The Master of the Day of Judgment (9 page)

"Try and remember," he yelled at me. "For heaven's sake try and remember. I must find out whom you were talking to. You've got to remember, do you hear? You've got to remember."

I shrugged my shoulders.

"If you like I'll ring the exchange," I said. "Perhaps they'll be able to tell me where the call came from."

"That's quite hopeless, don't waste your time, try and remember instead. She asked for Eugen Bischoff. What did she want from him?"

I repeated the conversation word for word for his benefit.

"You too find it strange, don't you?" I said to him when I had finished. "The Day of Judgment? What can be the meaning of that?"

"I don't know," he replied, gazing at the floor. "All I know is that those were Eugen Bischoff's last words."

We stood silently facing each other.

Nothing moved in the room, there was no sound but the ticking of the clock, until Dr Gorski, who had been looking out into the garden, shut the window.

"Thank God, it has stopped raining," he said.

"What the hell do I care whether it's raining or not?" the engineer exclaimed in a sudden fit of fury. "Don't you understand? Someone's life's in danger."

"You're worrying about me quite unnecessarily," I said to calm him. "I'm not really as helpless as you seem to assume, and besides ..."

He looked at me blankly. Then he noticed his hat, and took it from me.

"It's not your life that's at risk," he said. "No, not yours."

Then he walked out, walked out like a sleep-walker. He walked down the stairs and out, his crushed hat in his hand, without saying goodbye and taking no notice of Dr Gorski or me.

TEN

As I made my way home through the brightly lit streets that evening, hatless, in a state of great agitation, and with a gash on my forehead, the impression I must have made on passers- by was that I had gone out of my mind. I have never found out how I got the gash, but it probably happened in the pavilion when I lost consciousness for a few seconds — it was only a slight attack of weakness that passed off quickly — my forehead must have come into contact with something hard, the arm of a chair or the edge of the desk. I distinctly remember that soon afterwards I felt a sharp, penetrating pain over my right eye. As it passed off so quickly I took no more notice of it. Out in the street I still knew nothing about the gash, and the look of surprise on the faces of people I passed put a strange idea into my head.

It seemed to me that the whole town knew what had just happened at the Bischoff villa, was taking a passionate interest in the affair, knew me and regarded me as the murderer.

The look of amazement on the face of a student emerging from a night café seemed to say: Is it possible that he hasn't been arrested yet? This alarmed me, and I pressed on. Two sisters were waiting to be let in outside the door of some flats, and there could be no possible doubt that one of them, the one with a branch of a rowan tree in her hand, recognised me. "There he is," she whispered, and turned away with a look of indignation and horror. She had a pale face, and I caught a glimpse of red hair under the broad brim of her summer hat.

Then an old gentleman with twitching hands stopped and looked at me concernedly, and actually seemed about to talk to me. How could you harry the poor man to death, he seemed to be going to say, how could you do such a thing?

That's enough, damn it, was the thought that flashed through my mind, and he realised that if he said anything I'd take him by the throat, and that frightened him and he made off.

The next thing that happened robbed me of the last remnants of my self-control.

A cyclist, a big, muscular fellow with bare arms and a brutal expression, he looked like a baker's assistant in his string vest, approached silently, dismounted right in front of me and glared at me.

He's looking for you, he's after you, I said to myself, and I ran across the street, and went on running until I came to my senses and stopped, panting, in a dark side-street a long way out of my way.

I felt frightened and ashamed of myself. What came over me, what was I running away from? Was it conceivable that the whole town should be in a state of shock because one man had shot himself? What craziness to read Felix's senseless accusations in the eyes and behaviour of indifferent strangers whom chance put in my path. I had allowed a figment of the imagination to terrify me.

I've had enough, I'm going home, I whispered angrily to myself. It's my nerves, I must take some bromine when I get back. I've had too much for one day. What have I to be afraid of? I have no responsibility for what happened. I could not have prevented it, no-one could have prevented it. I have nothing and no-one to fear, I can quietly go on my way, I can look people in the face as calmly as I did yesterday and every other day.

