The Emperor of All Things

12

The Cogwheel Sun



THE NEXT THING I knew, we were on the ground again, at the base of the clock. I was lying with my back propped against the stepladder, gazing into the concerned faces of Adolpheus and Corinna as snow continued to fall around us. Corinna knelt at my shoulder, cushioning my head against her arm, while Adolpheus squatted by my foot, which he appeared to have been examining while I was unconscious. My ankle throbbed in time to the beating of my heart: two perfectly synchronized timepieces.

‘Are you all right, Michael – er, Herr Gray?’ Corinna asked. Her face was pale with worry, though a faint blush coloured her cheeks as she corrected her use of my Christian name – but not before Adolpheus had taken note of the slip, as I saw from the sharp glance he gave her.

‘Not the smartest thing I’ve ever done, Fraülein,’ I admitted with an attempt at levity, both because I wanted Corinna to think me brave and because I didn’t want Adolpheus to report back to Herr Doppler that she and I were in the habit of addressing each other so informally. One intimacy might lead to another, after all … at least, in the mind of a father so determined to guard his daughter’s innocence. But the sight of my foot – or, rather, the torn and bloody boot that covered it – wiped even the hint of a grin from my face, and all bravery from my heart. What would I find beneath that mangled boot? The thought of it made me sick with apprehension.

‘Hard to tell how bad it is without cutting off the boot, or rather what’s left of it,’ said Adolpheus. ‘Let’s get you back to the Hearth and Home, and we’ll see where things stand. And speaking of which, I don’t suppose you can – stand, that is.’

‘I should not like to try,’ I answered.

‘Then I will carry you,’ he said. ‘I will be as gentle as I can.’

Again he lifted me effortlessly, cradling me against his chest. What a ludicrous sight we must have made as he bore me back to the Hearth and Home! A dwarf carrying a man almost twice his own height! But there was no one to witness my humiliation. The square was deserted, as were the covered passages. Corinna followed us, the stepladder slung over her shoulder by its rope, which she held in both hands, bent forward to better distribute the weight of the ladder, as if she bore a load of kindling on her back. Though she said nothing, her concern for me was palpable.

True to his word, Adolpheus was gentleness itself. Not once did he bang my injured foot against the sides of the corridors, which, though spacious enough for two people to pass abreast, were yet not very much wider than my own length. Even so, the trip was a torturous one, and it took all my self-control to keep from crying out when, as was inevitable, some movement jostled my foot, or, as happened despite Adolpheus’s care, my boot brushed against a wall as he turned a corner.

‘Herr Doppler will not be pleased when he hears of this,’ Adolpheus remarked as we neared the inn.

This seemed so self-evident as not to require a reply. Besides, I feared that if I opened my mouth to speak, I might whimper like a beaten dog.

But Corinna spoke up from behind. ‘Oh, must you tell him, Adolpheus? The only harm done was to poor Herr Gray. Surely there is no reason for my father to know.’

‘I have never lied to your father,’ Adolpheus answered without slowing or looking back, ‘and I do not mean to start now. I am the watchman of this town, and it is my duty to report such transgressions. Herr Doppler has been indulgent where you are concerned, Fraülein – what father would not be? But I do not care to tempt his wrath by dissembling. I will tell him what I know. In any case, the story would soon come out. The injury, after all, speaks for itself.’

‘Then let it,’ she returned pertly.

‘I will tell what I know,’ he repeated.

‘But what do you know, after all? Only that his foot became caught in the train. You do not know how he came to be in that position.’

‘It seems clear enough. He sought entrance to the clock – which he promised your father not to do. Is that not the case, Herr Gray?’

Corinna replied before I could. ‘He climbed to the proscenium because I asked him to. What happened is my fault entirely!’

At this I protested, of course. ‘She’s lying,’ I ground out between clenched teeth.

‘I’m not,’ she insisted. ‘Herr Gray is only trying to protect me by taking the blame onto himself, as any gentleman would.’

‘Protect you from what?’ Adolpheus demanded. I confess I was curious to learn this as well; looking back at her over the dwarf’s shoulder, I saw her raise an admonitory finger to her lips. Clearly, she had something in mind, though I could not guess what it might be. But I held my tongue.

‘The truth is – you will think me wicked, Adolpheus – but the truth is that I teased him mercilessly, challenged him again and again to scale the tower. Every boy in Märchen has made the climb, I told him. Are you, a grown man, afraid to match them? I don’t know why I did it; I try to be good, but there is something in me that likes to stir things up, some devil that delights in mischief.’

‘I’m disappointed in you,’ Adolpheus said. ‘And in you as well, Herr Gray. To allow a young girl’s teasing to provoke you into breaking a solemn promise. You should be setting this one a sober example, not encouraging her waywardness.’

Again Corinna spoke up before I could. ‘He didn’t want to go,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t going to, no matter what. But then I promised that I would reward him most handsomely if he scaled the tower and returned to the ground before the automatons had completed their course. I was only teasing, I swear it, but up he went like a jackrabbit. You know the rest.’

‘What did you promise him?’ Adolpheus asked. ‘That is what I would know.’

At this, Corinna burst into tears, or seemed to, letting the stepladder fall behind her as she turned towards one wall and buried her face in her hands. ‘Oh, I cannot say. Do not ask it of me, Adolpheus! I am too ashamed.’

Needless to say, this had the effect of encouraging rather than deflecting Adolpheus’s curiosity. He stopped and half turned to look behind him at the weeping Corinna – in the process grazing my boot against the wall, so that I had to bite my lip to hold back a cry. ‘If you will not tell me,’ he said to her, ‘I will require it of Herr Gray. He, I feel sure, will know his duty.’

‘No,’ she said, seeming to dry her eyes, though she would not meet Adolpheus’s demanding gaze – or my own uncomprehending one. ‘I will tell you. I promised him … a kiss.’

