73
M
ORDECAI BEN
J
UDAH
L
EVI
and Barash were seated opposite each other. The scholar, who had previously spoken out confidently, demonstrating his extensive knowledge of kabbalistic arcana, was now less sure of himself. Barash’s Spartan parlor, with its various dun and indefinite shades, had absorbed Levi’s charisma. He was curiously diminished, and Barash correspondingly enlarged.
Introductory remarks had been superseded by a lengthy silence, which, although discomforting for Levi, did not trouble Barash. He tolerated the hiatus with the infinite patience of a statue. Levi shifted in his seat, coughed into his hand, and ventured a question. “You said he would reveal himself. And the following week: Alois Gasse. How did you know?”
“It was inevitable,” said Barash.
Another silence.
“What transpired at the Ulrichskirche…,” Levi began again. “It was most unexpected.”
“Indeed,” Barash replied. “At first, I did not believe such a thing possible. But we live in interesting times, and the victim was, I am informed, a wicked man—a procurer.” Barash linked his fingers. “Let us suppose, then, that Jeheil Sachs met his end staring into the eyes of the kabbalist’s creation. What can this mean? Just one thing, surely, a signal—and a clear one at that: we must be united, or a great tragedy will befall us.”
Levi massaged his forehead. A feeling of pressure had begun to build up behind his eyes accompanied by a dull, aching pulse.
“Unity…” Levi’s voice faltered. “Unity, so that we are strong?”
“If
he
calls, my people will be ready. I hope that yours too will be sufficiently prepared.”
There were voices outside in the street. Shouting, good-humored banter. It sounded distant, almost from another world.
Levi said, “I heard that one of your students, the young shopkeeper who lives with his sick father—”
“The spirit of Prague,” Barash interrupted, “has returned to us. Our enemies will not find us so compliant now, so willing to submit.”
“Do you approve of what the boy did?”
“We must protect our interests.”
“I agree, but I am not convinced that violence is the answer.”
“Then why did Rabbi Loew make his golem? An eye for an eye!”
Barash stood up angrily and went to the sideboard. He opened a door and removed a scroll. Returning to his chair, he unrolled the thick parchment paper and laid the exposed page down on the floor. Levi leaned forward to examine it.
The page was a cosmological chart consisting of circles, constellations, and planetary symbols. In various places the letters of Hebrew phrases—quotes from religious works—had been converted into numbers. These products were then absorbed into what appeared to be an ongoing calculation, the overall structure of which resembled an inverted pyramid. The pinnacle was blunt and consisted of four digits executed in bright red ink: 1903.
“This year,” said Levi. “According to the Gregorian calendar.”
“Yes,” said Barash. “A new cycle—a new age.”
Levi pulled at his beard.
“With respect: a new age, yes. But are you sure that it will favor us, and not our enemies?”
Barash did not distinguish the question with a reply. As far as he was concerned, his gematria was faultless.
74
“WAS IT ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY
to tell him about me?”
Gabriel Kusevitsky got up and paced around the room. He was extremely agitated.
Stopping abruptly, he turned to address Anna. “I had nothing to do with that dreadful man Sachs.”
“The inspector only asked you a few questions.”
“Anna, I don’t think you understand. I can’t have the police arriving at the hospital asking questions! How do you think that looks? Professor Kraus was furious. He was convinced I’d been up to no good.”
“Then Professor Kraus must be a rather silly man.”
“Professor Kraus is many things, Anna, but
silly
is not one of them.”
“Gabriel, what was I supposed to do? Lie?”
“You didn’t have to lie. But you could have been a little more thoughtful, a little more circumspect. You didn’t have to tell the inspector
everything.”
Anna looked bemused.
“Inspector Rheinhardt asked me who I had spoken to about Sachs. I told him my parents, and you. I am sorry that the inspector’s arrival at the hospital caused you some embarrassment. But you seem to forget that Jeheil Sachs was murdered. This is a serious matter.”
“Exactly,” said Kusevitsky. “And I have been implicated!”
Anna shook her head. “Gabriel, that is an absurd thing to say.”
More exchanges followed, and their differences of opinion gradually became entrenched.
