The Silence

Nine

Werthen’s right knee was acting up the next morning. Sometimes it felt as if the bullet from the duel was still lodged in there. He did not let it stop him, however, from walking to work as usual. He merely took his mahogany walking stick with him. Berthe had bought it for him last Christmas; a handsome piece of work with a brass grip in the shape of a globe that fit perfectly into the palm of his hand. Berthe knew him so well: Werthen’s vanity would not allow him to use a mere cane, but this walking stick had a distinguished feel to it. He felt a bit of the dandy as he strolled to the Inner City, high clouds scudding in the sky ahead of a chill north wind.

No sooner had Werthen arrived at the Habsburgergasse and settled in at his desk, than he received a visit from an old friend.

‘My God. Gross,’ he said, pumping the man’s hand after he was shown into the office by Fraulein Metzinger. ‘How wonderful to see you.’

Doktor Hanns Gross, a tall, somewhat portly man in his early fifties, returned the handshake with equal vigor. His lips seemed to quiver under his salt and pepper moustache, which, Werthen noticed, had lately been transformed from a pencil-thin sprig of foliage to a bristling and slightly confused snail-like growth, curving up cavalierly at its right terminus yet dipping down into the doldrums on the left. Gross’s pate, ringed with a fringe of gray hair, gleamed from a fresh application of bay rum, which he used every morning.

‘Did you just arrive?’ Werthen asked.

‘We’ve been here since Friday, actually.’

‘Where have you been hiding? And who is “we”? Don’t tell me that you actually brought Adele with you this time.’

Gross grimaced as if in sudden pain. ‘Yes, dearest Adele is with me. Or, more accurately, I am accompanying her.’ He sat in a chair with a slight sigh. ‘Fasching, you see.’ Another grimace.

‘You’re not?’

‘Afraid so. After years of politely requesting, my dear lady wife finally made an ultimatum: we would attend the Vienna ball season or else. I was too devastated to inquire about the nature of “else.” Thus, here I am in your pre-Lenten city.’

Werthen sat down in one of the client chairs next to Gross instead of sitting behind his desk. ‘So you are actually going to attend a ball?’

Werthen did not think he had ever seen the criminologist looking so miserable, not even when faced with hemorrhoid surgery in Graz. Gross made a quick nod of the head.

‘Have done already, in point of fact. Last Saturday night’s Gartenbau Ball. Would it were otherwise. I am not as graceful on my feet as I once was, Werthen.’

‘Well, I for one think it is damn fine of you, Gross. Poor Adele has been pining to attend the Vienna ball season ever since I first met her in Graz.’

‘Oh, long before that, my dear friend.’

‘And you finally consented.’

‘Relented,’ Gross corrected. ‘And there was the plumiest band of dandies and swells in attendance at the ball. Insipid and bored lower aristocracy with too much drink taken. All they could think of doing to entertain themselves was wager thousands of crowns on snail races. My God, what an occupation.’

It was the latest rage in Viennese society, Werthen knew. Dissipated nobility purchased snails at exorbitant rates to see which could climb to the top of a meter stick first, wagering even more exorbitant sums in the process.

‘It was an outrage,’ Gross spluttered.

Inactivity of any sort was anathema to Gross.

‘But come, tell me Werthen, what lovely case do you have in hand?’

Werthen quickly outlined the major points in the Praetor murder.

‘One of those, eh?’ was Gross’s immediate reply.

‘Not you, too,’ Werthen all but groaned.

‘I was referring to the young man’s profession rather than his sexual inclinations. Journalists make prime targets for homicides, as they so often step on the toes of the powerful or merely the vengeful.’

‘You’ve come close to the truth there,’ Werthen allowed, and proceeded to relate Praetor’s possible link to the death of Councilman Steinwitz as well as the missing notebooks, which may or may not contain damning information from Praetor’s unfinished investigation.

Before Werthen had a chance to further elaborate on the direction of his investigations, as he and Berthe had determined last night, Gross interrupted.

‘I assume you are investigating possible links between Herr Steinwitz’s death and Praetor’s?’

Werthen made to assent, but Gross barged on.

