HS02 - Days of Atonement (36 page)

Aaron Jacob considered this for a moment. His face grew dark and brooding.

‘When she is found, Herr Procurator, I would consider it a privilege if I might be allowed to examine her skull,’ he said. ‘If it conforms to the pattern of her children, she will have met a sudden and a terrible death.’

I thought of the mutilated body of a woman we had found in Gummerstett’s warehouse, and a cold shiver ran tingling down my spine.

Had this improbable wise man stumbled on a horrid truth?

‘The last report we have of Frau Gottewald places her in your rented cottage,’ Lavedrine interposed. ‘She was alive, then.’

‘Where and when a person dies is beyond the realms of scientific study,
monsieur
,’ Aaron Jacob replied. ‘God knows the answer. I can only examine the evidence after the fact. If the lady is living when she is found, examination of her skull will still . . .’

‘Thank you, Herr Jacob,’ I cut in sharply, glancing at Lavedrine. ‘We have learnt as much as we are ever likely to learn. We can consider this interview over.’

But the Frenchman chose to ignore my signal.

‘Earlier you mentioned classifications, sir,’ he said. ‘As a criminologist this aspect of your studies interests me more than any other. “Victims” was the term that you used, as if some beings are born with no other purpose in life.’

Aaron Jacob preened like a peacock over this unexpected compliment. ‘The Twelve Tribes of Israel were God’s ordained people. Now, we are obliged to suffer and pay for our sin. In the future we will be redeemed.
Yom Kippur
. This is the name that we give to the Day of Atonement. Is this predestination, or is it fate? In Jewish skulls, as I said before, I have seen the message of impending tragedy . . . No, excuse me’—he paused and laid his hand on his heart—‘tragedy is not the word I am looking for. Our history as a people is marked by tragedy. It is our birthmark. There is an even greater trial in store. All the signs point to it. A disaster of unimaginable proportions will fall upon us. The Kabbalah, our book of mysticism, indicates that the Devil’s time for harvesting is not yet ripe.
Lilith will come, Time will cease
 . . . It will happen here in Prussia.’

‘We are wasting time,’ I said to Lavedrine. ‘Herr Jacob promised to tell us why the children were killed. We have our answer. Destiny. The best way to put an end to the unrest in Lotingen is to find the killer. We will not do so standing here.’

Lavedrine seemed pointedly to ignore my urgency once again.

‘All is not so gloomy as you paint it,’ he said to Aaron Jacob. ‘You are no longer an underprivileged outcast. The Napoleonic Codes have granted civil rights to Jews, not just in Prussia, but throughout the continent of Europe. That includes the freedom to study, and improve your lot. We have turned the old world upside-down. Is it not a better place?’

The Jew smiled uncertainly at Lavedrine, but he made no effort to reply.

I could have answered for him. I had seen the fright in the eyes of my wife and children as the French were storming through the town. If his theory was correct, the irregularity of our skulls had brought violence crashing down upon us. If he was right, Napoleon Bonaparte had been given no choice but to hammer us.

I kept this opinion to myself as we left the house.

Outside it was night.

The crowd of men who had brought us there had dispersed like evening mist. We found Judenstrasse equally deserted. It was as if the hand of God had swept down from the heavens and carried everyone off to the better place that Lavedrine had mentioned. When we reached the gate, we found no angry crowd on either side.

The four militiamen were quietly smoking their pipes.

‘What happened?’ I asked the corporal of the Palisaders.

‘They hung around and shouted,’ he replied. ‘Then one by one they got tired of it, and drifted off.’

‘A propitious inversion of negative cosmic influences.’ Lavedrine laughed. ‘I have a scientific theory of my own.’

‘What is that?’ I asked.

‘It is dinnertime, Herr Procurator.’ A strange shy smile played at the corners of his mouth. ‘You’ll be going home to dine, I suppose.’

‘True,’ I answered.

‘I wonder, Stiffeniis, may I keep you company? I feel the need for warmth and fellowship after such a depressing day. Would your wife object if I asked her to set an extra plate for me at her table?’

I felt a sudden stiffening in my limbs, a tightening of the muscles in my face. What did this Frenchman want from me? What did he expect from my family?

Warmth, he had said.

Like a flea looking for a new host and fresh blood, thought I to myself, resentfully. If he came to dinner, he was bound to see Helena again. And meet my children. He would sit down at my table, and enjoy the fruits of our limited store.

The curfew sounded as we turned into the cathedral square.

I did not wish him to see the uneasiness that he had awakened in my breast.

‘You are most welcome,’ I said, but there was no enthusiasm in it.

 26 

H
ELENA COULD NOT
have failed to notice our arrival.

She must have told the maid to wait until we rang before opening the door, I decided. As one would do with strangers.

My wife was avoiding me, as I had chosen to avoid her that morning.

‘Wait a moment, Stiffeniis.’

Lavedrine laid his hand on my arm, preventing me from pulling the bell cord.

Had he had second thoughts about inviting himself to dinner?

‘I do not think we should tell Helena about the body that we found this morning,’ he said, instead. ‘Not in her own home. What do you say if we leave her in peace for a while?’

Not Frau Stiffeniis. Not your wife.
Helena
 . . .

I smiled weakly. ‘I have learnt to my cost,’ I said, ‘how difficult it is to keep anything secret from my wife. You realised the danger before I did. If we don’t tell her, somebody else will.’

Lavedrine nodded thoughtfully. ‘I am a guest,’ he said. ‘It would be a sort of sacrilege to bring what we have seen today into your home. Do you not agree?’

