The Clockwork Man (12 page)

Though Herr Gruber would have been justified in forbidding me to attend, before sunrise he sent Fräulein Gruenwald down to relay his permission, and to prepare me. I would be allowed to walk behind the Master’s carriage during the procession, at some distance, and could view the funeral from the carriage outside, provided I was sufficiently disguised and caused no distractions. I was forbidden to enter the church. I did not object; even from the carriage I would be able to see and hear the service quite easily, and God’s grace is reserved only for those of flesh and blood. During the burial I was to remain behind the trees at the cemetery’s edge.

I sat quietly on a stool Fräulein Gruenwald had brought me while she scrubbed the set-in maroon stains from my hands and cheek. “You poor creature,” she said, massaging my damp cheek. “They shouldn’t be punishing you.”

“The Master knows best.”

Fräulein Gruenwald stopped scrubbing my face for a moment and set the handkerchief down. “There was nothing you could have done. No sense in blaming yourself now.”

“Thank you,” I said politely, though I did not agree. She was simply trying to comfort me—a meaningless task—and I did not wish to upset her.

“She loved you. You should know that.”

“You should finish soon. The Master will need you.”

“Of course.” She resumed dabbing at my cheek with oil soap.

At eight minutes to eleven, Fräulein Gruenwald returned, descending the stairs carrying a black overcoat and bowler hat, and a heavy red scarf. “They’re ready. Herr Gruber wants you to wear these.”

“As the Master wishes,” I said as she helped me into the coat.

I saw the carriages in front of the house, the Master helping Frau Gruber and Jakob into their seats. Jakob seemed more pallid than usual, nearly blending in with the snow, and even from the doorway I could see his face bore no expression. I have seen little of him in the three days since Fräulein Gruenwald reawakened me, and in the odd times when he passed me in the hallway he did not speak or otherwise acknowledge my presence. His relationship with Giselle was at times strained, and I suspect he does not know how to reconcile her death. I do not think he blames me.

The Master, as well, barely registers my existence, and I wonder if my presence is a reminder of her death—I was there, a witness to her murder, and held her as she died.

As the horses began to pull the carriages through the snow, the Master called out to Fräulein Gruenwald, who shuffled outside to join them. Halfway to the rear carriage she stopped, shook her head, and began trudging back toward the house in her snow boots.

“Are you not attending?” I asked.

“Of course I am. I’m walking with you.”

“The church is over a mile away. You will be cold.”

“It’s not so bad. Come, now. Don’t want to fall too far behind.”

She took my hand and we began to follow the Master’s carriage down the narrow road leading to the church. Halfway there she began to shudder noticeably, so I slid off my overcoat and draped it over her shoulders.

“Thank you, dear,” she said, and held tight to my gloved hand. “You really are a gentle soul.”

I stood at a respectable distance from the church for the duration of the service, having no desire to anger or otherwise distract the Master and his family at such a time. Perhaps two dozen carriages stood in the frozen courtyard, and I still fail to see how such a large number might fit inside that narrow white hall. Its congregation is small, but the Master is well known here, and his many friends came to pay respects. Though I could not see inside, I easily heard Rev. Schuchardt’s sermon: a mournful, almost poetic elegy likening Giselle’s death to a young lamb cut down by wolves. I recall the Master saying the minister had known her since her birth, and the pain was evident in his voice, however muffled it may have been from my vantage point.

I remained there until the black-clad mourners emerged: the Master, his brothers, and Rev. Schuchardt bearing Giselle’s casket to the waiting hearse, then followed as the procession began its slow crawl to the city’s main cemetery. Fräulein Gruenwald once again made ready to walk beside me, but because of the cold I insisted she ride with the Master and his family.

The funeral procession made its way to the
Hauptfriedhof
, our city’s principal cemetery, and I was easily able to keep up despite the snow and slippery ground. When we had crossed the river to Frankfurt proper, many people lined the sidewalks of the
Eckenheimer Landstraÿe
, the great central street of Frankfurt, standing outside the tightly packed shops, their hats removed and placed over their hearts. In this part of the city, where I so often ran errands with Fräulein Gruenwald, Giselle, and Jakob, I can walk unconcealed. Some of the mourners waved sadly; others tossed flowers in the street before the approaching carriages. The baker, whose intervention had spared me from destruction, stepped from the crowd and offered me a lily to lay upon her grave. I accepted it and expressed my gratitude, though when we reached the cemetery I gave the lily to Fräulein Gruenwald as thanks for her kindness.

