Fatal Lies Read online

  After the old jurist, Liebermann saw a young woman with a pathological fear of spiders, a civil servant who derived pleasure from dressing in his wife's clothing, and an utterly miserable “comic” actor. The peculiar and ironic condition of the latter would ordinarily have piqued his interest, but Liebermann was completely unable to focus on what the man was saying. Eventually, the young doctor was forced to concede defeat. There was no point in proceeding—he was in no fit state to practice. He fabricated an excuse that would account for his absence, and retired to a nondescript coffeehouse located behind the hospital.

  On entering the establishment, he felt somewhat ashamed of his white lie—particularly so on observing that all the other patrons were absconding medical students trying to recover after a night of excessive drinking.

  Liebermann stirred his schwarzer and sank into a state of ruminative abstraction. In the play of light on the surface of his coffee he saw—once again—a trembling suggestion of Miss Lyd gate falling into the arms of her lover.

  Although the notion was unjustified, Liebermann could not rid himself of the feeling that he had been deceived, and the longer he sat, ordering schwarzers, smoking Trabuco cheroots, and thinking, thinking, thinking, the less unreasonable his position seemed. Miss Lyd gate had given him the impression that she was a bookish intellectual: refined, elevated, untroubled by baser instincts, with little or no interest in gentlemen. The young doctor tapped his cigar, and a long cylinder of fragile ash dropped onto the tabletop, creating a star-burst of white ash. How could he, the most astute judge of character, have been so wrong! (Like all psychiatrists, he had immense difficulty grasping the fundamental truth that self-understanding is considerably more problematic than understanding others.)

  A dark thought, like a black storm cloud, rolled over the flat horizon of his consciousness. Miss Lyd gate had once suffered from hysteria… and he had treated her. He remembered something that Professor Gruner, the former head of department, had said to him— a warning that he had instantly dismissed: As we all know, the female hysteric is cunning, malicious, and histrionic. She is a consummate seductress. The credulous physician is easy prey.

  At the time, Liebermann had considered Gruner an old fool: unsympathetic, misogynistic, and an advocate of barbaric electrical treatments. Yet now, as Liebermann sank deeper and deeper into a quagmire of unhappy, bitter confusion, he found himself reviewing his opinion.

  “No,” he said, quite suddenly—surprised and embarrassed to discover that he had spoken the word aloud. An unshaven medical student sitting at the next table raised his head and looked around the room with bleary bloodshot eyes.

  I cannot blame her! I cannot think this way!

  Annoyed at his own weakness, annoyed at his willingness to entertain a pernicious, morally bankrupt account of hysterical illness, annoyed at the ease with which he had condemned Miss Lyd gate (just like the patriarchal women-hating psychiatrists he most despised), Liebermann sprang up from his chair. He tossed some coins onto the table and departed the coffeehouse, eager to put his unsavory descent into self-pity and despair behind him.

  Liebermann walked back to the hospital at a brisk pace. He went directly to his office, where he applied himself to revising the wholly inadequate patient notes he had made earlier.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Enter,” Liebermann called out.

  A man appeared, wearing a smart uniform with orange and gold piping, two rows of buttons bearing relief eagles, and a green hooded cloak. The splendor of his appearance (which revealed the typically Viennese fondness for civic grandeur) vastly inflated the importance of his station and function.

  “Herr Dr. Liebermann?” he asked, breathlessly.

  “Yes.”

  The telegraph messenger handed Liebermann an envelope and retreated a few steps. He lingered in the doorway. Liebermann dug deep into his pockets but could find the makings of only a sorry tip, having disposed of most of his change in the coffeehouse.

  Liebermann opened the envelope and found a note inside, written in an elegant, looping hand.

  Dear Dr. Liebermann,

  I trust this note will discover your whereabouts—as I have had to improvise your address. We did not speak of music, but I have a strong feeling that it is important to you—that you possess a musical soul. This evening, I will be performing a selection of Tartini's works for violin. (A ticket is enclosed.) I very much hope that you will come. Please accept my apologies for giving such short notice.

  Once again, thank you for your most timely assistance.

  With fond greetings,

  Trezska Novak

  So that's why she's in Vienna! She's a violinist!

  Liebermann raised the note and passed it under his nose. He recognized the woman's perfume: the upper register, a combination of clementine and mimosa, the lower, white amber and musk.

  “Trezska Novak.” He said her name out loud, affecting a Hungarian accent. It tripped off his tongue with a jaunty dance rhythm. For the first time that day he smiled. Not a great, radiant smile, but a smile nevertheless.

  31

  ON LEAVING THE HOSPITAL, Liebermann walked to Café Landtmann, where he ordered a large plate of Wiener schnitzel followed by two slices of topfenstollen. His appetite, which had been notably absent, had suddenly returned. As his fork sliced through the crumbly pastry, the fragrance of lemon zest, cinnamon, and rum intensified. He relished the sharp flavors, which seemed to revive all his senses: the world became more vivid.