‘And are making inquiries with fellow journalists regarding the possible whereabouts if not contents of said notebooks?’

Again Werthen attempted to say yes, and again was drowned out by Gross.

‘And are tracking down any leads regarding Praetor’s relations. His. . well, his lovers.’

Not wishing to respond to this, Werthen was now presented with silence from Gross, who peered at him like a slightly perverse owl.

Finally Werthen said, ‘Yes to the first two, and no to the last. I do not discount the possibility of a tryst gone wrong, as your friend Drechsler surmises, but rather prefer to follow what seem to me to be more pressing leads.’

‘Ah, Detective Inspector Drechsler is in charge of the case?’ Gross asked.

‘And dragging his heels. Willing to list it as a suicide in spite of the lack of either weapon or note simply to avoid complications.’

‘And in light of this dismembered avian creature?’

Werthen sat silent at this question.

‘You haven’t told him, have you? And bravo. Nor should you. The man and his minions were too incompetent to discover it. Well, that is their problem.’

How like Gross, Werthen thought, to make this a competition.

‘I would very much like to help, if I may,’ Gross said after a moment more of silence. ‘There is much to do. Follow the leads to Steinwitz, other councilmen, the bereaved widow, et al. I assume your good wife is off to the offices of the Arbeiter Zeitung.’

He said the name of the socialist newspaper the way one might pronounce a distasteful disease.

‘Actually, Berthe is pursuing such leads from the comfort of our apartment, using our telephone. You must not have received my card.’

‘Which card, dear Werthen?’

‘Telling you of the birth of our daughter Frieda, on the nineteenth of January this year.’

There followed several moments of well-wishing from Gross, who apparently had not received the communication. He had left Czernowitz, where he held the chair in criminology, almost a month ago, during the long semester break. First he and his wife had gone to their home in Graz, and then finally to Vienna, and had not had their mail forwarded.

‘Marvelous news,’ Gross concluded. ‘Truly marvelous. Adele will be so happy to hear of it. All the more reason for me to help out in this investigation then. I suggest I follow the lead to Praetor’s father.’

‘But there is no lead to the father,’ Werthen protested.

‘Oh, I imagine we will find one. If the man knew his son as well as you say, then he surely knew if his son were in love, or at least entangled.’

Werthen nodded at this. From his long acquaintanceship with Gross, he knew there was no way of dissuading the criminologist from joining an investigation that piqued his interest.

‘I would take it as a personal favor,’ Gross suddenly added. ‘A respite from my Fasching requirements.’

‘Agreed,’ Werthen said. In fact, he rather relished joining forces with Gross once again.

‘And it is just as well that you did not shame Drechsler with the discovery of the bird. We need him for another small favor. As Herr Praetor was a journalist, I assume he used a typewriting machine.’

Werthen nodded at this.

‘Excellent,’ Gross said. ‘I have lately been making an investigation of deciphering the marks left on the platen of a typewriting machine as well as on the ink ribbons. Some of my students in Czernowitz have assisted me in my endeavors, setting up a separate mechanical decipherment department at the crime laboratory I instituted at the university. There I have begun to assemble a rather workable technology in recovering typed impressions. I would like to see what can be discovered from Herr Praetor’s typewriting machine.’

‘Excellent,’ Werthen said, and then came a brief rapping at his office door.

He called out for Fraulein Metzinger to enter, and she did so, her young friend, Huck, in tow, looking awfully well-appointed in a new gray suit from Loden Plankl, his thin legs encased in green knee socks and woolen knickers.

‘Sorry to interrupt, AdvokatWerthen. But I was thinking of sending Huck to the Bezirksamt.’

This was her usual duty, carrying wills to be registered at the local district office in Naglergasse. To send Huck in her stead was an elevation in duties from mere delivery boy to official representative of the firm, for Huck would sign the ledger at the district office. Werthen knew that Fraulein Metzinger had been working on Huck’s penmanship and clearly now thought that the youth was ready for this promotion. Huck stood up straight and proud in his new suit and Werthen did not have the heart to do other than consent.

‘I am sure Huck will carry out his duties successfully,’ Werthen said importantly, and was pleased to see the boy puff out his chest even more.

