HS03 - A Visible Darkness (3 page)

‘Which way today, Herr Stiffeniis?’

‘The Berlin road,’ I announced.

He did not ask me why I had not come to work that morning. He did not care. He let out a loud sigh of resignation, and began to trundle through the streets behind me with his wheelbarrow.

I had adopted a scientific method of working, a proven French method, in the belief that the French themselves would not be able to ignore such carefully documented facts. Each day, Knutzen and I would take ourselves to one of the main roads leading into town, looking out for what I called ‘fair samples’, that is, deposits of varying sizes—large, medium and small—which I could added to my statistical record.

As we made our way through the town—I with my ledger under my arm, Knutzen pushing his wheelbarrow, both dressed up like
bandits with handkerchiefs tied over our noses—I consoled myself with the thought that this would be the last time that I would be obliged to make a public spectacle of myself in the interests of the tiny commonwealth of Lotingen. The following day, those shocking statistics would be made public. The French would
have
to act upon them.

‘That’s a good one,’ I said, as we turned the corner into Berlinstrasse, though we had ignored a thousand similar hazards as we passed through the besmirched and stinking streets on our way there. Lotingen seemed to be sinking under a rising tide of horrid filth. Fresh cow-pats steamed like erupting volcanoes everywhere you looked. It was impossible to pass along the road without soiling your boots, impossible not to carry the mulch inside wherever you went.

Knutzen grunted, and took out his scales.

He dropped them with a clang, then reached for his long-handled shovel.

‘Smells like rotten tripe,’ he growled, as he shovelled it up.

He held up the scales and moved the balance-weight across the iron bar.

‘It weighs precisely two pounds, nine ounces,’ I read from the gauge. In my notebook, along with the weight, I added a brief description of the nuisance:
dark brown, fresh, extremely runny
.

While Knutzen dropped the contents into his barrow, I stepped back, waved the flies away, then moved ahead, looking for another decent specimen. I did not need to go two yards. I had decided from the start that six examples weighed and recorded each day would provide sufficient data for a statistical report that might end the squabbling which had divided the town for the past month.

‘Over here, Knutzen.’

Again, he loaded the object onto his scales.

Again, I recorded every detail:
nauseous, fly-plagued, 3 lb 2 oz
.

‘Stinks worse than the last one,’ Knutzen muttered as he turned the plate of the scales and let the contents slide with a lurch into the wheelbarrow. ‘Bloody flies!’

He stood back from the cart with this exclamation, waving his
shovel at the cloud of insects circling there, scattering droplets of liquid excrement in a scything arc from which I quickly distanced myself.

‘My wife was complaining again this morning,’ I confided, instantly regretting it.

‘Who isn’t,’ he muttered grimly.

This glum taciturnity is one of Knutzen’s traits. I had acquired him with the office, there was nothing to be done about it. How many times had I thought to send him packing? I would have preferred a more sociable underling, but who in Prussia had the courage to turf a widowed father out of a job? He was in his fifties, a slovenly man of low birth and no manners, with only three things on his mind: his children; the animals that kept them alive; and the promise of a state pension when he reached his seventieth birthday. If I remained in Lotingen so long—and I had no wish to leave it—Knutzen and I were destined to pass many more years in each other’s company.

‘I hope that you’ll remember, sir?’

I knew what he meant. His salary was nearly due.

‘I will, of course.’

He nodded once. It was the only thing that concerned him. Where the money came from was a matter for my conscience. My meagre expenses had been strictly limited by cuts in the State economy after the Compromise of Tilsit; I would have to pay him his half-salary out of
my
half-salary. Did he thank me? He did not. The sixth cow-pat went slopping into his wheelbarrow.

Knutzen turned to me. ‘That’s your lot done, sir.’

As I closed my ledger, he shovelled three or four more shovelfuls into his barrow.

‘Back to the office,’ I announced.

