The Romanians say that a vampire can go up into the sky by the thread that a woman weaves at night without a candle, and thus he eats the moon. Perhaps Humots ascended in some such fashion, and then some malicious angel snipped the thread, for he never came back. The inspector lay at rest, and sometimes he dreamed of Doroteja trying to stab him through the heart with a silver hairpin while sometimes he dreamed of Doroteja smiling at him with nearly closed eyes. And so his mission became to him like a vampire’s tomb so overgrown with underbrush that not even Trollhand could find the way.
Richter von Lochner had once succeeded in forcing a witch to confess (a triumph of his jurisprudence) that she had flown her broomstick to Prague, and there been conveyed by certain sinful creatures into that secret tunnel about which Father Hauser had so often preached; it runs from the Jewish Ghetto all the way to Jerusalem — and, as anyone might expect, makes a special detour to the churchyard here in H—, where the greatest battle ever between good and evil is eternally taking place. Thanks to the inspector’s efforts, the fact of this battle was now proved, as a result of which the priest and the judge both expected to melt down many more scrap-hearts in the furnace of piety. But then the inspector stopped coming. He never drew out for them his subterranean map, or informed them of the whereabouts of the King Vrykolakas, whose staking would have been a grievous loss to hell, or even gave them more names of pranksters from the cemetery. Even on Saint John’s Day, when our vilest witches creep out naked to gather certain herbs whose magic will steal the milk from their neighbors’ cows, the inspector never appeared to finger them.
Just as the surgeon, when called upon by the magistrate, will conscientiously slit open a comatose vampire’s chest to discover how fresh and lively its blood may be, so Father Hauser now called upon himself to examine the inspector’s heart, or as I should say his soul; for he had heard from Trollhand about that ambiguous visit to the church; who had it been exactly? And why was that stinking black cape lying on top of the inspector’s grave? The other vampires wondered much the same, but as usual there was nothing to prove the inspector’s guilt to either party; the golden pentacle blazed on within Jette’s skeleton; Kobold paid a visit to the inspector, who lay in his rotten box with his arms folded and declined to answer. Meanwhile, day came, as it always has so far, and so the priest and Trollhand set out for the cemetery, that thriving heart of the town, where Doroteja used to sing and dig in hopes of undoing her miscarriage, where Michael Liebesmann happily recovered his wife Milena, where our inspector had gone in order to advance his career, and witches and warlocks came to harvest the materials of their commerce. Come to think of it, the cemetery was the only important place in H—.
This occasion, of course, did not at all resemble the occasion when the whole village turned out for the opening of Milena’s grave. Trollhand doffed his official cloak. Not even the surgeon and the drummer boy were invited. The people were in the fields. Father Hauser believed as much as ever in the inspector’s loyalty, although Trollhand, having seen so much evil in his life, said: Forgive me, Father, but what lasts forever? Even undeath is turning out to be temporary, thanks to these new police methods of ours.
You’re quite proud of the inspector, aren’t you, Hans?
Well, said Trollhand, he’s put food on my table. For every one I stake, the mayor gives me a silver thaler, although last year one of them was counterfeit.
Blackbirds and starlings rose up over their heads when they dug him up, and as he appeared distinctly evil, they finally put a stake through his heart, in order to teach him that the tunnel to heaven is far narrower than a corseted woman’s waist. The priest, who was so well regarded that on cloudy days one could practically see his halo, held it to be for the best. Although Richter von Lochner had uttered no promise on the subject, in his Christian mercy he did presently command that the inspector’s remains should rest beneath a cross made of wild rose thorns. Perhaps you consider this an inadequate reward. But as is said about devils in the ancient Grimorium Verum, this sort of creature does not give anything for nothing.
Father Hauser offered up three prayers, for the inspector had certainly abated the nuisance, even if not permanently; and so tranquillity welled up out of the grave-riddled earth of Bohemia, seeping and creeping across the entire carcass of the Holy Roman Empire, until by 1855 Bavaria found it practical to recommend the amalgamation of commercial codes throughout the German states.
IV
JUNE EIGHTEENTH
So long as there is an Emperor, there is still an Empire, even if he has no more than six feet of earth belonging to him, for the Empire is nothing without the Emperor.
If you appreciate the way that the double-headed Austrian eagle manages to bear both sword and orb in its claws, then you may well be an adorer of the fleet, like Massimiliano, whose bedroom resembled a ship’s cabin. How he loved to sail around Istria! Archduke and Admiral, lepidopterist and orange-gardener, he might have lived contented, had not his wife persuaded him otherwise. Indeed, he used to say that all he wanted out of life was a castle and garden by the sea. Instead, he entered a story told on tin-coated iron. (He was not unlike the Holy Child of Atocha, who was carried to Mexico by the Dominicans.) Once more he gazed back into the pale blue harbor, with Trieste glowing white on the underside of that blue peninsula. Then the Novara carried him away. He became Maximilian. Charlotte stood beside him on the foredeck, excited to finally become Carlota. To this day some Italians remain proud of him, at least to an extent. In Trieste his verdigrised statue stands high upon a cylindrical and octagonal bronze plinth studded with high-breasted angels, and there is even a bare-chested youth whom I first took for an Egyptian in a quasi-Pharaonic headdress, although now I wonder whether he could be one of the Emperor’s grateful Mexican subjects?
A soldier from the Confederate States of America once observed: Owing to some radical defect in the Mexican character unfitting them for self government the country has been cursed by one of republican form…
Fortunately, Maximilian now prepared to govern for them. He made it understood that his measures would have an entirely friendly character.
We remember him for many good qualities, not least his china blue eyes and beautiful teeth.
Matters ran on pretty well for the first two years, wrote an Englishman in his service. French bayonets kept the country quiet, and the roads open. But presently certain Mexicans began to fall short of their Emperor’s hopes. I cannot tell you whether the blue and red of Maximilian’s army were inappropriate colors for those latitudes, or whether his desire to lead the natives out of anarchy exceeded their benighted comprehension. He assured them: No Mexican has such warm feelings for his country and its progress as I. I wish you could have seen him with his blank white forehead and his nautical side-whiskers and his squinting eyes, whose gaze was outglittered by the watch-chain peeping out of his dark vest. Beside him, Carlota in her white wedding-cake dress smiled nervously upon the world. He determined to keep only Mexicans in his government, wore white, abolished inherited debt, enacted ten-year serfdom for negroes, but only under certain conditions and with the best intentions; imported pianos, upheld the nationalization of Church property, established a minimum wage and collected butterflies. Soon the Empress was writing to France: We see nothing to respect in this country, and shall act in such a way as to change it. He restored the Palacio Nacional. His soldiers dug ever more convoluted earthworks isolated by ditches; established outlying piquets whose sentries lay ready to fire upon silence; rigged up abatis of prickly pears; marched out battalions of jet-black Turcos in Zouave dress; levied any number of ablebodied natives to serve in his Guardia Rural, while Carlota, twenty-five years old, clasped her lovely long-fingered hands, assuring her acquaintances in Belgium: If necessary, I can lead an army. Do not laugh at me. Meanwhile her husband, who was already going bald, signed the October Decree, which saved the inconvenience of trying guerrillas before executing them. But no matter how valiantly he led, anarchy marched along at his heels. Indeed, so singular is Mexican gratitude that he was practically alone even before the French troops sailed home; then he found himself defeated, surrounded, betrayed at Querétaro, and imprisoned in that half-devoured city, brought to trial at the Iturbide Theater (in absentia, since they had courteously granted him a certificate of illness) and duly condemned to be shot on the nineteenth of June, 1867, along with his generals Mejía and Miramón.