Sinister Shorts

the woman. She is not in my league yet. I am the specialist, a professional with the highest standards. My work demands a strong back and a scientist's curiosity, and… but let me give you an example.

In the summer of the year 200-, I needed funds. My bank account at the time would appear large to you, but my interests are expensive. A generous contributor to several charities and a certain political party, in that pivotal election year I had outdone myself in more ways than one. Christie's chose that moment to announce a forthcoming auction of an incredible treasure-the manuscript of Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground, written entirely in the Master's hand, which I had coveted since reading a copy as a boy, sitting beside a fresh grave while my father dumped dirt into a neat pile beside me.

In that chilly Upstate New York village of my origin, I began my odyssey through life, my small steps accompanied by the sound of a shovel, a man grunting, moist soil, and the gaping holes that receive life's detritus. My father, whose broken English inspired such derision from the locals, taught me after school in our shack on the edge of town about Tolstoy, Stendhal, about that European culture which America has so hastily forgotten… and about Dostoyevsky.

The Master's story, the spewed-out vitriolic phrases, laying bare the hypocrisies of the Establishment in his day, had turned my staid world upside down. And now his ms. was available to the highest bidder. To me!

Gates might acquire his Leonardo for $30 million, Spielberg could keep his Holocaust memorabilia… for me, the supreme collectible has always been the paper upon which was penned the immortal ruminations of the nineteenth-century Russian novelists, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and… the most tortured of them all, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky.

I had to have it. I contacted my New York agent for more details and found out the manuscript's probable cost. One lucrative job plus my current liquid holdings would suffice.

After driving to the library of the large university in my city one humid Sunday, I immersed myself in the academic journals. What I needed to find were the latest historical academic brouhahas. The Egyptian controversies I skipped; a one-man operation is unsuitable for an Egyptian project.

The University of Missouri Journal of American History mentioned a dispute over John Wilkes Booth's body. Certain academic factions alleged that Booth was not buried in his grave, but instead had fled to the Wild West after being-oh, please!-unjustly accused of the assassination of Lincoln. It had possibilities. Speaking of Lincoln, the old controversy as to whether he suffered from Marfan syndrome had heated up again. Then I waded through the usual Napoleona. Cause of the stout little general's death has never been indubitably established-a trip to the Isle of Elba might be pleasant.

Then I found it: a most acrimonious debate. The National Review of Musicology, a new publication of the Juilliard School with a slick cover photo of Mahler in his slippers, smoking a pipe, contained an intriguing series of letters. A Juilliard professor, Anton Sabatich, expert on eighteenth-century opera, was embroiled in a wintry and progressively more impolite exchange with Professor Arnhem of the University of Leyden concerning the cause of Mozart's death.

Sabatich refused to believe the young genius died of any illness, much less the atypical tuberculosis theory advanced by Professor Arnhem. The American, influenced perhaps too heavily by popular media, opined that Mozart had been slowly poisoned by his rival, Salieri, probably with arsenic. It's well-known that Mozart died penniless and was buried in a pauper's field.

I faxed Sabatich my standard letter:

Dear Professor Sabatich:

Regarding the death of Mozart: I can make you privy to incontrovertible scientific evidence as to the causa mortis.

Please fax me to arrange a meeting.

Sincerely,

Peter C.

Before lunch I had my reply, a very good sign, and I duly flew to New York City for a consultation. We met in the VIP waiting room at La Guardia. Sabatich was a short, hawk-nosed man glinting with fanaticism behind his spectacles. He never opened the heavy briefcase, presumably full of learned papers, which he held tightly on his lap. I discussed my ways, my means, and my price, ignoring the gaping of his mouth and the paling of his skin. By the time I finished, he had recovered his normal floridity and fallen under the calming influence of his own avarice. He agreed to my terms. He had money or the intensity of his need had overpowered his good sense. Usually, they try to dicker.

