A Head for Eisenstadt

0:00 The Bell Rings Before the Coffee Has Boiled

0:04 Narrator: Vienna, August, nineteen fifty-two. The bell rang at our mezzanine off the Herrengasse before the coffee had boiled, and Brenner went down the passage to answer it, with me at his shoulder. Nemeth: Herr Brenner? My name is Nemeth. Sexton of the Bergkirche, in Eisenstadt.

0:23 Brenner: Come in, Frau Nemeth. That's a long road through the Russian zone. Narrator: Mind the zither. A client left it against his fee and never came back. Do sit.

0:34 Nemeth: I'll stand, Doctor. If I sit, I won't get up again. Narrator: As you like.

0:41 Brenner: You came on the first bus, spoke to nobody, and held that parcel till your knuckles went white. Nemeth: Not the bus. My nephew's milk lorry. And I spoke to him. About his cows.

0:54 Brenner: Then tell me what's in the altar cloth. Nemeth: Yesterday I laid the head of Matthias Altmann in his tomb. With these two hands. Near a century and a half in Vienna, and he was whole again.

1:07 Narrator: We heard the bells on the wireless. Half of Austria wept. Nemeth: When they'd all gone, I tidied the casket. And in it was— there was this. A funeral card, with a stranger's face.

1:23 Brenner: A stranger to you? Nemeth: Never seen him in my life. And he's dead, or there'd be no card.

1:29 Narrator: Then let's see— Nemeth: No. Brenner: You came sixty kilometres to show it to me.

1:34 Nemeth: I came sixty kilometres to fetch you, Herr Brenner. It lay with him in the dark. Read it where it lay.

1:43 A Grey Police Volkswagen and a Striped Barrier

1:47 Narrator: Inspector Lang of the Vienna police drove us out himself in a grey police Volkswagen, the sexton beside me in the back with her parcel on her knees, until a striped barrier and a sentry stopped us. The sentry is reading every line of that pass, Lang. Twice.

2:07 Lang: Four languages, Doctor. He reads the Russian and admires the other three. Brenner: No driver, and your own coat instead of the uniform. This drive is in nobody's book.

2:18 Lang: My free day, Brenner. And my driver talks to his sister, who talks to the newspapers. Narrator: You rode with the procession, didn't you?

2:27 Lang: Behind the hearse, all the way. Flags on the farmhouses, old women kneeling in the ditches. Seven years of ration cards and four armies, and for one day this country was proud.

2:39 Narrator: You say it like a man saying goodbye to it. Lang: Never mind how I say it. Frau Nemeth, what's in that cloth?

2:46 Nemeth: In Eisenstadt, Inspector. Not before. Lang: It rides through their barrier on my pass, and I may not—

2:53 Nemeth: You're carrying me, Inspector. I'm carrying it. Lang: Wonderful.

2:58 Lang: Eisenstadt. Mind your tongues, on this side the Russians listen.

3:04 Snuffed Candles in the Sacristy

3:08 Narrator: The sacristy smelled of snuffed candles; the empty casket stood open on trestles, and Lang, Brenner and I gathered round it while Frau Nemeth untied her cloth. Nemeth: Here, at the head end. The velvet's only stitched at the corners. I lifted it, so.

3:26 Narrator: Why lift it at all? The casket was empty. Nemeth: Dust gets under velvet, Doctor. I was taught to brush out every casket before it's stored.

3:36 Narrator: Ah. Brenner: And you did it alone. Nemeth: The hearse had gone, the mourners had gone, the Pfarrer was at his supper. Nobody but me has seen under this velvet.

3:47 Brenner: Then it wasn't dropped. A dropped card lies on the velvet. This one was under it, so a hand lifted the lining and laid it there.

3:56 Nemeth: Laid it flat, face up. The way you'd keep a card in a missal. Lang: Let me see—

4:02 Nemeth: I'll read it, Inspector. An old man, high collar, white moustache. And beneath him it says: Pray for the soul of Johann Wukovits, laid to rest at the Zentralfriedhof.

4:16 Narrator: My mother kept a drawer full of those. Every mourner takes one at the graveside, and it lives in a prayer book for thirty years. Brenner: Not this one. Soft corners, bent to a curve. It's lived in a breast pocket, against somebody.

