“Nine in the morning?” I parrot weakly.
“The repair must be complete by this evening.”
“That may not be possible.”
In a single electric movement, he bounds forward and swings his cane in wide arc. I try to avoid the strike but it is too late. My eyes slam shut and teeth gnash anticipating the blow. None comes. When I open my eyes, the polished golden bear handle shimmers inches from my skull. The hard, sunken eyes of KaÄak gleam in the gray morning light.
“Then you'll just have to return my watch,” he calmly states, dropping his arm and rapping the cane against his false leg for punctuation. “Along with my money, minus a fair sum to compensate you for your time. I'm not an unreasonable man. I would, of course, greatly prefer it if the repair could be completed. If it's a matter of moneyâwell, of course it's a matter of money. It always is with your sort.”
“My sort, sir?”
“You're a Jew, are you not?”
“I'm afraid you're mistaken.”
“About Jews I'm never mistaken.” In swiftly linked movements he removes his stovepipe hat, reaches inside, and produces a thick envelope, which he summarily jams into the waistband of my trousers. His eyes are inches from mine, the malodorous scent of him at such close quarters so pungent I nearly gag. “These funds should speed your progress.”
My tongue is a dead thing in my mouth.
“I'll return for the watch this evening,” he announces, replacing the hat with a flourish. “You have until 8 PM to complete your work. Don't disappoint me.”
Doctor KaÄak turns on his heel and hobbles out the door. My eyes fall upon the fire poker, still sitting against the wall where I left it after last night's encounter with Franz. I stare at it for a long time. Then I shove the doctor's money uncounted inside a desk drawer.
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Franz has again spent the chilly, sunless afternoon outdoors. Before he left I told him I didn't want him playing with that strange little
girl I found in his company yesterday. She looks sickly and may be carrying any number of fearsome diseases. I worry over the fact that God's Miracle wears his keys around his neck (he often manages to lose them nonetheless), and she has the desperate, larcenous face of one fully capable of duping him into handing over the keys in exchange for a bouquet of weeds or a dead mouse.
Whether my warnings register in his divided mind is unknowable. Even if he understood, an hour later he'd be likely to forget my instructions entirely. Besides, the thieves could help themselves for all I cared. Aside from the Complication, some clothes, my pipe, the chessboard, and your photograph, all will be left behind. My own little Kunstkammer to be plundered by conquerors.
Back in the cellar, my diligent work toward discovering what drives the watch movements is rewarded with equal portions zilch and nil. My nerves are frayed and concentration is difficultâthere's so much left to do. Packing our bags, settling my meager account at the bank, deciding how to kill Doctor KaÄak. If only the man was leaving one day later, if only his train did not depart at the same hour as my own. For all I know he'll be on the very same train, in the very same car. The risk is simply too great, and after Doctor KaÄak's show with the cane this morning, I fear a fire poker may be inadequate for the job at hand. KaÄak is quick, even with his false leg. He's surely stronger than I am, and something in his manner tells me he is no stranger to physical confrontation. Tells me he would perhaps relish it. I find it difficult to explain why he disturbs me so, whether it's the bruised yellow pallor of his skin, the unyielding expression in his eyes, or even that faint but decidedly foul odor that calls to mind spoiled meat. Maybe its is none of the characteristics he possesses. Maybe it's that essential part of him that seems lacking.
The watch has meanwhile slowed to such a degree that it ticks only once every eight or ten seconds. Less out of any wish to adhere to Doctor KaÄak's demands than a desire to make sure my investment shall still
be in working order when we arrive in America, I decide to give the winding key a turn.
To my astonishment, the key won't budge.
I remove the key and re-insert it in the slot, but the mechanism holds firm, as if fused into place. At a loss, I examine the strange symbols etched in miniature on either side of the key. Perhaps they are not merely decorative but contain some kind of instructions? A warning maybe. “Caveat” on one side, “Furtificus” on the other?
