“Tell me what you know about him.”
“He stole my wife,” said Master Zetti, tugging at his heavy mustache. “A whore, but what a whore, the most beautiful prostitute in Buda. You’ve seen her?”
“Yes,” said Picard, seeing her instantly in his mind, her body moving through his memory, her breasts trembling in his brain.
Zetti smiled for the first time. “I see that you have met her.” He laughed, patting his horse on the neck. “I was the highest bidder. Every man of wealth in Buda sought her favor. And what favor, what rare and priceless favor it was. I lost more than money when she left, though she took off with a great deal of that, as well. Of course, she had to have the best.”
“Did Bruno Bari take any of your property?”
“He took my soul, which was not my property. Look, Inspector, look up there and tell me what you see.”
Ahead in the sky was a herd of running horses, shimmering, fantastic, galloping through the blue dome of heaven.
Picard blinked his eyes, watched the horses racing off into the endless reaches of the sky.
“A mirage, Inspector. The fabulous Fata Morgana. Bruno Bari was fascinated by it, by which he showed himself to be a true peasant. Only the peasants let the mirage rule their life, daydreaming over it. He always talked about it, making it sound rare, philosophical. Like all the other famous liars around here, he claimed to have gone walking through the Fata Morgana, through paradise.” Sándor Zetti spat on the ground and spurred his horse.
Picard touched his own mount with his heels and they raced toward the floating paradise in the sky, where the horses of heaven roamed, but he and Zetti came no closer. Earth-bound, they were unable to rise up and run with the celestial herd, and their galloping slowed again to a trot.
“Some days you’ll see entire forests floating in the air. Lakes and valleys and hills, all golden, with perhaps a cow sailing over the whole of it.” Zetti turned to Picard. His eyes were suddenly questioning, and in the question was a small boy, in pain. “Have you seen Renée with Bari?”
“He’s called Ric Lazare now. They’re in Paris.”
“Yes, she loved the high life. And how is she looking? Don’t tell me, or we shall both appear ridiculous.” Zetti spurred his horse once more and the two men rode across the last part of the field, bringing their horses to the stable, where the grooms received them. “I chased him myself, unsuccessfully.” They walked from the stables toward the house. “You saw my men, Inspector. Relentless riders. We tore this half of Europe apart trying to catch Renée and Bari, but we could not, though we saw them twice. They vanished, like the Fata Morgana. You’ll dine with me, of course.”
* * *
The dining room of the mansion was built around a huge stone fireplace. The windows were of stained glass, which gave an iridescent quality to the sunlight as it filtered through onto the long massive wooden table, the tabletop aglow with quiet light, the soup tureen and serving plates part of a fabulous Fata Morgana—beautiful, delicately tinged, through which the hand passed, never quite able to grasp the streaming color. Picard reached for bread, and turned golden; leaned back through a band of blue, and settled in a pool of red light which surrounded his chair, a wanderer come to the rainbow’s end and served with fairy food in a gossamer room. The voice of his host brought him back from his daydream, but even so, Zetti’s face was bathed in gold, like some titan of the rainbow, ferocious and chimerical, and Picard could not escape the peculiar feeling that his chase was leading him still deeper into mirage, into a danger more subtle than any he’d ever faced in the brutal Parisian underworld.
“He came here as her guest. Quite often.” Zetti sipped his wine. “Renée loved his toys. He had a wonderful gift that way, I must admit. It fascinated Renée, and charmed me, and while I was so charmed, they stole off together.”
“You say you followed them?”
“Into the mountains of Transylvania. Fifteen men surrounded the inn in which we’d cornered them. But he slipped by us, heaven knows how. We picked up his trail again at the base of the Mountain of Skulls. There is a ruined castle there. As we made our way up the mountainside, one of my men suddenly clutched at his chest and fell to the ground, as if he’d been struck by—by a poisoned dart. He muttered hysterically that Bruno Bari was a sorcerer, and by the time we got the man under shelter he was dead, without a mark on his body. He was a young man, in perfect health. I abandoned the chase at that point, in regard for my men.”