4:33 Lang: Some joker at the Kapellverein slipped it in for a laugh. Brenner: A joke wants an audience, Lang. This was hidden where only a sexton with a brush would find it.

4:44 Nemeth: I held that skull in my two hands. I said an Ave over it. I told him, welcome home, Herr Altmann—

4:51 Narrator: Sit down a moment— Nemeth: Then whose head did I bury beside him?

4:56 Cold as a Wine Cellar, Before the White Marble

5:00 Narrator: Down in the crypt it was cold as a wine cellar, and the four of us stood before the white marble of Altmann's tomb. Brenner: Who else knows of that card? Lang: Nobody in my office. And my report—

5:13 Brenner: Is already gone. You wrote it the moment the tomb was closed, so the Russians would read it before they thought to ask. Lang: Before they could write their own. Theirs would say the Austrians fumbled it. Mine says burial flawless, every courtesy observed.

5:28 Narrator: And nothing about a stranger in the casket. Lang: It says not one word about the card, Doctor, because I hadn't seen it. Now I have. And it still won't.

5:39 Brenner: You'll keep silent, then. Lang: With the treaty still on the table? If this comes out, my report is— it's a lie on a Soviet desk.

5:48 Brenner: Frau Nemeth. The Pfarrer? The nephew with the milk lorry?

5:52 Nemeth: I swear it on this tomb, Inspector, so you hear it too. I told no one. Not the Pfarrer, not— not my own blood. I wrapped it and I came.

6:02 Lang: Then four of us know, and it stays four. Narrator: Five, counting whoever put it there. He's the one I'd like to meet.

6:11 Lang: Charming. Brenner: Then show me the seals.

6:15 A Folded Handkerchief on a Stone Bench

6:19 Narrator: Evening was settling on the porch when Frau Nemeth spread a folded handkerchief across the stone bench, Lang at her elbow and the two of us bending close. Nemeth: Five seals. Red wax, the Kapellverein's lyre in each. I kept every crumb.

6:37 Narrator: You kept broken wax? Nemeth: It was on his casket, Doctor. You don't sweep that into the bin.

6:44 Narrator: No. Of course not. Brenner: Each seal cut once, clean, at the same point. One blade did all five.

6:54 Nemeth: My knife. And not one was cracked before it. I looked. I always look.

7:00 Lang: I watched her, with a Russian colonel breathing down my collar. No crack, no thumbprint, nothing melted twice. Brenner: Then if the wax is honest, the head inside when the wax went on is the head she buried.

7:14 Lang: The wax is honest. Five seals, Brenner, and every one reached Eisenstadt unbroken. Narrator: And whose hand pressed them?

7:22 Lang: The archivist at the Kapellverein, Michaud. She laid the head in and pressed every seal herself. She wouldn't let a porter so much as hold the candle.

7:32 Brenner: Very careful, then. Or wanting no one close enough to see. Lang: Same thing, to me. Michaud's hands, Brenner. We drive home at first light.

7:43 A Stair as Steep as a Ladder Before Dawn

7:47 Narrator: Frau Nemeth had the choir loft open before the sky was properly grey, and led Brenner, Lang and me up a stair as steep as a ladder to a book the size of a gravestone. Lang: Ten minutes, Frau Nemeth. The car is warming, and the checkpoint changes its guard at seven, so—

8:04 Nemeth: Ten minutes? Plenty. Look here, Inspector.

8:08 Brenner: You found it before dawn, by candle. The wax on this page is still soft. Nemeth: By lamp, Herr Brenner. That wax is the choirboys', eighty years of them. The loft is warm; it never sets.

8:22 Brenner: I stand corrected. Narrator: Tenors on the left, basses on the right, and a little cross by every man who could read his notes. Nemeth: There. "Wukovits, Johann, tenor." And in the margin, in another hand: "Gone to Vienna."

8:39 Narrator: Good Lord. Brenner: The same name as the card. Nemeth: A Johann Wukovits sang here before he went, Herr Brenner. In this loft, over Herr Altmann's own music, likely.

8:52 Brenner: Then the man on that card was a stranger to you. Not to this church. Lang: A name in a book, Brenner. And a dead man has the best alibi in Austria.

