‘I have no doubt of it, Herr Doctor,’ I assured him. ‘It was merely a joke – a poor one.’
‘Ah,’ he said, nodding sagaciously. ‘A joke. Of course.’
The concept seemed foreign to him.
‘Well, Dr Immelman,’ Inge broke in, ‘will you need my assistance? Is there anything I can get for you?’
By now Immelman had reached the bed. He settled his black bag upon the edge of the mattress and adjusted his spectacles as he looked me over. His bloodless face and pale, high forehead were slick with
sweat
; he almost seemed to be melting, as if made of wax or ice. ‘That boot will have to be cut away,’ he said. ‘I will need hot water and bandages, Frau Hubner. And a bottle of schnapps for the patient, to dull the pain.’
‘I’ll have them sent up at once,’ she replied. ‘I’ll leave you in the doctor’s capable hands for now, Herr Gray. Later I will bring some food and sit with you awhile. Come, Hesta,’ she added, and the dog rose from the floor and followed her out of the room.
Dr Immelman pulled up a chair and sat down near the foot of the bed, facing me but keeping his gaze fixed on my boot. ‘You will let me know if there is any pain,’ he directed, reaching out with long, slender fingers, like those of a pianist.
I swore as he began to manipulate my ankle; his touch was gentle enough, but even so the pain was severe. He drew back at once.
‘Is it broken?’ I asked him.
He withdrew a handkerchief from within his black coat and mopped his perspiring face, then tucked it back inside. Now his gaze did meet my own, but only, as it were, glancingly. ‘I cannot say for certain without removing the boot. It seems likely, however.’
I swore again.
‘How were you injured, Herr Gray?’ Immelman asked. ‘I was told only that my services were required.’
‘I climbed the clock tower, and my foot became lodged in the train along which the automatons move.’
Now his gaze returned to my own, and this time it did not waver. ‘Why would you do such a foolish thing?’
I shrugged but did not look away. ‘It seemed a good idea at the time.’ I didn’t want to say anything more concerning the automatons, not only because of Corinna’s apparent desire that I should keep quiet about their resemblance to the people of Märchen, but because I was convinced that I had seen the good doctor – or, rather, his wooden counterpart – among them. Yes, I remembered the sight of him quite clearly; he had preceded Adolpheus in the parade, that black bag of his held before him in the same fashion he had held it just moments ago, before setting it down on the bed. The recollection made it impossible to view the man with equanimity; despite his timidity, there was
something
uncanny, almost sinister, it seemed to me, about his presence now, and I experienced once again, more intensely than I had in the taproom, a sense of – how to describe it? –
misalignment
, as if I no longer fitted properly into the world, or as if the world had undergone some subtle change, one that had left it less friendly to me, less, well, like home. The sensation was all the more troubling in that it was so inchoate, a pervasive wrongness I could neither explain nor explain away.
‘You are the English clockman,’ Immelman said. ‘You have come to learn the secrets of our timepieces, no?’
‘I hope to be permitted to study them,’ I allowed.
‘You have a strange way of going about it, climbing the tower like that. It is not the sort of behaviour likely to be rewarded by Herr Doppler.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘I think it was no idle action.’ Immelman glanced to the door, then leaned towards me, his voice a confiding whisper. ‘I think you saw something that … astonished you. Something that provoked you to make the climb.’
‘On what do you base your diagnosis?’ I asked. ‘Have you yourself seen something astonishing?’
‘I have seen many such things in my time here,’ Immelman replied, once again casting a nervous glance towards the door. He licked his thin lips. Then, as if coming to a decision, he addressed me in English. ‘Sir,’ he said, pitching his voice lower still, ‘you are in grave danger. Märchen is not what you think. Nothing here is what you think. You must be on your guard if you ever wish to leave this place alive.’
I confess I was too taken aback to make an immediate reply. It was not only the shock of being addressed in my native tongue, but the warning thus conveyed, which, though it had come out of the blue, was uttered with such conviction that I did not doubt the man’s sincerity. But of course sincerity is no guarantee of truth. No one, after all, is as sincere as a madman.
‘They have tried to keep us apart,’ Immelman went on, his words spilling out in a breathless rush. ‘This is not your first injury since you arrived in Märchen, yet only now have I been given the task of treating you. Do you not find that strange?’
‘They? Who is this
they
?’ I found my voice at last.
