The Empty Mirror (5 page)

“I’m sure the man does not have blood on his arms at all times, Gross.” Werthen was growing exasperated with this game.

A pensioner wearing a Tyrolean hat and seated just in front of them turned round and stared at Gross and Werthen with rheumy eyes.

Gross tipped his derby hat at the inquisitive old man, returning to the subject at hand.

“No, no, Werthen. A birthmark, not blood. In the shape of a crescent, and located on his left temple in plain sight as we entered.”

The old man continued to gawp at them as Werthen closed his eyes for a moment, re-creating the autopsy room in his imagination. He saw the pathologist’s hands at work in the viscera of a cadaver, then let his mind work its way upward on the man’s body. Suddenly the telltale birthmark appeared.

“Why, Gross, you’re right! The man did have a birthmark, and in the shape of a new moon.” Then to the old man, still craning his neck backward: “Would you care to join us?”

The man faced forward again with a disgusted snort.

“No reason to be rude, Werthen,” Gross said.

Werthen raised his eyebrows at this remark, for Gross was usually too oblivious of the feelings of others to even know when he was being rude.

“At any rate,” Gross continued, “you should learn to notice such things, Werthen. Take me. I’ve trained myself assiduously in that finest of visual arts: being a reliable witness.”

Gross gestured with palms outward at Werthen. “The words may seem a contradiction in terms, I know. More times than I care to recall I have had cases fall apart because of witnesses who were too easily influenced by afterthoughts; who wanted notoriety and were willing to say whatever was needed to attain it; who were even color-blind. Did you know that fully five percent of adult males cannot tell red from blue?”

“Once again, Gross, you impress one with your breadth of knowledge.”

Gross caught the sarcasm in Werthen’s voice. “Sorry if I’m
boring you, old man.” He straightened in his seat next to Werthen. “By the way, the pathologist had no birthmark. Just goes to show you how suggestible we all are.”

The old man in front of them let out a derisive snort.

They rode the rest of the way to Anna Plötzl’s apartment in silence.

She lived at the end of the J line, near the Ottakring cemetery. The tenement at 231 Ottakringerstrasse was the same as five others in the block on both sides of the narrow street: five stories tall and badly in need of sandblasting. The front door was open and no nosy
Portier
was on duty to check the comings and goings of tenants.

Inside, the building was dark and cavernous: Three different staircases led to the upper stories. Staircase A was on the left. By the second landing, Werthen realized that the apartment numbering had nothing to do with which floor the apartment was on. Anna Plötzl’s apartment was at the end of the hall on the fifth floor. As they knocked at her door, Werthen made a silent prayer that she would be at home. He had no desire to make a second trip to Ottakring to verify Klimt’s alibi.

The door was opened on the third knock by a tiny woman who was obviously expecting somebody else. Her smile turned to a frown when she saw them.

“What do you want?”

“My good lady.” Gross swept his derby off his head and nudged Werthen to do the same with his. “We have come on a mission from your good friend Herr Klimt.”

“Gustl sent you?” Her face screwed up in suspicion. She was so unlike the ethereal females Klimt portrayed on his canvases that Werthen wondered what the artist could ever have seen in her. She was somewhat hunched as well as flat-chested as far as he could see, and with a shadow of dark fuzz over her upper lip.

“He did, indeed, madam,” Gross replied, but she only pinched her face more, her eyes tiny, wary slits.

Werthen produced a card. “I am Herr Klimt’s lawyer, Fräulein Plötzl.”

She took the card in a hand reddened and rough from washing, most likely her former profession, assumed Werthen.

“What’s he need a lawyer for?”

“Perhaps we could come in and discuss matters more fully,” Werthen suggested.

A door opened across the dimly lit hall, and a face peered out at them for a moment. Then the door closed quickly again.

“What matters would that be?” she asked.

Behind her a little boy tugged at her skirts. She thrust a foot at him. “Not now, Gustl. Go play
Mutti’s
got business to do.”

She looked at the card again, then up and down the hall.

“You better come in.”

