The closer I got to the town, the worse the stench became, despite the lavender, despite the pressure with which I held the cotton to my nose.
By the time I reached the East Gate, I could hardly breathe.
The hot sun had only partly dried the river of yesterday’s filth which covered the cobbles leading in the direction of Gaffenburger’s abattoir. Beneath the solid crust, there was a semi-liquid mulch. And fresh beasts had been driven into Lotingen that morning,
adding their own deposits to those of yesterday, and all the days before. The street was a dark brown carpet, and all above was a dense dark cloud of flies and other insects. If one attempted to pass that way, they would rise up, buzzing angrily at the intrusion, then fall back where they had come from.
The insects frightened us, but Spain terrorised the French even more.
They were facing a new kind war down there; the Emperor’s answer was to send more men. Prussia had been subdued, while Spain had not. The campaign was a bottomless pit into which they were pouring money, men and arms. For over a month, the number of soldiers passing through our streets had been growing day after day. The Emperor’s finest were going to Spain; the worst would remain in Prussia.
French horses fouled our streets, as did the cows and the sheep that fed the troops. If an animal dropped dead, they left it there to rot. Bones and carcasses littered every yard of the way to Gaffenburger’s stockyard. Wagons crowded with French soldiers rolled in swift succession down to the port, and every imaginable thing was left behind them: the remains of food and drink in every form. Solid, liquid, fully or partly digested. It was a common sight to see defecating French buttocks hanging out over the end of a cart. The flies swarmed in their wake, fell hungrily upon the sewage. Lotingen was sinking beneath a tide of filth. Myriads of insects floated on it, and flew above it. The French would not clean up after themselves. No Prussian would clean up after the French. And to make things worse, the gentle breeze from the sea which generally tempered the summer heat was nowhere to be found.
How long had it been since our lungs had breathed fresh air?
Linnaeus had been quite clear on this point: foul air and filth make flies!
I strode across the bridge.
As a rule, I go straight on, passing along Königstrasse, following the southern wall of the cathedral, then crossing over the market square to my office, which is on the far side, opposite the French General Quarters.
Instead, I turned sharp right.
Fifty yards down the lane stands the yard of Daniel Winterhalter. If one has to travel anywhere that the public coach does not go, and if one does not happen to own a horse or a trap, then a call at Winterhalter’s is inevitable. He always has a fine selection of horses and a range of phaetons, flies and berlins for hire.
I went in through the arch, feeling better now that I had made my decision.
In the corner of the empty yard—most of the coaches had already gone—stood a most unseasonable carriage for the north coast of East Prussia. Winterhalter must have regretted buying it a thousand times: an ancient landau painted the same colour as the filthy sludge which fouled the streets outside.
‘Has anyone beaten me to it?’ I asked him, pointing.
Winterhalter was rubbing down a fine bay with a wire brush, chasing away the flies as he finished his stroke, in a sort of intricate ballet in time with the horse’s swishing tail.
‘It’s the last one left, Herr Stiffeniis. And not the best, as you can see.
They
requisitioned all the rest first thing this morning.’ He pulled a glum face. ‘I just hope they decide to pay, that’s all! If you aren’t going far, it’ll get you there and back.’
‘Not far,’ I said, giving thanks to God for the unserviceable state of the landau. ‘How long will it take to get her ready?’
I knew how long it would take. The minute we had finished haggling over a price, he would put one of his older hacks—certainly not the fine bay stallion—between the shafts, adjust the halter, invite me to climb up, hand me the reins, and remind me to use the whip with urgency and frequency.
Five minutes later, I was rolling back the way I had come. I had made a decision, and would leave the procurator’s office in the hands of my clerk for the morning.
M
ANNI SPOKE OUT
boldly.
‘As cold as mamma’s hands!’ he cried.
We had been on Mildehaven beach a couple of hours.
In their first excitement the children had dug a hole in the sand. Then, I took them down to paddle in the sea. Manni splashed and shouted, while Anders cried whenever a drop of water touched his face or hands. They soon forgot the flies and the smells that we had left behind in Lotingen.
