The Left-Handed God Read online

  But as Augusta saw the happy face, the sparkling eyes, the rosy glow in her mother’s cheeks and remembered her sprightly manner of talking and humming, her courage failed her. She sighed and described Herr Seutter’s salon.

  3

  Mannheim

  Maxima est enim factae injuriae poena fecisse.

  (The heaviest punishment is the fact of having done an injury)

  Seneca, De Ira

  He dreamed of the lake. Always. Seasons passed in his dreams. The leaden waters of winter, on which the snow fell like down from gray cloud featherbeds, drawing a veil across the alps, gave way to the azure sparkle of spring amid green shores wreathed with flowering apple trees. In midsummer, the lake’s warm waters lapped gently against his boat as he floated, bathed by the heat of the sun under a crystalline blue against which gulls soared and swooped like kites borne by the wind. And in autumn the flaming sunsets spilled their glory of molten gold across its surface and made the trees along the shore burst into flame.

  The interims between his dreams were filled with images of torment and death. He wanted no part of them and fought the demons that inhabited this bleak and hellish land until he found his way back to the lake.

  He learned to explore his dream world to feel it more intensely. He would let his hand fall over the side of the boat to trail through the cooling, caressing waters and imagine touching and being touched by a lover. At other times, he walked along the lake shore, on and on, passing through small familiar towns with smiling people, resting under trees heavy with ripe fruit‌—‌cherries melting sweetly on his tongue, apples bursting into tart juice, pears that tasted of honey‌—‌and the bees would buzz and sometimes sting, but even their sting was delicious. He would circle the whole lake endlessly, passing under snow-capped mountains, lying in flowering meadows, kissing pretty maidens in their kitchen gardens, and he would end where he had begun, happy for what had been and eager for the next journey.

  Once, only once, in his passionate love affair with the lake, he flung himself into its waters, naked like a lover or a newborn, losing himself in its embrace, mastering it, letting himself be absorbed into its dark and mysterious depths, to die in ecstasy.

  Better to die quickly than to live in terror, says Aesop.

  Dulce et decorum est etcetera.

  Death pays all debts.

  Come unto me and I shall refresh thee, calls the lake…‌

  Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, and water to water.

  And so ye shall be reborn.

  But it was not to be. The four apocalyptic specters interjected themselves between him and his consummation.

  He thought of them as apocalyptic because they were four, differentiated by their colors. Red, black, white, and a pale ivory. In the Book of Revelations the four horsemen are sent to end the world. They ride into battle against a sinful mankind. He had once seen a woodcut by Albrecht Dürer, showing the four horsemen as knights or soldiers with raised swords, looking much like the Prussian hussar who had ridden him down and taken his colors. But his own apocalypse walked on foot now, befitting his insignificance.

  War

  Death

  Pestilence

  Famine

  He was not sure who was what in Revelations, but he knew that his red apocalypse spoke of War, and the black one of Death. The white apocalypse brought pain, and the pale one came with the white one, so he thought they must be Pestilence and Famine.

  The other two came separately.

  He hated and feared all of them, for they warred with his desire to be reborn. They tormented his body and rent his soul. They kept him from fleeing to his lake with its refreshing waters and its island paradise.

  However much he resisted, they were slowly winning the battle, for his escapes became shorter and his suffering greater, longer, and more intense.

  In time he was to learn that his chimerae were mere flesh-and-blood men, but that did not change his fear and anger. The white figure was a military doctor in Austrian uniform with a stained white apron tied around his middle. He worked on the legs, inflicting such exquisite agony that Franz would scream like one of the damned in hell. Sometimes his screaming would produce the nurse Famine with a meager draft of laudanum, the nepenthe of forgetfulness that brought a brief sojourn back to his lake.

  The red chimera was another military man, in red coat and breeches. His visits were rare in the beginning, and Franz did not know if it was always the same officer. He had a notion that this man had been asking questions that Franz could not or would not answer. At least once those questions concerned Mama and Augusta. He remembered trying to answer but his tongue had refused to obey.

  Not that he felt like talking to any of them. The most irritating visitor was the clergyman assigned to him. In his sober black robe and with his harsh voice reminding him to put his trust in God who was the resurrection, he seemed Death personified. Franz knew the way to resurrection and hoped for more laudanum, enough laudanum so that he could cross over and lose himself forever in the lake.

  It was not to be.

  They had brought him here to this hospital. Drifting in and out of his dream state, he remembered little of the journey except discomfort. He had lain on a stretcher in a covered wagon with other wounded men. Then he was in this room, and here he suffered more pain, worse than the first, but there was also more laudanum, and he returned to the lake.

  The pain did not leave him, but it abated in time. And when it did, there was no more laudanum. The cup the nurse offered to his lips now contained broth, and later soup with bits of meat. At first he refused the food, knowing that it sustained existence, and existence was too painful to contemplate.

  Another doctor came and asked questions. Franz answered with grunts. Like all doctors, the man volunteered little himself. One day, Franz strained very hard to speak and managed, “W-wh-hat?”

  The doctor gave him a sharp glance over his spectacles and said, “What is the outlook, do you mean?”

