The Golem (25 page)

“Your name is Athanasius Pernath and you are –” he looked at a sheet of paper with nothing written on it, “– a gem engraver.”

Immediately the club-foot under the other desk came to life; it rubbed against the leg of the chair, and I could hear the scratch of pen on paper.

I concurred. “Pernath. Gem engraver.”

“Well, we’re both agreed on that, Herr … Pernath … Pernath, yes, Pernath. Yes, yes.” Suddenly the Superintendent was full of warmth, as if he had just heard the most gratifying news. He stretched out both hands towards me and made grotesque attempts to sound harmless. “Tell me, Herr Pernath, what do you do all day?”

“I think that is no business of yours, Herr Otschin”, I answered coolly.

He screwed up his eyes for a moment then suddenly shot out a lightning-quick question, “Since when has the Countess been having this affair with Savioli?” but I had been expecting something of the kind and did not bat an eyelid.

He interrogated me cunningly, darting from one topic to another in his attempt to get me to contradict myself, but although my heart was in my mouth with fright, I said nothing to give myself away and kept insisting that I had never heard the name of Savioli, was acquainted with Angelina from my father’s time and that she had frequently commissioned cameos from me.

In spite of that, I had the feeling the Superintendent could tell whenever I was lying and was inwardly fuming that he had not managed to get anything out of me. He thought for a moment, then pulled me towards him by the lapel, gave a warning jerk of the thumb towards the left-hand desk and whispered in my ear, “Athanasius, your late father was my best friend. I want to save you, Athanasius. But you’ll have to tell me everything about the Countess. Everything, do you hear?”

I had no idea what he was talking about. “What do you mean, you want to save me?” I asked him out loud.

The club-foot stamped irritatedly on the floor. The Superintendent’s face went ashen-grey with hatred. His lip curled. He waited. I knew that he would pounce again (his shock tactics reminded me of Wassertrum), so I waited, too. A goat-like face, obviously belonging to the owner of the club-foot, appeared above the desk-panels, then suddenly the Superintendent yelled at me in an ear-splitting voice:

“Murderer!”

I was speechless with astonishment.

With a sour look on his goat’s face, club-foot withdrew behind his desk.

The Superintendent also seemed rather taken aback by my calm, but cleverly disguised his surprise by drawing up a chair and offering me a seat.

“So you refuse to make the statement I have requested about the Countess, Herr Pernath?”

“I have no statement to make, Superintendent, at least not the statement you expect. In the first place, I know nobody by the name of Savioli, and secondly I am firmly convinced that the suggestion that she is deceiving her husband is a vile calumny.”

“Are you prepared to repeat that under oath?”

My heart missed a beat. “Yes. Any time you like.”

“Good. Hmm.”

There was quite a long pause, during which the Superintendent appeared to be racking his brains. When he looked at me again, there was a rather obviously assumed expression of pain on his face. As he spoke, his voice vibrant with tears, I was immediately reminded of Charousek. “But Athanasius, you can tell me – me, your father’s old friend – me, who carried you in his arms when you were a little baby –” I could hardly stop myself from laughing: the man was at most ten years older than I, “tell me, Athanasius, it was self-defence, wasn’t it?”

The goat’s face reappeared.

“What was self-defence?” I asked, completely mystified.

“The affair with … ZOTTMANN!” The Superintendent suddenly yelled the name at me, and it struck me like a blow from a dagger. Zottmann! Zottmann! The watch! Zottmann was the name engraved on the watch. The blood throbbed in my veins. That fiend Wassertrum had given me the watch to throw suspicion of the murder onto me.

Immediately the Superintendent threw off his mask, bared his teeth and screwed up his eyes. “So you admit the murder, Pernath?”

“But it’s all a mistake, a dreadful mistake. For the love of God, listen to me. I can explain everything, Superintendent!” I cried.

“Now will you tell me everything about the Countess?” he quickly broke in. “I must point out that it will be counted in your favour.”

“I can’t say any more than I have already. The Countess is innocent.”

He clenched his teeth and turned to goat-face. “Take this down: Pernath confesses to the murder of Karl Zottmann, insurance agent –”

I was seized by a blind fury. “You swine! How dare you?!” I roared at him and looked round for a heavy object.