After Fraulein Metzinger and Huck left, Gross peered at Werthen, a slight smile on his lips.

‘Doing good works are we now, Werthen?’

‘I have no idea what you mean.’

‘You can clothe him like a gentleman, but it is painfully obvious that young boy was lately living rough on the streets.’

‘However can you know that?’ Werthen said, amazed.

‘The color of his skin, for one. Far too ruddy for this time of year when sensible people stay indoors. Then there is the matter of the gray under his eyes, which suggests not just lack of proper sleep, but also a poor diet, something that cannot be reversed overnight. Additionally there was the very manner in which he held his body, so proud of himself as if this were the first good suit of clothes he has possessed.’

‘That is quite impressive, Gross. From those scant clues you could conclude that he was once a street urchin?’

Gross waved off the compliment as if such deductions were nothing.

‘From that, and from the bits of conversation I overheard between your new assistant and the boy when I arrived and was taking off my coat waiting to be announced. It is quite surprising what people will say around one they think is too old or perhaps too proper to attempt to overhear them. Your young secretary was giving the boy tips on how to enter and leave a room with grace rather than the manner in which one might “pull a scamper in the sewers,” as I believe she put it in quite good street argot. Not something the young woman would know on her own. Ergo. .’

In the end, they decided to take lunch together. Gross and his wife were staying at the Hotel Imperial. Before, when on his own, Gross would be Werthen’s house guest, but that was now out of the question with the coming of Frieda and the fact that the criminologist was here with his wife. It spoke of the level of their intimacy that Werthen made no insincere invitations, nor did Gross expect one.

Thus, they walked to the nearby Imperial for lunch. Adele was indeed pleased to see him, for Werthen had been a constant guest in the Gross household during his years in Graz as a young criminal lawyer. And though he had already twice collaborated with Gross on criminal investigations since leaving Graz, Werthen had not seen Adele in the intervening years.

She was a short, thin woman, and, like many smaller women, she was full of a bubbling strength and confidence that made you forget her stature. Hearing of the birth of his first child, Adele leaned across the table to kiss him on the cheek. As she did so, she whispered, ‘Do not ruin your child.’

At least he thought she had said that. Implying that Gross had done his utmost to ruin their own child, Otto, a budding twenty-three-year-old psychologist by all accounts, but who, as a youth, had been at loggerheads with his authoritarian father.

Werthen merely smiled in return to Adele. It felt almost like a betrayal of Gross even to receive such advice. Still, Werthen would not have wanted to be the man’s son. Hard enough being the offspring of Emile von Werthen.

They spoke of food for a time once the carp was served, and then Gross regaled them for a full half-hour about the discoveries he had made yesterday at the Kunsthistorisches Museum viewing his beloved Bruegel paintings. In particular, he had been inspecting The Fight Between Carnival and Lent.

‘A most propitious painting for this time of year,’ Gross remarked.

Gross thought he had discovered the mystery behind the change in orthography for Bruegel’s name. Prior to 1559, the Flemish painter spelled his name with an ‘h’: Brueghel. However, thereafter for the final decade of his life, he spelled it without the ‘h,’ even though his offspring — both painters as well — kept the ‘h.’ Many art historians credited such a spelling change to the influence of humanism on the painter, wanting to Latinize his name. However, in The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, from 1559, Gross felt that he had uncovered the secret reason for this change. Amid the bewildering myriad of characters populating the canvas, Gross had discerned a recurring pattern: in each group there appeared to be a hunched crone plying some occult trade. According to Gross, the ‘h’ thus represented to Bruegel the word heks, the Flemish for witch or sorceress.

‘In effect,’ Gross said with a satisfied smile, ‘Bruegel underwent a form of self-exorcism of the witch within himself with this spelling change.’

Adele was quite obviously uninterested in such a discussion; she peeled a dessert apple and left it untasted, then proceeded to fold and refold her napkin. Werthen, too, felt a little impatient with this discourse, not because it was uninteresting to him, but rather because he had his own mystery to chew on and would have preferred Gross to confer with him on further details of that business. However, it soon dawned on him — as Gross requested Werthen’s company for an after-lunch visit to the museum — that the criminologist was using the Bruegel matter as a ruse. Adele had finally shamed Gross into making a round of the Fasching balls; she would obviously not want his attention diverted by a new criminal investigation.

