Famous Last Words (8 page)

the chair, a great blue bowl of cigarette butts set out like after-dinner mints; about two pounds of them.

The walls here, too, were a mass of words.

“Well I’ll be damned,” said Freyberg in his muted way.

Quinn turned around and saw the room.

Even its ceiling was adorned. There were animals there.

And birds. And stars. And a handprint drawn with candle smoke.

“I don’t see how it’s possible,” said Freyberg—and got out his handkerchief. “One man…”

Rudecki said; “didn’t I tell ya?” Beaming. “Didn’t I (ell ya?”

“Yes,” said”Freyberg. “Yes, you did indeed. Congratulations.”

But Quinn was the first to see the epigraph.

He crossed the carpet almost running, moving towards the candelabra on the table like a man who after many years has seen a friend.

“What is it?” Freyberg asked, alarmed. “What the hell is it?”

Quinn could not reply. All he could do was shut his eyes and wait for the noise of the words inside his head to stop.

Freyberg noted the lift, the oddness in the set of Lieutenant Quinn’s shoulders. He guessed there would be no answer

so he went across himself, though not so far as Quinn had gone, and he read—unable to prevent the sound of it from reaching his lips—aloud:

“IN THE SAME HOUR CAME FORTH FINGERS OF A MAN’S

HAND, AND WROTE OVER AGAINST THE CANDLESTICK

UPON THE PLAISTER OF THE WALL OF THE KING’S

PALACE…”

After maybe thirty seconds, Quinn said: “and the King saiv the part of the hand that wrote.” And turned, with a smile to Freyberg and said; “with a silver pencil?”

Freyberg nodded.

“Well,” he said. “At least now we know what he was

doing here.”

“And—maybe—why he was murdered,” said Quinn.

“And—maybe—why he should have been,” said Freyberg.

Quinn exploded.

“Jesus. God damn it, sir!” he said. “I mean, why the hell…?

I mean—look at what we’ve just discovered here! Look at it! Two whole rooms of evidence. Not even classified. Not even read. And you’re so god damn sure he’s guilty, you might just as well have put that thing through his eye yourself!

What are you so god damned scared of? He might be

innocent, for Christ’s sake? Might not be what you want him to be?”

“Are you through?” said Freyberg.

Rudecki was looking—one man to the other—astonished.

Quinn had never blown his stack like that before. Freyberg

53

had never let him, had never let anyone get out of hand like that.

Freyberg began to fold his handkerchief, making it as small as something he was going to hide in a matchbox—a specimen, perhaps, for his collection. “Think about it,” he said.

“There’s all this writing on the walls, all very neat, all very ordered, all lined up in rows, all very…careful.”

“He was an artist,” said Quinn.

“That’s right. An artist.” Freyberg looked around the walls.

“Something of a con-artist, too, for all we know. The bigger the lie, the more we are bound to believe it…didn’t one of them say that? Something like that? And twice told lies become the truth…Years, we’ve had of it now. The Nazi con-game. …”

“Mauberley wasn’t a Nazi.”

Freyberg just smiled and went on smoothing and folding

his handkerchief, turning it over and over in his hands.

“He hated Nazis,” said Quinn.

“Mmmmm-hmmm…”

“He did.”

“Yes. Yes. I’m sure he did.” Freyberg’s smile was pinched and demeaning. “Why, from what I hear, they all hated

Nazis. Didn’t they? I mean, I hear that every day. And if I was fool enough to believe it every time I heard it, I’d have to believe there weren’t enough Nazis to form a quorum.

Were there, Quinn? And the war never happened. And Hitler was just an actor with a moustache made up to look like Charlie Chaplin. So, when Charlie says we should all fall down—we all fall down… .Pratfalls. Yes? And no war. How wonderful. Just to walk out into the lobby and leave it all behind us on a giant movie screen. With the music playing and everyone applauding…I’d like that. I really would.”

Freyberg squeezed the captive handkerchief tight between his palms and walked away to the windows, his features

fading until there was nothing left but silhouette: a boy’s head and bones and six feet of rumpled coat got up to look like a man. “But I’d also like this movie to include the scenes at Dachau, Quinn—so you could walk back through the gates and tell me nothing happened there. Tell me that all those

people were only extras, paid to starve themselves…paid to lie down and play dead. Yes? Hansel and Gretel lying in the ovens…and maybe somewhere a gingerbread house.