‘Herr Doppler and the rest. They are afraid I will warn you, as indeed I have. Afraid I will help you escape, as I should like very much to do. Yes, and go with you, away from this cursed place for ever! They wish to keep you here, Herr Gray. They have need of you. Just as, years ago, when I was as young a man as you, they had need of me.’
The disarray of the doctor’s clothes and wig, which I had at first taken as evidence of a certain absentmindedness often to be met with among medical men, now began to suggest a more troubling interpretation. Inge had told me that the long months of isolation imposed by Märchen’s heavy snowfalls sometimes induced a kind of mania in the townsfolk. Was that the cause of Dr Immelman’s odd behaviour? His eyes had a wild cast behind his spectacles, and his skin glistened with sweat; he looked sickly, feverish. I responded reasonably, hoping to calm him. ‘If my skills are required, Herr Doppler need only ask. Instead, he has denied my every request.’
‘He has his reasons, of that you may be sure. But it is useless to try and puzzle them out. They do not think as we do, Herr Gray. They are not—’
He broke off at the sound of approaching footsteps, turning to the door as Inge entered, carrying a tray on which she had balanced a steaming jug, a bottle of schnapps with a small glass turned upside down beside it, and a pile of folded white cloths. ‘What is the prognosis, Doctor?’ she inquired.
Dr Immelman blanched at this innocuous question and, switching back to German, stammered out his diagnosis of a broken ankle.
‘I am sorry to hear it,’ said Inge, shaking her head in sympathy as she crossed the room to us and set the tray on the bedside table; her bosom strained against her blouse as she leaned down, but somehow, as before, failed to overspill it. That was as astonishing as anything else I had seen, I assure you. When I tore my eyes away from the display of ripe pink flesh, it was to find her gazing at me with what I can only describe as hunger, as if I were a feast spread before her. At that moment I felt an answering hunger, as though, were it not for the presence of Dr Immelman, each of us could have devoured the other. I felt ashamed of my feelings, and guilty, as if by having them I was being unfaithful to
Corinna
, but I couldn’t ignore them, either. Inge smiled, seeming to divine my thoughts. ‘I shall take good care of you, Herr Gray, never fear.’
The spell was broken as Dr Immelman once again manipulated my ankle, this time without the gentleness he had displayed earlier. I cursed more loudly than ever, and the doctor apologized profusely. His hands were shaking.
‘For God’s sake, Doctor,’ Inge erupted, ‘can you not be more careful? Pull yourself together!’ She fetched a chair from across the room and sat beside him. ‘Come, I will assist you.’ She poured a small portion of schnapps into the glass and handed it to him. ‘Here, this will steady your nerves.’
‘Thank you,’ he said and gulped it down. Then, by what seemed an immense effort of will, Dr Immelman asserted control over his trembling hands. He opened his black bag and began to lay out his instruments. The routine of it seemed to calm him further. Yet the sight of those instruments only increased my apprehension.
‘Now it is your turn, Herr Gray,’ said Inge meanwhile, filling the glass from the bottle and offering it to me. ‘Drink it down, now, all of it.’
I did not need any encouragement. I drained the glass as if it held water. I have never been fond of schnapps – I find its sweetness cloying. Give me a good English port any time. Yet this was like no schnapps I had ever tasted. When I had first arrived in town and secured my room at the Hearth and Home, I had poured myself a glass of water – a glass that had seemed, instead, to contain a most potent liquor, cold and sharp as an icy needle to the brain, which, upon melting, had diffused its numbness through my body, sending me into a sleep so profound that Corinna’s presence at my bedside had not awakened me, but had only, as it were, become transmuted into the stuff of dreams. This draught of schnapps was like that, except more so: it was as if I had swallowed a magical elixir, the ambrosia of the gods, something too strong for mortal senses, as far beyond normal schnapps as that water I had tasted was beyond normal water. The sleep that claimed me was beyond sleep, and if I experienced any dreams, they were beyond the grasp of my memory, for I have never, in all the years since, been able to recall even a glimmer of what passed through my mind from the
time
I swallowed the schnapps until I opened my eyes again to find the room lit by candlelight and, instead of Inge and Dr Immelman, Herr Doppler himself seated at my bedside.
‘The sleeper wakes,’ he said, closing the thin leather-bound volume he had been reading and setting it on the mattress.
I was too groggy and disoriented to reply, but merely lay there, half reclining against the headboard, trying to situate myself.
