The Silence (7 page)

Berthe rolled her eyes and was about to comment with the biting sarcasm Werthen knew so well, when Herr Meisner, the scholar, the man of rectitude, common sense, and affability, added further oil.

‘I know it is what your mother would have wished.’

Her mother had died when Berthe was ten. She never spoke of it, nor had Werthen ever heard Herr Meisner mention his deceased wife before.

Lines had been drawn after that. Tension ruled the household.

Now Werthen sat gingerly as if there were a bomb under his chair. He unfolded his napkin and placed it in his lap.

‘Aren’t you going to ask?’ Berthe said.

‘I imagine you will tell me when you want to. Besides, I have already had my own domestic crisis.’

‘He still insists on an
Aliya
for Frieda.’

Werthen looked at her blankly.

‘A formal naming ceremony and blessing at a temple. He wants her to have a Jewish name, too.’

‘Like you,’ Werthen joked.

‘But I actually do,’ she said. ‘I just never use it.’

‘What is it?’ Werthen asked, wondering for a moment what other things he did not know about his wife.

‘Rachel.’

‘A nice name. I suppose we could add Sara to Frieda’s name. Or Ruth.’

‘It is not the name, darling . . .’

He nodded. ‘I know. Why can’t our parents behave like adults?’

Frau Blatschky, her eyes still red, came with the
Gulasch
and they settled in to the meal, forgetting their troublesome parents for the time. Finally, Werthen mentioned the new case.

‘Wittgenstein,’ she said. ‘Impressive clients.’

‘One could get lost in their town house.’ He went on to explain how far he had gotten in the investigation.

‘So what do you think happened to the young man?’

‘I think this Herr Praetor may be able to clarify matters.’

‘That name sounds familiar to me. Other than his surgeon father, I mean.’

‘The priest at the Theresianum thought he may have gone into journalism.’

‘Yes,’ she said, putting her spoon down. ‘That’s where I’ve heard the name. He writes for the
Arbeiter Zeitung.
’

‘An interesting place for a former student of the Theresianum to publish his articles.’

‘Perhaps he is a displaced socialist, like your wife.’

Finally, Werthen was beginning to feel they had their life back. It was moments like this with Berthe that he longed for: the small teases, the familiarity, the communal understanding.

Six

A
fter lunch, and after finding a few moments to dandle the just awakened Frieda on his knee, Werthen returned to the Wittgenstein affair. He placed a telephone call to the Vienna city morgue and ascertained that there was one unidentified body that might fit the description as well as the time period that Werthen supplied. There was nothing for it but to go there in person and make a preliminary identification. If the body in question looked closely enough like Hans Wittgenstein, then he would have to get a family member to make a conclusive identification. He hoped it would not be so.

This afternoon he decided he had already had enough exercise and took an
Einspänner
, a cab drawn by one horse, to the General Hospital, in whose basement the city morgue was located. The snow was gone now, but the temperature was once again dropping. February could be a quarrelsome, unsettled month in Vienna with sudden and unaccountable changes in weather. Werthen enjoyed the three-four time the horse’s hooves kept as he was rattled along the Ringstrasse to Alsergrund.

Since first coming to the morgue with his colleague and sometime collaborator, Doktor Hanns Gross, in 1898, he had made his own personal connections with the director, the unfortunately named Doktor Starb. Tall and jovial, Starb, whose surname came from the past tense of
sterben
, to die, hardly looked the part of director of a morgue, dressed as he was nattily in a checked morning coat and butter-yellow tie, but when it came to death, he was all business. He took Werthen personally to the drawers of unclaimed bodies.

‘This one was found at the harness racing track at Freudenau,’ Starb explained as they entered the chill of the basement rooms. ‘Poor chap seems to have been despondent about something. Though the track is closed down now for the winter, it could be a symbolic act. Perhaps he’d lost money on the races last fall.’

Werthen had neglected to ask about the means of death earlier and thus did not know it was a suicide. He hoped it was not a messy one; his stomach for gore was not the strongest.

Sensing Werthen’s thoughts, Starb added, ‘Shot himself. We’ll examine the good side of the head. Who is it you’re looking for?’

Werthen shrugged. ‘The family does not wish to make it public.’

‘Ahh,’ Starb said. ‘Important, then?’

