– 54 –

Cecil Winge pulls the scarf tightly around his neck to protect the sliver of skin between coat and neck from the falling snow. He leaves the City-between-the-Bridges at the Royal Mint and takes a route across the frozen wood at the bridge by the timber yard, crosses the Islet of the Holy Ghost out of the wind by the royal stables and Per Brahe’s house, to struggle on into the wind again by Slaughterhouse Bridge. To his right, out of the gushing lake water, rise the stone pillars of the half-finished North Bridge, each surrounded by a stranglehold of icy shelves. The unfinished ends of the foundation fumble in vain for the support of the arches to bind them together.

The lower court building, still called Kastenhof after the brewer who ran the cellar pub there over a hundred years ago, sits on one side of Northern Square. Five steps take him up to the entrance, above which the royal monogram has been carved in resplendent sandstone. Winge is recognized at the door. He addresses the guard on duty by name and is shown to the jail, a corridor where a row of doors lead to walled-in cells, all lit by narrow window slits. The room has spartan furnishings: a bed hardly tall enough to hide the chamber pot, a dresser, a stool.

Johannes Balk sits in the dimly lit cell. He is staring into space before Winge’s arrival wakes him from his reflections. Behind them, the door is bolted and the sound of the guard’s boots on the stone dies away as he leaves.

Winge nods at him in greeting.

“Good morning. Have you everything you need? Food, blankets, tobacco?”

“I need nothing. I’ve never smoked. The fish and pork are sufficient. The cold doesn’t bother me anymore.”

Something about Balk reminds Winge of a spider, unmoving and patient in its web, tauntingly passive. A plate with the remains of a meal stands on the chest: porridge, and what looks like boiled pike. Balk rubs his eyes while Winge sits down on the stool.

“Do you know, Winge, that I am several years younger than you, though we look as if we were born the same year? Perhaps life carves our faces with the experiences that we suffer through, and perhaps it is my actions that have aged me prematurely. Where were we? Oh, the middle of the second act. I was just preparing to leave the country.”

The water in the pitcher that stands next to the bed has already formed a layer of ice at the top. Balk cracks it with his index finger before pouring himself a mug. He clears his throat and drinks, stopping for a while as if to find the place where he left the story, and then he begins again.

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In time, the boy becomes a young man, but without a father or a mother he is doomed in many ways to remain a boy. As long as he is too young, Birdsong is under the control of a board of trustees, a collection of stern gentlemen in Stockholm who have assisted Gustav Adolf Balk in his affairs, and whom the young man only acquaints himself with through the letters he receives, which are written in a style so formal, their content is not so easy to surmise. Twice a year, a proxy is sent out to Birdsong to oversee the management of the estate and to ensure that the young man’s education continues according to his father’s wishes.

On his seventeenth birthday, he receives a communiqué with unexpected information: according to the terms of Gustav Adolf Balk’s last will and testament, a fund has been set aside for an educational tour of the Continent. A particular route has been outlined, with the addresses of bankers who, forewarned of his arrival, are prepared to pay out travel funds in practical currencies in exchange for the notarized bills included in his instructions. His journey begins by sea, from Stockholm to Reval, then south to Paris, Florence, and Rome. For the second time he leaves Birdsong, and sees the somber buildings disappear behind the end of the linden trees.

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It is in Paris that he departs from the itinerary. He has read about the city, the scene of novels and stories, home to thinkers and visionaries. He has always longed to see it with his own eyes and finds that art has not done justice to reality. There is something in the air here. At each coffeehouse and restaurant, people discuss the conditions and rights of humankind. Slavery is unanimously condemned. Many go even further, comparing the submission of the slave with the fate of the people under their monarch. Beneath the beautiful ideals he catches a glimpse of the feeling that he, more than anyone else, is familiar with: fear.

As if by some sixth sense, he already feels surrounded by the bloodlust that mercilessly follows in fear’s wake, and when the day of departure draws near he finds he does not want to leave the city. Something is coming and, whatever it is, he wants to witness it with his own eyes. During the first few months, he spends every waking moment on the city’s streets and public squares. He listens to the discourse in a language he has learned by way of books and the caning of his tutors, and quickly understands it better and better. With a few dispatches to his home he can secure credit with French bankers, and rents a room in the Latin Quarter.

