Petr Stančík

Noceros

2018 | Druhé město

chapter 17

 

For the pleasure whose sweetness I had tasted for the first time in my life, I was beholden to that prejudice and even felt a deep reverence towards it.

(Giacomo Casanova — History of My Life)

 

I had no desire to get into a new relationship — I was tired and Kunigunda’s scent had not quite faded from the bedroom. On the other hand, I didn’t want to offend the Chief Inspector and my male self-respect also demanded it of me.

It turned out that Marhanová liked playing the housewife assaulted by a brazen burglar. It seemed a bit cliched to me, but I donned the close-fitting black trousers and polo-neck without grumbling, put on an eye mask of the same colour, and went out in front of my house so I could burgle it. She insisted I break in through the first-floor window and leap on her directly from the window as she lay in bed. I tried to climb up the wire of the lightning conductor, but Prokop Diviš punished me for my pride. The brackets set into the wall were badly rusted through and halfway up gave way under my weight. The wire jerked and wrenched the entire lighting conductor out of the roof. I fell right on my back from a height of two metres and the tip of the lightning rod stuck into the ground just beside my ear. I rolled around on the grass in pain — luckily, I didn’t seem to have broken anything.

“What do you think you’re doing here?” said an official voice behind me.

I looked around. Standing right behind me were two police officers in black uniforms, toying meaningfully with the nightsticks hanging from their belts.

The question was rather too enigmatic for my taste, but I forced myself not to think about its possible connotations and simply replied:

“I live here. I’ve had a visit from a lady who would like me to assault her disguised as the criminal element by way of foreplay, if you know what I mean.”

All at once, the policemen’s expressions were fully attentive. They both held out a hand to me and lifted me back on my feet.

“Oh, dear. I know only too well,” sighed the shorter law-enforcement officer. “My missus gets turned on by doing it in public places. Because of us, they’ve already had to re-consecrate the church, give refunds at the theatre and disinfect an ambulance. Not to mention the fact that she insists I strangle her while we’re doing it. And when she ends up with bruises on her neck, she complains to her friends that I strangle her. What about your wife, Marcel?”

“Nothing special, Ludvík,” said his taller colleague, shrugging, “except for the fact that she sticks her hand in a sack of dry rice while we’re doing it. And hugs the urn with her dad’s ashes as she climaxes.”

“There you are then. So let’s help him out,” suggested Ludvík. “Stand up against the wall here. I’ll give him a boost, he’ll climb onto your back, and he’ll be able to reach from there.”

“I don’t know,” said Marcel doubtfully. “Shouldn’t we search him first?”

“Don’t be silly, he seems like a nice guy.”

So Marcel stood up against the wall, Ludvík linked his hands together and I pushed off them with my foot and clambered up onto Marcel’s shoulders. Just as my fingertips touched the edge of the window ledge, the bushes parted and a grey-haired Asian man came rushing out of them towards us. He was whirling a camera on a strap above his head like a medieval flail and struck the forehead of the taller policemen with it. He staggered beneath me and I lost my balance and fell onto the shorter one, so suddenly all three of us were rolling around on the ground. Our mysterious assailant leapt nimbly around us, landing more and more blows on exposed places with the camera. Eventually, however, using our combined forces, we managed to overcome and handcuff him. From his passport the police officers ascertained that the old man was a subject of the Japanese emperor by the name of Naoko Takemura and had come to Prague as a tourist. Asked why he had attacked the policemen, the Japanese man replied logically that he had taken them for burglars. In the end we all calmed down and Marcel and Ludvík put their caps back on and removed Takemura’s handcuffs. We said our goodbyes with a polite bow and went our separate ways.

Back home I discovered that in the meantime the Chief Inspector, having slipped into some seductive lingerie, had dozed off in the bed, so I no longer had to climb anywhere. I quietly crept past her, stepped up onto the window sill and cried out:

“I have come to thoroughly plunder your piggybank. By forced entry!” That was seriously the best I could come up with.

Marhanová woke up with a start and reached into the shoulder holster she had left hanging on the back of a chair for her pink Glock 42, an ugly plastic .380 Auto pistol. However, she quickly got back into character. She put the pistol away and dropped decoratively to one knee on the bed. With her left hand she covered her crotch and with the right hand her breasts, in order to draw attention to those places.