‘Prominent,’ Werthen allowed.

He took the family photograph out of his pocket as Starb found the proper drawer and pulled it out. The corpse came out feet first, and Werthen saw that the body was about the proper height. He caught a flash of dark hair as the head, turned to one side, came into view. A slight moustache, as well. This was not how he had expected this to end.

He moved around the body, getting closer to the head and making sure he kept the photograph concealed from Starb, who would surely recognize Karl Wittgenstein in the family grouping.

Werthen bent over the head, looking closely at the face in profile. But having never met Hans Wittgenstein, he was not sure. The photograph he had was of a full face, but obviously the other side of this man’s head had been shattered by the self-inflicted wound.

Still, he needed to ask. ‘Is there a frontal view?’

Starb shook his head. ‘Not so you would notice.’

‘I’ll need to make a telephone call.’

‘Upstairs. I assume you never met the young man.’

‘No,’ Werthen said, watching the affable Herr Direktor carefully close drawer number sixty-three, and the corpse, covered in white, slide into the cooler once again. A strong aroma of ammonia accompanied the opening and closing, from the gas the morgue used in its refrigerating vapor compressor.

Starb discreetly left Werthen alone as the Advokat placed a call to Kurt Wittgenstein at the Kolowatring office. The decision seemed a simple one: he could not ask the father to come for the identification for fear he would be recognized. The other members of the family he had met, brothers Rudi and Ludwig, were not appropriate: Rudi was sick and Ludwig too young. And though the sister, Hermine, was termed a ‘brick’, Werthen did not want to bring a woman for such a job. Kurt Wittgenstein, however, was seemingly a man of business, a man who might be expected to have his wits about him.

Calling the number he was quickly connected with Kurt, who happily had been apprised of Werthen’s commission by sister Hermine. There was a momentary pause when Werthen explained his request.

Then, his voice breaking on the first word, Kurt said, ‘I’ll be there in twenty-five minutes.’

In the event it took twenty. Kurt Wittgenstein looked ashen as he followed Werthen and a white-coated worker – for Starb had maintained his discretion – to drawer sixty-three. White coat looked at Werthen as if asking for permission to begin, but it was Kurt Wittgenstein who answered the silent request with a sharp nod of the head.

The drawer came out slowly, accompanied again by the burning smell of ammonia.

Werthen kept his eyes on Kurt Wittgenstein, looking for any sign of recognition as the corpse’s head cleared the drawer frame.

Kurt looked at the dead man for several seconds, then took a deep breath.

‘No,’ he said finally. ‘That is not my brother. Poor man.’

‘I didn’t think it would be Hans,’ the brother said as they breathed in the fresh, crisp air outside the hospital. ‘We Wittgensteins are not the type to take the easy way out.’

‘Out of what?’ Werthen asked.

‘Well, just an expression, you know.’

‘Do you have any idea where your brother might be, Herr Wittgenstein?’

‘I would look for the nearest piano, if I were you. But no, seriously, I do not. Like my father, I am sanguine that Hans will come home soon. I assume dear Hermine has informed you of the family dynamics. Hans and I may only be a year apart in age, but we are vastly different people. For me, taking part in Father’s business is far from onerous.’

‘And for Hans? I gather he has musical aspirations.’

‘Yes. He can tickle the ivories quite flamboyantly.’ He paused momentarily. Then: ‘You must forgive me, Advokat. I am not quite myself. I must confess your call and then seeing that unfortunate young dead man . . . well, it has all rather unnerved me. I do not usually talk such piffle. We Wittgensteins pride ourselves on being music lovers. Brahms, Mahler – many have found our house welcoming.’

‘It is understandable, Herr Wittgenstein. Any information you can give me would help. Do you know any of Hans’s friends?’

‘I wasn’t aware he had any.’

Werthen waited for an ironic laugh, but Kurt Wittgenstein was being absolutely serious; no more piffle.

‘Ever hear of a fellow named Praetor? Henricus Praetor? He and Hans were supposedly fast friends at the Theresianum.’

‘Sorry, can’t say I do. Is he in Vienna, this Herr Praetor?’

‘I believe so.’

‘Well, then. There you are.’

‘Where?’

‘Well, Hans has probably bivouacked in his old school friend’s cramped accommodations. Praetor? Name does sound familiar now I think of it.’

