Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street (29 page)

‘I know it's poisonous,' replied the woman in a whisper, also leaning closer to Melchior. ‘Lily-of-the-valley is
very
poisonous.' And again there flashed in her eyes a sort of cruelty, a kind of madness.
Heavens above, do I really recognize this,
thought Melchior. Does one madman recognize another?

‘What wounds does the Pastor have then?' he ventured.

‘Mr Gottschalk was severely repenting of his sins, and his blood was united with Jesus Christ's blood,' whispered the woman, ‘but the wounds are not closing, and the Pastor sent me after medicine.'

‘Then he has been repenting much too hard.'

‘Sins have to be repented severely. The Master himself said that.'

‘Oh, well, if the Master said it …' Melchior stepped over to his shelf of medicine bottles, looking for a particular oil, ‘the Master's words have to be obeyed.' He had no idea who the Master might be. He put two small bottles in front of Margelin Witte. ‘One of these is amber oil and the other lily-of-the-valley wine. They're supposed to be mixed together and then drunk. It stops a wound from festering. But since we don't have the doctor's seal of approval, and I haven't seen those wounds, I don't know how strongly to mix them. Lily-of-the-valley is poisonous – as we've agreed – and I might make it too strong. I have to see the penitent's wounds.'

‘Then I will show you the way to them – and, who knows, maybe that way will be the way of your own penitence,' whispered Margelin. ‘Come and treat the poor sinner's wounds.'

‘I'm coming,' replied Melchior. ‘Oh, I'll come with pleasure.'

F
OR THE
FIRST
time in his life Melchior stepped over the threshold of the Unterrainer house. It was very ordinary. The
diele
looked like the
diele
of any other house in Tallinn. It was impersonal. In the summer heat it gave shade from the blazing sun and in winter a warm refuge from the searing cold. And, of course, being the house of a holy man, even the
diele
featured a wooden image of the Redeemer and an altar on the west wall. When the Apothecary arrived the Pastor came downstairs and stood staring in amazement at Melchior.

‘Your esteemed sister invited me to treat your wounds,' said Melchior.

‘And he knows about the Master,' said Margelin. ‘He knows that the Master's word has to be obeyed.'

Pastor Gottschalk Witte was of short stature with a balding head and an unkempt appearance. He did not exude strength and power, only piety and modesty. His congregation loved him, and the Council held him in high esteem. By the wish of the Bishop of Tallinn the Council had invited him from a German university, where he had received his education and previously lived. He looked like a very pious and rather feeble man, and he was in a state of terror, that Melchior could see clearly.

‘I was told that you have wounds,' he said and bowed. ‘And I came to treat them. If you would show me your injuries, Pastor, then I'll know how strong a solution of lily-of-the valley to mix for them.'

And then, after they had gone into the kitchen, Melchior carried on chatting. He said he had also brought an ointment of salvia, mint, marjoram and dill because maybe he didn't need such a strong drug as lily-of-the-valley, for you had to be very careful with it. Lily-of-the-valley is a good cure, but it is very poisonous, and so on, and he praised the Witte residence, that it was beautiful and clean and one could instantly see that Mistress Margelin was a diligent housekeeper and took good care of the household. That before the Wittes had moved in the house had been empty for a long time, and it was always hard to settle down in a house such as this with so much cleaning and housework to get rid of the dampness and the dirt. But one could see straight away that just as Mr Witte took care of his parishioners so Mistress Margelin took care of the house, and so forth, and that all sorts of tales were told about this house, about who had lived here previously and what terrible things had happened and …

Meanwhile Margelin was helping Gottschalk Witte remove his coat and shirt, and then Melchior saw the wounds. Yes, they were wounds from flagellation, no doubt about it. His whole back was covered in them, and some of them had started festering and must hurt a great deal.

‘I'd rather rub them with ointment,' decided Melchior. ‘They're not such terrible wounds as to need lily-of-the-valley. If the lady will bind them up they'll be all right in a couple of days.'

‘We're very grateful to you, Apothecary,' said Witte quietly.