The
Hauptfriedhof
itself was quite beautiful, though winter had rendered its landscape an unremitting white. I had seen it before, accompanying the Master and his children to pay respects to the late Frau Gruber in the family mausoleum. The monuments, some of them several hundred years old, were quite ornate and extraordinary: copper angels, green with age though no less grand; gleaming white crucifixes and obelisks; near translucent blue and green marble hexagons.

The Gruber mausoleum had been brushed clear of the recent snowfall, and I found it difficult to comprehend that, in a few moments, Giselle would be laid to rest inside it.

I stepped behind a waist-high rock wall at the cemetery’s edge as the mourners disembarked from their carriages. The Master and Jakob stood at the mausoleum’s doorway, the Master’s face full of loss and confusion, Jakob’s an unmoving pale mask, as if he still had not grasped the full measure of what had happened. In this, we three are alike; Giselle was so intensely alive to us that her death seems impossible to accept.

The graveside service was brief, perhaps owing to the cold. Rev. Schuchardt gave a quick prayer; then Giselle’s coffin was carried into the mausoleum. The Master and Jakob each touched the casket, then the mourners each laid a flower upon it.

I remained behind the wall until the last carriage had departed and the attendants sealed the door. Only then did I approach. On seeing me up close the attendants backed away, startled; I did not apologize. I simply looked down upon the closed marble door, and said, “Good-bye.”

As I feared, my presence in the house has offended Frau Gruber, who has decided to stay on for a few days to take care of the Master and Jakob. Regardless of the Master’s explanation, I believe she blames me for the loss of her granddaughter. Fräulein Gruenwald later explained that, irrational as she was, she would have blamed me even had I not been present at Giselle’s death. Still, her suspicions have led to a violent disruption of the Master’s home, and I fear there is nothing I can do or say that will ease her animosity toward me.

At 6:42 this morning, while the Master still slept and the house was quiet and dark, I heard the cellar door open with a slow, quiet creak. Frau Gruber, frail as she was, descended the staircasegingerly, holding a lighted candle in one hand, grasping at the banister with the other. When she had reached the bottom, she stared at me silently in the dark, the dim orange light flickering on the Master’s diagrams and blueprints behind me.

“May I help you?” I asked her.

She approached me slowly, holding the candle several feet in front of her so that her face was cast in shadow. “Karl says you had nothing to do with it.”

“He is correct,” I replied. “But I was also unable to save her.”

“My son’s mind is clouded. He doesn’t believe you could ever do such a thing.” She inched closer, so that she was perhaps two feet from me, her gaze never averting from mine.

“I could not. I am not a violent creature.”

“I told him to take you apart after Giselle died, but he didn’t listen.”

One of the Master’s many gifts to me was his insistence that I learn to observe human behavior, that I might learn from it and avoid being taken advantage of when he is no longer there to guide me. Thus, I knew Frau Gruber’s intention was to do me harm. I took two steps back, to place distance between us. “The Master will be angry if you destroy me,” I said.

“Maybe so,” she said. “But he will understand one day.” She weakly lunged at me with the candle, presumably to set me ablaze. But I am able to move more quickly than she, and I avoided the tiny flame entirely. Several drops of candle wax flew from the holder in her hand and splattered across the workbench and wall. She lunged a second time, but I again evaded her reach. I began to grow concerned that, in her flailing, she might set the house on fire, and I was not confident I could carry everyone out in time. She lunged at meyet again, but lost her balance and fell, catching herself on the edge of the long wooden bench.

It was at this point that Fräulein Gruenwald heard the commotion, and rushed downstairs, still in her nightgown and slippers. “My God! What is going on down here?”

