The Mastersinger from Minsk (3 page)

“On the contrary, Inspector, whoever wrote this note must be sought out and brought to justice immediately! There's no time to waste!” The old man's small bony fingers, gripping the brim of his hat, began to tremble.

“Please, Herr Mecklenberg, this is not a life-and-death matter,” I said. “Trust me, sir. I've had years of experience —”

“But you have never been exposed to the likes of Richard Wagner, have you?”

“Of course I will need to interview him. Perhaps in a day or two. You might bring him round to my office at the Constabulary, Herr Mecklenberg. Say, uh, the day after tomorrow, at ten in the morning?”

“I don't think you understand, Inspector,” Mecklenberg said. “He must see you now …
tonight
. The note was slipped under the front door of his house late this afternoon and the man is beside himself. Please, Inspector Preiss, I have a carriage waiting —”

A
man was striking the keyboard of a piano with his fists as though it were an anvil, sending clusters of notes flying discordantly into the air, while crying aloud in a high-pitched grating voice over and over, “No no no!” the cries of a man at his wit's end, yet plaintive at the same time, a man desperately wanting something beyond his reach.

Mecklenberg and I had just taken our first steps into the entrance hall of Richard Wagner's house, admitted by his housekeeper, her hands protectively pressed against her ears and shaking her head as if to let us know she'd been through these upheavals many times in the past. The clamor came at us even louder now, penetrating the closed doors of the drawing room beyond. Again “
No no no!
” followed this time with “That is
not
what I want! You are
not
singing a national anthem, for God's sake! You are supposed to be
lovers!
”

“I'm afraid we've caught your man at an inconvenient time,” I whispered to Mecklenberg. I had begun to unbutton my coat but stopped short. “Perhaps we should put this off until tomorrow.”

The old man seized my arm. “Please, Inspector, it's only a private rehearsal. Nothing out of the ordinary, I assure you. He prefers these intimate sessions; it's just that he becomes a little irascible at times.” He shrugged and gave a weak smile. “You know how geniuses carry on, I'm sure.”

I expressed surprise that Wagner would be in a mood to rehearse with singers given the threatening note left earlier in the evening. “He's under extraordinary pressure,” Mecklenberg explained. “The new opera opening soon, auditions, rehearsals, revisions and more revisions, financial arrangements, and so on.” Clearly Wagner's long-time impresario was accustomed to making excuses for his client's conduct.

“But how does anyone survive these tantrums of his?” I asked. “Come to think of it, how does
he
survive his tantrums?”

“Believe me, Preiss,” Mecklenberg said, smiling as much as his aged jowls would permit, “in the end it's worth all the fuss and bother.”

“Fuss and bother? You call what we've just heard ‘fuss and bother'?”

Before Mecklenberg could respond, the doors of the drawing room were thrust open. “Mecklenberg, where the hell have you been? Why are you standing there like a piece of furniture?”

Then Wagner's eyes landed on me like grapeshot. Lowering his voice he said to Mecklenberg, “Is this the policeman we sent for?”

Nervously Mecklenberg replied, “Maestro, allow me to —”

“Can't the man speak for himself?” Still eyeing me, Wagner said, “And you are who?”

“Chief Inspector Hermann Preiss, Maestro.” I took a firm step in his direction and offered my hand.

“I never shake hands when I'm working,” Wagner said without so much as a flicker of apology. “I don't know why it is, Chief Inspector, but too many men nowadays seem under some kind of compulsion to prove their manliness by crushing the living daylights out of you when they shake hands. My hands are my life, Chief Inspector.”

I couldn't resist a smile. “I assure you, Maestro Wagner, I would have been as timid as a virgin.”

Wagner stared at me for a moment with what I took to be disapproval, then suddenly smiled (though cautiously). “Well, Mecklenberg,” he called over his shoulder, “at least he's got a sense of humour. Are you quite sure he's a policeman?” His eyes narrowed again. “Wait … Hermann Preiss? … weren't you the detective back in Düsseldorf some years ago … yes, of course! … involved with the Schumanns. Am I correct?”