“Please don’t hurt me, sir. I’ll give you anything you want. Only the opening to my piggybank has got jammed.”

“Have no fear, sweetheart. I’ve got a diamond drill all ready for you. If you’re a good girl, I’ll leave you something in your piggybank.”

The rest played out like the script to a cheap porn film. I had trouble concentrating. I couldn’t stop thinking about where I knew the odd shape of the fatal wound on the top of Bogislav’s head from, but eventually, using our combined forces, we managed to bring the case to a satisfactory conclusion.

Emička then took her leave without any unnecessary tenderness and I was finally able to get back to Goethe’s diary.

 

 

Cheb, Saturday 10th September 1774

 

After breakfast Grand Master Born pulled back the veil of his arcanum for me:

Before the century is out, the Plutonists are planning to tear down the strongest bastions of Neptunia — that is, the European monarchies — and install a republican system in their place, for the masses of common folk can be controlled much more easily than individuals. The crowd drags down anything that stands above it. The wisdom of the crowd equals the wisdom of the most foolish of its particles.

The first order of business is a revolution in France, whose example will then sweep all the others along with it, because France sets trends in everything, even politics. However, so that the plutonistic plan is not revealed prematurely, our Masonic lodge “Zu der wie Topf siedenden Tiefen See” has been given the task of rehearsing a rebellion against the nobility a long way from France, in far-flung Bohemia.

And so here, from the safe haven of Cheb, we are diligently investigating how best to hoodwink the rabble and instil in them discontent with their fate and revolt against the hierarchy with the sovereign at the top.

We have at our disposal two test samples of peasant folk: one on my estate of Staré Sedliště not far from here, and the other on the opposite side of the kingdom, on the Kinsky estate in Chlumec nad Cidlinou.

Each of us has his task: I am planning and directing the entire conspiracy. Brother Casanova is schooling the peasants’ wives in unnatural amorous practices that do not assuage desire but inflame it all the more. This leaves their husbands tired and unwilling to work in the morning. Brother Mesmer is using animal magnetism to put the serfs into a hypnotic state. Then we will sprinkle into their heads the seeds of revolt against the nobility, so that later they will surface as their own thoughts. Brother Mozart is composing catchy revolutionary ditties for them. Brother Cagliostro is concocting potions that stimulate courage and suppress fear, which we are secretly emptying into wells in villages. And at the end Brother Kinsky will eliminate the entire rebellion using his army.

And what can I contribute to our great cause? I asked, perhaps too eagerly.

You are a promising writer and dramatist, Grand Master Born praised me. Everything is going according to plan, the peasants are discontented, they are discussing things and grumbling about their conditions, but for the moment that’s as far as it goes.

Even though we have burdened them with six or even all seven days of compulsory labour a week, they still go and dutifully toil on their lord’s estate and haven’t so much as killed a single beadle yet. The devil only knows what those human beasts of burden actually eat, when all they do is work for the nobility from sun to sun…

In short, we need to come up with a trigger for revolution. We have packed the barrel with gunpowder, but we are lacking the spark to ignite it. And that is your task, Brother Goethe. You are a genius, so go and bring us that spark!

 

 

Carlsbad, Sunday 11th September 1774

 

When the stagecoach stopped at an inn for lunch on the way from Cheb, I chanced upon an attractive geological formation in the dirt by the road. There were two hexagonal crystals of pinkish orthoclase feldspar, mirror images of each other fused together so that they resembled a pair of lovers simultaneously performing anilingus on one another. I discovered that similar intergrowths are abundant in the vicinity of Carlsbad and for this reason I named them “Carlsbad twins”.

No sooner had I returned to the spa than I found myself back in the clutches of Lady Hortensia von Dolce. Her husband is still out of town, so we spent the rest of the day in amorous diversions. While I am barely capable of writing a few lines in my diary this evening, she is still full of life. I do not understand where she gets all this energy from!

