HS03 - A Visible Darkness (16 page)

Evidently, he believed that the paper in my hand was meant for his eyes.

The urge to tell him that his professional concerns came a poor second to my domestic worries welled up in me, but I crushed it swiftly. The opportunity to dine with him, and tell him between mouthfuls what was on my mind, was too good to miss.

My letter could wait.

‘I accept your generous offer,’ I said, as if I had been invited to a formal dinner at the General Quarters. ‘If you’ll grant me the time to clean myself up, I would be grateful.’

‘To judge from the stink in here,’ he grunted, ‘you’ve been crawling through the drains of Nordcopp.’ He held up his hooded lantern the better to see my face and clothes. ‘But be quick about it. When hunger takes hold of me, it tends to swallow up my patience. In twenty minutes, hut three.’

An invitation? It was an order.

‘Most kind,’ I murmured, as he went out, leaving the door wide open.

Was
I
the one who stank? Was
I
the one who needed to spruce himself up?

As I put away my quill and closed the bottle of ink, stowing them carefully away in the travelling
nècessaire
that Helena had purchased for my thirtieth birthday, I felt the anger welling up in me.

Should I wash?

A bucket had been provided for my ablutions. It contained cold water from the sea. The bucket was not particularly clean. Nor was the water fresh. In something of a passion, I stripped off the shirt I had worn all that day and the day before, dipped it into the water and sponged my face, arms and chest with it.

What about my hair?

I wear my hair long, and loosely tied. It was dry, clogged and clotted with the sand that was carried on the persistent breeze. With a curse against French colonels and their sudden invitations to dine, I dropped down on my knees, took a breath and dipped my head into the bucket. Helena had put a towel into my bag, but I had acted without thinking. It was too late to start rummaging inside for a towel. I used the soiled shirt to soak up some of the water, brushing my hair back with my hands, tying it up tightly with the same strip of black ribbon that I had worn all day.

My beard?

Each attempt at improvement urged me on rashly to the next. And all in the desire to outdo Colonel les Halles. No Frenchman would outshine me. I shave each morning at home, but I had not shaved once in Nordcopp. I took the cut-throat razor out from my shoulder-bag, dipped the blade into the water—it looked less inviting every time I was required to use it—and made some darting correction to the stubble on my face and cheeks.

Again, I used the dirty shirt to rub my cheeks and dry my hands.

Now, what was I to do with the shirt?

I rolled it into a bundle, and stuffed it into the bucket, leaving it there to soak, while I went to look for the spare linen shirt that was rolled up somewhere in my travelling-bag. I had been intending to wear it the following week if the investigation dragged on so very long, but I was left with no choice.

Time was drawing on, but as I shook out the fresh linen, time stood still.

I held the garment to my nose, and took a deep breath. I closed my eyes, and inhaled the heady perfume of lilac and rosemary from Helena’s garden. For one moment I was back in Lotingen. Thank Heaven for the little cotton bags of crushed flowers which
Lotte always put between the clean clothes in the drawers at home to take the edge off the smell of burnt ashes. When the maid washed on a Monday, the entire previous week’s supply of ashes went into the tub with the dirty garments.

I opened my eyes.

I pulled on the fresh shirt, carefully folding down the collar, knotting the linen bands in a fluffy bow at my throat. I was ready to dine. Except for the final touch. I took out a small ceramic bottle from my bag and unscrewed the stopper. The scent of Farina’s finest
Kölnwasser
filled my nostrils with lime and lemon, orange and bergamot. While visiting Paris in 1793, I had purchased a perfume enriched with a distillation of rose petals from the shop of Monsieur Roget & Cie in Rue Lerebours, and I felt sure that les Halles would have something of the sort. As I slicked my hands over my hair, luxuriating in the perfume, I could not help but smile. Hut three would be a battlefield of contrasting, competing scents: essence of Prussia
versus
the Grande Armée of essences of France. I trusted in Helena’s good taste to bring me safely through the conflict. By the time I knocked on the door, waiting for his gruff call to enter, I had convinced myself that the skirmish was already won.

