Fear and His Servant Read online

  The man who received me was a Baron Schmidlin. He was an adviser in the administration and was just over forty years old. Already bald, shortish and sporting a beer gut. He had a hearty manner that went beyond the merely polite, and it didn’t take long for him to open up. As we all know, fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

  ‘Herr Graf,’ he said excitedly, ‘I know that you are sent from Vienna to investigate the terrible events that torment His Majesty’s subjects.’

  Excellent, I thought. The man thinks I’m one of the emperor’s special investigators. Why didn’t he just assume I’d been sent because of the war Austria was waging to the south? Following its initial victories and the conquest of Niš, the imperial army had suffered defeat after defeat. Caribrod and Pirot had already fallen, and Niš was under siege by the Turks.

  ‘Indeed,’ I said evenly, ‘I am a special imperial investigator, and I shall expect your full cooperation in bringing our investigation to a swift conclusion.’

  ‘I’ll tell you everything I know, but you must go and see it with your own eyes.’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘It,’ he repeated, ‘the thing with no name.’

  ‘Very well,’ I said, quite sure that I wouldn’t. ‘I shall.’

  ‘And you are not at all afraid?’

  ‘No,’ I said resolutely, although I was afraid. Had I felt no fear I would not have come to Belgrade. ‘Now tell me.’

  ‘When the time is right,’ said Schmidlin, nearly whispering. ‘We expect the regent to return from the hunt at any moment. You see how thick the fog is. The hunt is sure to have been a failure, and the regent is very angry when he comes back empty-handed.’

  ‘From what I hear, he’s always very angry,’ I said, making a bid for closeness with Schmidlin.

  He grinned and nodded.

  ‘That is so. And please do not forget, he does not like to be called President of the Administration, which is his real title here. Address him as Regent of Serbia.’

  ‘I shall bear it in mind.’

  ‘One other thing. Tonight there is a ball here at the Residenz. You will certainly attend, but I beg you not to speak to the regent of your business here. It will only provoke him.’

  ‘But I am an imperial …’

  ‘Vienna is far away, Herr Graf, and here there are terrible crimes in the dark.’

  ‘Very well,’ I said, nodding, ‘but I must advise you that there is another commission on its way, one that knows nothing of me and has been sent by His Imperial Majesty to conduct an investigation alongside my own. They are not aware of me because, among other things, I must oversee them as well. The commission is led by a young doctor, Klaus Radetzky.’

  ‘It was to be expected,’ said the baron. ‘For Vienna to send a doctor was only to be expected.’

  He said nothing else, and I felt that he was holding something back. As I expected, he was kind enough to escort me to the chamber that had been prepared for me. I entered the room, which was not especially luxurious, and lay on the wide bed. I was pleased with myself. I fell asleep and was only briefly awakened by the first cock-crow.

  THREE

  Love, the Mother of All Ills

  ‘Love is the mother of all ills,’ whispered the hostess of the ball into the ear of a fawning lady. But still the words reached me. So that was why Maria Augusta, Princess of Thurn and Taxis, was looking so pale and wan. Afflicted with the age-old woe of the idle, she had barely noticed me. Too long in the tooth for my taste anyway. True, she was barely thirty, but I do feel that’s quite enough for any woman. Her rich diet had amply padded out her hips and bosom. She was stocky with dark-brown eyes and a dark-brown wig like all the members of the Thurn and Taxis clan. I shall never understand what causes entire families to go in for matching wigs.

  I assume that her marriage was the result of careful planning and skilful negotiations. The wedding had not taken place until her husband’s position as Regent of Serbia had been assured. Only then had she been dispatched to this side of the Danube, there to complain of love as the mother of all ills. But what could this foolish woman know of troubles and cares? Nothing. I could speak of such things for years and decades and centuries and still not be done. Yet, who would listen? There was no one I could tell.

  ‘How can you love him?’ asked the lady confidante, with what seemed to be distaste. ‘He falls so short of perfection in every way.’