A silence ensued that possessed the lethal frigidity of a vacuum: the singular deadness that pervades a room after lovers have quarreled. Anna looked up, and her gaze met Gabriel’s; however, there was no softening of his expression, no sign of the expected reconciliatory half smile. In fact, the cast of his face suggested the very opposite. He was not so much looking at her as
studying
her. He had interposed a “professional” distance, and the narrowness of his stare suggested calculation.
“Anna,” he said coldly, “perhaps we have made a mistake.”
“What do you mean, a mistake?”
“We are both young, and I fear we may have been premature, impulsive”—Gabriel hesitated before adding clumsily—“in our relations.” He then nodded as if agreeing with a concordant response that she had not given. “I must admit, my work has suffered. And I must suppose that you too have neglected your causes.”
His statement seemed to repel Anna, physically. She rocked backward before slowly recovering her original position. Even though Professor Priel’s injunction to respect the Kusevitskys’ fraternal bond was sounding in her head—indeed, perhaps because of it—she found herself saying, “This has something to do with your brother, doesn’t it? He has never liked me.”
Gabriel was about to protest. He raised his arm energetically, but then allowed it to drop. “We have much to do. Not for ourselves, but for the good of
our
people.” Anna was unsure whether he was referring to himself and his brother or to himself and her. “It was wrong of me to pursue your affection,” Gabriel continued. “The time is not right. I am sorry, Anna. Please forgive me.”
“Am I to understand that you wish to end our…”—she was suddenly lost for words, and ended the sentence with a sterile noun—“association”?
The young doctor nodded.
Anna was not accustomed to being dismissed in such a peremptory fashion. All her other suitors had been rejected by her. The reverse was unthinkable. Her response, therefore, was rage, followed by a show of defensive indifference. “Very well,” she said. “If that is how you feel, you’d better go.”
“Anna…” Gabriel made a few faltering steps toward her.
“Please,” she said. “Do not insult me with an apology.”
Kusevitsky bowed and walked stiffly to the door.
“Oh, and incidentally,” Anna added, “it was I who pursued your affection, not you who pursued mine.”
Kusevitsky accepted this emasculating barb and left the room. Anna listened for the sound of the apartment door, and then allowed herself to burst into tears.
She ran from the parlor, down the hallway, and into her bedroom. Standing by the window, she concealed herself behind the curtain and watched Gabriel’s diminutive figure cross the road below. Something caught in her chest, a more pitiful emotion that made itself known through the maelstrom of anger. She noticed something: a man—who must have been standing in a doorway—emerging and walking after Gabriel. It looked as though he had been waiting for the young doctor to come out. Her thoughts were interrupted by a timid knock on the door.
“Fräulein Anna?” It was the maid. “Fräulein Anna? Are you all right?”
“It’s for the best,” said Asher Kusevitsky, handing his brother the bottle of schnapps. “You did the right thing.”
Gabriel took a swig and wiped his lips on his sleeve. His purple necktie was loose. He pulled it off, examined it for a moment, and then tossed it aside.
“We cannot
… must
not be distracted,” said Asher
“Yes,” said Gabriel. “Of course.” After a pause, he added, “I dreamed of Mother and Father last night.”
“Did you?” said Asher. “How strange. So did I. The old house?”
“Yes.”
“They
came for them… carrying torches… and I watched the house burn. Mother called out to me.” Gabriel bit his lower lip. “
‘Leave,’
she said.
‘Run.’”
“It was the same for me too.”
“What? She mentioned Vienna?”
Asher shook his head. “No.”
“I heard her quite distinctly. She said, ‘Run, run…. Leave Vienna.’”
The playwright stood up and extended his hand. Gabriel grabbed it and pulled himself up. “We’re not going anywhere,” said Asher. “No more running—ever again. We have work to do. Work will set you free!” he said, quoting the title of an old novel.
75
A
FTER A MEAL AT
the little café by the Anatomical Institute—two fat bratwurst, a pile of sauerkraut, and a dollop of mustard—Liebermann returned to his room at the hospital. He reviewed his case notes and then tried to distract himself by reading; however, he found that he was unable to concentrate. That afternoon he had received two letters. The first was from the chancellor’s secretary, requesting his attendance at the next hospital committee meeting, and the second was from the aspirant, Edlinger:
WHAT I DID WAS WRONG. MEET ME BY THE NARRENTURM TONIGHT AT TEN-THIRTY. WE MUST SPEAK. THERE IS SOMETHING YOU SHOULD KNOW.
