EQMM, June 2012 Read online

  Well, Diary, it's already getting light here, so I'd better start rewriting my ballade before it's time to get up. See you later!

  Burg Hulshoff, 22 September 1820

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  Dear Diary,

  I think Margret and Goethe's manservant are getting down to business, if you get my drift. She just ran past me into the kitchen with her corsets half undone, clutching a rose to her face with this really, you know, ecstatic expression. Now I've got nothing against romantic gestures, but that manservant must have broken that rose off a bush in our garden. Helloooooooo, not your roses, dude!

  But I wanted to tell you about my second lesson. I wrote a terrific ballade, sinister and with a really great murder, but the privy councillor still wasn't satisfied. He started saying “Hmm, hmm” again, and then he said it was time to get to the next important point: true poetry must be historic. That means, the poet has to have experienced it, not necessarily literally or exactly, but historically. That's the source of everything. And it was pretty obvious to him that I've never really, genuinely, historically experienced a murder, but that came as no surprise to him in the case of a young baroness who naturally has a limited view of the world. That's why women can't write, or at most about flowers.

  And then the murder, said Goethe: bad idea. Very bad idea. Nobody wants to read a ballade about a murder, that's not literature and nobody likes it, that needs to be said right off. Really good, worthwhile literature can be sinister without anyone needing to murder anyone else, that's a cheap thrill to create tension. He said all that and then he started talking again about his boring ballade about the man who wants a bath.

  But he seemed a little preoccupied while he was talking, and then he took my notes away and said I should write something else, a creative piece of homework, something about a flower. And it should have a rhyme scheme, not everything all thrown in there together like my ballade, but assonance and alliteration and all the other stuff I've been taught. And maybe a couple of visual comparisons, that's always good.

  So that's it, Diary, tonight I've got to write a poem about flowers. Maybe about a rose.

  But there's one more thing: Now I know what the privy councillor's so scared of. Today a horse whinnied outside, and he went white as a sheet, and I wanted to reassure him and tell him it's just the man who brings the post, but then he started shaking and his teeth chattered like a shutter banging in the wind (that's a visual comparison, Diary dear—just in case you missed it . . .). Anyway, then Margret brought him a letter and he got up in a terrific hurry and went away with it. Who do you suppose it's from? Who's got that kind of power over a great writer like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe?

  So, Diary dear, I'd better get to work on my poem. I've decided to call it “The Rose of Hulshoff.” I already have an idea. . . .

  —

  D..... Di....y (Editors’ note: date illegible)

  It w..... (Editor's note: Here the text appears to have had something spilled on it; the letters are no longer legible)

  My le.......... with the pri

  alm..........g....d.

  ..................

  —

  I can't stop crying, and the tears drip on the page and make the ink run. The privy councillor was totally mean-spirited and unfair. He said my rose poem was very ladylike and showed a sensitivity to beauty, but it also showed that I had no artistic sense. My stylistic devices were naive, utterly naive, he said, the constant reiteration of “rosebush, rosebush” would just drive the reader crazy and all those diminutives, well maybe at a ladies’ tea party . . . But after all that was certainly my métier and he hoped I knew it and was satisfied now, he'd done his best, but I had no talent, and even Adele Schopenhauer couldn't ask more of him than that! I was just about to protest when he said that even so, with his vigorous support (so that's what he calls it!!!!????) I'd written a nice little poem, and now I could embroider it in cross-stitch on a little cloth or whatever it was ladies do, but he'd had enough, he had real work to do.

  So I said he should teach me how to write a real, sinister, historical ballade, and then he lost his temper and shouted that if he hadn't made a promise to Adele he'd never have agreed to squander his precious time on such a dull and untalented girl, and then he yelled for his manservant to pack and said he'd be leaving before the dawn, he had better things to do, the world, after all, was expecting him to compose a great new ballade. I cried and begged him to go on with our lessons. I mean, I've really made progress! But he got up to go out of the room, and when I ran after him he grabbed one of Mama's ornamental plates off the wall and threw it at me.

  And now he's gone, and I'm desperate. How am I supposed to write a ballade all by myself?

