The Golem Page 21

  ‘Aha! The file’, I thought, with a smile.

  “And now, Count”, said the arsonist, giving my hand the friendly shake of a fellow criminal, “see that you get out as soon as possible. And if you’re ever short of ready cash, just ask for Black Vóssatka at Loisitchek’s, all the girls there know me. That’s it then. Goodbye, Count. Pleased to have met you.”

  He paused in the doorway, but the gaoler was already shoving a new inmate into the cell. As soon as I saw him, I recognised the lout in the soldier’s cap who had once stood next to me in the rain under an archway in Hahnpassgasse. What a pleasant surprise! Perhaps he might have some news of Hillel, Zwakh and all the others?

  I wanted to start asking him questions right away, but to my astonishment he put a finger to his lips with a conspiratorial look on his face, indicating that I should say nothing. Only when the door had been locked from outside and the warder’s steps died away down the corridor did he come to life.

  My heart was thumping with excitement. What could it mean? Did he know who I was? What did he want?

  The first thing the lout did was to sit down and take off his left boot. Then he gripped a plug in the heel with his teeth and pulled it out. From the cavity he took a small, bent piece of sheet-iron and ripped off the sole, which was obviously only loosely attached, and then proudly handed both to me.

  All this he did in less than no time and without paying the least attention to my excited questions.

  “There! Greetings from Herr Charousek.”

  I was so taken aback that I could think of nothing to say.

  “All you do is take the iron and prise open the sole during the night. Or any time when no one’s looking. ’Ollow inside, you see”, the lout went on with a superior look on his face. “You’ll find a letter from Herr Charousek in there.”

  I was so overcome with delight that I threw my arms round his neck, the tears streaming down my cheeks. He gently pushed me away and said reproachfully, “You’ve got to pull yourself together, Herr von Pernath. We ’aven’t got no time to lose. Any moment they might find out I’m in the wrong cell. Franzl and me swopped numbers down in the gatehouse.”

  I must have looked completely nonplussed, for he went on, “It don’t matter if you don’t understand. The important thing is, I’m here.”

  “But tell me, Herr …?”

  “Wenzel, they call me, Pretty Boy Wenzel.”

  “Well tell me, Wenzel, how is Hillel, the archivist at the Jewish Town Hall, and his daughter?’

  “No time for all that now”, the self-styled Pretty Boy interrupted impatiently. “I might be chucked out any moment now. The reason I’m ’ere is I confessed special to robbery with violence –”

  “What! You committed robbery with violence just to get in here to help me, Wenzel!?” I asked, aghast.

  The lout shook his head contemptuously. “If I really ’ad done a robbery, I wouldn’t be confessing to it, would I. What do you take me for!?”

  The penny slowly dropped. The fellow had worked a trick to smuggle Charousek’s letter in to me.

  “Right then. First of all”, he took on an air of supreme importance, “I’ve to learn you about eppleppsy.”

  “About what?”

  “Eppleppsy. Just watch me and see ’ow it’s done. First you fill your gob with spittle”, he blew out his cheeks and moved them from side to side, like someone rinsing his mouth out, “then you foam at the mouth, like so.” This he proceeded to do, with the most revolting realism. “Then you grab your thumbs, go all cross-eyed”, he squinted horribly, “and then, this’s the ’ard bit, you ’ave to give little grunts, like this, ‘Berr, berr, berr’, and fall over at the same time.” He collapsed onto the floor, making the walls tremble. When he got up, he said, “That’s your natural eppleppsy, just like what Dr. ’Ulbert taught us in the Regiment.”

  “Yes, yes, very convincing”, I agreed. “But what’s the point of it all?”

  “Because first of all you ’ave to get out of this place!” Wenzel explained. “That Dr. Rosenblatt’s an obstinate old bastard. Your ’ead could drop off and ’e’d still pass you fit as a fiddle. There’s only one thing puts the fear of God into him, eppleppsy. If you can throw a good fit, you’ll be in the prison ’ospital in no time at all, and it’s child’s play to break out of there.” His voice took on a confidential tone. “The bars on the window over there ’ave been sawn through, you see, and just stuck together with a bit of mud. That’s one of the Regiment’s little secrets! You just need to keep a sharp look-out for a few nights till you see a noose on the end of a rope let down from the roof. Then you take out the bars, all quiet like so you don’t disturb no one, put your arms through the noose and we’ll pull you up onto the roof and down to the street on the other side, and that’s it.”

  “But why should I break out of prison?” I objected timidly, “I’m innocent.”

  “But that ain’t no reason not to escape!” Pretty Boy Wenzel objected, his eyes wide with astonishment.

  It took all my persuasion to talk him out of this hare-brained scheme which, he assured me, was the result of a ‘Regimental council’. He just couldn’t believe I had rejected such a God-given opportunity and preferred to wait until I was released.

  “Nevertheless, I would like to thank you and your comrades from the bottom of my heart”, I said, shaking him warmly by the hand. “When my trials are over, the first thing I’ll do will be to give you all a token of my gratitude.”

