Kolm’s Walking Stick
After Arnim Palace, I went to the courts to ask for Kolm, but no information was provided about executioners for fear of revenge. When I insisted, they let me leave a message in a basket. The note, proposing we meet the next day, fell in among others that looked as if they had been there for years, waiting for someone who never came. A rope was lowered down, and the basket was hung on a hook. The messages soon rose up until they disappeared into one of the upper windows.
I waited for the executioner in front of the courthouse the following day. Suddenly, I felt hands around my neck, and my feet left the ground once again. As I fought for air and recovered from his little joke, Kolm told me that someone from the hanged man’s troupe in Toulouse had insisted on accusing him. The law had more to worry about than an actor who had taken his role too far, but he had nevertheless decided to leave as a precaution.
The walking stick with the metal fist still hung off his belt. I asked whether it continued to malfunction.
“It destroys everything it touches.”
“I know someone who can fix it.”
I insisted; I didn’t want to look for Von Knepper on my own.
We walked around behind a church and into a deserted cul-de-sac until we reached a green door. The owner’s name—Laghi—was engraved on the lintel. A carriage clock was visible through the window; on top of the wooden base, a Vulcan was about to let his hammer fall on an anvil. I pulled the bell, but no one came. Kolm pounded impatiently on the door.
A maid opened, said it was late and we should come back the next day. The executioner showed her the silver hand, as if it symbolized some higher authority. Mechanical artifacts held extraordinary power in that house, and the servant let us in, as if we had shown her an order signed by the king himself. We were led into a cold room that had only one chair. Kolm sat down despondently and left me on my feet to nervously pace. After we had been waiting for a while, I wandered into the next room.
Up against the wall was a chest with dozens of wide drawers, similar to the ones at Siccard House. I opened the first with some difficulty and found a variety of mechanisms and gears. Most were made of metal, but some had been carved out of glass. It was obvious that certain pieces fit together like the parts of a sentence, but no matter how long I studied and weighed those pieces in my hands, I couldn’t imagine the grammar that regulated their construction. However, just as an archaeologist may only need to know one word to then decipher an entire dead language, I found something in the third drawer that revealed the whole: sixty-five empty compartments surrounded one glass eye.
There were footsteps and the sound of keys next door. I assumed it must be M. Laghi, the owner, but saw two men come in from outside. I watched them through the half-open door. There was good reason to hide my face because one of them was familiar: the keeper of the keys from Arnim Palace. The maid stared in terror at Signac’s arms and chest. His keys jangled, a sound conveying the authority bestowed by heavy oak doors and thick iron grillwork.
“Monsieur Laghi won’t be long. You can wait for him in the carriage,” the servant said in a quavering voice.
I came out of my hiding place only after they left. Seeing the keeper of the keys had left me shaken. Kolm, on the other hand, sat dozing, completely unaware.
“Let’s leave your walking stick. We can come back for it later,” I said, anxious to leave.
The executioner jolted awake and stared at me blankly for a moment. There was no leaving then, for M. Laghi was walking toward us.
He was dressed entirely in black, as if he were going to a funeral, and in his hand was a small chest. Kolm tried to intercept him, holding up his walking stick, but Laghi barely glanced at it. The executioner, used to asserting his authority, was taken aback by the owner’s disdain. Laghi was in such a hurry, it was as if he already inhabited the future.
“What do you want? Are you with them?” he asked, gesturing to the closed door and, through it, to the abbot’s men waiting for him outside.
“I need you to fix this walking stick.”
The artisan took it dismissively. He tested it two or three times and handed it back to Kolm.
“Take it to a watchmaker. I deal with much more intricate mechanisms.”
“I want you to do it.”
Laghi felt the urge to shove the executioner and call for the men outside to come to his aid, but he hesitated—not out of cowardice but in order not to make the night ahead any more difficult than it already was. He snatched the mechanical hand from Kolm and took it with him. The executioner shuddered at being so abruptly deprived of his walking stick, as if his actual hand had been taken from him.