The Golem (30 page)

Every night after that when the full moon was in the sky, I kept imagining I could see Laponder’s sleeping face on the grey linen of the bed. In the days after he had been taken away I had heard the sound of thunderous hammering and sawing from the execution yard, sometimes continuing through the night until the dawn. I knew what it meant and sat for hours with my hands over my ears in despair.

Month after month passed. I could see how the summer was trickling away in the sickly appearance of the sparse foliage in the exercise yard; I could smell it in the mouldy air from the walls. Every time I noticed the dying tree with the glass picture of the Virgin in its bark, I automatically saw it as an image of the way Laponder’s face had lodged within me. It was always with me, his Buddha’s face with its smooth skin and strange, constant smile.

Only once, in September, had the examining magistrate sent for me and asked me suspiciously what reason I could give for saying at the bank that I had to leave the town on urgent business, and why in the hours before my arrest I had been in such an uneasy mood, and why I had all my precious stones on me?

When I replied that I had had the intention of committing suicide, there again came the scornful cackle from behind the other desk.

Until then I had been alone in the cell and could immerse myself in my thoughts, in my grief for Charousek, whom I felt must be dead by now, and Laponder, and in my yearning for Miriam. Then new prisoners came: thieving, dissipated-looking office workers, pot-bellied bank clerks, ‘orphans’ as Black Vóssatka would have called them, ruining the air and my mood. One day one of them told us full of indignation about a sex murder that had taken place in the city some time ago. Fortunately, he went on, they had caught the murderer straight away and soon made short work of him.

“Laponder was ’is name, the evil-minded bastard!” shouted out another, a ruffian with predatory features who had been given the heavy sentence of fourteen days in prison for child abuse. “They caught ’im in the act, they did. A lamp fell over while they was fighting and the room burnt down. The girl’s corpse was so charred they still haven’t been able to find out who she was. She had black hair and a narrow face, and that’s all what’s known. And that Laponder refused point blank to come out with ’er name. If I’d ’ve ’ad my way, I’d ’ve skinned ’im alive and sprayed pepper all over ’im, but then that’s your upper classes for you, innit? Murderers the ’ole lot of ’em. As if there wasn’t plenty of other ways, if you want to get rid of a tart”, he added with a cynical grin.

I was seething with rage; for two pins I’d have knocked the fellow to the ground. Every night he snored in the bed where Laponder had lain. I breathed a sigh of relief when he was finally released.

But even then I wasn’t free of him. What he had said stuck in me, like a barbed arrow. Constantly, especially during the dark, the awful suspicion gnawed at me that Laponder’s victim might have been Miriam. The more I fought against the notion, the tighter it wrapped its tendrils round me, until it threatened to become an obsession.

Sometimes though, especially when the moon shone brightly through the bars, things were better. I could relive the hours I had spent with Laponder, and the feeling he aroused in me dispelled the torment. But all too often those terrible moments would return in which I would see Miriam’s charred corpse, and feel that I was about to go mad with anxiety. At such moments the vague suspicions on which my fear was based would harden into the firm conviction revealed in a vivid picture full of indescribably horrific detail.

One November evening towards ten o’clock – it was already pitch-dark and my despair had reached such a point of intensity that, like an animal dying of thirst, I had to bite my straw mattress to stop myself from crying out loud – the gaoler suddenly opened the door and ordered me to follow him to the examining magistrate. I felt so weak that I staggered rather than walked.

Any hope I had of ever leaving this awful place had long since died within me.

I prepared myself for the usual icy question followed by the usual cackling from behind the desk, before I was sent back into the darkness. Baron Leisetreter had already gone home and there was no one in the room but an old, hunchbacked, spider-fingered clerk. I just stood there, dully waiting to see what would come next. Then I noticed that the gaoler had stayed in the room and was giving me encouraging winks, but I was much too downhearted to ask myself what they might mean.

