“And his wife?” Fortschig anxiously asked.
“Stone deaf,” the inspector said. “Luckily for you, Fortschig. And take that little brown cigar over there on the night table. A ‘Little Rose.’ Dr. Hungertobel left it on purpose, you can smoke in this room with impunity.”
With a good deal of fuss and circumstance, Fortschig lit the cigar.
“Would you like to go to Paris for ten days?” Barlach casually asked.
“To Paris?” the little man screamed, leaping up from his chair. “By my soul, if I have one, did you say Paris? I, who worship French literature like nobody else? With the next train!”
Fortschig’s surprise and delight were so great he was gasping for air.
“Five hundred francs and a ticket are waiting for you in the office of Butz, the notary on the Bundesgasse,” Barlach said calmly. “The trip will do you good. Paris is a beautiful city, the most beautiful one I know, apart from Constantinople; and the French—I don’t know, Fortschig, I think the French are the best and most cultivated fellows around. Not even a dyed-in-the-wool Turk can compare with them.”
“To Paris, to Paris,” the poor devil stammered.
“But before you go, I will need your help with something that’s eating me up,” Barlach said, gazing sharply at the little man. “It’s a terrible thing.”
“A crime?” Fortschig was quaking.
“A crime that must be exposed.”
Fortschig slowly put the “Little Rose” in the ashtray next to him. “Is it dangerous, what I have to do?” he asked softly, with wide-open eyes.
“No,” the old man said. “It is not dangerous. And to remove even the remotest possibility of danger, I’m sending you to Paris. But you have to follow my instructions. When is the next issue of Apfelschuss due?”
“I don’t know. Whenever I have some money.”
“When can you send out an issue?” the inspector asked.
“Right away,” Fortschig replied.
“Do you produce the Apfelschuss by yourself?” Barlach wanted to know.
“Alone. With a typewriter and an old duplicating machine,” the editor replied.
“In how many copies?”
“Forty-five. It’s a very small newspaper,” Fortschig softly replied from his chair. “I’ve never had more than fifteen subscriptions.”
The inspector reflected for a moment.
“The next issue of Apfelschuss has to come out in a huge edition. Three hundred copies. I’ll pay. All I expect from you is that you write a certain article for this issue: the rest of the paper is all yours to fill any way you want to. This article” (he handed him the long sheet of paper) “will contain what I have written here: but in your language, Fortschig, I want you to write the way you did in your best times. You don’t need to know any more than the information I’m giving you, not even the name of the doctor this diatribe is aimed at. Don’t be irritated by my allegations: trust me, they are true, I can vouch for that. In the article, which you will send to certain hospitals, there will be only one lie, and that is that you, Fortschig, hold the proof of your assertions in your hands and know the name of the doctor. That’s the dangerous part. And that is why you have to go to Paris as soon as you’ve brought the Apfelschuss to the post office. That same night.”
“I will write, and I will go,” the writer assured Barlach, holding the sheet of paper the old man had given him. He looked transformed. He was virtually skipping with joy.
“You will not tell anyone about your trip,” Barlach commanded.
“No one will know it,” Fortschig swore, “not a soul.”
The old man wanted to know how much the issue would cost.
“Four hundred francs,” the little man demanded with shining eyes, proud of his newly found affluence.
The inspector nodded. “You can pick up the money from my good old Butz. If you hurry, he’ll give it to you today, I’ve already told him on the phone. So you’ll leave as soon as the issue is out?” he asked again, filled with an invincible mistrust.
“Immediately,” Fortschig swore, holding up three fingers for emphasis. “That same night. For Paris.”
But the old man was not reassured after Fortschig had left. The writer had struck him as more unreliable than ever. He wondered whether he shouldn’t ask Lutz to have him guarded.