Now, indeed, a cry escaped my lips, but of surprise rather than pain. Yet I don’t believe Adolpheus heard it, for he had thrown back his head and was roaring with laughter. ‘A kiss!’ he managed to gasp out. ‘Bless you, a kiss!’

This response provoked Corinna to anger. ‘Yes, why not a kiss? What is so funny about that, I should like to know! Am I so hideous, that no one would want to kiss me?’

But Adolpheus did not reply. Still laughing, he turned and continued towards the inn.

Corinna followed, furious now. ‘Answer me, Adolpheus! Adolpheus!’

He paid her no heed. As for me, I was at a loss to explain why she had concocted such a story to account for my presence upon the proscenium. Adolpheus might find it amusing, but I felt sure her father would have a different reaction. That she had some scheme in mind was obvious – but what? I grasped that she had not wanted me to reveal what we had seen, yet I could not guess her reasons. Indeed, I could scarcely credit my own eyes. That the automatons should resemble the townsfolk of Märchen seemed possible – though it meant Herr Doppler had been less than truthful when he’d told me that no one had touched the inner workings of the clock since Wachter’s day. But that someone could have prepared an automaton to resemble me in the relatively short time I’d been there – why, that was beyond credulity. I supposed a skilled craftsman working diligently from the moment I’d set foot in town could have made such a thing, but why? For what purpose? Howsoever I racked my brains, no answers came – at least, no sane ones.

My return to the Hearth and Home was a humiliating one. Corinna, looking daggers at Adolpheus, held the door open for him to carry me through. The taproom was crowded and noisy, much as it had been the night of my arrival. And, as had been the case that night, all conversation ceased at my entrance. But unlike that night, the silence was followed by raucous laughter as the spectacle of a dwarf carrying a full-grown man in his arms registered on the patrons.

‘Behold,’ shouted one wit, ‘the watchman bears the clockman!’

‘Got too much time on your hands, Dolph?’ contributed another.

‘Quiet, you dolts,’ Adolpheus roared. ‘Can’t you see the man’s been hurt? Someone fetch the doctor!’

At that moment, Inge entered from the kitchen with a tray of glasses. Seeing us, she gave a little shriek and dropped the tray. The sound of shattering glass provoked greater mirth from the denizens of the taproom, which in turn set Hesta, already roused from her slumber by the hearth, to barking.

With a growl of annoyance, Adolpheus carried me across the room and up the stairs. Inge, recovered from her surprise, bustled after us, bombarding Adolpheus with questions that, for the moment, he ignored. Corinna followed her, and, last of all, came a still-barking Hesta. I had the uncanny sense that this, too, was but a grouping of automatons. Shakespeare wrote that all the world’s a stage, but at that moment it seemed to me a clock.

The door to my room was locked, and though I had the key in my pocket, I could not get to it easily from my current position, and so Adolpheus stood to one side as Inge used her master key. The dwarf’s arms were like bands of iron; despite the distance he had carried me, I could not feel even a tremor in his muscles. It seemed that he could bear my weight for hours more if need be.

‘Ach, Herr Gray,’ Inge said as she pushed the door open, letting a heavy exhalation of heat roll from the room, ‘what have you done to yourself now?’

‘The fool climbed the clock tower,’ Adolpheus answered as he shouldered his way past her.

‘Lord bless us!’ Inge responded, entering the room behind him. ‘Did he fall?’

‘I simply wished to examine the automatons more closely,’ I explained, tired of other people speaking for me, ‘and my boot became caught in the mechanism.’

‘You’re lucky to be alive,’ the landlady stated. ‘That clock has ways of defending itself.’

‘That’s ridicu— holy Christ in heaven!’ A wave of pain overwhelmed me as Adolpheus none too gently, whether from weariness or exasperation, deposited me onto the bed.

‘Apologies, Herr Gray,’ he said cheerfully.

‘Adolpheus, you clumsy idiot!’ cried Corinna, who had followed Inge into the room. ‘Are you trying to kill him?’ She rushed to my bedside as though to protect me from a murderer. Ignoring the hurly-burly, Hesta went straight to the simmering furnace and flopped down onto the floor in front of it.

‘That’s enough from you, young lady,’ Inge said sharply. ‘Herr Gray left in your care, and see how he returns!’

‘Are you saying it’s my fault he was hurt?’ Corinna demanded, pulling up short and turning to face the landlady, an incredulous look on her face.

‘Isn’t it?’ Adolpheus asked. ‘After all, he would not have climbed the tower had you not tempted him with a kiss.’

Corinna flushed, and whatever she had been about to say went unsaid; in the heat of the exchange, she had, or so it seemed to me, forgotten what she had told Adolpheus earlier, but now the memory of it left her quite unable to speak.

‘What?’ cried Inge at this news. ‘Why, you shameless hussy! A kiss, indeed! Your father shall hear of this, I promise you.’

‘But Frau Hubner …’ Suddenly she looked near tears. Real ones this time. Corinna’s customary self-possession had the effect of making her seem older than her years, but now that façade was stripped away, revealing her youth and innocence. It wrung my heart to see, yet what could I say? She had invented the story of a kiss to stop me from telling Adolpheus the real reason for my climb; for whatever reason, she wished to keep what we had seen a secret, and I had no sense now that her wishes had changed, even if circumstances had taken an unforeseen turning.

‘But nothing,’ Inge said. ‘Get downstairs with you this instant. You’re late for work as it is, and that crowd of drunks is probably robbing me blind.’

‘But—’

‘I said now! You, too, Adolpheus – Herr Gray is not a sack of potatoes to be thrown down so roughly. He requires a woman’s touch.’

Corinna, after a plaintive glance at me, eyes brimming with tears, turned and left the room, her posture one of abject defeat. Adolpheus followed almost jauntily. ‘Well, clockman,’ he said in the doorway, ‘I’ll look in on you later, assuming there is anything left of you after Herr Doppler is through.’ He shook his shaggy head and chuckled. ‘A kiss indeed. That girl is a menace.’

