Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482) (34 page)

And finally let the Judge come in and promise he will be merciful, with the mental reservation that he means he will be merciful to himself or the State; for whatever is done for the safety of the State is merciful.

The Malleus Maleficarum
,
ca.
1484

In old Moravia, between the towns of Javicko and Svitavka, you may, if the scale of your map permits, descry the little village of H——, which has few monuments to speak of (not that the patriotic citizens of this locality are entirely conscious of the aforesaid fact); accordingly, its very existence has been passed over in every edition of Baedeker's guide. I have been told that the schoolmaster once made courageous epistolary efforts to remedy the omission, for he is a man of charity, who readily takes it upon himself to improve the defects of others. As for his neighbors, including even those august fellows in whose name the old lamplighter hangs out red or black flags from the balcony of the town hall, I fear that few could definitively inform you whether Baedeker is some great lord ensconced in a castle down in Lombardy or an item of dairy-tackle of which they need not trouble to learn the use, thanks to the superior methods of milking (not to mention cheesemongering) in their enlightened district of Bohemia.

Now, the burghers of H—— are known above all else for their devotion to duty, and the schoolmaster even promised to show me a citation which some Margrave or possibly even an Emperor once bestowed upon the Mayor; unfortunately, his good wife kept topping off our tankards with empyrean beer until we both forgot about it. But should you have any doubts about this matter, I advise you to observe the police force in action; sometimes there are as many as two officers in uniform protecting the village from evil, and the schoolmaster claims to have seen even more. At the time of this story, which takes place in 1673, although it could have been 1752, there was, unfortunately, only one man on the
force, but you may rest assured that he was a full inspector, with all the powers and dignities of that office.

He was a veteran, of course, and childless—still hale but with a greying moustache. I believe he had been decorated and commended in a small war in Swabia not long before 1361. His eyes were that lovely blue-grey which comes when a silver thaler is polished. He knew which townsmen were bad, and who was merely weak, and how to torture a recalcitrant prisoner with the strappado—which he did only when ordered or when necessity struck. No good citizen had anything against him, and he greeted the neighbors with a slightly distant but in no way deficient courtesy. Had he been a Prussian, he would have bowed and clicked his heels. In Bohemia people rarely go so far as that, but in the moderately informal venue of H—— it could be seen that this inspector of ours desired to please, even if that desire must be moderated by official duty. A few ancient men who tremblingly grasp hold of life even yet remember how they used to watch him whittle toys for them when they were children, and I think I have seen the moustached oval of his face peering from a dark high window in the town hall. Nobody ever asked him what he wanted out of life, which was as well, since in those days life was parsimonious. He aspired to promotion, of course, and perhaps even to marriage if he could afford it. Well warned by the famous tale of the hero who is lured into the arms of a lovely girl who then turns into a corpse, he kept away from love. No great career awaited him; he had nothing in particular to which he could attach himself, except for life itself.

There are epochs when we manage to convince ourselves that death is merely an inconvenience visited upon other people; but then come other periods. H—— was presently in one of those latter phases. According to Father Hauser, who gave Sunday reports on just this subject, evil had been waxing in those parts for a considerable while, doubtless because our judges weren't burning enough witches. In the adjacent village of Neinstade, a corpse chewed and grunted so horribly in its grave that they had to disinter it, at which point it opened its teeth and exhaled a stench, from which cause several people were infected with the plague. Immediately afterward, every churchyard in old Germany became perilous. Sextons no longer dared to dig coffin-wells after nightfall, for fear that some skeleton-hand might pull them down. Vampires rose up throughout
what Fleischmann has named
the ill-fated Bohemian rectangle.
God's army reacted. In the neighborhood of H——, several beautiful and intelligent women had to be destroyed, just in case they might be witches. Antisocial or intellectual persons of any stripe were burned alive. Strange to say, the monsters grew worse.

