Vienna Blood

77

Rheinhardt had ordered two pieces of poppy seed strudel, a turkische coffee, and a schwarzer for his friend. A waiter with thinning hair, a walrus mustache, and the grumpy manner of a privy counselor delivered their order promptly but with little ceremony.

While Liebermann gazed out of the window, Rheinhardt made light work of his breakfast. When Liebermann finally turned his head, he saw the inspector shamelessly staring at his own untouched pastry with intense interest. The older man's expression was difficult to describe, as it somehow managed to embody in equal measure yearning, whimsy, regret, and avarice.

Liebermann pushed his strudel across the table.

“Eat it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I'll have a croissant later.”

Rheinhardt smiled and a certain tension in his attitude was relieved. He attacked his second breakfast with remarkable energy, creating an explosion of powdered sugar and papery caramel flakes as his fork plunged through the soft, yielding confection.

Raising his fork and waving it in a mock-minatory manner, he exclaimed, “Now! I want to know exactly how you discovered that it was Olbricht! No enigmatic statements, cryptic looks, or evasion! You will appreciate, I hope, that the rest of my morning will be spent writing a report for Commissioner Brugel.” Rheinhardt swallowed his strudel. “So, if you would be so kind, Herr Doctor, I am eager to be enlightened.”

This was a conversational juncture that the two men had reached on several previous occasions, and Rheinhardt was not surprised to see his young friend assume an air of casual, languid disinterest. He picked some lint off his trousers, raised his coffee cup, inhaled the aroma, and in due course, with evident reluctance, confessed. “It was the pictures. The pictures we saw at his exhibition.”

“What about them?”

“You will recall that Professor Freud is of the opinion that dreams can be interpreted. I simply applied Professor Freud's technique of dream interpretation to Olbricht's paintings.”

“I would be grateful if you would be more specific, Max.”

“Olbricht is preoccupied by blood, in two senses. First, he is preoccupied by the blood that he sees when he wields his sabre. I am reminded of a case reported by Krafft-Ebing in Psychopathia Sexualis: a tinsmith who made a prostitute sit undressed on the edge of her bed while he stabbed her with a long knife, three times in the chest and abdomen. Krafft-Ebing reports that the tinsmith sustained an erection throughout. I suspect that Olbricht may derive some erotic pleasure from the sight of blood. I also believe that I was correct in an earlier conjecture. Olbricht is impotent. His use of a sabre has phallic connotations. When he wields his sabre, he is powerful, potent

… irresistible. The weapon compensates for his deficiencies as a man.”

Rheinhardt coughed uncomfortably. “I'm not sure I can put that in my report. But you were saying, he is preoccupied by blood in two senses.”

“Yes, he is also preoccupied with blood in the sense of stock, race, and heredity-an obsession that I presume has arisen through his familiarity with the writings of List and his ilk.”

“So what has this got to do with his paintings?”

“Oskar's canvases are full of blood. He cannot stop himself from enlivening his heroic scenes with daubs and splashes of red paint. Moreover he favors a curiously sanguinary palette: coral, russet, cerise, scarlet, carmine, crimson, rust… It is like a compulsion. And the most extraordinary example of this… this obsession, was the painting titled Pipara: The Germanic Woman in the Purple of the Caesars. Do you remember it?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Did you notice anything odd about it?”

Rheinhardt thought for a few moments. “No, I can't say that I did.”

“Her cape was red, Oskar… red! She is supposed to be dressed in the purple of the Caesars! Professor Freud has frequently observed that verbal blunders-slips of the tongue-can be very revealing. Ol-bricht's Pipara is the artistic equivalent. A slip of the eye!’

“Mmm… how very interesting.” Rheinhardt placed his fork on the plate and took out his notebook. “Go on.”

“Dreams conceal wishes-often forbidden wishes. Olbricht's repressed, forbidden wish was to paint with blood-or, at least, with the blood of those he counted as dangerous or threatening. This terrible desire was partially satisfied by his frequent use of red paint… that is, until Spittelberg. There the repressed wish surfaced and the psychic energy was discharged when he desecrated the wall in Madam Borek's brothel. Olbricht's paintings also dramatize another form of wish-fulfillment. They depict various visions of a Teutonic heaven: skalds, beautiful maidens, and conquering knights. The skyline is broken by the turrets and spires of great Gothic castles. It is a world that any visitor to Bayreuth would recognize. A world without Slavs, Jews, and Negroes. A world liberated from the Catholic Church. A world in which the old gods have been restored to their former glory.”

