HS03 - A Visible Darkness (48 page)

T
URNING INTO
S
CHWARTZSTRASSE
, I pulled up sharply.

It was as if Frau Poborovsky had opened Vulpius’s wardrobe again.

That smell.

The same pungent aroma that clung to Vulpius’s working clothes. Cloying and sweet, it invaded my throat, and sat heavily upon my stomach. Frau Poborovsky had said that it was constantly on his hands and hair. A most peculiar perfume that he favoured, she believed. It was certainly distinctive, but she was wrong in thinking that he wore it as a pomade.

Tall, dark ware houses lined the far side of the street. They had been abandoned for some time by the look of them. The doors were barred, the hatches closed, the joists and pulleys used for heaving sacks to the upper floors were orange with rust. Even so, the street was busy. On the near side there were mechanics’ dens, a blacksmith’s yard, workshops of endless variety. Saws rasped and buzzed from one door, beating hammers exploded from the next. I paused outside a barrel-maker’s, and heard the creak and shriek of staves being bent, the rattle of iron hoops, the thumping of wooden mallets. Up above my head, seagulls screeched forlornly. Perched
on roof-gables, they stared fixedly north in the direction of the Baltic Sea.

I worked my way along the street, following that smell.

There had been more fragrant scents there in the past, it seemed. Hand-painted signs offered spices from the Indies, tropical fruits from South America. But then the French had arrived and the British naval blockade had put an end to foreign trade. Where pepper, nutmeg and other rare vegetable extracts had once been ground and packaged in paper sachets, mackerel were now being smoked on strings hung over a charcoal-pit. The view through the open doors of the smoking-yard was like a still-life painting from the Low Countries: bright glowing embers in strips on the ground; hazy blue smoke on a dark ground; silver-glistening, dead-eyed fish.

But that other smell kept coming back to me.

I lost it for an instant as I passed beside a carpenter and his lad who were making coffins beneath an ancient sign.
PRECIOUS WOODS—INTAGLIO WORK
, it read. They were rooting through a mound of cast-off lumber which had just been tipped out onto the cobbles. A lanky man in rags with a skinny horse and makeshift cart was dumping broken doors and scorched planks onto the pile, whistling through his gap-teeth while he worked. Wood-shavings, glue and varnish filled the air.

But not for long.

I caught the scent again, then lost it immediately.

The doors of the next shop were thrown wide open. Three men were hard at work. Their faces seemed to be melting in a lather of sweat. Old sacks covered their bodies and heads. They were filling large glass jars with vinegar and baby eels, which twisted and jerked away as each man grabbed a writhing handful from a tub, and tried to press the reluctant creatures into their little glass coffins.

I lingered for a moment, remembering.

One of our serfs had been sent to Königsberg to collect the leather harnesses for a new coach. When he returned to Ruisling, he brought back a jar of pickled eels for my father, saying that they
were considered to be a great delicacy. Father, mother, Stefan and I had sampled the eels that eve ning, and been sick for three days afterwards. Helena had expressed a craving desire for pickled eels one morning recently, as pregnant women sometimes will.

Very soon, her time would be up . . .

I had never felt so helpless. I thought of her swollen belly. The child would be gathering his strength now. He, or
she
, would be preparing to fight his, or
her
, way into the world. I ought to have been there. And maybe I would be there soon.

That distinctive smell grew stronger.

Smoked fish, scorched wood, pickling eels could not hold me back. Like a prized red setter, I caught at the richer, more celestial, aroma floating on the warm air, and I rushed on down Schwartzstrasse. It pushed all other smells aside, persisting long after they had faded. Had I walked that street at night—had my eyes been blind—I would still have been able to follow it to its source.

Bright red letters on a white background, the hanging sign looked relatively new. I stopped and read again what was written on the trade-sign.
DEWITZ WAXWORKS—DEATH MASKS ON REQUEST
.

I breathed in deeply.

It did not smell like the beeswax that Frau Poborovsky probably used to polish the dining-table in her parlour. Nor did it have the clinging greasy odour of the tallow rushes that she certainly used to light her rooms. This stuff had a sharp, almost bitter, scent that anyone might have remarked upon if Vulpius carried it into his lodgings.

