A Visible Darkness Part 44

'That is all there is to know!'

I could barely see his outline through the gauze which masked my eyes.

'Don't you want to know what I discovered about you, Herr Magistrate Hanno Stiffeniis of Lotingen?'

There it was again. He answered me with a question, throwing my arguments arrogantly in my face as if they were his own. What more did he have to hide? Why torment me before he murdered me? Was this another aspect of his malevolence? First, he would amuse himself. Then, he would kill with whatever came to hand, wherever he happened to be. A windswept beach, a stinking pigsty, on the muddy banks of the River Pregel, in the tiny house of Narcizus Rickert.

I felt a tremor shake my limbs. Having killed me, he would take what he desired. Cutting, hacking, carrying off the bits that fired his madness. I had to humour him. And yet, exasperation got the better of me.

'What can you know of me?' I protested. 'I told you very little when we met in Nordcopp. You know only what les Halles and the French have decided to let you hear. A Prussian magistrate sent from Lotingen to investigate the crimes of which you are guilty.'

I heard the squeak of tensing leather.

He seemed to be crouching close beside me.

His breath was warm. It penetrated the cloth that clung to my face.

'I saw the newspapers in your room, but they could tell you nothing . . .'

'I knew of you before they sent you to the coast,' he stressed. 'I learnt of you from a different source. A most reliable one . . .'

The odour of his body was stale, musky. There was not the slightest hint of wax. Frau Poborovsky had said that she could smell it always on his hands, hair, and clothes. He had not been to work in the last ten days. Had the smell faded away? Had he sloughed it off, as snakes are said to change their skins?

'You went to the Kantstudiensaal yesterday,' he said. 'I followed you there. You did not find what you were looking for. That particular ma.n.u.script had been removed for safe-keeping, let us say.'

'You stole it. Then, you sent Ludvigssen those crushed insects . . .'

'Could Kant's legacy be trusted to a drunkard?' he snarled suddenly. 'The French would have closed the place. The Albertina is in their hands already. They have laid their greedy paws on everything else. Now, instead, the Kantstudiensaal is open. Kant's books and his ma.n.u.scripts are cared for in the manner that they merit. The true spirit of Prussia will be preserved. For ever . . .'

'Like flies in amber?' I hissed.

The dark shape of his head loomed close to my face.

He let out a heavy sigh.

'Now you are beginning to make some sense, Herr Stiffeniis.'

'That doc.u.ment you took from the archive,' I said. 'It was something Immanuel Kant had written about amber. Why did you remove it? Why remove that doc.u.ment, and no other?'

The sound of our breathing was audible.

I sucked air in gasps through the stifling gauze; he breathed slowly, regularly. There was no doubt in my mind. My life could be snuffed out at any instant, and at the slightest provocation.

'I thought you might have understood by now. Professor Kant was the first to comprehend the significance of amber,' he said at last. 'He saw the way ahead. Late in life, but he saw it. He understood what others have always failed to see. What you have failed to see . . .'

His voice faded away.

'I read the note in Ludvigssen's catalogue,' I said. 'There was nothing of a scientific nature in what Kant had to say.'

'Regarding a piece of amber shown to me by Wasianski,' Vulpius recited precisely. 'Kant had never taken much of an interest in the natural sciences. But when Wasianski showed him that unusual piece, it was as if the golden light of the amber had illuminated him. The note is very short-two pages-you are right about that. But what intuition! No one has ever explained who and what we Prussians are. Nor what Prussia is. But then, Professor Kant turned his mind upon those questions.'

I heard the sc.r.a.pe of a boot, the swish of clothes as Vulpius moved away. Some moments later, the sharp crackle of a piece of folded paper being opened.

'And you hold the key to his meaning, Stiffeniis.'

He began to read, and I was obliged to listen.

Was it the confusion in my head? The pain in my skull? The m.u.f.fling curtain about my face? His voice worked its way inside my brain. Professor Kant might have been reading to me from beyond the grave.

'Wasianski showed me something memorable today,' he read.