‘She is innocent,’ I responded.

‘And all the more dangerous for it, as you are about to discover.’ He jerked his chin in my direction and added, ‘If the lesson hasn’t sunk in already.’

‘Ach, don’t pay him any mind,’ Inge said after Adolpheus had departed. ‘He is just jealous.’

‘Jealous?’ I exclaimed.

‘Of course jealous,’ she answered. ‘Do you think anyone has offered to kiss him lately? Or ever?’

I had to laugh.

Inge smiled, her apple-red cheeks dimpling. ‘That’s more like it. Don’t worry about Herr Doppler. He knows his daughter’s tricks and fancies. You are not the first she’s led astray.’ The landlady leaned over the bed, her abundant breasts seeming about to spill out of the top of her blouse like ripe fruits from a cornucopia. The heady aromas of the kitchen wafted from her as if from an open oven, and once again they proved to have a stimulating effect, which I shifted my position on the bed to disguise, though I could see by Inge’s glance that my condition had not escaped her notice. ‘Your poor foot,’ she said, laying a massive hand on my leg, above the knee; I could feel the heat of her through my clothing, as if she and not the tile stove were the source of the room’s excessive warmth. ‘Can I do anything to ease your pain until the doctor arrives?’

I had the distinct impression that she was not referring to my foot at all. But just at that moment, the gentleman in question knocked at the open door. He was a small man, though of course taller than Adolpheus, but slight as a reed and pale as parchment, as if he had no more than a trickle of blood in his veins. He peeked into the room, blinking owlishly behind a pair of spectacles. He was dressed in black, which made his skin seem all the paler; his powdered grey wig, of a style long out of fashion, was tilted askew, as though he had jammed it onto his head while rushing out of the door. I did not think I had seen him before, though there was something familiar about him.

‘I was sent for,’ he said defensively, as if afraid his presence would be questioned.

‘Come in, sir, come in,’ said Inge, straightening and stepping back, her hand sliding from my leg in a kind of caress. ‘Your patient awaits.’

The doctor entered, holding a small black bag very much like my own tool kit before him in the manner of a shield. ‘How do you do, sir,’ he said with a somewhat convulsive bow in my direction.

‘Not too well, I’m afraid,’ I replied, indicating my foot.

‘This is Herr Gray, Doctor,’ Inge said.

He repeated his bow. ‘I am Dr Immelman.’

‘A Jew,’ Inge added in a stage whisper, as if this fact were significant.

‘A convert,’ the doctor was quick to amend, as if this, too, were significant, indicative of superior, if not occult, knowledge.

‘It is your medical rather than your religious practices that concern me,’ I told him with an attempt at levity that appeared to fall flat.

‘We may be a bit out of the way here in Märchen, off the beaten track so to speak,’ he said as he approached the bed with that same tentative air, ‘but I think you’ll find my skills more than adequate.’

‘I have no doubt of it, Herr Doctor,’ I assured him. ‘It was merely a joke – a poor one.’

‘Ah,’ he said, nodding sagaciously. ‘A joke. Of course.’

The concept seemed foreign to him.

‘Well, Dr Immelman,’ Inge broke in, ‘will you need my assistance? Is there anything I can get for you?’

By now Immelman had reached the bed. He settled his black bag upon the edge of the mattress and adjusted his spectacles as he looked me over. His bloodless face and pale, high forehead were slick with sweat; he almost seemed to be melting, as if made of wax or ice. ‘That boot will have to be cut away,’ he said. ‘I will need hot water and bandages, Frau Hubner. And a bottle of schnapps for the patient, to dull the pain.’

‘I’ll have them sent up at once,’ she replied. ‘I’ll leave you in the doctor’s capable hands for now, Herr Gray. Later I will bring some food and sit with you awhile. Come, Hesta,’ she added, and the dog rose from the floor and followed her out of the room.

Dr Immelman pulled up a chair and sat down near the foot of the bed, facing me but keeping his gaze fixed on my boot. ‘You will let me know if there is any pain,’ he directed, reaching out with long, slender fingers, like those of a pianist.

I swore as he began to manipulate my ankle; his touch was gentle enough, but even so the pain was severe. He drew back at once.

‘Is it broken?’ I asked him.

He withdrew a handkerchief from within his black coat and mopped his perspiring face, then tucked it back inside. Now his gaze did meet my own, but only, as it were, glancingly. ‘I cannot say for certain without removing the boot. It seems likely, however.’

I swore again.

‘How were you injured, Herr Gray?’ Immelman asked. ‘I was told only that my services were required.’

‘I climbed the clock tower, and my foot became lodged in the train along which the automatons move.’

Now his gaze returned to my own, and this time it did not waver. ‘Why would you do such a foolish thing?’

I shrugged but did not look away. ‘It seemed a good idea at the time.’ I didn’t want to say anything more concerning the automatons, not only because of Corinna’s apparent desire that I should keep quiet about their resemblance to the people of Märchen, but because I was convinced that I had seen the good doctor – or, rather, his wooden counterpart – among them. Yes, I remembered the sight of him quite clearly; he had preceded Adolpheus in the parade, that black bag of his held before him in the same fashion he had held it just moments ago, before setting it down on the bed. The recollection made it impossible to view the man with equanimity; despite his timidity, there was something uncanny, almost sinister, it seemed to me, about his presence now, and I experienced once again, more intensely than I had in the taproom, a sense of – how to describe it? – misalignment, as if I no longer fitted properly into the world, or as if the world had undergone some subtle change, one that had left it less friendly to me, less, well, like home. The sensation was all the more troubling in that it was so inchoate, a pervasive wrongness I could neither explain nor explain away.

‘You are the English clockman,’ Immelman said. ‘You have come to learn the secrets of our timepieces, no?’

‘I hope to be permitted to study them,’ I allowed.

