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Monk did not need to ask about the other side of ethical values. He had met Josef and Magda Beck, and seen the depth and fervor of their Catholicism. He had also seen that, for whatever reason, they countenanced in their house friends who were profoundly anti-Jewish. Whatever their beliefs, their words tipped over from discrimination into persecution. The first allowed the second, and therefore was party to it, even if only by silence. A sudden memory flashed into his mind, sharp as spring sunlight in the rectory front room, the vicar himself standing quoting John Milton to a twelve-year-old Monk, teaching him great English literature. “They also serve who only stand and wait.” But now it came differently to his mind: “They also sin who only stand and watch.”
He came back to the present candlelit room in Vienna with the daylight fading rapidly beyond the windows, and this quiet couple waiting for him to say something to make sense of his visit here, an
d their courtesy in receiving both him and Ferdi, and welcoming them on this of all days. Anything but the truth would insult them all, he as much as they, and perhaps Kristian and Hanna as well.
“Did you know Elissa von Leibnitz?” he asked.
“Yes,” Jakob answered. There was profound feeling in his face and in the timbre of his voice, but Monk was unable to read it. Had they resented her, known that their daughter had been picked for the errand that cost her life, rather than Elissa, because Elissa, the Aryan Catholic, was valued more, her life held more important than that of Hanna, the Jewess? Immeasurably worse than that, did they know or guess that she had betrayed their daughter to a pointless death? But he had left himself no way to retreat.
“Did you know that Kristian married her?”
“Yes, I knew that.”
Monk could feel the heat burning his face. He was ashamed for people he had not even known, far less shared acts or judgments with, and yet he felt tarred with the same brush. He was aware of Ferdi next to him and that perhaps he felt the same embarrassment.
“Will you eat with us?” Frau Jakob asked softly, also in English. “The meal is nearly ready.”
Monk was touched, and oddly, he was also afraid. There was a sense of tradition, of belonging, in this quiet room, which attracted him more than he was able to cope with, or to dismiss as irrelevant to him. He wanted to refuse, to make some excuse to come back at another time, but there was no other time. Kristian’s trial would begin any day, or might already have begun, and he was no real step nearer to the truth of who had killed Elissa, or why. Certainly he had nothing to take back to Callandra.
He glanced at Ferdi, then back at Frau Jakob. “Thank you,” he said.
She smiled and excused herself to attend to matters in the kitchen.
The meal was brought in, a slow-cooked stew in a deep, earthenware pot, and served with prayers and thanksgiving, which included the servants, who seemed to join as a matter of custom. Only after that was the conversation resumed. A peace had settled in the room, a sense of timelessness, a continuity of belief which spanned the millennia. Some of these same words must have been spoken over the breaking of bread centuries before the birth of Christ, with the same reverence for the creation of the earth, for the release of a nation from bondage, and above all the same certainty of the God who presided over all things. These people knew who they were and understood their identity. Monk envied them that, and it frightened him. He noticed that Ferdi also was moved by it-and disturbed, because it reached something in him older than conscious thought or teaching.
“What is it that we can do for Kristian, or Elissa?” Herr Jakob asked.
Monk spoke the truth without even considering otherwise. “Elissa was killed. . murdered. .” He disregarded their shock. “Kristian has been charged, because he appears to have had motive, and he cannot prove that he was elsewhere. I don’t believe he would have done such a thing, no matter what the provocation, but I have no evidence to put forward in his defense.”
Herr Jakob frowned. “You say ’provocation,’ Herr Monk. What is it that you refer to?”
“She was gambling, and losing far more than he could afford,” Monk answered.
Herr Jakob did not look surprised. “That is sad, and dangerous, but perhaps not impossible to understand in a woman who had known the passion and danger of revolution, and exchanged it for the tranquillity of domestic life.”
“Domestic life should be enough.” Frau Jakob spoke for the first time. “To give of yourself is sufficient for the deepest happiness. There are always those who need. There is the community. . and of course, no matter what age they are, your children always need you, even if they pretend otherwise.” The sadness was only momentary in her face, the memory of her daughter who was beyond her help.
“Elissa had no children,” Monk explained.
“And she was not one of us,” Herr Jakob added gently. “Perhaps in England they do not have a community like ours.” He turned to Monk. “But I agree with you. I cannot imagine Kristian meaning to harm her.”
The nature of the killing sprang sharply to Monk’s mind. Elissa’s death, at least, could have been accidental, a man who had not realized his own strength. But Sarah Mackeson’s had been a deliberate act of murder. Quickly, he explained it to them, seeing the revulsion and the grief in their faces. He heard Ferdi’s sharply indrawn breath, but did not look at him.
Frau Jakob glanced at her husband.
He shook his head. “Even so,” he said grimly, “I cannot believe it. Not the second woman.”
“What?” Monk demanded, fear biting inside him. “What is it?”
Frau Jakob looked to her husband, and he to her.
“For God’s sake, his life could depend on it!” Monk said with rising panic, knowing he was failing and seeing his last chance slip away. “What do you know?” Was it the betrayal? Had it, after all, not been the secret Father Geissner had believed?
“I cannot see if it will help, and perhaps it will make things worse,” Herr Jakob said at last, his eyes filled with a sorrow that seemed too harsh and too deep for what Monk had told him, even the murder of a woman he might have admired, and the possibility that a man he had most certainly regarded highly could have been responsible.
“I need to know it anyway,” Monk said in the heavy silence. “Tell me.”
Beside him, Ferdi gulped. Herr Jakob sighed. “The history of our race is full of seeking, of homecoming, and of expulsion,” he said, looking not at Monk but at some point in the white linen tablecloth, and some vast arena of the world in his vision. “Again and again we find ourselves strangers in a land that fears us, and in the end hates us. We are permanent exiles. In Egypt, in Babylon, and across the world.”