There is life and movement everywhere. The city is seething with revolt, fomented by the poor harvest of the year before. At the beginning of May, there is a convocation of the Estates-General, the first in almost two hundred years. The National Assembly is proclaimed, the Bastille is stormed, and by the summer of ’89, Paris is under self-rule by grace of the city council and the newly formed National Guard. In the rest of the country, peasants cast off the yoke of oppression. Feudal lords are forced to flee or relinquish their ancient rights. He stands in the middle of all of this, a passive but enthusiastic observer. In August, the new Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is published by the National Assembly. Word spreads through the city’s squares and meeting points. He sees King Louis XVI himself speak to the people from the balcony at the Tuileries Palace, no longer a young man but imposing nevertheless, in the prime of life. The king speaks warmly of the new constitution, the very symbol of the old accepting the new. During the next few months, the city appears to have stabilized under the new order. But he senses its fragility and bides his time. He stays for the rest of the year. And the next.

Johannes Balk knows that hate requires fear just as a fire needs fuel, and he feels the fear growing around him. Maybe it is this more than anything else that makes Paris feel like the home Birdsong never became for him. Here he is not exceptional: everyone is afraid; most people are as full of hate as him—and, among them, Johannes feels superior. They have only just begun to acquaint themselves with emotions he has harbored for as long as he can remember. Although belief in the power of the people grows stronger at the expense of the king, anxiety spreads among the ranks of the revolutionaries. Many see enemies in every shadow, both in and outside the city’s walls. Marat the agitator writes caustic pamphlets advocating drastic measures: a purge of the blight of the Jews for the good of the many. It is now said that the end will justify the means.

For the first time in his life, the young man feels that he is a part of something he understands, surrounded by people like himself. He senses a colossal death approaching, unseen by the masses, biding its time. He awaits it with great anticipation, eager to find out which forms it will take.

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In December ’91, he is awakened by a commotion in the stairwell. Men in the homemade uniforms of the National Guard, reflecting the colors of the new flag, kick in his door. He has been informed against. Who the sneak was, he never discovers. Someone seeking favors from the Jacobins? Maybe his banker, or his landlord? As a foreign nobleman, he is an easy target of suspicion. They say he is a spy. He is brought to the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, quite near his own lodgings, where they tell him he will be interrogated.

No such interrogations ever take place. He is placed in a cell in the dungeon of the military prison, deep down under the old Benedictine monastery. There is no window or light of any kind. At first, he waits patiently and prepares his defense as best he can. A guard brings bread and water, sometimes other morsels, without ever showing his face. A bowl is shoved through an opening at the bottom of the door and no one responds to any questions. He is left there to rot. Perhaps the hierarchy among the revolutionaries has shifted, so that the order for his arrest has been forgotten. The cell is completely black. He can’t see his hand in front of his face. In time, he becomes uncertain if his eyes are open or closed, or where his body ends and the darkness begins. He can only sit still in the dark.

He becomes aware that he is not alone. Things that cannot exist there become visible. The father he believed to be dead comes to visit him. When he fumbles his way over to the stretcher to sleep, his mother—who has patiently been waiting for him—crawls over to him and reaches out to claw his face. He defends himself by giving back as good as he gets. In this way time goes by, with no means for him to measure it.

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He is awakened from his state of slumbering wakefulness by terrible sounds that he soon realizes are human voices raised in anger. His door is slammed open, and in comes a light so strong he is forced to cover his face with his hands. Random fists grab him and lift his body. He is carried out into the grounds in front of the church where hundreds of people have gathered. The sans-culottes, the revolutionary mob, and the National Guard are all gathered, and the prisoners of Saint-Germain are all dragged out into the open.

He sees the large crowd swaying. Here and there, heads stick up out of the mass, only to sink back down to the level of the others with a thud. At first he is confused by what he is seeing; then he realizes that they are trampling each of the prisoners to death. A dozen men at a time get up on top of a single victim, holding on to each other’s shoulders and waists for balance, and then bounce by bending and straightening their knees. Soon the prisoner’s body gives way. The chest bursts with a bang, the skull is trampled flat with such force that the eyeballs shoot across the cobblestones. Under all of them is a bloody mess where no one can tell any longer which body part was attached where.

