“No, Madam Vronsky,” I said hastily, “please … gossip is to a policeman what — ” I paused, struggling for a suitable comparison.
“What mother’s milk is to a baby?” Madam Vronsky offered, coming to my rescue. “Very well, to gossip, then. Maestro Wagner toured a couple of Russia’s major cities several years ago … I think it was during the year 1862 … and tales were circulating throughout the musical world that he was in every kind of trouble imaginable. He had separated from his wife Minna; he was drowning in debt; he’d had some colossal failures in Paris and Vienna, and performances of his operas had ground to a halt. He was desperately in need of a patron but none was then even distantly on the horizon. The journeys by train to Moscow and St. Petersburg were exhausting, what with sleepless nights and unbearable food. His ability to communicate to Russian musicians was limited, some German here, some French there, an occasional bit of Italian, all delivered at the top of Wagner’s lungs on the supposition that the best way to speak to people who don’t understand a word you’re saying is to shout at them. And shout he did, so much so that at one point in Wagner’s first rehearsal with the orchestra in St. Petersburg the concertmaster, a violinist who happened to be fluent in German, shouted back at Wagner. “We’re not deaf, Maestro Wagner,” he said, “and what’s more, we are accustomed to beginning a piece not on the upbeat but on the downbeat. In fact, we are having difficulty following your beat altogether.”
“Was this fellow — this violin player — insane?” I asked. “Nobody … not even The Holy Trinity … would dare speak that way to Richard Wagner.”
“Wait, Inspector, that’s not all. A few minutes into the first selection, Wagner’s Overture to Rienzi, the Maestro yelled at the musicians to stop. He ordered the first violin section to replay the passage they had just played, which they did, then demanded they play it again, glaring at them the whole time, watching every move they made as though through a microscope. Signalling the concertmaster to rise from his chair and come forward to the podium, Wagner shouted to the members of the orchestra, ‘You see, this is what happens to a violin section when there is total absence of discipline, of leadership, all the bows going in different directions like bulrushes in a windstorm instead of in unison.’ Pointing accusingly at the concertmaster, Wagner went on: ‘And this one should be in charge of a band of gypsies on a street corner, not sitting at the first desk in a concert hall in St. Petersburg. But then, what else would one expect from a man with a name like Simon Socransky, eh?’
“With that, Wagner summoned the orchestra manager, declared that he would not proceed so long as ‘that Jew Socransky’ was present, whereupon the unfortunate Simon Socransky was dismissed on the spot.”
I was shocked that an orchestral player could be sacked in such a summary fashion, but Madam Vronsky explained that musicians were regularly hired and fired at will, even the most senior of them. “It’s a precarious way to earn a living,” she said, “especially when your fortunes on any given day depend upon which side of the bed the conductor arose that morning.”
“Tell me, Madam Vronsky, how did you come to hear of this incident? You seem to know all the gory details as though you were actually there.”
“In the world of music and musicians, bad news travels faster than an off-key entrance,” she replied.
“But if I understand you correctly, hirings and firings are not all that unusual or remarkable,” I said.
“Ah, but this was both unusual and remarkable, Inspector. And tragic, too. Horribly tragic. You see, Simon Socransky was distraught; after all, he’d slaved for years to achieve the high position of concertmaster, had been obliged to spend much of each year away from home and family in order to hold the post in St. Petersburg, suffered such appalling humiliation right there in front of the entire orchestra, then found himself suddenly and cruelly unemployed. And so he returned to his native city … but in a coffin.”
“You mean he took his own life?”
“Suicide. Yes.”
“Where was he from? Where did his family live?”
Madam Vronsky paused, rubbing her forehead, a slight frown showing between her beautifully manicured fingers. Slowly she replied, “Well now, Inspector Preiss, that’s an odd coincidence, isn’t it?”
“What’s an odd coincidence, Madam?”
“Come to think of it, Simon Socransky was from Minsk.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
"The strangest thing happened today, Hermann. You will never guess in a million years who showed up at our rehearsal!” Helena Becker had a peculiar look in her eyes and I knew instinctively that even if I were to guess correctly, I would not be pleased with the answer.
“You know how I despise guessing games,” I said.
“Oh, don’t be so petulant!” she said, giving my shoulder a not-too-gentle poke. “Go on, guess.”
“Very well. Schubert. Old Franz himself.”
“That’s ridiculous, Hermann. Schubert died exactly forty years ago.”
I pretended to be surprised. “He did? Funny, there’s not a word about it in his police record.”
“What police record? I never knew Franz Schubert had a police record.”
“Ahah! So the great Helena Becker still has a thing or two to learn about life in the musical world. Your turn to guess.”
Fascination was written all over Helena’s face now. “Stop being coy, Hermann. What police record?”
“Tit for tat,” I said. “You tell me who was the mystery guest at your rehearsal, and I’ll reveal the secret about Schubert.”
“Henryk Schramm, that’s who. Now what about Schubert?”
Of course there was no police record concerning the late composer, so hastily I fabricated one. “When he was nine years old Schubert stole a tune from Josef Haydn. Now then, what was Henryk Schramm up to?” The expression on my face made it clear that I was indeed not pleased with Helena’s news.
“Henryk Schramm wasn’t ‘up to’ anything,” she shot back defensively. “In fact, I thought it was rather sweet of him, sneaking in and sitting all by himself in the back row of the hall.”
“I take it Schramm just happened to find himself in the neighbourhood and dropped in to say hello, eh?”
“Actually, Hermann, he stayed right from beginning to end,” Helena replied, relishing the feeling of annoyance mixed with jealousy which I tried, but failed, to conceal.
“And afterward — ?”
“Afterward I was famished. After all, I’d gone straight to the rehearsal from the train without so much as a morsel of food. So Henryk treated me to a light supper at a nearby coffeehouse, a delightful little place that served — ”
“Spare me the menu, Helena,” I interrupted. “I’ve already had the dubious pleasure of being exposed to Schramm’s taste in light suppers. Let’s get to the point, shall we.”
“The point? What point?”
“Now who’s being coy, Helena? The last time I saw Schramm was when he burst into my office to inform me that Karla Steilmann had been murdered. He looked like a man who had just seen the sky falling. It was as though a piece of his own life had just been hacked away. And now you’re telling me that it’s goodbye Karla, hello Helena? Simple as that?”
“Poor Henryk — ”
“Oh, so it’s ‘poor Henryk’ now, is it? Go on, what about poor Henryk?”
“You are being beastly, Hermann. Really, you are!”
“I don’t have time to be nice!” I yelled. Then, ashamed of my ill-temper, I said in a calmer voice, “Helena, please try to understand: Am I jealous when a handsome talented fellow like Henryk Schramm shows interest in you? Yes, yes, and yes. There, you can put that admission on record. But if I’m impatient, angry … beastly, as you put it … it’s because the sky seems to be falling for me. I’m besieged from every possible quarter. I have a monster-genius who is under threat of ruination from an unknown source; a tenor who we think is Jewish willing for some strange and possibly perverse reason to play a leading role in an opera by a notorious anti-Semite; a soprano on the loose somewhere out there who may be wreaking havoc on a path of extreme revenge; three murders to date and, God knows, more to come; a mayor and police commissioner who have dumped the future of Munich on my doorstep; a wily French horn player whom I would gladly strangle except that I need his co-operation to locate the aforementioned soprano; and, lo and behold, a corrupt detective for a partner who would love nothing more than to see me burning on a funeral pyre. There you have it, Helena.”