“You are, sir.”

“Pity about the poor idiot. Schumann, I mean. Died young, didn't he? Some asylum near Bonn, as I recall. That wife of his … Clara …
there
was a witch if ever I met one. Never had a decent word to say about me and my music. Still doesn't, damn her. Brahms … Johannes Brahms … now
there
was a man more to her taste, in every sense of the term, if you know what I mean.” Wagner frowned, as though struggling to recall something. “There was talk about whether or not Schumann did away with some journalist … something scandalous about Schumann's past that this writer threatened to expose. They say Schumann literally got away with murder.” Looking me straight in the eye, Wagner snorted, “Doesn't say much about the quality of police work in Düsseldorf, does it … people getting away with murder.”

I had two choices here: to agree with him, as a good public servant should do, perhaps even going so far as to bow and scrape; or to reply in kind and to hell with the consequences. I chose the latter. “It occurs to me, sir, that you must be a genuine connoisseur of police work, having been involved much of the time with justice systems here and abroad.”

Wagner glared at me for a moment, then turned to Mecklenberg, the old man looking as though he wished the floor would open and allow him to disappear. “Well, Mecklenberg, at least he's not spineless, which is more than I can say about most people with whom I'm forced to deal these days, isn't that so?” Returning to me, Wagner said, “I'm not sure we're going to get along, you and I, Preiss. I've been confronted with a serious threat. I need a man who will be at my service, nothing less.”

“And that is exactly what I'm prepared to do, be at your service,” I said. “I am not, however, prepared to be your
humble
servant.”

I won't flatter myself by claiming that this retort had the effect of putting the Maestro in his place; whether one knew Richard Wagner by reputation only, or was a personal acquaintance over many years, or was meeting him for the very first time as I was, one thing was incontrovertible: nothing short of the voice of God could cause this man to go weak at the knees. Still, my refusal to humiliate myself at least managed to establish a ground rule that would govern my relationship with Wagner if only for the time being. As far as I was concerned, Richard Wagner needed me more than I needed Richard Wagner.

“Very well, you two. Come!” Wagner stood to one side, motioning for us to move into the drawing room. He pointed to a sofa in a remote corner of the large room and ordered us to be seated there. “We're nearly finished, these two young people and I. There's not much more we can accomplish, not tonight at any rate.”

I had expected to be introduced to the pair of singers posted close to an enormous Bösendorfer, waiting in silence, like soldiers anticipating their next orders. But no introductions were forthcoming; instead it was back to business. Wagner took his seat at the piano and, sounding more like a military commander than a musician, he delivered the following lecture: “I remind you once again that this scene is crucial between Walther and Eva. Act Two succeeds or fails depending on how you relate to each other at this point. You are planning to elope; you are frustrated by conventions that constrain your emotions, your love for each other. Walther has been treated like an outcast by the Mastersingers Guild; Eva is being used as a pawn in what will be an arranged marriage. Both of you are challenged now to defy narrow conventionalism. So passion …
passion!
… you must not only sing, you must
act!
”

What followed for the next thirty minutes was some of the most sublime music and singing ever to fill my ears. Indeed — and I admit this without shame — I could feel tears forming in my eyes and I was forced to blink hard at times to clear my vision. If the person responsible for this was a monster (and already I'd formed an opinion that he was) then let him be monstrous, I thought. As for the two singers, despite the fatigue evident in their faces, they were carrying out the monster's orders above and beyond the call of duty.

At last, Wagner removed his hands from the keyboard, signalling that the session was ended. Nodding brusquely, all he said to the singers was “We're getting there. Go home. Get some rest. Tomorrow morning, ten o'clock sharp.”

Rising from the sofa, I approached the three at the piano, calling out, “Maestro, I should like an introduction to your singers, if you don't mind.”

“Why? Is it essential for some reason that you meet them?”

“No, not essential,” I admitted, somewhat taken aback, “but it would be a privilege … for me, I mean.” Addressing the singers, I said, “I'm Inspector Hermann Preiss, of the Munich Police.”

