A Visible Darkness Part 36

I thanked him, and sat down.

I did what I had been meaning to do all day, I wrote a note to Helena.

She was constantly in my thoughts, I said, and the investigation was proceeding speedily. I told her that I was confident of being home before the child was born. Her time would soon be up. If I had not completed my task (that is, if I had still not caught the killer, though I avoided being so unnecessarily explicit), I would request temporary leave from General Malaport, and I had no doubt that he would grant it. I asked her to consign the second note (which would be folded up and sealed inside her letter) to my a.s.sistant, Johannes Gurten. I described him as 'manna from heaven,' noting: I know not where he may be lodging, but Knutzen will know. I count on you, my love, having no other means of contacting Herr Gurten.

Kiss our little ones for me. I miss them all. I cannot express the pleasure that I feel to think of the addition to our house hold, who is, at this very moment, growing inside you. Try to keep him/her quiet until I am able to return to you all.

Yours, etc. Hanno.

The note to Gurten was more prosaic.

Konigsbergtwo unidentified female corpses found here. One was mutilated. The other, too, perhaps. Reports unclear about details. Girls from Nordcopp selling amber in Konigsberg? Most likely. City alive with rebels/nationalists/dissidents of every sort.

I am hunting a ghost named VULPIUS.

I hope that your research is more material than mine.

I will keep you posted regarding developments.

I added Rickert's address, telling Gurten to send his messages there.

All the while, Professor Rickert stood in front of the table, his back towards me, arms folded, feet apart, as if he were on special guard duty. Would he charge me for this service, too, I wondered. If any marauding student from another queue came too close, he stepped forward quickly, waved them off with his fists, ordering them angrily to keep their distance and behave like scholars.

I folded the second letter inside the first, sealed the packet with wax by the candle flame, then I stood up.

'I thank you for your help, Herr Doctor Rickert,' I said.

'It was nothing, sir. Nothing at all,' he replied. 'You have to keep a careful eye on them, you know. Whatever is the university coming to! They're little better than monkeys. Why, they'd be climbing all over the table if you didn't fight them off.'

I knew what was expected of me. I slipped another coin into Rickert's damp palm as I handed him the letter.

'You spoke of two letters, sir.'

'Just one,' I replied. 'Second thoughts, you know.'

Dr Rickert had no such thoughts. He did not offer to refund a farthing of the money that he had already taken from me.

'Your message will be delivered tomorrow morning,' he informed me, glancing at the address that I had written. 'The town is near enough.'

Dr Rickert was correct. Lotingen was close, Nordcopp even closer. They seemed to me like distant planets drawn together by an astral flux that was malign, mysterious. Lotingen with its invasion of flies and foulness, Nordcopp with its mutilated corpses, living cripples and vulnerable women. Konigsberg was part of the same impenetrable labyrinth-strange men and stranger trades in the port, the secretive commissions of its jewellers' shops, the cloisters and the halls of its university ringing with a new scientific language, the old ways all but forgotten. And yet, I thought, there was the secret, hidden underbelly of Konigsberg, too, where amber was smuggled, bought and sold, and where feverish and rebellious ideas of Prussia's spiritual rebirth were never far away.

'A letter to your wife, I see, sir. She'll be pleased to know that you have found the perfect lodging. Until this evening, then, Herr Stiffeniis. Your humble servant, sir.'

The eyelids of Dr Rickert beat as rapidly as any young lover's might, when the moment of separation arrives. By way of contrast, his joyful expression reminded me of the mysterious sentence about blood and how best to extract it, that he had been writing when I arrived. Then, something that Colonel les Halles had said the other night on the coq du mer returned to my thoughts. Nothing is ever as it seems in Prussia, Stiffeniis. What had induced this smiling academic, this thaler-hungry sycophant, to interest himself in blood, and the most efficient ways to extract it from the human body?

The sun was sinking, and it was gloomy out in the quadrangle. I walked through the great entrance-gate, but I did not leave the precincts of the university. I knew where I was going as I turned away from the harbour, and headed into the shambles of the old town.

I knew what I would find there.

28.

THE LIBRARY DOORS were thrown wide open.

A single lantern traced out a cracked mosaic of pummelled, ancient paving stones. A head poked out of a tiny window in the wall, like a guard-dog on a short chain chasing off unwanted callers.

