The Burial Chamber
Mathilde no longer had any hold over me; Clarissa filled my thoughts as my hand traced letters on a woman’s skin. It wasn’t my fantasy to write on her, but I imagined she came to my room late one rainy night, and I slowly explored a message written in an unknown language.
Kolm and I met at a tavern frequented by cemetery workers, where I gave him back his walking stick. He asked me how much it had cost; I told him a lot, but he could make it up to me with a little favor. We were free to speak here without fear of being overheard by the indiscreet or spies; gravediggers only ever talked to one another—nothing else interested them. The long isolation they were subjected to by their profession had led them to distort language and create one of their own. References to tombs, darkness, marble, or death couldn’t be interpreted literally; they could mean any number of things, depending on how they were combined. The music of that language was at times as dry and deliberate as shovelfuls of earth and at others vaguely solemn, interspersed with Latin phrases they had learned from funeral inscriptions.
After years of filthy boots walking through it, the tavern now simply had a dirt floor. All bags and tools were left at the door. Medical students would come to buy bones, and goldsmiths stolen jewelry.
To reimburse me for the repairs, I asked Kolm to find out why Von Knepper went to the cemetery. It took jug after jug of awful wine before Kolm gave in to my pestering and grudgingly agreed to help. He led me over to a red-faced man sitting alone, talking to no one. Forlorn in a corner, he was reading and rereading a thick book filled with tiny notations. He would lick his fingertip to turn the page and then point at a spot in the book, as if he had finally found the very word he’d spent years looking for. I recognized him as the guard who had opened the gate for Von Knepper.
“Remember me, Maron? It’s Kolm.”
Maron wasn’t used to social interaction and was surprised these words were addressed to him.
“I remember you. I thought you’d left us. Why’ve you come to this place full of undesirables?”
“I was looking for you.”
“Why would anyone want to see me?”
“The key to the cemetery. I want to invite my friend here to a nighttime stroll through the graves.”
“I’ve opened and closed that gate for forty years and never lent the key to anyone.”
“We’ll offer you a little something as if we believed that were true.”
Obeying the executioner’s signals, I put two, three, four coins on the table before he had me stop.
“And we’ll give you one more if you let us take a look at that book.”
Maron pocketed the coins. Unlike every other man there, his hands were clean and white, not a mark of any kind. He spoke in a low voice:
“Just a quick look. Don’t get it dirty.”
Kolm took the book and handed it to me. I was initially confused and flipped through the pages, more to pretend I knew what Kolm wanted than to look for anything specific. He whispered that I should pay attention to the most recent burials. Next to each name was a grave site. I studied each line, searching for the lie that twists the stroke, sends it off course, and then forces it back to its original form but only with extreme effort. Kolm thought we should keep Von Knepper’s name out of it, in case Maron went behind our backs. It was best if our purpose remain hidden.
The letter S in the name Sarras almost seemed to vibrate, calling attention to its deceit.
We took the key, returned the book, and stood in front of the cemetery gates a little while later, well after midnight.
Kolm refused to go in with me.
“I’m an executioner. My deal with death ends under this arch.”
He stayed to keep watch.
I walked past the headstones to where the monuments were erected. It was like being a stranger in a new land, and I tried to form a picture of the place, but the moonlight seemed to move things around. I read the inscriptions, looking for the name Sarras. The path led me to the back, where the oldest tombs were, most of them virtually in ruins, and there, at last, I found it.
On top of a small marble palace, an archangel threatened visitors with a broken sword. The rusty lock had been broken long ago. The cold, nauseating air nearly made me stumble and fall down the stairs that led inside.
Using my lamp, I lit candles that on previous nights had spilled down over coffins and altars. Not even in bright daylight would the sight before me have made sense. One of my teachers at Vidors’ School, an optician named Mialot, used to give us an exercise: he would show us blurred lines in which a message would be revealed after a while. It wasn’t concentration that let you see the hidden words but a certain inattention achieved only after a great deal of effort. Once the mystery had been solved, it was hard to believe you hadn’t seen the writing all along.
The bishop was sitting in a high-backed chair that resembled a throne. He was being supported by ropes that came down from the ceiling and made him look like a marionette. I’ve finally found the automaton, I thought. Who could mistake that for a real man? He was surrounded by enormous blocks of ice, brought down from the mountains who knows how. The candlelight seemed to imbue him with an extraordinary sense of dignity; the bishop looked like an underground monarch, capable of governing from the beyond. Anyone looking at those ropes would think they weren’t holding him up but were instead how he controlled his administration’s strategies and actions.
One by one, the candle stubs were extinguished in pools of their own melted wax. When nothing but the light from my lamp remained, I noticed the shadow of another intruder on the wall.