‘You have a strange way of going about it, climbing the tower like that. It is not the sort of behaviour likely to be rewarded by Herr Doppler.’

‘I suppose not.’

‘I think it was no idle action.’ Immelman glanced to the door, then leaned towards me, his voice a confiding whisper. ‘I think you saw something that … astonished you. Something that provoked you to make the climb.’

‘On what do you base your diagnosis?’ I asked. ‘Have you yourself seen something astonishing?’

‘I have seen many such things in my time here,’ Immelman replied, once again casting a nervous glance towards the door. He licked his thin lips. Then, as if coming to a decision, he addressed me in English. ‘Sir,’ he said, pitching his voice lower still, ‘you are in grave danger. Märchen is not what you think. Nothing here is what you think. You must be on your guard if you ever wish to leave this place alive.’

I confess I was too taken aback to make an immediate reply. It was not only the shock of being addressed in my native tongue, but the warning thus conveyed, which, though it had come out of the blue, was uttered with such conviction that I did not doubt the man’s sincerity. But of course sincerity is no guarantee of truth. No one, after all, is as sincere as a madman.

‘They have tried to keep us apart,’ Immelman went on, his words spilling out in a breathless rush. ‘This is not your first injury since you arrived in Märchen, yet only now have I been given the task of treating you. Do you not find that strange?’

‘They? Who is this they?’ I found my voice at last.

‘Herr Doppler and the rest. They are afraid I will warn you, as indeed I have. Afraid I will help you escape, as I should like very much to do. Yes, and go with you, away from this cursed place for ever! They wish to keep you here, Herr Gray. They have need of you. Just as, years ago, when I was as young a man as you, they had need of me.’

The disarray of the doctor’s clothes and wig, which I had at first taken as evidence of a certain absentmindedness often to be met with among medical men, now began to suggest a more troubling interpretation. Inge had told me that the long months of isolation imposed by Märchen’s heavy snowfalls sometimes induced a kind of mania in the townsfolk. Was that the cause of Dr Immelman’s odd behaviour? His eyes had a wild cast behind his spectacles, and his skin glistened with sweat; he looked sickly, feverish. I responded reasonably, hoping to calm him. ‘If my skills are required, Herr Doppler need only ask. Instead, he has denied my every request.’

‘He has his reasons, of that you may be sure. But it is useless to try and puzzle them out. They do not think as we do, Herr Gray. They are not—’

He broke off at the sound of approaching footsteps, turning to the door as Inge entered, carrying a tray on which she had balanced a steaming jug, a bottle of schnapps with a small glass turned upside down beside it, and a pile of folded white cloths. ‘What is the prognosis, Doctor?’ she inquired.

Dr Immelman blanched at this innocuous question and, switching back to German, stammered out his diagnosis of a broken ankle.

‘I am sorry to hear it,’ said Inge, shaking her head in sympathy as she crossed the room to us and set the tray on the bedside table; her bosom strained against her blouse as she leaned down, but somehow, as before, failed to overspill it. That was as astonishing as anything else I had seen, I assure you. When I tore my eyes away from the display of ripe pink flesh, it was to find her gazing at me with what I can only describe as hunger, as if I were a feast spread before her. At that moment I felt an answering hunger, as though, were it not for the presence of Dr Immelman, each of us could have devoured the other. I felt ashamed of my feelings, and guilty, as if by having them I was being unfaithful to Corinna, but I couldn’t ignore them, either. Inge smiled, seeming to divine my thoughts. ‘I shall take good care of you, Herr Gray, never fear.’

The spell was broken as Dr Immelman once again manipulated my ankle, this time without the gentleness he had displayed earlier. I cursed more loudly than ever, and the doctor apologized profusely. His hands were shaking.

‘For God’s sake, Doctor,’ Inge erupted, ‘can you not be more careful? Pull yourself together!’ She fetched a chair from across the room and sat beside him. ‘Come, I will assist you.’ She poured a small portion of schnapps into the glass and handed it to him. ‘Here, this will steady your nerves.’

‘Thank you,’ he said and gulped it down. Then, by what seemed an immense effort of will, Dr Immelman asserted control over his trembling hands. He opened his black bag and began to lay out his instruments. The routine of it seemed to calm him further. Yet the sight of those instruments only increased my apprehension.

‘Now it is your turn, Herr Gray,’ said Inge meanwhile, filling the glass from the bottle and offering it to me. ‘Drink it down, now, all of it.’

I did not need any encouragement. I drained the glass as if it held water. I have never been fond of schnapps – I find its sweetness cloying. Give me a good English port any time. Yet this was like no schnapps I had ever tasted. When I had first arrived in town and secured my room at the Hearth and Home, I had poured myself a glass of water – a glass that had seemed, instead, to contain a most potent liquor, cold and sharp as an icy needle to the brain, which, upon melting, had diffused its numbness through my body, sending me into a sleep so profound that Corinna’s presence at my bedside had not awakened me, but had only, as it were, become transmuted into the stuff of dreams. This draught of schnapps was like that, except more so: it was as if I had swallowed a magical elixir, the ambrosia of the gods, something too strong for mortal senses, as far beyond normal schnapps as that water I had tasted was beyond normal water. The sleep that claimed me was beyond sleep, and if I experienced any dreams, they were beyond the grasp of my memory, for I have never, in all the years since, been able to recall even a glimmer of what passed through my mind from the time I swallowed the schnapps until I opened my eyes again to find the room lit by candlelight and, instead of Inge and Dr Immelman, Herr Doppler himself seated at my bedside.

‘The sleeper wakes,’ he said, closing the thin leather-bound volume he had been reading and setting it on the mattress.

I was too groggy and disoriented to reply, but merely lay there, half reclining against the headboard, trying to situate myself.