‘Don't mention it,' said Melchior kindly, ‘and don't mention it to the town doctor either. He would prescribe the same sort of ointment and nothing else. But doesn't this say something about your piety, Pastor, that you have beaten yourself so hard to repent of your sins? Not every clergyman has such courage and enthusiasm – at least, not in Tallinn.'

Actually Melchior had not heard of any lay brothers in Tallinn beating themselves and so valiantly seeking penitence. In the monasteries and convents, monks and nuns were sometimes punished by whipping if they had committed some disgraceful act
– whipping was said to be a good method for subduing the flesh – but as for lay preachers doing it … Melchior recalled that wasn't it St Peter Damian who had once written a eulogy on the virtues of flagellating oneself?

‘I'm sure that our Pastor does not have any sin on his conscience so great that it would actually merit a whipping,' said Melchior half in jest. Witte, however, was alarmed at this; Melchior could clearly feel that under his fingers as he was rubbing ointment into the man's back. The wounds were caused by a short whip. The wheals were more delicate down below and deepest around the shoulder-blades, ending with a coarser rupture; therefore the end of the whip must have had a knot. Melchior greased the wounds while thinking about what kinds of sins that would necessitate such self-abasement.

‘Oh, but the Master said that a whip wards off sins, and a virtuous and pious man may find happiness and joy in it even when he hasn't sinned,' Margelin suddenly whispered.

‘Shut up, woman,' Witte snapped.

‘But Melchior knows about the Master, he said so himself.'

‘I'm afraid my knowledge of the Master is quite sketchy,' remarked Melchior with a smile.

‘I received a very stern education at Heidelberg,' said Witte. ‘Only by cleansing my soul may I stand before my congregation and demand the same virtuous life of them as of myself.'

‘One can only respect your fortitude,' said Melchior.

‘The Master said that –' Margelin started to say, but Witte interrupted her sharply.

‘You have jobs to do in the laundry, sister.'

‘Yes, dear brother,' said Margelin meekly and left.

‘These wounds will close up quickly,' Melchior continued. ‘They aren't deep by any means, and the pus has not got far, but it would not be a good idea, Pastor, to flog yourself again too soon.'

‘I'll try to be more gentle with myself in future,' he promised.

‘That would certainly be wise. It seems as if you, sir, have been taking all the sins committed in this house on to your own shoulders. All sorts of things have been said about what once
happened here. True, it was all of seventy years ago, but a woman was immured in the cellar, and, do you know, sir, that the skeleton of a certain monk might still be lying down there?'

Witte was startled again but didn't answer.

‘Sometimes I like to take an interest in the things that go on in my own street, and all sorts of tales are told, indeed,' Melchior prattled on, putting the lotion carefully on the wounds. ‘A certain Cristian Unterrainer, who lived here once, had caught his wife in the act of sinning – my tongue can't be brought to say how exactly, but they say it was with a Dominican. And then he walled his wife in, alive, in the cellar, and this was discovered … But, do you know what happened the other day at the Dominican Monastery? On St Dominic's Day they buried a lay brother, and for that purpose they dug open the grave of that same wicked monk, and then, sir, truly, I swear to you, they found that the coffin was empty. There wasn't a single bone or anything in it – not that I mean to say that he's definitely still in the cellar, but, you know, people do start to talk.'

Witte was silent, but his body was tense, and he listened attentively to the story, which he evidently regarded as ordinary apothecary's gossip. Apothecaries are known to be inquisitive chatterboxes, and Witte had come to this town recently and obviously didn't know what many others knew, that when Melchior talked of crimes and corpses he wasn't just doing it to keep his mouth warm.

‘And then all those stories about the haunting in this house – you must have heard of those, Pastor? That the spirit of that poor sinner woman still haunts this place and tempts sinners? Of course,
I
don't believe those stories, but, you know, three people have perished recently after telling that story, so, you never know, is there a curse or a scourge or something … ?'

‘A Christian should not be telling such stories,' said Witte sternly, ‘and an educated man such as yourself, Apothecary, certainly should not.'

