscious of the absurdity of his imaginings, Jessiersky began to search about madly for a weapon, any sort of instrument, any object with which he could attack Luna and throw him down. But there were no longer any weapons in the house. (They had all been turned in when the city was taken, since, quite understandably, the Allies wished to misbehave with as little danger to themselves as possible.) By the time the man had reached the stairwell and the sound of the steps was already beginning to fade into the distance, Jessiersky had found nothing better with which to arm himself than a pair of scissors that were lying on his dressing table. It was the biggest of a half dozen, about six inches long. But as a weapon, especially as a weapon with which to attack a man in full armor, it was utterly ridiculous. How could he have watched and waited for months, and, now that Luna had finally come, have nothing with which to meet him but a pair of scissors! He ran through the two parlors and was just about to fling open the door onto the stairway when he had the sense to realize that it would be extremely foolish to stage a struggle — and probably a fatal one — with so dreadful an adversary right in the house. Although his heart was in his mouth, he prevailed upon himself to wait by the door until Luna’s footsteps — still clinking metallically, as Jessiersky imagined — had descended the staircase and passed by the door. He seemed to hear the edges of the pieces of armor softly rubbing against one another as the man went on down the stairs.

  Finally Jessiersky opened the door. Luna had walked down in the dark, and Jessiersky did not switch on the light. Tightly clutching the scissors, he too followed in darkness. He heard Luna open and close the glass door at the bottom of the stairs, then unlock the entrance door, step out onto the street, and lock both wings again from the outside. The other time, he had, in his haste, left one wing unlocked; this time he obviously had no suspicion that anyone might be following him. Now Jessiersky also hurried down the staircase and across the hall. When he had unlocked the door and reached the street, he could still see Luna over toward the Burgtheater, just disappearing, like a shadow, around the corner of Bankgasse.

  As he began to run after him, he told himself that it was madness to try to attack a deadly enemy with a pair of scissors. But he knew that he would have assaulted him even with his bare hands. Meanwhile, Luna had walked past the rear of the Burgtheater and had turned onto Teinfaltstrasse. His footsteps, although out of doors they no longer sounded metallic, or even like crystal, echoed in the stillness of the night. By the light of the street lamps, Jessiersky now saw clearly that Luna was not wearing armor — it had been ridiculous to think he was wearing armor and was clothed in rattling mail. Jessiersky was following him at a distance of less than a hundred steps, and he began to wonder how he could catch up with Luna without attracting his attention. For now was the moment to do so — the street was deserted. . . .

  Luna, to his misfortune, stopped to light a cigarette. Instantly Jessiersky ran up to him on tiptoe and threw himself upon him. Luna, taken completely by surprise, fell forward on his face. Jessiersky, blind with rage, the scissors clutched in his hand, jabbed them again and again, like a knife, into the nape of Luna’s neck. His victim began to emit horrible, choking cries of despair and even managed to raise himself up for a moment to shove Jessiersky away. But he flopped down almost at once, rolled over and over, and finally lay motionless.

  Jessiersky, who had flattened himself out against the wall of a house, peered up and down the street but could see nothing. His heart was pounding loudly, in frightful agitation. Then as though the wind on the ocean of his soul had suddenly shifted, a kind of pity swept over him for the miserable death of this man whose joyless, cramped existence, with the many years spent in prison camps and then in the darkness of the underworld and of anonymity, had all ended now in this hopeless struggle for breath, in this awful choking in his own blood.

  At last Jessiersky ventured to approach the prostrate figure.

  Luna was lying in a puddle. A long rivulet of blood was trickling across the sidewalk and into the street. It looked as if a dog had relieved itself beside Luna’s head.

  When Jessiersky turned over the body, however, in order to get a good look at the pockmarked face with the pushed-in features that he had so often imagined, he saw that this man whom he had killed, in order to kill Luna, was not Luna. It was Baron Spinette, whom he knew slightly, a distant cousin of Elisabeth Jessiersky.

  Chapter 7

  He gently lifted the dead man’s head and held it in his hands. There was something strangely repugnant about holding in one’s hand the still warm, but already lifeless head of a man as one might hold the living head of a child or a woman. After a few seconds, he let the head fall back onto the pavement and quickly searched the man’s pockets for the key to the Strattmann house. When he found it, he got to his feet, looked all around, and listened. Everything was still quiet in the street. The only sound was the far off hum of city traffic. The lamps above the center of the street were swaying gently in the night wind, and the light was flitting back and forth across the asphalt as though ghostly birds were fluttering about the lamps.

  Jessiersky went back by the same way he had come only a few minutes before, following hard on the heels of his victim. As he walked along, he wrapped up his right hand in a handkerchief. When he reached the house, he found the door unlocked just as he had left it. He pushed open one wing with his handkerchiefed hand, turned the key which was still sticking in the inside lock, and hurried up the stairs. In his bathroom he washed his hands. Then he went into the dressing room, emptied his pockets, and took off his suit and underwear. He put the handkerchief and scissors with the clothes and rolled them up, wrapped the bundle in a newspaper, and tied it with twine which, after some searching, he had found in a drawer. Then he returned to the bathroom, washed his whole body thoroughly, put on fresh underwear and another suit, and left the house, the bundle under his arm.

  Whether the policeman who was stationed in front of the Hungarian Embassy noticed him — whether, in fact, he had noticed his previous departure and return — was impossible to tell. Jessiersky turned right and hastily made his way toward the Ringstrasse. There he picked up a taxicab, whose driver, staring at Jessiersky’s face with all the adhesive tape on it, did not look at the parcel. Jessiersky had the taxi take him to the quay of the Danube Canal. At the corner of Rotenturmstrasse he left the cab and continued on, bundle in hand, to the bridge, and from there, at a moment when he thought no one was watching him, he tossed the package into the water.

  Then he started returning home on foot. Only now, when he th
ought he had washed off all traces of his deed, had got rid of all the objects that might have given him away, did he begin to consider the dreadful consequences of the mistaken identity. But had it really been a case of mistaken identity? Yes and no. For it was clear to Jessiersky that his wife had betrayed him, that she had received her cousin in one of the guest rooms on the top floor instead of in her own bedroom where Jessiersky might walk in at any moment. But Jessiersky asked himself whether her unfaithfulness alone would have prompted him to do what he had done to Spinette. Scarcely. There had been a time — and he himself had heard tales about it as a child — when such things were done. Back in those days, every other week or so, some officer would stab one of his rivals in a wardrobe or behind the bedroom stove, where the poor man had taken refuge. It was also said that quite often in the Army Riding Instructors’ Academy when the trainers went into the covered ring in the morning, they would find a pool of blood left from some duel which had just taken place. But nowadays no one bothered to go to all that trouble. A man simply threw his wife out. Or he might not even go that far and just let her do as she pleased. Jessiersky was also aware that for years he had grossly neglected his wife, although the last thing she wanted was to be neglected. In short, he could not help admitting to himself that he had killed Spinette only because he had taken him for Luna, and that otherwise, he surely would not have murdered him. At the same time he was convinced that he ought to have killed Spinette in any case; it was quite possible that other people, real businessmen, simply threw out the wives who betrayed them and sometimes did not even go that far; but he, Jessiersky, who was not a real businessman, had killed his wife’s lover. And because he was, as he believed, perfectly justified in killing him, Jessiersky experienced no pangs of conscience.