I thought at first that he had caught a b.u.t.terfly, the way he held it tightly trapped inside his closed fist. And yet, it is winter. Some worm, or creeping thing, I thought, as we sat together before the parlour fire. As a special favour, Wasianski reported, a friend had left an object in his keeping for the day. Wasianski wanted me to see it. The next morning, the owner intended to sell the treasure in the Kneiphof district.

'Dear Kant,' Wasianski began, 'have you ever seen the like of this?'

His voice was trembling with excitement as he showed me what was hidden in his palm: a piece of amber, the size of a large plum. It glowed like a small transparent sun, the glistening, yellow colour of honey fresh from the hive.

And there was something darker at the core . . .

It took my breath away.

'It is from the Baltic,' Wasianski said. 'Just look what it contains!'

I had never seen anything so luminous. A living flame enclosed within, it seemed to spark and flare as it refracted light. I had seen slight fragments of vegetation and minute flies contained in shards of amber, but never anything to equal it.

The insect swept every other thought aside. Not for an hour. Nor a day. But for many weeks altogether.

Had such a brute once taken wing on Prussian winds? It was horrid, fascinating. Longer than my thumb, it might have been made of the hardest steela suit of armour with six legs, a single horn, two sets of wings.

Where had it come from? When had it lived? What dangers had it outfaced before it drowned in liquid amber? Invincible, aggressive, cruel, there was no hint of conscience in that design. It was fas.h.i.+oned for survival. Nothing more.

Could G.o.d invent such a thing?

'It is our history,' I said.

But even as I spoke, another thought was taking shape in my mind. An idea which induced a sense of stupor and fright. Planted there by a young man who came to see me recently, having just returned from France. His words echoed in my head; that monster of Nature glistened in my hand. I saw what Wasianski could not see. I saw what no man had ever seen before, I think. I alone had spoken to the youth. I alone had listened, as he walked with me around the Castle Walk that foggy afternoon. He had opened up his heart to me. I had looked into his thoughts, and what I saw there was dark, cruel, primitive. I had the same impression as I gazed upon that insect trapped in amber.

The fixation will not let me be.

Is it possible, I ask myself? His dark soul; that extinct creature frozen in time? Not a vision of the past, but of a possible future?

I must speak to him again. I must know what has become of him.

I stare at the creature trapped inside this stone, and I see a visible darkness. What would happen if this monster were to free itself and fly away? What if it is nesting now in his mind and in his soul? What would the consequences be for all of us?'

'This doc.u.ment is dated November 1803,' Vulpius added. 'That is, a short time before the killings began in Konigsberg, and Professor Kant sent for you. You will see the connection, I think. When the French ordered you to go to Nordcopp, it seemed as if the ghost of Kant had issued you a further challenge. But you did not see it that way. Betraying yourself and the "darkness" that Kant had seen inside you, you set yourself to help the French, enabling them to possess our amber and crush our primitive hearts.'

And for that sin I must pay with my life.

And yet, his reasoning was false. I had not betrayed Kant. Nor helped the French to take possession of my country.

The words tripped lightly from my lips.

'I am not helping the French . . .'

'Just listen to yourself, Herr Magistrate!' he snarled.

I had set my foot on a slippery rock.

'Prussian women were being murdered on the coast,' I said, changing direction quickly. 'That was all that I knew when I was ordered up to Nordcopp.'

'You did not know that the French were building machines? That they were planning to strip the coast of amber?' he stormed, his anger mounting. 'You have seen them at work, Herr Magistrate. Their theft grows day by day. Yet you ignored what they were doing.'

'I saw how Prussian women were being butchered . . .'

'They had to die,' he snapped impatiently.

'Why?' I shouted. 'Why?'

He did not react. Or would not. As the silence stretched out, hope began to flutter in my breast, and a sort of desperate madness took hold of me. Why had he taken me prisoner? Why did he let me live? I had something that he wanted. Whatever it was, it might just save my life.

'We can help each other,' I suggested. 'Don't you want to know what Kant left out?'

Time stood still.

'Continue,' he snapped.

'What do you think Kant saw in me?' I asked, carefully weighing my words. 'What connection did he make between myself and the piece of amber that Wasianski showed him? That was the reason he sent for me, and no one else, four years ago, to investigate the murders in Konigsberg.'

