Toymaker, The (3 page)

Mathias knew what that was. Lutsmann wanted to know what Gustav’s secret was. Once, Mathias had surprised Anna-Maria going through Gustav’s bags. She said she had been tidying up – ‘Such a mess.’ But she needn’t have said anything and Mathias
knew that she had been looking for something, even if she didn’t know exactly what it was. They weren’t afraid of Gustav now that he was feeble and dribbled and couldn’t do the trick of putting a rope around their neck. So Mathias looked after him, and so far as a boy was able he protected him too, because he was his grandfather.

And that is the kind of boy that Mathias was.

Then came the day of the wolves and the horses. The circus travelled on and set up in the next market square. The cart they travelled in was emptied out as usual and the stage set. When it came to Gustav’s turn, he stood looking down at the sea of grinning faces, not sure what it was that he was supposed to do next. Mathias looked away as he always did because he knew what was going to happen and he couldn’t bear to watch it. But as he turned away, he saw in the crowd a man with a silver-topped cane. It was the cane that he saw first – the top of it caught the light of the flaring torches that lit the stage. It struck Mathias as odd because in the last town there had been a cane like that too; it had gleamed then. And then he looked at the man who held it, and realized that it was the same man as well. And that struck him as odd, because people
wouldn’t come to see the same show twice. Certainly not follow it from one town to the next. But there he was, Mathias was sure. He was standing near the back, his eyes intently watching the man on the stage. Then Gustav saw him too. He stopped stock-still, staring at the man with the silver-topped cane. He started to dribble; he looked wildly from side to side as though he were trying to find somewhere to run to, but as he lurched forward his knees caught the side of the cart and he pitched head first over the edge of the stage and onto the hard stone beneath.

The crowd let out a whoop of delight as Gustav fell from the stage. One or two of the men rushed forward and tried to pick him up and push him back on, but his body was as limp as a rag doll, and then, by the light of the flaring torches, they saw that they had blood on their hands. Gustav’s hair was thick with it. It made thin black ropes down the white of his face. They put him down on the ground and stepped back. Others jostled to get a better look. Mathias couldn’t get through. A man was elbowing his way through the crowd. Mathias grabbed hold of his coat and, holding tight, was pulled through. It was the man with the silver-topped cane. He was shouting, ‘Let me through!’ and pushing the gawping people aside.

When he got to the cart, he knelt down beside
Gustav and laid his ear to the old man’s chest to listen. The whole dreadful scene was lit by the flaring torches. Mathias saw it all – the eager faces of the crowd in the flickering shadows, the tall man with his head upon Gustav’s chest, the lines of blood on the chalk-white face.

‘He’s alive,’ the man said. He pointed to the two nearest men in the crowd. ‘You and you. Carry him.’

The cart had been set up in the large square in front of the coaching inn. It was always the best place. The two men carried Gustav’s limp body like a sack of flour between them. The man with the silver-topped cane went in front. As they came into the courtyard of the inn, he called out, ‘We have a man hurt!’

The tapster in his thick leather apron looked down at Gustav and at the small common crowd that had trailed along to watch. There was no money to be had there. He pointed to one of the empty stables.

‘I’ll pay,’ said the man with the cane.

The tapster looked at Gustav again and shook his head. ‘He can die in there just as well as in any of my beds.’

The man with the cane didn’t argue. They carried
Gustav through an open stable door and laid him down in the deep, dirty straw. Someone lit a lamp.

‘Shouldn’t we get a doctor?’ said Mathias.

It was only then that the man noticed him. He must have thought that he was just one of the crowd come to stare. Some of them had pushed into the stable. Those who couldn’t actually get in peered round the open door.

‘He’s my grandfather,’ Mathias said.

The man looked at him with sudden, new attention. ‘You needn’t worry, boy,’ he said in a hard, cold voice. ‘I am a doctor. Can you run?’

Mathias nodded.

