Sherlock Holmes and The Mystery Of Einstein's Daughter

Chapter VIII Zorka’s Magical Marionette Show

It was the day of the performance. As evening drew in, we set off on foot for Zorka’s Magical Marionette Show. We went on foot through an artisan quarter of wagon-makers, carpenters, rope-makers, tailors and coppersmiths. The women wore their hair plaited, woven with flowers and other adornments, tied back with long oval hair-pins. Their glass bead necklaces, metal belts, bracelets and blouses decorated with silk tassels reminded me of Bulgaria. A gunsmith sat in front of his store filling cartridges, a commodity clearly in great demand.

We came to a patch of open ground on which a large tent had been erected. At the entrance a man with a dancing bear and an assistant with a tambourine were drumming up custom for the marionette show, the tambourine in competition with an opportunist little street orchestra of viola, two drums, a flute and a triangle. A girl hardly more than twelve years of age inspected our tickets. She showed us to seats reserved in our name. On a stage backdrop large snakes rose from the ground and swept across fields. Among the serpents a group of crudely-painted gravity-defying peasants danced the rondo in quick time.

A Gipsy musical ensemble in velveteen coats with glittering buckles on their clogs sat at one side of the stage, scraping at fiddles. Puppeteers and seamstresses lit by oil-lamps lifted marionettes from a great carved chest painted pea-green and picked out with scarlet and gold. The dolls were about two feet tall, made from hand-carved poplar. Two or three of the female marionettes wore white tulle dresses over pink silk slips, hair arranged à la grecque. Other girl-marionettes lay crumpled in a small heap, some with wide kilted skirts and velvet or satin aprons embroidered with posies of red roses and pansies. The male marionettes were dressed as village dandies in frilled white shirts, velvet waistcoats and high boots, with a bright flower behind an ear. A girl reached deep into the chest and pulled out a witch marionette with bandaged feet and a black cat gripping hard to her shoulder.

With a mouthful of pins, a seamstress worked rapidly to turn up the hem of a fierce-looking marionette. A large, bristly handlebar moustache dangled loosely to its chin. A shako on his head showed a military background. Fifteen minutes later, the Gipsy musicians jumped to their feet and struck up in earnest, singing in loud, forced voices. The audience hushed. The marionettes sprang into life as palmists, sorcerers, or fortune tellers turning over a deck of Tarot cards. They joined hands and began to dance a kolo, turning in a ring, hands on each other’s shoulders and waists, first a few steps to the right, then a few steps to the left, or backwards and forwards.

Cameo scenes came and went until a drum roll indicated we were at the final Act. Slowly, to joyous calls from the marionettes, a wooden crib descended from the dark of the roof. The cot tilted and swayed like a lifeboat lowered in a storm. The marionettes crowded around it, welcoming a new baby into the world. Their hand movements and excited exclamations proclaimed their delight. The proud terracotta mother hovered over the troupe, looking down. On one foot she wore an ugly orthopaedic shoe. A marionette broke an egg for luck over the face of the new-born infant. Other marionettes swung into a wild dance, with nimble, high-stepping footwork as though to give zest to the new soul. The swirling kolo reached a frenzy.

A crash of thunder rattled the small auditorium. A disquieting barefoot human hurled herself swooping and twirling into the throng of marionettes. Dark hair fell in an avalanche of curls on the left eye, obscuring her face. A paste made from talc and tamarind seeds applied to the face, hands and feet gave a lustrous ivory glow to her skin. A black pearl drooped heavily from one ear, a pink pearl from the other, giving an odd and bewildering witchery. The wild dancing came to an abrupt halt. As though the lid had been lifted off a beehive, a buzz rose from the audience. In awed whispers, the name ‘Zorka’ seeped around the auditorium.