  Burg Hulshoff, 1 Oktober 1820

  Dear Diary,

  It's been a week since the privy councillor left. Mama was a little ticked off at his leaving so suddenly and breaking her plate like he did. And then—you'll never guess what—today another letter came for him. I'm pretty sure the seal on it is exactly the same as on the last letter that scared him so much. Anyway, I was dying to know what it said. Mama gave Margret strict instructions to forward all the privy councillor's mail to an inn in the moors, but Margret wasn't around, she was probably up in the servants’ quarters crying her eyes out over Goethe's manservant. So I broke the seal and read the letter. It was really interesting. The writer was a certain Johann Friedrich Cotta, and apparently he's the privy councillor's publisher.

  The letter went like this: He, that is, the publisher, was very pleased to hear that a sojourn in the country was having such an inspiring effect on him, that is, Goethe, especially after such an unforgivably long break between works. The poem about the rose was one of the best things the privy councillor had written since his “Werther"—the urgency of the reiteration, “rosebush, rosebush, rosebush red,” the incomparably youthful naiveté, all of it just as if a young lady had actually written it . . . in short, such originality! The reading public would love it and he had already sent it off to the printer, the only thing he'd changed was the title: “Rose von Hulshoff” just wouldn't do, the title suggested Westphalian fug instead of the heady perfume of a rose, that would never sell. Instead, he suggested “The Rosebush on the Moor,” and he'd already assumed the privy councillor would agree; after all, local color's a great strategic marketing factor. Beyond that, he was happy to see that the privy councillor was apparently working again, and it seemed like a good time to remind him again of the sequel to Wilhelm Meister, people kept asking about it, and he should consider something with a high recognition factor; how about Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years? And as far as the privy councillor's admitted decline in the liveliness of his prose, well, not to worry, the public's tolerant, they all love him to death, but they love a good series even more, and besides, the editors will help out, that's what they're there for; there are plenty of ways to skin a cat. Sincerely yours, etc. etc., and by the way, how's the ballade coming that the privy councillor mentioned he was writing? Everyone's all excited.

  I was pretty stunned, Diary, that's for sure. I folded the letter and put it back in the envelope, thinking hard the whole time. So this was the man who put the fear of God into Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Cotta, the publisher. And now my “Rose von Hulshoff” was going to be published under a different title and—most of all—under Goethe's name! Well, obviously I couldn't do anything about that particular little bit of villainy, but I could make it work for me, oh yes, because now I was pretty damn privy myself to one of the councillor's deepest secrets! I decided to go see Goethe on the moors and force him to continue the ballade lessons. He wouldn't be able to turn me down, not now. I shouted for Margret.

  So, Diary dear, we're off. Margret's packing. I'm trying to think up something to tell Mama, and I don't know what, but I'd better figure it out fast, I can hear the horses getting restless. Back soon!

  4 Oktober 1820

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  Dear Diary,

  It's
wonderful here on the moors, and a little creepy too. We found the inn right away. I showed the innkeeper my charcoal sketch of Goethe and he put his head to one side and said he wasn't sure, it was hard to tell, the gentleman was very insistent that people keep a respectable distance from him, everyone but his manservant, and that's when I knew: Gotcha! So while Margret was carrying our bags up to our room, I brought the innkeeper up to speed about Goethe's tooth and everything.

  Meanwhile, Margret had run into Fantasy Man upstairs. At least, it was an age before she came back down, and her cheeks were all red. She reported that the privy councillor had gone out onto the moor to get some inspiration for his new ballade, so we set off after him. It was kind of cool, going through a moor, even a little spooky. There was a lot to see, too: peat smoke, reed beds, spear grass; I even heard a sort of eerie melody, almost like a hollow moan. And it smelled like peat. It was really all very interesting—but it wasn't what we'd come for, we were after the privy councillor, and we found him.

  He was sitting on a tree stump, studying his notes intently. He was pretty surprised to see us, Margret and me, and I didn't waste a second, I just let him have it.