Here was another side of the man. He spoke without a trace of sarcasm. As a rule, it dripped from his lips as naturally as water from a spring. Now he wished to shun any mention of facts that might wound a frail female heart, though I had witnessed the speed with which he could cut a woman’s face with that spiked ring of his. Now, this genteel Frenchman would do anything to leave crude reality outside my house. As we were examining that crushed body in Gummerstett’s warehouse, he himself had proposed that Helena be dragged into the investigation. Now, this sudden change. What was going through his mind?

‘Have you no reply to make?’ he added, punching me lightly on the arm in a friendly manner. ‘I was saying that you are fortunate in having a wife and children to come home to. For an old dog such as myself, an hour spent
in the company of another man’s family is all that I have to look forward to. How else am I to shake from my head the sights and smells that we have seen? Sometimes I long for normality. There, that’s why I thrust my company upon you!’

Out of sorts on account of the things we had seen? I was no less affected, but why did I deny him the right to be perturbed? Why think so insistently of him as my enemy?

‘I believe Helena has made a strudel,’ I announced dispiritedly.

The door opened suddenly, though I had not pulled the bell. Lotte stood back to let us enter. The warm sweetness of baked apples wafted out to do battle with the cold.

‘We did not know what time you’d be back, sir,’ Lotte said with a curtsy that I had never seen before. She spoke to me, but her eyes were fixed on Lavedrine, as if she were trying to comprehend what brought him there. We would not be the first Prussians to lose their home to a smiling Frenchman.

‘This is Monsieur Lavedrine, Lotte,’ I said quickly. ‘A guest. I hope that delicious smell of apple, cinnamon, and honey is not the product of my imagination? I’ve spent all day thinking of it. I am famished!’

‘The mistress has finished baking,’ Lotte mumbled. ‘And the table is set. For five . . .’ she added, uncertainly.

‘We’ll need to make another place,’ I replied. ‘How is Helena?’

Lotte glanced uncertainly at our dirty clothes. ‘The mistress is well, sir. But what have you been up to?’

‘A spot of manual work,’ said Lavedrine with a smile, fiddling with his hat, the perfect image of the unexpected guest. He was very good at it.

‘Helena, we have a guest,’ I called.

My wife came dutifully along the passage from the kitchen, candle in hand, showing no sign of surprise. Neither for the state of our clothes, nor for the presence of the Frenchman. She stopped in front of him, and dropped her eyes to the tiled floor.

‘Monsieur Lavedrine, you are most welcome.’ She did not look in my direction, nor give any sign of noticing me. ‘Come in and warm yourself, sir.’

We proceeded into the parlour. Helena sat down on the sofa, pointing Lavedrine to an armchair on the other side of the hob. In that same room the night before, I had lost her confidence, and I was uncomfortably aware of the unresolved state of our differences. She did not invite me to sit, and I made no move to do so.

‘I beg your pardon,
madame,
’ Lavedrine began, smiling like a pickpocket who has just lifted a heavy wallet. ‘This French invasion was my idea. Your husband had no part in it, I assure you. I pressed myself upon his generosity. He could not say no.’

I stood by the window and watched them in silence.

Lavedrine had left his oil-stained coat in the hall. He was wearing a dark green jacket made of thick woven tweed, and heavy baggy trousers of dark-brown twill with a chevron pattern. A peasant dressed for duck-hunting, I judged malignly. The impression was reinforced by the stains of oil and mess from Gummerstett’s warehouse, which still spotted his clothes. I was more formally attired. My black kersey suit showed less evident signs of the labours of the morning. The starched collar of my white shirt pushed its stiff wings against my jaw. Yet, I had to allow, there was a careless elegance in Lavedrine’s rough eccentricity that seemed to reinforce the innate charm of his manner. Had we appeared together at a ball in the same clothes, I knew which way the eyes of the women would turn.

‘You’ll have to make the best of a dull Prussian dinner,’ I said from the window.

‘Monsieur Lavedrine will excuse our shortcomings,’ Helena replied abruptly, without looking in my direction, stretching out her arms to take the baby, which Lotte brought into the room at that moment.

‘I cannot do everything in the kitchen, and look after the bairn, ma’am,’ the maid explained, clearly put out by this unexpected visit. She pronounced her German very slowly, her eyes fixed on the Frenchman all the while like a Mesmerist’s dupe.

I glanced over at Helena, felt a sudden surge of relief, and knew myself for a fool. She had taken a brush to tame her curls, or Lotte had been ordered to do it. Her hair was tied up tightly at the nape of her neck in the old style.

I gave myself up to enormous pride, then.

Helena presented herself exactly as I wished Lavedrine to see her. That is, as I knew her. As a wife and a mother, a polite hostess, a charming and intelligent woman, who was not uncomfortably married to a member of the lower aristocracy; a Prussian woman who would greet a Frenchman civilly.

A moment later, Süzi and Manni shyly entered the room, hand in hand, and plumped themselves down on the rug in front of the fire. They did not say a word. Their eyes were wide, unblinking, and they were fixed on Lavedrine.

‘Aren’t you going to welcome our visitor?’ Helena chided them, but the children who were five and four years old only giggled, exchanged a glance, then stared back at the stranger with open mouths. ‘Nor say hello to your father after his journey?’

I moved instinctively across to the sofa, caressed the baby’s head with my hand, then touched my lips to Helena’s forehead for just one instant. But even in such a short space of time, she seemed to draw back imperceptibly.
I disguised the motion quickly, leaning closer to kiss baby Anders on the cheek. Here, I was better rewarded. The child let out a cooing
ghaahaaa
that was not exactly a ‘papa,’ but was close enough to ensure my contentment. Then Manni and Süzi jumped to their feet, taking their lead from their baby brother. They wrapped their arms about my legs, letting out cries of welcome and joy. Manni grabbed hold of my coat, pulling me down, begging me to give him a piggyback. As I rode him around the room, Süzi hung on to the tail of my jacket like a barrel organist’s monkey. Everyone laughed with glee.