The relative enthusiasm that Knutzen had shown while we were choosing and weighing the cow-droppings went out like a light. An expression of sullen resignation took its place. I knew what he would be doing for the next hour. That manure would be spread on his vegetable-patch. Then, having milked his cow and made the round of his duck-run, collecting eggs, he would feed the piglet
that he was fattening up to sell to the French. At five o’clock, he would return in a huff to the Court House and seat himself in the small closet at the end of the hall, ready (but not particularly willing) to usher in any visitor who had business with the law until closing-time.

Together we returned towards the market square.

What would Lavedrine have said if he could have seen me?

The French criminologist and I had been thrown into fierce competition the year before as we struggled to solve a crime that was one of the most perplexing in the annals of recent Prussian history. Was he back in Paris, I wondered. What smiling sarcasms would flow from the Frenchman’s lips if could see me now, collecting cow-dung in the streets with the same concentration that we had employed to analyse the scene of the Gottewald massacre?

The town was busy. I met numerous acquaintances, and was obliged to nod and wish them all a bright good afternoon. They looked at me, glanced at Knutzen and his wheelbarrow, then quickly moved away. And the more I tried to hurry him forward, the heavier his barrow seemed to become. The stink of the stuff in his cart hung upon us like a poisonous fog. Flies flew all around in a dense, black cloud. I stopped at the water-pump in the market square, and washed my hands, but I could not rid myself of the clinging stench of faeces.

‘The smell is corrupting the weave of my clothes,’ I muttered.

My only hope was that Lotte would have some marvellous country remedy for unpleasant odours that modern science had not, as yet, dreamt up.

‘Hang them out to air,’ Knutzen advised me gruffly.

While he pushed his cart away in the direction of his home, I went up the stairs to my chambers to pass the remainder of the day in the company of the file relating to the case which had obliged me to compile those revolting statistics: Keillerhaus
versus
Gaffenburger. First, I would make my final computation. Then, I intended to write my opening address to the Court.

Apart from the loud ticking of the Dutch clock, the only sound in the room was made by the agitated rustling of tiny wings. How
many flies had managed to find their way into my office, I could not begin to estimate, but I blamed Knutzen. The window looking out on the market square was open. It had been left that way all through the long, hot day.

I sat down at my desk, and cursed him again.

While we were walking out, I had asked him the usual questions.

Had any mail arrived? Had anybody called at the office?

‘Nobody, sir,’ Knutzen said.

Yet, clearly someone had been there. On the desk lay a book. It was a slim volume in a pale, expensive pig-skin binding. I picked it up and read the title.

A M
OST
R
EMARKABLE
P
HENOMENON
OF
S
PONTANEOUS
C
REATION
.

‘T
HE COURT OF
Lotingen is
finally
in session.’

That accentuated adverb was not a part of the ritual announcement. And perhaps Knutzen’s short temper was justified that day. As a rule, there are no more than five or six casual onlookers when the district assizes are called on the last Friday of every month in the Pietist meeting-house on Fromborkstrasse. The cases to be tried are generally matters of the dullest sort, petty theft, domestic wrangling, drunkenness, disturbing the peace.

‘Procurator Stiffeniis presiding!’ Knutzen added.

The eyes of at least a hundred people turned in my direction as I made my way out from the minister’s vestibule, crossed the hall, and took my seat behind the raised altar-table, which had been cleared for the occasion and covered with a crimson damask drape. The eager excitement of the throng crushed together in the narrow pews—many of them seeing me in my judge’s toga and black cap for the very first time—and the grumbling of those less fortunate who had come too late to claim a seat and found themselves obliged to stand at the back of the hall, was the true measure of the civic importance of the case.

‘Silence in court!’

Knutzen had to shout, calling for order several times again before the proceedings could commence with any sort of reasonable dignity.

On the right-hand side of the bench stood the plaintiff. Wearing a three-quarter-length coat of dark blue wool with a double row of brass buttons despite the persistent summer heat, studded leather sea-boots, his three-cornered nautical hat tucked beneath his arm, his face as dark, brown and wrinkled as a fried walnut, Fritz Keillerhaus looked every inch what he proudly claimed to be: a ship’s captain, who was used to ruling a crew of ruffians, alone and unaided in the pursuit of behemoths. On the other side, Augustus Gaffenburger, the owner of the Lotingen slaughterhouse, and the defendant in the case. They wore matching theatrical expressions of anger and impatience on their faces.