'What can I do for you, sir?'

'I must speak with Herr Ludvigssen,' I answered, recovering from my surprise. Here was a change! The library had been abandoned and forgotten the year before. Now, there was a man to guard the entrance.

'Ludvigssen? D'you know where to find him, sir?'

'If he is still down in the Kantstudiensaal . . .'

'That's right, sir. Been down there before, have you?'

The head ducked out of sight, as if I had just given the correct pa.s.sword.

As I went down the stairs to the bas.e.m.e.nt, as the lanterns grew spa.r.s.er, and the shadows thickened, I recalled my visit to the university library in the company of Serge Lavedrine the year before. On that occasion, thanks to Lavedrine's perseverance, we had found what we were seeking.

Would I be so lucky on my own, I wondered.

The underground corridor ran the length of the building. It was dark and dank, smelling strongly of mould and mice, dusty paper and rank abandonment. My nerves were tingling and a sort of blind panic seized me by the throat. Was it possible that Kant had failed to record our conversation? It had changed the course of my whole life. It had altered the direction of his life, too. I was certain the philosopher had written a note about it, and I did not doubt that his account was hidden somewhere in that archive. All of his extant papers had been deposited there after his death. And Arnold Abel Ludvigssen had been employed as the archivist to catalogue each single ma.n.u.script sheet. My nightmare had long been that the man would find my name and learn what I preferred should be forever lost and forgotten.

My steps echoed on the stone flags. Someone might have been following behind me in the gloom, they sounded so loud. My head was a maelstrom of thoughts that made no sense, as I halted before the door of the Kantstudiensaal.

I raised my fist-it felt as heavy as a cannonball-then let it fall upon the door.

'Come in,' a voice called brightly.

It was not the slurred and slovenly voice that I remembered, though the same man was seated behind a large desk. I recognised the long nose of Arnold Abel Ludvigssen, the straight middle parting, the divided waterfalls of greasy black hair which fell on either side of his long, pale, narrow face. He peered short-sightedly over the top of his pince-nez like a frightened hare.

'Can I help you, sir?'

No light of recognition shone in his eyes, and I was glad of that. Twelve months before, he had been the picture of dest.i.tution. Drunk then, he was sober now. The state of the room had altered, too. It was as if a Baltic gale had blown through the place, sweeping up the mountain of ma.n.u.scripts and books, and depositing them magically in perfect order on the shelves which ran around the walls. He had accomplished a task that would have daunted Hercules. A rubbish tip had been transformed into an archive which was manageable, though vast. The same purifying wind had blown over him. He looked fresh, clean, new, as he came running from behind the desk to meet me.

'I am an investigating magistrate,' I began to say.

'You've come about the stolen papers?' he asked, and his left eyelid began to flicker nervously.

'I am conducting an enquiry on behalf of General Malaport,' I specified.

I could have sworn I heard his heels click together at the mention of the Frenchman's name. He had been standing in front of me, his body rigid, eyes cast down like a junior officer brought up on a charge. Now, his tense face seemed to visibly relax.

'You are working for the French,' he started to say, and a trill of nervous laughter burst out of him. 'That's a great relief, sir. I knew they'd take the matter seriously in the end.'

'The matter?' I echoed.

Herr Ludvigssen was wearing a new suit of neat brown twill, his shirt was clean, his collar stiff with starch, his tie was a puffy red velvet bow. When drunk, the man had been rude and intractable, but now he was as meek as a puppy, and he was sober.

'The papers, sir. I was very worried. That's why I reported the theft.'

Had he chosen to confide in me because I was working for the French? He was the first Prussian to behave in such a manner. All the others had been terrified at the thought of talking to a man in my position.

Before I could ask him what had been taken, he began to speak again.

'I thought that you'd been sent by them . . . My benefactors,' he said, a twisted expression of resentment on his face.

'Who are you talking of?' I asked him.

'The people who supervise the archive nowadays.'

'I thought the University ran it?'

'Oh no, sir. Not anymore. The Albertina would have closed the place down,' he continued. 'But then . . . they stepped in at the eleventh hour. They paid for the furniture, and the shelves, and the desks, but . . .'

'But what?'

