A Visible Darkness Part 41

Smoked fish, scorched wood, pickling eels could not hold me back. Like a prized red setter, I caught at the richer, more celestial, aroma floating on the warm air, and I rushed on down Schwartzstra.s.se. It pushed all other smells aside, persisting long after they had faded. Had I walked that street at night-had my eyes been blind-I would still have been able to follow it to its source.

Bright red letters on a white background, the hanging sign looked relatively new. I stopped and read again what was written on the trade-sign. DEWITZ WAXWORKS-DEATH MASKS ON REQUEST.

I breathed in deeply.

It did not smell like the beeswax that Frau Poborovsky probably used to polish the dining-table in her parlour. Nor did it have the clinging greasy odour of the tallow rushes that she certainly used to light her rooms. This stuff had a sharp, almost bitter, scent that anyone might have remarked upon if Vulpius carried it into his lodgings.

A handcart was parked in front of the door. Ready to depart at a moment's notice, I surmised. They must carry wax to a customer's home. It seemed unlikely that grieving relatives would bring a body all the way here to make an impression of the face alone. I decided immediately how I would present myself. I would invent an uncle, then sacrifice him. He had died that very morning; I wished to have a death mask made.

I pushed on the door. A dangling bell clanged and jangled as I entered.

I might have been stepping into a church. The warm wax worked its spell on me. Can any Christian soul resist it? It seemed to promise warmth and light and eternal life-despite the suggestion of death, and the hint of funerals that inevitably accompanies it. The low, barrel-vaulted ceiling of the workshop was made of ancient smoke-stained bricks, and it was as long as a country chapel. There even appeared to be side-altars sprouting off on either side. Light shone out of these openings, tracing elongated human shapes in stark silhouette upon the opposite walls.

'Is anyone there?' I called.

Large cubes of grey wax were stacked like blocks of ice against the walls on both sides of the entrance. Clouds of wood-smoke filled the air. As I called again more loudly, the figure of a man emerged from the swirling smoke, as from a fog, coming to meet me in an unhurried manner.

'May I help you?' he enquired.

He was tall, slender, rakish. Not yet fifty, I would have said. Wisps of long blond hair dangled in a goatee beard from his pointed chin. He had carelessly thrown a brown cloak over his shoulder like a French cha.s.seur, and wore a red wool cap pulled down tightly over his forehead. His bright blue eyes gazed into mine.

'I am looking for Herr DeWitz,' I announced.

'You have found him,' the man replied with a pleasant, welcoming smile. There was a croaking catch in his animated voice. He spoke German well, but clearly it was not his native tongue.

'You . . . you are not Prussian, sir,' I said, dithering about the best way to begin.

Having got so very close, I did not intend to startle Vulpius into flight.

'You have a good ear, sir. I am Dutch. From Delft. But no,' he apologised quickly, his face taking on a more lugubrious aspect. 'You have more urgent business certainly. A death in the family, I suppose?'

I toyed with my mythical uncle, then decided to be blunt.

'No, thank the Lord,' I replied. Then, lowering my voice, I took a step closer. 'I am a Prussian magistrate, sir. I am conducting an investigation. Is there somewhere we may talk in private?'

He did not seem surprised or alarmed at this request.

'Come with me,' he replied, turning away, walking into the smoky interior.

I followed him in silence, taking careful note of my surroundings. In the first vaulted room through which we pa.s.sed, two very young girls were sitting beside an open fire on a which a large pot of wax was bubbling. These children were making domestic spills, dipping long reeds one by one into the pot, then placing them in an upright rack to harden and dry.

'We're getting ready for the winter,' DeWitz informed me, turning to the right, leading me into another brick-vaulted tunnel, where an old man with a badly bent back and large, skeletal hands was feeding brushwood kindling into a fire beneath a large bra.s.s boiler. A set of long, slender candle-moulds were laid out on a work-bench beside him, the wicks pulled tight by dangling weights at either end of the mould.

I fought off the suggestion which rose immediately to my mind. Plaster casts of candles of differing dimensions hung from the walls. It was all too easy to make comparisons with the surgery of Dr Heinrich and the plaster casts of Erika Linder's arms, hands and legs. All too easy to reach a wrong conclusion, and see what I wanted to see.

I chased after DeWitz.

At the far end of this long low hall was a table and four stools. The proprietor of the waxworks sat down, made himself comfortable, and invited me to do the same with a sweeping gesture of his pale right hand. He poured himself a gla.s.s of water from a carafe, sipped from it, then he looked at me. 'Will this do you for privacy? You are very mysterious, sir.'

'I . . . I saw your sign,' I said, hesitating again. My greatest fear was that Vulpius was somewhere in the vicinity. 'Death masks . . .'

'A minor branch of the trade,' he replied. 'We don't do more than four or five a week. It is going out of fas.h.i.+on. Candle-making takes up the greatest part of the general business. All shapes and sizes. All qualities, of course. The denser the wax, the longer they burn, the more they cost.' He sipped again, apparently waiting for me. 'It is thirsty work.'