‘I would be pleased to join you,’ Werthen responded to the invitation, which brought a wide and satisfied smile from Gross.

‘Remember we have a dinner engagement tonight with the Hausmanns, Hanns,’ Adele said as they were leaving the restaurant.

‘Of course, my sweet. It is uppermost in my mind.’

‘You are as sharp as always,’ Gross said as they left the Imperial. ‘I confess that in a moment of weakness I vowed to Adele that I would not become involved in a criminal investigation while in Vienna. But really, Werthen. Snail races. I’ll be sold for a donkey before being exposed to such foolery again.’

They did not, of course, go to the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Instead, with Werthen’s knee feeling better now that he had his walking stick, they took a leisurely stroll to the nearby Maximilianstrasse 13, one street in from the Ring and just across from the Hofoper. In a cramped and cluttered corner office they found Karl Kraus hard at work getting his latest edition of Die Fackel ready for the printer.

Kraus, whom Werthen had the occasion to consult on an earlier investigation, was more than a mere journalist. He seemed to know where all the bodies were buried in Vienna, who was sleeping with whom, and even what the emperor had for dinner the night before. His network of colleagues and friends extended to every section of society. Kraus, a slight man with a curly head of hair and tiny oval wire-rim glasses, was happily surprised at their visit, even setting out three small glasses of rather too sweet apricot schnapps in honor of the occasion. Theirs was a symbiotic relationship: in exchange for quite accurate gossip, Kraus had been, in the past, provided by Werthen and Gross with material for his thrice-monthly journal that, as the Americans said, ‘scooped’ the dailies.

They made small talk for a time, Kraus encircled by uneven piles of Viennese newspapers which he scoured daily for signs of hypocrisy, pomposity, and, worst sin of all, poor grammar.

‘So, gentlemen,’ Kraus said after appropriate toasts to communal health had been made, ‘I trust you have not paid a visit solely for a bit of free schnapps. What wonderful case are you currently engaged in and how can I be of service?’

Gross, who at first meeting had heartily complained of Kraus’s affectedness, was now a convert and greeted the journalist’s flair with a smile.

Werthen set his empty glass on to the small desk amid the clutter of newsprint. ‘I am interested in the colleagues of Councilman Steinwitz. Any close friends he might have had at City Hall or elsewhere.’

Kraus leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands over his narrow chest.

‘Ah, the dear departed Councilman Steinwitz. His name has been quite eclipsed in the press of late. We journalists are a fickle lot.’ He squinted at Werthen. ‘By friends, do you mean acquaintances?’

‘Real friends,’ Werthen said.

Kraus nodded. ‘I assume you know that he and Lueger were school chums. Both at the Theresianum together.’

Werthen remembered now the flag at half-mast at the school when he was investigating the disappearance of Hans Wittgenstein. The words of Father Mickelsburg came back to him, for the Piarist priest had reported that Steinwitz and Lueger were among the first class of commoners to be allowed to attend the school, and that the two had remained close friends after graduation.

‘Quite attached to one another, by all accounts,’ Kraus continued. ‘Lueger brought him into his government despite certain irreconcilables.’

‘How do you mean?’ Werthen quickly inquired.

‘Well, the two were not of one mind about the Jewish question at all. Lueger has gone so far as to suggest the Jews all be loaded on a ship and sent off to Palestine.’

Werthen noted that Kraus, a converted Jew like Werthen himself, did not use the pronoun ‘we’ when speaking of Vienna’s Jews.

‘And Steinwitz?’ But Werthen, having formerly represented the deceased councilman, felt he already knew the answer.

‘Race and religion were never one of Herr Steinwitz’s concerns,’ Kraus said. ‘But their differences went beyond that.’

He smiled at them rather enigmatically for a moment.

‘Do you intend to share your knowledge, Herr Kraus?’ Gross asked with a degree of irony.