‘Go and tell your circus man what has happened. Then get me clean water and a cloth. Go! Be quick! And you’ – he spoke to the men who had carried Gustav in – ‘keep this rabble out!’

He dropped money into the hand of the first man. They didn’t need any more telling. They were both big men, and with pushes and punches they emptied the stable in a moment. The man with the cane closed the door behind them, then turned to where Gustav lay unconscious in the deep straw.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Let us see if you really are who I think you are.’

Mathias ran as fast as he could to find Lutsmann. Lutsmann had already heard what had happened but his concerns were very different from those of Mathias. He was standing behind the cart that held the clothes, arguing with Estella. He wanted her to go onto the stage again. She was standing with her hands on her snake-thin hips. She had done her part, she said. She would only do more – and she held her hand out like someone rubbing money – if he paid her. Lutsmann’s face was scarlet. The people who had not trailed after Gustav to the inn but had waited instead for another act were getting impatient. Mathias could hear them whistling and
throwing stones onto the empty stage. All of a sudden Anna-Maria stepped out from the shadows. Mathias had not known that she was even there. She pushed past Lutsmann and gave Estella such a slap across the face with her bare hand that it must have loosened the woman’s teeth. Estella shrieked and, with fingers like claws, flew at Anna-Maria, who cut at her with her riding crop. The two women grabbed hold of each other’s hair and, pulling and scratching, fell to the ground. Lutsmann tried to drag them apart. Estella bit him hard on the hand. He yelled and kicked her. There was no stopping them. Mathias ran back to the inn to get the water, cursing himself for having wasted time.

When he opened the door of the stable, he saw that the man with the cane had taken Gustav’s coat off him and had it in his hands. All the pockets had been turned inside out and emptied onto the straw.

‘What are you doing?’ said Mathias, but the man didn’t answer. He tossed the coat onto the ground.

‘Bring the water here,’ he said.

Mathias put the bowl down beside Gustav’s head. The man took the cloth and, wetting it, began to wash the blood from Gustav’s forehead and chin. But he was rubbing so hard. Then Mathias realized
that he wasn’t washing the blood away at all. He was washing the white paint off Gustav’s face. It was a face that Mathias had never seen before. It seemed wrong for this stranger to be uncovering it. He pushed at him and tried to take the cloth away, but the man was too strong. He shoved Mathias away into the straw. When Mathias tried again, the man hit him with the back of his hand, sending him sprawling into the corner and making his nose bleed. Then the man stood up and lifted the lamp from where it had been hung on a hook. He bent over Gustav and looked at the washed face as though for something that he was expecting to find. Mathias crept forward.

Where the white paint had been washed off, Gustav’s bare face was deathly pale, save for one cheek, which had a large red stain – a birth mark – like port wine. It was as big as a hand. Mathias had never seen it before, never known it was even there.

The man turned to him. ‘He is your grandfather, you say?’

Mathias nodded.

The man settled himself in the straw, beside Gustav’s head. ‘Conjuror,’ he said. ‘Can you hear?’

Gustav didn’t move. The man shook him.

‘Can you hear?’

But Gustav lay quite still.

‘Stay with him,’ said the man and, picking up his cane, went out of the stable.

It was so cold. Mathias took Gustav’s coat and spread it over the motionless man, and as he did so, Gustav suddenly opened his eyes wide. His lips moved. Mathias bent down to try to hear what he was saying, but he couldn’t make out the words. Gustav’s fingers were pulling at the coat. Mathias folded it around him. But Gustav’s fingers kept pulling at it. Mathias realized that he was trying to pull the coat to him.

‘The coat?’ Mathias said. ‘You want the coat?’