And yet something inside me made me make wide circles round everyone coming towards me. I went round the ring of bright light under the gas lamps, and I started when I heard footsteps behind me. At a street corner I heard a cab slowly passing by. I hailed it, it stopped, and a sleepy cabbie drove me home.

By the time I opened the door of my flat I had made up my mind to go away. My nerves are shattered, I mumbled to myself as I walked in. I repeated this five or six times, and when I caught myself at it I was horrified. Yes, I must get out of here. But not to the Mediterranean, not to Nice, Rapallo or the Lido. I had an estate in Bohemia, in the Chrudim area, which had been left to me by a cousin on my mother's side who died young. I had spent part of my boyhood in the old manor house, and checking through the regular accounts, the reports and proposals sent me by my manager there always reminded me of long past summers. Since then I had been there only once, when I spent a week shooting roebuck in the Chrudim woods. That had been five years ago.

That was where I would go now. That was where I should find the peace and solitude that I needed as never before in my life. It did not occur to me at the time that in Vienna my disappearance might be wrongly interpreted as flight, a confession of guilt, a desperate attempt to extricate myself from a net of irrefutable evidence. I wanted to get away from the city, that was all, and I imagined myself spending the next few weeks wandering for hours uphill and downhill through the endless pinewoods, making friends with a shaggy old hunting dog, revisiting the pool where as a boy looking for sea monsters I had caught water-beetles, newts and leeches, spending a Sunday afternoon at the village inn among taciturn Czech peasants and card-playing foresters, and spending an hour before going to bed in the evening in an armchair in front of a blazing wood fire with books, a bottle of red wine, and my pipe.

That was the life I envisaged for myself for the next few weeks, and no sooner had I made my plans than I wanted to put them into practice. I paced up and down the room, burning with impatience, wishing I were already in the train and hating all the familiar things that met my eyes, the desk, the brightly coloured Gobelin curtains, the Albanian arquebus and the green silk prayer mat on the wall.

The fever of impatience I was in made idle waiting impossible, so, to confirm my decision inside myself as well as for the sake of doing something that would bring the carrying out of my plan nearer, I fetched my two suitcases and started packing, as if there were no time to lose. In spite of my restlessness, I set about it methodically and thought of everything — even my man Vinzenz could not have done better. I even remembered the small pocket compass and the German-Czech dictionary that I had taken with me on my trip to Bohemia five years before. When I had finished, and the place was littered with books, articles of clothing, leather spats and washing, and I locked the suitcases, I started thinking about the other things I should have to do before I left. First of all I should have to go to the bank to get some money. Then I must have a talk with my lawyer — I would telephone him and ask him to come and see me. Leave? No, my leave had not expired yet. I had an appointment to dine with friends at the Opera restaurant on Wednesday evening, and I must put them off, and I must send a telegram to my estate manager asking him to send the car to meet me at the station. There were also a few bills and a gaming debt to settle — I wanted to leave all my affairs in order. There was some last-minute shopping to do in town, and then there was the Count Wenckheim Memorial Tournament at the fencing club for which I had entered my name — a few lines to the secretary would settle that.

That was all I could think of at the moment, and I wrote it all down and put the note under the paper-weight on the desk. My restlessness diminished slightly. I had done all I could do at this late hour to get ready for my departure. It was five minutes past two — time to go to bed.

But I was still too agitated to be able to sleep. For a time I lay with closed eyes, but no trace of tiredness made its appearance, and my over-active mind was in turmoil with a hundred alarming ideas. I remembered the sleeping tablets on my bedside table. Only two small bromine tablets were left in the box, and I took them both.

I would have to buy bromine or morphine drops or veronal or some sort of drug in the morning — I mustn't forget. I'd need something of the sort in the days to come, I said to myself, and I jumped out of bed and started anxiously looking for the prescription, first in my briefcase, then in all the drawers of the desk and all the corners of the cupboards and chests-of-drawers and finally in my jacket pockets, but it was nowhere to be found.