“Nonsense,” he said then. “They dismissed me. I’ll solve the Emmenberger case on my own. Fortschig will write the article against Emmenberger, and since he’ll be leaving town, I won’t have to lose any sleep over him. Not even Hungertobel needs to know anything about this. I wish he would come now. I could use a ‘Little Rose.’”
PART TWO
THE ABYSS
And so it came to pass that at nightfall on Friday—it was the last day of the year—the inspector, his legs propped up under blankets on the back seat of a car, reached the city of Zürich. Hungertobel himself sat at the wheel, and he was driving even more carefully than usual. He was worried about his friend. The city burst into glowing cascades of light. Hungertobel was caught in a dense swarm of cars that came gliding into this brilliance from all sides, slipping off into side streets and opening themselves, disgorging their contents, men, women, all greedy for this night, this end of the year, all ready to start a new one and go on living. The old man sat motionless in the back of the car, lost in the darkness of the small, arched space. He asked Hungertobel not to take the most direct route. With a lowering stare, he observed the tireless commotion. He was ordinarily not very fond of Zürich: four hundred thousand Swiss in one spot seemed a little excessive; he hated the Bahnhofstrasse they were driving along. But on this mysterious trip to an uncertain and menacing destination—on this trip to reality, as he had said to Hungertobel—the city fascinated him. From the black, lusterless sky a fine rain began to fall, then snow, then rain again, silver threads in the lights. People, people! Ever new mobs of them thronging both sides of the street behind curtains of snow and rain, ghostlike faces behind the windows of crowded trams flashing into view, hands clutching newspapers, fantastic forms in the silver light, passing, gone. For the first time since he had fallen ill, Barlach felt like a man whose time had passed, who had lost his battle with death, that irrevocable battle. The reason that irresistibly drew him to Zürich, this suspicion, elaborated with dogged energy and yet merely a figment dreamed up, by accident, on the tired waves of his illness, seemed futile and worthless now; why make the effort, to what end, for what purpose? He longed to sink back into an endless, dreamless sleep.
Hungertobel cursed inwardly; he felt the resignation of the old man behind him and reproached himself for not having put a stop to this adventure. The vague nocturnal surface of the lake flooded into view, the car glided slowly across the bridge. A traffic policeman appeared, an automaton with mechanically propelled arms and legs. Fleetingly Barlach thought of Fortschig (miserable Fortschig, who was now sitting in his dirty garret in Bern, feverishly writing the pamphlet), and then he lost this anchor, too. He leaned back and closed his eyes. The tiredness in him grew, a ghostly, towering thing.
“You’ll die,” he thought. “One day you’ll die, within a year, just as cities, nations, and continents will die one day. You’ll croak,” he thought, “that’s the word: croak—and the earth will still revolve around the sun, on the same imperceptibly wavering, stubborn, inexorable course, racing and yet so calm, on and on, on and on. What does it matter whether this city here lives or whether that gray, watery, lifeless surface covers everything, the houses, the towers, the lights, the people—were those the leaden waves of the Dead Sea I saw through the darkness of rain and snow when we were crossing the bridge?”
He felt cold. The coldness of the universe, a fleeting breath of unimaginably vast and stony coldness, descended on him for a second, for an eternity.
He opened his eyes and stared out again. The theater building appeared and vanished. The old man saw his friend in the front of the car: the doctor’s calm, kindly presence comfor
ted him (he sensed nothing of Hungertobel’s distress). Touched by the breath of the void, he become awake and courageous again. At the university they made a right turn, the road climbed, darkened, one curve succeeded another, the old man let himself drift, his senses keen, his mind sharply observant, imperturbable.