  Franz had meant to ask, “What is wrong with me?” but this would do. He nodded.

  “Well, the field surgeons did the best they could.”

  They always say that when the news is bad, Franz thought.

  “They should have taken your leg off. But as they didn’t, I could see that yours was the sort of case we might learn from.” The doctor preened a little. “There was an article‌—‌published by a Frenchman‌—‌his name’s Desault, if you’ve a mind to know‌—‌that proposes to deal with necrosis by cutting the rotting flesh away. It seemed the opportune moment to test the theory. Mind you, it was touch and go. I cannot count the bits of bone and metal I had to remove first, and it’s a miracle you didn’t die from gangrene fever after all. Nasty stuff, gangrene. Your flesh turns black and stinks to high heaven. Well, I kept cutting and cutting, and here you still are.”

  “M-m…‌m-m?” Franz wondered why his tongue would not cooperate.

  “I mean, the leg’s still there. Both of them. Though the right knee may be a bit of a problem. Won’t be able to bend it or put much weight on it. I’m afraid crutches will be in order. The other one’s well enough. Scarred, of course. You’re a lucky fellow.”

  “L-ll…‌l-l…‌l-la?”

  “What’s wrong with your tongue?” The doctor bent over him and pulled down Franz’s jaw, peered inside his mouth and then felt around it with his fingers, pulling his tongue up and down and sideways.

  Franz gagged. The doctor’s fingers had a disgusting smell and taste of tobacco and other unspeakable things.

  The doctor removed his hand and straightened. “Say something!”

  “N-na-no!” croaked Franz and glared.

  One day, Franz stole a glimpse at his legs while the doctor and nurse were cleaning and re-bandaging them. It was a very brief glimpse, for the pain was, as usual, excruciating. But the sight of his wounds was so unnerving that for a long time afterward he refused to look at them. The flesh was a violent red or purple, puffed up so much
in places that the middle of his leg no longer looked like a limb but like something rotten and slimy unearthed from a grave. On the right leg, trickles of blood and pus pulsated from the doctor’s incisions like burning lava from small volcanoes. The smell of corruption reached his nose, and he closed his eyes, gagging on his vomit.

  *

  The sharp-nosed servant with the odd yellow eyes closed the double doors of the library behind the visitor. The visitor advanced nervously, bowed, and sat down on the other side of the wide, ornately carved desk. “Is it true?” he asked.

  His host poured cognac into two glasses and pushed one toward him. “Really, Paul,” he said. “You have less self-control than a female. Pull yourself together. It appears there was a letter, but it has been five months. We would have heard if it had been delivered.”

  The other man emptied the glass and set it down with a shaking hand. “Your informant was certain that such a letter was written, but we don’t know what happened to it? How can you be so calm? As long as it exists, our lives aren’t worth a copper pfennig. And surely we have to abandon our plan.”

  “What plan? There never was a plan.”

  The visitor raised his glass, saw it was empty and set it back down. “You said a hunt was quite as useful as a battle for fatal accidents. I thought‌—‌”

  “What?” His host’s face had purpled. He rose from his chair. “I never said anything of the sort. Beware of that careless tongue of yours. That sort of thing will get you into trouble.”

  His guest blustered, “I would never mention the matter outside this room. You mistake me. I am completely devoted to the cause.”

  The other man glared. “Understand this: there is no cause! There never was a cause, just idle talk of foolish men in their cups.”

  The visitor looked astonished. He rose slowly. “Well, if that’s the way it is…‌and if you are certain all is safe…” He saw the other man’s face. His voice trailed off, and he turned to go.

  *

  After several weeks of fever and pain, Franz became aware that his right leg was no longer straight but made an awkward curve near the place where his knee had been. But both his legs continued to heal‌—‌at least the wounds did. The shattered knee cap and the badly aligned bones would never get better. Yet the doctor thought his treatment entirely successful and told Franz that he was writing an article of his own, based on the case. He had saved the limb after it had been nearly destroyed by an exploding canister filled with rusted nails and assorted bits of metal, and the patient had not died from the experiment.

  Franz did not thank him for his effort.

  By then, he knew that he was in Mannheim, the residential capital of His Serene Highness, Karl Theodor, Margrave of Bergen op Zoom, Duke and Count Palatine of Pfalz-Sulzbach, Duke and Count Palatine of Pfalz-Neuburg, and Elector of the Holy Roman Empire.

  The fact that Franz did not speak bothered the doctor enough to bring in his colleagues again. They stood over him, tormenting him for days by poking around in his mouth, squeezing his neck, and assigning him all sorts of speech exercises. In the end, the verdict was that the blow to his head must have deranged something in his brain. One of the learned men seemed to think that his intelligence had been destroyed, or at least severely damaged, and that he was an imbecile who should be given a pension. This, Franz knew not to be true, though he made no effort to disabuse him.

  He reached his twenty-first birthday a cripple who could no longer speak normally.

  His wounds did not affect his ability to write, and one of his military visitors, the same one who had brought him his decoration and a letter of congratulation signed by General Luszinky himself, suggested that Franz should write to his family. This, Franz declined by shaking his head. Lieutenant Killian offered to write for him, and again Franz shook his head.

