The Play of Death Page 7

  “For God’s sake, Father, wake up before they burn the house down around you.” She pounded on the door again, and this time something could be heard moving inside. Something large and heavy fell to the floor, then came the sound of a breaking dish, and then someone shuffled to the door and pushed the bolt aside.

  The door opened, and the stale smell of alcohol came wafting toward them. Jakob Kuisl seemed in a very bad mood, and he glared down at Magdalena and the constable with narrow, tired eyes. If Magdalena hadn’t been his daughter, she would have been terrified of this angry-looking giant.

  “I’ve got no time now, so beat it,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “My God, Father,” Magdalena hissed. “If you could see yourself . . .”

  “Don’t have to,” he responded curtly. “What the hell do you want from me? Can’t a decent man sleep a little late on Sunday?”

  “The bells have already rung nine o’clock, and Lechner wants to see you,” Magdalena said. She pointed at Andreas, standing next to her and grinning. “The constable is going to take you with him now, and—”

  The door slammed shut.

  “Hey!” Andreas shouted as he pounded on the door with his halberd. “This is an order from the judge, Kuisl. Come out right now or—”

  “Or what, you fool?” came the voice of Jakob Kuisl from inside. “Are you going to get the hangman? You’ll have to be patient if that’s who you’re looking for.”

  Grumbling, Andreas took a seat on the bench outside the house and stared morosely at the town atop a bluff over the Lech River. The look on the constable’s face suggested he would have much preferred sitting down with his colleagues for a pint of beer to escorting a grumpy, hungover hangman to the Schongau City Hall.

  “You know how he is,” Magdalena said, trying to calm him down. “I’m sure he’ll come out soon.”

  “I’ll wait until the bell sounds the next hour,” Andreas said in a firm voice. “Until the next bell, and no longer. Then . . . then I’ll go to Lechner, and your father will really be in trouble.”

  Magdalena remained silent—she knew only too well that if her father had his mind set on something, he couldn’t be swayed, not by the constable, by Lechner, nor even by the dear Lord Himself.

  Barbara was coming toward them across the wetland, holding a basket. Today, Sunday, was her day off, and she’d spent the early morning down on the Lech with other young women, collecting sweet woodruff. When she saw Magdalena and the constable standing in front of the house, she quickened her pace.

  “What’s going on?” she asked breathlessly and set the basket down between two flower beds.

  “You probably know better than anyone,” Magdalena responded, pulling her aside where the constable wouldn’t hear them. “What was that fight about last night?” she whispered.

  Barbara rolled her eyes, then she told her older sister what had happened. Every drop of blood drained out of Magdalena’s face as she heard what Barbara had to say.

  “Father whacked Ransmayer over the head?” She groaned. “My God, that’s a lot worse than I expected. The doctor is an esteemed citizen, and Lechner is a patient of his, and so are half the members of the town council and the burgomaster himself. If Ransmayer wants, he can have Father whipped and dragged through the streets.”

  “A whoremonger! That’s what he is,” Barbara hissed. “The esteemed doctor met me again down by the river and threatened that he was going to make a lot of trouble for Father. He’ll have him beaten and driven out of town.” She smiled darkly. “But perhaps we can make some trouble for the doctor, as well.”

  “Just what do you mean by that?” Magdalena whispered.

  Barbara turned around cautiously and looked at Andreas, who was sitting on the bench, dozing in the morning sun.

  “Last night I saw Ransmayer in the old cemetery behind the church. He met someone there, a strange, foreign-looking fellow, and some money changed hands. Later, when I asked Ransmayer about it, he said it wasn’t him, but I’m sure it was.” Barbara lowered her voice. “Perhaps he’s involved in some shady deals, and if we can stick it to him, we’ve got him where we want him.”

  Magdalena smiled despairingly. Sometimes her younger sister sounded just like the little girl she had sung to sleep not all that long ago. “I’m afraid, Barbara, you’ve been reading too many of these bloody fliers with all their sensational news. Isn’t it possible the doctor was simply selling medicine to someone?”