THE DWARF
Hungertobel’s car stopped in a park whose firs imperceptibly blended with the forest. That at least was what Barlach presumed, for he could only guess at the edge of the forest that marked the horizon. Up here it was snowing in large pure flakes; through the falling snow the old man could obscurely make out the front of the long, stretched hospital building. The brightly lit entrance, near which the car stood, was deeply set into the façade and flanked by two windows behind artistically wrought gratings—well positioned to watch the entrance, the inspector thought. Hungertobel lit a “Little Rose,” and without saying a word left the car and disappeared in the entrance. The old man was alone. He leaned forward and scanned the building, as far as that was possible in the dark. “Sonnenstein,” he thought. “Reality.” The snow fell more thickly, not a single one of the many windows was lighted, only once in a while a vague gleam flickered through the falling masses of snow; the white, modern steel and glass construction lay lifeless before him. The old man became restless—Hungertobel seemed in no hurry to come back; he looked at his watch and realized hardly a minute had passed. “I’m nervous,” he thought, and leaned back with the intention of closing his eyes.
At that moment Barlach’s glance fell through the broad runnels of melting snow on the car window and espied a figure hanging from the bars of the window to the left of the entrance. At first he thought he was seeing a monkey, but then he recognized with surprise that it was a dwarf, the kind that is sometimes used in a circus for the public’s entertainment. The little hands and feet were naked and gripped the bars as a monkey’s would, while the massive head was turned toward the inspector. It was a shriveled, ancient face of a bestial ugliness, with deep folds and crevices, degraded by nature herself, that gaped at the old man through large dark eyes, motionless, like a weather-worn, moss-covered stone. The inspector leaned forward and pressed his face against the wet window to see more clearly, but already the dwarf had vanished, with a cat-like leap backwards into the room, it seemed; the window was dark and empty. Now Hungertobel came, and behind him two nurses, doubly white in the incessant snowfall. The doctor opened the car door and was shocked when he saw Barlach’s pale face.
“What’s happening?” he whispered.
“Nothing,” the old man replied. “I just have to get used to this modern building. Reality is always a little different from what you imagine.”
Hungertobel sensed that the old man was hiding something and looked at him suspiciously. “Well,” he replied, whispering as before, “this is it.”
“Have you seen Emmenberger?” the inspector whispered.
“I talked to him,” Hungertobel reported. “I have no doubt whatsoever, Hans, it’s him. I wasn’t mistaken in Ascona.”
The two men fell silent. Outside, the nurses were waiting somewhat impatiently.
“We’re chasing a phantom,” Hungertobel thought to himself. “Emmenberger is a harmless doctor, and this hospital is like any other, just more expensive.”
In the back of the car, in the now almost impenetrable shadow, sat the inspector, fully aware of what Hungertobel was thinking.
“When will he examine me?” he asked.
“Now,” Hungertobel replied.
The doctor saw how the old man was regaining his verve. “Then say goodbye to me here, Samuel,” Barlach said, “you’re incapable of putting on an act, and no one must know that we’re friends. A lot depends on this first interrogation.”
“Interrogation?”
“What else?” was the inspector’s wry response. “Emmenberger will examine me and I will interrogate him.”
They shook hands.
The nurses came. Now there were four. The old man was lifted onto a gleaming metal stretcher. Sinking back, he saw Hungertobel handing out the suitcase. Then the old man looked up, into a black, empty plane from which the flakes descended in silent, incomprehensible whirls, dancing, floating, shining in the light before touching his face for a moment, wet and cold. “The snow won’t stay on the ground,” he thought. As the wheelchair was rolled through the entrance, he could hear Hungertobel’s car leaving. “He’s leaving, he’s leaving,” he said quietly to himself. Above him was a gleaming white, vaulted ceiling interrupted by wide strips of mirror-glass in which he saw himself stretched out and helpless; smoothly and noiselessly, the stretcher glided through mysterious corridors; not even the nurses’ steps could be heard. Black numbers clung to the glittering whiteness right and left, the only mark distinguishing the doors from the walls. Now he was passing a niche; in the half-light inside it stood the naked firm body of a statue. Once again Barlach was received into the gentle yet cruel world of a hospital.
And behind him the red, fat face of the nurse who was pushing the stretcher.
The old man had again crossed his hands behind his neck.