“That was the end of your knowledge of Bari?”
“There was a newspaper account of the death of a young priest, in the convent gardens of the Metropolitan of Transylvania. The priest had recently been involved in an argument with a traveling magician, or charlatan, call him what you will. I know it was Bruno Bari, and I call him a filthy dog.”
“In what manner did the priest die?”
“The coroner’s report was apoplexy. This was, by the way, the same diagnosis given of my man who died upon the Mountain of Skulls.”
In the wild and sinister mountains of Transylvania, Picard felt again the strange vertigo he’d known in Austria. He should, by rights, be heading now toward Paris. His case was complete. And yet there was a nerve end that thrilled toward this death by apoplexy of a young Transylvania priest. And so he continued on by carriage, through winding and inhospitable terrain. Something said he must go on past the mountaintop castles and through the rugged villages where the peasants sat in their doorways, smoking long black pipes. The doors and window frames were intricately carved in mystical whorls, depicting the soul of a highly imaginative and somewhat fantastic people.
It was with relief that he reached the city of Bucharest, finding it wholly normal and bourgeois, untouched by the morbid quality of the peasant art which had worked upon his spirit for so many lonely miles. The hotel sent his message to the Metropolitan of Transylvania, who responded at once. His Holiness would see the Inspector at two in the afternoon.
Picard arrived punctually at the palace gates. He was admitted into a large park. Tame deer strolled through an avenue of trees, and in front of the holy palace a fabulous procession of peacocks was passing.
He was shown down a long stone hallway to the receiving room of the Metropolitan, an elderly man in long soutane and crowned by a high red calette.
“Your Grace.” Picard bowed to the old priest.
The Metropolitan summoned his footman and jam was served in little glass plates. The two men touched at the spread with small silver spoons. “Whatever you can tell me about the death of Father Miklós, and of the magician with whom he quarreled...”
“Father Miklós and I were walking together, on the palace grounds. It was a quiet, beautiful day. Suddenly the deer, who had been feeding close by us, ran away terrified, as if they’d caught scent of something in the wind. The peacocks screeched wildly. Father Miklós turned to me, with a deep sadness in his eyes. He sank to the grass, dead at my feet.”
“Dead of apoplexy.”
“That is correct,” said the old priest. “Of course, the servants and the local people made much of the terror of the birds and deer. And they inevitably linked it to Father Miklós having had a run-in with a traveling mesmerist, whom he ordered out of the city on the previous day.” The Metropolitan paused, tapping his small silver spoon upon his front teeth. “Our people are very superstitious. It is not good to stir them up with such things as this mesmerist was reputed to have been performing.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, telling fortunes, and causing people to act in strange ways against their will. Suggestiveness is very deeply seated in the human heart, I’m afraid,” said the Metropolitan. “So we took steps against the man. His name was...” The old priest paused again. “I think it was the Great Baltus, a name of that sort anyway, the usual pompousness these people have. Father Miklós visited him, and by a coincidence met his death not twenty-four hours later.”
“You see no connection?”
“I have lived a good many years, Inspector, and have seen many strange and terrible things. But without exception, their origin was in accord with the accepted laws of causality. I am not trying to make less of a tragic death. Father Miklós was like a son to me. But his passing was not mysterious, only unfortunate for being premature. As to the animals, I’m sure you are aware how sensitive animals are to impending death.”
“Did you see this mesmerist?”
“He was described as a lean man, with a metallic brightness in his eyes, of the kind one sees in the eyes of an epileptic. His wife was said to be of special beauty. There are many such gypsies traveling the roads. They are no different from the rest of mankind.”
Picard rose. “I’m grateful for your time, Excellency.”
“Please,” said the old priest, “take this.” He reached into his soutane and withdrew an embroidered piece of cloth, hung on a thin red string. Upon it was woven the descent of a white dove.
Picard slipped the amulet into his pocket, and bowed again to the old priest. The footman showed him down the hallway and out of the palace. On the grounds were the tame deer who had bolted at the premonition of Father Miklós’s death. They were nibbling quietly now, undisturbed by such intuitions.