Gustav didn’t answer. The pockets had already been turned inside out; even the lining had been slit with a blade and pulled through. But Gustav’s fingers were working at the lapel by the collar. Mathias took the coat from him. Beneath the thick cloth he could feel something – a small hard lump. He looked quickly over his shoulder lest the man return, then began picking at the stitching with his fingernails, but he couldn’t break it. He put it in his mouth and ground his teeth against it. The cloth tasted dirty and bitter, but his teeth made a small
hole. He chewed it larger then, spitting the threads out, pulled through the hole a tight roll of paper.

He looked over his shoulder again. ‘Is this it?’

For the first time Gustav’s eyes seemed to focus. With trembling fingers he took the paper and, opening his mouth, put it in and tried to chew, but the effort was simply too much. His eyes drooped closed and his head lolled back onto the straw. Mathias put his ear to the old man’s chest but there was no sound. Gustav was dead.

There were people still outside. One of them pushed open the door to see what had happened. In ones and twos they came in and looked down at the dead man, then, bored by what they saw, wandered away. Mathias’s nose was still bleeding, but he didn’t want to touch the water or the cloth, which were milky white with the paint from Gustav’s face, so he wiped his nose on his sleeve and sat in the straw and cried.

He didn’t know how long he cried for, but the people had gone. He sat looking at his dead grandfather, at the strange, hollow face, not knowing what to do next. Then he remembered the piece of paper. Very gently, he prised open Gustav’s mouth. The paper was still there on the back of his wet tongue.
Mathias looked round: there was no one to see. With his fingers he reached into Gustav’s mouth and picked it out. He had only just put it in his own coat pocket when he heard a noise behind him. He turned round. Standing in the doorway was Anna-Maria.

Mathias didn’t know whether Anna-Maria had seen what he’d done. He took his hand quickly out of his pocket.

‘Get up,’ she said.

Her words were always clipped; they never offered any choice. She expected people to do what she told them. If they didn’t, they learned the consequences pretty quickly and by the next time they knew better. Mathias stood up, still unsure whether she had seen him put the piece of paper in his pocket. But she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at Gustav’s face and coat.

‘Who did this?’ she demanded.

‘The man who was here,’ said Mathias.

Her face filled with a look of greed and suspicion. ‘Did he find anything?’

Mathias shook his head. ‘I don’t know what he was looking for,’ he said, but in his own mind he thought he knew.

Anna-Maria put her face very close to his. He could smell the perfumed powder on her skin.

‘You’d better be right,’ she said, and her voice was cruel.

She gripped Mathias’s arm and pulled him across the market square towards where the stage cart stood. Its big, heavy curtains were drawn shut. The audience had drifted away and the torches had been put out. Mathias could smell the wisps of oily smoke in the air. In the dark Anna-Maria led him up the wooden steps of Lutsmann’s cart. Beneath the crack of its door he could see the glimmer of light.

‘My dove,’ said Lutsmann, in a voice that was greasy and false, as Anna-Maria opened the door. ‘Have you found the poor dear boy?’

Anna-Maria, who the moment before had been pulling at Mathias, gripping his arm so tightly that it hurt, now gently ushered him in, brushing his hair tidy with her fingers as though he were the very apple of her eye.

‘I found him by poor Gustav’s body,’ she said silkily and looked down at Mathias sorrowfully. ‘The
lamb.’

But Mathias didn’t look at her. His eyes were fixed on the other man in the cart, on his hat and silver-topped cane. He was sitting opposite Lutsmann at the small table. In the bright lamplight, Mathias was able to have a good look at him for the first time. He had dark, hard eyes in a face that was quite round, pudgy, like a small moon. There was an ill-disguised contempt for Lutsmann on his face, a not believing a word of the charade that was being played out before him.

‘This is Doctor …’

‘Leiter,’ said the man.

‘Yes,’ said Lutsmann, as though he in turn doubted that it was the man’s name at all. ‘Doctor Leiter has an offer to make to you, Mathias. A very generous offer.’

Lutsmann’s eyes strayed to the table. Mathias noticed for the first time a small leather pouch, there by Lutsmann’s hand. He didn’t have to guess very hard what it might contain.