 

 

I jumped up from the diary in excitement. The shape and size of that mysterious wound in the punctured skull of the factory owner Bogislav corresponded exactly to a pair of intergrown hexagonal crystals of orthoclase. The murder weapon was undoubtedly a Carlsbad twin.

I went to look in the cabinet containing my rock collection for my own specimen, but it was gone. All that was left behind was an empty pedestal smeared with something, probably sticky fingers from a lollipop or boiled sweets.

Finally my police-academy training was about to come in handy. I opened the dactylscopic briefcase that Krunýř the forensic-science technician had once left behind at a crime scene. From the fridge I took out the sawn-off black hand I’d found in the trap less than a week ago, took prints from it and compared them with the ones in the cabinet. They matched. In other words, the same perpetrator who had ransacked my flat and stolen the Carlsbad twin had later tortured Dr Jehlan and almost burnt him to death, and finally murdered Bogislav too.

I began to be overcome by a sense of futility: The more I knew about this case, the less sense it made.

I was reminded of the sad story of European science, which at the beginning of the seventeenth century, blinded by the blaze from the funeral pyre of the Dominican friar Giordano Bruno, strayed onto a heretical path of knowledge of nature through senses amplified by instruments. And yet what is confusing is neither human senses nor instruments, but rather the very nature of the material universe. The invention of the microscope and the telescope estranged man from the universe both inwardly and outwardly, transforming the microcosm and macrocosm into an infinite set of Chinese puzzle boxes, each tucked into the next. And every time it seems that we have understood everything, some new improved microscope or telescope will open up a new box whose contents will sweep away the order established by the previous one. Science has become sophisticated unconsciousness. And people have become perpetually immature children, playing with forces whose nature is beyond our reach and understanding.

It was already after midnight, so I went off to sleep on it.

 

chapter 18

 

Painting, and imitative art in general, does its work far removed from the truth and enters into a companionable friendship with that part of us which is far removed from wisdom, without any healthy or truthful purpose.

(Plato — The Republic)

 

For breakfast I wanted to mix myself a tall glass of real Viennese Kaiser mélange from black filter coffee, egg yolks blended with honey, cheap rum and cream. After careful consideration, however, I dropped all the ingredients apart from the coffee and rum.

The latest edition of the newspaper was waiting in the mailbox. Extending across the entire front page in bold typeset was the headline:

 

Child vanishes from National Gallery along with paintings worth millions

 

The photograph under the headline showed a familiar pile of ashes with fragments of bones sticking out here and there. The article described the incident with brutal succinctness:

 

Last night, between Sunday night and Monday morning, the alarm system was triggered in the department of modern art at the National Gallery in Prague. Police officers called to the scene surrounded a young dark-skinned boy, who had cut the famous paintings Black Lake and Night Bathing by the Czech painter Jan Preisler out of their frames and attempted to make off with them. As soon as the school-age perpetrator understood that escape was impossible, he apparently swallowed a lollipop, whereupon he was incinerated alive along with the canvases he was clutching to his chest. The motive for this act and the identity of the carbonized child are as yet unknown. According to footage from the security cameras, he made his way into the building among ordinary visitors, cut off the bottom of a plastic barrel in a drinking-water dispenser shortly before closing time and hid for several hours crouching inside it. He was wearing a white glove on his right hand. The devastated director of the National Gallery stated that the paintings were among the most important works of 20th-century European art, the destroyed canvases cannot be restored in any known way and their value is incalculable in monetary terms. The police investigation is ongoing.

 

I crumpled the newspaper into a ball and dialled three zeros and a one.

“Hello, Isis. Lavabo here. Did you hear about that robbery at the National Gallery?”

“Yes. It’s dreadful.” Her husky alto was trembling with emotion. “I love both of those paintings. I could stand in front of them for hours, my eyes caressing their melancholic beauty, the folds of the veil undulating with the secret it conceals. Jan Preisler worked his way up into the aristocracy of early-twentieth-century Czech painting. He didn’t want to be a Picasso for the poor like Emil Filla, he didn’t imitate fashionable styles. He was his own man, and that’s what made him world-class.”

“Tell me, Isis, what do those two incinerated paintings have in common? Apart from the artist, of course.”