‘Here, Herr Gray, allow me to assist you,’ Doppler said, getting to his feet. He poured me a glass of water and, with an arm behind my neck, helped prop me up to drink it. I sipped; the water was cold but not intoxicating – invigorating, rather. It brought me fully awake. As if sensing this, Herr Doppler set the glass down on the bedside table, plumped the pillows behind me, and resumed his seat. ‘How are you feeling?’ he inquired. ‘Any pain?’

I shook my head. I lay on top of the covers, fully dressed save for the absence of my boots. One foot was in its stocking; the other was wrapped in pristine white bandages and elevated upon a pillow. It was twice the size of its fellow. Beneath the bandages, I could feel nothing at all. ‘Where is Dr Immelman?’ I asked, recalling his warning to me.

‘Downstairs, eating his dinner. I will call for him in a moment, never fear.’

‘I cannot feel my foot,’ I told him. ‘It is as numb as a block of wood.’

Herr Doppler chuckled at this. ‘Calm yourself, Herr Gray! The good doctor knows his business. I arrived in time to watch him at his work – a steadier hand I have seldom seen. Why, he cut away your boot as if he were peeling an orange, then set your ankle so smoothly that you did not so much as twitch in your sleep. Then he applied some kind of poultice – a numbing agent, he called it, to keep the pain at bay while the break begins to heal. He can explain it better than I, and will do so, I am sure – but first, you and I must have a chat, sir. I dare say you can guess the subject.’

‘My head is somewhat fuzzy,’ I temporized. ‘If you would enlighten me …’ It seemed safest to let him take the lead.

‘Ah, Herr Gray, you think I am angry with you because you climbed the clock tower. I assure you, I am not. The clock, as you see, has ways of protecting itself.’

‘That is what Inge said,’ I exclaimed. ‘But surely you can’t believe—’

‘That one of Herr Wachter’s mechanisms might defend itself?’ he broke in. ‘Come, Herr Gray. Do you mean to tell me, after all you have seen, all you have experienced, that you could doubt it?’

I let this pass. Frankly, I did not wish to dwell on the possibility, which I found disturbing. ‘If not that, then what?’

‘Why, if not the effect, what else but the cause? That is to say, the reason you climbed the tower in the first place. What was it, Herr Gray? Something you saw, perhaps? Something out of the ordinary?’

At this, I had to laugh. ‘Out of the ordinary? Herr Doppler, I have seen little else since I arrived here!’ Then, mindful of Corinna’s evident desire that I keep secret what we had seen, I asked him, ‘Have you not spoken to your daughter?’

He frowned. ‘Rather, she has spoken to me. And confessed that it was all her doing – that she tempted you into making the climb with the promise of a kiss. I could well believe her capable of such a wicked promise, the minx, but the fact that she volunteered the information freely makes me suspicious. I know my daughter, sir. She is hiding something. And I think you know what it is.’

I had no intention of revealing what I had seen. I did not understand the significance of it, but I had no doubt that it was significant, for not only Herr Doppler but Dr Immelman and even Adolpheus had pressed me on the matter. In any case, it was sufficient that Corinna wished me to say nothing of it.

‘I would not have you think badly of your daughter,’ I told Herr Doppler. ‘She is only trying to protect me, and in her innocence does not understand the injury she does herself. The truth is, it was I who set the terms for that climb, not Corinna.’

‘You, sir?’

‘I had been pressing her for a kiss all morning. But she had resisted my every advance. At last, as we stood before the clock tower, watching as the automatons crossed the stage above us, I secured her promise – reluctantly given, I assure you, and only out of a desire to put an end to my importuning – of a kiss in exchange for my climbing the tower and planting a kiss of my own upon the cheek of a wooden maiden there.’

‘A wooden maiden?’ Herr Doppler echoed, his eyes narrowing. ‘What maiden is this?’

I wondered if I had said too much and inadvertently revealed what I had hoped to keep secret. I saw no recourse but to press on. ‘Just one of the automatons,’ I answered with a shrug. ‘I hope I do not give offence, Herr Doppler, but to speak frankly, I had expected better. So wondrous are the outsides of Herr Wachter’s timepieces that I had thought anything emerging from within them must be equally wondrous. But the figures I saw seemed to have been executed in haste, and otherwise were no different than hundreds of others I have encountered in my travels.’

‘Ah, so now you know our darkest secret,’ Doppler said with a chuckle, as if relieved. ‘The truth is, Herr Wachter had nothing to do with those figures. When it came to such things, he preferred to work on a smaller scale, as with the dragon in Inge’s cuckoo clock. There he lavished the full measure of his genius. Do not misunderstand – the clock tower is indeed his masterpiece. But its size and complexity were such that he felt compelled to delegate certain aspects of its fabrication, like the automatons, to others … or so I was told and do believe. The truth of it seems evident in the craftsmanship, as you say. So,’ he added, returning to his subject, ‘having secured my daughter’s promise, you ascended.’

‘The climb was easier than I had expected – the carvings on the façade provided all the hand- and footholds necessary. But I never got the chance to deliver my kiss. My foot became caught in the train almost at once. If not for Adolpheus, I shudder to think what would have happened. I do not think I would have escaped with just a broken ankle.’

‘Indeed, you might have lost your leg to the mechanism,’ Doppler agreed. ‘I hope this will be a lesson to you, Herr Gray.’

‘I do not think I am likely to be climbing anything for a while,’ I said.

‘Oh, it’s not as bad as all that,’ Doppler said. ‘Dr Immelman will have you hobbling about in no time, you’ll see. But as to the matter of the kiss …’ He paused and stroked his moustache as if considering how best to proceed. Then, in a grave tone: ‘I’m afraid you have disappointed me, Herr Gray. I do not like to be disappointed. I thought we had an agreement. You were to instruct my daughter in horology, all the while subtly discouraging her interest. I did not intend that you instruct her in anything else. But you seem to have mistaken me. My English is lacking, I know, yet I do not believe horology begins with a w.’