They did so, but got no farther than the doorway, which opened directly onto a space that obviously served as living room, bedroom, and dining room all in one. A crucifix hung over a double bed, unmade, with sheets and comforter spilling onto the floor. Children’s blocks were scattered on the bed; more were to be found underfoot. In the center of the room was an oval table of indeterminate wood whose chipped surface was covered with dirty dishes, scraps of papers with childish doodles on them, and a soiled chemise.

The domestic mess made Werthen feel ill at ease. He did not want to be privy to this part of Klimt’s life.

“What’s he gone and done he needs a lawyer?” she asked again. Then sizing up Gross, she added, “Two lawyers.”

“We have come to help,” Gross began, but this only increased her innate fear.

“He
is
in trouble then. I don’t want any part of trouble.”

The child, sickly looking rather than robust, hid behind a daybed in the far corner of the room. He was the antithesis of Klimt, with frail-looking limbs, sallow complexion, and smudges of dark under his eyes.

Werthen jumped in, “There is no trouble, I assure you. We have only come to ascertain … that is, assure ourselves-”

“I know what ‘ascertain’ means. No need to talk down to me. I read books.”

She gestured at a bookshelf in the corner by the boy.

“I am sorry. I didn’t mean to be impolite,” Werthen went on.

Gross, meanwhile, moved to the bookshelf in question and picked out a volume. “Interesting.”

“I like my books,” Anna said.

“But to return to the question at hand,” Werthen continued as Gross thumbed through pages. “Perhaps you could assure us that in fact Herr Klimt was a visitor here last night.”

“I can assure you of no such thing. What do you take me for?”

“I believe you are a friend of Herr Klimt’s?”

“Friends are one thing. He comes sometimes to draw me. Just my face, mind you. Nothing improper.”

“Of course not. And yesterday?”

She puffed out her lips. “I don’t think I like your incineration, Herr High-and-Mighty”

“This is no time for false modesty,” Werthen said, finally losing patience with the woman. “Klimt needs your help.”

“So he is in trouble after all. Why’d you lie to me? No. I want none of it. You two, get out now.” She grabbed the book out of Gross’s hands and shooed him toward the door.

“Please, Fräulein Plötzl-”

“It’s
Frau
Plötzl. Can’t you use the eyes God gave you? That’s my son there.”

“And his father?” Gross said.

“That’s no business of yours. Now get out before I scream for help. Fancy gents like you don’t want the complications that’ll bring, I tell you.”

“Mutti,”
the little boy said from the corner. “When is Uncle Gustl coming?”

“Out!” she yelled. “Now!”

They did as they were told. Once they regained the street, they could only look at one another and sigh.

“What does that leave us with?” Werthen asked.

“I imagine she will come around if Klimt himself were to ask her, but that would rather taint her testimony. Lower-class morality. It’s enough to make you weep at the human race. Here is a woman compromised on all counts: She has a bastard child by a lover who will hardly say her name in daylight, yet she is worried about her reputation being besmirched if said lover is in some kind of ‘trouble.’ I tell you, Werthen, sometimes it is enough for me to want to give up on humans altogether and raise monkeys.”

“I will simply assume Klimt was telling the truth when he said he was with her last night,” Werthen said. “He was mightily embarrassed by this alibi. I now understand why.”

“We do not, however, come away empty-handed.” Gross retrieved a slip of paper from his coat pocket. Unfolding it, he presented it to Werthen, who saw that it was a crude pencil sketch of a gnomelike bearded man very much the image of Klimt, with horns on his head and a forked tail. The block-lettering signature at the foot of the sketch was unmistakable:
KLIMT
.

“Where did you get this?” Werthen asked, handing the paper back.

“In the book I was looking in at Frau Plötzl’s. It is an interesting choice of reading, but I highly doubt it is the good Frau Plötzl’s. This sketch would indicate it belongs rather to Gustav Klimt.”

“So the man reads. He is not an artistic barbarian, after all.”

“I gather not. Or then again …”

“Please, Gross, no coyness. What was the book?”

“The Man of Genius.”

“By Cesare Lombroso?”

“The very,” Gross said. “One of my predecessors in the field of criminalistics, though I do not altogether agree with or approve of his theory that criminality is inherited. In some cases, yes. But the Italian depended overmuch on the physical defects which he
held demonstrate the criminal type. For example you, Werthen, with your high cheekbones and rather hawklike nose fit two of the physiognomic categories for criminality, but I have never met anyone with less of a criminal nature in my entire career.”

