They were fairly sure but not positive. — You deserve a rest, said the King Vrykolakas to the inspector. Why don’t you go up to your coffin for a year or two, while I take my nap?
Chuckling, he watched the inspector’s glance flick toward the map, then away. What did he care? Even Trollhand was in no position to threaten the cemetery frontier. And the inspector watched him watch. Since the King Vrykolakas knew his secret, what was supposed to happen? The inspector did not dare to take it with him, but he felt confident that he had most of it memorized. Of course he had better visit Father Hauser sooner rather than later; in case he too became stupider.
He clambered back up through the ooze. In the chamber he had left, his host was already snoring like a goodwife’s iron pot bubbling day and night on the stove.
It happened during the twentieth Mansion of the Moon: Abnahaya, which strengthens prisons. By now the inspector wore the generic fangs of a dead Bohemian. When he blasphemed, it no longer brought him any pleasure. His position felt as cynical as the policy of the angels. Sometimes he dreamed that he had forgotten the way to his tomb, but found himself twitching strangely and counting pebbles whenever he entered a graveyard. He yearned to give himself to the green darkness of oak leaves, which unlike the living or the undead would accept him without conditions.
His pentangle was gone. This alarmed him, but not so much as he might have expected. Just before dawn he set out with his Saint Polona medallion, but it had lost much virtue, and he was in agony by the time he reached the sexton’s toolshed. A witch was hurrying away from the daylight, clutching something wrapped up in a dirty cloth. He knew her; she must have just dug up a dead man’s head, and today would be planting black beans in his eyes, mouth and ears, to make herself invisible. Well, Trollhand could burn her. The inspector drew on his mendicant’s cloak, which used to stick to his oozing flesh but which now hung quite loosely, and when he regarded his hands he saw why; they were semiskeletonized.
Creeping into the church, he found it disagreeably warm, for he had grown accustomed to the delightful coolness of muck and clay. Naturally, he did not permit this discomfort to distort his projects in any way.
Father Hauser was in bed at home. But his good friend Trollhand was there, dozing in the rearmost pew, wrapped in his black-and-red cloak, with a heap of sharpened stakes at his feet. Since his salary was low except when there were dogs and rats to catch, he often preferred to sleep in the church, in order to avoid his hungry wife and children. The inspector stood over him, longing to eavesdrop on his thoughts, for suddenly it came to him that the only key to understanding himself he now possessed was this Hans Trollhand. Perhaps he felt this because they had been friends together, or it might simply have been that Trollhand was the first living person he had seen in a long time, and the inspector still thought of himself as in a way living. Or it might have been that his assignment, which nowadays we would call espionage, had rubbed off on him, although in fact everybody in H— does much the same; practically every night Doroteja caught somebody listening at her keyhole to the sounds she made when she was combing her hair.
Trollhand uttered a cry when the inspector touched his shoulder. After all, it had been awhile since they had met. The inspector began to tell him his great news, only to discover that he seemed to have lost his tongue.
Are you the inspector? Trollhand demanded. Why don’t you say something? For all I know, you’re some ghoul who’s gotten hold of that cloak. Speak to me, damn you!
This insulting treatment enraged the inspector, who, after all, had given up quite a lot for his fellow men. But he bit what remained of his lip, and gestured that he wished for something to write with. Narrowly observing him, Trollhand said: I don’t have much truck with reading and writing. Now, are you the inspector or aren’t you? Nod your head yes or no.
The inspector nodded once. The man’s ignorance revolted him, not that the King Vrykolakas had been any better. Was there nothing but one kind of self-satisfied cunning stupidity or another? Neither one of them even cared about the demon Brulefer, much less Trimsael or Humots.
Trollhand then insolently said: And have you ever met the Angel of Death, old boy?
Suddenly the inspector was overcome with indifference. Not only are the lusts of the living never satisfied, he said to himself, but they grow and grow, just like the death within them. How many of us has he staked and burned, thanks to my efforts? And now he wants to mock me. — Turning away, he shambled back to the cemetery. So many birds, so many insects! Blackbirds were nesting where the archers used to shoot. A pigeon trilled within a dead knight’s blind arch. But it all hurt him. He longed to be as supple as a lizard in a shady crevice, the way he used to be when he was alive. As he drew near he began to perceive the shining of the golden pentacle coming up through the earth of Jette’s grave. Since none of the undead could possibly be on watch, he dove down to retrieve it, and at once he felt more together, so to speak. The sun scarcely annoyed him, and vapors no longer rose from his cloak. He could have returned straight to Trollhand, in order to express himself to him with greater success, but instead he decided to visit Doroteja, who was always kind to everyone.
Of course the sun was higher now, and people saw him. The kerchiefed women, already kneeling down in the fields while two matrons approached with baskets, rose up to scream; men threw stones, and someone ran off to fetch the priest. Not wishing for Doroteja to get burned for a witch, the inspector gave it up, wondering: Am I the only one who is not incapable of love or of facing truth? He spat, determined not be reconciled with any of them. Having inhaled all those secrets issuing out from between the King Vrykolakas’s teeth, having betrayed many a fetching vampiress, even the innocent ones who still wore their white shrouds, he must have done enough. So he returned to the cemetery, returned the pentangle into Jette’s eternally unconscious keeping, and descended into his own grave. By now he felt too weak to return the black cloak, so there it lay in full daylight on top of his tombstone.
When he had rested for a night or two, he called upon Humots, who stood ready to bring him any book of his desire. So he asked for the Secret Book of Angels, which contained rules for every situation, especially the postmortem ones. He said: I hope to learn what belongs to me. — Humots twinkled his red eyes at the inspector, then flew up toward heaven with a great buzz of blackish-green insect wings. And the inspector waited.