And so to the bookshelves I go, extracting any volumes that might conceivably contain information on Hebrew, Aramaic, Sanskrit, Chinese, Arabicâthe eldritch symbols could come from any number of languages living or dead. I tear through my library, scarce discarding one book before I've cracked opened another, painfully aware all the while that such a rudderless expedition into this depthless swamp of quasi-scholarship is wasting precious minutes. The ticking of the watch has grown so irregular now that each time the sound startles me afresh.
Two fruitless hours elapse before I stumble upon an annotated epic poem in a worm-eaten journal published in 1881 by the Department of the Occult Sciences and Speculative Arts at Prague's own Royal and Imperial German Charles Ferdinand University. The poem is called “The Ballad of Edward Kelley,” its author the mad poet Otto Rentnerâone of your favorites I believe, but then all your favorites were mad.
I wait for the sound of another second passing.
I allow myself to indulge in this poem concerning Irish lowlife Kelley who came to Prague centuries agoâhis story is also an immigrant's story, after all, one in which I may find a cautionary lessonâbut I am chiefly concerned with a reference to the Enochian Keys, an alphabet reputedly transmitted to Kelley and Dee by an impish spirit called Madimi. This little sprite was said to be six thousand years old but took the form of a small girl when she appeared to them to help
unlock the angelic language in use before the Fall of Adam. Herein might be a clue to the symbols on the winding key. My diligence pays off, for in appendix I find reproduced the entire known Enochian language. Pulse quickening, my fingers race through the pages and sure enough, the symbols I seek appear all but leaping from the page. I check them once more against the winding key to be absolutely certain. They match.
One the one side of the key, TELOAH.
Death.
On the other, AZIEN.
Hand.
Death's Hand? The Hand of Death? Fingers of Death? Death Fist? My body trembles with the thrill of discovery, but the fervor soon cools with the realization that this ancient bit of nonsense contributes precisely nothing to helping me unravel the twin mysteries now causing me a high degree of anxiety; the unfathomable ticking, the inoperable winding key.
I soon find myself returned to the ballad, somehow certain that in their stanzas all shall be revealed. Looking at my watch, however, I discover there is no time to pursue it until its end. Doctor KaÄak will soon be returning to reclaim the Rudolf Complication, which I realize with sudden alarm has not sounded for over an hour. As if conjured by the very thought, its emits another click, a dull note that rings on and on.
Then an explosion of noise from above.
Someone is banging on the door.
Him, of course.
He's come early, hoping to find me unprepared. I am clearly not to be trusted. And with a sinking feeling, I understand that hours or days later would still find me unprepared for what needs doing. Had I been truly intent on murdering the doctor, would I not have been scheming how best to accomplish the deed rather than losing myself in the long-forgotten saga of John Dee and Edward Kelley?
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The man above cries out, calling my name perhaps, cursing me, but it reaches my ears only as a low moan, the words themselves carried away by the wind. I slump over my workbench, listening, waiting. I can't bring myself to go upstairs. His smell, his yellow skin. I stare at the gears of the Rudolf Complication still turning against all physics. Maybe he'll go away. Would it not be plausible that I might've had to leave my shop unattended in order to seek out supplies for the repair? The knocking continues for a few moments longer and then all is silent.
I can't kill the doctor, yet can't risk encountering him tomorrow at the train station. I could leave tonight, Franz and I steal away on any train headed anywhere. I could get word to Max somehow, meet him in Holland or in England before heading to America. This would be entirely feasible had I money, but even with Doctor KaÄak's generous advance, I lack funds for lodging and two continental train tickets, all of my other monies tied up in this shop that is to become my mausoleum.
Sometime later Doctor KaÄak returns and kicks down the door with a single blow. I hear it crash to the floor above me with a great boom, and dust rains from the ceiling. I leap from my stool, swaddle the watch in its velvet cloth. His footfalls above thunder across the shop's floor.