Playtime. Movie time. Make believe.” Freyberg turned to look at Quinn. “You think you might be able to arrange all that?”

Quinn could only look at his feet.

“I assume your answer is no, Lieutenant?”

Quinn put his hands behind his back and waited, still

looking down. He was aware that Freyberg had begun to

cruise along beside the walls and would soon be behind

him. All Rudecki did was hang in suspended animation,

barely breathing over by the door.

“Really, you disappoint me, Quinn. After all the training you’ve been given—all the skill you have with words and ideas. ‘Such a fine mind!’ as Colonel Holland says. ‘What a pity to waste it on a demolitions expert… .’ “

Freyberg came and stood at his shoulder. Quinn looked

up. Freyberg was smiling at the hanky in his hands. “Colonel Holland thinks so highly of you, Quinn. And I do, too. We talk about you all the time. And we’re afraid some boobytrapped wall is going to blow up in your face—and then

we’ll lose that fine, fine mind—ka-boom!” He gave a false and patently exaggerated shrug. “And maybe it will, one day. Some wall. Go boom.” Freyberg’s breath smelled of

peanuts and chocolate—even of candy wrappers, stale and dry and faintly sweet. “But I’ll tell you what. You look at these walls here…” He laid his hand out flat in the air.

“And maybe Mister Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, traitor and

propagandist, can teach you a thing or two about storytelling.

Yes?”

“Sir,” Quinn began.

And Freyberg reddened. “No,” he said. “No, Quinn. No.

This—” he gestured at the walls “—whatever story it tells, will end with an apology. I absolutely guarantee it. Tell us, he may, the truth—the whole truth—and nothing but the

truth—but in the end, he will apologize. And in the end.

because he has apologized, you and twelve million others will all fall down on your knees before these walls and you will forgive him.” He held up his hand to prevent Quinn

55

from speaking. “You will forgive him, Quinn. And once

you’ve forgiven him, you will forgive all the others too. And that, my bamboozled friend, is what I mean by propaganda.”

“Damn it all, sir,” said Quinn. “You don’t even know

what’s written there.”

“Don’t I?”

“No, sir—you do not.”

“Okay. All right,” said Freyberg at last, as if conceding defeat. But then he grinned and added; “just as you don’t know what I found in the bathroom, back across the hall.”

“What’s that?”

“The bathtub is full of ashes.”

“So,” said Quinn. “He was freezing to death. There wasn’t any heat. He made a fire.”

“No,” said Freyberg. “It’s not that simple, much as I’m sure you’d like it to be. In fact, Lieutenant, I’m sure you’d like it very much if everything but what you approve of here would go away and leave you alone. Then we could all get down to the proper business of a eulogy…burial and martyrdom.

Yes? Well, that isn’t going to happen. Not while I’m

here.”

Quinn began to panic. The Captain, after all, had developed his own procedures, based on his own priorities and

prejudices. Freyberg’s whole existence, ever since Dachau, had been a search for clues. He had seen so many ashes.

Sifted them. Blown them off the backs of his hands. Kept them in packages. Knew what they had been. “He burned

some handwritten notebooks in there,” he said. “A great many handwritten notebooks, in fact.” He walked in closer to the walls and gave the words a glance. “You know—I

have to wonder why a man would burn so many books if

what they contained was essentially the same as what he took so many pains to lay out, oh so very carefully, here on these walls.”

Quinn fumbled for excuses.

“They were notes.” he said. “And what he’s written here is larger. Expanded.”

“Maybe,” said Frevberg. “Maybe. But then. why burn

them?”

“I told you. He was freezing to death. He wanted fire.”

“Wanted fire—and did not burn this table? And this chair?

This desk?”

Quinn said; “well—he needed the chair to stand on. Look how high he’s written.”

Freyberg actually laughed. “You don’t know what’s written here, either,” he said. “But you’re already holding up

his arm to help him write it. Jesus Christ, I bet if I introduced you to Hitler, Quinn, you’d call him sir. I’ll bet you’d even bow.”

“Captain,” said Quinn. “The war is over.”

Rudecki was relieved to hear it.