“In the spring of 1903, Preisler was undergoing treatment for a serious illness in Karlovy Vary. As soon as he was better, he began a series of paintings with the subject of a black lake. He was completely obsessed with it — by 1909 he had painted seven versions, one every year. Both of the paintings that were destroyed were part of that series.”

“Where are the rest of the paintings?”

“The first one is called Superabundant Harvest and it belongs to the gallery in Hradec Králové. The second is Black Lake — that one perished at the National Gallery yesterday. The third, Putting Ribbons on the Stallion, is in a private collection. The fourth is called Night Bathing — that’s the other one that was destroyed. The fifth is Girl with a Scarf, and it’s hanging in the Cheb Gallery. The sixth, Tears of the Springs, is owned by the Kutná Hora Gallery. The seventh and final painting, Merging, can be found in the Pilsen Gallery.”

“Isis, can you please call those galleries up and tell them to immediately remove all the Preisler paintings to a safe place. By the way, who is that private owner?”

“Wait a second, I’ll have to check. Ah, here it is: Putting Ribbons on the Stallion was sold at the Didius auction house last year for twenty-three million crowns to Patrik Metyloun.”

“What, that environmental activist from Palatines of the Planet?”

“Judging by the photo from the auction, it’s definitely him.”

“Where would he have got hold of that kind of money?”

“I’m afraid that question is beyond my pay grade.”

“I understand. Don’t bother phoning Metyloun, I’ll go and warn him myself.”

“Sure thing. The address for the head office of the non-profit organization Palatines of the Planet is Na Poříčí 37, New Town, Prague.”

“I have one more request: could you make me colour copies of those seven paintings by Preisler and post them to me?”

“Consider it done.”

“Thanks for everything, dear Isis, and speak to you again sometime.”

“Anything for you, my reborn Osiris.”

 

I got into the Ragnarök and drove to the New Town. From a busy street full of tourists, cars and jingling trams, I entered the quiet of the neo-Gothic tenement building at number 37. The passageway led into an entrance hall topped by an attractive rib vault with stone brackets decorated with coats of arms. I recognized the emblems of all three Prague towns as well as Kutná Hora, Cheb, Hradec Králové, Pilsen and České Budějovice. I climbed up three flights of stairs to the second floor.

The door marked Palatines of the Planet was ajar. I knocked, but nobody answered. Inside there was a terrible mess: every flat surface was littered with papers covered in writing and there was a smell of burning. Even though it was a bright day outside, the lightbulbs were shining on full filament from all the ceilings and there wasn’t a soul in sight.

I finally found Metyloun on a balcony on top of a bay window which jutted out into the street on stone corbels above the entrance to the building. He was swaying on the back legs of a chair, his feet resting on the balustrade with its stone tracery. The ecologist was drinking an oil-like soft drink branded Sexi-Cola from a non-returnable plastic bottle with great relish while feasting his eyes on a colour photograph of a seal pup crouching in a sea of plastic waste which was printed on his T-shirt. Upside-down, of course, so he didn’t have to imagine it the other way round.

I cleared my throat. Metyloun didn’t even bother to turn round, just chucked the empty Sexi-Cola bottle on the ground with the words:

“Jarmila, bring me another cold one.”

I introduced myself: “My name’s Libor Lavabo, I’m investigating the murder of twelve female rhinoceroses. We met on Thursday 30th August at Mr Vrutec’s.”

When Metyloun heard my voice, he flinched slightly but otherwise showed no sign of surprise. He slowly turned his head like an owl and looked me right in the eye.

“Oh, yes, I remember. What do you want? I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“You recently bought the painting Putting Ribbons on the Stallion by Jan Preisler.”

“What’s that got to do with rhinoceroses?”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to find out. Can I take a look at it?”

“Have you got a search warrant?”

“Have you got something to hide?”

He laughed. It sounded like a car starting with a weak battery.

“Of course not. But you can’t see it. I accidentally burned it a while ago. Like the unfortunate philatelist Maxmilián Dráp with his pride and joy: an envelope with the Blue Mauritius on it. If you happen to be familiar with it.”

“How is it possible to accidentally burn a painting?”

“I lit some incense sticks really clumsily.”