I caught the next available flight to Vienna, checking my long, heavy bag of equipment. In first class, the charming flight attendants kept my glass full of mediocre champagne and provided me with a blanket when I grew fatigued. I arrived, still weary, in the small hours in the heart of the old city. A taxi took me to the Wienerwald Gasthof, a homey jewel amid the soulless international hotels near the Ring.

Later that morning, after a hearty Fruhstuck of fresh eggs, black bread, and strawberries, I made my way along the cobbled streets, an inconspicuous if unusually broad-shouldered tourist, to St. Marxer Friedhof, where the young composer had been buried without ceremony in a pauper's unmarked grave.

Of course, it was raining. A funeral party brooded under black umbrellas, issuing low wails. Urns of red plastic flowers and a horseshoe wreath of white and yellow mums had been arranged in the general area of Mozart's final resting place, as though others had tried to pinpoint its location. A smashed can of Heineken beer formed shallow puddles over the spot that I knew, from information gathered years before by my father's father, held the body. A low black fence surrounding an area nearby invoked a grassy yard where the composer's youthful spirit might still wander.

I remained awhile paying my respects, hat in hand, rain dripping off my nose, eyes busy. A security guard drove by at 10:20 and again at 10:35 and 10:50. Out of such routines are crimes born.

After a while, the cold having prowled through my skin and taken hold of my bones, unwilling to admit a slight unease, I explored further, walking to the far end of the cemetery at the edge of a misty forest. A pile of loose earth fast turning to mud indicated recent maintenance activity-brush clippings, shreds of winding-sheet. I looked more closely, a fractured humerus and knobs of knuckle- the gardener had been tidying up, all too assiduously. The clippings, dry under a tarp, would make excellent fill, if need be.

Reductio ad absurdum.

As I replaced the tarp, I caught movement on the periphery of the forest. Something light in color, a large animal perhaps. A deer? But it was my experience that wild animals will leave if you approach them, which I did, waving my arms a little foolishly, shouting, I admit. A slow withdrawal into the murk of the dark green marked its exit, nothing more. I was loath to follow. The dark of the day and the sucking sponge of the ground below discouraged me. Can you blame me for a moment's unprofessionalism? I am not immune to the emanations of human fragility such a place provokes. I left quickly, leaving the forest to its mystery.

Back in the city, I joined a bus tour with my fellow Americans, enjoying the sights of the capital, including St. Stephen's Cathedral and the vast Schonbrunn Palace, where, as a six-year-old, the prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus astonished Empress Maria Theresa. In what was for me an unusual flight of imagination, I could imagine the small feet tapping across the shining floors, and the small fingers, cold as mine today in the graveyard, whispering over the keys, the fresh music of a young genius resounding through the hard walls. Too young to have any idea of how short his life would be, he would have been feeling immortal, maybe dreaming of puppies as he played for the jaded oldsters who barely preceded him into a coffin.

Refreshed with my thoughts, as I always am when I consider mortality and how it brings all of us, sycophants, tyrants, and talents, to the same home, I found a candlelit dining room and filled up on delightful Viennese schnitzel. The continuing drizzle that had escorted me to the hotel did not dampen my spirits.

My plans floated around my head, suspended like the soft eiderdown under which I later went to bed. I saw myself as I drowsed, spiraling down toward the cemetery, then veering toward its forest. Once there, in the shadows of my dream, I thumbed through the cracked yellow pages of the Dostoyevsky opus that would soon be mine, the glare of his haunted intelligence my night-light, as exciting as good sex.

At three A.M. I arose. Putting on the rain gear and boots I had left beside my bed, I shouldered the long bag which held the tools of my trade. The walk to the cemetery took forty minutes, with only one policeman to avoid. Even the taverns had closed and a cool vaporous rain obscured the severe gothic lines of the granite buildings so favored by the city burgermeisters.

The lock to the main wrought iron gate I picked without incident, and made my way within, treading cautiously along the graveled path, words of the Master lingering in my mind: “I know that I am going to a graveyard, but it's a most precious graveyard.”