‘It's not
me
telling them. I'm only reporting what they're saying in town. You know yourself, sir, that all kinds of stories come into
an apothecary's shop, some of them pious but some of them a little more ungodly. You must know what is being said about this house, and some say they have seen that ghost here quite recently …'

‘I've never heard it,' said Witte. ‘No ghost, no nothing. Are you finished now, Apothecary? How much do I owe you?'

‘It might be better, Pastor, if you say a prayer for the medicine at the Church of the Holy Ghost,' opined Melchior.

‘I will certainly do that.'

Witte got up, covering his body with the shirt. They said goodbye. Melchior bowed and gathered his medical things together. Witte withdrew and went upstairs. At the street door Melchior bumped into Margelin, who was coming from the washroom in the yard, carrying under her arm a batch of washed clothes and casting a very strange look at him.

‘The Pastor will recover,' promised Melchior. ‘Madam needn't worry about it at all.'

‘Thirty-three and a half days of suffering,' whispered Margelin, looking Melchior steadfastly in the eye, ‘and then the whole world will be saved, so the Master said. I suppose you know that yourself, Apothecary.'

‘Thirty-three and a half days,' Melchior whispered back. He had no idea what the madwoman was talking about. But he did know that if anyone wants to lie, they never tell a complete lie, and there is always a grain of truth in their story. At the same time, the fact that a person is mad does not mean that their whole story is borne of an evil spirit and excessive phlegm accumulated in the head. Not the
whole
story. ‘Thirty-three and a half, so it has to be. Thus it is written,' he repeated.

‘Oh, it is, of course. The Holy Virgin herself wrote thus, and the angels brought her message to Rome.'

‘The Holy Virgin wrote it, oh yes, of course,' agreed Melchior, although he was quite sure that Brother Hinric would hardly agree with such an interpretation of the Scriptures.

‘And the whips will wipe away the whole world's sins,' said the woman. ‘Whips will save the world.'

‘So it is,' agreed Melchior again. ‘But I would also say that too much whipping may bring with it a great bodily scourge. I don't suppose madam will show me the Pastor's whip? If there's old blood on a whip, and it mixes with new blood coming from a wound, then too much poisonous pus gets into the wound, and that's bad, that's very bad. So wrote St Damian.'

‘Oh, would you like to see the whip, Apothecary?' Margelin asked. ‘It's here, right here.'

The pile of clothes fell from Margelin's hands on to the stairs, and under it she had been holding the whip. It had a short handle and a leather cord about an ell long at the end of which was a coarse knot, one that would deliver the most pain. Margelin's arm was sinewy, and she held the handle so that her knuckles were white. Her hand loved this whip.

Melchior took the whip and smeared it with salve. He said that would stop the poison, and the Pastor need not be afraid. He need not be afraid even of ghost stories because they were just idle gossip.

‘It was a terrible sin that was once committed in this house,' said Margelin. ‘The Master punished those wanton ones. The Master knew how to punish. But his wife's spirit is still here, yes, we have heard it. But we're not afraid of it. She's afraid of us. She does us no harm because she's afraid. She howls at night because she's repenting her sins. The Master decreed that she should suffer in this way so that she would never see the gates of Paradise.'

‘The Master himself?' asked Melchior cautiously.

‘Oh, yes, this is the Master's house,' whispered Margelin. ‘And the sinner's spirit which can find no peace comes where there is a cold spot …'

‘Sister,' boomed the loud voice of Gottschalk Witte suddenly. ‘Sister, where are you? I'm waiting for you. My wounds have to be bound up.'

‘A sinner is calling me,' said Margelin. ‘I have to go.'

‘Of course, gracious madam, go,' said Melchior.

Margelin gathered up the washing from the floor, hid the whip under it and left, casting Melchior a strangely inviting and
inexplicable look from the threshold. Melchior did not, however, hurry back to the pharmacy. He waited until Margelin had closed the door and then slipped along a passageway to the courtyard alongside the house and straight into the yard of the Unterrainer house. As a little boy he had played here. The old stables were still in use then, and the facility had not yet been completely transferred to Mäealune Street under the slopes of Toompea. These old stables by Town Hall Square were encircled by a low wall from the backyards of the houses on Rataskaevu Street, and there were several dark recesses and exciting lairs where it was fun to play.