“Where did you get hold of twenty-three million crowns?”

“Oh, you know, by scraping together the pennies…from membership fees.”

“Where were you…”

“Here,” he interrupted me. “My secretary Jarmila whatever-her-name-is will vouch for me.”

“I didn’t even say when.”

“I’m here saving the planet round the clock. Jarmila!!! Never mind. She’s probably gone to buy more Sexi-Colas. I’m crazy about them. I go through a whole fridge of them a day.”

“I’ll leave you to it then.”

“Go and enjoy the great outdoors.”

On the way back I saw the Preisler painting above a desk — or rather, what was left of it. Shreds of heat-contorted canvas grinned out of the gilded frame like rotten teeth. I climbed onto the desk, took the frame off the wall and examined the back of it closely. Hidden under a brass hook for hanging on a nail, someone had carved two tiny circles in the wood of the frame.

I put the frame back on the wall, switched off the unnecessary lights and walked straight out of the eco-activists’ headquarters.

 

What did those two little circles mean? A symbol for eyes? Two zeros, double-zero flour? Or perhaps the letters OO, an archaic abbreviation for a toilet? I had to find out whether there was something carved on the other frames as well.

I drove to the National Gallery and had myself announced to the director as the insurance claims adjuster. The good man willingly showed me both of the cut-out frames. Carved in the same place under the hook on Black Lake were the digits 06, and on Night Bathing the number 12.

By the evening I’d got round the galleries in Kutná Hora and Hradec Králové, and the next day the other two in Cheb and Pilsen. With the right combination of friendly impertinence, threats and bribes, I managed to assemble the inscriptions from all the frames. In the end, I wrote them down in a table for ease of reference:

  1. Superabundant Harvest — 1903 — Hradec Králové — digits 50
  2. Black Lake — 1904 — Prague — digits 06
  3. Putting Ribbons on the Stallion — 1905 — Palatines of the Planet — symbols 00
  4. Night Bathing — 1906 — Prague — digits 12
  5. Girl with a Scarf — 1907 — Cheb — digits 20
  6. Tears of the Springs — 1908 — Kutná Hora — digits 10
  7. Merging — 1909 — Pilsen — letters NAE

 

However, I was still none the wiser. So I went back to Ouklej’s crypt in the Olšany Cemetries to clear my head with some alconautics. And the sight of the intersecting circles of latitude and longitude on the surface of the gloglobe suggested a solution to me: NAE stands for North latitude And East longitude, while the digits give the degrees, minutes and seconds of geographic coordinates.

I rewarded myself with a spiritual pilgrimage to the grave of Saint James in the town of Santiago de Compostela by a circuitous route taking in monastic herbal liqueurs.

I began with a swig of Ora et liquera, produced according to an ancient recipe from the Benedictine monastery of Porta Apostolorum in Postoloprty. This was followed by Klostergeheimnis, originating from the Benedictine monastery in Ettal, Bavaria. Then Trappistine from the Trappist monastery in Orval, Belgium. After that came Gemma d’Abeto from the Servite monastery of Monte Senario in Tuscany. Next up was Chartreuse, the work of the Carthusians at the monastery of Grande Chartreuse at the foot of the French Alps. On top of that, Bénédictine from the Benedictine monastery of Fécamp in Normandy. And finally Venganza de ermitaño by the Benedictines from the Monasterio de San Pelayo de Antealtares in Santiago de Compostela.

Evidently, the Order of St Benedict has been the most industrious in the field of herbs — perhaps because it is the oldest of all the monastic orders and has therefore had the most time for tasting.

 

I returned home from the crypt by the shortest route. Without even taking my shoes off, I eagerly drew a parallel of 50°6’0″ north latitude and a meridian of 12°20’10“ east longitude in pencil on a map. The lines crossed near Cheb in the wooded area at the foot of Chamber Hill, the smallest and also youngest Czech volcano.

 

chapter 19

 

If all men knew this pleasure, the earth would be depopulated inside a dozen years.

(Donatien Alphonse François de Sade — Juliette or Vice Amply Rewarded)

 

In the morning I woke up with my head buried in the map. Why had Preisler encoded Chamber Hill of all places into his paintings? Could it have something to do with the Masonic lodge “Zu der wie Topf siedenden Tiefen See” — that is, “At the Depths Boiling like a Pot” — located just a short distance from here, in Cheb?