“Is there a dwarf around here?” he asked in High German, for he had been registered as a Swiss living abroad.
The nurse laughed. “But Herr Kramer,” she said, “what makes you think that?”
She spoke High German with a Swiss coloration, from which he concluded that she was from Bern. Her answer made him suspicious, but her accent struck him as a positive sign. At least he was among Bernese.
“What is your name, Nurse?”
“I am Nurse Kläri.”
“From Bern, right?”
“Yes, from Biglen, Herr Kramer.”
I’ll work on her, the inspector thought.
THE INTERROGATION
The nurse rolled Barlach into a room that at first glance appeared to be made entirely of glaringly bright panes of glass. There he saw two figures: one of them slightly bent, gaunt, a man of the world even in his white lab coat, with heavy horn-rimmed glasses that could not quite conceal the scar over his right eyebrow: Dr. Fritz Emmenberger. The old man’s glance merely brushed past the doctor at first; he paid more attention to the woman next to his suspect. Women made him curious. He looked at her distrustfully. Like most men of Bern, he found professional women uncanny. The woman was beautiful, he had to admit, and as an old bachelor he was doubly susceptible to that; she was a lady, he could tell that at first glance, the way she stood there, so elegant and so reserved in her white smock next to Emmenberger (who could, after all, be a mass murderer), but she seemed just a bit too noble for him. “You could put her right on a pedestal,” the inspector thought bitterly.
“Grüessech,” he said, dropping the High German he had just been speaking with Nurse Kläri, “it’s a pleasure to meet such a famous doctor.”
“Why, you’re speaking Bernese German,” the doctor replied, also in dialect.
“I may live abroad, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still pronounce ‘Miuchmauchterli,’” the old man muttered.
“Well, you just proved it,” Emmenberger laughed. “It takes a Bernese to pronounce ‘Miuchmauchterli’ properly.”
“Hungertobel is right,” Barlach thought. “This is not Nehle. No Berliner could ever pronounce that word as he did.”
He looked at the lady again.
“My assistant, Doctor Marlok,” the doctor introduced her.
“Hm,” said the old man dryly, “glad to meet you too.” And then, abruptly, turning his head a little toward the doctor, he asked, “Weren’t you in Germany once, Dr. Emmenberger?”
“Once, years ago,” the doctor replied, “I was there, but mostly in Santiago de Chile.” Nothing betrayed what he might be thinking, or whether the question had unsettled him.
“In Chile, in Chile,” the old man said, and then again: “In Chile, in Chile.”
Emmenberger lit a cigarette and went to the switchboard; now the room lay in semi-darkness, sparsely lit by a sm
all blue lamp above the inspector. Only the operating table was visible, and the faces of the white figures standing before him; the old man also noticed that the room was closed off by a window through which a few distant lights cast their rays. The red tip of Emmenberger’s cigarette moved up and down.
A thought suddenly struck the inspector: “There’s usually no smoking in this sort of room. I’ve unsettled him already.”
“Where’s Hungertobel?” the doctor asked.
“I sent him away,” Barlach answered. “I want you to examine me in his absence.”
The doctor pushed up his glasses. “I think we may safely put our trust in Dr. Hungertobel.”
“Certainly,” Barlach replied.
“You are ill,” Emmenberger continued, “the operation was dangerous and is not always successful. Hungertobel told me that you are aware of this. That is good. We doctors need courageous patients whom we can tell the truth. I would have welcomed Hungertobel’s presence during the examination, and I am sorry that he acceded to your wish. As doctors, we should cooperate, science itself demands it.”
“As a colleague, I can well understand that,” the inspector replied.
“What do you mean?” Emmenberger asked. “You’re not a doctor, as far as I know.”
“Simple,” the old man laughed. “You track down diseases, I ferret out war criminals.”
Emmenberger lit another cigarette. “I guess that’s not without its dangers, for a private citizen,” he said nonchalantly.