  “In the cemetery?” Barbara shook her head. “Hardly. You’ll see . . . I’ll find out what’s going on. He’ll be sorry he crossed swords with the Kuisls.”

  “If you hadn’t been flirting with the doctor, this fight would never have happened,” Magdalena admonished her sister. “Didn’t you realize that the whole time he was just trying to pump you for information about Simon and his methods? Ransmayer’s a quack. Remember last year? Treating syphilis with mercury was Simon’s idea, and Ransmayer simply stole it.”

  “I didn’t flirt with him,” Barbara shot back, stamping the ground angrily. “You’re just like everyone else, thinking I’m trying to fling myself at men.”

  Magdalena sighed. “That’s not at all what I’m saying, but if you’d just restrain yourself a bit, we’d not always—”

  At that moment, the door to the little house behind them swung open and their father appeared, looking grim. Jakob Kuisl had cut his hair, trimmed his beard, and put on a fresh shirt. He wore a leather jerkin over his shoulders, and his boots were freshly waxed, but his face was still pale, his cheeks sunken, and his hooked nose jutted out like an eagle’s beak. Magdalena stared at her father, thinking once again how old he looked.

  But then she looked into his eyes, alert and intelligent, sparkling between the wrinkles in his face; she saw his upper arms, as big around as tree trunks, and his hands, as large as beer steins, which he clenched into fists until his knuckles cracked.

  Magdalena would have to revise her opinion. Even at the age of almost sixty and fighting a hangover, her father still looked like he could put up a good fight.

  A scornful expression played around his mouth as he turned to the constable, who was fumbling nervously with his halberd.

  “Well, then, let’s go,” the hangman grumbled. “The most important thing is that I’m well dressed for my own execution.”

  Around twenty miles away, Simon stared at the soot-stained ceiling of the Oberammergau bathhouse. He’d decided to avoid the bedroom of the deceased Kaspar Landes and spend the night instead on a hard bench next to the stove. In view of everything that had happened recently, Simon felt uneasy about using Kaspar’s bed, and in any case wanted first to fumigate the house. Who knew what really killed the old bathhouse owner?

  The bathhouse was on the outskirts of the village, not far from the Ammer River, and had a pretty little garden where the first medicinal plants of spring were beginning to sprout. Looking out a window darkened by dust and cobwebs, Simon could see the yarrow, ribwort, and lavender growing there, and the wild garlic was in full bloom, its fragrance wafting through the house.

  Judging by the cups, bottles, and pans on the shelves alongside the tile stove, Simon knew that Kaspar Landes was a typical bathhouse keeper. The whole place was teeming with the kinds of ingredients one would find in the so-called dirt pharmacies, among them snakes and toads preserved in alcohol, fat taken from the corpses of executed criminals, and the usual mumia, brown powder from the crushed remains of ancient Egyptian mummies, viewed as a universal remedy. Simon, too, had such things in Schongau, not because he believed in their effectiveness, but because his patients expressly asked for these medicines. Sometimes he even used crushed skull fragments in his pills and had considerable success treating epilepsy with that.

  All night, Simon had been agonizing about whether it had been a wise decision to remain in Oberammergau as the interim bathhouse keeper. His family really needed the money, and in this way at least he got the chance to stay longer with Peter. On the other ha
nd, it probably meant he’d lose more clients in Schongau to the quack doctor, Ransmayer, not to mention that Magdalena would really give him hell. Early that morning he’d written her a letter and handed it to a messenger. He’d asked for understanding, but at the same time realized how much trouble it would cause her.

  There was of course another reason Simon was determined to stay here, which became clear to him over the course of the night.

  It was that crucified man.

  As so often in his life, Simon was gripped by an almost childlike curiosity, and once again found himself confronted by a riddle. This was a trait he shared with his grumpy father-in-law, Jakob Kuisl. What exactly was going on here in Oberammergau? A cloak of fear and hate had settled over the village, something he had sensed so clearly on the street the day before, but especially at the strange postmortem in St. Ann’s Chapel—everyone seemed so hostile toward everyone else.