‘His father is the surgeon.’

‘No, I had newspapers in mind. Something to do with the hapless councilman who killed himself.’

‘Steinwitz?’

‘Yes, that one.’

Again, the Steinwitz connection.

‘I believe a fellow named Praetor was the journalist who first wrote about Rathaus shenanigans. We in the business community follow such things. Especially when they reach Mayor Lueger’s confidants.’

Werthen nodded at this, knowing that he still had one more question for the brother, and was not sure how to broach it.

‘I gather Hans was a very sensitive sort.’

Kurt Wittgenstein shrugged at this. ‘Hardly against the law. Especially in Vienna. Nerves and the waltz. City specialties.’

‘Those I have interviewed seemed to make a special emphasis of this sensitivity,’ Werthen said, pushing the point.

Kurt chewed on his cheek for a moment, squinting at Werthen.

‘I suppose if Father employed you, you are a man to be trusted with family skeletons, Advokat.’

‘Is that a question?’

Wittgenstein rubbed his chin. ‘I believe my brother is, as some put it, inverted, sexually speaking.’

‘Shy, you mean?’ Werthen said. He knew the phrase, but wanted to make sure.

‘Undoubtedly. But more than that. Inclined to one’s own gender.’

Which explained the priest’s embarrassment at recalling Hans Wittgenstein’s personality and character.

‘You’re sure of this?’

Kurt Wittgenstein shrugged. ‘We are not terribly close as siblings, Hans and I.’

‘Meaning he did not confide in you?’

A sharp nod of the head from Wittgenstein. ‘But one has a sense about such things.’

It was a very worldly comment for a man like Kurt Wittgenstein, who, frankly, appeared quite unworldly to Werthen.

‘I thank you for your candor, Herr Wittgenstein.’

‘At least Hans picked someone near to his own class.’ Seeing Werthen’s puzzlement, he added, ‘This Praetor fellow. One assumes . . .’

A quick consultation of the current year’s telephone directory told Werthen that ‘Praetor, Henricus, Journalist’ lived at Zeltgasse 8. The Turks had set up camp on the site of this small street, not far from Werthen’s own home in the Josefstadt, two hundred years earlier when laying siege to the city for the second time. And for the second time, Vienna had proven the bulwark of Europe, turning the Muslim hordes back. The flowing tents of the enemy, however, gave the street its name – they were that close to the city walls.

Late afternoon and there was an off chance that Herr Praetor would be home this time of day. Herr Praetor was what was called a freelance journalist. Werthen found this a rather inspired usage from the real meaning of the term, denoting a medieval mercenary. The irony in Praetor’s case was that the original meaning was, in a way, apposite: the pen being mightier than the sword. At any rate, there was the possibility that Praetor, with no office to go to, might work at home rather than in his favorite café.

Werthen knocked once at flat fifteen. After a decent interval he administered a second series of raps. He heard footsteps approaching, felt rather than saw an eye being applied to the viewing lens built into the door, and then heard a bolt being freed. The man on the other side of the door as it opened was tall, thin, and aesthetic-looking, dressed something like a Turk himself, in a long silk smoking jacket with a fez on his head.

‘Herr Praetor?’ Werthen said.

‘Do I know you?’

Werthen quickly dug out one of his cards from the inside pocket of his overcoat.

‘Werthen,’ he said. ‘AdvokatKarl Werthen. I have been employed by the Wittgenstein family.’

‘How fortunate for you.’ Said with an acid dryness and a slight sibilance.

This was clearly not going to be easy, Werthen realized.

‘I wonder if I might come in?’

‘Please yourself.’ The young man turned and moved with elegant grace from the foyer to a sitting room that was a jumble of furniture of every style from a pine table in Alpine rustic to the heavy black bookcases of Alt Deutsch. Obviously young Praetor was not didactic when it came to furnishing. The same sort of happy serendipity seemed to inform the choice of reading matter stacked in piles and littering the room. Grillparzer mingled with Spengler, while Rilke rubbed shoulders with Stifter. Ernst Mach’s
The Analysis of Sensations
found a place with Sigmund Freud’s recently published
Interpretation of Dreams.
In one corner a large Regency desk in cherry wood was scattered with papers and a mammoth Regina typewriting machine.