Death and the Maiden (19 page)

‘Did their association continue,’ asked Rheinhardt, ‘after the pregnancy was terminated?’

‘For a period of time, yes.’

‘How long?’

‘It lasted until the summer, at least.’

‘But eventually it ended?’

‘That was my impression. But I cannot be certain. It is possible that Ida maintained her association with Lueger while simultaneously becoming intimate with other gentlemen.’

Rheinhardt glanced at his friend.

‘Do you have any questions you would like to ask the professor, Herr Doctor?’

‘Yes,’ said Liebermann. ‘I do.’ He paused thoughtfully and pointed towards the piano.

‘Do you play, Herr Professor?’

Saminsky looked puzzled.

‘When I get the time’

‘I notice you own an Ehrbar.’

‘A gift from His Majesty. I attended the late empress.’

‘How do you think they compare with Bösendorfers? I’ve been told the action can be a little heavy.’

Rheinhardt closed his notebook and found that his mind was offering him a string of expletives for later use.

‘Why on earth did you ask him those ridiculous questions about his piano?’

‘The relative merits of the Ehrbar and Bösendorfer actions is a topic of great interest to me. Besides, there’s a lot you can learn about a man from such a conversation.’

‘And what, may I ask, did you learn?’

‘Enough to confirm my existing prejudices.’ The two men stepped off the paving stones and began their transit of the wide cobbled road. ‘He’s a fool. A perfect example of the “physiological psychiatrist”: a practitioner whose thinking is stunted by a slavish obedience to historical precedents, an individual who, when presented with the marvel of the human psyche, with its dark continents, power to create dreams, passions and enigmas, sees only a brain trailing threads of nerve tissue: a self-important cretin, looking backwards, resisting progress, while his discipline is straining at the leash, leaping forward, pulling medicine, philosophy and science into the future and the new century.’

‘Don’t mince your words – eh, Max?’ said Rheinhardt.

Liebermann ignored Rheinhardt’s sarcasm and continued to vent his spleen.

‘General faradisation! A singer walks into Saminsky’s consulting room with a throat problem and it doesn’t even occur to him to make a connection.’

‘I thought
globus hystericus
was associated with difficulty swallowing, not singing.’

‘An imaginary obstruction would almost certainly have affected Rosenkrantz’s ability to sing.’

‘Yes,’ said Rheinhardt. ‘I suppose it must have, even if the effect was only to damage her confidence.’

‘Remember, Oskar, we are discussing a hysterical illness, an illness which has only an
apparent
physical cause. There is, in reality, no lump in the throat, no inflammation of the larynx. The symptoms are perceived, not actual, and as a rule anything produced by the mind has meaning.’

‘All right, then, what did Fräulein Rosenkrantz’s
globus hystericus
mean?’

They reached the other side of the road. ‘Perhaps she wanted to terminate her contract at the opera house, or even cease performing entirely.’

‘Nonsense; she loved the applause, the attention.’

‘But she didn’t love the director’s tyranny and the spite of her rival divas. Sometimes when a person cannot make a momentous decision the unconscious settles the issue by other, more subtle means. The person becomes ill, providing convenient exemption from worldly obligations. The fact that Ida Rosenkrantz suffered from a condition affecting her throat is one that no competent psychiatrist would have overlooked.’

Liebermann halted and raised his index finger. ‘That is just one possibility, but there are others.’ A second finger appeared. ‘Perhaps the illness represented a punishment for a past transgression; a transgression that she could only atone for by giving up her most valuable possession, her voice.’ A third finger joined the first two. ‘Or … perhaps the imaginary obstruction in her throat allowed her to avoid performing a sexual act.’

Rheinhardt winced.

‘Really, Max …’

‘All or none of these possibilities might be true. My point is that Saminsky didn’t consider any of them. Instead, he tried to strengthen Rosenkrantz’s nervous system with electricity because that was what he was told to do when he was a student! The man is an absolute fool.’

Rheinhardt directed Liebermann’s attention back across the road to where Saminsky’s house and garden occupied a substantial plot. It was a mock-Renaissance edifice not unlike a French chateau. Pitched roofs and turrets suggested aristocratic luxury and the windows were decorated with foliated, volute gables.

‘He’s doing very well for a fool,’ said Rheinhardt. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘It’s scandalous,’ said the young doctor. ‘Freud, a genius, only lately a professor, struggles to achieve recognition, whereas Saminsky, an idiot, collects honours and gifts from the palace.’

‘Who said that life was fair?’ Rheinhardt slapped Liebermann on the back and they proceeded towards the waiting carriage.

‘I take it you will be paying Commissioner Brügel a visit this afternoon?’

‘He asked me to return with something more substantial. “A little more meat on the bone” were his exact words.’

‘Well, he won’t be disappointed.’

‘If it really transpires that the mayor …’ Rheinhardt abandoned his sentence. ‘No, one must not think that yet. It is far too early.’

The two men looked at each other and much passed between them. A strange, shared excitement, tainted with the expectation of encountering uncertain dangers.

‘You will let me know, I trust, should you succeed in getting the commissioner’s approval?’

‘Only if you promise not to talk to the mayor about pianos.’

‘You have my word. I’ll be at the hospital.’

They arrived at the carriage but when Rheinhardt pulled the door open Liebermann made no attempt to get inside.

‘Don’t you want to come back to Schottenring with me?’

‘No. I’m going to catch a train.’

‘To the hospital?’

‘No, Landstrasse.’

‘Why are you going there?’

‘To pay my respects to Mozart.’

Liebermann raised his hand, turned sharply, and walked off as though he was suddenly in a great hurry. Rheinhardt took a cigar
from his pocket, lit it, and watched his friend’s brisk progress down the gentle gradient.