9:02 Nemeth: He had a good enough one to get into Herr Altmann's casket. Lang: It's a fine book, Frau Nemeth. Close it.

9:09 Nemeth: You've closed it yourself, Inspector. I've a church to open. Lang: A dead chorister stole nothing. The thief is Viennese.

9:18 Back in Vienna by Noon, a Hose and a Rake

9:22 Narrator: By noon we were back in Vienna, at the city undertakers' brick shed in Simmering, where a driver was hosing down his hearse and a gardener leaned on her rake against the cemetery wall. Pokorny: Mind your shoes, gentlemen. Pokorny, city undertakers. Funerals are round the front.

9:40 Brenner: This one's come and gone, Herr Pokorny. I'm Brenner, this is Dr. Fuchs. Inspector Lang wants the casket's road walked, end to end.

9:49 Pokorny: Then you're standing on it. Out of the Kapellverein at dusk, the night in this shed, and at six we rolled for Eisenstadt. Haselbach: And you're standing on my gravel, Pokorny, with your hose running into my roses.

10:01 Pokorny: Frau Haselbach does the graves. She thinks the paths are hers as well. Haselbach: Listen to him.

10:09 Brenner: Who locked the shed that night? Pokorny: I did, at nine. Both bolts. Then I walked back past the wall at midnight to try them. You don't leave Altmann to luck. Fast, both of them. Nobody'd been at my doors. But somebody was out among the graves at midnight with a lantern, bobbing along the rows.

10:26 Haselbach: Don't you look at me, Herr Brenner. I was home— I was in my bed all night, my husband snoring and the baby teething. Brenner: Your boots are wet to the ankle, Frau Haselbach, and the paths are bone dry. You've been in the long grass since before the dew went.

10:42 Haselbach: Since six, watering. That's the job. And that night I was home, I— I swear it on my mother, and she's lying two rows over.

10:52 Narrator: Off among the headstones, Brenner, and not another word out of her.

10:58 Night Falls Beside the Orphaned Zither

11:02 Narrator: Night had fallen when I spread my notes on the table beside our orphaned zither, and Brenner stood at the dark window with his hands behind him. Four things, Brenner, and not one will lie down beside another. A dead man's card in the casket.

11:19 Brenner: Mm. Keep counting. Narrator: A chorister who left Eisenstadt for Vienna. Five seals, whole. And a gardener who swears she was home in bed.

11:31 Brenner: Start with the seals. They're the one witness that can't lie. Narrator: Wax can't, no. But somebody pressed it.

11:39 Brenner: So the seal tells the truth, and the change was made before it went on. In one room, by one pair of hands. Narrator: Michaud's.

11:49 Brenner: Hers alone. A careful woman who wants no witness usually has a reason. Narrator: Then why tuck in a chorister from Eisenstadt? Why leave anything at—

11:59 Brenner: Unless she wanted the trouble found there, and not here. Narrator: You're making the card fit the wax. Brenner: I'm making it wait.

12:08 Narrator: Which do we believe, Brenner? The wax, or the dead man's card?

12:13 Received Among the Shelves of an Archive

12:17 Narrator: The Kapellverein kept its archive up a back stair behind the golden concert hall, and Frau Michaud received the Inspector, Brenner and me among its shelves, a ring of keys at her waist. Lang: Frau Michaud, Herr Brenner and Dr. Fuchs. A few questions, and we'll leave you to your dust.

12:36 Michaud: We keep a good deal of it, Inspector. This was his case. Walnut, velvet, and a brass plate.

12:43 Brenner: Polished this morning, with nothing behind the glass. There's still polish in the letters. Michaud: Every week since nineteen twenty-four, Herr Brenner. One doesn't stop because the case is empty. He should never have left it.

12:58 Lang: The Ministry sent him home, Frau Michaud, and you wrote three letters against— Michaud: Four. He lived for Vienna and he— he died in Vienna. In forty-five I carried him down to the cellar in my arms while the shells fell on the Ring.

