Part 46 (1/2)

A naked man, life-sized, was reclining on his back. He might have been peacefully sleeping, except for the fact that his snaking innards were exposed to view. No man could survive for long in such a state. Intestines had uncoiled onto his chest, arms and lower trunk to form a sort of vast amphitheatre. Deep down in the centre of the arena itself, the complex mechanisms by which the stomach functions were on display.

I raised my hand, covered my mouth, swallowed hard.

No blood, fluid, bile or mucus obscured the horrid spectacle. As a teaching instrument, the inanimate wax model would undoubtedly be useful. The statue was a monument to the combined miracles of Art and Nature. I recognised the hand that had fas.h.i.+oned the plaster casts of Erika Linder's limbs. There was the same precision in the detail, the same impeccable realism. But surely this was not the piece that he had been talking of.

I threw back the second dust-sheet, and held up the lantern.

An aged woman.

A head of braided hair-was it real?-a wrinkled face. From the point of her chin to the soles of her feet, the skin had been stripped away from the body, revealing the bare bones of the skeleton beneath. Large red-and-blue knots bulged along her arms and legs, together with the major blood vessels which connected them to her heart and lungs.

Where were the muscles?

It was a sort of abstract of a human corpse, and I recalled the French word that DeWitz had used to describe the models for the Albertina. ecorche. The French verb means 'to flay; to lay bare.' The effect was more p.r.o.nounced in this particular instance. The wax model ill.u.s.trated in infinite detail the cyclic flow of blood around and through the avenues of the body. Anything which was irrelevant had been eliminated for didactic purposes.

I pulled away the third sheet.

Relief. Disappointment. Nausea. I felt all three together. DeWitz had spoken of the governing principle in the making of such models. Here was vivid evidence of how they were constructed. A wire frame had been shaped in the figure of a child-the unfinished piece appeared to be a boy aged eleven or twelve. Lying comfortably on his left flank, the skin and fat had been removed from his arms, legs and stomach, exposing his maturing muscles, and the conformation of his developing s.e.xuality. Finer details in the form of the internal organs and the bodily ma.s.s were being added as each item became available, though the calves and the feet were still no more than bare metal wire.

Was this what Heinrich-Vulpius wanted me to see?

He had been so intensely mystical when he spoke of it, yet I saw nothing which could represent in any way the rebirth of a fallen nation.

I replaced the dust-sheet over the boy, and turned to the last table. I hesitated for an instant, then threw the sheet back.

A naked woman.

She was large-boned, muscular, strikingly beautiful.

I had seen such women on the coast. Their robust yet graceful physical structure, the harmony of the hips, their well-shaped legs and the long muscle-honed thighs. Indeed, I corrected myself, I had seen many of them.

Before, and after, death.

The face was only partially finished. It was a miracle of gory detail. The skin had been stripped away-perhaps, it had yet to be put on-revealing the underlying features, the muscles, fat and tissue, which would give it form. The upper teeth and the lower jaw were missing.

Kati Rodendahl . . .

A large triangular section was lacking from the throat and the larynx.

Ilse Bruen in the pigsty . . .

The women in Nordcopp had told the truth about the artist who was obsessed by the anatomical perfection of their bodies. Heinrich had picked them out, noted the pieces that he was searching for, murdered them at his own convenience, then brought the specimens to Konigsberg. He had still not found the time or the opportunity to model them in wax. I felt a tremor of revulsion course through my body. Were the missing parts kept in jars of distilled wine, together with the other creatures, in the attic of Frau Poborovsky?

Was it all so simple?

A maniac obsessed by a particular type of woman, possessed of the necessary artistic skill to reproduce her model, desperate only for examples on which to base his work? What was the finality of it all? What could he hope to achieve? I could see nothing that was revolutionary in the scheme. Could he hope to defeat the French army and send them packing with a wax model of a woman, no matter how perfect he might make her?

I pulled the sheet away entirely, exposing the figure.

The wax woman was naked below the waist. Her legs were long, graceful, strong, but the figure was incomplete. In the triangle where her legs joined her trunk, there was a large gaping cavity. I felt a painful jolt.

The womb.

I remembered something that DeWitz had told me about his modeller.

'He is a perfectionist. He'll not invent a thing when Nature can be called upon to provide a perfect specimen. He recently mentioned the case of a woman who will certainly die before her time is up. He called her the new Eve . . .'

A pregnant woman, her belly swollen with the child that she was carrying. The one thing missing: an unborn foetus.

Edviga Lornerssen.

I recalled the way she asked about my wife. I saw again the gentle and protective way in which she laid her hands in her lap as she listened to my replies. She had even mentioned the fact that she feared for the effect that cold sea-water might have upon a child. I had had the right intuition: Edviga was asking about Helena, but she was thinking of her own baby.

Edviga Lornerssen was pregnant. She had gone to speak to Dr Heinrich. He knew about the baby growing inside her. The perfect foetus for the perfect Eve.

He would strike again in Nordcopp.

35.

'WHAT DID you see there?'

The voice of les Halles was brusque.

I stood at his side, looking down on Nordcopp beach. Everything had changed during my short absence. A dozen braziers had been set up near the waterline. These fiery beacons cast a pink glaze on the rippling black waves that broke upon the s.h.i.+ngle. Thirty paces out, the steam-pumps of the coq du mer were chattering furiously. Piston-driven rods flew up and down, sucking up the sea-bed, sending the sludge hissing through a series of filters, spewing the water back to where it had come from. A rotating canvas belt fed stones and shale into a long, narrow flume which carried it onto the beach, where the detritus cascaded noisily into a metal tray. The amber-girls were working there, throwing unwanted pebbles higher up the beach, dropping fragments of amber into sacks which dangled around their necks. Their nets and spears were gone. They were obliged to work bare-armed, bare-foot. French soldiers pressed close around them, making sure that nothing was stolen.

Once, they had seemed to me like G.o.ddesses.

Now, they looked like humbled slaves.

Colonel les Halles surveyed the field of battle. Sweat rolled off his brow and trickled down his chin, running under his collar like dark rivulets of blood. His cheeks were gaunt, his cheekbones scuffed with oil where he had tried to brush away the sweat with the back of his filthy hands. His face was the painted mask of a warrior. He was fighting the final skirmish in his war against the Baltic Sea. He had violated the sea-bed, illuminated the sh.o.r.e, triumphed over gravity with his ingenious pipes and pumps. His machines would work all day, and through the night, digging endlessly for the precious amber that was buried beneath the shallow waters.

'Well, Stiffeniis?'

His patience was short. His mind was on his own task, not on mine.

I began to tell him what I had done the minute I arrived in Nordcopp.

'Why didn't you report your discoveries to me?' he snapped. 'He could have murdered you, as well.'

His questions were intelligent, rational. My behaviour had been neither. I had ridden hard from Konigsberg. Three hours in the saddle, the horse almost lame by the time that I reached the town. I had gone immediately to Heinrich's house. Afterwards, I reported what I had found to Sergeant Tessier in the North Tower. Five minutes later, aboard an open carriage with an armed escort, I was racing through the dunes towards the sea and Colonel les Halles.

'You cannot go alone,' Tessier grumbled.

But I saw the truth in his eyes. He did not trust me. I was a Prussian. Prussians were devious, dangerous. I must be carried directly to his superior, while he went off to verify what I had told him. For all he knew, I might be mad.

'Why did you enter that house alone?' les Halles demanded.