It read more like a plea for help than a repentant man’s promise of restitution. The inclusion of Edlinger’s statement in the dossier sent to the security office indicated that he had probably been courted by Christian Social activists; however, he was young—rash—and might have regretted his decision to become involved in the von Kortig affair. Perhaps his political masters were making demands that he was now less willing to go along with? Or perhaps they had revealed the true scope of their ambition, and Edlinger was having scruples? Edlinger was a hotheaded young man with a reputation for dueling. Nevertheless, it was rumored that he rarely drew his sword to defend an ideal. It was almost always because of a lady.
At first Liebermann was disinclined to meet with Edlinger. If the aspirant had gotten himself into trouble, that was
his
problem. He could always relieve his guilty conscience by confessing to a priest! Moreover, Liebermann did not believe that Edlinger could tell him anything that he hadn’t already guessed. Yet, as the day progressed, curiosity got the better of him.
At ten-fifteen he placed his journal and the two letters in his bag. He locked his desk, extinguished the gaslight, and left his room.
The General Hospital was not a single building but a group of interconnected structures, with a hinterland of clinics and university institutes to the north. Liebermann made his way through a complex maze of corridors that eventually took him out into an open space surrounded by various outhouses and a high stucco façade.
The night was cold. Overhead, slow-moving clouds were limned with the silver valance of a hidden moon.
Liebermann’s breath condensed on the air, and through the dissolving haze he saw the Narrenturm—the fools’ tower. Five stories high, its hooplike structure resembled a
guglhupf
cake (a correspondence that had provided students with a serviceable sobriquet for well over a hundred years). Its curved, dilapidated brick wall was featureless except for a uniform girdle of equidistant slit windows. The absence of any ornament suggested penal austerity—incarceration and hard labor. Yet the Narrenturm had once been the most important psychiatric hospital in the world, attracting not only distinguished doctors but also interested members of the public. Its unique design permitted visitors to circumambulate its corridors and view the unfortunate inmates in their cells as if they were animals in a zoo.
In spite of its historical importance, the Narrenturm now stood on a neglected plot of scrubby grass that was littered with the detritus of construction work: wooden planks, steel drums, and broken slates. A washing line had been attached to a crumbling pillar, and undergarments floated above the ground like the pale body parts of dismembered ghosts.
Only a few windows on the stucco façade opposite were illuminated, but Liebermann’s eyes swiftly adapted to the darkness and he was able to find a way to the Narrenturm with relative ease. He had been standing there for only a few moments when he heard the sound of a restive horse: the jangle of a bridle and the stamping of hooves.
Perhaps Edlinger had already arrived and was waiting on the other side?
Liebermann walked to the back of the building, but could see very little: a clump of trees, more building materials, and the faint outline of additional outhouses. He tried to check the time on his wrist-watch, but the meager light was insufficient.
Again—the jangling bridle.
Peering across the open space, Liebermann thought he detected some movement, a piece of the night—even darker than its background—detached and expanding. The moon emerged momentarily from behind its cloud and clarified the world: an old man, wearing a frock coat and a massive beaver hat, was heading toward him. He was making slow progress, stooped over a walking stick, and he carried a substantial book under his other arm.
“Excuse me… is that someone there?” The voice was thin, and the effort of speech seemed to make the old man cough.
Liebermann tutted.
This is most irritating
.
He walked out to meet the old fellow. As he approached, he noticed the coiled sideburns of a Hasidic Jew.
“Do you need some help?”
“Yes,” said the old man. His breathing was labored, and he spoke with a pronounced Eastern accent. “I need a doctor…”
He coughed again and dropped his book to the ground. As he moved to pick it up, Liebermann stopped him.
“Please, allow me.”
Liebermann crouched down, sensed a sudden flurry of activity, and remained conscious just long enough to recognize the magnitude of his stupidity. Then everything turned black.