More and more people are crowding into the yard until panic breaks out, and the men who have carried the young man out are obliged to let go of him in order to fend the others off. He crawls between the forest of battling legs until he reaches a fence. He sees a gap between two boards—impossibly narrow—and then, to his surprise, realizes that his body is thin enough to pass through.

In this way, he regains his freedom. On the other side, there is no longer anything that separates him from the other paupers who flock around the church. He washes himself clean down by the Seine. He doesn’t recognize his own reflection. In time he hears that a rumor had spread about the number of imprisoned foreigners having grown large enough to threaten the Commune itself, and that the enraged mob was emboldened to take matters into its own hands. Saint-Germain-des-Prés is only one of many prisons where such scenes are played out.

During his imprisonment, the death that he has so long been waiting for has come to Paris. On his way through the city, he sees bodies piled up higher than his hand can reach. They have been massacred by the thousands. Chaos reigns. On the other side of the river he sees drunk men force a woman up onto a pile of corpses, to dance and sing in praise of the republic, and when she refuses, the bayonets pierce her body. It is now September 1792, and the autumn leaves are everywhere. A few days earlier, the king was forced to flee the Tuileries when the palace was stormed, but he has now been captured, along with his family. On the streets, people are singing “Ça Ira,” a melody he knows well from the first year of the revolution, but it has different lyrics now. They used to sing about justice for the oppressed. Now the song is about hanging aristocrats from the lampposts. All men have to wear the revolution’s tricolored cockade on their hats, the colors that were supposed to symbolize liberty, fraternity, and equality. His way out of the city takes him to the eight-sided square he once knew as Place Louis XV and in the middle of which a strange object now stands, placed next to the plinth on which the king’s father was once depicted sitting astride a horse. It is the first guillotine he sees. No executioner can be expected to manage all the beheadings that the revolution demands, so someone has invented a machine for it. He claps his hands and laughs so vigorously that cracks appear all over his dry lips.

He wanders north, barefoot. No one bothers him. His appearance is alarming and he possesses nothing of value. In Flanders, he finds some fellow Swedes whom he convinces of his family background, and from whom he can borrow some money in return for a payment three times the amount. Then he makes his way home to Rostock, where he can buy himself a berth on a ship to Karlskrona. At the end of the year, he returns to his native land after years of absence, though he appears to have aged far more than this.

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Balk returns to the light. His eyes appear unseeing, as if his gaze is turned inwards to his memories to pull a lost image from the past.

“It was then I met Daniel Devall. I was looking for a ride to Stockholm to take me back to Birdsong, the only home that remained to me. At the roadside inn where I was looking for a driver, there he was. He had bought a place in the same sleigh, and on our journey, we began to converse. You know yourself how slow and uncomfortable the hours are as the horses toil. You never saw him in life, Mr. Winge. I am sorry that the remains you recovered from Larder Lake did not manage to do him justice. He had a glow about him, as if his soul were shining from the inside and made him into a lantern to light the world for others. His eyes were wide and a clear blue, slightly tilted in a face that had perfectly symmetrical features. He had a glint in his eye that was at once roguish and innocent, bold and modest at the same time, like that of a blessed child no parent could ever bring themselves to discipline. He wore his golden hair long when we met, tied at the neck with a silk ribbon but, as time wore on, often worn loose around the shoulders. When he smiled, he had two milk-white rows of teeth. The upper ones were completely straight, and in the lower row he had a tooth that was slightly askew, as if his creator had been worried about taking perfection to excess. His body was slender and finely formed, dressed in beautiful clothes tailored to flatter his proportions. He had the hands of a virtuoso, with long slender fingers. Even his scent was appealing: a discreet suggestion of a flowering meadow, at a time when others drenched themselves in perfume to cover their stink.

