Hefner shook his head.
The stranger then produced a string of colorful and quite shocking insults, each one delivered with an almost gleeful relish. Occasionally he would slip back into his native tongue-presumably because he could not find a German word sufficiently plosive to express the desired degree of opprobrium that his insult required. He spat out harsh consonants and flattened vowels. From this cataract of curses and maledictions the nature of the gentleman's accusation gradually became clear. Hefner had misled his kind, good-hearted sister, taken advantage of her, and in doing so had ruined her good reputation.
The eighteenth had been stationed in Hungary that summer at a godforsaken outpost on the banks of the Tisza. There had been absolutely nothing to do there, and Hefner had been forced to relieve his boredom with a few inconsequential assignations: a milkmaid, a doctor's wife… and yes, there had been a countess, a countess whose family had fallen upon hard times. What was her name?
That was it-Zaborszky.
Countess Borbala Zaborszky.
Hefner was in no mood for a confrontation of this kind. It had all been such a long time ago-he could hardly remember the woman.
“Look, my friend,” Hefner said, somewhat dismissively. “I think you have the wrong man.”
The stranger shook his head. “No. There has been no mistake.”
Languidly-almost lazily-he pulled at the fingers of his glove, stretching the material covering each digit in turn. Eventually the thin, adhesive material snapped off, contracting in the process. The stranger then raised the glove up, with its pathetic cluster of drooping, shriveled udders, and said, “Consider yourself slapped.”
A small group of well-dressed men had gathered close by. They too had probably been to the opera. The stranger's raised glove was enough to signal what was happening.
In matters of honor there were three categories of slur. The simple slight, the direct insult, and the blow or slap. The first two might be resolved without bloodshed-but not the third.
Hefner executed a brief bow, then he and Zaborszky exchanged the names of their seconds. The uhlan made his way back to the Cafe Haynau, where he found Renz and Trapp at their usual table. They were immediately dispatched to the Cafe Museum, instructed to liaise with the stranger's seconds: Doctor Joska Dekany and Herr Otto Braun. “Tan ta-na-na-na, ni-na ne-na”
Mathilde rotated her hips provocatively in front of the doctor's face. The men sitting at adjacent tables began to clap and yell. “Lipje su Bahtrh p drva kxleci Nego Ri fe injice v htmarah svkci” The girls from Bakar collecting wood for the fire Are more beautiful than the girls from Rijeka Sitting in solemn attire…
The door of the cafe swung open, and Renz and Trapp appeared. The smoke eddied around their feet and a few stray snowflakes followed them in.
“Well?” asked Hefner.
The two men slumped down and removed their caps. Snow had collected on their shoulders.
“Yes, all done,” Trapp replied.
“Where is it to be?”
“In a private room above Kryschinski's whorehouse.”
“What?” Hefner looked from Trapp to Renz, as if Trapp had declared himself a lunatic and could no longer be trusted.
“They insisted on an American duel,” said Renz.
“An American duel!” cried Hefner. “And you agreed?”
“When we left, you said anything-it was all the same to you.”
“God in heaven, I can't believe it!” said Hefner shaking his head. “An American duel…”
Trapp and Renz exchanged worried glances.
“Renz is right,” said Trapp. “You did say anything. It's what you always say.”
“But an American duel…”
A loud cheer went up, and the three men turned to see the busty chanteuse straddling the lap of the regimental doctor. “Tan ta-na-na-na, ni-na ne-na”
“Well,” said Hefner, “at least this time we won't be needing his services.”
59
“FASTER!”
The driver cracked his whip and yelled another imprecation at the horses. Inside, the portly inspector felt like a mariner caught in some dreadful storm, his little vessel being tossed from one wave to the next. Rheinhardt tried to peer out of the window but could see very little. Covered shop fronts and yellow gaslights flashed past. He gave up and closed his eyes. The vestigial tatters of an interrupted dream were still flapping around, incomprehensibly, in his mind.
A great ballroom, viewed from above.
Couples rotating in triple time beneath a glorious chandelier, each pair like cogwheels in a great machine, endlessly turning. And then a sentence, spoken by a pleasant, pensive, world-weary voice: “No one escapes The Eternity Waltz, my friend. As you will see, it goes on forever.”
The Eternity Waltz? What would Max make of that?
A pothole in the road made Rheinhardt's buttocks part company with the seat. He landed with a dull thump, which returned him, somewhat rudely, to the present. The carriage shook and Rheinhardt's forehead bumped against the glass. He cursed loudly.
Only twenty minutes earlier he had been fast asleep in a warm, comfortable bed. A tactile memory teased his peripheral nerves: his wife's soft, accommodating body, the reassuring feel of her breasts beneath the cotton of her nightdress. Something of her scent still lingered in his nostrils, as homely as freshly baked bread and as sweet as honeysuckle.
The telephone had rung out with unusual harshness. The rotating couples in his dream had spun into oblivion and he had sat bolt upright, staring into the shadows, his heart pounding as loudly and insistently as the kettledrum in a Brahms symphony. A sense of horror had overwhelmed him long before his critical faculties had engaged sufficiently to invest the impatient bell with meaning. Eventually, though, the horror connected with a name: Salieri.
The carriage slowed and came to a halt. Immediately, Rheinhardt opened the door and stepped down. The horses snorted violently and rapped the cobbles with their restive hooves. Flecks of foam had appeared on their steaming haunches. The driver leaped off his box and pressed some crystallized sugar between the lips of the nearest animal.
“Fast enough for you?”
“Yes,” said the inspector, bluntly.
“Another murder, is it?”
“I'm afraid so.”
“And here of all places.”
Rheinhardt looked across the deserted Neuer Markt, which was dominated by the Donner fountain. Nude figures, each of which represented a tributary of the Danube, lounged and stretched on its rim. The edifice was covered in a salty rime that sparkled like mica. The sky above was cloudless, and the stars looked as if they had been strewn across the firmament by a careless angel. The effect was one of negligent perfection.
One of the horses rocked its head from side to side, its bridle producing a silvery carillon.
“Nothing's sacred, eh?” added the driver.
Rheinhardt turned and looked upward. The Kapuzinerkirche was not an attractive building-it resembled a child's drawing of a house, with its steep triangular roof and few distinguishing features. An arched niche in the gable contained a figure carrying a crucifix, and below this was a simple arrangement of three windows and a porch. The lack of ornament suggested grim austerity-mortification and self-denial. Adjoining the church was a square-shaped annex, the entrance to which was a large half-open door. It led to the Habsburg crypt. A solitary constable stood outside, stamping his feet and rubbing his hands together.