‘Come now, Herr Doppler,’ I told him. ‘That is harsh and unworthy. What blame there is attaches to me, not Corinna. I assure you, I had no designs beyond a chaste kiss, and, indeed, had not really intended for things to go even that far. It won’t happen again.’

‘See that it does not,’ he said, laying a hand upon my bandaged foot. I could feel the pressure of it, the weight, but no pain or other sensation penetrated the numbing effects of Dr Immelman’s poultice. Still, I understood the threat that Herr Doppler had left unspoken.

‘Then, am I to continue her lessons?’ I inquired.

‘I see no reason why not,’ Doppler said and lifted his hand. ‘She has already insisted upon nursing you back to health – though it seems your landlady also has intentions in that regard. Well, we shall let the women battle it out. In the meantime, you may as well continue the lessons. Only, no more talk of kisses, eh? And I would like to see some progress. As of yet, she shows no signs of discouragement. On the contrary, she seems more enthusiastic than ever.’

‘The one must precede the other, or else the blow, when it comes, will be insufficient to achieve the result you desire. It is not so easy to kill a dream, Herr Doppler. If the slightest fragment is left, it may take root and grow again – especially when, as is the case here, a genuine talent exists.’

‘I leave the details to you,’ he said and pushed himself to his feet. ‘What matters to me are results. If I do not see some progress by the time you are on your feet again, we shall have another discussion, Herr Gray. A less pleasant one.’

‘I understand,’ I told him.

‘Good,’ he said with a satisfied nod. ‘I will inform Corinna. And now I must bid you good night – my dinner is waiting. As, no doubt, is the good doctor, eager to check on his patient. I will send him up directly.’

I was glad to see him go. There was a mercurial aspect to Herr Doppler that disturbed me, especially where Corinna was concerned. Why, he had all but called his own daughter a whore! He seemed almost more like a jealous lover than a father. Yet I reminded myself that he had been both father and mother to the girl, and so had, by necessity, been forced into a relationship outside the normal bounds of father-hood. How could I, who had no children, presume to criticize? Still, it would have gone better for both of them, I could not help thinking, had he taken another wife.

Alone, my attention was drawn towards my bandaged foot, but the sight of it – combined with the absence of sensation – left me feeling queasy. It was as if the appendage belonged to me and yet was foreign. I had an urge to unwrap the bandages but was afraid to touch them.

To distract myself while waiting for Dr Immelman, I picked up the slim volume that Herr Doppler had been reading and had left behind on the bed, forgotten. The cover was of green-dyed leather and had upon it no writing, just a gold-embossed image of the sun – or what I took for the sun but then realized could just as easily be a stylized representation of a cogwheel. Intrigued, I opened the book.

The page before me was covered in printed symbols I neither knew nor recognized, a sinuous typeface that reminded me of the Arabic writing I had seen in my travels. But I knew it was not Arabic. It was something stranger, more foreign. The shape of the letters – if that was what they were – was such that the lines seemed to move as I studied them, to actually flow across the page. Or, rather, not the lines themselves, but a force within the lines, moving through them like water through an elaborate system of pipes, as if the ink itself were in motion, impelled by some vital power. I seemed to hear the murmur of that activity, and it struck me that the book was whispering to me, telling me its secrets, if only I had the wit to understand them.

As I stared, mesmerized as much by the soft susurrus of sound as by the undulations of the script, I felt a kind of sickness spawn inside me, and I would have flung the book away if I could. Book? Was it a book that I held, or was it instead a living thing, not ink but blood rushing through the exotic markings on the page? I did not know. I only knew that it held me as firmly as I held it, that I could no more tear my hands away than I had been able to wrench my foot free of the train that had caught me and would have carried me into the clock had it not been for the arrival of Adolpheus. Then I had cried for help, but now I could not so much as whisper. I could barely even breathe as the book spilled itself into me, or so it seemed, entering through the skin of my fingers as much as through my eyes and ears, though I still could not have said – nor can I to this day – what was being communicated to me. But I could feel it filling me up, squirming its way inside me, changing me. Perhaps it was teaching me how to read it. Perhaps, on the contrary, I was being read. Maybe both at once.

All I know is that, as time went by – and whether minutes or hours had passed, I could not say – the markings on the page began to seem familiar to me, and I thought I could discern a kind of sense in them. Not the sense of words, inseparable from the sounds we associate with particular shapes, and the meanings thus conjured in our minds, but the sense of machines. Of clocks. Yes, the thought grew in me that I was holding something akin to one of Herr Wachter’s timepieces. The shapes on the page, I now perceived, or recognized, were not words at all but parts of an intricate mechanical system; the flowing movement I had detected was the motion of each separate part in harmony with the others. If I looked closely, I could see it all quite clearly, as if through a jeweller’s loupe – tiny gears meshing, chains moving, pulleys rising and falling. It was like looking at a sketch for a mechanical device and suddenly realizing that the sketch was the device: that the two were one and the same, the representation of the thing, and the thing itself, identical. But to what end did such a machine exist? What work was it performing? I confess that I could not form an answer, or even the beginnings of one. Yet surely if I read further into the book I would discover the answer – or, rather, the answer would make itself known to me.

So deeply was I caught in the coils of the book that I did not register the arrival of Dr Immelman until he wrenched it from my hands. At that, the spell was broken. I fell back against the pillows, bathed in a cold sweat and shivering. The doctor, meanwhile, was gazing at me wide-eyed behind his spectacles, the book – closed now – clasped to his chest. Between his fingers, over his heart, I saw the embossed image of the cogwheel sun. It was turning. Not swiftly, but at a steady rate, as though driving an invisible hand across an invisible clock face. Yet even as I watched, it began to slow. For some reason, this terrified me more than anything.

‘What is that book?’ I demanded, pointing with a shaking finger.

Immelman did not answer, but turned and crossed the room to the table where he’d left his black bag. His back was to me, so I couldn’t see clearly what he was doing there, but when he returned to the bed, the book was gone, and he held a small glass vial in his hands. It was filled with a pearlescent liquid.

