The Left-Handed God (11 page)

Standing, he had gained some stature but he was still short in spite of a pair of very high-heeled shoes with large gilt buckles. Franz wondered if the velvet suit, time-yellowed lace jabot and rich lace cuffs, silk stockings, and shoes had once belonged to a long deceased courtier.

Seutter, who had received the aspersions on his probity with rumbling laughter, introduced Franz.

Stiebel made Franz an elegant bow. “A great pleasure, young man,” he said. “My friend here has spoken so highly of your talents that I fear my needs are well beneath your abilities, but he seems to think that you would not be completely averse to them at the present time?”

Franz muttered an affirmative.

Stiebel’s narrow face stretched into a smile and his eyes twinkled over the spectacles. “‘
O diem laetum
,’ as Pliny said. You make my day joyous. Pray be seated, gentlemen.”

The interview was strange in that Stiebel both asked and answered his own questions, leaving Franz no more to do than to nod or shake his head. Seutter listened with a smile, or made noises of approval and comments like, “There! Didn’t I tell you so?” “I knew it would serve perfectly,” and “What happiness!”

So Franz became a lawyer’s clerk.

*

Max Bauer made his second attempt on the Langsdorff house toward noon. He had been watching since dawn and had almost decided to try a daring night-time entry while the family was asleep when he saw the cripple hobbling away and shortly afterward his mother setting off with a basket over her arm. That left the girl, and the smoke from the chimney told him that she must be cooking. He knew well enough that the kitchen was in the back of the house while the stairs to the bedrooms were in the front.

He walked boldly up to the front door and knocked very softly. After a short wait, he tried the handle and slipped in. The hall was dim, but he could hear the clatter of pots from the kitchen. He sniffed the air. Cabbage and onions. It smelled good and he was hungry. His employer had not paid him because Max had not produced the letter.

He listened, heard only the normal kitchen noises, and tiptoed to the stairs. His foot hovered over the lowest step when the girl came out of the kitchen, saw him, and froze.

For a moment, they stood staring at each other‌—‌perhaps equally frightened. Max pictured himself with a noose around his neck, and she was a mere girl and must be terrified to find a strange man in her house when she was alone. It was a wonder she had not started screaming yet. Max recovered and put his foot back on the tiled floor.

“Beggin’ your pardon, miss,” he said in his humblest voice and in a wheedling tone. “I knocked and was sure I heard you call out to come in. I hope I didn’t give you a fright.”

“You did,” snapped Augusta. “And I did not hear you knock. What do you want?”

Max bowed his head and twisted his hands. “Just a piece of bread, miss. I’m that hungry. I’d be glad to work for it.”

He peered cautiously at her and saw that she was undecided. Good. The noose could be avoided once again. “For the sake of our Lord,” he pleaded, then shuffled back a step or two. “Beggin’ your pardon. I can see it’s not a good time. I’ll try elsewhere.” He bobbed his head and reached for the door handle.

“Wait,” she said. “When did you eat last?”

“Yesterday, miss. Or maybe the day before. I can’t hardly recall. I don’t like to ask for food but I haven’t had work since the war.”

This was inspired, for she came closer and took his arm. “Oh, you’re one of the poor soldiers. Perhaps you’ve been wounded like my poor brother?”

When he saw her face close up and filled with pity for him, he was almost too overcome to speak. She was as beautiful as an angel, an innocent angel, and he was ashamed of what he had thought to do with her not so long ago. “Yes, miss,” he lied humbly. “Took a bullet in my leg. ’T wasn’t nothin’, but I fell and must’ve been kicked by a horse. Now my head gets dizzy with the pain sometimes.”

“Oh. I’m sorry for you. I know it’s hard for a man to come back from the war and have no work and feel the constant pain. Well, come into the kitchen. The soup’s not ready, but I have bread and butter, and some sausages. We won’t need them all for our dinner. I can cut up a bit of bacon instead.” She drew him after her into the well-lit kitchen and made him sit at the table. Here they looked at each other properly. Max saw a young woman, or rather a girl just at the point of turning into a young woman, with a dainty figure in a faded dress and large white kitchen apron. Shining brown hair was pinned under a white ruffled cap, but a few curls escaped and trembled against the rosy cheeks. Amazingly‌—‌to Max, who thought brown-haired girls had brown eyes‌—‌her eyes were a clear, deep blue. And now she smiled at him with those pretty lips and white teeth, and Max fell in love.