Exhausted after their hard labour, they lay down on the sand and ate the picnic lunch that Lotte had prepared for us. Then, I organised a game of Similes to keep the children busy. Süzi won the first point, though there was a heated dispute about it.
‘As round . . .’ I proposed.
‘. . . as a thaler,’ she answered immediately.
I was forced to produce a coin from my pocket to settle the argument in my daughter’s favour. The apple that Manni held up in defence of his own simile was a less than perfect circle. When silence fell again, I posed the next question, and Manni came up with that disconcerting answer.
‘As cold as mamma’s hands!’
My wife sat staring silently out to sea.
The sun was hot, the gentle breeze coming off the sea was refreshing. The water inside the sand bar was flat, blue, warm. The waves broke on the
haf
, but they were nothing more than a gentle ripple with a harmless white crest on the smooth surface of the Baltic Sea. The idea of taking them for an excursion to the beach had been an excellent one. There could have been no better view. No better sky. No cleaner air.
Despite all this, Helena’s hands were cold. It happened when she was afraid of something.
But what was she afraid of?
I looked all around the vast expanse of empty sand.
There were three or four other coaches on the sands that day, but they were tiny black dots in the far distance. Sea-gulls were poking along the waterline in search of rag-worm, wrangling noisily over knots of tangled sea-wrack and the encrusted mussels that had been washed in on the morning tide.
Helena had heard what Manni said, though she did not say a word about it. She sat in rigid profile. Beads of perspiration sparkled on her brow and along her upper lip. Her hair was swept upwards, trussed down with a blue velvet ribbon. Her gaze never shifted from the sea. She had worn the same smile all the morning.
‘You must pick an object which is cold by nature, Manni,’ I explained. ‘Or one which is cold by circumstance . . .’
‘But they
are
cold,’ he shouted defiantly.
‘Come along,’ I said, jumping up, bustling more than was necessary. ‘That hole must be filled in before we can go home. Help your sister, Manni.’
Süzi obeyed at once.
Manni watched for a moment, then fell to work at her side, using his hands like outstretched pincers. The word-game was forgotten in an instant.
I brushed the sand from my hands and clothes, then took a few steps towards Helena. She was sitting up straight—gown stretched out before her, her back resting against a little scarp of eroded sand where the dunes gave way to the beach. I sat myself down on the
top of the mound and swung one leg over her head, as if I might have been playfully sitting on her shoulders.
‘Almost time to be getting back,’ I whispered in her ear.
As I spoke, I pressed my knees gently against her arms. Then, I laid my hands on either side of her head and rested it back against the pillow of my stomach. Her up-tilted eyes looked into mine. It was the first time she had shifted her gaze from the thin line of the horizon where the dark blue sea and the pale blue sky collided. She closed her eyes and smiled more softly for a moment.
I rested the point of my chin against her forehead, and began to massage the muscles in her neck. Then, I slid my hands down the length of her arms. Her hands were poised upon her swollen belly, as if to protect the creature growing there from whatever the world might throw at it.
Before I could place my hands on hers, they slid away beneath her armpits like frightened deer retreating to the safety of the forest.
‘Manni’s right,’ she murmured. ‘My hands
are
cold.’
‘What is wrong?’ I asked her, resting the palms of my hands on the bulge of her womb. A month or so, and it would all be over. Maybe everything would be gone by then. Filth, flies, the French, as well.
Helena’s hands shot out, and caught hold of mine.
In that moment, I felt the chill of cold sweat on her damp palms.
Her head pulled away. She stiffened, gazing out to sea again. It was as if a dark cloud had suddenly appeared in the summer sky, threatening to pitch a thunderstorm upon our heads.
Further along the beach, three French soldiers came tramping noisily out from the dunes. Laughing and cat-calling to one another, they made their shambling way down to the water’s edge.
Manni and Süzi froze like frightened squirrels.
The soldiers had not seen us. They were gesticulating, shouting, pointing towards the waves which gently lapped upon the shore, as if they had never seen the open sea before.
I did not move.
