The Salzburg Tales (16 page)

Despite their discouragement over the adventure of Odilet, the two guards were impressed with Plavnica's recital, and went to round up the patrols in a hurry, since they were no longer required to watch. A band of five set out for Poverty Gully, and there ingeniously disposed their forces.

The burglar had fallen into a heavy sleep; his snoring was heard by them some time before they reached the Gully. He did not awake till the sergeant pulled him by the shoulder. Then suddenly, he grabbed the sergeant's legs, threw himself violently round, bit him on the knee and at the same moment kicked out at Plavnica. The two men fell upon the burglar and dragged him from the cave. Plavnica turned his bull's eye upon him, and they saw a convulsed red face,
disfigured with dirt, and with tears and rheum, topped by matted hair. They took him to the stream, washed his hands and face forcibly in the icy water and dragged him up the Gully while he protested unintelligibly and sobbed. Plavnica said, “The burglar is a foreigner.” His face was inflamed and puffed up and his eyes malignant: he was older than they had thought, but he had a crafty look. Presently he lapsed into silence and Plavnica whispered, “It's more dangerous: he'll try to make a break.” In his pockets they found fishing-lines with hooks attached, and a long thin rope, as well as a handkerchief folded into a triangle. Plavnica, a man of quick ideas, as we have already seen, deduced that the burglar used the fishing paraphernalia to yank light objects from open windows: the others swallowed this theory hook, line and sinker, but the sergeant, jealous, began to bait our theoretician a bit, with “And suppose he's simply a fisherman?”

All marched in high glee, but at a slow pace, the ones pulling, the others prodding. Plavnica bore the booty. At length they reached Rottenhill and their arrival on the outskirts was greeted by the cocks, dogs and kine with their chorus of a few hours before.

The policeman in charge was out when they reached the station: so they requisitioned the prisoner's flask and soon emptied it. All were then so weary that they locked the burglar up until the sergeant in charge should wake, or return, or until morning came. They rolled themselves up in their cloaks and nodded: the burglar was caught, what need to watch? To watch would be pedantic.

The prisoner began to hammer on the cell, yelling in native idiom, “Let me out, blackguards, poisoners, torturers: I am not the burglar!” “Ah,” said Plavnica, “that man will never confess!” “But you have the evidence there, in that sack,” said the sergeant coldly. “He will say it was planted there by us,” replied Plavnica cunningly. “He will be made to confess,” said the sergeant sternly. “How are you going to do that?” asked Plavnica. “Keep him standing till he begs for a chair, and neither let him lie, sit, squat, lean, stand on one foot, nor bend his knees, until he confesses.” “What is better still,”
said another policeman, “and what I've seen done to great effect, is to place a hot roast on the table at about twenty feet, no, say ten, so that he can smell it, and keep him from eating for twenty-four hours.” “But how do you keep it hot?” asked Plavnica. “They have a special heater in Kronstadt,” said the town policeman with pride. “Suppose he is a vegetarian,” demurred another: “no, there is an infallible method; take off his boots and make him run about on burrs and pricks, a man running behind him with a whip. Presently he falls and has to pick himself up again, and the pricks adhere to face and hands.” “Suppose we can't find any burrs and pricks!” said another: “no, the best thing is to tell him his wife's under arrest, and will be released when he confesses.” “He looks like a bachelor to me,” said the youngest policeman doubtfully: “no, I suggest that you cut the buttons off his braces and make him do a two-step in front of us here for a couple of hours.” “O, I couldn't bear that,” said in a timorous voice a sentimental policeman who always wore a rose: “I think the most revolting thing would be to make him go out and clean up the—hum, hum, you boys know what I mean!” “Give him a couple of emetics every hour and he'll spill his confession,” said a rude, brawny policeman. “No,” said Plavnica brightly: “keep him from sleeping. It's very simple, the Chinese used to do it. In no time at all, he'll sell you his mother's tombstone for a bit of sleep, he'll grant you all you want, he'll confess to all the murders that've been relinquished for want of evidence these last twenty years.” “Suppose he suffers from insomnia,” said the sergeant brutally.