  When I got to the part about the rosebush, the privy councillor just shrugged his shoulders. Schiller'd stolen all kinds of things from him when he was still alive, in fact, pretty much everything he'd written, but that's an author's life for you, he said. So then I said that for a man who steals poems from a young baroness he was being pretty cavalier about the whole thing and did his publisher know about this? because now I had Cotta's address. And then the privy councillor started to cry and said I had no idea what it was like, that blasted publisher was on his back constantly about the Wilhelm Meister sequel and he didn't know what to do, Mr. Cotta wanted him to just write and write and write and nobody ever asked how he, Goethe, felt about it, and the public didn't want art anymore, it wanted series, and with local color on account of the strategic marketing factor. And I said I didn't give a rat's a— about any of that, all I wanted was to go on with the ballade lessons, and we could start here and now. And then the privy councillor started to laugh, a nasty mean laugh, and said I evidently hadn't understood anything, true poetry has to be historic and as a woman—tough luck, but there it is—I would never experience anything even remotely significant. So I thought of Cotta's letter and said I thought originality was much more important. But the privy councillor just grinned and stood up and swung up into the saddle and said there was no such thing as originality, just authenticity, and started to ride off onto the moor, but he didn't get far, and he didn't say another thing, because I whopped him hard with my walking stick, right between the eyes. He opened them really wide, and then he fell off his horse like a sack of potatoes and started to sink into the peat. I poked around to see if I could rescue that nice wig of his, and fished it out of the moor and gave it to Margret; it was only a teeny bit dirty and she stuffed it in her muff. We were just going to head back to the inn when we heard a horrible squelching, sucking noise behind us in the moor as the privy councillor rose to the surface one last time and opened his mouth. . . . Oh, Diary dear, never mind, I just can't make myself write what he said. And besides, I have to keep a few things to myself even if I do tell you everything else.

  And the really funny thing is, no one will ever suspect me, because the privy councillor's still alive! It was Margret who had the idea. She rescued me, the very next day. It started when she snuck into the privy councillor's room to put back the wig so no one would find it in our room. And guess who caught her there? But it turned out all right, because the manservant liked her better than Goethe anyway, and that's how she got the idea, and he helped her pull it off. It's so simple it's amazing. Margret just puts on the wig and Goethe's clothes and a lot of makeup. And no one's allowed to get too close to him anyway because of his missing tooth, so nobody's noticed the difference. I wouldn't have, if I hadn't known.

  Margret's in seventh heaven. First of all because she's snared Fantasy Man, but it doesn't hurt that everybody calls her “Mr. Privy Councillor” and she gets a hot bath every morning and wonderful meals, just the way the privy councillor always did. And candles, of course, as many as she wants, so she can see when she writes all those ballades and stories. And she doesn't have to polish any more silver; the manservant does that. And he'll keep his mouth shut, because if anyone in Weimar ever found out it was Margret under the wig and those clothes and all that powder, he'd be out of a job.

  And I'm doing great with the writing now. The privy councillor left his notes on the tree stump, so I took a look at them, and what do you think? They were mine. He'd just stuck in a little more alliteration and assonance, that's all. But I didn't use them; I don't think writers should steal from each other. I just wrote a new ballade. It was easy, now that I've had a historical experience of my very own. I'm calling it “The Boy on the Moor.” But I'll have to put it away for a while, at least as long as they're still searching the moors for my maidservant, who disappeared so mysteriously. . . . I mean, anything else would be unfeeling.

  Oh, and while we're on the subject of Margret: Just think, she's already gotten down to brass tacks. After all the praise for “The Rosebush on the Moor,” she went through the privy councillor's desk drawers and found some stuff and now she's going to patch together a sequel for Wilhelm Meister. Mr. Cotta's all excited and he already paid her a big advance.

  But sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and hear that horrible sucking sound, as if it were happening all over again, the privy councillor rising to the surface of the moor right behind me. Then I lie awake for a long time, wondering what got into me, there on the moor. Sometimes I think I sold my soul there, and Margret sold hers. . . .

