Vienna Secrets

39

Liebermann spent the entire morning seeing patients. He was on his way back to his office with a number of case files under his arm when his friend and colleague Stefan Kanner stopped him in the corridor.

“Ah, Maxim, I’d buy you lunch, but I very much doubt you’ll be free to accept my kind offer.”

“Why do you say that?”

“There’s someone waiting for you.”

“Who?”

“A policeman,” said Kanner, adopting a comic expression. “But you can still get away, of course. We can leave by the back entrance, have a leisurely schnitzel in Josefstadt, and be at the Westbahnhof by two. You’ll be in good time for the Munich train, and I’d recommend changing at Paris for London. They’ll never find you!”

Liebermann smiled and walked on.

When he arrived at his office, a constable was waiting outside. The young man looked very conspicuous in the bare hospital corridor.

“Dr. Liebermann?”

“Yes.”

“Constable Mader, sir. I was sent here by Detective Inspector Rheinhardt of the security office.”

Liebermann assumed that the constable was the bringer of bad news.

“Has there been another murder?”

“No.”

“What, then?”

“Inspector Rheinhardt would like you to join him in Leopoldstadt.”

“But why? What’s happened?”

“Nothing’s happened, as such…” The constable took off his spiked helmet and brushed his hair back. “More like… something’s been found.”

“What’s been found?”

“Well, it’s…” The constable shrugged, apparently lost for words. “I think you’d better see for yourself, sir.”

Two carriages were already parked outside the Alois Gasse Temple and a policeman was standing by the entrance. A group of onlookers had gathered on the sidewalk close by.

“Make way, please,” Constable Mader called out. “Make way for the doctor.”

“Has someone been hurt?” asked one of the crowd.

“He says someone’s been hurt,” cried another.

“Move back.”

“Let them through.”

“He’s brought a doctor.”

The bodies peeled away, creating a narrow channel. Liebermann felt like Moses parting the Red Sea, an ironic “identification” given his near-constitutional skepticism. He ascended the stone stairs and, passing through a small vestibule, entered the main sanctuary. He stopped for a moment and viewed his surroundings. He was reminded of his childhood, going to the Stadttempel with his father and being bored to tears by the interminable prayers. He looked at the ark-with its gilded, intricate carvings-and experienced the same simmering resentment that he’d known as a child. Barash’s words sounded in his mind, distant but precisely remembered: Perhaps if you had troubled to take a greater interest in your own origins, in the traditions and history of your people, then you would not be wasting your efforts talking to me now. You would have at least some inkling of what these murders might mean.

Nonsense, thought Liebermann. Utter nonsense.

Still, Liebermann could credit the zaddik with being right about one thing: he did think Barash was a lunatic, and had said so in the report he had prepared for Rheinhardt. The zaddik’s account of metoposcopy was equal in absurdity to anything he had heard issuing from the mouth of a patient with dementia praecox.

Constable Mader coughed to attract Liebermann’s attention and gestured toward a staircase.

“Inspector Rheinhardt is waiting upstairs.”

“Of course,” said Liebermann, a little embarrassed that his abstractedness might have been mistaken for reverence.

They began to climb the wooden steps but had to stop to let a photographer pass on his way down.

“Extraordinary,” muttered the photographer. “Quite extraordinary.”

A youthful assistant followed, carrying a tripod on his shoulders. Liebermann thought that the boy’s expression looked somewhat confused, but also a little fearful.

The stairs delivered Liebermann and Constable Mader to a balcony.

A door stood ajar, and through the opening Liebermann could see Rheinhardt and Haussmann. The younger man was kneeling on the floor, collecting samples of dust, while the older was twirling his mustache and looking up at the ceiling. When Rheinhardt heard Liebermann arrive, he turned, acknowledging his friend’s presence by raising his eyebrows. Like that of the photographer’s assistant, his expression was troubled.

Liebermann stepped across the threshold and found himself, if not in another world, then certainly in another century.

The room was windowless except for a small dirt-streaked skylight, and the walls were entirely lined with shelves. Each of these shelves was crammed with a gallimaufry of items: stoppered bottles, dishes, leather-bound books, scrolls, statuettes, rubber tubes, retorts, and several examples of obsolete scientific equipment. It was almost too much to take in. Among the general clutter, Liebermann saw an eighteenth-century shagreen single-draw telescope, a rusting astrolabe, and what appeared to be a very primitive electric battery. Paper labels had been gummed to the bottles and inscribed in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Liebermann walked the length of the nearest wall, pausing to inspect some of the labels, and deciphering the writing where possible.

Phosphorus, antimony, cinnabar, sulfur, oil of vitriol…

A workbench was littered with astrological charts and mathematical tables. An ancient calculating cylinder (made from three interlocked metal rings) and a pair of compasses had been employed as paperweights to keep a length of rolled parchment flat. It looked like an old horoscope. Against a background of fading concentric wheels and nebulous patches of moldy discoloration were planetary symbols, newly executed in bright red ink.

The floor had been decorated with a large esoteric design. It consisted of ten painted circles arranged in an approximate diamond shape and connected to one another by thick lines. Some of the circles were more interconnected than others. Thus, the central circle possessed eight lines of connection, whereas those occupying the extremities of the diamond had only three. Every circle and every thick line was marked with a letter (or several letters) from the Hebrew alphabet.