“The hours simply flew by, to the point I would have wished them to last longer. Daniel was charming and quick-witted, a superb conversationalist and easygoing. He sat very close to me and when I told him something that amused him, he burst into laughter and laid his hand on my knee as if he could not stop himself.”

He pauses and pours himself some more water.

“You have to understand, Mr. Winge, that I have never had a friend. I cannot recall anyone ever paying me any attention or asking me a question out of pure curiosity. That’s why I was so poorly prepared for Daniel Devall. I was . . . vulnerable.”

He drinks of the cold water until it is all gone.

“When we reached our destination, Devall offered to be my guide in Stockholm for the next couple of days. The journey had worn me out and I needed to rest. He was familiar with the city that I had only seen very briefly and where I would otherwise quickly have become lost in the maelstrom of bustling life. I saw no reason not to accept his offer.”

He nods to himself.

“Let me tell you about one of the evenings in particular, Mr. Winge. There was a masked ball that night, although it was less than a year since the king had been murdered at just such an event. The men appeared to take pleasure in this element of incongruity; they were not of the kind to mourn for King Gustav. They all wore masks, but their clothes betrayed their noble birth and wealth. Neither I nor Devall belonged to these circles, but after Daniel managed to procure each of us a mask, no one noticed that we were strangers, not least because of the amount of wine that flowed. As evening became night, the gentlemen went on to other establishments. We were pulled along, and in this way arrived at a house that was set apart from the others, by the waterside where only the grain cargo boats go. A dark-skinned servant greeted us, and soon we found ourselves in ornate rooms.

“Horrors awaited us there, Mr. Winge. I had been drinking, and when I first saw some masks that I had not noticed earlier, I was astounded at how lifelike they were. There were distorted faces with bulging growths, heads that had been twisted into strange shapes, costumes to transform their wearers into cripples and grotesque figures. But soon I realized that these poor wretches were not wearing masks at all. This was their true form and they belonged to the house for the entertainment and distraction of the gentlemen. After a while, women arrived, dressed only in veils over their naked bodies, and soon the men loosened their belts and let their clothes fall to the ground. Before long the room was a slithering mass, with men and women copulating in all manner of ways. The deformed cripples provided any service that was required of them. This scene revolted me and when I pulled the mask from my face, Devall could read the expression on my face. ‘I thought . . . your father . . . ,’ he said to me, and the extent of what he meant did not strike me until much later. We left. I saw no reason to postpone my departure any longer and made the necessary preparations. I asked Daniel to accompany me to Birdsong, as I had no servants and his requirements were not great.”

“What happened after that, Johannes? Did you find his correspondence?”

“I knew that he wrote letters, Mr. Winge. But I did not find that strange. It took me a while to figure out who he was writing to and why. The letters to Liljensparre he wrote in code—as you must surely know—but he wrote them first in plain text and used a key to translate them into the code. He must have opened the masonry stove in his bedroom without first checking if there were still embers in there. It was a cool evening and I opened it later to make sure there would be enough heat until the morning. There was a piece of paper crumpled in the ashes. His original copy. I could not keep myself from reading it.”

“And what were your conclusions?”

“Daniel Devall was a fortune-hunter, Mr. Winge. He wanted nothing more than to find favor with Police Chief Liljensparre and thereby further his interests. I imagine that someone had told him about my impending arrival in Karlskrona, perhaps from one of the Swedes I met in Flanders. His assignment as informant was to survey the harbor and carefully observe any suspect persons who came from France to spread the revolution in the north. He assumed I was a Jacobin who had taken part in the revolt and who was now returning home to spread the same message. That’s why he came with me to Birdsong. He was hoping that I would confide in him my plans to overthrow the monarchy, and that he would win the honor of having uncovered the plot.”

“What did you do after you read the letter?”