A small, square table was laid with a plain white cloth embroidered with only a regimental emblem. The plates of fine bone china were also white, and adorned with the same red heraldic badge. The cutlery was heavy silver: worn, but very ornate. There were two seats, one on either side of the table, which was loaded down with a basket of bread, two bottles of red wine, cutcrystal goblets, a large salver on which a long boiled sausage lay, another dish containing meat chops in a red sauce, and dishes piled with potatoes and beet. The sight and aroma would have made a favourable impression in an eating-house.

Only one thing spoiled the scene.

Colonel les Halles was seated at the table, a napkin stuffed down the unbuttoned neck of his uniform. He held a large chop to his lips with both hands, and gnawed on it like a starving hound. He dropped the bone noisily onto his plate, rattling his knife and fork, splashing gravy over the tablecloth. With a loud sigh, he picked up
his wine-glass and consumed half of the contents in a single draught. ‘You have used the time to good effect, Herr Procurator. You look and smell like another man. And much more pretty than the old one,’ he concluded with a raucous laugh, as if greatly satisfied with these ironic remarks.

I stood there like a jilted bridegroom.

He wore the same uniform. The same filthy trousers. The same sodden boots. His short hair stood on end, as if he had tried to scratch the sand from his hair, then given it over as a hopeless task. He did not sit at the table so much as slouch, his boots stretched out to one side, his head bending low to meet the food and drink before his hands could bring it up to his lips. The spotted mess on his napkin reminded me of a large map in my office in Lotingen which showed the shoals of the Nogat estuary in red ink, the shifting sandbanks in brown. He eased himself into a more comfortable position, sitting further back in his seat, and his boots left half-moon clumps of mud and sand behind them.

The smell of his sweat was more acrid and penetrating than before. Despite the aroma of warm food, I realised that I would be obliged to inhale it the instant I sat down opposite him at that small table. No Essence de Lavande Provençale would save me, and my mind flew back to lunches eaten in peasants’ cottages when I went out hunting with my father and my brother, thirst and hunger sweeping away decorum as the unwashed serfs and their earthy wives rushed to lavish their best on their master and his pampered sons.

‘Sit down,’ les Halles commanded.

I did as I was told. Could I doubt where the power in Prussia lay? He had ordered me to clean myself up for dinner; I had run to obey. If he told me to sit, I sat. While he, in his unspruced filth, looked complacently at my clean shirt, washed face and combed hair, then added harsher salt to the insult of carelessness.

‘I did not know that Prussians were such fops,’ he said, grabbing up a bottle in his fist, slopping wine into the goblets. ‘You see the menu before you, Stiffeniis. Pork chops braised in Pomeranian wine. A bit vinegary for my taste, but there you are. Meat sausage
in a vegetable broth to follow. Potatoes baked in sea-salt. All washed down with Saxon wine. The best of France and Prussia.’

He raised his glass. ‘Taste it.’

As I carried the glass to my lips, the heel of his boot kicked out at my shin.

‘Not yet. I want to propose a toast. Here’s to the success of Richard les Halles’s . . . now, what
shall
I call her? “Shale-drill” sounds tame, don’t you agree?’ He clicked his tongue, smiled, emptied his glass. ‘
Coq du mer
? Hm, that’s better. Les Halles’s Sea-Cock. With its long scrawny neck pecking away at the sea-bed. Will you drink to that?’

I raised my glass in the air, then drank a sip.

He sat forward, elbows on either side of his plate, and a nauseous stinking wave drifted into my face. ‘You should have seen the way it pecked this afternoon! The Baltic tried to resist like a proud old Prussian matron, but I had my way with her. A bit bumpy at first, but once we struck the—what do you Prussians call it,
die blaue Erde
?—there was no stopping her. As soon as my engineers get their pipes into the water, and the engines start pumping, we’ll be sucking up amber like
limonade
. When the sorting-racks come into play, a new era will begin on the north coast. I expect to draft a report of my success to Paris within the week.’

He drained his glass and fixed me with a smile, waiting to hear what I would make of his industrial success.

I raised my goblet again. ‘I wish that you could build a machine, monsieur, that would suck up all the
merde
and flies from the streets of Lotingen, my home town. All the citizens, my wife included, would thank you for it.’

The expression of triumph on his face gave way to dark brooding anger.

I had surprised even myself by this sarcasm, and I immediately regretted it.

He jabbed his fork into a chop that was swimming in red wine.