At Mozart's grave, I swiftly unpacked my spade and dug. Several hours passed. I had stripped to the waist, oblivious to the cold. If the cherubim in the sky lamented, if the composer himself watched infuriated, I remained oblivious, chained to my task, intent upon my work and its own rhythms. Only an amateur would allow the cries of owls to suggest such things. Only an amateur would shiver at the gauzy haunts that passed through me as I worked. The regular chink of the spade followed by the sifting sound of dirt falling in a pile were the only sounds I heard, and they were cozy sounds, soothing even, sounds of my father, sounds of my youth.

Flashes of movement near the trees, I could swear I saw them, but the coffin came into view, and all such childish imaginings fled at the sight of it.

Made of flimsy wood and rotted through from two hundred years in the dank Viennese earth, the box was quite deeply embedded. I had to climb into the hole to get closer. From my small dirt ledge, I lifted the lid with my spade handle, and gazed upon the composer.

Like all the rest, a grinning skull, bones enfolded in half-disintegrated bits of frippery, lace and velvet and… A short sword, still entangled between the fingers of the right hand, lay along what had once had been a thigh, a final gift, no doubt, from some noble friend. I could not resist. I took hold of the hilt and tried to disengage my prize from its encumbrance but to my dismay the desiccated appendage detached itself at the wrist and came loose with the sword. Surprised, I cried out, then brought myself under control, removing the musician's possessive palm and fingers with gentle force. I held his hand for a brief moment in my own, marveling at the small size that had exerted such crescendos of originality in life, before returning it to its owner. I then climbed out of the pit and thrust the sword into my pack.

Back again into the boggy grave I crawled, snipping a bit of hair that clung to the grayish skull and scraping bits of bone into a zipper-lock plastic bag. My task was almost complete. Standing for a last moment in the grave I decided to examine the coffin lid further. Were those words I saw there? Last bits of wisdom to consider? In a foolish gesture that cost me everything, I bent and was struck from above.

No, I did not die, although my dream died. I awoke covered with earth, my bones commingled with Mozart's, his cold and disturbed, mine fortunately still ignited by flesh. I was only loosely coated with the earth. Above me, dawn spread, a faint streak of red after rain. Taking the time only to replace the lid and grab my spade, failing to bid my usually gracious adieu to the man who owned this spot, I climbed quickly out.

Gone! Pack, tools, samples-and sword! Gone while I had succumbed to a moment of humanity, a craving to know more than I needed to know. All that was left above was my spade and a flashlight. I freely confess I danced around the grave shouting obscenities and kicking the spot where there should have been a headstone for some minutes, but my rage was soon replaced by fear. Even my shirt had been stolen. The gray light of morning crept up around me and the morning rounds would soon begin.

Gathering my wits, I shone my flashlight along the ground, observing impressions in the mud, small boot marks. Haunts did not wear boots. If they did, they would be larger, I said to myself, picturing the thief and the laughter. An easy job, taking full advantage of my overconfidence.

Shaken, but determined in my task, I started back for the grave. A shout and heavy footsteps turned me away. I ran, following the tracks that led away from the grave, diminutive footsteps deepened by the heavy pack and easy to see. Strong, swift, silent as death she had been… remarkable in every way. My heart pounded as I visualized her, trim in her jeans and boots, observing me from the trees, watching the rain stream down my straining back, joyful at outwitting me…

I flew back to New York the next morning, scrutinizing my fellow passengers, alert for the small, smart, strong, and solitary female. But she had too much sense to take the same plane.

Sabatich, my unhappy client, got a refund. Two weeks later I fought melancholy, with the news that a Japanese corporation had purchased Notes from Underground at a record auction price for a literary ms. of $1.2 million.

I took comfort in three observations. First, Professor Arnhem published no further attacks on Professor Sabatich's arsenic poisoning theory. Clearly, the samples she provided had tested positive, and the man had some modicum of professional honor.