“My thoughts went to my mother. How she pulled the limbs from her crane flies in place of my father. And what was Devall if not a crane fly that had bumbled into my house? Was he not deserving of the same fate? It took me many hours to ponder how such a thing could be accomplished. My mother had laid her prey on the windowsill and left them there to languish. I needed a windowsill large enough for Daniel Devall. Then I recollected Keyser House, where we had found ourselves among naked half-men and grotesque figures, and only now did I realize that the visit had been deliberate. I remember the words Devall had uttered by mistake, and I realized their meaning. He had led me there because he knew my father, who must have been a regular guest at the house. Devall guessed that I shared the same tendencies. In his mind, he must have imagined that the Honorable Gustav Adolf Balk had taken his firstborn son to Stockholm to introduce him to the appetites of the flesh that appeal to the gentlemen of his class. I cannot with words describe how much this thought disgusts me. And so I found it fitting to let him end his days at Keyser House, associating with people like my father. In their circles, Daniel Devall would be welcome, such as I would shape him.”

He squints up at the slit of light near the ceiling, which is growing fainter.

“I hardly need to tell you the rest, Mr. Winge. All you do not know now are some practical details. I had to take myself to Stockholm for these arrangements, and had to be assured that Daniel would not leave Birdsong before my return. My first stop was to that board of trustees who thought me long dead. I asked for a lump sum payment against the promise that I would never darken their threshold again. Inquiries led me to the Jew, Dülitz, whose services I could now afford. Through him I found the surgeon’s apprentice, Kristofer Blix, and purchased both his debts and his life. Magnus was the only one of the residents of Birdsong who was there when I returned from France. He was a half-feral hunting dog who remembered enough of my smell to associate me with being fed. He allowed himself to be chained in the shed and I did not disappoint him.”

Winge allows the silence to settle before he speaks.

“You know that Blix wrote down everything that he had done, witness accounts that allowed us to track you down. What happened to Kristofer when he had played out his role?”

“Blix was afraid of his own shadow and prepared to do anything to save his own skin. After he had completed everything I asked of him, I let him run off into the woods.”

“And if you are now prepared to confess to everything, why did you wait until we found you, Johannes? Why did you not come to me directly?”

“I lacked evidence for my crimes, Mr. Winge, and it is of great importance to me that my confession not be refuted. I read in the Extra Post that you had taken on the case of the Larder corpse and felt secure in the knowledge that you would find me and bind me to what I had done.”

A sense of unease causes Winge to hesitate before raising the question he has been waiting to ask.

“Why are you doing this now, Johannes? What is your goal?”

Johannes Balk looks straight into his eyes. His pupils, large and black in the dim light, seem to Winge to be two deep wells without end, containing only a raging emptiness.

“I have seen the world now, Mr. Winge. Humans are lying vermin, a pack of bloodthirsty wolves who want nothing more than to tear each other to pieces in their struggle for power. The enslaved are no better than their masters, only weaker. The innocent only retain their blamelessness due to their lack of ability. Before Paris became a bloodbath, everyone spoke of equality, liberty, and brotherhood, of human rights, and now those same voices are heard here. I saw the Declaration of Human Rights bound in the tanned hides of men who had been flayed once the guillotine had separated their heads from their bodies. Here, the burghers and farmers also stand ready to rise up against the nobility, their ancient oppressors. Do you remember, Mr. Winge, how a noble officer at the beginning of the year raised his hand against a merchant and the City Guard had to drive the agitated mob from the gates of the castle itself? Revolution hung in the air then. It does so still. I, the final descendant of one of the kingdom’s most prominent houses, firstborn son of a member of the Council of the Realm, will step forwards in the lower courts and confess in detail what I have done to Daniel Devall, a common man of the people. You yourself will prove my guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt. And the people will rise up in vengeance. Before you lay me under the sword, I will tip the scales of revolution. In Paris, the streets flow with blood as we speak. The blade of the guillotine has to be sharpened several times a day in order to manage its load. I wish the same for Stockholm. The gutters will run red. The fewer of us who survive, the better. Let the City-between-the-Bridges choke on corpses. Let the graveyards be flooded. Let only the ravens remain.”

He chuckles.

“And then there is you, Mr. Winge. In a world of wolves, you are the exception. A man of a better kind, born to the wrong time. You uphold justice and reason when others simply wish to better themselves. I read your name in the Extra Post and, when I understood who you were, all became clear to me. Providence has brought you to the place where my journey ends. You are famous for always allowing the accused to tell their side. And tell it I will. That which must come to pass afterwards will be as much your doing as mine.”