I cleared my throat, then read out the deposition which had given rise to the dispute.

‘
On the 20th of July, in this, the year 1808, after making repeated complaints—in the first instance, directly to the accused; in the second place, to the civic authorities of the town—I, Fritz Keillerhaus, captain (retired), do hereby solemnly swear and affirm that no action was ever taken by either party to correct the wrong that I have suffered. Indeed, the nuisance has grown steadily worse. Therefore, and most reluctantly, I feel obliged by honour to sue for the payment of substantial damages incurred as a result of the continuing assault upon my property . . 
.’

‘By
his
cows!’ Captain Keillerhaus burst out impulsively.

‘We know the nature of your grievance, sir,’ I answered briefly. ‘We are here to settle the matter. The essence of a fair trial is that after your complaints have been fully stated, the accused should be given the opportunity to refute them if he can. Allow me to finish, and we will get on with business!’

Captain Keillerhaus looked down. For one instant, I thought he might be going to spit. He did not. Which was fortunate. It is an offence to expectorate in the presence of His Majesty’s magistrate in the performance of his duties, and even more so when the court makes shift in a consecrated chapel for want of any better assembly-room. I would have been obliged to fine him for it.

‘. . .
continuing assault upon my property
,’ I resumed, ‘
damages which have been estimated in the region of five hundred thalers
.’

I turned to Captain Keillerhaus again. ‘Do you stand by your statement, sir?’

‘Of course I do!’ he snapped. ‘I’d not have made it otherwise.’

‘Very well,’ I said, deciding to ignore the rudeness of his reply, which had caused titters from some of the women and knowing smiles and laughter from many of the men who were present in the room. I turned to Gaffenburger. ‘What have you to say, sir? How do you respond to the charge brought by Captain Keillerhaus?’

‘Captain Keillerhaus is looking for trouble,’ he said, ‘and hopes to make a profit by causing it. He seems to be convinced that I am rich.’

Loud laughter came from the public gallery.

Gaffenburger’s slaughterhouse was one of the largest business enterprises in Lotingen. The defendant’s grandfather had set up in a small way sixty years before. At that time, most people would have considered it a public utility of the first importance. The present owner’s father had enlarged the main building and constructed a network of holding-pens where the restless animals could be calmed down and watered before the fatal moment arrived when they would go to meet the executioner’s knife. Augustus Gaffenburger had inherited the business from his father a decade before, and nothing much had changed for a while.

Then the French had arrived.

After the pacification of Prussia, the French garrison in Lotingen numbered anywhere between one and three thousand men—our port and estuary were the gateway to the northern plain and the Berlin road to the south—so there was now an unending flow of foreign soldiers passing through. There was a constant demand for fresh meat as a consequence, and the French were paying for it. Gaffenburger’s business had tripled in the course of the occupation, and if, as many people suspected, Napoleon was intent on invading Russia when the next campaign season came around, the necessity to slaughter even more cows and sheep, and feed up the French for the fight, was likely to make him a very rich man indeed.

Knutzen was obliged to insist on silence again before I could speak.

‘Captain Keillerhaus,’ I continued, ‘tell us, if you would, what the substance of this complaint is.’

The Captain opened his mouth and a sound came out. ‘Shhh . . .’ He stopped, looked at the wooden altar-table behind which I was sitting, thought for an instant, then changed his mind. ‘Droppings, sir.’

‘What manner of droppings?’

‘You know as well as I do!’ he protested. ‘How many men and women have fouled their precious boots in recent weeks? Shoes do not come cheap. Every time you walk out on the street it’s an obstacle course to avoid stepping into the shhh . . . animal droppings. Of every shape and size, and all of them smelling like the Devil’s own. I have counted them, sir . . .’

General laughter greeted this announcement.