'Dr. Gruen?' he asked.
For a moment I had to remind myself it was me he was talking to. I nodded. He bowed in a courtly kind of way.
'I am Dr. Bekemeier,' he said. He motioned me into the office behind him and continued speaking in a voice that creaked like the door on a Transylvanian castle. 'Please, Herr Doktor. Step this way.'
I went into his office where a well-behaved fire was burning quietly, as fires in lawyers' offices always do, for fear of being put out.
'May I take your coat?' he said.
I shrugged it off and watched him hang it on a mahogany hat stand. Then we sat down on opposite sides of a partner's desk--I on a leather button-backed chair that was the little brother of the one he sat on.
'Before we proceed,' he said, 'you will forgive me if I trouble you to confirm your identity, Herr Doktor. I am afraid that the sheer size of your late mother's estate requires an extra amount of caution. Given these unusual circumstances I am sure you understand that it behooves me to be quite sure of your bona fides. May I look at your passport, please?'
I was already reaching for Gruen's passport. Lawyers, underneath their library-pale skins, are all the same. They cast no shadows and they sleep in coffins. I handed it over without a word.
He opened the passport and scrutinized it, turning every page before coming back to the photograph and the description of the bearer. I let him roll his eyes across my face and then the photograph without comment. To have said anything at all might have invited suspicion. People always get gabby when they're pulling a stroke and start to lose their nerve. I held my breath, enjoyed feeling the fumes of the cognac still inside my tubes, and waited. Eventually he nodded, and handed the passport back to me.
'Is that it?' I asked. 'Formal identification of the body and all that?'
'Not quite.' He opened a file on his desktop, consulted something typewritten on the top sheet of paper and then closed the file again. 'According to my information, Eric Gruen suffered an accident to his left hand, in 1938. He lost the two upper joints of his little finger. May I please see your left hand, Herr Doktor?'
I leaned forward and laid my left hand on his blotter. There was a smile on my face where, perhaps, there ought to have been a frown, for it now struck me as odd that the injury to Gruen's hand should have occurred so long ago, and that he hadn't made more of it in connection with the whole procedure of my identification as him. Somehow I had formed the now apparently incorrect impression that he had lost his little finger during the war, at the same time he had lost his spleen and the use of his legs. There was also the fact that the lawyer, Dr. Bekemeier, had been so very precise about the injury to Gruen's little finger. And it occurred to me now that but for this detail there could have been no positive identification of myself as Eric Gruen. In other words, my finger, or lack of it, had been much more important than I could have known.
'Everything seems to be in order,' he said, smiling at last. Which was the first time I noticed that he had no eyebrows. And that the hair on his head appeared to be a wig. 'There are of course some papers for you to sign, as the next of kin, Herr Gruen. And also so that you can establish the line of credit with the bank until the will has been administered. Not that I expect there will be any problems. I drew the will up myself. As you may know, your mother banked with Spaengler's all her life, and naturally they will be expecting you to come in and attend to the withdrawals you specified in your telegram. You'll find the manager, Herr Trenner, to be most helpful.'
'I'm sure I will,' I said.
'Am I correct in thinking that you're staying at the Erzherzog Rainer, Herr Doktor?'
'Yes. Suite three twenty-five.'
'A wise choice, if you don't mind my saying so. The manager, Herr Bentheim, is a friend of mine. You must keep us both informed if there's anything we can do to make your stay in Vienna more agreeable.'
'Thank you.'
'The funeral service will be held at eleven o'clock tomorrow, at Karlskirche. It's just a few blocks northeast of your hotel. At the opposite end of Gusshausstrasse. And the interment immediately afterward in the family vault at the Central Cemetery. That's in the French sector.'
'I know where the Central Cemetery is, Dr. Bekemeier,' I said. 'And while I remember, thank you for making all the arrangements. As you know, Mother and I didn't exactly get on.'
'It was my honor and privilege to do so,' he said. 'I was your mother's lawyer for twenty years.'
'I imagine she had alienated everyone else,' I said, coolly.
'She was an old woman,' he said, as if this was all the explanation that was required for what had happened between Eric Gruen and his mother. 'Even so, her death was still somewhat unexpected. I had thought she would be alive for several years yet.'
'So she didn't suffer at all,' I said.
'Not at all. Indeed, I saw her the day before she died. At the Vienna General Hospital, on Garnisongasse. She seemed fit enough. Bedridden, but quite cheerful, really. Most curious.'
'What is?'
'The way death comes, sometimes. When we are not expecting it. Will you be attending, Dr. Gruen? The funeral?'
'Of course,' I said.
'Really?' He sounded a little surprised.
'Let bygones be bygones, that's what I say.'
'Yes, well, that's an admirable sentiment,' he said, as if he didn't quite believe it himself.
I took out a pipe and began to fill it. I had started smoking the pipe in an effort to look and feel more like Eric Gruen. I didn't much like pipes, or all the paraphernalia that went with them, but I couldn't think of a better way of convincing myself I was Eric Gruen, short of buying a wheelchair. 'Is there anyone else coming to the funeral I might know?' I asked, innocently
'There are one or two old servants coming,' he said. 'I'm not sure if you would know them or not. There will be others, of course. The Gruen family name still resonates here in Vienna. As might be expected. I assume you won't wish to lead the mourners yourself, Herr Dr. Gruen.'
'No, that would be too much,' I said. 'I shall remain very much in the background throughout the proceedings.'
'Yes, yes, that would probably be best,' he said. 'All things considered.' He leaned back in his chair and, with his elbows on the armrests, brought the ends of his fingers together like the poles of a tent. 'In your telegram you said that it was your intention to liquidate your holdings in Gruen Sugar.'
'Yes.'
'Might I suggest that the announcement be delayed until perhaps you have left the city?' he said carefully. 'It's just that such a sale will attract a certain amount of attention. And with you being as private a man as you are, some of that attention may, perforce, be unwelcome. Vienna is a small city. People talk. The very fact of your being here at all will occasion a certain amount of comment perhaps. Perhaps even, dare I say, some notoriety.'
'All right,' I said. 'I don't mind delaying the announcement for a few days. As you said.'
He tapped his fingers together nervously as if my presence in his office unsettled him. 'Might I also inquire if it is your intention to remain in Vienna for very long?'
'Not very long,' I said. 'I have a private matter to attend to. Nothing that need concern you. After that I shall probably go back to Garmisch.'
He smiled in a way that left me thinking of a small stone Buddha. 'Ah, Garmisch,' he said. 'Such a lovely old town. My wife and I went there for the Winter Olympics, in 'thirty-six.'
'Did you see Hitler?' I asked, managing at last to light my pipe.
'Hitler?'
'You remember him, surely? The opening ceremony?'
The smile persisted but he let out a sigh, as if he had adjusted a small valve on his spats. 'We were never very political, my wife and I,' he said. 'But I think we did see him, albeit from a great distance away.'
'Safer that way,' I said.
'It all seems such a long time ago, now,' he said. 'Like another life.'
'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,' I said. 'Yes, I know exactly what you mean.'
A silence ensued and finally Bekemeier's smile evaporated like a smudge on a windowpane.
'Well,' I said. 'I had better sign these papers, hadn't I?'