‘Doctor, the book,’ I persisted, groping for the right words but not finding them.

‘It belongs to Herr Doppler,’ he said. ‘I will return it to him. You should not have tried to read it.’

‘Read it?’ Laughter bubbled between my lips. I felt as if I were going mad. ‘There is no reading such a book – if it is a book, and not some kind of infernal machine!’

‘Every book is a machine, is it not?’ the doctor queried as he opened the vial and poured a few drops into a glass on the bedside table. This he filled with water; it clouded and then cleared as he swished the water around the glass. ‘Drink this,’ he said, holding it out to me.

I looked at him stupidly.

He sighed and spoke as if to a child. ‘You are having a reaction to the poultice, Herr Gray. It contains a potent numbing agent which can sometimes induce hallucinations. Do you understand?’

‘I know what I saw,’ I insisted. ‘You know it, too – I can tell. Why are you lying?’

He sighed again. ‘Must I call Herr Doppler and Adolpheus to hold you down? Drink, Herr Gray. It’s for your own good.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ I said. ‘Earlier you were about to warn me of something. What was it?’

The doctor hesitated before replying, as if debating how much to tell me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last, ‘but it is too late. Now, drink up. Don’t worry – it’s merely a sedative, something to help you sleep. When you wake up, all your questions will be answered, I promise.’

I shook my head, drawing back from the glass he thrust at me. ‘No,’ I cried. ‘Too late for what? Keep it away – I said no!’

‘Doctor, let me talk to him.’ It was Corinna. I was so glad to see her that I nearly sobbed with relief. She was the only one in this madhouse of a town that I could trust.

Dr Immelman straightened at her words. ‘Very well, Fraülein.’ He set the glass on the bedside table and stepped back, motioning for her to approach me.

‘I should like to speak to Herr Gray alone,’ she clarified.

‘Why, that’s …’ Whatever he was about to say, he thought better of it. ‘Of course.’ He crossed the room to retrieve his black bag. Then, bowing to each of us in turn, he left the room. ‘I shall be outside if you need me.’

‘Please close the door, Herr Doctor.’

He did so without objection.

‘What is going on, Corinna?’ I asked. I had so many questions, I scarcely knew where to begin. ‘Your father’s book … The automatons … All of it. What is happening to me?’

‘Shh,’ she said as she came forward and sat on the edge of the bed, reaching out to brush back a lock of my hair. The touch of her fingers on my brow accomplished what mere words could not, and I felt at once stirred to my depths and yet soothed in my soul. ‘Drink the doctor’s potion first, Michael, and I will sit with you and tell you all you wish to know.’

‘I’m afraid,’ I admitted to her. ‘Afraid that I will never wake up.’

‘You will wake,’ she assured me. ‘I swear it. Now, please, for my sake.’ And she picked up the glass and held it out to me.

I met her gaze, searching for any hint of deception, but I saw only caring and concern. I took the glass, and it felt to me that I was binding myself to her by the action, or rather the trust behind it, as if we two were plighting our troth in a ceremony that needed no other witnesses but ourselves, a ceremony more significant than anything we had already shared. I saw, or seemed to see, an answering knowledge in her eyes. And so I drank the potion. I tasted nothing but water – though the water of Märchen was anything but ordinary. So swift was the spread of lethargy through my limbs that I would have dropped the glass had she not plucked it from my hand.

‘Now ask your questions,’ she said.

It was difficult to focus my thoughts, much less speak them aloud. But I persevered. ‘The automatons, Corinna. How is that I saw myself there? And why did you not wish to tell anyone what we had seen? Why did you make up that story about a kiss?’

‘Why, would you not like a kiss from me?’ she answered coyly.

‘Of course,’ I said, ‘but—’

‘Then you shall have it,’ she said and, before I could say another word, pressed her lips to mine. Despite the lassitude instilled by the doctor’s potion, I responded. That her father or Frau Hubner might enter the room at any time and discover us did not cross my mind. But even as I sought to deepen the kiss, opening my lips to coax the same from her, she pulled away.

‘That was nice,’ she said. ‘I could feel your heart beating so fast, like a hummingbird!’

But to me my heartbeat seemed rather like a clock in need of winding, or like the cogwheel slowing on the cover of Herr Doppler’s book as whatever energy had powered its turning ebbed away. I felt myself slipping under. I did not think even another kiss from Corinna could keep me awake. I struggled to speak. ‘Tell me about the clock, the automatons.’

She frowned but then answered. ‘It is some wizardry of Herr Wachter’s,’ she said. ‘The figures are always the same, modelled after the townsfolk. Except today. Today you appeared among them. A stranger. That has never happened before. There is something special about you, Michael. The clock has chosen you.’

I understood her words, but the sense behind them was as far beyond my comprehension as the script in Herr Doppler’s book. ‘Chosen? How? And for what?’

‘For me,’ she said, blushing most becomingly. ‘We are to be husband and wife.’

I confess I did not follow the logic. Yet there was nothing more I could say; the potion had done its work, and even as she bent to give me another kiss, I felt myself falling away from her as if the mattress had yawned open beneath me. Before her lips reached mine, darkness closed over my eyes.

‘I will come back later tonight.’ Her voice threaded out of the black. ‘When you are awake again. I will show you …’

Her words were lost as I slipped completely under.

I was awakened by the sound of a closing door. I sat up, alert in an instant, the effects of Dr Immelman’s draught utterly spent. The lamp had gone out, and the only light in the room was a soft glow from the stove, a reddish nimbus like the heart of a dying coal. It illuminated nothing beyond itself, clinging to its source as if for warmth, for the temperature in the room had plunged while I slept. Behind me, I heard the rattle of sleet against the windowpane.

‘Who is there?’ I whispered. ‘Corinna, is it you?’

