“For everyone,” agreed Dirk. “You are still playing?”
“My Lehrmeister has me working over several string trios of van Beethoven. And I’ve just got my hands on a ravishing piece by de Saint-Colombe. Practice does get in the way of my theology studies, I am afraid.”
“You will be a pastor? After you’ve fathered an illegitimate child?”
Felix laughed. “I intend to learn only enough theology to know how to sin more effectively, thus to become more deeply penitential. The darker the sin, the richer the value of spiritual recovery.” He was speaking in a level of nuance beyond Dirk’s apprehension: droll, insincere, affectionate. “No, I hope to become a better performer, to be worthy of the music I am learning. If knowing music can bring me relief, can—move me across the border—how to say this—can release me, perhaps, to write my own, so others may be moved as I have been—is there any other ambition? Theology and art aim in the same direction.”
Dirk had nothing to say on the matter, so he slurped at the ale. Felix said, “What are your aims, young man?”
“I have no talents,” said Dirk. “I only watch and listen.”
“You have a talent of charm, I see you do.”
“I cannot see—what did you say about it—across borders. I have never been able to see that. But I know someone who can, I think, but is stuck—cannot take the step.”
“Music usually helps,” said Felix. But he seemed to realize that remark was glib, and he relented. “Tell me what you mean.”
Without naming Nastaran, Dirk told Felix about a woman from somewhere in the Near East, a woman possessed of a dybbuk of sorts, pestered by an incubus, that caused her to walk at night in her sleep. She couldn’t name the destination, so she was haunted and trapped in this syndrome. If she could be released, Dirk said, who knows where she might go?
“Perhaps into a church tower with you?” asked Felix, knocking Dirk’s calf with the toe of his boot.
“Franz! Moritz?” called Dirk, standing up.
“Wait,” said Felix. “I have an idea. I heard of someone who might help. I don’t know the man, and he has become elderly, but I’m told he lives right here in Meersburg. Would you like me to see if I can get an appointment for your mysterious somnambulist?”
“What must I pay you for your help?” asked Dirk.
“I’ll think of something.” He downed the last of his ale and tossed a few pfennigs upon the boards. “Though the von Koenig family is here only occasionally, the Baron knows everyone in Meersburg. Baron von Koenig will open any doors for me that I ask. I’m sure the door to Herr Mesmer’s apartments are no exception.”
Felix took down the address of the Pfeiffer household and left brusquely, without a good-bye. The cinnamon reek of rot that accompanies harvest was beginning to rise as the morning sun strengthened.
39.
The physician had a suite of rooms above the Heilig-Geist Spital in Vorburgga?e. Dirk and Felix found the man settled in a wooden armchair upon a heap of faded cushions. He was in his seventies, perhaps late seventies. He said, “I am Doktor Mesmer. I am told”—glancing again at the letter of introduction unfolded in his lap—“that I am to be at your service, young Stahlbaum.” He winced even to raise his right hand to grab Felix’s.
“This is a preliminary visit.” Felix glanced back at Dirk, who was standing behind him in the shadows. “I’d like you to explain to my friend what you might do to help the mistress of his employer’s house. She suffers an odd ailment.”
“I might do nothing to help her. Is that explanation enough?”
“He doesn’t understand your theory and practice, and I’m not competent to clarify.”
“I don’t entirely understand it myself,” said the old man. “Is that perhaps a flagon of schnapps you have brought as a present? A good deal of therapy starts and ends with a bolt of schnapps, I find. My nephew, who runs this hotel for the elderly, arranged my rooms right above the winepress, the rental cost of which helps support his whole operation. But little wine is pressed in my direction. It’s a sore trial to me, the proximity of possibility. Very Tantalus, very Aesop.”
Felix uncorked the flask and poured a portion in a gummy glass with a chipped gold rim. There was only one glass. Doktor Mesmer fortified himself. “I have been discredited in Vienna and I have been discredited in Paris,” he declared. “Lavoisier was cutting, the bastard, but at least that visiting gasbag, Herr Benjamin Franklin, managed to be witty in his dismissal of my claims. I am parading my high-fledged associations for your admiration, in case you haven’t noticed. How tawdry of me. Am I obliged to humiliate myself further at this stage in my life?”
“We won’t keep you long. But you might help. I should be so grateful.” Felix said that last in a way that suggested the mildest sort of menace, a pressure brought to bear upon a man who couldn’t stand up from a chair without the help of a cane. Felix went on. “Where shall I start? Your work concerns a theory of affinity between animals as they meet and correspond with one another, is that aptly put? A sympathetic hydraulics of vapors and fluids, a depression of phlegms? A rising of invisible energies? I practiced these definitions last night to get them right.”
“I see you like that part. The young always like that part,” said Doktor Mesmer. “Sometimes my theory is known as animal magnetism. Have you a canary, perhaps, with a chronic malaise? Won’t sing? Much can be achieved by understanding the psyche of the canary. Listen to your canary. Did you know psyche is the ancient Greek word for soul? Of course you did.” He was mocking them, mocking himself.
“Tell us about the part that’s come to be known as Mesmerism,” prompted Felix.
“Ailments.” The Doktor appeared to be addressing the schnapps. “Physical abnormalities. What are they? A blocking in the circulation of vital liquors? Perhaps. If so, an induced crise—a trance state—can sometimes be helpful at restoring vigor. This aids in recuperation and for a while it also allowed me to keep up with my debts. But, Herr Stahlbaum, I’m not about to treat your young friend.” He glared over Felix’s shoulder at Dirk. “I can see from here that he is beyond help. Those born dull remain dull. I shall not be sued for incompetence. I won’t open myself to that indignity.”
“I told you, it isn’t him,” said Felix. “And if we don’t pay you for your services, we can hardly sue you if you fail to satisfy. Isn’t that true?”
The elderly gentleman—charlatan or seer, Dirk had no way of knowing—sighed. His hands trembled, one on the stem of the glass, one on the letter in his lap. He said, as much to himself as to the young men in the room, “When Herr Benjamin Franklin came in, and I saw his prodigious intelligence and his beaver-skin cap, I wondered if I was having an elective affinity with genius or with a dead beaver. Can you trust anything that I would say?”
“You’re lying about that little vignette.” Felix settled his own felt cap upon his head. “I have affinities of my own. Might you see the person in question tomorrow morning at this hour? A respectable hausfrau?”