‘Give me your plate,’ he snapped, holding out his other hand, opening and closing his fingers impatiently until I obeyed. ‘
Bon appétit
, Herr Stiffeniis.’

Without waiting to see how I might react to the food, he hunched over his plate, head down, his knife and fork poking from his closed fists like daggers, and began to wolf his food.

‘You come from a family of aristocrats, I have been told,’ he spluttered, glancing up, an over-large piece of meat in his mouth. He chewed it greedily, his lips and his teeth engaged in a complex grinding operation that ought to have resulted in the swallowing of his tongue.

I had no intention of stepping onto the thin ice of my personal life. I did not wish that man’s ghost to cross the threshold of my home. Not even during conversation at the dinner-table. ‘That is not quite exact . . .’

Les Halles thrust his fork at my face, a potato impaled on the prongs.

‘Don’t lie to me! I’ve got a file. It’s all written down. After the Gottewald massacre investigation, Colonel Lavedrine reported on your character. Reserved in manner, sometimes brusque, it says. A tongue that is sharp, eyes that never flinch. You do not give yourself away, though your heart may be flailing wildly inside your breast.’ The potato disappeared into his mouth. He drew the contour of my face in the air with his empty fork. ‘You eat like a duellist, I would add, elbows close to your sides as you handle your irons, all very trim, no matter how tough the meat may be.’

He turned to the side and spat out the lump of meat in his own mouth.

‘Inedible,’ he said, ‘but you eat on.’

I continued to chew. ‘Our teeth make swallowing easier,’ I replied.

He managed a smile as he ate.

‘We come from different worlds,’ he said. ‘Anyone can see it. I will always be the unrepentant son of a Montgalliard sheep-herder. But you, Stiffeniis, even when you’re hot and dirty, your hands black, hair knotted with sweat, you could ask a lady to dance and she would say yes. Aristocratic, as I said . . .’

Was it a compliment? Or was it the opposite?

‘I own no land, nor have I ever served my country. I detest arms
and armies. My principles . . .’ I swallowed hard, having said more than I intended. I certainly did not mean to tell him that I had been disinherited by my landowning father. ‘I chose to study the law, instead.’

His face became an ugly sneer. ‘What ever you say, you’ll never cease to be what you are. What’s the local term for it?’ His eyes narrowed, his brow furrowed, he chased the word he sought across the ceiling. And all the while, he made the most appalling row as he chomped at his meat. ‘
Junker
! That is, a proud and privileged troublemaker.’ He might have been reading from a book that claimed to describe the people and the habits of East Prussia. ‘People like you were driven out of France. The ones who dared to stay lost their heads in Paris.’

I bit my lip. I could have told him a lot about Paris. I had inhaled a new perfume there in 1793. I had seen the French mob murder their king. In the Place de la Révolution, my spirit had been overwhelmed by a bewitching essence: the smell of human blood. An unknown aspect of my character had risen to the surface. I had been fascinated by the simple mechanics of Death. A lever was pulled, the guillotine blade fell, a life was carried off for ever. Nothing was easier, nothing was headier.

‘You refuse to believe that men like me will change the Prus sia that you hold so dear,’ he went on, as if my silence pricked him. ‘The new breed of French egalitarians may be rough, but we are ready, monsieur. We know nothing of good manners, and care even less. Our generals are men of the people, yet they can whip the hide off a Prussian army led by men with surnames as long as the Rhine. How did it happen? You do not voice the question, but I can hear it all the same. French peasants with a little technical education will build machines and mould the armies that will sweep your world away. Baltic amber—Baltic “gold,” as you so proudly call it—is just a small part of the process. The Teutonic Knights made Prussia great. Well, now it is ours!’ He halted for a moment, then drank deeply. ‘Its only purpose now is to serve our purpose.’

I cut a piece of meat with my knife, carried it to my mouth with
my fork, and began to chew it slowly. I would not answer with my mouth full. I would not give him that small satisfaction. And yet, I privately conceded, he was right. We were different, and not on account of our table manners alone. He saw Kati Rodendahl as an impediment to his ambitious plans; he wanted to see the murderer caught for that reason alone. Killers and their victims must not hamper the harvesting of amber. French interests would not be sacrificed for anything so human, or so petty.