I slam shut the door adjacent the stairs just as he begins hurtling down them. Hands atremble, I manage to secure the lock before his mass crashes against the door like a cannon shot. Back I stumble, struggling to keep my feet beneath me. Again Doctor KaÄak hurls his weight, the knob rattling, wood bulging and groaning. Two, perhaps three such assaults and the door will splinter and he will be upon me.
My eyes flit around the room, scanning for some forgotten window or miraculously appearing exit. Another crash at the door, the walls shiver, the air roils with dust. My eyes fall upon the old Spanish pistol dangling from the bent nail. I can hear Doctor KaÄak, his breath coming in animal bursts.
Somewhere is a leather ammunition pouch with gunpowder and three lead shots. For one panicked moment its location escapes me, until
I spot the battered metal footlocker stored beneath the workbench, one filled with Franz's childhood playthings. I snatch the pistol from the wall and rush toward the footlocker. Metal hoops and whipping tops, jackstraws and Jacob's ladders, I rummage through them all before finally discovering the pouch underneath a one-eyed Golliwog doll.
The room shudders with another assault on the door.
I pour the black powder into the muzzle. I drop one cloth-wrapped lead ball inside and remove the thin jamming rod from the underside of the barrel. Packing the shot is an easy matter, not so priming the flash pan. A puppet of Prince Bayaya stares up at me from inside the trunk, wooden grin knifed into his face. The pistol is loaded.
Another crash and a piece of the door splinters loose and clatters to the floor. Gripping the weapon I rise quickly. Too quickly. My legs go wobbly and objects start losing solidity. I reach out to steady myself and lurch through the dusty haze toward the door.
From the other side comes a series of low groans. I now stand directly in front of the stairs, some eight feet back from the door. Through the narrow three-inch slit where a splinter of wood had been dislodged, a flicker of movement. He is preparing another attack. I cock the hammer, take a deep breath, and level the pistol. From this distance there can be no missing.
A rush and the door bursts shattering open and I close my eyes and squeeze the trigger just as the man launches himself into the room. An explosion of sound and a thick black cloud fill the air. The gun's recoil jams my arm up into my shoulder socket, and the man is lifted off the ground and looses a terrible cry. He lands in a heap at my feet and makes no further movement.
The air is heavy with the acrid smell of gunpowder. My ears are ringing, and when I look down and my eyes first land on the shiny little lion glinting through the haze, I think it must be a mistake. The Order of the White Lion. And next to it the Commemorative Cross, the Medal of the Revolution, the Žižka Medal, the Order of the Sokol, all
showing in their dulled glory upon the moth-eaten army jacket. God's Miracle is sprawled arms akimbo, eyes opened and fixed at a point beyond reach.
He is certainly with you now, Klara. Happy and whole again as you knew him. Now that my farewell letter is nearly complete, I shall be joining you both. In truth, this manner of resolution has occurred to me many times over the years, but I've always resisted. Nothing in this world now remains to keep me from your side.
I had hoped penning these words would allow me some better understanding of what has happened. But there is no understanding. I held Franz in my arms, just as I'd done when he was a child, until he was gone. As I first tried hopelessly to staunch the blood, I couldn't help but notice that his keys were no longer around his neck. He'd lost them and then come knocking. When I didn't answer, he panicked and broke the door down. Perhaps in his disjointed thoughts, he even believed me to be in danger, was coming to rescue his old man. Maybe one day he can tell us both how it happened. Maybe he'll have no memory of it at all. If there is a world better than this one, he'll have forgotten the last twenty odd years.
It is nearly 9 AM. Our nephew Max will be waiting at Wilson station. When Franz and I miss our appointment, perhaps he too shall come calling. I will leave this letter and the others upon the workbench so that he may find them. And Max, if you are reading this now, let me spare a few words to say you were right. Perhaps there was a part of me that yearned to lose everything. And perhaps having lost so much already, it was inevitable that this part would eventually win out. The battle raging within me has long ceased to be a fight among equals.