It was extremely warm in the manufactory. It would be a decent place to work in winter, I thought, but the numerous fires, the smoke, and the heavy scent of perfumed wax clogged the stifling air.

I leant over the table.

'I am looking for a man named Vulpius,' I said very quietly. 'I have been informed that he works for you.'

DeWitz stared hard at me. 'Vulpius sometimes works for me,' he replied.

'Is he here just now?' I asked.

'He is not,' he said.

'Do you know where he is?'

'Again, Herr Magistrate, I must say no.'

The tension drained out of me. Frustration took its place.

'But you know where I can find him, surely?'

DeWitz did not move, his gla.s.s poised close to his lips.

'I have no idea,' he said at last. 'To tell you the truth, I am beginning to lose my patience with him. He should be here, he should be working, but I haven't seen him for . . . what, a week? More, perhaps. What day is it today?'

'Thursday,' I replied.

'It is at least ten days since he was here,' he decided at last.

The deaths of Kati and Ilse fell within that time span. And Dr Heinrich had been in Nordcopp-not Konigsberg-as I could personally testify, in the same period.

'What does he do when he does come to work?' I asked.

'He is a modeller,' DeWitz replied.

'Of candles?'

The answer came after a while. 'He is employed in the laboratory.'

'The laboratory?' I repeated. 'And what is that?'

DeWitz looked at me, and he smiled more pensively. 'Have you a good, strong stomach, sir?' he asked.

I nodded mechanically, thinking that he was talking of mortuary masks. I had seen the operation done on two occasions in my youth: my father's mother first, then, a decade later when my brother, Stefan, died.

'I know that wax is applied to the cadaver's face . . .'

DeWitz shook his head. 'Not that,' he said dismissively. 'It might be better if I show you what we do here, rather than explain it. You are a magistrate, after all. You'll have seen sights that other men find shocking. Is that not so, sir?'

There was an air of presumption in his manner, almost a challenge.

I rose to my feet at once. 'Where is this place?'

We went back down the hall, turned left, then right, and left again. At the end of the tunnel there was a broad double door. And a warning sign: KEEP OUT-ON PAIN OF DEATH. Someone had sketched a skull, and a pair of crossed bones in the form of a k.n.o.bbly letter X. The symbol reminded me of the memento mori carved on ancient tombs in country churchyards.

DeWitz pounded three times on the door.

Each knock was separated by a second of silence.

He waited for a few moments before pus.h.i.+ng the door and going in.

The room was larger than any of the others. Six or seven people were working there. Two of them were women. One of them was stirring a large bowl of what looked like plaster, but that activity seemed tame in comparison with what the other workers were doing.

'I have a licence,' DeWitz said quickly. 'From the police, and the Albertina, too.'

'I certainly hope so,' I muttered.

In the centre of the room, a man in a leather ap.r.o.n was standing by a table. He was working with a short knife, removing the heart from a dead body which was naked. The butcher was so thoroughly caked in blood that his ap.r.o.n was black. Spots of blood were spattered on his arms and his face.

'A male,' I murmured, noting the grey, lifeless s.e.x of the corpse.

'Fresh from Lobenicht poorhouse this morning,' DeWitz informed me. 'We make the most of what we can get.'

'What are they doing?' I asked him.

'They're making models for the university,' DeWitz replied with a short, ironic laugh, as if he had sensed my doubts. 'What else would they be doing?'

Someone began to sing in a high-pitched female soprano.

'Tu 'nce si nnata co' le rose 'mmano . . .'

A second voice picked up the melody of a song that I had heard before.

'Are they Italian?' I asked, nodding from the blood-soaked man with a human heart in his hands to the singers and the other persons employed in that charnel-house. To make it worse, two small boys were tending a fire and the cauldron for melting wax that was suspended over it.

'Indeed they are,' DeWitz explained with a raising of his eyebrows. 'From Florence, most of them. Though the carver over there,' he indicated the man with the human heart, 'his wife and his daughter, who both have lovely voices, are all from Naples.'

'What are they doing in Konigsberg?'

'They are artists,' he replied. 'Florence and Naples are cities with a refined and ancient tradition in modelling wax. They can fas.h.i.+on a crib that will have everyone who sees it weeping on Christmas Eve. Voi siete artisti, non e vero, Pasquale?' he called over to the man, who was sc.r.a.ping and levering with his knife, extracting some other organ from the cavity of the corpse that lay wide open before him on the table.

'Verissimo, capo!' the Neapolitan replied without looking up.

DeWitz turned to me and shook his head. 'I went to Italy many years ago,' he said, 'intending to learn the waxy art myself, but it is not learnable. Either you have the talent, or you don't. I did not . . .'

'Does Vulpius have it?' I asked.

'Oh yes, he does,' DeWitz replied enthusiastically. 'He's one of the best, though relatively new to the trade. I had him making plaster casts for me at first, but when the Italian workers arrived, we needed extra help to meet the terms of the contract.'