  Maria Augusta heaved a great sigh and said, ‘I did not fall in love because I was looking for boundless strength, or flawless beauty, or bottomless wisdom. On the contrary, it was when I noticed the imperfections that I began to love – the weakness running through the strength, a hint of ugliness, the foolishness of an idea or opinion …’ She paused then continued, ‘It is not possible to love someone who is too strong, too beautiful, too wise. That is the price they pay.’

  ‘Yes, but …’ the lady began, only to fall silent, whether because she had realized that the princess was right or because she disagreed entirely, I could not tell.

  But Baron Schmidlin was talking nineteen to the dozen, as they say. Why nineteen, I’ve always wondered? Why not eighteen, or twenty, or even my old favourite, thirteen? At any rate, I said to myself, I ought to join his listeners. I knew it would be best to win the man over completely, and there’s no better way to make people like you than by following their stories attentively. Even for someone who’s been around as long as I have it’s deuced odd – inexplicable, even – to see the most ordinary attention so readily taken for love.

  That young doctor, Radetzky, was after the same thing apparently, as he was making a show of nodding and assiduously following as Schmidlin perpetrated his abuse of the language. There were two other gentlemen with them, dressed in the latest Viennese fashion. I concluded that Baron Schmidlin must be bending the ear of the real commission. No doubt he was taking pleasure from the false knowledge that a secret commissioner to His Imperial Majesty was also present in my own person. The time I have spent among the rabble of mankind has taught me that people love and enjoy nothing so much as their belief that a lie is in fact the truth. Our man Schmidlin was positively blooming from the dung-heap of misrepresentation I had prepared for him.

  I approached, observing how Radetzky started at the sight of me. Baron Schmidlin bowed slightly and introduced me to Doctor Radetzky and the other two men of science, counts whose names I have forgotten. One’s wig was blond, and the other’s was red. Naturally, I was introduced as Count von Hausburg, passing through on my way to Niš.

  ‘I’ve just been telling the young gentlemen from Vienna how we repaired and rebuilt the Fortress of Kalemegdan. The work was led by General Nicolas Doxat de Démoret, whom you’ll meet in Niš. He was also the one who recommended following the plans of the ingenious Marshal Vauban.’

  ‘Vauban, Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban? Do you mean the marshal who got a whipping from our very own Prince Eugene of Savoy?’ asked Radetzky.

  ‘That’s the one,’ the baron agreed, adjusting his wig, which still sat crookedly. ‘But, lest we forget, in his day, Marshal Vauban won every battle he fought. He was actually an engineer by training, with his specialities being the fortification of cities and siegecraft. Every city he laid siege to would fall into his hands – and, may I remind you, gentlemen, that his successes include Lille, Maastricht and Luxembourg, among others – while every city he fortified was able to fend off its enemies.’

  ‘So, a master of both defence and offence,’ I said, working my way into the conversation.

  ‘Well, you must know how an attack is conducted’, said Schmidlin, ‘in order to prevent one. And by the same token, you must understand how defences work in order to break through them. General Doxat followed all of Marshal Vauban’s basic instructions for laying out proper artillery fortifications. In our library you can consult a small tract by the marshal on sieges and defence works – if you know French, of course. It’s entitled De l’attaque et de la défense des places. It was publishe
d this year in Paris.’ He stopped for a moment then spoke again. ‘Why, tomorrow we could all see the walls together.’

  ‘You simply must take us around those fortifications,’ said one of Radetzky’s companions, the one in the blond wig, politely.

  Schmidlin struck his forehead and declared, ‘I’d almost forgotten, tomorrow night is the costume ball. It’s the most important social event of the autumn, and anyone who’s anyone in Serbia will be here with the regent at the Residenz, all in their masks and fancy dress.’

  ‘Perhaps you could tell us something about why we’ve come?’ asked the other man of science, the one in the red wig. Radetzky looked at me, then looked at Schmidlin, then at the man with the ersatz red hair, then at the man with the ersatz blond hair and then back at me. With a meaningful look the baron sought my permission, which I granted with a slight nod.