  Simon stretched, stood up from the hard bench, and went over to the stove to stir the coals. Before he could think of what the new day would bring, he needed his coffee. He loved the little black beans he always carried with him whenever he was traveling. Recently he’d even bought himself a little hand grinder. Carefully he ground the beans, put them in a pot, and poured boiling water over them, and at once an aroma arose that sharpened his mind. With a steaming cup of the hot brew in his hands, he sat back down at the table, closed his eyes, and sipped the hot brew. The first sip was always the best. After his coffee, he’d look in on Peter, and then . . .

  The front door squeaked, and he could hear footsteps in the hallway. Simon was startled and put down the cup he was holding. Who could it be? Perhaps Georg Kaiser, stopping by with Peter? But he would probably have knocked. Simon couldn’t help thinking how people were said to scurry through the house for weeks after their demise. He shook his head.

  This village is making me crazy . . .

  Suddenly the footsteps stopped, as if the visitor had just noticed there was someone in the house. Simon held his breath, but now it was deadly quiet out in the hall as well. Carefully, he got to his feet and reached for the candlestick standing on the table. Thus armed, he crept toward the door and depressed the latch.

  At that moment, a plank beneath his feet creaked, and he heard someone running down the hallway and out of the house. When Simon reached the hallway, he got a quick glimpse of a figure at the front door, who turned right onto the narrow lane leading down to the Ammer. It was a large man with several tufts of fire-red hair protruding from beneath a wide-brimmed hat.

  “Hey, you!” Simon called after him as he ran down the hallway. “Stop! What the hell are you doing here?”

  He stepped on a pot of fat left by the doorway for people to shine their shoes with and he slipped, landing flat in the mud outside the door. By the time he had scrambled to his feet, the stranger had disappeared.

  Disgustedly, he brushed off his clothing, which was now soiled with horse droppings. This was the only suit of clothes he had with him. If he really intended to stay a while in Oberammergau, he’d have to pay a bit more attention to his appearance. He didn’t even want to think of being forced to wear the clothing of the deceased bathhouse keeper. He looked cautiously right and left down the muddy lane at some children dressed in rags playing amid the cowpats. They just looked at him curiously.

  “Did you happen to see the man who just went storming out of the house?” he asked. But the children didn’t answer. They just glared at him suspiciously and went back to playing with their marbles and hoops.

  “Thanks so much for the information,” he mumbled. “You children here in Oberammergau are really good kids.”

  He returned to the house and was just about to enter the main room when he noticed something strange alongside the fireplace.

  It was a small carved wooden figurine.

  It caught his eye because, in contrast to the dirty pots and pans, it appeared spotless and new. He stopped to think—he couldn’t remember having seen the finger-sized figurine earlier.

  He picked it up and looked at it more closely. It represented a sort of priest with a shroud-like headdress, and when he turned it over he noticed two short Latin words scratched on the bottom.

  ET TU . . .

  “And you?” Simon murmured. “What in the world . . .”

  Again the front door squeaked. Simon was startled, put the figurine aside, and turned around. Had the stranger returned? He was relieved to see that this time it really was Georg Kaiser. The schoolteacher was carrying a large basket filled to the top with food, with a fat hock of ham sticking out.

  “Old Faistenmantel told me to bring you this,” Kaiser said. “A sort of housewarming gift. The town council chairman was clearly impressed with your remarks yesterday in the chapel. Since it’s Sunday and there’s no school today, I thought I’d pay you a visit.”

  He paused upon seeing how upset Simon looked and noticed his mud-spattered clothing.

  “Did you fall down outside?” he asked.

  Simon nodded. “I was trying to catch a man who broke into the house, but unfortunately I didn’t get a very good look at him. Do you have any idea who that might be? He was wearing a soft floppy hat and had bright red hair.”

  “A floppy hat?” Kaiser shrugged. “Perhaps an itinerant peddler—there are some now in the village. Maybe the rascal heard the bathhouse keeper was dead and thought he could fill up his knapsack.” He laughed. “Well, no doubt he was more afraid of you than you were of him.”