'They are strict, sir. Mighty strict. Consider this a mausoleum, they said. And dress the part. The archive must be worthy of the man that it enshrines.' An embarra.s.sed smile appeared on his face, and he giggled quietly to himself. 'Sometimes, when I am down here on my own, I have the notion Kant himself has come in through that door, sir. I get the feeling he is watching me. He is a malevolent presence, sir. A threat, I can a.s.sure you.'

He spoke as if he lived in a permanent state of terror.

'Professor Kant would be gratified to see the splendid work that you have done,' I said, trying to put him at his ease. 'Who are these benefactors, anyway?'

His mouth opened and closed, like a carp out of water.

'The idolaters of Kant,' he whispered, leaning closer. 'For so I call them.'

Vulpius had used a similar expression about himself when stopped and questioned in the street by the night watchman. 'I am a follower of Kant,' he had said. Had Rickert sent me to the right place, after all?

'Have you ever met these people?' I asked him.

Ludvigssen clasped his hands together. 'Never, sir.'

'Surely, if they pay your salary, someone brings it.'

He shook his head, and breathed in noisily. 'Oh no, sir. I am paid through the Albertina Secretariat,' he replied. 'That's not changed, though everything else has. Including the notes I get when I commit an error, or put a book back in the wrong place. Arrive a minute late, or close too soon, an envelope turns up.'

'Well, somebody must bring those,' I suggested.

Ludvigssen shook his head. 'I find them on my desk. I've no idea who brings them here. I've asked the watchman on the gate, but he's got no idea, either. It's almost as if the fog had delivered them.'

Ludvigssen shivered as if the temperature had suddenly dropped.

'Were these letters signed?' I asked, wondering whether there might be some rational explanation, an academic committee, perhaps, that had been formed to oversee the daily running of the archive.

'Not signed, as such,' he said mysteriously.

'May I see them?' I asked.

Ludvigssen looked once again beyond my shoulder to the door. 'You are a magistrate, aren't you, sir? Working for the French, I mean?' he said. His eyes flashed bright with fright. 'They haven't sent you here to test me, have they?'

'I am employed by General Malaport, as I told you,' I answered firmly, 'and I have come here on his business. Now, let me see these letters, if you will.'

He blinked nervously, as if uncertain whether the greatest danger lay in me, or in the unseen watchers. Then, with a deep sigh, he crossed the room and sat himself down behind his desk, reaching down to open the bottom drawer.

As he came up again, holding a sheet of paper, there was something odd in his way of managing it. He had laid the folded paper flat in the palm of his left hand, and he held it closed with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. 'Open it as if you were lifting up a lid,' he said, offering the paper to me. 'That's right, sir. Just hold it in the same way I am holding it.'

I did as I was told, then raised the top half carefully. There was red wax all around the edges, as if the paper had been sealed like a packet, as if it had once contained something more than words alone.

OFFENCE, I read the large letters. In smaller letters: Archive closed one hour early on 17th inst. You were seen drinking beer in the Mermaid Tavern. Shirt collar dirty. It has been noted that the frontispiece of the Westphalia edition has been consumed by worms.

WARNING: Let this be the last time!

There was neither a date, nor a signature.

Where the signature ought to have been, there was a large bluebottle.

The insect had been squashed, then pressed down hard, leaving the imprint of a finger in the mulch. Fluids had stained a dull brown spot. The crushed contents of the thorax had attached themselves like glue to the paper. As the paper trembled in my hand, a fragment of the wing detached itself and caught against my thumb.

'This was no accident, I think.' I folded the paper up, and pinched it closed.

'Indeed,' he said, putting the note away, taking out another one, handing it to me in the same curious manner.

I repeated the operation.

OFFENCE: Preface to Critique of Pure Reason [1787 Riga edition] incorrectly returned to the shelves containing Social Essays.

Late in opening 22nd inst.

WARNING: This is the second time that books have been misplaced!

No fly had been squashed on the paper. It was a spider this time. A large, long-legged spider, which had been crushed with a thumb, and spread across the page like strawberry jam.

I closed it up, and gave it back.

'Are these accusations justified?' I asked, closing the letter, handing it back.

'They were, sir,' Ludvigssen admitted. 'I have altered my ways. Stopped drinking, for a start.'

'Would the idolaters do what those crushed insects seem to suggest?'

It was cold down there, despite the oppressive heat of summer out in the streets, but a drop of sweat rolled down Ludvigssen's nose and splashed on the surface of his desk.