The tenor, without waiting for Wagner's approval, stepped forward, his hand outstretched. “I'm Henryk Schramm.” He beckoned the soprano to come forward. “And this … this is Karla Steilmann!” Schramm said this with such enthusiasm that I wondered whether it was her voice or her beauty that elicited such a show of warmth and admiration from her collaborator.

Visibly annoyed that these two young people hadn't waited for him to manage the formalities, Wagner addressed them gruffly, insisting that they depart without further delay given the demands of tomorrow. “Now get home, the two of you. Go! Out!”

“I do hope we meet again, Herr Preiss,” the young woman said, reducing me with her smile to a mound of wet clay.

Wagner stood watching with undisguised impatience as his singers made their exit. Then, satisfied that they had left the house, he turned on me and said in an angry voice, “That was most imprudent of you, Preiss, if I may say so. I am not eager to announce to the entire world that my career — maybe my life itself — is so threatened that I require the protection of the police. Do you have any notion at all about how much comfort and joy such a revelation would bring to my enemies? My God, man, a little discretion!”

“I think you're overlooking something, sir, with all due respect,” I replied. “It was
your
idea …
your
sense of urgency … that brought me here tonight. It was
you
who invited me to be in this room when I would have been perfectly content to wait in some other part of the house until your rehearsal was finished.”

Wagner did not take kindly to this response, which was no surprise. To Mecklenberg, who was by now a living portrait of misery, he called: “Is
this
the best you could secure for me?”

In a weak voice the impresario answered, “I was assured, Maestro, that Inspector Preiss is the finest in the Munich Constabulary. None better.”

“He certainly doesn't impress me as having the attributes of a conventional policeman. Considering the threat made against me, one would expect at least a modicum of sympathy, of respect.”

“If you are looking for a ‘conventional' policeman,” I said, “then look elsewhere, Maestro. To borrow your little sermon to your singers a few moments ago … or at least part of it … I have always felt challenged to defy narrow conventionalism.”

“Is that so, Preiss? Well, then, perhaps that explains the stories about your involvement with the Schumann case a few years back in Düsseldorf.”

“Stories?”

“Yes. About how you were apparently so blinded by Schumann and that wife of his that —”

“You needn't repeat it, Maestro. What was mere gossip has unfortunately grown into a legend.”

“Ah, so Franz isn't telling tales out of school after all.”

“Franz? You mean Franz Brunner?”

“
Brunner
? Who the devil is Franz Brunner? I'm talking about Franz
Liszt
of course.”

“Ah yes, the father of the woman with whom you are having an affair … a rather notorious affair.”

“That is none of your business, Inspector,” Wagner shot back.

“
Everything
is my business, Maestro Wagner,” I said. “Your lady friend —” I began to say.

“I have many lady friends, Preiss.”

“Your
lover
, then … Cosima von Bülow, wife of the conductor. I, too, have ears that pick up tales out of school, tales to the effect that your former friend Franz Liszt is appalled that his daughter has left her husband and become your mistress. Maestro von Bülow can hardly be thrilled by these events.”

“These are personal matters, Preiss,” Wagner shouted. “I repeat: they are none of your business.”

“The threatening note you received … could it not have been written by Liszt, or von Bülow, or some government official, for that matter? Any one of these persons, it seems to me, might have a powerful desire to bring about your downfall.”

Wagner fell silent and stood studying me for a few moments. Quietly he said, “I see that you are indeed not a conventional policeman. You seem to know a great deal about what goes on in the musical world, at least here in Munich.”

“And elsewhere,” I said. “But, to be frank, your activities, Maestro, extend far beyond the boundaries of the musical world. Politics, revolution, creditors and the avoidance of creditors … the very name ‘Richard Wagner' conjures up as much discord as harmony throughout Europe. I have just mentioned three people who would have ample cause to write that note, but there could be thirty, or three hundred, or even three thousand!”

And with that, I reached for my coat and hat. “It is late, sir. You must excuse me. If you want me, Mecklenberg knows where to find me.”

Without another word, I turned and made a brisk exit, leaving one of the most vocal men in Germany speechless.