The next moment two policemen had grabbed me and handcuffed me. At that the Superintendent strutted before me like a cock on the dung-heap. “And this watch?” – he suddenly had the battered watch in his hand – “Was poor Zottmann still alive when you stole it from him or not?”

I had calmed down now and simply stated: “The junkdealer, Anton Wassertrum, gave me that watch this morning.”

There was a snort of laughter, and I saw the club-foot and the felt slipper perform a dance of joy under the desk.

My hands tied behind my back and followed by a policeman with his bayonet fixed, I had to walk through the lamplit streets. Scores of street urchins ran alongside, bawling and yelling, women flung open windows, waved their wooden spoons and shouted insults at me. In the distance appeared the massive stone cube of the Law Courts, with the inscription over the entrance:

Avenging Justice Protects

the Law-abiding Citizen

Then I was passing through a huge gateway, along a corridor and into a room that reeked of kitchen smells. A man with a bushy beard and wearing a sabre, uniform jacket and cap, his bare feet protruding from long johns tied at the ankles, stood up, put the coffee mill he had been holding between his knees on one side, and ordered me to take all my clothes off. He looked through my pockets, taking out everything he found in them, and asked me if I was infested with any vermin.

When I said no, he took the rings off my fingers and said that was all, now I could get dressed again. Then I was taken up several flights of stairs and along corridors with large, grey lockable chests standing in the window embrasures. The other side of the corridor was an unbroken row of iron doors with massive bolts and small, barred windows; above each burnt a gas jet.

A giant of a gaoler with a military bearing – the first honest face I had seen for hours – opened one of the doors, pushed me into a dark, closet-like cavity with a pestilential stench, and locked the door behind me. I was in complete darkness, and found my bearings by feeling my way round. My knee bumped against a galvanised iron bucket. Finally – the room was so narrow I could hardly turn round – I managed to find the door-handle to hold on to. I was in a cell: double bunk-beds with straw mattresses ran along the walls on either side, the gap between them scarcely one pace wide. A barred window three feet square high above the back wall let in the dull light of the night sky. The heat was unbearable, the cell filled with the smell of unwashed clothes.

When my eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, I saw that one bunk was empty, but the other three were occupied by men in grey prisoners’ uniforms sitting with their elbows on their knees and their faces in their hands.

Not one spoke a word.

I sat on the empty bunk and waited. Waited. Waited.

One hour.

Two hours, three hours.

Whenever I thought I heard a step outside, I sat up. Now, I thought, now they’re coming to fetch me to see the examining magistrate.

Each time my hopes were dashed. The sound of the steps faded down the corridor.

I tore open my collar, I felt I was going to suffocate. One by one, I heard the groans of the other prisoners as they stretched out on their mattresses.

“Can’t we open the window up there?” I put my despairing question to the general darkness around, almost starting at the sound of my own voice.

“No”, was the sour response from one of the straw mattresses.

Nevertheless, I felt along the mildewed wall … a shelf at chest height … two jugs of water … a few stale crusts of bread. With difficulty I managed to clamber onto it, grasped the bars and pressed my face to the gap, so that at least I could breathe some fresh air. And there I stood, until my knees started to tremble, staring out into a monotony of dark-grey fog. The cold iron bars seemed to sweat.

It must soon be midnight.

Behind me I heard snoring. There was only one of them who seemed unable to sleep. He tossed and turned on the straw, sometimes moaning softly to himself.

Would morning never come? There! A clock was chiming! And again.

I counted with trembling lips. One – two – three! – Thank God, only a few more hours until it would begin to get light. The chiming continued. Four? Five? The sweat started pouring down my face. Six! – Seven!! … It was
eleven
o’clock! Only one hour had passed since I had last heard the clock strike.

Bit by bit I started to work out what must have happened. Wassertrum had tricked me into accepting Zottmann’s watch so that I would be suspected of murder. He must be the murderer himself, or how else could he have come into possession of the watch? If he had come across the corpse somewhere and then stolen the watch, he would certainly have claimed the thousand crowns reward which had been offered for information leading to the discovery of the missing man. But that could not be the case: the posters were still up in the streets, as I had clearly seen as I made my way to the prison.