  By seven o'clock he was on a tram, which took him to the nearby seventh district. He soon found the small concert venue where Trezska was playing. Examining the billboard, he discovered that she was sharing the platform with two other musicians: a pianist, József Kál-man, and a cellist called Bertalan Szép. The concert seemed to be part of a cultural initiative and was sponsored by Árpád Arts, a charitable foundation promoting young musicians from Hungary.

  Liebermann entered the building, deposited his coat in the cloakroom, and purchased a program. He loitered in the foyer for a few minutes and studied the audience. They were entirely unremarkable, although there were more Hungarians present than might ordinarily have been expected. Capturing an usher's attention, he was guided to a central seat in the fourth row. The auditorium was already quite full, and an obese woman, wearing a feather boa and a floral hat, scowled at him when she had to stand up to let him pass.

  As he settled down, Liebermann noticed a group of men advancing up the side aisle. They were dressed in elegant black suits and looked, so Liebermann thought, like representatives of the charitable foundation. One of them sported an award of civil merit: a large cross, hanging from a violet and green ribbon—the Royal Hungarian Order of Saint Stephen. Among their number, Liebermann was surprised to glimpse the white tunic and gold sash of an Austrian general. He did not get a very clear view of the man, but he saw that he was carrying a bouquet of flowers. The dignitaries took their seats— all in the front row—and almost immediately the lights dimmed.

  A door at the back of the stage opened, and József Kálman—a thin, sallow man with sunken eyes—marched to the piano. He played some fanciful pieces by Karl Goldmark and a selection of mazurkas, nocturnes, and ballades by Stephen Heller. Liebermann judged Kálman to be technically proficient, but his interpretations were far too literal. Be that as it may, the audience was determined to praise the young artist, and responded with vigorous applause and hearty cries of “Bravo! Bravo!”

  The cellist, Bertalan Szép—a stout fellow with comically horripi-lated hair—was an altogether more accomplished performer. He produced an excellent account of Bach's Suite Number Six in D major, managing to make the melancholy voice of his instrument sing with joy. He continued his recital with an amusing transcription of an orchestral interlude by a Russian composer, titled The Flight of the Bumblebee—the conceit of the piece being that its curious chromatic melody emulated precisely the frantic buzzing of the busy insect. When Szép took his
bow, Liebermann was pleased to bring his hands together with genuine enthusiasm.

  Contemplating the vacant platform, Liebermann found that he was peculiarly excited by the prospect of seeing Trezska Novak again. He began to wonder if his recollection of her was accurate: the full mouth, the strong nose, and those striking eyebrows. She had seemed very beautiful—at the time—but they had met under exceptional circumstances. Perhaps his heightened state of emotion had affected his perception of her. He was hoping—rather anxiously— that his memory had not deceived him, and that the woman who was about to occupy the stage would prove to be an exact copy of the woman he had rescued in Landstrasse.

  The door at the rear of the stage opened and Trezska Novak materialized out of the shadows. Liebermann was not disappointed. Indeed, so arresting was her appearance that the audience produced an appreciative soughing that preceded their applause. She was wearing a black satin dress, and her hair fell in thick lustrous locks around her shoulders. Above her heart, she had pinned a brooch—shaped like a horned moon—which burned with a fiery white adamantine light. Her expression was serious and purposeful. She curtsied, gripped the violin beneath her chin, and waited for the clapping to subside. Then, closing her eyes, she drew her bow across the strings.

  A strange, improvisatory scraping filled the hall: the opening bars of Tartini's G-minor sonata, more popularly known as The Devil's Trill (on account of the composer's insistence that it was revealed to him by Satan in a dream). The melody was serpentine, sinister, and creeping, occasionally finding a major key and offering the listener hope, only to dash it again by twisting back into a tonal wasteland of eerie ambiguities.

  Liebermann had heard The Devil's Trill performed once before, at the Saal Ehrbar, but it had not affected him so deeply. In that concert, the work had been performed with a piano accompaniment, which had only diminished the music's power. The lone voice of the violin was more haunting, more mysterious—imbued with a raw, chilling urgency.

  Of course, thought Liebermann. When the devil played to Tartini, he played alone!

  Trezska did not open her eyes, but communed with her violin, swaying and rolling from side to side. The demonic obliquity of her eyebrows and the rapture of her playing stirred in Liebermann memories of Faust: a capricious notion that this woman might once have gambled with her soul in exchange for greater mastery of her instrument. The sheer spectacle of her performance charmed the audience into forgiving any technical deficiencies. She was like a magician, artfully misleading by means of a carefully choreographed danse macabre.

  The conservative second movement was followed by the opening bars of the third, a fortissimo howl that might have escaped from the mouth of a doomed Florentine in Dante's hell. Jerking rhythms led to fluid accelerandi and savage down-bowed chords. Then the famous trills: frenzied, dizzying, convulsive, becoming louder and louder— climbing in pitch and volume. Trezska leaned backward, and her tresses tumbled off her shoulders. Her eyes opened. In the sulfurous gaslight they appeared incandescent with infernal rage. When the music finally reached its arpeggiated dissolution into nothingness, almost everyone listening had been persuaded that this extraordinary composition was, indeed, the devil's handiwork.