PART III
The Magician
Snow was falling in Paris; he stood on the Pont-Neuf and stared upriver, his bag beside him on the walk. The towers and bridges were wrapped in the storm, but the snow didn’t stick, was melting on the ground, on his outstretched hand, and he melted into the familiar facades, feeling it all again, Paris, a trap, a sewer. Nonetheless, I’m happiest in you. I’ve been visiting your sisters, and they can’t compare with you. You’re my one madness, and I know you’ll ruin me in the end. But I’m glad to be here.
He picked up his bag, crossed the rest of the way over the river, and entered the Latin Quarter. The voices of the street, the smells coming from the café kitchens, the familiar swirl of life on the rue Dauphine were as soothing as the healing waters in far-off Esztergom. I’ll open my rooms first, let some air in, change my clothes—and there are the lovely lemon tarts. Pass, Picard, pass and keep your belt hooked tight.
The rue de Nesle was mean-looking and squalid as ever, and he walked along it happily to the battered doorway of his tenement. The concierge looked up from his den, where he was stroking a cat, and gave a sleepy-eyed, half-drunken nod. He hasn’t noticed I’ve been gone. A building like this is one in a million.
Picard climbed the stairs to the fifth floor, which he shared with Saulnier. The degenerate philosopher’s door was open and a rotten smell filled the hallway. “Hey, Saulnier, what are you cooking in there, a dead rat?”
Saulnier came out of the gloomy depths of his rooms, and squinted at Picard through thick glasses. “I smelled it myself, about a quarter of an hour ago.” He stroked his tangled beard and twitched his nose. “I think it’s in your place.”
Picard looked toward his door, saw the faint curl of smoke from beneath it. He fumbled with his key, threw open the door and raced into the stinking smoke, into a nightmare repeated, a burning room, suffocating hands at his throat. He lost his momentum, swayed in the smoke, confusion gripping him. A shadow moved, he raised his arm to guard against the Baron’s descending cane.
“Water!” called Saulnier, stumbling past him. Picard staggered to the window, drew it open. The wind sucked the nauseating smoke into the street, and Picard turned, saw the smoldering black lump which had almost burned out now, in the ashtray on the living-room table. And of course there was no Baron, the Baron is dead and under the ground in Nuremberg. But I saw him, saw him coming at me just now. Into your grave, Mantes, our fight is done.
Saulnier came from the kitchen with a glass of wine in his hand. “There is no water.”
“It’s out,” said Picard, pointing at the offensive black lump.
“Then I shall drink the wine.”
Picard went to the table and looked at the lump, from which a last foul fume was rising. “Did you see anyone in the hall?”
Saulnier set the wine glass down. “It was probably Josie’s kid, the little bastard. Last month he hung a dead fish behind my bed.”
Picard went to the kitchen and found the window latch open. “He came through here.” The crude fire escape was empty, as was the courtyard below.
“I smelled it all month in my room, Picard. A sickly-sweet odor. I tore the place apart. Then—behind my bed, hanging on a string, a dead mackerel.”
Picard returned to the living room, and touched the lump with the tip of his pocketknife. A tongue of foul blackness bubbled out of the incision, dissolving into an oily stream that ran along his blade. “This was not done by a child.”
“He has a viciously twisted mind, Picard. You don’t know the boy the way I do.”
Picard took out his handkerchief and laid it over the warm lump, wrapping it up carefully.
Saulnier went to the kitchen window and looked down into the courtyard. “He’s probably in the cellar somewhere, enjoying a laugh. I practically lost my sanity over that fish. Unable to find the origin of the smell, I had begun to believe that I was the cause of it, that I was in some way undergoing a strange putrefaction.” Saulnier returned to the living room. “When I finally found it, it was so rotten it had entered a state of phosphorescence. It glowed in the dark, Picard, that kid’s fish. I flung it into the alley. That night the cats went berserk. You should have heard them screaming.”