  “No need for that”, said Wenzel aimiably. “We wouldn’t say no to a couple of glasses of Pilsener, but that’s all. Pan Charousek, him what’s treasurer of the Regiment now, ’as told us all about the good you do on the quiet. Any message for ’im when I get out in a few days time?”

  “Yes, please”, I said quickly. “Ask him to go and see Hillel and tell him I’ve been very concerned about the health of his daughter Miriam. Herr Hillel should not let her out of his sight. You’ll remember the name, won’t you: Hillel.”

  “Hirrel?”

  “No: Hillel.”

  “Hiller?”

  “No: Hill-el.”

  Wenzel found it almost impossible to get his tongue round such a completely unCzech sounding name, but finally managed it, grimacing madly.

  “Just one more thing. Please ask Herr Charousek if he would be kind enough, as far as it is in his power, to help a certain lady; he’ll know whom I mean.”

  “You probably mean that aristocratic tart what was ’aving a bit on the side with that Nyemetz, that German, what’s ’e called, Dr. Sapioli? No need to worry about ’er, she’s got ’er divorce and ’as cleared off with ’er kid and Sapioli.”

  “Do you know that for certain?”

  I could feel the quiver in my voice. However glad I was for Angelina’s sake, it still pierced me like a knife to the heart. All the anxiety I had suffered for her and now I was forgotten. Perhaps she thought I really was a murderer. There was a bitter taste at the back of my throat.

  The lout, with a delicacy which, strangely enough, even the most degraded wretches show in matters of love, seemed to have guessed how I felt, for he looked away and did not answer.

  “Do you perhaps know how Herr Hillel’s daughter, Fräulein Miriam, is? Do you know her?” I asked, hardly able to get the words out.

  “Miriam? Miriam?” Wenzel screwed up his face in a reflective frown. “Miriam? Does she often go down to Loisitchek’s of an evening?”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “No. Certainly not.”

  “Then I won’t know her”, replied Wenzel laconically.

  We said nothing for a while.

  There might, of course, be something about her in Charousek’s note.

  “I suppose you’ve ’eard”, he suddenly went on, “that old Wassertrum’s kicked the bucket?”

  I started in horror.

  “Yes”, Wenzel pointed to his throat. “Someone done ’im in. ‘Orrible it was, I can tell you. When they broke into ’is shop because ’e ’adn�
�t been seen for a few days, I was the first in, wasn’t I. And there ’e was, old Wassertrum, sitting in a filthy armchair, blood all down his chest and the eyes popping out of ’is ’ead. You know, I’m a pretty tough customer, but it made my ’ead spin, I can tell you, I thought I was going to keel over myself. I ’ad to keep telling myself, ‘Wenzel’, I said, ‘no need to get worked up, it’s only a dead Jew.’ There was a file sticking into ’is gullet and the shop was a right mess. ’E must ’ave come across the burglar, who done ’im in.”

  The file! The file! I could feel my breath go cold with horror. The file! So it had found its target after all!

  “And I know who it was, too”, Wenzel went on after a pause. “It was that pock-marked Loisa, I tell you, that’s who it was. I found ’is pocket-knife on the ground in the shop and I slipped it into my pocket so the police wouldn’t find it. ’E got into the shop by an underground passage –” He suddenly broke off and listened for a few seconds, then threw himself onto a bunk and began to snore for all he was worth. Immediately there was the clank of the padlock being removed and the gaoler came in and gave me a suspicious stare. I looked completely blank. Wenzel was almost impossible to wake. It took several blows before he sat up, yawned and staggered out sleepily, followed by the gaoler.

  Feverish with suspense, I unfolded Charousek’s letter:

  12th May

  My dear friend and benefactor,

  Week after week I have waited for you to be released, but always in vain. I have tried everything I can think of to collect evidence to prove your innocence, but I could not find any. I begged the examining magistrate to expedite the proceedings, but every time the reply was that there was nothing he could do, that was the responsibility of the prosecution service and not his.

  Bureaucrats passing the buck!

  But just now, only an hour ago, I came across something which looks very promising: I learnt that Jaromir sold Wassertrum a gold watch which he found in his brother’s bed after he was arrested. Now there is a rumour going round at Loisitchek’s, where, as you know, the detectives do their drinking, that poor Zottmann’s watch – they still haven’t found the body, by the way – was found in your rooms. I worked out the rest myself: Wassertrum and all his works!

  I immediately found Jaromir and gave him a thousand crowns –

  The letter sank to the bed, and my eyes were filled with tears of joy. Only Angelina could have given Charousek such a sum; neither Zwakh, nor Prokop, nor Vrieslander had that much money. She hadn’t forgotten me after all! I read on:

  – a thousand crowns and promised him a further two thousand if he would agree to go to the police with me right away, and admit to having stolen the watch from his brother and sold it.

  But we can only do that after I’ve sent off this letter to you. Time is short, but you can rest assured that it will be done. And today, I give you my word on that.

  I have no doubt at all that Loisa committed the murder and that the watch is Zottmann’s. If, by any chance, it should not be, Jaromir knows what he has to do. Whatever the case, he will identify it as the one found in your rooms.

  So bear up and do not despair. The day of your release may be quite close now.