But presently conversation languished, and hearing the burglar behind doors breathing stertorously, they decided to keep him company. In the early morning, they looked in, found him still heavily asleep, searched him and found laudanum on him. Out of a slight torpor he shook himself to denounce them one and all as troublesome asses who were so ashamed of their blank record, that they would rather arrest an honest man than have the untellable tale of their indecipherable nothingness reach Head Office. He was an honest man, he was Odilet
the deacon. At this the sergeant-in-charge exploded in a rage. “What, the impudent rascal: he's taunting us now, for arresting Odilet. But how the devil does he know? “The burglar continued to announce that he was Odilet the deacon. He even dared to laugh at them all. A secret irritation worried them all. How had he found out about Odilet? Was there a listening post in the police-station? A hole under the floor, a dictaphone in the chimney? Did he find out the times of the rounds and hear the reports of the police? They became very uneasy. Perhaps the burglar was not one but a gang.

Their inquisition went on, but the wretch insisted that he was Odilet, gave Odilet's name, age and domicile, and persisted in recalling a hundred incidents of Odilet's life which were known, he said, to everyone in the community. “Not to us,” said the sergeant, very stiff. Nothing irritates the law more than impudent mockery, and that is very natural. When a man uses his truncheon to defend our property, we should not laugh at the wart on his nose, or his wits.

At midday two inspectors came down and interrogated the detained man, who had, following the excellent advice of the sergeant, been kept standing since early in the morning. They retired to discuss his obstinacy and to have dinner. The burglar had no dinner. They decided to send a man to the deacon's rooms to get the deacon to come and confront the burglar himself. This was done. The burglar, who had been mocking up till that hour, began to change his tune: his face altered; instead of red it became rather whitish or greyish, and he looked very old indeed. Presently the news came that Odilet was out on his business and had left no message indicating his time of return. “Send for the landlady or the minister,” said the burglar, laughing bitterly. They dismissed this impudent defiance.

At 3.30 in the afternoon there entered the sergeant who had been on duty late the night before; seeing the burglar held at attention by the tired armed guard, he exclaimed, “For the love of Christ, what is it now?” The guard saluted and said, “Inspectors' orders, sir!” “Why?” said the sergeant. “The prisoner is suspected of being the burglar,”
replied the guard. At that the sergeant let out a shout, went and brought the burglar a chair, and began to laugh and laugh, at last asking between gasps, “For somebody's sweet sake, who arrested him? Do not keep me in suspense: it is too much …” The guard properly surprised, said, “I do not know.” An Inspector poked his head round the door and said, “Sergeant Busno? What is the joke?” Sergeant Busno, calming himself as well as he could, replied, “I apologise, sir, but this is twice in one night that Deacon Odilet has been arrested for burglary.” He went to the table and looked at the list of the things found in Odilet's pack, a pair of pewter candlesticks (much battered), a tin canister, etc. He began to laugh again. At that moment Odilet fell to the floor, and the farmer's son rode up to say that the burglar had entered their house in the early hours of the morning and stolen the new china clock and half a dozen silver forks got as presents with the porridge.

B
EFORE
the end of the Police Commissioner's tale, clouds had begun to gather, and a cool breeze to blow. “We will have rain this afternoon, but not yet,” said the Danish Woman, turning a weather-eye to the sky. “Tonight we will have heavy rain. How we depend on the sun! In the sun I feel like a dragon-fly or gnat, bright and restless: when even a slight shadow falls, I cannot repress a shiver of fear, as if the ice-age would suddenly dart out of the pole and freeze us to death in these attitudes. Even policemen, I see,” she continued turning to the Police Commissioner, “are sensitive to cold and dark.”

“The weather has changed: that is an excuse for a tale,” said the Master of the Day. “Will you tell it, woman from Denmark, daughter of Copenhagen? You must have tales in your blood, all you people from the Sound.”

“I am too sad, at this moment: I would be boring,” said the Danish Woman.

“Then, a boring, sad tale, for it is your turn,” commanded the Master.