  Simon waved dismissively and led Kaiser into the main room, where they sat down at the table. “You’re right,” he said. “How foolish of me.” He stared with growing appetite at the basket full of ham, cheese, bread, and wine.

  “Help yourself,” said Kaiser. “Faistenmantel wants to have a strong, healthy bathhouse keeper and medicus in town.”

  Simon dug in eagerly. For a moment he considered telling Kaiser about the carved figurine, but then the entire matter felt almost as silly to him as the supposed attempted burglary. With a full mouth, he turned to his old friend.

  “How is my son?” he asked.

  Kaiser laughed. “He sits in my library and has lost all sense of time. You don’t have to worry about Peter. I know that I’ll have to go and get more books every so often; he will have read all my books very soon.”

  Simon nodded contentedly. It was good to hear that Peter felt comfortable with Kaiser. Evidently he needed his father less than Simon had expected.

  “Now exactly what does this Faistenmantel do?” he asked after a while, as he continued eating. “Chairman of the city council is not a job, after all.”

  “He’s a merchant in Oberammergau,” Kaiser replied. Simon gave him a quizzical look, and the schoolteacher continued. “As you have perhaps already noticed, there’s much about this village that’s different from what you’d find in other Bavarian towns. First of all, many of the residents make their living not as farmers, but as woodcarvers.”

  “And you can make a living at that?” Simon asked with surprise.

  Kaiser nodded. “Yes, and a rather good one, too. It all started with Oberammergauers making carved crucifixes and figurines of saints that they sold to pilgrims on their way to the nearby Ettal Monastery. The soil is poor here, and that was often all they were able to do to make money, but over time the Oberammergauers turned it into a good business. They carve crucifixes, puppets, jumping jacks, animals, and all sorts of things. The little figurines are sold as far away as Venice and Amsterdam. Konrad Faistenmantel organizes the sales and in return buys tools, wood, and food for the woodcarvers. They work for him, and he makes a good profit.”

  “At least enough, it appears, that he can play God here,” Simon replied as he sipped on his coffee, which in the meantime had cooled down. He pointed at the pot on the hearth. “Would you like a cup, too?”

  Kaiser smiled and shook his head. “You offered me that stuff a few months ago when you came for a visit. It’s too bitter for me—I really don�
�t know what you see in it.”

  “It helps me think, but I suspect by now I’ve become as addicted to it as some people are to brandy.” Simon took another long sip and fell silent. His friend’s remark reminded him how seldom they saw each other, even though they lived no more than a day’s journey apart.

  After a slight pause, Simon continued. “I couldn’t help noticing yesterday how Faistenmantel treated the Ammergau judge, this Johannes Rieger. Evidently he knows something about Rieger that has to be kept quiet, something that might have sent anyone else off to prison.”

  “Anyone but Konrad Faistenmantel, who for that reason was able to advance the schedule for the Passion play. Faistenmantel is assigning the roles, providing the costumes, and even paying a lot for the services of a new medicus.” Kaiser winked at him. “He wants to make sure no other shadow falls over the play.”

  “The death of his own son is surely more than enough,” Simon said bitterly.

  Kaiser shrugged. “Actually, the two of them never got along—they were too different. Dominik was Konrad Faistenmantel’s youngest son, and the father always looked at him as a failure, though he was in fact a real artist. There were not many people as skilled as Dominik in the use of gouges and woodcarving knives.” The schoolmaster smiled sadly. “His father must have loved him in some fashion, or he wouldn’t have gotten this role for him in the play.”

  “What did Faistenmantel mean when he said his son was just spouting nonsense?” Simon asked.

  “Oh, Dominik was always saying he wanted to leave this place and go to Venice or the New World, but his father never gave him even a kreuzer, so he couldn’t do that.” Kaiser stood up and started putting the food on the shelves alongside the pickled snakes and toads. With his back to Simon, he continued. “In the meantime, Faistenmantel has persuaded the judge that young Hans Göbl is behind it all, and this morning Rieger took the lad back with him to the monastery in Ettal.” Kaiser sighed deeply. “I’m slowly running out of actors to play the part of Christ.”