A handcart was parked in front of the door. Ready to depart at a moment’s notice, I surmised. They must carry wax to a customer’s home. It seemed unlikely that grieving relatives would bring a body all the way here to make an impression of the face alone. I decided immediately how I would present myself. I would invent an uncle, then sacrifice him. He had died that very morning; I wished to have a death mask made.

I pushed on the door. A dangling bell clanged and jangled as I entered.

I might have been stepping into a church. The warm wax worked
its spell on me. Can any Christian soul resist it? It seemed to promise warmth and light and eternal life—despite the suggestion of death, and the hint of funerals that inevitably accompanies it. The low, barrel-vaulted ceiling of the workshop was made of ancient smoke-stained bricks, and it was as long as a country chapel. There even appeared to be side-altars sprouting off on either side. Light shone out of these openings, tracing elongated human shapes in stark silhouette upon the opposite walls.

‘Is anyone there?’ I called.

Large cubes of grey wax were stacked like blocks of ice against the walls on both sides of the entrance. Clouds of wood-smoke filled the air. As I called again more loudly, the figure of a man emerged from the swirling smoke, as from a fog, coming to meet me in an unhurried manner.

‘May I help you?’ he enquired.

He was tall, slender, rakish. Not yet fifty, I would have said. Wisps of long blond hair dangled in a goatee beard from his pointed chin. He had carelessly thrown a brown cloak over his shoulder like a French
chasseur
, and wore a red wool cap pulled down tightly over his forehead. His bright blue eyes gazed into mine.

‘I am looking for Herr DeWitz,’ I announced.

‘You have found him,’ the man replied with a pleasant, welcoming smile. There was a croaking catch in his animated voice. He spoke German well, but clearly it was not his native tongue.

‘You . . . you are not Prussian, sir,’ I said, dithering about the best way to begin.

Having got so very close, I did not intend to startle Vulpius into flight.

‘You have a good ear, sir. I am Dutch. From Delft. But no,’ he apologised quickly, his face taking on a more lugubrious aspect. ‘You have more urgent business certainly. A death in the family, I suppose?’

I toyed with my mythical uncle, then decided to be blunt.

‘No, thank the Lord,’ I replied. Then, lowering my voice, I took a step closer. ‘I am a Prussian magistrate, sir. I am conducting an investigation. Is there somewhere we may talk in private?’

He did not seem surprised or alarmed at this request.

‘Come with me,’ he replied, turning away, walking into the smoky interior.

I followed him in silence, taking careful note of my surroundings. In the first vaulted room through which we passed, two very young girls were sitting beside an open fire on a which a large pot of wax was bubbling. These children were making domestic spills, dipping long reeds one by one into the pot, then placing them in an upright rack to harden and dry.

‘We’re getting ready for the winter,’ DeWitz informed me, turning to the right, leading me into another brick-vaulted tunnel, where an old man with a badly bent back and large, skeletal hands was feeding brushwood kindling into a fire beneath a large brass boiler. A set of long, slender candle-moulds were laid out on a work-bench beside him, the wicks pulled tight by dangling weights at either end of the mould.

I fought off the suggestion which rose immediately to my mind. Plaster casts of candles of differing dimensions hung from the walls. It was all too easy to make comparisons with the surgery of Dr Heinrich and the plaster casts of Erika Linder’s arms, hands and legs. All too easy to reach a wrong conclusion, and see what I wanted to see.

I chased after DeWitz.

At the far end of this long low hall was a table and four stools. The proprietor of the waxworks sat down, made himself comfortable, and invited me to do the same with a sweeping gesture of his pale right hand. He poured himself a glass of water from a carafe, sipped from it, then he looked at me. ‘Will this do you for privacy? You are very mysterious, sir.’

‘I . . . I saw your sign,’ I said, hesitating again. My greatest fear was that Vulpius was somewhere in the vicinity. ‘Death masks . . .’

‘A minor branch of the trade,’ he replied. ‘We don’t do more than four or five a week. It is going out of fashion. Candle-making takes up the greatest part of the general business. All shapes and sizes. All qualities, of course. The denser the wax, the longer they burn,
the more they cost.’ He sipped again, apparently waiting for me. ‘It is thirsty work.’