With an air of menacing command, Zorka ordered the marionettes to turn back and look again into the cot. One by one they obeyed. They went strangely silent as they stared down more intently at the new-born infant. A female marionette called out, beseeching someone in the outer darkness to approach. A midwife puppet appeared and examined the infant. With a high-pitched cry of anguish she turned to face the audience, her hands clasped in prayer. The music switched tempo from joyous to menacing. The musicians broke into a shrill falsetto, a wild, inhuman sound, in an attempt to frighten off the evil eye. The marionettes crowded around the cot, beseeching the spirits to reverse the damage to the newborn’s brain. The agonised mother cried out, realising something terrible was about to happen.

The sturdy mustachioed marionette of military aspect and middle years made his entry. A prolonged scream of horror and anguish burst from the other marionettes, sick with fear as the threat to the new-born infant became clear. Zorka struggled desperately to hold him back. They lurched back and forth across the stage and down into the audience. The powerful wooden arm of the military marionette sent Zorka crashing to the ground. He turned and stretched his merciless hands down into the cot to throttle the child. He lifted up the lifeless body. The auditorium went black. The air was filled with the sound of a hundred voices screaming, marionettes and audience alike.

Absurdly, hypnotically, a stone started to trundle out over the audience, lit up from behind the stage by a single beam no larger than a coin. The stone halted above where Holmes and I were seated, rocking gently on the wires. My comrade reached up and took hold of it. Scratched on it were the words Ukleta kuća.

Outside the tent, relieved to be away from the horror of the infanticide, I asked, ‘Holmes, what on Earth could all this mean?’

Holmes replied grimly, ‘The marionettes have presented us with a conundrum. If that was Rózsika’s child mentioned by Besso, she was born an imbecile and murdered. One thing is certain, we are no longer searching for a living being. We seek a corpse. The question is, why are we to take an interest in the fate of Rózsika’s child? What has that to do with Einstein?’

I added, ‘And what are we to make of the words ‘Ukleta kuća’?’

‘I must encourage you to learn German,’ Holmes replied. ‘With just Pashto and Hindi at your command you are at a considerable disadvantage in this matter.’

Holmes’s command of the language was legendary, and not employed solely to read great works of science in their original tongue. To my knowledge he had quoted Goethe in the original three times. He had even conquered the Fraktur type and the confusing majuscule of eszett.

‘How would speaking German help?’ I asked. ‘Surely the words Ukleta kućaare in the local language?’

‘You miss the point, Watson. The significance for our quest is the fact the message was scratched into a stone. The German for a stone is Ein Stein.’

I retired early. I was on the point of getting into bed when a tap at the door produced my comrade.

‘Watson, I was just passing by and saw your light on. I am sorry to trouble you but I have a further question concerning the Café Bollwerk. Do you recall Mileva’s words when we met there - the way she described her infant boy?’

‘Only that he’s called Hans Albert,’ I replied. ‘Is there something curious about that? Surely Hans and Albert are perfectly standard German names?’

‘Not the names, Watson, but how she went on to describe him,’ Holmes replied.

I reached across for my note-book. As I expected, I had not recorded such an inconsequential matter. I begged, ‘Given you appear to feel the matter is of staggering importance, Holmes, would you be good enough to refresh my memory- and then let me get a decent night’s sleep?’

‘I shall, my dear friend, certainly. I believe Mileva’s exact words were ‘He’s our first son’.’

‘Those were certainly her words. What’s so unusual about that?’

‘Her ‘first son’,’ Holmes repeated. ‘By which she means what?’

‘Simply that Hans Albert was the first of several sons they plan to have,’ I replied.

‘You may be right, Watson,’ my comrade replied thoughtfully. ‘Nevertheless I shall tuck it away and see whether it withers at the vine or bursts into glorious life further down the track. It’s time to follow the clue we were given in the second note. Tomorrow we go to Titel.’

As he turned away he said, ‘Zorka is making allegations against Miloš Marić based on what knowledge? If the events portrayed by the marionettes are true, how do you suppose she got to know about them? Only the closest members of the Marić family would have been party to a matter as terrible as this.’