“The investigation into the case of Karl Zottmann has led to the conclusion –”, the clerk began, cackled, clambered onto a chair and rummaged around in the papers on the shelf before he found the one he wanted, then continued, “– the conclusion that prior to his death the aforementioned Zottmann, in the course of a secret assignation with the former prostitute Rosina Metzeles, spinster, generally known at the time as Rosie the Redhead, later procured for an undisclosed sum from Kautsky’s Wine Bar by the deaf-mute, Jaromir Kwássnitschka, silhouette artist, now detained at His Imperial Majesty’s pleasure, and since April of this year living in a common-law marriage – Rosie the Redhead, that is – with His Highness Prince Ferri Athenstädt, was enticed – the aforementioned Zottmann, that is – into a disused cellar of the house, cadastral number 21,873, stroke Roman III, commonly referred to as Hahnpassgasse no. 7, where he was incarcerated against his will and left to starve or freeze to death.” The clerk peered at me over his spectacles and leafed through several pages of the document before continuing.

“The investigation led to the further conclusion that subsequent to his decease the aforementioned Karl Zottmann was, in all probability, robbed of all the possessions he carried on his person, in particular of the double-cased pocket-watch” – the clerk held up the watch by its chain – “enclosed under section capital P, stroke b. The testimony of Jaromir Kwássnitschka, silhouette artist, orphan of the late manufacturer of communion wafers of the same name, in which he claimed to have found the abovementioned watch in the bed of his brother, Loisa, who has since absconded, and disposed of it to Aaron Wassertrum, dealer in second-hand goods and owner of several properties subsequently deceased, for an agreed sum, was rejected due to the unreliable character of the deponent.

The investigation also established that the corpse of the aforementioned Karl Zottmann contained, at the time of its discovery, a notebook in its rear trousers pocket in which it had made, presumably some time before its demise, several entries relevant to the case and which assisted the Imperial and Royal authorities in identifying the criminal. The testimony of the entries in the deceased’s notebook casts strong suspicion on
Loisa
Kwássnitschka, at present a fugitive from justice, to whom the Imperial and Royal state prosecution service has accordingly turned its attention. In consideration of the new material evidence detailed above, the detention order against Athanasius Pernath, gem engraver with no previous convictions at present, is therefore to be revoked and the proceedings against him withdrawn.

Prague, July 189-

signed
         

Dr. Freiherr von Leisetreter”

The ground seemed to give way under my feet, and for a few minutes I lost consciousness. When I came to, I was sitting on a chair and the gaoler was giving me a friendly pat on the shoulder. The clerk remained utterly impassive, sniffed, blew his nose and then said, “Notification of the decision could not take place before today due to the fact that your name begins with a ‘P’ and must therefore naturally come towards the end of the alphabetical order.” Then he continued reading:

“In addition, Athanasius Pernath, gem engraver, is to be apprised of the fact that, by the terms of the last will and testament of Innocence Charousek, medical student of this city, who died in May of this year, he, Athanasius Pernath, is declared heir to one third of the total estate of the said Innocence Charousek, and is hereby required to append his signature below in acknowledgement of this notification of the court’s decision.”

As he read the last word, the clerk dipped his pen in the ink-well and began scrawling across the paper. I expected his usual cackle, but he refrained from it.

“Innocence Charousek”, I murmured, lost in thought. The gaoler leant over and whispered to me:

“He came to visit me, did Herr Dr. Charousek. It was just before he died and he was asking after you. ‘Give him my very, very best wishes’, he said. Of course I couldn’t tell you then. Strictly against the rules. He came to a terrible end, did that poor Dr. Charousek. Did away with himself, he did. They found him lying on his front on the grave of that Anton Wassertrum. He’d dug two deep holes in the ground, cut open the arteries in his wrists and stuck his arms down the holes. He must have bled to death. Mad he probably was, that poor Dr. Char–”

The clerk pushed his chair back noisily and handed me the pen to sign. Then he stood up, full of self-importance, and said, in exactly the tones of his aristocratic superior, “Gaoler, take this man out.”

Once again – after how many, many months? – the man with the sabre and long johns in the room in the gatehouse had put aside the coffee-mill he was holding between his knees, only this time he did not examine me, but returned my precious stones, my purse with the ten crowns in it, my coat and all my other things.