What was obvious was that the junk-dealer had informed against me; also that, as far as Angelina was concerned, he was in league with the Superintendent. Why else the interrogation about Savioli? On the other hand, that showed that Wassertrum had not yet managed to get hold of Angelina’s letters.

I thought hard.

Suddenly the whole plot was revealed to me with awful clarity, as if I had been there myself. Yes, that’s what must have happened: Wassertrum had searched my room with his police accomplice and must have secretly taken my strong box, suspecting it contained compromising material. He wouldn’t have been able to open it right away, since I had the key with me … perhaps he was in his lair, trying to break it open at this very moment.

In a frenzy of desperation I shook the bars. In my mind I could see Wassertrum rifling through Angelina’s letters. If only I could tell Charousek what had happened, so that he could at least warn Savioli in time!

For a moment I clung to the hope that the news of my arrest would have spread through the Jewish quarter like wildfire. I trusted Charousek as I would trust my guardian angel. Wassertrum could not match his fiendish cunning. “I will have him by the throat the very moment he thinks he has Dr. Savioli at his mercy”, Charousek had said.

The next moment I rejected the whole idea and was seized with panic. What if Charousek came too late?

Then Angelina was lost.

I bit my lips till the blood came, and tore my breast with remorse at not having burnt the letters straight away. I swore a solemn oath that I would kill Wassertrum the moment I was free again.

What did it matter to me whether I died by my own hand or on the gallows?!

Not for a single moment did I doubt that the examining magistrate would believe me if I told him the story of the watch and of Wassertrum’s threats. I was sure to be free by the morrow, and at the very least the court would order Wassertrum’s arrest on suspicion of murder. I counted the hours, praying for them to pass more quickly. All the while I stared out into the black murk outside.

After an interminable time it began to get lighter and, first as a dark patch, then clearer and clearer, a huge copper disc appeared out of the mist: the face of an old clock on a tower. But – yet another torment – the hands were missing.

Then five o’clock struck.

I heard the other prisoners waking up and starting a conversation in Czech. One voice seemed familiar. I turned round and clambered down from the shelf. There was the pock-marked Loisa sitting on the bunk opposite mine and staring at me in amazement. The other two were hardfaced rogues who scrutinised me contemptuously. “Embezzler, don’t you think?” the one asked his mate in an undertone, giving him a dig in the ribs at the same time. The other muttered some disparaging remark, rummaged around in his mattress, pulled out a black piece of paper and lay it on the floor. Then he splashed a little water from the jug onto it, knelt down and used it as a mirror as he combed his hair into a kiss-curl with his fingers. Then he dried the paper with solicitous care and hid it in his mattress again.

“Pan Pernath, Pan Pernath.” Loisa kept muttering my name to himself, staring at me wide-eyed, as if he had seen a ghost.

“You gentlemen appear to be acquainted, if you’ll allow the remark”, said the prisoner with uncombed hair in the slightly stilted manner characteristic of Viennese Czechs, sketching a mocking bow in my direction. “Permit me to introduce myself: Vóssatka’s the name, Black Vóssatka. Arson”, he added an octave lower, his voice throbbing with pride.

The man with the kiss-curl spat through his teeth, stared at me contemptuously for a few seconds, then said laconically, pointing to his own chest, “Breaking and entering.”

I remained silent.

“Well, and what’s brought you here, Count?” the Viennese Czech asked after a short pause.

I thought for a moment and then said calmly, “Murder in the course of robbery.”

The two started in surprise, the scornful expression on their faces giving way to a look of utmost respect as, with one voice, they exclaimed, “An ’onour to share a cell with you.”

When they saw that I took no notice of them, they withdrew to a corner where they held a whispered conversation. Then the one with the kiss-curl stood up and came over to me, silently felt my biceps and returned to his companion, shaking his head.

In a low voice, so the other two would not hear, I asked Loisa, “I suppose you’re being kept on suspicion of having murdered Zottmann as well?”