Part 44 (1/2)

'That is all there is to know!'

I could barely see his outline through the gauze which masked my eyes.

'Don't you want to know what I discovered about you, Herr Magistrate Hanno Stiffeniis of Lotingen?'

There it was again. He answered me with a question, throwing my arguments arrogantly in my face as if they were his own. What more did he have to hide? Why torment me before he murdered me? Was this another aspect of his malevolence? First, he would amuse himself. Then, he would kill with whatever came to hand, wherever he happened to be. A windswept beach, a stinking pigsty, on the muddy banks of the River Pregel, in the tiny house of Narcizus Rickert.

I felt a tremor shake my limbs. Having killed me, he would take what he desired. Cutting, hacking, carrying off the bits that fired his madness. I had to humour him. And yet, exasperation got the better of me.

'What can you know of me?' I protested. 'I told you very little when we met in Nordcopp. You know only what les Halles and the French have decided to let you hear. A Prussian magistrate sent from Lotingen to investigate the crimes of which you are guilty.'

I heard the squeak of tensing leather.

He seemed to be crouching close beside me.

His breath was warm. It penetrated the cloth that clung to my face.

'I saw the newspapers in your room, but they could tell you nothing . . .'

'I knew of you before they sent you to the coast,' he stressed. 'I learnt of you from a different source. A most reliable one . . .'

The odour of his body was stale, musky. There was not the slightest hint of wax. Frau Poborovsky had said that she could smell it always on his hands, hair, and clothes. He had not been to work in the last ten days. Had the smell faded away? Had he sloughed it off, as snakes are said to change their skins?

'You went to the Kantstudiensaal yesterday,' he said. 'I followed you there. You did not find what you were looking for. That particular ma.n.u.script had been removed for safe-keeping, let us say.'

'You stole it. Then, you sent Ludvigssen those crushed insects . . .'

'Could Kant's legacy be trusted to a drunkard?' he snarled suddenly. 'The French would have closed the place. The Albertina is in their hands already. They have laid their greedy paws on everything else. Now, instead, the Kantstudiensaal is open. Kant's books and his ma.n.u.scripts are cared for in the manner that they merit. The true spirit of Prussia will be preserved. For ever . . .'

'Like flies in amber?' I hissed.

The dark shape of his head loomed close to my face.

He let out a heavy sigh.

'Now you are beginning to make some sense, Herr Stiffeniis.'

'That doc.u.ment you took from the archive,' I said. 'It was something Immanuel Kant had written about amber. Why did you remove it? Why remove that doc.u.ment, and no other?'

The sound of our breathing was audible.

I sucked air in gasps through the stifling gauze; he breathed slowly, regularly. There was no doubt in my mind. My life could be snuffed out at any instant, and at the slightest provocation.

'I thought you might have understood by now. Professor Kant was the first to comprehend the significance of amber,' he said at last. 'He saw the way ahead. Late in life, but he saw it. He understood what others have always failed to see. What you have failed to see . . .'

His voice faded away.

'I read the note in Ludvigssen's catalogue,' I said. 'There was nothing of a scientific nature in what Kant had to say.'

'Regarding a piece of amber shown to me by Wasianski,' Vulpius recited precisely. 'Kant had never taken much of an interest in the natural sciences. But when Wasianski showed him that unusual piece, it was as if the golden light of the amber had illuminated him. The note is very short-two pages-you are right about that. But what intuition! No one has ever explained who and what we Prussians are. Nor what Prussia is. But then, Professor Kant turned his mind upon those questions.'

I heard the sc.r.a.pe of a boot, the swish of clothes as Vulpius moved away. Some moments later, the sharp crackle of a piece of folded paper being opened.

'And you hold the key to his meaning, Stiffeniis.'

He began to read, and I was obliged to listen.

Was it the confusion in my head? The pain in my skull? The m.u.f.fling curtain about my face? His voice worked its way inside my brain. Professor Kant might have been reading to me from beyond the grave.

'Wasianski showed me something memorable today,' he read.

I thought at first that he had caught a b.u.t.terfly, the way he held it tightly trapped inside his closed fist. And yet, it is winter. Some worm, or creeping thing, I thought, as we sat together before the parlour fire. As a special favour, Wasianski reported, a friend had left an object in his keeping for the day. Wasianski wanted me to see it. The next morning, the owner intended to sell the treasure in the Kneiphof district.

'Dear Kant,' Wasianski began, 'have you ever seen the like of this?'

His voice was trembling with excitement as he showed me what was hidden in his palm: a piece of amber, the size of a large plum. It glowed like a small transparent sun, the glistening, yellow colour of honey fresh from the hive.

And there was something darker at the core . . .

It took my breath away.

'It is from the Baltic,' Wasianski said. 'Just look what it contains!'

I had never seen anything so luminous. A living flame enclosed within, it seemed to spark and flare as it refracted light. I had seen slight fragments of vegetation and minute flies contained in shards of amber, but never anything to equal it.

The insect swept every other thought aside. Not for an hour. Nor a day. But for many weeks altogether.

Had such a brute once taken wing on Prussian winds? It was horrid, fascinating. Longer than my thumb, it might have been made of the hardest steela suit of armour with six legs, a single horn, two sets of wings.

Where had it come from? When had it lived? What dangers had it outfaced before it drowned in liquid amber? Invincible, aggressive, cruel, there was no hint of conscience in that design. It was fas.h.i.+oned for survival. Nothing more.

Could G.o.d invent such a thing?

'It is our history,' I said.

But even as I spoke, another thought was taking shape in my mind. An idea which induced a sense of stupor and fright. Planted there by a young man who came to see me recently, having just returned from France. His words echoed in my head; that monster of Nature glistened in my hand. I saw what Wasianski could not see. I saw what no man had ever seen before, I think. I alone had spoken to the youth. I alone had listened, as he walked with me around the Castle Walk that foggy afternoon. He had opened up his heart to me. I had looked into his thoughts, and what I saw there was dark, cruel, primitive. I had the same impression as I gazed upon that insect trapped in amber.

The fixation will not let me be.

Is it possible, I ask myself? His dark soul; that extinct creature frozen in time? Not a vision of the past, but of a possible future?

I must speak to him again. I must know what has become of him.

I stare at the creature trapped inside this stone, and I see a visible darkness. What would happen if this monster were to free itself and fly away? What if it is nesting now in his mind and in his soul? What would the consequences be for all of us?'

'This doc.u.ment is dated November 1803,' Vulpius added. 'That is, a short time before the killings began in Konigsberg, and Professor Kant sent for you. You will see the connection, I think. When the French ordered you to go to Nordcopp, it seemed as if the ghost of Kant had issued you a further challenge. But you did not see it that way. Betraying yourself and the ”darkness” that Kant had seen inside you, you set yourself to help the French, enabling them to possess our amber and crush our primitive hearts.'

And for that sin I must pay with my life.

And yet, his reasoning was false. I had not betrayed Kant. Nor helped the French to take possession of my country.