No one blamed the inspector for not keeping up with the threat, but the next time the Mayor came to church, he stayed late and lent Father Hauser an edition of last year's newspaper, which had just arrived in H——, where we kindly give others the opportunity to verify our news before we read it. It seemed that Frederick the Great had just dispatched one of his most trusted martinets to Paris, to be instructed by the Lieutenant of Police in Paris for one year. In Berlin, the Police President of Berlin now commanded a hundred-odd truncheon-smacking Exekutivepolizei, most of them former soldiers who had every quality it took to break any lawbreaker's teeth. Why couldn't we be equally
au courant
in H——?

Of course nobody could offer the inspector any additional help, not even a truncheon. But those who mattered agreed that he should set an example to all the policemen of Bohemia, for honor's sake.

They gave him a temporary squad of beggars, and he opened many a grave, but most had to be closed up again for lack of proof! And several were empty, and practically every vault contained a tunnel going down, down, down! The inspector wrote a report. He explained that unless these enemies of heaven were taken in the act, nothing could be accomplished. So they took away his squad.

The inspector and Father Hauser locked themselves into the church at high noon, with candles burning all around. They rubbed every keyhole with garlic. The High Honorable Richter
*
Bernd von Lochner knocked at the back door, and they let him in, looking both ways. Since dawn the executioner, Hans Trollhand, had been stationed in the crypt, his huge mushroom-shaped ear turning blue with cold as he pressed it to the floor, listening for any subterranean stirrings, because it would be disastrous if the enemy overheard their counsels. The three who mattered agreed on trying something new, daring, perhaps even shocking, should
word get out, but since they controlled the town's opinion, they had high hopes that it wouldn't.

Richter von Lochner had by far the greatest authority at that conclave, for he had travelled as far as Prague, where the clay corpse of the Golem still lies in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue. Of all his generation, he, perhaps, had done the most for the human race. I would need a flock of obsequious clerks were I to retail to you all his accomplishments. He had burned dozens of Jews and Freemasons in his time, and even interrogated the Devil, catching him off guard within the house in Charles Square where Doctor Faustus once lived. It was his pride that he had never let a guilty soul escape.

Inspector, he began, I've been watching your efforts. No one can reproach you for anything. You're a brave and steady hunter. I suppose you carried out many a night reconnaissance as a soldier.

Oh, yes, said the inspector.

Tonight we expect to find you in position underground. Modern police methods demand new modes of observation. Do you understand me?

I know how to do as I'm told, replied the inspector, who might have doubted this or that, but never said so.

At any rate, Father Hauser sprinkled him with holy water and summoned the sexton. Secreting a twice-blessed medallion of Saint Polona against his heart, the inspector set out to expose the guilty.

On that occasion (it was Goblin's Day), he essayed to disguise himself by coloring himself brown with a decoction of oak bark and puffing out his cheeks like a
vrykolakas.
Acting upon an advance hint from above, the carpenter had prepared him a coffin with a little hole in it, through which for an hour he diligently practiced sipping by means of a straw. Father Hauser gave him Communion. Laying by his pike which once parted a Turk's ribs—for what good would that do against the undead, except in daytime?—he took up the greater weapon of the sacred Host—which, alas, dissolved away beneath his tongue. They lowered him into position while he lay staring upward, wondering how it would end. Richter von Lochner had already drawn up a list of inspector-successors and replacements, which the mayor signed, saying: Good men, Your Honor, and ready to go down to their utmost!— Of course the sexton left his grave unfilled, so the inspector breathed full comfortably. He thought he might
catch one or two dead rascals, oh, yes; no one would be disappointed in him! But on that very first churchyard midnight, when he heard the mausoleum doors creak open, and accordingly popped out of his coffin (whose nailheads were merely painted on), stood up in that six-foot hole and threw back his own gravestone (which was on hinges), crying,
fellows, where's the party?,
they saw through him at once, and made a rush! I am sorry to say that poor Saint Polona excited their chuckles; he barely saved himself by firing off all his garlic-rubbed silver bullets. Not one of them managed to bite him, thank goodness, and thanks to his excellent shooting he managed, just as he had hoped, to destroy three notorious vampires: a roasted Protestant, an infanticidal mother whom the authorities had convicted and buried alive last winter, and a woman taken in adultery whom they had mercifully and legally drowned.— Justice, concluded the inspector, is not justice, until a stake goes through the heart!