Freyberg regarded the small white thing he had made with his hands; crumpled it tight and let it fall open.

Then he turned and began to walk away from the room.

At the door, he stopped. “I’m giving you a job,” he said to Quinn. “I want you to read every word of this. And I want you to keep me abreast of what you’re reading—just so I can check it against a little research I’ll be doing on my own. But do, please do be careful; and if you hear it whirring and ticking, just be sure you stand well back and warn the rest of us. I don’t want to be buried in rubble like that. and I don’t think you do either. Anyone found in a garbage heap is suspect, I always think. Don’t you?”

Annie Oakley’s Crystal Saloon was beginning to fill up.

The bodies—five from the courtyard, one from behind the counter in the lobby and one from the stairs—had been

tagged and bagged and placed in a row on the floor against the wall where Ingrid Bergman had been sitting when he

first looked in through the doors. There was a candle on her table. Annie had put it there.

Freyberg had given him charge of the corpses. Perhaps

because he was such a good shot—and the corpses needed protection. Annie had kept the silver pencil in his pocket, together with the Iron Cross from that Colonel he’d shot in the latrine at Innsbruck and the one and only piece of “precious”

jewelry he’d managed to collect thus far: a ruby ring

57

(or just red glass) in an antique setting taken from the woman who had died on the road to Umhausen. That was all. But the pencil was the best—because it was famous.

And every minute the pencil got more and more famous.

Every time Quinn or Freyberg or Rudecki came down the

stairs, there was some new development, shocking and intriguing.

More and more writing was appearing on the walls.

Its content seemed to be more and more “alarming” (to

Quinn), “damning” (to Freyberg) and “fuckin’ fantastic” (to Rudecki). Freyberg had ordered the whole Elysium Hotel off limits except to classified personnel, and he was moving Quinn and himself into rooms on the second floor.

But Annie was the Keeper of the Morgue.

His only fear was that Freyberg would tell him to take the bodies out and burn them, like he had the dogs at Dachau.

No one could be buried yet. The snow was still too deep up here and the ground still frozen. But maybe if he got lucky (for a change) someone would come and take the bodies

down the mountain into the valley where they could be

given some kind of so-called decent burial. Churchbells and stuff and someone saying-prayers. There hadn’t been too much of that with all the dead he’d seen. Mostly it was just the dogtags looped on some guy’s arm. He’d tip them all into a cardboard box and hand them to the Chaplain, twenty, thirty or forty at a time—and a truck coming and the bodybags all driven off, looking so lumpy and strange and not

as if there were human beings inside at all.

Annie looked over at the candle on Ingrid Bergman’s table and began to hum “As Time Goes By.”

Freyberg had started negotiations for a generator. It was promised for tomorrow or the day after. This was standard vocabulary for “when we get to it,” meaning: “okav, let’s bargain.” The way was now open for communications between Freyberg’s Quartermaster and the Quartermaster down

in the town. Freyberg’s QM came up with one case of Scotch for two cases of Liebfraumilch: twenty Panalellas for five

hundred Camels; six jars of Vaseline (no questions asked) for eighteen gallons of kerosene. And finally; “your Betty Grable for my Rita Hayworth.” Result: “An absolute guarantee, sir. We’ll have a generator tomorrow.” Meaning the

day after.

In the meantime: candles.

Immediately after Freyberg had left, Quinn and Rudecki had discovered two more rooms—all the rooms with the writing sharing the opposite side of the corridor to the suite where Mauberley’s corpse had been found.

Quinn had put his cot in the room with the gramophone

and the candelabra; moving in with a sense of relief and exhilaration. He was absolutely certain he would exonerate Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. Freyberg simply didn’t understand.

It was a question of interpretation, and this was Quinn’s forte.

Evening was upon them.

Down in the valleys Quinn could see green, heightened

by the vivid emerald overlay of water on the ice of the Otztalsee. Here, however, on the heights the wind and the cold prevailed. There was frost on the windows, sparkling now in the increasing light as Quinn lit more and more

candles to augment the single kerosene lamp he had been allotted.

Taking the last of his candlesticks, Quinn went over and opened the door between this room and the next. He could still not believe what Mauberley had done: accomplished.

Four whole rooms of it—sixteen walls of meticulous etching.