Then I was out in the street.

“Miriam, Miriam! Soon at last we shall see each other again!” It was all I could do to suppress a wild shout of joy. It must have been midnight. Like a dull brass plate, the full moon was floating wanly behind a veil of cloud. The cobbles were covered with a layer of sticky mud. In the mist the cab looked like a prehistoric monster; I was so unused to walking that my legs almost gave way, and I staggered towards it, the soles of my feet completely numb, as if I were suffering from inflammation of the spinal chord.

“Hahnpassgasse, Cabbie, as quick as you can, number seven. D’you hear? Hahnpassgasse No. 7.”

We had only driven a few yards when the cab stopped.

“Hahnpassgasse, your Honour?”

“Yes, yes, on you go!”

The cab set off again, and again it stopped.

“For God’s sake, what’s the matter now?!”

“You did say Hahnpassgasse, your Honour?”

“Yes, yes. Of course I did!”

“But I can’t take you to Hahnpassgasse.”

“Why ever not?”

“ ’Cos they’ve dug up the roads everywhere. They’re pulling the whole of the Jewish quarter down.”

“Take me as far as you can, then, but be quick about it!”

His nag took one leap forward and then subsided into its habitual amble. I let down the rattling windows and greedily sucked in the cool night air. Everything had become so strange, so bewilderingly new, the houses, the streets, the closed shutters. A white dog trotted past, alone and morose, along the damp pavement. How strange! A dog! I had completely forgotten the existence of such animals. Full of a childish delight, I shouted after it, “Come on now, how can you look so glum?”

What would Hillel say? And Miriam?

Only a few more minutes and I would be there. I would not stop hammering on their door until I had roused them from their beds. Now everything was going to be all right, all the trials and tribulations of this year over at last. What a splendid Christmas it would be! And this time I wouldn’t sleep through it like last year!

For a moment my old fear returned to paralyse me as I remembered the words of the ruffian with the predatory features. The charred face – rape – murder. No! No! I forced myself to shake off the horrifying images. No, no, it could not be true. Miriam was alive! Had I not heard her voice from Laponder’s lips?

Just one more minute – thirty seconds – and then –

The cab stopped beside a mountain of rubble. Everywhere the road was barricaded by heaps of cobblestones with red lamps on top of them. An army of navvies was working by the light of blazing torches.

The way was blocked by piles of debris and broken masonry. I clambered over it, sinking in up to my knees.

There, that must be Hahnpassgasse, mustn’t it? I had the greatest difficulty orienting myself, nothing but ruins all around. Wasn’t that the house where I had lived? The faade had been ripped off.

I climbed to the top of a mound of earth; far below, what had been the street had become a narrow passageway between black walls. I looked up. The lattice of exposed rooms rose up into the air like the cells of a gigantic honeycomb, lit half by the torchlight, half by the dull moon.

That one up there, that must have been my room. I could recognise it by the paint on the walls, although there was only a small patch left to see. And next to it the studio, Savioli’s studio. I suddenly had an empty feeling in my heart. How strange! The studio! Angelina! That was all so far, so immeasurably far behind me now.

I turned round. Of the house in which Wassertrum had lived there was not one stone left standing on another. Everything had been razed to the ground, the junk-shop, Charousek’s basement, everything, everything.

A phrase I had read somewhere came to mind, ‘Our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.’

I asked one of the workmen whether he knew where the people who had left these houses lived now. Did he know Shemaiah Hillel, the archivist at the Jewish Town Hall?

“Nix daitsch”, was the curt answer, but when I offered him a crown, he immediately found he could understand German; however he still could not help me. None of his workmates either.

Perhaps I would find out more if I asked at Loisitchek’s? – Loisitchek’s was closed, they said, the house was being renovated.

Well, then, I could wake up someone in the area, anyone. Wouldn’t that be possible? – There was no one living in the area, no one at all, not even a stray cat. Forbidden by the authorities. Because of typhoid.

“But the Old Toll House Tavern? The Old Toll House must be open?”

“Closed.”

“Are you sure?”