Frau Gruber turned to glare at her. “Go away. You are not needed here.” She turned back toward me to make one final attempt to immolate me, but Fräulein Gruenwald immediately rushed down the stairs and seized her by the wrists. “I’m sorry,” she said, as she pried the candle from Frau Gruber’s grasp. “I cannot let you do that. Herr Gruber would never forgive you.”

“My son will throw you out of this house forever!” Frau Gruber said. She struggled weakly against the younger woman’s grasp before collapsing into tears, clutching at the skirts of Fräulein Gruenwald’s gown.

“Come on,” Fräulein Gruenwald said. “I’ll take you back up to bed.” She set the candle on one of the empty workbenches and helped Frau Gruber back up the stairs. In the doorway she turned back toward me. “Stay here,” she said, and disappeared behind the heavy oaken door. After I heard their footsteps stop upstairs I stood in the cellar’s darkest corner and did not move.

Three hours, twenty-seven minutes later, Fräulein Gruenwald came back down to the workshop. “She’s sedated,” she said. “I called a doctor for all of them.”

“I am glad she is all right.”

She reached up to touch my shoulder. “I don’t think that had anything to do with you,” she said. “She was angry and grieving.”

“I suspected as much. I hold no grudge.”

“I won’t let her bother you again. But while she’s here, don’t remind her you’re down here.”

“Agreed.”

She took my hand in hers, as gently as Giselle ever had. “You shouldn’t have to put up with this. I’m so sorry. ” I insisted I would be fine, and bade her tend to the Master’s family.

I must extend my apologies for the recent lapse in my entries, and hope the usefulness of this account to the social sciences has not been compromised as a result. The family’s current state has been a great distraction and has lessened my diligence.

Frau Gruber left us this morning at 11:15, promising to come back from time to time to help the Master with Jakob. Thus, my exile to the cellar has ended by default. I came out when she departed, and the Master simply has not ordered me back. If she returns, I will do my best to avoid her.

Fräulein Gruenwald today enlisted me to help hang Christmas Eve decorations around the house. The Master disappeared into his workshop yesterday evening and has yet to emerge, and does not seem interested in such tasks—these were largely Giselle’s responsibility since her mother’s passing—so she has taken the initiative for Jakob’s sake. She has gone so far as to suggest we cut down a spruce from the Master’s backyard to bring inside, but believes she should ask his permission before doing so.

This afternoon a police detective came to the house to speak tothe Master. The two men sat in the dining hall while, in hushed tones, the inspector gave him a progress report on the investigation of Giselle’s murder. They had searched the butcher’s house in the Jewish quarter of Frankfurt, and questioned his family members, but found nothing to suggest where he had gone.

“I don’t want to upset you,” the inspector said, his voice falling to a near whisper, “but he could be anywhere now. We have detectives looking for him at the Polish and Austrian borders. But so many people come through every day—we might still miss him. If he crosses over, obviously there’s not much we can do.”

The Master nodded. “I understand.”

“He might still be in hiding. We’re keeping a close eye on his neighborhood. We’ll let you know if we find him.”

Jakob had been trying to fashion a bird-shaped kite from wax paper and skewers, as Giselle had done for him, when the inspector came. After some time he gave up, wandered into the dining hall to listen, and suggested to the inspector that the police round up all the Jews in Frankfurt and interrogate each one until the murderer was found. The Master seemed subtly alarmed by the suggestion, but said nothing.

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” the inspector said.

“Why?” Jakob asked sincerely. Both men seemed uncomfortable at his question, and neither offered an answer.

“Go finish your kite,” the Master finally said, and the two men continued talking.

Later, after the Master retreated back to his workshop, Jakob came to my library cubby. “Father doesn’t know what to do,” he said. “I say we sneak out when he’s asleep, go into the Jewish quarter, andtorture people until they tell us where the killer is. Then, when we find him, you can rip him apart with your bare hands.”

“I would never do such a thing,” I said. “This is a matter for the police.”

“They’re not doing a very good job of it. You could just hold him, and I’ll take care of the rest.” He made a stabbing motion with his arm.

I urged Jakob to have faith that the authorities would bring Giselle’s murderer to justice and escorted him to bed.