Liebermann’s attention was captured by a row of large glass jars on the opposite side of the room. Floating in a pale yellow liquid were several body parts-eyes, heart, fingers, and spleen-and included in this macabre collection was a small creature in a state of advanced decomposition. Liebermann drew closer. The skull and rib cage were visible beneath remnants of decaying flesh, and thin threads of hair floated up from the exposed beige-ivory crown. Lower down, the spine sank into a pocket of tarnished silver scales that tapered before expanding outward again as a ribbed fish tail. It was utterly grotesque. The young doctor snorted in disgust.

“Take a look in those barrels.”

It was Rheinhardt. He was pointing to the other end of the room.

The barrels were very big, the size used by breweries to transport large quantities of beer. As Liebermann removed one of the lids, a mature loamy fragrance, almost fecal, rose up from inside. The barrel was full of mud: moist, dark earth.

“Mud?” said Liebermann.

“Yes, mud.”

“You think there is some connection?”

“There must be, surely.”

Liebermann replaced the lid.

“Do you know anything about this synagogue?” asked Rheinhardt.

“No,” Liebermann replied. The tone of his voice was slightly offended.

“The rabbi-Rabbi Seligman-has explained to me that this room has been locked for more than ten years. The key was lost. A few weeks ago the caretaker said that he could hear noises coming from inside. Unusual noises. In fact”-Rheinhardt paused and looked round the room-“he thought they were produced supernaturally. In due course the rabbi too heard the noises and called the police.”

“How did you get the door open?” Liebermann asked.

Rheinhardt pulled a bunch of skeleton keys from his pocket and rattled them in the air.

“Rabbi Seligman believes that this room has been used by a kabbalist, which I gather is some kind of Jewish sorcerer. Have you any idea what he’s talking about?”

“Yes,” replied Liebermann, “but only vaguely. Kabbalah is a form of Jewish mysticism, a hybrid of alchemy, astrology, and other vatic arts.”

“How on earth did this fellow manage to get all these things in here without being noticed?”

“Not by magic, I can assure you! The staff of the security office can’t be the only people in the world who know about skeleton keys.”

“The lock was stiff. It didn’t feel like it had been recently opened.”

“Then he must have lowered things through the skylight.” Liebermann looked up. “It would be a tight squeeze, but I think it’s possible.”

“Those barrels look too large to me.”

“All right, maybe the barrels have always been here.”

“And what if they haven’t?”

“Then the barrels would have been made up in this room, from parts that were small enough to be lowered through the skylight.”

“Wouldn’t that be very noisy?”

“You said the caretaker did hear noises.”

Rheinhardt made a sweeping gesture. “There’s so much, though. How could one man…?”

“He probably had an apprentice, like the one in Goethe’s poem!”

“Max, be serious.”

“I am being serious,” said Liebermann. “However, I see very little purpose in trying to establish their exact methods right now! Suffice it to say that we are supposed to consider the existence of this ‘laboratory’ magical. The pressing questions are, first, why would anyone trouble to construct a kabbalist’s lair? And second, do these barrels of mud link the former occupant-or occupants-of this room with the murders of Faust and Brother Stanislav? I have as yet no answer to the first, but I am already inclined to agree with you as regards the second.”

Haussmann had finished collecting samples and was packing envelopes and boxes into a leather case. When he had finished, he stood up and took another look at the disintegrating mermaid.

“Herr Doctor… what is this? I mean, it looks real.”

“Well, it is real in a sense,” said Liebermann. “It is probably made from the skeleton of a small monkey, human hair, and an exotic fish. In the eighteenth century there was much interest in fantastic creatures, and many strange and wonderful things began to appear in private collections. These exhibits were usually put together by impecunious medical students who were able to make a modest income by selling their handiwork to gullible members of the aristocracy.”

“It’s definitely a fake, then?”

Liebermann rolled his eyes. “Yes, Haussmann, it’s a fake!”

Rheinhardt joined his assistant and ran his finger around the rim of the jar. “Dust,” he said. “Thick dust! The caretaker started hearing noises in here about two weeks ago. These jars have been untouched for much longer than two weeks.”

Liebermann sidled up to Rheinhardt and said quietly, “Has it occurred to you that Rabbi Seligman and the caretaker might be unreliable witnesses? They could have done all this themselves-very easily-and then called the police.”

“Rabbi Seligman and the caretaker seemed genuinely shocked when I arrived. Moreover, there are many valuable objects in this room. If I am not mistaken, some of these books”-Rheinhardt tapped the nearest spines-“were printed in the sixteenth century, and Rabbi Seligman is not a wealthy man.”

“Sixteenth century, you say?”

“Indeed.”

“Why would anyone want the people of Vienna to believe that a magician-a Jewish magus-was casting spells in Leopoldstadt?”

“To produce wonderment?”

“Or fear?” Liebermann asked.

“Or contempt. Christians have always been suspicious of Jewish rituals.”

“You are thinking of the blood libel.”

“And Hilsner, who supposedly killed a Christian virgin for her blood,” Rheinhardt replied.

Liebermann took a scuffed leather volume from the shelf and allowed the pages to fall open. The paper was thick and maculated, and exuded a ripe mildewy fragrance. The text was in Latin. He flicked to the title page and read: De Arte Kabbalistica by Johannes Reuchlin.