“I thank you for that, Gross.”

“But it is interesting reading for your artist friend, don’t you think?”

Werthen had not read the book himself, but knew of the theme: It argued that artistic genius was a form of hereditary insanity, and Lombroso went on to identify a baker’s dozen of types of art that he characterized as “the art of the insane.”

“One wonders if Herr Klimt found his own art categorized in the book,” Gross said with a wan smile. “It does give us something to think about.”

It was late afternoon by the time they arrived back in the center of Vienna. They transferred to a second tram that took them to Karlsplatz. There was today, as on most days of the summer of 1898, a large crowd of onlookers taking up position around the construction site at the far eastern end of the square, on Friedrichstrasse. Holes had courteously been drilled at various levels into the wooden wall surrounding the site to accommodate the varying heights of spectators. Now that the construction had reached heavenward, however, such holes were no longer necessary. Eyes were all focused on the very top of the cube-shaped building, at a gigantic ball of laurel leaves rendered in bronze. From a distance, however, the ball took on more the aspect of a giant golden cabbage or cauliflower. Pedestrians stopped midstride to shake their heads in wonder, to elbow one another jocularly. “It’s those crazy artists at work again,” they would say.

“It looks very like a tomb,” one big-bosomed matron, lorgnette to her eyes, was saying as Werthen and Gross briskly passed, headed toward the entrance of the new building.

“Werthen,” Gross finally called out. “Why so secretive? Where in the name of Mary and Joseph are you leading me?”

“You’ll see,” Werthen said, not slowing his pace. It was his turn to play
magister ludi
as Gross had done at the morgue, and truth to tell, he was enjoying it.

He presented his card to the red-nosed guard at the main doors and was waved on into the large entry hall of the building still under construction. Dust filled the air; the chatter of workmen and the percussion of hammers assaulted the ear, making Gross cover his with his hands.

It took only a moment for Werthen to spot their man. He was still dressed in the flowing caftan with intricate flower design embroidered on it. He seemed as at home directing carpenters and wall painters as he was behind the easel, as if he were the architect and not one of the artists who would show their work in this new gallery.

Werthen led the way to Klimt, who was busily showing a worker how to get the desired texture on the white walls.

The painter saw him out the corner of his eye before the lawyer could greet him.

“Werthen. At last. What kept you?” The painter took Werthen’s frail hand into his meaty paw and squeezed it tightly.

“We had to-,” Werthen began, but was interrupted by one of the thick builders, who was sweating under a black bowler hat. He gesticulated at a sheet of blueprints he held, spluttering something incomprehensible at Klimt, who moved aside with him for a moment.

Gross took the opportunity to tug on Werthen’s sleeve.

“What is this chap?” Gross nodded derisively at Klimt in his caftan. “Some sort of Mussulman?”

“Actually, he’s our client.”

Gross pursed his lips so fiercely that they became two white lines under his mustache. “You could have told me earlier.”

“Yes, I suppose I could have. More fun this way, though.”

Klimt finally eased himself away from the builder and shrugged at them by way of apology.

“Klimt, let me introduce a colleague, here to help. Dr. Hanns Gross.”

Klimt turned to face the man, much taller, but not half as brawny as the painter.

“The
Hanns Gross? The criminologist?”

Gross suddenly beamed, Werthen noticed. “The very one,” Gross said.

“Wonderful,” Klimt said, and with that he embraced the criminologist. Gross stood stiffly, hands at his side, allowing the hug, but blinking indignantly over Klimt’s shoulder at Werthen.

“We’ve had some difficulty with your friend in Ottakring,” Werthen said, looking around them to make sure no one was eavesdropping.

However, Klimt did not seem anxious to find some more private place to talk. The constant din made by the building crew masked their conversation, anyway. Plus, here Klimt was in the company of his peers; there was no public image of propriety to maintain.

“She says I wasn’t with her last night?”

“She refuses to say one way or the other. Once she discovered I was your lawyer, she decided it was not wise to be known as your acquaintance.”