I did nothing that might attract their attention.
I took Helena’s cold hands in mine, and I pressed them hard.
Then, I turned to the children.
‘As soon as you have finished, we’ll be going home,’ I encouraged them.
Their eyes flitted from the far-off soldiers to me, then back again.
The sound of my voice must have reached the Frenchmen. Two of the soldiers turned and looked in our direction, while the third man never took his eyes off the sea. One of the two took a step our way, raising his hands to cover his eyes from the direct rays of the sun. He stared at us for some moments, then he turned back to his companions.
‘They had the same idea,’ I whispered to Helena. ‘A peaceful day at the seaside, that’s all.’
‘I heard their wagons passing by all night,’ she said, as if I had not spoken.
Was that the source of her uneasiness? The fact that the French army was on the move?
‘What’s happening in Spain should make our own lives easier,’ I said, intending to reassure her. ‘They like us well enough at the moment.’
Helena’s fingers tightened into fists.
‘Do you really believe that?’ she hissed.
‘They mean us no harm,’ I said.
The soldiers were making more noise than my children had done. They laughed and shouted, passing a bottle of wine between them.
‘I am not speaking of the French,’ she said. She turned her head, her eyes looked up into mine. ‘Not those three. Nor the rest of them. You understand the real danger, don’t you?’
A vein was pulsing rapidly in her temple. She was like a lamb who has caught a glimpse of the butcher’s knife. It pained me to see her distress, yet I did not understand the cause of it.
‘What is it, Helena? The insects, the foul air, the filth . . .’
‘It is not that,’ she said quickly, looking down the beach again.
Two of the men were naked now, their bodies gleaming white in the sun. They were dancing by the water’s edge, touching the sea
with their toes, as if they meant to enter it and swim, while the third man seemed to be trying to dissuade his companions from such a bold enterprise.
‘What worries me,’ she said more slowly, ‘is what may happen
here
. Spain will put ideas into Prussian heads. And now, the French are weaker. That’s what frightens me. You know what they are like, our countrymen. If one of them comes up with a wild scheme, he’ll find a thousand who are ready to follow him.’
At her side, the baby was sleeping beneath an umbrella. Anders turned on his blanket and let out a tiny whimper.
‘It’s time to go,’ I said, standing up, helping Helena to her feet, lifting up the baby, making haste to gather our things together and put them in the carriage, encouraging the children to do the same.
The soldiers had come out of the water. They were jumping up and down to warm themselves. Soon, they would start looking for a new amusement.
Within two minutes, Helena and the children were sitting quietly in the landau. Having removed the horse’s nose-bag and hung it on the nail at the cart’s end, I climbed up into the driver’s seat, cracked the whip, jerked on the reins, and we turned our backs on Mildehaven beach.
Forty minutes later, I pulled hard and the carriage stopped before my door.
There was a miasma hanging over Lotingen. The sun had brought the untreated sewage to a fiery ferment. The children jumped down and ran quickly into the house, as I told them to do. In Helena’s case, such speed was out of the question. I helped her to the ground, while Lotte came out and took the baby from her arms. When, at last, my wife’s heavy, fragile figure reached the door and entered the house, the children waving from behind the windows that Lotte did not dare to open, I felt as though I had sealed them all inside a tomb.
As the carriage gathered speed again, I felt the spattering blows of insects on my brow. I had arranged to meet Gudjøn Knutzen at four o’clock that afternoon, but I did not relish the appointment. Nor the thought of what we would be doing. We had been collecting
‘evidence’—so-called—for the past two weeks. Fortunately, this would be the last occasion.
Tomorrow the trial would begin.
As I walked away from Daniel Winterhalter’s yard, stepping carefully through the filthy streets, I felt my angry stomach surging up into my throat.
G
UDJØN
K
NUTZEN WAS
waiting by the steps outside my office.
My clerk was in his usual state: grey hair standing up on his head as if the comb were still waiting to be invented, his clothes as spruce as a strolling tinker’s. His wheelbarrow contained a well-worn shovel and a set of scales that had once belonged to his grandfather.