  ‘The first complaints from the Serbs came in the autumn of ’34, if memory serves, but none of us paid them any mind, thinking it was all just superstitious nonsense. More complaints and accusations followed in the spring of ’35, and again we dismissed them without further enquiry. However, just before Christmas that year one of our tax-collectors disappeared, in the very same area where most of the complaints had been made. We suspected renegade peasants in the matter, those highwaymen as the Serbs call them. It made sense, as they certainly have no scruples about robbing and murdering ordinary men, so why not a tax-collector returning with laden coffers? Not only would they make a rich haul they’d increase their standing in the eyes of their countrymen by stealing back what had been taken from them – you know what the Serbs think of taxes. The unfortunate man had been travelling with an escort of five soldiers. They’d all fallen asleep without leaving a single one on guard. Drunk, as we quickly established. The next morning they woke to find the tax-collector and the money gone. Naturally, we had their effects and persons searched at once, suspecting that the soldiers had conspired to kill the tax-collector and divide the spoils. However, the search revealed nothing, not a single kreutzer. Besides, if they really had done it they’d hardly return to Belgrade; they’d have gone elsewhere to drink away their ill-gotten gains. We also observed that the soldiers were behaving strangely. They were silent, pale, unaccountably fatigued. They stopped drinking, a most serious symptom. Our suspicions soon shifted from them, and we concluded that the crime must be put down to Serbian brigands.’

  ‘Could we speak to the soldiers?’ asked Radetzky, interrupting the baron.

  ‘Oh no, good sir. Shortly thereafter we had to let them go. They were no longer fit for military service. I believe all of them have long since departed Belgrade. But you could speak to their colonel’s physician. Although you can’t, as a matter of fact. He’s been sent to Niš, if I’m not mistaken. And, as you know, the situation in Niš is rather grim. We’ll have to send for him. Although he won’t be able to come. We can’t very well leave the colonel without a doctor while he’s busy defending the city from the Turks. They say they’re eighty-thousand strong now, the Turks.’

  ‘Do continue,’ I said impatiently.

  ‘Yes. So, we had the guard doubled and ordered them to remain on the alert at all times, thinking in that way to foil any attempts by the brigands. Indeed, that seemed to be the end of the attacks. And so we would have put the matter behind us, satisfied with our prevention of further evil, but for something else that happened, something most strange. On their way through the area, two of our Serbian Oberkapitäne happened to discover, quite by chance, in the cellar of an alehouse, the tax-collector’s body. The body was … it was … The captains were there last summer … six months after the tax-collector’s disappearance … The body was … it was …’ Schmidlin had not ceased to fiddle with his wig, which was perched on his round head in positions of ever-increasing absurdity. ‘The body was … it was …’

  ‘Out with it, man!’ I snapped. ‘The body was what? This is intolerable!’

  ‘The body was …’ Locks of hair stuck out wildly. ‘The body was …’

  And as he spoke someone shrieked. I turned around and saw a wig. On the floor. A black wig. Looking down at it stood Maria Augusta. With out her wig. Her hair was white. Quite entirely white. And cropped short.

  That woman … I thought. That woman is truly suffering. Why, she’s scarcely thirty years old. And her hair is already white. Quite entirely white.

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Radetzky.

  ‘I don’t know,’ answered one of the other two.

  But how white the woman’s hair was. A suffering soul.

  A soul.

  I could not tear myself away from the sight. A servant ran to retrieve the wig and attempted to restore it to the princess. And yet she would not take it. She only turned and rushed from the hall. Her departure was not proud but abashed, as if in flight. Only after she had left the hall was I able to turn my attention again to Schmidlin and the physicians. The baron’s fingers were still at his wig. I was beginning to lose my temper.

  The red-haired count and man of science wrinkled his nose and said, ‘It smells in here. Of brimstone.’

  Radetzky was quick to regain his composure, unlike me. ‘What about the body, then?’

  ‘The body was …’ Schmidlin repeated, and I could see his mind was no longer on the words he was mouthing. I wanted to strike him.

  ‘Please excuse me. There’s something I must … do,’ said the baron, and then he was gone.

