Malcolm James Thomson - TheodoraLand

“But there was no sign of any mysterious ‘three volume lot’ having found a buyer?”

Now Rudiger Reiß grinned. It made him more attractive. He reminded me of somebody.

“No, none. You know, Lessinger was very good… he became quite clever about selling books on to wealthy collectors before we even had to pay for them. He was often just a middle-man on our behalf in a quick-turnaround transaction, but the practice generated enough revenue to keep the antiquarian section just about viable.”

“Goodness! That goes a bit against my picture of him. Okay, an aging Lothario but also an ardent and serious book lover… at the Bookshop and with his own collection which was limited to incunabula in Latin. Did you know that the world’s largest collection of incunabula is here in Munich? Twenty thousand of them in the Bavarian State library.”

Rudiger Reiß nodded as I explained that incunabula were books not handwritten by scribes but produced in the ‘first infancy of printing’ prior to the year 1500.

“That was Lessinger’s passion,” I concluded. Not one of the three volumes in my stewardship was in Latin or printed prior to the sixteenth century. But of course I did not mention that.

“Ancient books and two merry widows?”

Rudiger gestured to where Vera and Agnes had come out to take the two taxis they had ordered. It looked as if at the last minute they decided to exchange cellphone numbers.

“The beginning of a beautiful friendship?” I suggested.

“Who knows? And… who knows whether there were in truth three precious books in the old gentleman’s coffin?”

WEDNESDAY 30 MAY 2012

Books in Ludwig-Viktor Lessinger’s coffin? It was a question the funeral director might be in a position to answer. That Reiß and I had agreed.

“Strange business, for sure. I could, I suppose, make time for an undertaker visit tomorrow. Perhaps you might like to join me?”

Late the next afternoon he collected me from where I’d agreed to meet him, on a street corner close to my flat. He was very punctual. I got into Rudiger’s car, a new but very small Volkswagen Polo.

“She got the Audi,” he said with less bitterness than I might have expected. Maybe I was supposed to say something. He threw me a glance but learned little, since I had donned my RayBan Aviators. I had slung a belt (seventies vintage von Lehndorff) around the black dress I had worn the day before, hiking it up to a non-funereal length. Often people assumed that my shoulder bag was a Chanel copy. It wasn’t.

On the subject of fakery, nothing could have been more obsequious or spurious than the excruciating piety of the funeral director.

“We take great pains to respect the wishes of the departed. Often special costuming is requested… or keepsakes are to accompany the deceased on his or her onward journey. For reasons of hygiene, of course, we are unable to fill requests that the casket should contain food or drink.”

Hygiene? A danger of posthumous food poisoning?

Yes, there had been items contained in a cotton bag for insertion into the coffin of Ludwig-Viktor Lessinger.

“The nature of the items will, however, remain a secret. Not because it is knowledge I am unable to share, but if books they were…” The dapper little hypocrite tailed off.

The problem was that the mortal remains of Herr Lessinger had been laid in the coffin, an expensive one, by an efficient, reliable but almost illiterate Transylvanian.

Grigor was short, rotund and surprised us a bit with an angelic smile. His German was as minimal as the funeral director had suggested, but in his own tongue he chattered almost without drawing breath. After lengthy confusion and much sign language it was clear that he feared he was being accused of purloining the coarse cotton bag in which the three books had arrived.

As for the books themselves, we learned a goodly amount. Grigor had some talent for drawing. His cubicle had samples of his work pinned up on the wall. Some of these I chose not to examine too closely, since it was clear that the little man found his artistic inspiration in his work with the deceased. If the anatomical sketches seemed to mimic the cold Renaissance objectivity of da Vinci, Grigor’s memento mori portraits were serene and almost affectionate.

“Keepsakes, ja, ja,” he had understood and rummaged through a fat portfolio. One drawing I found very poignant, a toy carousel which had been placed in the coffin of a child. The pencil strokes were quite faint in Grigor’s work, but in this case he had given the merry-go-round dabs of jewel-like colour. I could see that Reiß found it heart-rending, too.

“Lessinger, ja, ja.”

He showed us three drawings he had made. The first had the very sketchy outlines of a book, but he had devoted care to the cover which featured a cross, its arms of equal length. I gave a slight shudder when I saw that Grigor had used a red felt-tip pen to fill a scarlet field surrounding a white cross. The Swiss coat of arms. I had a slim volume of similar appearance at home, after all, about the size of a normal ring-binder as the Transylvanian confirmed with precise gestures.

Grigor mimed the suggestion that the line of text embossed on the cover below the white cross might be a telephone number. But he merely hinted in his drawing at what could be as easily letters as numbers. Reiß gazed at a spot on the ceiling in dismay.

My pretence of intense interest in subsequent revelations must have been convincing for Rudiger Reiß. The second cover was emblazoned with the standard of the Third Reich, the eagle’s wings outstretched, a swastika in the wreath grasped by the talons of the stylised bird of prey. I prevaricated with regard to the size of this book, suggesting it might be small, maybe pocket-sized. Grigor disagreed. It was square-ish, and almost as big as a vinyl record album.

Of course it was.

I made no effort to clarify the matter of the illustration on the cover of the third book, leaving Reiß thinking that it was a representation of the Virgin Mary. If memory served it was in reality a Black Madonna, the dusky Miriam of Magdala. I hadn’t bothered to take a look at my three books for weeks. While Rudiger Reiß struggled to understand Grigor, who was, we thought, trying to declare how fervent was his personal embrace of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, I wracked my brain in an effort to recall just how and when the three books had come into my possession. That was an easier task than speculating as to why three books burned with the remains of Herr Lessinger had covers which appeared to be faithful facsimiles of those cached in my flat.

“Why did Grigor make drawings of the three books, though? The sentimentality of that child’s carousel I can understand. But… old books?”

Rudiger Reiß nodded, and made an effort to frame the question in a way that the Transylvanian could perhaps comprehend.

Suddenly Grigor beamed broadly. He bent over his sketch pad and drew the quick portrait of a man with a bald head and a full beard, using a marker to give the fringe of the beard an orange tint.

“Draw for he!” said Grigor.

Early March, mid-March, late March. Three months ago. On the first Saturday of the month there had been drinks after the Bookshop closed for the day to celebrate Herr Lessinger’s birthday. I had made a point of being there, shuffling out of my warmest quilted winter coat to reveal the kind of mini-dress (it was tweed, and the hold-up stockings were very, very long) which gave Elsa Brundt apoplexy. Knowing that the end was coming (the closure of the bookshop) and that no future birthday of his would be observed on the premises, Ludwig-Viktor Lessinger had splashed out on a premium champagne (Veuve or Dom, one or the other). At the time he had hinted that in a couple of weeks he would be going into hospital. For observation, he assured the staff.