I don’t understand. Why should I suddenly leave off telling you about von Hausburg? To talk about Count Wittgenau?
I barely remember him. He was only briefly in Belgrade. Ten days or so. I think he arrived at Christmastime. No one knew the real reason for his visit. I’ve heard several accounts, and I doubt any of them are correct.
But I am quite sure that General Doxat was not to blame.
You’re not interested in what happened back in ’35? I can’t hear you. You want to hear about the costume ball?
I don’t remember what I was wearing. Well, it was a long time ago. How should I remember all the masks I’ve worn in my lifetime? There have been many fancy-dress parties and many things to change into and out of. Now I’m old and I don’t remember, especially now that I know that all of those parties never did me a bit of good.
Why do it then, you ask? That is what you’re asking?
It happens all the time. Someone invites you, or you invite someone, to a costume ball. That’s how one lives, you know.
Wittgenau.
So, someone must have been having a little joke, or sending a warning, or making an accusation – I never knew which – and arrived wearing a mask that looked just like the face of Count Wittgenau. No, I never did find out who it was. I know who it wasn’t. My husband, because he was the only one to spend the entire time without a mask. At first I was frightened, for the mask seemed alive. I mean that it didn’t seem like a mask. I could have sworn that the wig really was Wittgenau’s. The hair was grey with bluish strands.
Yes, the custom was to change one’s wig for a costume ball. I mean, we’d have recognized one another with our own wigs on. Naturally, the quickest and easiest way to identify anyone was by utterly artificial things such as wigs.
That night, yes, it’s coming back to me now, there was a terrible storm. Thunder and lightning, just like summertime. But it was only an Indian summer. I arrived late. I know it’s hardly the done thing for the hostess to be late, but something had happened, I no longer remember what. One of my maids was giving birth, perhaps. Something like that. And right away I noticed the trickster in the Wittgenau mask. He was speaking to the Devil, or, rather, someone dressed as the Devil. I don’t know what they were talking about. I was far away, the music was still playing, and the air was filled with thunder. I don’t think they were together long.
No, as I’ve already told you, I don’t recall what I was wearing that night. I don’t recall. Perhaps someone else remembers.
Something else has just occurred to me. Something I was thinking about during the party. It was often on my mind in Belgrade. A fairy-tale, a tale my grandmother used to tell me when I was very small, back in Regensburg. I no longer remember what the story is about, and even then in Serbia I don’t think I knew. No, I’m sure I didn’t. Probably something along the lines of all fairy-tales, a prince must defeat a monster to win a princess. But there was something special about it, something quite different from all the others. A tiny detail. Really, just the tiniest detail, but enough to make its whole meaning clear. My grandmother would tell it to me before bed. Yes, that’s right. Somewhere in the middle of the story the young men are put to the test to see which one is truly a prince. All they had to do was pass through some sort of forest and reach the castle. It was an ordinary forest, no trees that could talk or do anything worse. Just an ordinary forest in the country, not particularly dark or deep, certainly not filled with yew trees. They may have been oak trees. And there was a road that led through the forest. A road paved with gold and studded with jewels. And just as there always are, there were three young men, and their task was to take the road through the forest and reach the castle on the other side. The first young man set off on horseback, but when he saw the gold he kept to the side so as not to ride over the precious metal and stones. As soon as he arrived they chopped off his head. The second young man, not knowing what had happened to the first, also rode his horse alongside the road. And he also lost his head. The third young man did not even stop to think, but galloped straight down the middle of the road, his horse’s hooves striking up golden sparks all the way and crushing the priceless jewels into powder. That was the true prince, for only a true prince, said grandmother, takes the middle way along the road of gold.
That’s what I was thinking about at the costume ball. What?
That night nothing else happened in connection with the false Wittgenau. How do I know he was not the real one? Because by then Wittgenau had been dead for a year. Besides that, you know more about Wittgenau than I. You know everything there is to know about Wittgenau and about who killed him. And why are you asking me all of these questions when I’m only a woman, one who knows nothing about heroic deeds and has nothing to do with politics.
Now, I’ve told you, Wittgenau arrived in Belgrade sometime around Christmas in 1735 and promptly disappeared. Just like that. Disappeared. All I can tell you is what I heard from the usual hopefuls at court and the servants.
Not from lovers. I didn’t have lovers.
I had heard that Wittgenau was a member of the secret imperial commission which had come to look into the construction of the Fortress of Kalemegdan. And the cistern. The emphasis was always on the cistern. From what I’d heard the investigation did not concern the money that had been spent. No one ever told me what Wittgenau was actually looking for. What else is there to investigate when building is involved, if not corruption?
Yes, the principal charges were against Doxat. At least that’s what people were saying. He hadn’t yet been made a general; he was still just a colonel in charge of building the fortress. Yes, he was Swiss and a Protestant. But the two of them never met, you know, Doxat and Wittgenau. Doxat wasn’t in Belgrade when Wittgenau arrived. By the time Doxat returned, Wittgenau had already vanished.
Who? Why do you want me to talk about my family now? You know all that. Very well.
My family hold the postal monopoly within the Habsburg Empire, Hungary, Slavonia, all the German Grafschaften, the Czech lands, Poland, the Low Countries, parts of France and northern Italy. My paternal uncle is Postmaster General to the Holy Roman Empire. This position has been passed down in my family since 1490. We have more than twenty thousand couriers who can deliver a letter from Paris to Buda in seven days. Or from Vienna to Istanbul in four days.
Sorry? Why would we deliver a letter from Vienna to Istanbul? I was only giving an example. That’s all. Naturally our letter-carriers have passed through many lands, enemy lands among them. But we haven’t carried letters for the Turks. At least not that I know of.
Who is it you are interested in, actually? Wittgenau? Or von Hausburg? Or Doxat?
You’re interested in me?