BRESLAU, WEDNESDAY, JULY 18TH, 1934
EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
Anwaldt opened his swollen eyes and immediately saw the jug and glass standing on the little table. With shaking hands, he filled it with strained mint tea and raised it to his lips.
“Shall I give you a knife to separate those lips?” Mock was tying his tie, spreading a spicy scent of quality eau de cologne and smiling kindheartedly. “Do you know, I’m not even furious with you. Because how can you be furious with someone who’s just miraculously been found? Click, Anwaldt was here and Anwaldt’s gone. Click, and Anwaldt’s here again.” Mock stopped smiling. “Nod if you had a good reason to disappear from my sight.”
Anwaldt nodded. Fireworks lit up inside his skull. He poured himself some more mint. Mock stood astride, observing his hung-over assistant. He clasped his hands and twiddled his thumbs.
“Good. I see you feel like drinking. That means you won’t be sick. I’ve run a bath for you. There’s one of my shirts in the bathroom and your cleaned and pressed suit. You certainly took care of it yesterday. I paid the caretaker’s wife an arm and a leg for her efforts. It took her half the night. She also cleaned your shoes. You’ll pay me back when you’ve got some money. Someone robbed you yesterday. Take a shave because you look like an alcoholic tramp. Use my razor,” Mock was harsh and decisive. “And now listen to me. In three-quarters of an hour you’re to sit here and tell me your adventures. Briefly and concretely. Then we’ll go to John the Baptist’s Cathedral. There, at nine-fifteen, Doctor Leo Hartner’s going to be waiting for us.”
They sat in the cool darkness. The violence of the sun stopped short of the coloured filter of stained-glass windows; walls of ashlar muffled the noise and bustle of the sweating city; Silesian princes slept in silent niches; and Latin signs on the walls invoked the contemplation of eternity. Mock’s watch showed nine-twenty. As agreed, they sat in the front row and watched out for Hartner. Instead of him, a short priest with a crew-cut and silver-framed spectacles walked up to them. Without a word, he handed Mock an envelope, turned and left. Anwaldt wanted to follow him, but Mock held him back. He took the typed letter from the envelope and passed it to his assistant.
“You read. I can’t see properly in this light and we’re not going out into that cursed heat.” On saying this, Mock realized that he was speaking in familiar terms to Baron von der Malten’s son. (If I was on familiar terms with Marietta, I can be the same with him.)
Anwaldt looked at the sheet of paper embossed with the University Library’s golden crest beneath which appeared the elegant letters of the Director’s typewriter.
Dear Excellency.
I apologize for not being able to attend our appointment personally, but family reasons prompted me to leave suddenly yesterday evening. I called Your Excellency several times, but you were not in. So let me speak through this letter for I have several important things to impart. All that I am now going to say is based on the admirable book Les Yesidis by Jean Boye, published ten years ago in Paris. The author, a well-known French ethnographer and traveller, stayed with the Yesidis for four years. They liked him and respected him to such a degree that he was admitted to some sacred rituals. Among the many interesting descriptions of the religious cult of this secret sect, one is particularly significant. And so, our author stayed somewhere in the desert (he doesn’t say exactly where) with several of the Yesidi elders. There, they visited an old hermit who lived in a grotto. This elderly eremite would frequently dance and fall into a trance like the Turkish dervishes. While he did so, he pronounced prophecies in an incomprehensible tongue. Boye had for a long time to implore the Yesidis to clarify these prophetic cries. They eventually agreed and explained them. The hermit proclaimed that the time of vengeance for the murdered children of Al-Shausi had come. Boye, knowing the history of the Yesidis very well, knew that these children had died at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. He was surprised, therefore, that these born avengers had waited so long to fulfil their sacred duty. The Yesidis explained to him that, according to their law, vengeance is only valid if it corresponds exactly to the crime which it is to avenge. So that if someone’s eye had been gouged out with a stiletto, then his avenger had to visit the same barbarity on the criminal or his descendant, and not just with any ordinary knife but with a stiletto and — best of all — the very same one.
Vengeance for Al-Shausi’s murdered children would only be in keeping with their law if the children of the murderer’s descendant were killed in the very same way. But this could not come about for centuries, up until the moment that the deity Malak-Taus manifested himself to the hermit and announced that the awaited time had come. These hermits are profoundly venerated by the Yesidis and are considered to be the guardians of tradition. And the duty to avenge belongs to the sacred tradition. So that when the eremite announced that the time was right, the gathering chose an avenger whose right hand was tattooed with the symbol of vengeance. If this avenger did not fulfil his task, they hung him before everybody’s eyes. So much for Boye.
Dear Excellency, I too, unfortunately, am unable to answer the question which so troubled Jean Boye. I looked through the entire genealogy of the von der Malten family and think I know why the Yesidi’s vengeance could not be fulfilled for so many centuries. In the fourteenth century, the von der Maltens branched into three: the Silesian, the Bavarian and the Netherlandish. In the eighteenth century, the last two dried out. The Silesian branch did not propagate abundantly — mostly singleton boys were born to this well-known junker’s family, and the vengeance — let me remind you — could only be considered valid if it was carried out on siblings. In that family’s entire history, siblings were born only five times. In two cases, one of the children died when still an infant, in two others, the boys died in unknown circumstances. In the last one, Olivier von der Malten’s aunt, his father Ruppert’s sister, spent all her days in a strictly closed, sequestered convent, so that vengeance on her was effectively hindered.