Tours of the Black Clock

50

IT MUST BE THAT Petyr looks like an accountant only because he is one. Not only does he translate what I write but handles the business end of it as well. Over the next week, watching him at his desk by the window, it’s impossible to tell whether he’s diddling Amanda or decimals; his face never changes. I can’t imagine what my writing must read like as interpreted by this manager of numbers, though it’s possible he’s perfect for the job, leaving the passion to me and claiming only precision for himself. What a team, Petyr and Amanda and Molly and I.

Kronehelm wired a week ago to say he’ll be here in four or five days. There’s a fairly unveiled hint that I’m expected to make up for lost time. The clients in Vienna and Munich and Berlin wait with great anticipation for my new adventures. In the first week I find it impossible to get much done, though thinking about the Spanish girls on the train from Paris opens up a couple of inspiring possibilities. Petyr’s disappointed though. The clients don’t want Spanish girls from Paris, he reminds me, they want Americana — gangsters and Indians. He tells me Client X has a particular penchant for Aztec mysticism, so I cook up some stories involving conquistadors. Client X isn’t to be underestimated, a very big shot in the German government. Neither Petyr nor Kronehelm says much about him but it doesn’t take long to figure out they’re scared to death. One afternoon I overhear Kronehelm make some reference to “the little cripple,” and there’s a moment of silence that’s palpable even in the next room; both he and Petyr hold their breaths as they ponder the recklessness of the remark and wait for the consequences of its indiscretion, as though any second German police are going to come through the windows.

This goes on a month or two. In a quarter of this time I reach a breaking point. I can’t stand to stay in the flat and I can’t bear the idea of facing either Vienna or its winter again. I’m fucking cooked, that’s all, stuck here stewing in my juices. Petyr’s such an unsettling little worm that the day Kronehelm arrives I’m almost happy to see him slither in with his trunks and crates and immediately pull the curtains even tighter so not the thinnest slice of dank gray European light can come through. Kronehelm throws his arms around me and begins to cry with joy; I guess he figured I’d never actually show up. After a few more days I know something’s got to give, what with three freaks waddling from one dark room to the next publishing obscene books for the private collections of deformed midgets in Berlin five hundred kilometers away. You just know that kind of enterprise is going to have one or two pressure points somewhere. When I’ve been in Vienna eight weeks, spring begins to slip into the city like a refugee, and I, also like a refugee, am looking to slip away.