 

I
N
the gloomy January of a recent year my brother Svend came home to Copenhagen to marry. He had worked two years in Germany and five in France, perfecting himself in the bookbinding trade, which he first learned at home in Denmark. He came home once a year, at Christmas, during those seven years, and on each trip he spent his time courting Karen whom he first saw when she was fifteen. She was even then pretty, voluptuous and vain, and had had lovers, they said, from the age of thirteen. Svend would believe nothing like that and was so angry at the least breath of criticism that it was not possible for us to speak of her except with praise.

Svend had one eye green and one brown, he limped badly with a diseased hip, and his complexion was yellowish because of the way he worked, stooping all day over a bench in a workshop, and all night over his own private bench in the poor hotel room he rented. He was difficult to get on with, dry, and without charm; the advances of ordinary conversation he met with silence; but he was extremely kind to the poor and miserable, he worked unremittingly, he lived chastely in the hope of marrying Karen, and from beneath his demeanour of commonplace sobriety occasionally broke the sly smiles and twinklings of a lonely drollery.

Karen got prettier, always wore beautiful shoes, gay woollen caps and sweaters, ran down the streets like a rainbow rabbit, drank strong Danish drinks like a fish, was all fleece, bravado and brightness, danced, chattered and played all the popular sports, and wore for short periods engagement rings of various designs and values. The rings disappeared, the smiles remained; yet when Svend returned from Paris for his fifth Christmas, Karen was quite kind to him and for the first time held out a promise to him. His proposal of marriage was rejected by Karen and her brothers made fun of him publicly: yet a month after he returned to Paris he got an inconsequential but
affectionate letter from her, with the postscript, “I pay no attention to my pompous stiffs of brothers: I do what I like in my own life.”

Svend said nothing to anybody, but looked at his bankbook which showed the results of his five years' saving. He had saved every year three-fifths of his salary, and all the money he made in outside work. He would have saved more but for the Christmas journey home, the new suit he bought each year to gladden the sight of Karen, the few expensive leathers he had to buy for special orders, and the medical expenses for his bad leg.

In November of the seventh year, after a feverish correspondence which made Svend quite ill with excitement, Karen accepted him, and he was to come home, not in December, but in January, to marry Karen and settle down to work in Copenhagen.

He was a good workman, but distraught. An impatient and uncouth originality made him produce works and designs which had no attraction for anybody except a few friends. When Karen saw him again and heard his patient, plodding plans for the future, she looked three times in the glass, became afraid to tie such a pretty face and body to such a poor destiny, and refused him again. Svend, in his agony, refused to release her, for a minute's space: this frightened Karen entirely, and she freed herself as she knew well how to. It was all very natural. We had always foreseen such an end. A girl like that would really rather remain unmarried than cook lentils and darn socks in an ill-lighted workshop and listen to the humble syllabus of fifty years of patience sung out by the hammer, the creaking presses and the hissing leather.

Svend became silent. Although we watched him as well as one can watch a grown man, he escaped from us and only returned to us when he was completely exhausted with walking and almost frozen: then he would lie in bed like a stone, with his face to the wall. My father and brother sermonised him: “Be a man, your life's before you: what, for a feather-brained flirt!” Svend said nothing.

I was older than Svend by ten years. I looked after him day and night, when, his hip becoming much worse, he had to remain in his
room. It was only my duty; and in the waking nightmares and sick torpors that crush the watcher through the long nights, I perceived that Svend was closely knit to me in nature and affection. It is often like that in a large family; a sister has one true brother, or sister—the others are strangers.

Svend lingered on, morose and implacable for a year. We often heard the tapping of his hammer, or the little noises of his work, as we sat downstairs, but in the presence of anyone but me he remained silent and motionless. We once swallowed our sorrow and pride and asked Karen to go to see him. He turned his back on her and looking out of the window, began whistling. I took her out, weeping, and when I came back, found him in a dead faint: yet he would not see her. Was it pride? Madness? Our family was unsympathetic in the long run to this life of recluse. I, too, when the year had run its course, I hoped he would be out and about and be himself in the Spring. The attic room, with its benches and presses, depressed me horribly: then it was so far for me to climb—three flights from the hall. I pestered Svend, in a quiet way, for which he could not reproach me, to go out and make himself a man again. He said, in a grumbling voice, “Perhaps I will: this Spring. Wait!”