13:13 Lang: You laid the head in yourself, you pressed the seals yourself, and every one reached Eisenstadt unbroken. Who else could it be? Brenner: You sent the porter off and held the candle in your own hand. Nobody saw that head go in but—

13:26 Michaud: You think I'd cheat him of his grave? Brenner: I think you'd cheat Eisenstadt of him, and keep him somewhere you could still polish the plate. Michaud: How dare you.

13:37 Pokorny: Beg pardon. Pokorny, undertakers. The bursar sent me up here for my fee.

13:42 Lang: Then wait by the door, Pokorny. We're busy. Pokorny: That's her who sealed him, Doctor? Twenty years I've driven the dead. They all go in with something. A rosary, a photograph, a prayer card under the velvet.

13:55 Narrator: And him? Pokorny: Him, they sent off with wax and the Mayor's wreaths... Michaud: Inspector, I wrapped him in my own coat. I sat in that cellar with him on my knees while the— while the ceiling came—

14:09 Lang: You'll come with me now. Michaud: And you'll want my keys. Take them, then. Take them.

14:16 Michaud: Thirty years I kept him safe...

14:20 Next Morning, a Bare Room and a Tin Mug

14:24 Narrator: They held Frau Michaud overnight at the presidium on the Schottenring, and next morning Lang brought her up to a bare room with a barred window, where Brenner and I sat waiting. Michaud: I've had a night on a plank to think, Herr Brenner. Ask me how you'd know him.

14:41 Brenner: How would I know him? Michaud: He rattles. There's a chip of bone loose inside, behind the eyes. Tip him, and it rolls. Every keeper before me heard it.

14:51 Lang: Oh, for heaven's sake. Narrator: The thin bone behind the sockets flakes in old skulls. I kept one on my desk as a student. It rattled like a dried pea.

15:02 Lang: The theft of the century, and she offers me a dried pea. Come along, Frau Michaud, we're— Brenner: Lang. You were on the Kapellverein steps when the porters carried it down.

15:13 Lang: Behind it, with my hat off. They tipped it on the last step and something knocked inside. I thought— I thought they'd broken him. I swore at them.

15:23 Brenner: And next morning, at the Bergkirche? Those steps are as steep as a roof. Lang: Six men, the casket tilted half on end. And nothing. Not a whisper. I was listening for it, after the steps—

15:37 Michaud: Then you heard him leave me, Inspector, and you never heard him arrive. Brenner: The head that went under her wax, Lang, isn't the head that came out of it.

15:53 That Afternoon at a Flower Bed by the Gate

15:57 Narrator: Lang came with us to the Zentralfriedhof that afternoon, and we found Frau Haselbach kneeling at a flower bed near the second gate. Haselbach: You again, Herr Brenner, and a policeman this time. Is it the lantern again?

16:11 Lang: Inspector Lang, Frau Haselbach. Lanterns? This is the first I've heard of a lantern.

16:17 Brenner: We want a grave. Johann Wukovits. Haselbach: Wukovits? Group fifty-eight, by the wall. I've had my— I've had my hands in that one lately. Come along.

16:28 Haselbach: There. Tidy, isn't it? Old widow Wukovits went in this spring, ninety if she was a day. Pokorny opened the Wukovits grave himself, and drove her here as well.

16:39 Narrator: An undertaker with a spade? Haselbach: Not for the city men, they hate dirt on their cuffs. But he's a Favoriten boy. He'll dig.

16:49 Lang: Does he, now. Brenner: His name's weathered and hers is freshly cut. She outlived him by forty years.

16:57 Haselbach: Forty-one. She told me every All Souls', standing just where you are. Lang: Theresia Wukovits, new-cut. Above her, Johann Wukovits, eighteen fifty-one to nineteen eleven, and under them both, cut deep: Pray for the soul of Johann Wukovits.

17:17 Lang: That'll do. Some things don't go in a notebook.

17:21 Up the Back Stair Once More

17:25 Narrator: Frau Michaud was among her shelves again with the keys back on her belt, and when Lang brought us up the back stair she had a second casket waiting on the archive table. Michaud: The workshop sent us two, Herr Brenner. We rehearsed the sealing on this one. Five seals, my lyre, my hand.

17:44 Lang: About the night on the plank— Michaud: You gave me a blanket and a tin mug, Inspector. I've known worse cellars. Look at the wax.