‘Here, Herr Gray, allow me to assist you,’ Doppler said, getting to his feet. He poured me a glass of water and, with an arm behind my neck, helped prop me up to drink it. I sipped; the water was cold but not intoxicating – invigorating, rather. It brought me fully awake. As if sensing this, Herr Doppler set the glass down on the bedside table, plumped the pillows behind me, and resumed his seat. ‘How are you feeling?’ he inquired. ‘Any pain?’
I shook my head. I lay on top of the covers, fully dressed save for the absence of my boots. One foot was in its stocking; the other was wrapped in pristine white bandages and elevated upon a pillow. It was twice the size of its fellow. Beneath the bandages, I could feel nothing at all. ‘Where is Dr Immelman?’ I asked, recalling his warning to me.
‘Downstairs, eating his dinner. I will call for him in a moment, never fear.’
‘I cannot feel my foot,’ I told him. ‘It is as numb as a block of wood.’
Herr Doppler chuckled at this. ‘Calm yourself, Herr Gray! The good doctor knows his business. I arrived in time to watch him at his work – a steadier hand I have seldom seen. Why, he cut away your boot as if he were peeling an orange, then set your ankle so smoothly that you did not so much as twitch in your sleep. Then he applied some kind of poultice – a numbing agent, he called it, to keep the pain at bay while the break begins to heal. He can explain it better than I, and will do so, I am sure – but first, you and I must have a chat, sir. I dare say you can guess the subject.’
‘My head is somewhat fuzzy,’ I temporized. ‘If you would enlighten me …’ It seemed safest to let him take the lead.
‘Ah, Herr Gray, you think I am angry with you because you climbed the clock tower. I assure you, I am not. The clock, as you see, has ways of protecting itself.’
‘That is what Inge said,’ I exclaimed. ‘But surely you can’t believe—’
‘That one of Herr Wachter’s mechanisms might defend itself?’ he broke in. ‘Come, Herr Gray. Do you mean to tell me, after all you have seen, all you have experienced, that you could doubt it?’
I let this pass. Frankly, I did not wish to dwell on the possibility, which I found disturbing. ‘If not that, then what?’
‘Why, if not the effect, what else but the cause? That is to say, the reason you climbed the tower in the first place. What was it, Herr Gray? Something you saw, perhaps? Something out of the ordinary?’
At this, I had to laugh. ‘
Out of the ordinary?
Herr Doppler, I have seen little else since I arrived here!’ Then, mindful of Corinna’s evident desire that I keep secret what we had seen, I asked him, ‘Have you not spoken to your daughter?’
He frowned. ‘Rather, she has spoken to me. And confessed that it was all her doing – that she tempted you into making the climb with the promise of a kiss. I could well believe her capable of such a wicked promise, the minx, but the fact that she volunteered the information freely makes me suspicious. I know my daughter, sir. She is hiding something. And I think you know what it is.’
I had no intention of revealing what I had seen. I did not understand the significance of it, but I had no doubt that it
was
significant, for not only Herr Doppler but Dr Immelman and even Adolpheus had pressed me on the matter. In any case, it was sufficient that Corinna wished me to say nothing of it.
‘I would not have you think badly of your daughter,’ I told Herr Doppler. ‘She is only trying to protect me, and in her innocence does not understand the injury she does herself. The truth is, it was I who set the terms for that climb, not Corinna.’
‘You, sir?’
‘I had been pressing her for a kiss all morning. But she had resisted my every advance. At last, as we stood before the clock tower, watching as the automatons crossed the stage above us, I secured her promise – reluctantly given, I assure you, and only out of a desire to put an end to my importuning – of a kiss in exchange for my climbing the tower and planting a kiss of my own upon the cheek of a wooden maiden there.’
‘A wooden maiden?’ Herr Doppler echoed, his eyes narrowing. ‘What maiden is this?’
I wondered if I had said too much and inadvertently revealed what I had hoped to keep secret. I saw no recourse but to press on. ‘Just one of the automatons,’ I answered with a shrug. ‘I hope I do not give offence, Herr Doppler, but to speak frankly, I had expected better. So wondrous are the outsides of Herr Wachter’s timepieces that I had thought anything emerging from within them must be equally wondrous. But the figures I saw seemed to have been executed in haste, and otherwise were no different than hundreds of others I have encountered in my travels.’