I pounced on Goethe’s secret diary, in which there were only a couple of pages to go until the end.

 

 

Carlsbad, Monday 12th September 1774

 

A horrible tragedy has occurred. Even now my pen trembles with horror at the memory of it. After my return from Cheb, Lady Hortensia von Dolce further intensified the tide of bliss with the aid of a rubber tube. At her insistence we supplemented our previous amorous techniques with enemas of lukewarm milk with a drop of cognac applied to each other in the 69 position.

In doing so, Hortensia achieved such a deep orgasm that her heart gave way. The hapless, and at the same time happy, woman thus committed suicide by bliss. She literally pleasured herself to death.

Hortensia’s example inspired me to rework the ending to my Sorrows of Young Werther. In the original version Werther, after being rejected by Lotte, entered a monastery. Now he shoots himself with a pistol. Suicide is by far the most artistic kind of death.

I spent the whole night feverishly creating the new ending so that I could send the manuscript to my publisher in Leipzig by the morning post — let us hope that the book has not been printed yet.

 

 

Frankfurt am Main, Sunday 27th November 1774

 

Like a cruel stepfather, I have long neglected you, my secret diary. The phenomenal success of The Sorrows of Young Werther swept away the life I had known like an earthquake with a house built of cards. Finally I can quit the degrading internship at the Imperial Chamber Court in Wetzlar and from now on I intend to live only off literature. However, I have not forgotten the fraternal promise I made to Grand Master Born and tomorrow I will acquaint him with the fruits of my genius during a visit to his stately home in Staré Sedliště which we have arranged by correspondence.

 

 

Staré Sedliště, Monday 28th November 1774

 

Born’s residence turned out to be more of a molehill than a mountain. But what the mansion lacked in size, it more than made up for in the hospitality of its owner.

As soon as we had greeted each other with a fraternal handshake, I explained to the Grand Master my idea for a trigger for the peasant rebellion: we will circulate a rumour that Emperor Joseph II has issued a so-called Golden Patent granting freedom to all villeins and abolishing compulsory labour, and that in addition every peasant is to be given a gold coin by his former master. And furthermore, that the nobility have wilfully concealed the Golden Patent from the peasants, as well as forbidding the parish priests from duly announcing it from the pulpit.

Born was enthusiastic and decided to begin spreading the rumour without delay, with the help of all the brothers from our lodge.

 

 

Frankfurt am Main, Monday 3rd January 1775

 

I have received a letter in which Father Böhmenmot, pastor of the Orphanage of the Prophet Eliseus, urgently requests alms for his wards — which in our pre-arranged secret language means that Grand Master Born is summoning me to visit the Masonic lodge in Cheb.

I immediately purchased a seat on the mail coach. It is freezing cold, but fortunately not snowing. If the good weather holds, I will arrive at my destination on Friday.

 

 

Cheb, Friday 7th January 1775

 

The brothers, headed by Born, were waiting for me impatiently. It turned out that my idea of the rumour about the Golden Patent had worked perfectly in Chlumec nad Cidlinou, but not at all in Staré Sedliště. Both estates are approximately the same size, the peasants on both grow similar crops, have a similar amount of property and have a straight six days of compulsory labour a week imposed on them. Nor is there a difference in nationality, since all the serfs are almost exclusively Czech. And yet those from Staré Sedliště display a much greater resistance to being hoodwinked than those from Chlumec. A perfect enigma.

I decided to solve the riddle on the ground, under the guise of geological research.

Born put Brother Casanova at my disposal, because this globetrotter has also picked up a little Czech on his travels across Europe. We will set out for Staré Sedliště by carriage first thing in the morning.

 

 

Staré Sedliště, Saturday 15th January 1775

 

Not even an entire week of careful questioning produced the desired result. The Czech farmers are good-natured and happy to talk — without prompting, they even started to bring me interesting minerals they had ploughed up from the soil in the autumn. But as soon as the Emperor’s Golden Patent came up, they just said that they didn’t believe that rubbish and then refused to discuss the matter any more.