“Extraordinary.”

Rheinhardt quickly flicked over a page of his notebook.

“Do you remember Olbricht's depiction of a vast barbarian horde?”

“Yes-a great sea of minute faces.”

“If you had studied them more closely, you would have noticed that each one was a miniature essay in xenophobic prejudice. The horde was comprised of crude caricatures of Jews, Slavs, and the southern races: the enemies who must be defeated in order to protect and preserve the purity of the ancient German bloodlines.”

The morose waiter returned and placed a bill under the sugar bowl.

“With respect,” said Rheinhardt, “we would like more coffee. The same again, please.”

The waiter grumbled something under his breath, cleared the dirty cups away, and shuffled off.

Liebermann continued, “Another of Olbricht's works that captured my attention was his Rheingold-showing the Nibelung dwarf, Alberich, and the three Rhine maidens. Alberich is almost always depicted as an ugly, misshapen figure, but in Olbricht's rendering Alberich looks more like a romantic hero. Now, Herr Olbricht is not, by any estimation, an attractive man, not with his peculiar eyes and wrinkles, and he may have identified himself with the dwarf. I am inclined to believe that, like Alberich, Herr Olbricht would have experienced teasing by women. Women whom he would subsequently perceive as beautiful, heartless, cruel, and, most significant-unattainable… This identification may have been strengthened by the possession of a similar name: Olbricht, Alberich.” Liebermann paused to allow Rheinhardt to appreciate the shared resonances. “So, when we look at Olbricht's representation of Alberich, we are in fact looking at a self-portrait, how he really sees himself: handsome, brave, powerful. Not unlike List's Unbesiegbare- The Invincible, the strong one from above.”

“Ah, I see. That is what you saw on Olbricht's shelf when we were searching his bedroom: List's book.”

“Indeed: The Invincible: Basics of a German Weltanschauung.”

Rheinhardt stopped taking notes in order to consume another mouthful of strudel.

“I am most impressed,” said Rheinhardt. “But your reasoning is rather complex, and I am not altogether confident that Commissioner Brugel will be satisfied with such an explanation.”

“In which case,” said Liebermann, “you will be pleased to hear that a psychoanalytic interpretation of Olbricht's paintings was not the only factor that influenced my thinking.”

“Oh?”

“For the past month I have been treating a patient called Herr Beiber. He suffers from paranoia erotica.”

“Which is?”

“A delusion of love. He believes that he and Archduchess Marie-Valerie are-by some spiritual edict-amorously connected. Moreover, he believes that his feelings for her are reciprocated and that she communicates her affection through certain signs. These can be virtually anything but at one time they took the form of curtain movements behind the windows of the Schonbrunn Palace. Early one morning Herr Beiber had stationed himself outside the royal residence when he observed a man approaching carrying a cello. Herr Beiber offered the man a very considerable sum of money if he would play an aubade for the archduchess. The man refused, and he did so not because Herr Beiber's offer was unpersuasive but because there was no cello in his case, merely a sabre, which he had just employed to dispatch the emperor's favorite snake in the Tiergarten.”

“But how can you be sure it was Olbricht?”

“Herr Beiber commented on the peculiarity of the cellist's face. He described him as looking like a frog!”

“Astonishing!” Rheinhardt began to scribble in his notebook.

“Vienna is full of musicians. The sight of a man carrying a cello case is never conspicuous-at any hour of the day. It was an ideal contrivance for carrying and concealing a sabre. Further, Olbricht could carry laundered clothes in the case and exchange them for blood-spattered garments after performing his acts of carnage. I imagine this is what he did after the Spittelberg and Wieden atrocities.”

The morose waiter returned, deposited their coffees on the table, scowled, and departed. Rheinhardt, indifferent to the man's bad manners, finished scribbling and scored a thick line under his final sentence.

“Excellent! The commissioner should have no trouble accepting that as an explanation. I am afraid, however, that I must dispense with your clever psychological deductions concerning Olbricht's art-and with all that phallic business, of course. You will understand, I hope, that when dealing with a man like Brugel “pragmatism” is the watchword.”