It was extremely warm in the manufactory. It would be a decent place to work in winter, I thought, but the numerous fires, the smoke, and the heavy scent of perfumed wax clogged the stifling air.

I leant over the table.

‘I am looking for a man named Vulpius,’ I said very quietly. ‘I have been informed that he works for you.’

DeWitz stared hard at me. ‘Vulpius
sometimes
works for me,’ he replied.

‘Is he here just now?’ I asked.

‘He is not,’ he said.

‘Do you know where he is?’

‘Again, Herr Magistrate, I must say no.’

The tension drained out of me. Frustration took its place.

‘But you know where I can find him, surely?’

DeWitz did not move, his glass poised close to his lips.

‘I have no idea,’ he said at last. ‘To tell you the truth, I am beginning to lose my patience with him. He should be here, he should be working, but I haven’t seen him for . . . what, a week? More, perhaps. What day is it today?’

‘Thursday,’ I replied.

‘It is at least ten days since he was here,’ he decided at last.

The deaths of Kati and Ilse fell within that time span. And Dr Heinrich had been in Nordcopp—not Königsberg—as I could personally testify, in the same period.

‘What does he do when he does come to work?’ I asked.

‘He is a modeller,’ DeWitz replied.

‘Of candles?’

The answer came after a while. ‘He is employed in the laboratory.’

‘The laboratory?’ I repeated. ‘And what is that?’

DeWitz looked at me, and he smiled more pensively. ‘Have you a good, strong stomach, sir?’ he asked.

I nodded mechanically, thinking that he was talking of mortuary masks. I had seen the operation done on two occasions in my youth: my father’s mother first, then, a decade later when my brother, Stefan, died.

‘I know that wax is applied to the cadaver’s face . . .’

DeWitz shook his head. ‘Not that,’ he said dismissively. ‘It might be better if I show you what we do here, rather than explain it. You are a magistrate, after all. You’ll have seen sights that other men find shocking. Is that not so, sir?’

There was an air of presumption in his manner, almost a challenge.

I rose to my feet at once. ‘Where is this place?’

We went back down the hall, turned left, then right, and left again. At the end of the tunnel there was a broad double door. And a warning sign:
KEEP OUT—ON PAIN OF DEATH
. Someone had sketched a skull, and a pair of crossed bones in the form of a knobbly letter X. The symbol reminded me of the
memento mori
carved on ancient tombs in country churchyards.

DeWitz pounded three times on the door.

Each knock was separated by a second of silence.

He waited for a few moments before pushing the door and going in.

The room was larger than any of the others. Six or seven people were working there. Two of them were women. One of them was stirring a large bowl of what looked like plaster, but that activity seemed tame in comparison with what the other workers were doing.

‘I have a licence,’ DeWitz said quickly. ‘From the police, and the Albertina, too.’

‘I certainly hope so,’ I muttered.

In the centre of the room, a man in a leather apron was standing by a table. He was working with a short knife, removing the heart from a dead body which was naked. The butcher was so thoroughly caked in blood that his apron was black. Spots of blood were spattered on his arms and his face.

‘A male,’ I murmured, noting the grey, lifeless sex of the corpse.

‘Fresh from Lobenicht poorhouse this morning,’ DeWitz informed me. ‘We make the most of what we can get.’

‘What are they doing?’ I asked him.

‘They’re making models for the university,’ DeWitz replied with a short, ironic laugh, as if he had sensed my doubts. ‘What else would they be doing?’

Someone began to sing in a high-pitched female soprano.

‘
Tu ’nce si nnata co’ le rose ’mmano
. . .’

A second voice picked up the melody of a song that I had heard before.

‘Are they Italian?’ I asked, nodding from the blood-soaked man with a human heart in his hands to the singers and the other persons employed in that charnel-house. To make it worse, two small boys were tending a fire and the cauldron for melting wax that was suspended over it.

‘Indeed they are,’ DeWitz explained with a raising of his eyebrows. ‘From Florence, most of them. Though the carver over there,’ he indicated the man with the human heart, ‘his wife and his daughter, who both have lovely voices, are all from Naples.’

‘What are they doing in Königsberg?’