The mystery was finally cleared up by Casanova, though quite by chance. On Born’s estate, the quick-witted libertine was reaping bountiful harvests of lechery. While the men were toiling on the estate, he went round their cottages and worked the plots of the abandoned wives and daughters with his velvet plough. During one such expedition a certain miller’s wife revealed the secret to him in a moment of ecstasy: Apparently, in the ground beneath a nearby hill called Chamber Hill lay the Golden Dot. She didn’t actually know what the Golden Dot was, but the men from the village would go there once in their lives to search for it. It was known to be extremely dangerous. Not everyone dared to make the journey, not everyone found the Golden Dot, and if they did, then not everyone came through it with their health intact. Some had never come back from Chamber Hill, while others had succumbed to despair after their return and hanged themselves from a pear tree or jumped into a well with a stone. But anyone who discovered the Golden Dot and survived became a completely different person. He was then referred to respectfully as a Goldendotter. A Goldendotter no longer took the bait or let the wool be pulled over his eyes, his words carried great weight and his neighbours heeded his advice. That was why no-one here believed in the Golden Patent: the Goldendotters had declared that it was an empty delusion and trick to fool the common folk.

Casanova now struts around proud like a peacock and I would like nothing better than to pluck out every one of his tail feathers. Unfortunately, there is no time for that now. Tomorrow we are setting out to explore Chamber Hill.

 

 

At that moment I got an idea on a totally unrelated topic. I was curious to know how the diary went on, but because of that idea I couldn’t concentrate on translating it. Eventually I gave up the futile struggle, picked up the phone and dialled the number of Chief Inspector Marhanová at the CID.

“Morning, Emička. Lavabo here.”

“It’s long after midday, you miserable layabout.”

“Have the police identified that black boy who burnt himself and the two paintings by Jan Preisler at the National Gallery recently? Please, it’s a matter of life and death!”

“Yes, but I can’t tell you over the phone,” said the Chief Inspector, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “You know what? I’m finishing work soon, so I’ll drop by your place. Then we can discuss, let’s say, how dangerous it is for a young woman on her own to invite a plumber into her flat. All those terrible socket wrenches, nut drivers and tube cutters of his!”

I sighed away from the receiver.

“Come quickly, I can hardly wait…” I waited until Marhanová hung up on the other end of the line, and added: “…until you’re gone again.”

 

I went down into the cellar for three bottles of white wine and while I was there it occurred to me to go into the electristian chapel. I flipped the switches and the darkness parted. The flashes in the glass tubes intersected to form a cross, and the seven apocalyptic lights on the menorah flared up.

I have always found the sight of people praying soothing, like the sight of dolphins leaping out of the water or wood burning fractally. I myself have never prayed in my life.

Until now.

 

O God, who pervades all things, including me

as the mere possibility of His being

creator of the universe from nothing through the Word of physical laws

creator of life from chaos through the Spirit of evolution

not through an exhalation, but an inhalation that draws in all living things

through a stream of time in a whirlpool of refining forms

creator, who Himself will be created only when the world ends

sending to us His prototypes

projected into the bodies of Horus, Mithra, Buddha, Krishna, Jesus, Odin and Zuarasiz

always born of a virgin, crucified and risen from the dead

O God, elevated above good and evil, beyond sex

indifferent to suffering and deaf to pleas

I pray to you, since it is futile.

 

Again the fuses blew one after another and the chapel was plunged into darkness.

I went back upstairs with the wine just in time. The doorbell rang and standing behind the door was Chief Inspector Marhanová. Ever practical, she had brought me a plumber’s bag full of tools and blue work overalls. Even though I pressed her, she refused to tell me anything until I had duly unblocked her pipes.

 

chapter 20

When Cynthia was silent, she was magnificent.

(Antal Szerb — The Pendragon Legend)

 

So I went out in front of the substation, letting the door slam shut behind me. I counted to ten in my head and then pushed in the doorbell button.

The Chief Inspector opened the door with only a blue-and-white spotted apron covering her naked body. I had to admit it was a very alluring look.

“Come on in and get stuck into it. My husband isn’t home and I need to get my opening widened.”