17:52 Brenner: Front and both ends, over the clasps. The back is bare brass. Lang: So?

17:58 Michaud: Hinges. Three of them. Nobody seals a hinge; who'd think to? Doctor, the pliers in my drawer, please.

18:06 Narrator: Pliers, in a music archive? Michaud: For the crates from Salzburg. Nails, wire, every kind of nonsense.

18:15 Narrator: She's drawing the pins. One, two... and three. Michaud: The clasps have play enough to tilt. A hand's width at the back. Room enough for an arm, and whatever is in the hand.

18:29 Brenner: And the seals, Fuchs? Narrator: Whole. Every one. Not a hair of a crack.

18:36 Lang: That's not possible. Michaud: Sealed, it rattled, you told me in that room with the bars, Inspector. Now you see what sealed is worth.

18:46 Brenner: I accused you of hiding him from Eisenstadt, Frau Michaud. I was wrong. Michaud: Half wrong. I should have liked to. I simply hadn't the stomach for it.

18:57 Lang: Honest, at least. Brenner: The wax only ever told us nobody opened the clasps. The hinges wanted pliers, a night, and nobody looking.

19:08 Lang: Three pins and a pair of pliers, and my case is... gone. So. Whoever kept that depot through the night.

19:17 Behind the Chapel, a Tarred Hut and a Whetstone

19:21 Narrator: Behind the cemetery chapel stood a tarred hut full of spades and old wreath frames, and Frau Haselbach was inside it when Lang and Brenner reached the door, with me a step behind. Haselbach: Two days running, Herr Brenner. People will say I've a sweetheart in the police.

19:38 Lang: Sit down, Frau Haselbach. And put the stone down. Brenner: Pokorny saw a lantern out among the graves at midnight, the night the casket lay in his shed.

19:49 Haselbach: Then let him chase it. I told you, I was home— Brenner: Yesterday, at your flower bed, you asked us whether it was the lantern again. Nobody frets about a lantern she never carried.

19:59 Lang: I heard it too, and I asked you then. Now— Haselbach: It's nothing to do with Herr Altmann, God rest him! It's only...

20:07 Narrator: Then tell us what it is, and we'll stop imagining worse. Haselbach: Rabbits. There. Brass wire, off the old wreath frames. They get fat on the graves, and my man's on half shifts at the gasworks.

20:21 Narrator: A snare. My uncle set those in the Danube meadows and swore at the gamekeeper in two languages. Brenner: So the wet boots came from the long grass by the wall, where they run. And you kept the lantern low.

20:35 Haselbach: Low, and out the moment I heard boots along the wall. I lay flat behind a stone till they'd... till they'd gone. I saw nobody. Nobody.

20:45 Brenner: Boots along the wall at midnight. That was Pokorny trying his bolts, as he told us. Haselbach: Inspector, if the cemetery office hears, I'm finished. Twelve years on these graves. My mother's here. The baby... please.

21:02 Narrator: He's put it in his pocket, Frau Haselbach. Not in his notebook.

21:07 Dusk Among the Rows, Walking Back

21:11 Narrator: Dusk caught Brenner and me among the rows, walking back toward the undertakers' shed, my notebook open on a page I could barely read. Two lines, Brenner, and I've read them three times. Lang, in the crypt: his report mentions no card.

21:29 Brenner: And the other. Narrator: Pokorny in the archive, waiting on his fee. The dead all go in with something: a rosary, a photograph, a card beneath the lining.

21:41 Brenner: You've underlined it. Narrator: Then I'll cross it out. It's trade talk. My mother's undertaker said as much over the coffee at her wake, and he'd never been near Eisenstadt.

21:53 Brenner: A rosary goes in the hands, Fuchs. A photograph lies on the breast, where the mourners see it. Who slips a card under the lining, where nobody looks?

22:03 Narrator: An undertaker who's found a hundred of them, doing his own tidying? Perhaps... Brenner: And Frau Nemeth stood by that casket and told us nobody but her has seen beneath that velvet.

22:16 Narrator: Wait. So outside the four of us, that card doesn't exist. Brenner: Then how did he know where it lay?