  But then I make myself a glass of warm milk and think of Margret's advance on Wilhelm Meister and my really great ballade, which I'll publish someday as the first step in my own incredibly successful career, and then I feel just fine. I think a soul's a small price to pay for an authentic historical experience, don't you?

  * * * *

  Oh, and one other thing: I left the murder out of the ballade, of course. I mean, let's be honest: Readers don't want anything with a murder in it!

  Copyright ©2012 by Judith Merchant; translation Copyright © 2012 by Mary Tannert

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  ERRATUM: In EQMM's February, 2012 issue, the story “Out There” by Zoe Beck, in the Passport to Crime department, appeared without either credit or copyright lines for translator Mary Tannert. We regret this omission. Mary Tannert's frequent—and seamless—translations are invaluable in keeping Passport to Crime going as a monthly feature. Our thanks to one of the genre's most accomplished translators!

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  Novelette: TUNNEL VISION

  by Gene Breaznell

  Writer Gene Breaznell has one of the most diverse resumes we've ever encountered. He's a former tennis professional (with a world ranking) who has also worked as a Connecticut police officer, an advertising and public relations account executive, an operating-room attendant, a waste-paper broker, and a recycling consultant. His first mystery novel, TheStar of Sutherland, was published in 1989; a second, Deadly Divots, in 2003. Now he's turned to short stories, while also working on a third novel.

  The clutch blew in the deepest part of the Midtown Tunnel. At the bottom of the East River. Halfway between Manhattan and Long Island City. Smoking like a trash fire. Stinking like a dead skunk. Stopping the old box truck in its bald tire tracks. Cutting the two-lane tube down to one during the evening rush. Starting a symphony of car horns. A chorus of curses.

  Dan rolled his eyes and muttered, “You were riding that bitch.”

  “This bitch is right where it belongs.” Larry calmly lit a cigarette. “Bottom of the damn river.”

  “Not with me in it.” Dan, who was claustrophobic, and a nonsmoker, broke into a cold sweat. There was no quick way out of this mess, and Larry wasn't about to
put out that cancer stick.

  Larry did turn off the engine, which was smoking more than the clutch, grinning out the cracked and pitted driver's-side window at the yuppie scum leaning on their highfalutin horns, fleeing the Big Rotten Apple in their Lexuses and Bimmers. Let them be late for dinner. At least they had radios, heaters, someplace to go, someone to go home to. When a tow truck finally worked its way through the traffic behind and pushed the old box truck out of the tunnel, then hooked it up and towed it back to the plant, he would go to his cheap weekly motel room. A hovel not far from the stinking, smoking tunnel. Not much better than his former prison cell. Where he'd force down some leftover takeout, while staring at the fuzzy TV and four bare walls.

  Trying to take his mind off the tunnel walls, which were closing in, Dan said, “Will we get a summons?”

  “The old man'll get one,” said Larry. “Serves him right. Wouldn't spring for a clutch, muffler, tires. Not even a new taillight. This thing's held together with duct tape. Cop'll get carpal tunnel writing the tickets.”

  Dan tried to smile, but couldn't lose the thought of the tunnel walls tearing apart, like the hull of the Titanic, and tons of cold polluted water crushing them. He wished he had never seen that damn movie, except for Kate Winslet's tits.

  Larry blew a puff of smoke toward Dan in the passenger seat, watching him sweat, cringe at loud car horns, glance up and down the tunnel walls as if they were terrorists with sniper rifles and suitcase nukes taking aim at them. What was he, twenty-six? Larry wondered. Half his age? The kid had told him once, but he'd promptly forgotten. College kid, laid off from some office job in the city. Unable to find anything but this dead-end job, in this shit-eating economy. Working for the old man—cheap bastard—sheeting, slitting, die-cutting, delivering corrugated boxes. Fixing machines that were always breaking down, like this box truck. Mopping oil. Horsing a forklift. Sweeping the floors in that godforsaken plant. Inhaling dust and chemical fumes. Larry took a long drag on his cigarette, almost wishing he would get emphysema, mesothelioma, lung cancer. He would sue the old man in a New York minute. Lawyers, like cockroaches, would beat a path to his motel door. But that could take years, and there was a better way.