*

Franz’s life fell into a routine that would have given him pleasure if he had not still woken up on a strangled scream most nights. The days at least took on some semblance of normalcy, though that was not the word to use for Doctor Stiebel.

Nepomuk Stiebel had never been married. He slept above his chambers and kept no servants. His only companion was the small goldfinch who lived in the gilded cage which its master carried daily from bedchamber to work chamber and back again.

In time, Franz became aware of other eccentricities. At first glance, the legal chambers had seemed ordinary enough: six large rooms that occupied the lower floor of the house and were arranged on either side of a hallway that contained only the pale stone floor, dark oak wainscoting, dark oak staircase to the upper floors, and a dark oak bench where callers awaited their turn. The room to the right of the front door was Stiebel’s office. The other two on that side communicated with it and each other and contained bookcases filled with leather-bound legal tomes. To the left of the entrance was a meeting room with a large oak table and six plain side chairs presided over by a carved settle with grotesques snarling from its back and the arm rests. Its dark green velvet upholstery bore traces of the same white powder as Stiebel’s velvet coat. The rest of the downstairs was taken up by a legal documents room and a storage room.

It was the latter that contained an odd assortment of objects that seemed to have no purpose there. A dusty glass case held a dead snake, a moth-eaten owl looked down from its wooden perch, a gilded harp leaned against one wall and a violin against the other, a series of stands held wigs of every description and color, a clothes’ form was dressed in an old-fashioned white silk court suit, the skirt of its coat and waistcoat heavily embroidered and trimmed with tarnished silver. The walls were covered with pictures, some of them oil portraits of frowning old men, darkened with age, and others prints of famous places. The rest of the collection, if that was what it was, resided in a number of carved trunks and two large wardrobes.

Franz had little time to inspect the hidden treasures. He was put to work in the first of the two book rooms, at a chair and table under the window. Here he resided for the next months under the benevolent but strict eye of councilor Stiebel.

He arrived punctually at seven every morning to receive his instructions for the day. At eight, the waiter from the
Goldene
Löwe
across the square arrived with a pot of steaming coffee, two cups and plates, hot rolls fresh from the bakery, and butter. Stiebel produced a jar of jam made from plums or strawberries, and they would share a pleasant breakfast discussing politics or the state of the postal system. Legal business was taboo during meals, and Stiebel did most of the discussing.

When the church bells rang the noon hour, the waiter returned to clear away the breakfast dishes and set out the midday meal. This was always specific to the day of the week and never changed, except for the preparation and seasonal adjustment of vegetables. Mondays was beef, Tuesdays chicken, Wednesdays sausages, Thursdays veal, Fridays fish or
Käs’
Spätzle
(Stiebel was Catholic), and Saturday pork. Franz used to wonder what his employer did about meals on Sundays, but he was grateful that he did not have to eat at home. It saved money, and he avoided his mother’s chatter.

Matters did improve dramatically at home. The day Franz returned from his first day’s work, his mother not only did not run away but rushed to greet him.

“My dear boy,” she cried, “how proud I am! My son a secretary to the best advocate in our city! His confidential secretary! Oh, it’s a most respectable and promising career for a clever young man.” She embraced Franz, who bore it in guarded silence and looked to Augusta for an explanation of this change of heart. Augusta raised an eyebrow and made a face, but her eyes danced. It reminded him of when they were children and shared a secret. Franz felt almost light-hearted.

When his mother released him, she said triumphantly, “And Herr Seutter made it all possible. He is the dearest of men to be so devoted to me.” She cast up her eyes and pressed her hands to her bosom. “Oh, it fills my mother’s heart to overflowing to know that I have helped my son rise above his terrible affliction!”

Frau von Langsdorff wasted no time in informing all her neighbors of her hand in the miraculous cure of her son’s madness.