“As you wish,” said Liebermann. “Although if it is permissible… One day I might wish to include my observations in an academic work-a forensic case study, perhaps.”

“If we apprehend Olbricht, you can do whatever pleases you, Max. Which brings us to the matter of his notebook. It would seem that Olbricht killed Papagena on the first of December. If I am not mistaken, in The Magic Flute she first appears as an old woman, and is then transformed, becoming young and pretty. The slaughter of any woman-young or old-would hardly go unnoticed. Perhaps these notes of his are not entirely reliable?”

“I cannot agree.”

“Then where is the body?”

Rheinhardt dropped some sugar into his turkische.

“The sewers. Olbricht was clearly familiar with that dreadful underworld. Finding a suitable victim down there would have been easy-and who would have cared about her demise?”

“Indeed,” said Rheinhardt, nodding his head gravely. “Bodies recovered from the sewers are simply carted off to the cemetery of the unnamed. I will notify the relevant authorities.” Rheinhardt stirred his turkische and sucked pensively on his lower lip. “Whatever the ultimate fate of Papagena-poor unfortunate soul-we must now turn our attention to Tamino and Sarastro.” Rheinhardt sipped his coffee. “Olbricht knows that we have found him out. Of course, a sane man would abandon his schemes and attempt to escape.”

“But he is not a sane man.”

“You think he will proceed with his plan?”

“I am certain of it. The ruined painting, the empty vodka bottle, and the smashed glass-he despaired after reading his reviews. He was forced to accept that he will never be recognized as a great artist. But the narcissism that drives the creative impulse cannot be extinguished so easily. It can be diverted and its aim displaced. Olbricht has always blurred the boundary between art and slaughter. Think of the attention he gives to the composition of his death scenes: Hildegard, Madam Borek's brothel, the servant in Wieden… He may still achieve immortality by elevating ideological murder to the level of a fine art.”

Liebermann gazed out of the window. On the other side of the road, two Bosnian soldiers were passing by, dressed in distinctive regimental uniform: collarless tunics, knickerbockers, ankle boots, backpacks, and tasseled fezzes. Bosnians were not a common sight around the city, yet they were frequently seen on sentry duty outside the Hofburg Palace. Their presence in such a conspicuous location was clearly intentional- old Franz Josef, sending a message to his subjects: Even the Muslim mountain people are valued members of our great Austro-Hungarian family.

“If Tamino is a prince,” said Liebermann softly, “then it is just possible that…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “No. It is too dreadful to contemplate.”

“The royal family?” cried Rheinhardt.

“If Olbricht assassinated a Habsburg, that would certainly ensure his immortality. Which of us will ever forget the name of Luigi Lucheni?”

“We must inform the palace immediately.”

Liebermann raised his hand, gently counseling restraint.

“It is only one of several possibilities, Oskar… Olbricht might interpret the title prince idiosyncratically. Evzen Vanek was not a bird catcher, and Ra'ad was not a Moor. His victims are merely approximations of Schikaneder's characters.”

The lineaments of anxiety faded somewhat from Rheinhardt's face-but they did not vanish entirely.

“And what of Sarastro?

“A sage, a philosopher-king.” Liebermann's fingers played on the edge of the table as he recollected the aria: In diesen heil'gen Hallen-In these sacred halls. “The head of a secret order,” he continued.

“Well,” said Rheinhardt, “given that The Magic Flute is a Masonic opera, could it be that Sarastro is the head of a Masonic lodge?”

“It is certainly a possibility-but which one?”

“Well, strictly speaking there are no Masonic lodges in Vienna. As you know, they are not permitted to perform their rituals. But they meet as friends-under the banner of a charitable organization called Humanitas.”

Rheinhardt wrote down a few more lines in his notebook. He then looked up, a puzzled expression furrowing his brow. “Olbricht intends to murder Tamino and Sarastro on the same day. Why would he do that?”

“Perhaps Tamino and Sarastro are going to be in the same place. Like the Queen of the Night and her three ladies.”

“It seems unlikely that a member of the royal family will be attending a meeting of Humanitas.”

Liebermann sniffed, suddenly aware of an unpleasant odor. He lifted his coat sleeve and held it beneath his twitching nose. It was redolent of mephitic subterranean vapors. He understood now why the waiter had given them such a graceless reception.