'And Vulpius volunteered?'

'He did, sir. Displayed a rare skill, too. He is a student of medicine, and is working here to pay his way. His knowledge has been useful. His anatomical drawings are precise. That is, they are precious to me, as you can imagine.'

I had seen the drawings in Frau Poborovsky's. Bizarre, they might be. Monstrous, too. But they were incredibly life-like and marvellously detailed.

'You mentioned a contract,' I said.

'Science is all the rage at the university now,' he replied. 'It all began with the arrival of the French . . .' He turned and stared aggressively at me. 'I know what Prussians think of them, sir. But not everything they bring is bad.'

I was inclined to agree, though I did not like to hear such talk from a foreigner.

'What is this contract for?' I insisted.

'A medical museum, Herr Procurator,' DeWitz replied with a broad smile. 'The Albertina is enlarging its faculty. I was working on a similar job in Paris before coming here. I spent two years at the Observatoire Nationale. These men and women came here with me. They have been imported, so to speak. It is easier to import people into Prussia nowadays than it is to bring in tea or coffee. No Prussian artist is their equal. Except for Vulpius. They are incredibly skilled in modelling the human anatomy. You'd be amazed at the sort of detail they are able to reproduce in wax. Just look here, sir.' He led me over to a table where a middle-aged woman was working on a model of a hand. 'Con il tuo permesso, Maria. Will you look at that? Have you ever seen anything like it?'

In my head a warning voice sounded.

Dr Heinrich had been there . . .

Dressed in a brown overall and bonnet, the lady was working by the light of a lantern with a magnifying mirror. Even in this fierce blaze, I was able to distinguish the real from the false by one token only: one hand was finished; the other was not. The hand from the corpse was laid out on a square of pale satin cloth. The loose skin had been peeled away from a central incision, and rested in two triangular red flaps, exposing the veins, the nerves and the bones. The artist had already formed the general shape of the muscles; she was laying thin strips of purple wax over the fleshy pink mound between the thumb and forefinger.

'She'll form the veins one by one, then ripple them to suggest the contours and pulsing shape of blood-laden vessels. When all is perfect, she'll weld the additions to her model by means of heat,' DeWitz explained.

'But the cloth is real,' I challenged.

Like the real hand, the model was laid out on a piece of satin.

'Wax!' DeWitz proclaimed, as if the thought bewitched him. 'The magic of wax and gum arabic. They build the model up, layer upon layer. And when it is quite finished, it goes into the storage room to set hard.'

He pointed to the furthest, deepest part of the vault.

In the gloom I could just make out long shelves piled high with covered objects. In the centre of the s.p.a.ce were a number of long tables covered with white drapes. It looked to me like a ward in an epidemic hospital where all the patients had died.

'As the gum sets, the wax takes on a permanent glaze,' he explained. 'Once that is done, the exhibits are ready to go on public display. Within a year, Konigsberg will be in a position to open the doors of its very own wax museum.'

I remembered seeing something of the sort in Paris in 1793, though those exhibits were real: the decapitated heads of common criminals and n.o.bles ranged side by side in gore-splashed baskets beneath the guillotine.

'A lurid spectacle for the curious,' I muttered.

'Not at all!' he protested vehemently. 'Have you been to Florence, sir? Have you never seen La Specola, the museum of the Duke of Tuscany? It is a waxen mirror of life and death, the finest scientific collection in the world. Duke Peter-Leopold of Hapsburg-Lotharingen was an enlightened scholar of the first order. Public dissection of the human body was odious, he declared, and he decided to prohibit it. But doctors and surgeons still needed to be trained. They had to know in detail the mechanics of life and death. So how were they to learn? There was only one way, sir. By cutting up human bodies. There is no lack of common criminals in Florence, you might think. But how many bodies does a medical school require in the course of a year, Herr Procurator? The number disgusted Duke Peter-Leopold, and it continues to horrify the religious authorities in Konigsberg. The Pietists object to capital punishment for fear of condemning an immortal soul to h.e.l.l. They prefer long prison sentences, hard labour, much prayer, and the possibility of eventual penitence. I am their salvation,' he added archly. He seemed to pulse with pride at the thought of such admirable human and scientific progress.

I trembled also, aghast with a sense of horror.

Had the jaw of Kati Rodendahl and the larynx of Ilse Bruen pa.s.sed through their hands? Had the Italian woman working patiently on that lifeless hand worked on the amber-gatherers, as well? Or had Vulpius attended to them? Had he made models of the pieces that he had heartlessly ripped from the living?

My doubts melted like hot wax. Heinrich was leading a double life. And the name of his double was Vulpius! He was not concerned with amber alone. Nor with the ancient creatures that it contained. Malaport had guessed. 'He is interested in anatomy,' the general had said. 'Female anatomy.' That would explain why Dr Heinrich was so enamoured of the amber-gatherers.