Which brought a pinched smile to the journalist’s face. ‘Our esteemed mayor fashions himself the representative of the little man. He loves them so much, he tells us, that he wants to create parks and open spaces in their honor. Let the Kleinburgertum enjoy nature along with the toffs, right? Every time a tree is planted or a new green space, no matter how small, is installed, then there is an accompanying plaque commending Mayor Lueger for this worthy deed. Why, it has got so bad that last month, after the birth of an elephant at Schonbrunn Zoo, one of our leading journalists, hardly before known for his waggish tongue, suggested a plaque be erected at the elephant house: “Born during the Mayoralty of Karl Lueger.”’

‘Yes,’ Gross interrupted, ‘but what does this have to do with Councilman Steinwitz?’

‘Not to worry, Doktor Gross. I shall come full circle presently. From all this, one must conclude that Lueger is sincere in his connection with the lower middle classes. Correct?’

There was silence in the small office for a time. It took Werthen a moment to realize Kraus had actually posed a question.

‘Well, it might appear so,’ the lawyer answered while Gross sat thin-lipped.

‘Yes,’ Kraus said. ‘Appearances. They are so important to our mayor. In fact, however, the so-called little man hardly benefits from such beautification schemes. I could count on one hand the number of parks that Lueger has built in working-class districts. And those he built in the rest of Vienna have used up open space that could have been put to better use building affordable housing. But that would not please Lueger’s real constituency, the landlords and the moneyed classes. Building more housing would tend to bring rents down, something the landlords, and therefore Mayor Lueger, do not want. Our mayor is touted for building the new metropolitan rail-road, but no one now mentions that he single-handedly vetoed extension of it into outlying suburbs where the workers and lower middle classes could find more affordable housing. Instead, Lueger confines those classes to the city limits and thereby again helps to keep rents high. The countryside around Vienna, it seems, is fit only for those who can afford their own carriages.’

Gross let out a sound midway between clearing one’s throat and retching. ‘A rather cynical interpretation, wouldn’t you say, Kraus?’

‘Cynical,’ the journalist allowed, ‘but accurate. The two are not incompatible.’

‘Then I am to assume,’ Werthen said, ‘that Steinwitz was opposed to such policies.’

Kraus swept his hand magnanimously in front of him. ‘Assume away, Advokat. My minions inside the Rathaus tell me that of late there was no love lost between Steinwitz and Lueger. In fact, things were quite frosty between them. Steinwitz felt that Lueger had abandoned all his old principles in a mad rush for power. Old friendships turning sour. One never knows where that might lead.’

‘And who were the man’s supporters at City Hall?’ Gross inquired.

‘You mean who might have been close enough to seek revenge on the journalist who drove Steinwitz to suicide? I assume you are ultimately investigating the death of the unfortunate Henricus Praetor?’

Thus spoken, the theory seemed absurd even to Werthen, who had proposed it in the first place.

‘Yes to both your queries,’ responded Gross with conviction.

‘Off hand, I can think of more colleagues who might have been happy to see Steinwitz dead. However, he had one quasi-supporter in the inner circle. Councilman Hermann Bielohlawek.’

The name was familiar to Werthen. A Christian Social city councilman, Bielohlawek was an ur-philistine, infamous for his reaction to a Jewish Social Democrat member who wanted to introduce a book into evidence in debate. Werthen well remembered Bielohlawek’s response: Another book! I’ll puke!

Kraus nodded at the look of wonder on Werthen’s face. ‘Yes, that Bielohlawek. I strongly doubt, however, that he would avenge Steinwitz’s death. Theirs was a profoundly political alliance. Friendship did not enter into it. Bielohlawek likes to keep a foot in both camps. Other than that, rumor has it that Steinwitz had a wide circle of special friends.’

‘Special?’ Werthen said.

‘Rumor only. I do not like to speculate further.’

But by the wry smile on Kraus’s face, Werthen could see that he was pleased to have piqued their interest in this way.

‘Any possible avenging angels among them?’ Gross asked.

‘Not the dueling sort. And now, gentlemen, if you will forgive me. I have an edition to prepare for the printers.’