Never mind, I don't need it, I said to myself. They know me at the Archangel pharmacy across the road, the proprietor greets me when I pass, he'll let me have a little bromine without a prescription. I mustn't forget it, or I'll have a sleepless journey tomorrow.

I fetched the notes I had made for next morning and, as I wrote the word bromine, without being aware of any connection, I suddenly remembered the voice on the telephone, the voice of the woman who had been unwilling to wait for the Day of Judgment. How strange that sounded. At the same time I remembered what the engineer had said. "Try and remember. For heaven's sake try and remember." Yes, now that I had time and peace to do so, I must try and remember. I must not go to sleep, but must try and remember when and where I had heard that voice. It was now clear to me that that unknown woman possessed the key to the mystery and could tell us why Eugen Bischoff had died; she knew, and I must find her and talk to her . . .

I lay in bed and pressed my hands to my temples and tried to recall the sound of her voice in my ears, but it would not come. The sleeping tablets began to have their effect.

A feeling of tiredness crept over me, and all that had happened now struck me as unreal and strangely unsubstantial, a play of shadows on the wall. I was still awake, but already I felt the soothing hand of sleep. Disconnected, meaningless words, harbingers of a coming dream, sounded in my ear — it's still raining, a voice said, and other voices mingled with it, and I started awake and was alone. A fly buzzed through the room, and down in the street a man went by and tapped the pavement once, twice, three times with his stick. I heard it, but at the same time it seemed to me that somewhere in the distance a woodpecker was hammering. Pinewoods soughed in the wind, the cry of a bird came from a long way away, once more I tried to open my eyes, and then that day came to an end.

ELEVEN

Vinzenz, standing at the bedside with my breakfast, woke me. The room was dark, all I could make out was his outline and a faint gleam from the silver milk jug. He said something, but I could not make out what he said. I wanted to go back to sleep and resisted waking up. I felt vaguely afraid of getting up and facing another day.

"What's the time?" I asked, and must have dropped off to sleep again, but not for long, perhaps only for a few seconds, because when I opened my eyes Vinzenz was still standing by my bed.

"It's past nine o'clock, sir," I heard him say.

"Impossible," I replied. "It's pitch dark."

I heard the gentle rattle of the breakfast things and footsteps shuffling across the carpet, the shutters were drawn, daylight flooded into the room and there was a painful light in my eyes.

"If you're going away, sir, it's high time you got up, if I may say so, sir," Vinzenz said from just by the window.

"Going away? Where? Why?" I asked, still half asleep. I tried to think, but all I could remember was that overnight I had packed my two suitcases. "There's plenty of time. I want you to take the luggage to the station."

"To the South Station?"

It took me quite a time to remember where I was going.

"No, I'm going to Chrudim. Let down the shutters, I want to go to sleep again."

"Good heavens!" Vinzenz suddenly exclaimed. "What do you look like, sir?"

"What's the matter now?" I said irritably and sat up in bed.

"Your forehead, sir, just over the right eye. Where did you get that, sir?"

I felt my brow.

"Let me see," I said, and Vinzenz brought me the mirror.

The sight of the gash and the dried blood surprised me, and I could not explain how I had got it.

"The staircase was not lit again last night," I said just for the sake of dismissing the subject. "Now go and let me sleep."

"And what shall I tell the gentleman, sir? He's waiting, and says it's urgent."

"What gentleman, for heaven's sake?"

"I've already told you, sir. There's a gentleman in the other room, a tall, fair gentleman who has never been here before. He says it's essential that he should talk to you, sir, and he has made himself comfortable at the desk, just as if he were at home here, sir."

"Did he mention his name?"

"His card is on the sugar bowl, sir."

I picked up the card. The name on it was Waldemar Solgrub. I read it two or three times before remembering the events of the previous day. This made me feel uncomfortable. What could the engineer be wanting at this time of day? It certainly boded nothing good. I wondered whether to excuse myself on the grounds of indisposition or simply say I was not at home. I wanted to be alone, I didn't want to see anyone or be told anything.