‘Berne. Mission successful. Two regular out-going payments appear on A. Einstein’s accounts, to proprietor of house on Tillierstrasse and to M. Maritsch-Einstein. No further such payments. V.S.’
There was a Postscript: ‘No need to remit fee - the Spar Leihkasse Bank has paid generously on your behalf.’
The Tillierstrasse payments were presumably the rent. Housekeeping costs would account for the payments to Albert Einstein’s wife. We left the Post Office and returned to the hotel.
‘Watson,’ Holmes mused, ‘we find a world of strange anomalies and questionable clues. We reach. We grasp. What is left in our hands at the end? A shadow. The more we investigate the details and circumstances, the more inexplicable they become. We must work on the supposition this Lieserl is a child and that she is connected in some way to Einstein. Despite all our efforts we have been unable to discover anything about her - no legal papers, no family papers such as a baptismal certificate, no death certificate, no other customary civic record. How can this be? Every detail of every Serb from birth to death is minutely recorded and stored - in doctors’ offices, town halls, churches, monasteries, synagogues, yet not one document concerning a Lieserl exists. Why the lack even of a birth certificate?’
With frustration in his voice he continued. ‘In a world so filled with officials and paper - do we assume there never was a Lieserl?’
I remained silent. I knew from lengthy experience Holmes was in no way asking my opinion on the matter.
‘Or is someone a step ahead of us at every turn. If so - why?’
He stood up with a clouded brow and went to the window. The lights were coming on in Novi-Sad.
‘The word ‘Titel’ brought us to Serbia to make a search for Lieserl,’ he mused. ‘We are in a town in a land in a region where rumour-mongering is a way of life, yet whenever we enquire about Lieserl every door slams, every voice abruptly stills. So far we have been offered three theories. Dr. Herdlitzschke suggested Lieserl might have died inthe1903 epidemic of scarlet fever. Death certificates exist for every one of four hundred child victims but not for a Lieserl. The Rókus Kórház hinted without any evidence that the infant might have been sent to another village for adoption. The monk at the Kovilj monastery told us he had never heard of anyone with that name and suggested she might have been packed off to an institution for imbecilic infants. Yet from Clay’s inspection of Einstein’s bank account there is no evidence he makes more than the two regular payments, not to an adoptive family nor a home for mongoloid children.’
Holmes turned back from the window. ‘All we can say is that if there is a connection between Einstein and Lieserl, every effort has been made - by public officials, priests, monks, friends, relatives and relatives by marriage - to seek out and destroy every document with the child’s name on it. The question is - why?’
He paused. ‘Either we go on striving like the Old Man in Alice, to “madly squeeze a right-hand foot into a left-hand shoe”, or - ’
In gloomy silence we ate a dinner of soup made from carrots, chicken, rice, lemon and vinegar, followed by thin rolled pancakes filled with ground meat, topped with sour cream and a bright red relish made from red bell peppers. On the way to our rooms the hotel proprietor handed us an envelope which had been left at the desk. Our names were inscribed on the envelope in the same handwriting and same red ink as the mysterious notes. The envelope held two tickets for the evening performance of Zorka’s Magical Marionette Show.
Chapter VIII
Zorka’s Magical Marionette Show
It was the day of the performance. As evening drew in, we set off on foot for Zorka’s Magical Marionette Show. We went on foot through an artisan quarter of wagon-makers, carpenters, rope-makers, tailors and coppersmiths. The women wore their hair plaited, woven with flowers and other adornments, tied back with long oval hair-pins. Their glass bead necklaces, metal belts, bracelets and blouses decorated with silk tassels reminded me of Bulgaria. A gunsmith sat in front of his store filling cartridges, a commodity clearly in great demand.
We came to a patch of open ground on which a large tent had been erected. At the entrance a man with a dancing bear and an assistant with a tambourine were drumming up custom for the marionette show, the tambourine in competition with an opportunist little street orchestra of viola, two drums, a flute and a triangle. A girl hardly more than twelve years of age inspected our tickets. She showed us to seats reserved in our name. On a stage backdrop large snakes rose from the ground and swept across fields. Among the serpents a group of crudely-painted gravity-defying peasants danced the rondo in quick time.
A Gipsy musical ensemble in velveteen coats with glittering buckles on their clogs sat at one side of the stage, scraping at fiddles. Puppeteers and seamstresses lit by oil-lamps lifted marionettes from a great carved chest painted pea-green and picked out with scarlet and gold. The dolls were about two feet tall, made from hand-carved poplar. Two or three of the female marionettes wore white tulle dresses over pink silk slips, hair arranged à la grecque. Other girl-marionettes lay crumpled in a small heap, some with wide kilted skirts and velvet or satin aprons embroidered with posies of red roses and pansies. The male marionettes were dressed as village dandies in frilled white shirts, velvet waistcoats and high boots, with a bright flower behind an ear. A girl reached deep into the chest and pulled out a witch marionette with bandaged feet and a black cat gripping hard to her shoulder.
With a mouthful of pins, a seamstress worked rapidly to turn up the hem of a fierce-looking marionette. A large, bristly handlebar moustache dangled loosely to its chin. A shako on his head showed a military background. Fifteen minutes later, the Gipsy musicians jumped to their feet and struck up in earnest, singing in loud, forced voices. The audience hushed. The marionettes sprang into life as palmists, sorcerers, or fortune tellers turning over a deck of Tarot cards. They joined hands and began to dance a kolo, turning in a ring, hands on each other’s shoulders and waists, first a few steps to the right, then a few steps to the left, or backwards and forwards.
Cameo scenes came and went until a drum roll indicated we were at the final Act. Slowly, to joyous calls from the marionettes, a wooden crib descended from the dark of the roof. The cot tilted and swayed like a lifeboat lowered in a storm. The marionettes crowded around it, welcoming a new baby into the world. Their hand movements and excited exclamations proclaimed their delight. The proud terracotta mother hovered over the troupe, looking down. On one foot she wore an ugly orthopaedic shoe. A marionette broke an egg for luck over the face of the new-born infant. Other marionettes swung into a wild dance, with nimble, high-stepping footwork as though to give zest to the new soul. The swirling kolo reached a frenzy.
A crash of thunder rattled the small auditorium. A disquieting barefoot human hurled herself swooping and twirling into the throng of marionettes. Dark hair fell in an avalanche of curls on the left eye, obscuring her face. A paste made from talc and tamarind seeds applied to the face, hands and feet gave a lustrous ivory glow to her skin. A black pearl drooped heavily from one ear, a pink pearl from the other, giving an odd and bewildering witchery. The wild dancing came to an abrupt halt. As though the lid had been lifted off a beehive, a buzz rose from the audience. In awed whispers, the name ‘Zorka’ seeped around the auditorium.
With an air of menacing command, Zorka ordered the marionettes to turn back and look again into the cot. One by one they obeyed. They went strangely silent as they stared down more intently at the new-born infant. A female marionette called out, beseeching someone in the outer darkness to approach. A midwife puppet appeared and examined the infant. With a high-pitched cry of anguish she turned to face the audience, her hands clasped in prayer. The music switched tempo from joyous to menacing. The musicians broke into a shrill falsetto, a wild, inhuman sound, in an attempt to frighten off the evil eye. The marionettes crowded around the cot, beseeching the spirits to reverse the damage to the newborn’s brain. The agonised mother cried out, realising something terrible was about to happen.