“Will you grab hold of this for me, young lady?”

“From the front or the back?”

“However it’s a better fit for you. Just be careful it doesn’t gush all over the carpet.”

“Are you going to make me a hole here? You’d better start pounding away so we’ll be done by evening.”

And so on. After three hours of hard graft, Emička was finally satisfied and we were able to move on to the case.

“According to the CCTV footage from the National Gallery, we have indeed identified the arsonist. We were helped by his blond hair, which is extremely unusual in black people. He was one Gabriel Pikumba, born twelve years ago in Orderland in Africa, discarded by his parents during a visit to Prague and adopted by one Patrik Metyloun. However, immediately afterwards that same individual placed Gabriel in the Little Ant home for vulnerable children, and last week they reported to the police that Pikumba had run away. But the strangest thing of all is that white glove of his. It wasn’t actually a glove at all, but a hand…”

“…a hand cut off the murdered factory owner Bogislav,” I added.

“That’s right. How did you know?” she asked in surprise.

“It just came to me. Go on.”

“You see, we found that hand lying on the floor in the gallery. While the rest of the body was incinerated, the hand remained. According to the medical examiner, that was only because it wasn’t properly supplied with blood. There were still the remnants of stitches in the skin at the edge, so someone seems to have inexpertly transplanted Bogislav’s hand onto Pikumba. Just don’t tell anyone I told you. If it got out, the superintendent would have me flogged.”

 

We finished the last bottle of wine and Marhanová finally packed up her tool kit and left me to my thoughts.

I was utterly drained, both metaphorically and literally. So I decided to put off any further investigations until the next day and opened Goethe’s secret diary for the last time.

 

Chamber Hill, Sunday 16th January 1775

 

Grand Master Born acknowledged with unfeigned enthusiasm the progress made in the inquiry into the failure of the rumour about the Emperor’s Golden Patent among the serfs of Staré Sedliště. By a remarkable coincidence, he had already come across Chamber Hill during his own geological research. In fact, he had even written about the hill two years ago and published a scholarly pamphlet in the form of a letter to the Grand Master Predecessor, General Kinsky, entitled On an Extinct Volcano by the Town of Cheb in Bohemia, without, of course, suspecting that it concealed a secret.

For the expedition to Chamber Hill he lent us his own carriage, reeve and two commoners and, just to be on the safe side, an experienced exorcist, Father Farcimen from the order of St Dominic. While myself, Casanova, the Dominican and the reeve travelled in the comfort of the carriage, the peasants had to trot along behind us on foot.

First we drove to the Cheb barracks to see Count Kinsky, who made available to us a company of soldiers from his 42nd infantry regiment. While the driver lit the small stove in the carriage, sliced up a smoked ham for us and opened a bottle of fiery Eger “bull’s blood” from Born’s cellars to go with it, the servants and the peasants, following our orders, began to search around the foot of the hill. Towards evening capricious Lady Luck finally smiled on us — the empty Bikavér bottle which I threw out of the heated coach far away towards the hillside did not smash on a rock but audibly tumbled somewhere into the depths. There, deep in the undergrowth and also camouflaged by conifer branches, lay the hidden entrance to the earth’s interior.

It turned out that bringing the peasants had not been the happiest idea. The men knew very well where the underground entrance was located and had deliberately been leading the soldiers a merry dance all day on the opposite, north-east side of the hill.

The reeve had got so drunk on the Hungarian wine that he was incapable of walking. Fear had turned the Dominican exorcist as white as his scapular. The coachman had to look after the horses. The soldiers had to go back on duty. That left Casanova and I to embark on the expedition alone.

So we lit torches and intrepidly stepped into a winding corridor hollowed out of the granite massif by nature itself. After an hour’s descent, we arrived at the edge of a vast rocky chamber. It was there that we encountered something so terrifyingly hideous that it will haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. The worst thing of all is that the evil did not emanate from the earth but from me, from our inner selves — the hill only brought to the surface of consciousness a writhing nest of worms within us.

With the last of our moral and physical strength, Casanova and I scrambled back out beneath the starry sky.

 

Translated from the Czech by Graeme Dibble