‘He does it on purpose,’ the inspector muttered.

‘What did you say?’ asked the driver.

‘Nothing,’ Rheinhardt replied.

I
N THE SEVENTEEN-EIGHTIES
, Emperor Josef II had decreed that, in order to limit the spread of disease, all interments should take place outside the city walls. So it was that the St Marxer cemetery came to be situated on the south-eastern fringes of the modern metropolis. The new cemetery was so small that it soon became overcrowded and no further burials were permitted after eighteen seventy-four. Standards of maintenance were relaxed and the ensuing decades had imbued the cemetery with a desolate, forlorn aspect.

On previous occasions when Liebermann had ventured out to St Marxer, this general impression of remoteness and neglect had been assisted by the weather. An overcast sky had created an oppressive, eerie gloom. Curiously, the conditions now were, once again, identical. He had never seen, and wondered whether he ever would see, this sad little graveyard in sunlight. It seemed to exist under a pall of perpetual melancholy. Grey clouds had massed on the horizon and the fitful breeze carried with it the harsh laughter of crows.

Liebermann strolled down the principal avenue, occasionally stopping to admire the statuary: an angel, kneeling, hands clasped together, his robes falling in beautifully executed folds from his muscular body; a sweet little child, with curly locks, hands crossed over his chest, and chubby ankles exposed beneath the hem of his baggy nightshirt; an ethereal being, bearing a torch, emerging from the uneven surface of a rough-hewn slab of rock. None of the tombs
were very grand, but the understated artistry of their design was eloquent and arresting.

Turning off onto a muddy footpath, Liebermann made his way between more graves until he reached an open space containing a monument of white marble. A stricken cherub, hand held despairingly against its forehead, leaned against a broken pillar for support. The truncated column was symbolic, representing an untimely death. There was no epitaph on the pedestal, only a name in gold letters, and some dates:

W.A. Mozart
1756 – 1791

It was debatable whether the remains of the great composer really were beneath the monument. His body had been wrapped in a sack, sprinkled with lime to prevent contagion, and then tipped off a cart into a mass grave. The residual parts of those buried in this way – bones, teeth, hair – were usually dug up again after eight years. Mozart’s monument wasn’t erected until eighteen fifty-nine, by which time what was left of him would have been removed and scattered elsewhere. Still, thought Liebermann, there might be some physical remnant, some residuum, some trace yet preserved beneath the cold, wet earth.

Liebermann was, as always, deeply affected by the
Mozartgrab
. His instinct was to pray, but he was incapable of performing such a disingenuous act. He had no belief in God, saints, seraphim and cherubim or childish fantasies of immortality in a heavenly kingdom. It was all such nonsense! Consequently, he was denied a ready outlet for his natural inclination. Nevertheless, the urge to give some form to his feelings was insistent.

Listening to music was the closest Liebermann ever got to an
experience of the numinous, so, very softly, he began to sing a song that for him served as a substitute for prayer, Schubert’s
An die Musik
:

The gentle melody, croaked hoarsely above the imagined piano accompaniment, was cathartic: something inside, something tight and compact, found release. Liebermann reached out and touched the broken pillar. In a sense, its symbolism was universal. All lives were too short. He remembered a ward round he had attended as a student. The professor had presented the youthful
aspirants
with a cadaverous ninety-nine-year-old patient who was hanging on to life by a thread. It was the man’s birthday the following week, and he wanted, desperately, to reach the age of one hundred. Who was ever ready to die? There would always be one more book to read, one more person to see, one more hour or fleeting yet indispensable minute to spend.

The ninety-nine-year-old patient had died that evening.

Liebermann pressed his hand against the stone. He found himself thinking of Amelia Lydgate. He had read the book she had given him,
Elective Affinities
, a book about love. No, more than that, a book about
inevitable
love. He was constantly reminding his dear friend Rheinhardt that all human action, however trivial, had a deeper meaning. Perhaps it was time to take heed of his own counsel. Days were not in infinite supply.

Some spots of rain roused Liebermann from his deep musings. Withdrawing his hand from the truncated column, he chastised himself for becoming so self-absorbed. He had come to the St Marxer cemetery with a specific purpose in mind. Mozart was not the only
composer buried within its walls. A few days earlier, Liebermann had visited the city registry in order to discover the final resting place of David Freimark. How fitting it was that the young composer, snatched from life before his time, should be buried so close to Mozart, the patron saint of premature ends and thwarted promise.

Liebermann trudged down the waterlogged avenues, searching for the headstone. Eventually he came to a group of Jewish graves, and one of these belonged to David Freimark. It was a simple arched slab, showing only his name and dates: 1837–1863. The porous stone had crumbled, rendering a brief epitaph illegible. On the raised mound in front of the headstone was a bunch of flowers. The blooms had begun to shrivel and some petals had been scattered by the wind. Other, older bunches, desiccated stems tied together with string, were also distributed around the grave. Liebermann examined each of them in turn to see if any tags were attached. There was nothing.

Rheinhardt, the pragmatic policeman, had challenged Liebermann. What was the point of speculating about Freimark? If the composer had been murdered, all those years ago, and Brosius was also dead, what was Liebermann’s purpose?

I want to find out the truth
, thought Liebermann. He was a psychiatrist and an acolyte of Freud. His whole professional life was devoted to uncovering truths and it was not in his nature to ignore a mystery.

All these flowers …

Was it possible that Freimark still had a coterie of admirers? An artist remembered for a single work, however impressive, did not usually command such respect. No one had left a single bouquet on Mozart’s grave!