  But his mother and sister heard of his fate anyway. Letters arrived, which Lieutenant Killian gave to Franz. Franz opened and read these when he was alone and immediately tore them into little pieces. He did this not because they made him angry‌—‌they were quite loving epistles, especially his sister’s‌—‌but because they shamed him. He was not the Franz they remembered, believed in, and expected to return to them. He was an altogether different man, one he did not yet know completely but whom he already despised.

  His odd behavior lent credence to the opinion of the physician who had thought him an imbecile. Franz glowered at everyone, miserable in the knowledge that an imbecile was at least blessed with ignorance about his condition. He was haunted, sometimes to the point of madness, by what he had become.

  He was haunted more by what he had done.

  Another parson sat beside him one afternoon, a thin black figure haloed by the golden light of the afternoon sun in the window, and said, “I am told that your father was also a servant of the Lord. You must find great comfort in that.”

  Franz turned away his head. After a moment, the parson sighed, patted his arm, and left.

  They had raised his rank to second lieutenant‌—‌a small and meaningless gesture, since he was unfit for duty. In that at least, Franz found comfort.

  Some aspects of his condition gradually improved, while others deteriorated. The pain lessened, and he got stronger until he could sit up, and look out of the window at the slowly greening trees. He sat for hours doing that. Lieutenant Killian brought him books. When Franz refused them, he offered to read to him. Franz refused that also, and Killian sighed and decided to pen a short letter to Franz’s mother.

  He asked, “Shall I tell them that you feel better?”

  Franz looked back at the trees and nodded.

  “Shall I say that you miss them and hope to see them soon?”

  Franz did not answer that.

  Killian said, “I think I shall. They will expect it, you know. You don’t want to hurt them, do you?”

  Franz shook his head.

  “Good. I shall say that you are thinking of them fondly and counting the days.”

  One day Franz sorted through his possessions in a small trunk. Somehow, these had been dispatched after him, or with him‌—‌he could not be certain because he had had no desire to look at them before. There was not much. His uniform‌—‌the one he had not worn into battle, a small case containing his razor, comb, soap, and scissors, his decoration, the papers certifying his new rank, a few letters from his mother or Augusta that had escaped his destruction, and one letter that did not belong to him. This letter was fairly thick and stained with a brownish spot on one corner. Franz turned it in his hands and was mystified. It was addressed to someone called Friedrich von Loe, but there was neither a city nor a street. Surely whoever had packed his things had made a mistake. Eventually he put the letter with the others and relocked the trunk.

  To Franz’s irritation, the kind Lieutenant Killian came regularly and wrote what he thought a loving son should tell his family, and when he was done, he would read the letter to Franz and look at him with pity and friendship, thinking, no doubt:

  There but for God’s Grace, go I!

  If Franz had ever had divine grace, he had certainly lost it. As his physical health improved, he was forced to confront who he was, and what his father, a saintly and gentle man, would think of him now. His self-disgust caused him to lash out with angry snarls at anyone who came near him at such times. Not even Lieutenant Killian was spared.

  Then, one day Franz remembered the wounded captain. The next day, he asked Lieutenant Killian if he knew a Captain von Loe.

  Killian, not used to being spoken to by Franz, was immediately eager to be of use. No, he did not know the name. Could he write it? Franz did. Had von Loe been at Freiberg? Franz nodded.

  “W-w-ounded. N-not s-s-sure if a-a-…” Franz choked.

  “You want me to find out if he survived?”

  Franz nodded.

  Killian left happily. He had finally established communication with his difficult patient. He asked everyone among the military staff in Mannhe
im and then mailed letters to Vienna and Munich. The answers were disappointing. Captain von Loe had indeed died at Freiberg.

  Franz was saddened by it. The young captain’s voice been strong and his request fervent. His death left him with a letter to deliver. “H-his f-father? wh-where?” he asked Killian.

  But this time Killian’s search brought forth no answer. No one by the name was known in or near Mannheim. Franz pondered this for a few days and eventually decided that he must be mistaken about von Loe’s home. He had been dazed and sick from the blow to his head. It was a wonder he remembered anything at all. In any case, it would have to wait until he was well.

  His first struggle to stand‌—‌an effort that brought back an almost forgotten physical agony‌—‌also opened a mental wound. He had to come to grips with his deformity, the misshapen and awkwardly bent leg that could not be hidden in stockings and tight knee breeches. He was a freak in a world that valued physical beauty.

  Though he was still doing his best to avoid communication with the living, he could not escape the dead so easily. They came to him at night and haunted his dreams of childhood. His father would look with his blue eyes at the boy Franz, who had drummed too hard and too long on his little drum, and say gravely, “Careful, son, or you may lose your head.” And little Franz, in his Christmas Day finery, would answer, “I’m not afraid, Papa,” and drum some more. Papa would shake his head and keep shaking it until it flew away, a white-haired cannonball, and Franz would stumble around, searching among the bodies of the dead for his father’s head. When he finally found it, his father’s head perched on the body of the Prussian captain, who attacked him with a bloody sword. He would wake up screaming and lie, drenched in sweat, wondering if he would have killed his father or if his father would have slain him.