Meanwhile Franz was not only fed well at Stiebel’s, but he received a generous salary that was increased when he had learned enough to require little instruction. Most of this money Franz turned over to his mother, except for a little pocket money and something extra for Augusta.

Frau von Langsdorff purchased fabrics and paid a seamstress to make dresses for herself and her daughter. Soon, there was also a very young maid, a farmer’s daughter who wanted to learn housekeeping in a city household.

The fact that he made all this possible went a long way toward allaying the seething anger that had plagued Franz’s conscious hours.

He worked contentedly six days a week, often until late into the night because Stiebel seemed loath to part with him in the evenings. It did not matter. Franz had found some peace at last, a modicum of it at home, and a great deal more in chambers. There, he really did begin to heal. His right leg improved enough that he learned to do without the crutches and used a cane instead. His speech was less slurred also.

But the dreams still haunted his nights, and one or two incidents signaled that he had not left the horror behind.

The worst of these happened soon after he had started work, on a warm summer afternoon. Franz was bent over a legal tome, following the strangely-shaped gothic font of the text with a finger so he would not misread any letters. He jotted down his translation as he read. Near him lay a Latin-German dictionary, though he rarely consulted it. His Latin was very good, thanks to his father’s teaching and the university. Only certain medieval corruptions stopped him.

This work required his utmost concentration as well as a knowledge of legal matters, and so he did not notice that the light outside had changed. He looked up only when a particularly violent gust seized the half-opened window, slammed it inward, and lifted loose papers from his desk, scattering them over the floor.

The sky was an angry charcoal gray. A chestnut tree near his window tossed its branches in the wind, and the first thick drops hit the window pane when Franz forced it closed and pushed the latch in place. A summer thunderstorm. It was nearly dark in the room. He bent to gather up the sheets of paper, pale rectangles against the darkness of the flooring, when a flash of blinding bluish light filled the room as suddenly as if some curtain between time and eternity had been rent. The darkness that followed was denser and more suffocating than he could have imagined, and then the world cracked apart with a noise as of a hundred cannons exploding beside him, above him, all around him.

In an instant he was back on the hillside near Freiberg. All around him men were stabbing, bleeding, dying. Cannons belched smoke and hurled death. Giant hussars appeared, sabers flashing, and braying black horses reared above.

He threw himself down and screamed again and again, long past the final roll of thunder. Then the nightmare of severed heads and hands, of the sight, feel, and smell of blood returned, and he retched and sobbed until the next clap of thunder made him scream again.

He felt the hands first, tugging, shaking. Then he heard a voice. Words filtered through the shell he built around himself with his screams until it cracked and sense leaked through.

“Franz! Franz!”

As the fragments of the shell broke away on all sides, he wondered who Franz was. And then, having found him, he wondered who was calling.

Judgment
Call
?

He opened his eyes to face an angry God at the very moment when the blue light flashed again and blinded him, just before the divine wrath crashed down, crushing and obliterating him. He sobbed and curled up with a whimper.

But still the voice called and still the hands tugged. He reached out, clutched a hand, and cried, “Stop! Stop! There’s too much death. Too much blood!”

The thundering barrage came again, and in the end, he just held on and wept.

When the thunder finally died away and lightning merely flickered across the murky darkness, Franz came to himself and knew where he was and who held him.

Stiebel said, “My poor boy. Are you hurt? Did you fall or did the lightning strike you?”

Thunder and lightning were common occurrences in the summer months over the lake. As a child, Franz had watched the jagged fire in the night sky dancing across the water and had found it beautiful. But such sounds and sights, even the slightly sulfurous smell in the air, were now too close to the sights, sounds, and smells of the battlefield where the heavy artillery plowed bloody furrows through the lines of soldiers.

He sat up. His body was bathed in sweat; he was shaking and deeply ashamed. Stiebel still knelt beside him, looking worried. “N-no,” Franz said. “I’m unh-hurt. I b-beg your p-pardon, s-sir. It w-w-was exc-ceedingl-ly s-s-stupid!”

“Not at all. Are you sure you’re quite all right?”