I said no more, but waited for his answer.

'I want to know,' he said at last.

I took a deep breath.

I could smell my own sweat. It was sharper than the stink of the binding cloth and the cloying odour of putrefaction in that place.

'I witnessed an . . . an execution,' I said.

I had to force myself to speak. When it came at last, my voice seemed to come from the centre of the Earth. 'I saw a man beheaded by the guillotine. Blood spurted out of his neck like vapour from the blow-hole of a whale,' I said. And then, in a whisper, 'I hoped that the flow would never end.'

I fell headlong into the nightmare from which I had tried in vain to escape. I told him what I had confessed that day so long ago to Professor Kant. I had been in the Place de la Revolution in January 1793, when the Parisian mob put their king to death. That day my life had changed for ever. I described what I had seen, and what I had felt. It was not an ordered narrative. I re-evoked the violent rush of emotions which possessed me as I stood at the foot of the guillotine. The buzz of vulgar tongues. The dizzy ecstasy of expectation. The execution order finally given, the explosion of a drum-roll. The thunderous beating of my heart. The sudden shriek, the metallic sc.r.a.pe as the blade fell free.

The fountain of blood upon my face. The coppery taste of it upon my tongue. The immense power of Death. My unquenchable desire to see life taken.

Again, and again, and again . . .

I felt anew the pa.s.sion of that day. I relived it all in perfect detail, wondering where the tale had been hiding. In which dark antechamber of my fetid soul had it lain fallow? I pulled it out like a horrid trophy, and threw it at the feet of the man who meant to murder me. I did not intend to let him think of me as his victim. I wanted him to think of me as his brother in blood.

'Kant saw the same implacable cruelty, the same heartless ferocity, imprisoned in that piece of amber. The hideous insect trapped inside the stone. Wasianski saw a marvel. Kant saw a monster,' I concluded. 'He thought at once of me.'

The light seemed to ebb before my eyes.

The death-blow must come now.

I did not strain against my bonds.

An image filled my thoughts, instead.

A memory, rather . . .

I was in the garden. It was early morning still, the light was brilliant. I was on my way to work. I stopped by Helena's roses, and saw a fly caught tight in a spider's web. Later that day, I had been summoned by General Malaport and sent to Nordcopp. But it was the fly that gripped my thoughts. I felt as that creature must have felt. I was helpless, mortally trapped in a suffocating web of Heinrich-Vulpius's making. Like the spider, he would wait until the fight had drained out of me. That is when they kill.

But no blow came. That voice came, instead.

'Professor Kant saw the future in you,' he said.

I was stunned. Had he accepted the deal? Had he taken what I had to offer?

'Prussia will not be born again on the field of battle,' he murmured. 'Generals, armies, cannon, frail flesh. These things are gone for ever. Jena proved it. Our revolution will . . . Listen to me,' he hissed sharply. 'Could any man, except Professor Kant, have divined it? Our ideals will stem from amber. Our weapons will be wax and flesh. Can you imagine that? You have been to the workshop of DeWitz.'

What was he saying?

DeWitz, the workshop, Prussia's spiritual rebirth?

'I have been there,' I said uncertainly. 'I have seen the models for the university.'

'There is much else, besides.'

What did he mean?

'DeWitz showed me examples of . . .'

His voice cut brusquely over mine. 'That place is dark and damp. It is a womb, Herr Stiffeniis. DeWitz knows nothing. He would not recognise the creature taking shape before his eyes.'

I was lost. He was talking in metaphors.

The dark, the damp, creatures forming in the womb . . .

A hand settled heavily on my arm.

I froze. My scalp tingled madly with fright. My clenched teeth ached as I prepared to die. A knee crushed down upon my chest, holding me firm. Did he intend to cut my throat, as he had done to Ilse? As he had slaughtered Rickert? Would he drive a wooden stake through my heart?

A thousand terrors flashed through my mind.

An instant pa.s.sed, then he removed his knee.

Was he hovering above me? Was that his game? Would he slaughter me the instant that I attempted to rise and escape from that place?