At dawn, dragging himself back to the revered Father Hauser, who had once catechized his charmed childhood, he had to ask himself how much he should be expected to sacrifice for the town of H——. Would he yield up his life?— Well, if he had to; any brave man would, although his aspiration had been to retire before his hair went utterly white, and buy a flock of sheep.— What about his immortal soul? That was a blurrier proposition; for wasn't anyone who did such a deed, even in order to achieve good, a bad person? Fortunately, Father Hauser infallibly promised him absolution.

Richter von Lochner declined to be present at that difficult conference, for he too had a heart; it pained him to send anyone in uniform to certain death, no matter how easily he disposed of evildoers. So the inspector and Father Hauser stood face to face like two Bohemian eagles staring down one another on a faded tapestry, while the gaunt grimy-faced Virgin painted on the ceiling stared down past her locked hands, with her cadaverous head, framed in a blue wimple, glowing blotchily; and Hans Trollhand, well wrapped in his black-and-red cloak (for last time he had caught a cold), kept watch in the crypt, not that he detected the slightest scratching or groaning. Perhaps he would have made an even better hero than that cipher of an inspector; for he had always been more acute than the latter at ferreting out the tiny snake-holes which vampires make (although sometimes there is nothing below but a snake). He was also
very mercantile, which helps one to get renown. Sometimes he sold the blood of people he beheaded, for it was a charm against arson. He collected tips for a good view of the torture platform. All the same, his children were malnourished, and his wife Margaritha owned but one dress. There was hope expressed (I cannot say by whom) that this time the inspector would become famous, a possibility which must have occupied Trollhand in some fashion—and certainly warmed the inspector even through his constraint. He and the priest now discussed such minimally unacceptable methods as choking to death on a crucifix, or forcing holy water into one's lungs. But in the end, he ate mushroom poison, courtesy of a convicted witch whose torture von Lochner accordingly suspended. Justice was on the march! Before Hans Trollhand had even set that witch on fire, the inspector died in anguish, losing himself ever more sorrowfully behind the phosphorescent rainbow of the churchyard spectrum, while Father Hauser sent him off with prayers. So far, the secret retained its honorable virginity. It was an accident, proclaimed the town crier (for in the service of truth it is permitted to our authorities to lie), and so Father Hauser presided over his burial. Because the mayor, who considered that by lending out that newspaper he had already done enough, declined to tax the citizens of H—— for the price of a silver casket, which might have guarded our inspector more securely from the enemies of God, the sexton stuffed cloves of garlic into his shroud, while Hans Trollhand, whom nobody could accuse of not being goodhearted, dug up an irreproachable old Christian woman named Jette and hacked off her right hand, for shouldn't that be nearly as good as a saint's relic? This gift he laid across the inspector's breast. Now for the eulogy, two prayers and three cheers. Down sank our hero, and this time the dirt blanketed him.

Since a man who is merely dead remains of small use to either side in the war between good and evil, the undead-hunters' next task was to bring the inspector back to duty before the vampires got him. Father Hauser accordingly summoned the widow Doroteja, one of his favorite parishioners, who had never missed a day of church.

He said: Doroteja, my child, the church has need of you.

Yes, Father, although I'm but a simple woman . . .

Doroteja, what I'm about to demand of you must be kept secret, on pain of rendition to eternal fire. Do you understand?

Yes, Father.

We know that you enter the churchyard at night.

Please don't burn me, Father! I won't go there anymore—

Doroteja,
he who would save his soul must lose it. She who condemns her soul shall save it, now and forever, amen.
Sing one of those pretty spells of yours. Wake up the inspector. Do this, and I'll be well pleased.