  I tried to remain calm. In spite of all. First, some captains had found a body. A body. So the tax-collector was dead. That made all the difference. He was dead. Second, the captains were alive. Schmidlin hadn’t mentioned anything happening to the captains. Third, the princess’s hair was white. This was not reassuring. This distressed me. All in all, not counting the princess, of course, I had nothing to worry about. Other than perhaps the body. What had the body looked like, if Schmidlin was unable to utter the right words?

  ‘The baron is sure to return,’ said Radetzky, addressing me.

  ‘I do hope so,’ I answered, as politely as I was able.

  ‘What is your opinion?’ Radetzky continued.

  ‘In regard to what?’

  ‘The body.’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said.

  ‘Nor have I, although it must have been horrible.’

  ‘But you’re a physician. What could seem horrible to you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably something I’ve never seen before.’

  ‘You should speak to those captains,’ I said, trying to be helpful.

  ‘Most certainly,’ said Radetzky, lost in thought.

  They were all disappearing on me. The princess wasn’t coming back, neither was Schmidlin. The prince regent hadn’t yet even appeared. It struck me that the members of the household were behaving very oddly. I tried to work my way into several conversations but was unable to find out from anyone how the princess’s wig had slipped or been knocked off, or the nature of her affliction. Was it connected to her unhappiness in love? They either couldn’t or wouldn’t say. Although if people know something they’re usually quick to volunteer information. They just can’t help themselves.

  The orchestra struck up a tune, and the dancing began. I couldn’t see anything through the swirl of ball gowns. I took a seat and wondered whether to leave or to stay a bit longer. I was hoping to hear something important. I was hoping that Schmidlin would come back and finish his story. I was hoping the princess would return.

  And return she did. She was wearing the very same wig. She was despondent, although she smiled. Between her feelings and her outward expression stretched the chasm of pain known as noblesse oblige. I decided to draw closer but without addressing her. Even when I know someone quite well I avoid speaking to him (or, especially, her) in times of difficulty. The princess sat and rested her chin on her hand. For some time she merely watched the lords and ladies dancing – her gaze not focused on anyone in particular, I noticed – and then she began to fan hers
elf, as if suddenly flushed.

  Her fan was Chinese, painted in bamboo ink. Along the middle ran the Great Wall, dividing it nearly in half. Orderly rice paddies could be seen in the lower half, with industrious Chinamen standing up to their knees in the water. Off to the far right, closer to the handle of the fan than to the Great Wall, a procession of officials marched on its way. Perhaps the emperor himself was among them, although I could not see. The peasants were bowing low to the ruling power as it passed. Under the last row of peasants was the finger of Maria Augusta. Below it extended her pale and delicate hand. On the other side of the wall lay the desert, its great white expanse unbroken by anything but scattered, stunted vegetation. On the left jutted rocky mountains, although on which side of the wall it was hard to tell. Directly overhead, the black sun (the image being in no other colour than black) illuminated or darkened the entire scene. Beyond the black sun and the white sky was the ball, the coloured gowns, the prim dancers and the music.

  The princess snapped the fan shut, quite as suddenly as she had spread it open, and then a footman came to me and murmured, ‘Your servant awaits you outside. He says it is urgent.’

  I could well imagine how urgent it was. For me to lend him drinking money. I was forever lending him money. Then deducting it from his pay. Then lending him more. I was beginning to feel like a bank. And here in Belgrade there was no end of places to drink. A good two hundred, I’d heard. The best place in the city was said to be the Black Eagle. German beer, Hungarian wine, Serbian rakija – all straight down the gullet of drunkards galore. Why had I ever taken this man on as my servant? Couldn’t ask for anyone worse. Not only did he drink, not only did he always owe me money, he also gave me no end of cheek. I remember telling him once how I’d had a laugh at old Fishmouth’s expense. By Fishmouth I mean, of course, the Old Fish Himself, ΙΧΘΥΣ. That’s a good one. But where was I? Oh yes, one day in Jerusalem, among the multitudes, during one of the Jewish holy days, I run into Fishmouth. He doesn’t recognize me, of course, but I know him straight off. So I ask him, ‘Who do you take after, Fishmouth? I’ve seen your mother, and she’s got a fine mouth on her, so it must be your father. Ha, ha, ha.’ And he says –