22:24 After Dark Under One Bare Bulb

22:28 Narrator: The hearse stood gleaming under one bare bulb when we came back to the Simmering shed after dark, its driver working the glass with a chamois, and Lang went in ahead of us. Pokorny: Inspector. Herr Brenner, Doctor. Third time lucky, is it? She's clean, if you're shopping for—

22:45 Lang: Put the cloth down. Brenner: In the archive you told Dr. Fuchs the dead go in with a prayer card under the velvet. Pokorny: And so they do. Twenty years of it. Rosaries, photographs, a lock of hair.

22:58 Brenner: There was one in Altmann's casket. Pokorny: Oh, that. The sexton told me, at the Bergkirche, while I was turning the hearse. She'd talk to a gatepost, that one.

23:08 Lang: Turning the hearse, Pokorny. And she hadn't touched that velvet yet. You were gone before she lifted it.

23:14 Pokorny: Then she— she rang somebody. Somebody rang me, somebody— Lang: She swore on Altmann's tomb, in my hearing, that she told no soul. Not her Pfarrer, not her own blood. And my report on that Soviet desk says not one word about the card.

23:28 Pokorny: I... I don't... Narrator: In the crypt I said there'd be one more who knew. I never thought he'd be warning us to mind our shoes.

23:38 Brenner: The only man who knew the card was under the lining is the man who put it there. And you haven't taken your eyes off that hearse since we walked in. Pokorny: That's the wreath tray, leave that—

23:48 Lang: Sacking. And something round in it, the size of a man's two fists. Hear that, Brenner? Frau Michaud's dried pea. I owe that woman my hat.

24:00 Narrator: Behind the eyes. Just where she said. Lang: Pokorny. Your arm.

24:06 Pokorny: I only drove him home.

24:10 Vienna, Close on Midnight

24:14 Narrator: Vienna, the cells under the presidium, close on midnight: Pokorny sat on his plank turning his cap in his hands, and Lang let Brenner and me in without a word. Pokorny: An American. Camel coat, good shoes, said he collected composers. Twenty thousand dollars for Altmann's real head.

24:35 Narrator: Good heavens. Lang: That money. I couldn't earn it in thirty years of this.

24:43 Pokorny: Nor me in fifty. A visa, a boat from Bremerhaven, a cousin in Chicago. Out of this city before it buries me too.

24:52 Brenner: And you needed a head to leave in its place. You'd had one since the spring, when you buried the old widow. Pokorny: My grandmother. Theresia Wukovits. And under her, my mother's— my mother's father, gone to bone. I dug down to her place myself and kept his skull back. Who looks in a grave? Only the man with the spade.

25:13 Brenner: That's the link I want you to hear, Fuchs. Frau Haselbach told us at the stone that Pokorny opened the Wukovits grave himself. Narrator: And three months on, he kept Altmann's casket overnight.

25:26 Brenner: Two coffins opened, one pair of hands. Nobody else in this business touched both, and the bolts he swore were fast were his own to draw. Narrator: And Frau Nemeth's tenor, in the choir book?

25:39 Brenner: The same man. She said a Johann Wukovits sang here before he went, and "here" was the loft above Altmann's tomb. Narrator: There's one thing I can't make sense of, Pokorny. A thief leaves nothing behind. So why— why leave the card?

25:57 Pokorny: Because he sang there. Every Easter, Altmann's own Mass, up in that loft. He told me so when I was small enough for his knee. Then he came to Vienna for the trams, and never once went home.

26:09 Narrator: So you sent him. Pokorny: I was selling one head. I couldn't... I couldn't send the other in without his name. I've carried that card since I was a boy. Somebody had to pray for him by name...

26:22 Narrator: Somebody did, Pokorny. Frau Nemeth said an Ave over him, and told him welcome home. Pokorny: She said that? Welcome home. Forty years in the clay, and some old woman in Eisenstadt— oh, God. Opa.

26:40 Lang: You're charged with the theft of the remains of Matthias Altmann, and with disturbing a grave. Stand up. Brenner: So Altmann goes to Eisenstadt twice, Lang. The second time in your Volkswagen, with no bells.

26:55 Lang: And no report. Narrator: He'll stand trial, and the American will sail without his souvenir. A grandson drove him home, and Frau Nemeth laid him down. Vienna called it theft.