  Trezska completed her recital with a less dramatic piece: Tartini's Pastorale for violin in scordatura. Gradually, its gentle rusticity and bucolic breeziness dispelled the stench of brimstone, and visions of eternal torment were replaced by idyllic vales, drones, pipes, and slumbering shepherds.

  When the final notes had faded and Trezska had removed the violin from beneath her chin, the audience responded with noisy delight. Several of the dignitaries in the front row jumped to their feet—and others seated behind copied them, clapping and cheering. Through the mass of bodies, Liebermann caught a glimpse of white and gold— and saw Trezska bend to take the bunch of flowers from the Austrian general.

  After collecting his coat from the cloakroom, Liebermann left the hall and set off toward the Ringstrasse. He passed a Bosnian hawker, in crimson fez and pointed slippers, who attempted to sell him a kettle and an inlaid snuffbox. The sound of Tartini's diabolical trills still persisted in the young doctor's mind. They had acquired a siren-like quality, exerting a subtle tractive power that slowed his step. Moreover, he had begun to question the propriety of his precipitate departure. Trezska Novak had sent him a personal invitation. Surely it was discourteous to leave without congratulating her. This simple point of etiquette was frequently observed in musical circles, was it not? Such were his justifications.

  Liebermann stopped, turned around, and made his way back to the concert hall, slipping down a side alley that led to the artists’ entrance. He rapped on the door, which was opened by a porter. Jangling some loose change in his pocket, he asked the functionary to convey his compliments to Fräulein Novak. Some silver coins changed hands and the porter disappeared. A few minutes later the door reopened and Liebermann was admitted into a narrow corridor. A few gentlemen were standing at the far end: one of them was Bertalan Szép. He was smoking a cigar, and his arm was casually slung around the shoulders of his cello case. The porter indicated Trezska's dressing room.

  A gentle tap on the paneling produced an invitation to enter.

  Trezska was seated in front of a large mirror.

  “How good of you to come.”

  “It was my pleasure.”

  She did not stand to greet her visitor but remained perfectly still, conversing with Liebermann's reflection.

  “I like to sit quietly after a concert.” She smiled softly. “I find it… necessary.”

  “Yes. One needs to recover after expending so much emotional energy—and the pieces looked physically taxing, too. It was a very impressive performance: I have never heard the great G-minor sonata played unaccompanied before.”

  Something like a shadow passed across Trezska's face. “I was pleased—although some would say that I took liberties with the andante… and the allegro was somewhat uninspired, don't you think?”

  Liebermann understood that a musician of her quality was not seeking a blithe denial.

  “The problem lies—at least in part—with the composition itself. The allegro is musically inferior. Even so… I enjoyed it immensely.”

  “You are fond of music,” said Trezska, her gaze becoming more penetrating. “I was right—wasn't I?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is your instrument?”

  “The piano.”

  Trezska looked satisfied, almost smug, and without uttering a single word managed to communicate something like: Yes, of course you're a pianist—how could you be anything else?”

  Now that he was close to her, Liebermann noticed that Trezska's cheek was still a little swollen. She had used make-up to disguise her injury.

  “How is your graze?”

  “Sore… but getting better.”

  “Good.”

  There was a knock on the door, followed by the appearance of Szép. He acknowledged Liebermann with a bow, and said to Trezska: “We are off to Csarda.… Kiss is coming. Count Dohnányi and his guest will be joining us later.”

  Liebermann noticed that Trezska's eyes flicked toward the bunch of flowers she had been given, now laid on top of her dressing table.

  She shook her head.

  “I'm going home,” said Trezska. “Tell Kiss to get me a cab.”

  “Going home?” said Szép, evidently surprised.

  Trezska touched her head. The gesture was languid and affected, like that of an operatic diva.

  “A headache,” she said, with unconvincing indifference. “Please tell the count that I am sorry—I know he will be disappointed.”

  “Very well,” said Szép. He shrugged, and left the room.

  Trezska's gaze met with Liebermann's reflection again, and her cunning smile invited him to acknowledge the insincerity of her exchange with Szép. She stood up, her dress rustling, and turned to face him. For the first time that evening they looked at each other directly. He
r expression changed, switching from mischievous complicity to something more serious. Liebermann stepped forward and took her hand in his. He kissed her long delicate fingers, on which he detected the distinctive fragrance of her perfume: the clementine was particularly sweet.

  “Forgive my presumption, but I would…” Liebermann hesitated before continuing his sentence. “I would very much like to see you again.”

  32

  “WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME?”

  Wolf punched Perger as hard as he could. His knuckles sank into the soft area of the lower back, just to the right of the spinal column. The boy cried out in agony—and Wolf punched him again. The force of the second blow pushed the boy forward, and he fell to his knees. Wolf's hand closed around his victim's mouth.

  “Just shut up! Not another sound. Ask me again—and I swear I'll… I'll…” Nothing came to mind, and once again Wolf resorted to violence. He brought his knee up into the space between Perger's shoulder blades, which produced simultaneously a sharp crack and a sickening dull thud.

  “Now get up!” Wolf grabbed Perger's collar and pulled him to his feet. “And keep going.”