  And will the day come when we will meet again? I do not know. I am inclined to say not, for I have not long to go now and I must be on my guard so that my last hour does not catch me by surprise. But there is one belief you must hold firm: we will see each other again. If not in this life, nor in another life after death, then on the day when Time is shattered, the day when, as it says in the Bible, the Lord will spew those that are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, out of His mouth.

  Do not be surprised to hear me talk like this. I have never spoken to you about such matters, and the one time you mentioned the word ‘Cabbala’, I evaded the issue, but I know what I know. Perhaps you understand what I am talking about, but if not, then I beg you, please erase what I have just said from your mind. Once, in a delirium, I thought I saw a sign on your breast. Perhaps I was dreaming with my eyes open?

  If you really cannot understand all this, then just assume that there is a certain inner knowledge, which I have had almost from my earliest childhood and which has led me on my strange path. This inner knowledge does not coincide with what medical science teaches; it is knowledge which, thank God, is closed to medicine and, I hope, will always remain so. I have not let myself be stultified by science, whose highest goal is to furnish a ‘waiting room’, which it would be best to tear down.

  But enough of that. I must tell you what has been happening while you have been in prison.

  By the end of April Wassertrum had reached the point where my suggestion was beginning to have its effect. I could tell by the way he kept on talking to himself in the street and waving his arms about. That kind of thing is a sign that a person’s thoughts are gathering for the attack and will soon fall upon their master.

  Then he bought a little book and started making notes.

  He was writing! Writing! The very idea! Wassertrum writing!

  And then he went to a lawyer. Waiting outside in the street I knew what he was doing up in the lawyer’s chambers: he was making his will. However, the one thing I didn’t foresee was that he would make me his heir. The joy would probably have given me St. Vitus’ dance, if I had suspected it.

  He made me his heir because he imagined I was the only person on earth to whom he could make amends. It was his conscience that tricked him. Perhaps it was also the hope that when, after his death, I suddenly found myself a millionaire by his favour, I would bless him, thus cancelling out the curse he heard me pronounce in your rooms.

  Thus my use of suggestion had a triple effect.

  The joke is that he secretly did believe in atonement in the world beyond after all, while he had spent most of his life trying to convince himself there was nothing in it. But that’s the way it is with all these people who are too clever for their own good, you can recognise it by the insane fury they get into when you tell them the facts to their face. They feel they’ve been caught out.

  From the moment Wassertrum went to see his lawyer, I never let him out of my sight. At night I kept my ear pressed to the boards across the entrance to his shop, any moment could be the decisive one. I think I would have heard the pop of the cork coming out of the bottle of poison through any wall, however thick. There was perhaps only one more hour to go to the completion of my life’s work, when an outsider intervened and murdered him. With a file.

  Wenzel will give you the details, it is too bitter for me even to write it down. Call it superstition if you will, but when I saw that blood had been shed – it was all over the things in the shop – I felt as if his soul had escaped me. There is something inside me, some acute, infallible instinct, which tells me that it is not all the same if a man dies by his own hand or another’s. My mission would only have been completed if Wassertrum had had to take his blood with him into the earth. Now that it has all turned out differently, I feel rejected, an instrument that was not found worthy of the hand of the Angel of Death.

  But I will not rail against fate. My hatred is a hatred that goes beyond the grave, and I still have my own blood, that I can shed in whatever way I like, so that it will pursue his wherever it may go in the realm of shades.

  Every day since they buried his bones I have been sitting beside his grave, listening for a voice within my breast that will tell me what to do. I think I already know, but I intend to wait a while until the inner word becomes as clear as a bubbling spring. We humans are an impure race, and often it takes weeks of fasting and waking until we can understand the whisperings of our soul.

  Last week I was officially informed by the court that Wassertrum had made me his sole heir. I presume I do not need to assure you, Herr Pernath, that I will not touch one copper of it. I will take care not to give ‘him’ a hold on me ‘on the other side’. The houses he owned will be auctioned, the objects he touched will be burnt, and after my death one third
of the money realised will go to you. In my mind’s eye I can already see you jumping up and protesting, but I can reassure you. Everything you will receive is yours by right, with interest. I have known for a long time that years ago Wassertrum cheated your father and his family out of everything they owned; it is only now that I have the documents to prove it.

  Another third will be distributed among the twelve members of the Regiment who knew Dr. Hulbert personally. I want each one to be rich enough to be able to enter ‘good’ society in Prague.

  The final third will be distributed equally among the next seven to commit a murder in the course of robbery, but who are released because there is insufficient evidence against them. I owe that to public morality.

  I think that is everything. Farewell my dear, dear friend; I hope you will sometimes think of me.

  With sincere gratitude,

  Innocence Charousek.

  Deeply moved, I put the letter down. I could feel no joy at the prospect of imminent release. Charousek! Poor fellow! Looking after me like a brother simply because I once gave him a hundred crowns. If only I could at least shake him by the hand! But I sensed that he was right; that day would never come. I could see him standing before me, his restless eyes, consumptive’s shoulders and high, noble forehead. Perhaps this blighted existence would have turned out differently if a helping hand had been held out to him early enough.

  I read through his letter once more.