There came a dry rasping, as of something heavy being dragged across the floor. At that sound, the memory of the dream that had ravished me on my first night in Märchen, when Corinna had crept into my room and stolen my tool kit, flooded over me. I recalled the eldritch glow that had pervaded everything like some radiant property of cold, remembered the inhuman beauty of the woman who had stood before me like some aloof yet hungry goddess made of metal and jewels, demanding a tribute I could not deny. I began to tremble, afraid that the dream was playing itself out in real life … yet also half desiring it.

Then the pungent odour of fresh-baked bread rolled over me, as if an oven door had been opened, and I knew who my visitor was.

‘Inge,’ I said.

And from the darkness, near enough to touch, a whisper: ‘Shh.’

As had happened before, her scent proved stimulating, a force of nature beyond my control, and my little soldier had already sprung to attention when I felt her settle onto the bed, which groaned at the weight of her. I reached out, intending to push her away, but my hand sank as if into a mass of dough. She was naked. Her skin did not just envelop my hand but seemed to absorb it. She moaned at my touch as if she had long desired it. When I tried to pull my hand back, she fixed my wrist in a grip of iron and moved my hand over her body in a forceful parody of a caress.

In the darkness, the extent of her was impossible to gauge. She was the darkness, darkness incarnate and concentrated, hungry and hot beneath my fingers, as if she were burning with fever. And that fever spread to me. Infected me. Whereas at first it had been a kind of disbelieving horror that stilled my voice, now it was passion that robbed me of speech. I was panting like an animal, straining towards her with mindless need. And she reciprocated. Her hands tore at my clothing, freeing me, and then she – there is no other word for it – engulfed me. I had a moment’s anxiety for my injured foot, but I felt no pain as the soft and fragrant immensity of her came down over me, and then all thought was extinguished.

It was as if I had entered a dense and surging sea. I rose and plunged, tumbled and spun, caught in fleshy currents that flexed and slid and oozed around me like the coils of a serpent intent not to squeeze the breath from me but rather to stroke me to heights of pleasure beyond all enduring, pleasure too great for a human body to contain. I had a sense that she was not just ravishing me but also, at the same time, giving birth to me, to a new me, as if I were a lump of dough and she an expert baker whose hands were kneading me, whose embrace was baking me.

All the while, I was spilling without cease. There was no holding back, yet neither did I spend myself. My energies looped back on themselves, feeding on their own expiration. I felt as if every last drop of vitality was being wrung out of me, that, when Inge released me, I would be as desiccated as the victim of a spider, a shrivelled, bloodless husk. But I didn’t care. I welcomed that fate. I desired above everything to lay my spark on the altar of her divine corpulence, to light a candle there, even if I had to snuff myself out to do it.

And perhaps I would have done just that had not the door slammed open with a bang that not only penetrated but popped the bubble of our congress. An eerie blue light flooded the room, and Inge drew back with a hiss, releasing me. I lay there, spent and gasping, whatever glamour had gripped me broken. Looking up, I beheld a monster. A creature with the head and torso of a woman but the lower body of a serpent. It was those coils, lying loose around me now, not scaled but fleshy, glistening with the mingled fluids of our exertions, that had embraced me; it was those coils, twined about her torso, that had given Inge the appearance of such fantastic stoutness, for in reality – reality! – she was, from the waist up, as perfect a vision of femininity as any man could desire.

Now her eyes were fixed on the door, and on the figure that stood there: Corinna, returned as she had promised. But it was also the woman from my dream, the frozen succubus that had melted before me into a frightened girl. She was not frightened now. Anger flashed in her quartz-green eyes.

I had thought the room cold already, but now it turned positively frigid. Ice bloomed on every surface. I felt it on my lips, my tongue, deep in my lungs; I watched it precipitate out of the air with every exhalation, a sparkling condensation of fear. I could not move; could not cry out; could only shiver and watch the confrontation playing out before me. Yet even then, struck mute as I was with terror, I felt again an insatiable demand, and my body, though bereft of strength and desire, responded like some collapsed beast of burden lashed erect, so that I was once more as hard as marble and trembling on the edge of climax; it was only the fact that the attention of the two women – if women they were – was on each other and not on me that kept me from tumbling over.

For long seconds they took each other’s measure, the temperature meanwhile continuing to plunge, until it had passed the lowest register of my sensibilities and entered into some realm beyond cold, like the very heart of hell. Inge was sheathed in ice; it covered her like a second skin, a skin of glass, a diamond prison. Corinna might have been carved out of stone. Not a word was spoken by either of them.

Then Inge flexed her coils. The prison shattered, and she was free. Free and moving swift as lightning towards Corinna, who shot forward to meet her. They came together in the centre of the room and grappled there like two wrestlers, straining one against the other, wordless and intent, their eyes locked as fiercely as their limbs.

My ears rang from the thunder of their collision, the force of which shook the building like an earthquake. Yet even so I heard the bells in the clock tower begin to chime, as if the shock had reached all the way to the town square. It was no tuneful chorus such as I had heard before but a riotous caterwauling, strident and clamorous, a noise of panic, of alarm.

The women appeared not to notice, intent on each other. They seemed well matched. Neither could gain the upper hand; their bodies – Inge naked, Corinna clothed – trembled with the choked violence of their efforts, which sent tremors like aftershocks through the room. The floor creaked; the walls cracked; chips of plaster and ice dropped from the ceiling. It felt as if the inn was about to come crashing down around my ears, yet I couldn’t stir.

Then not just the room but the whole earth heaved beneath me. The women raised their heads sharply, seeming to listen with every fibre of their beings. And the earth heaved again. And again. If a mountain could walk, I remember thinking, this is what it would feel like.

‘You fool,’ hissed Inge. ‘You’ve awakened him!’

‘It’s your fault,’ Corinna shot back.

But it was clear that their mutual hatred was dwarfed by their fear of whatever was coming. With an angry cry, Inge pulled free of Corinna’s grasp. She could have struck then, yet she did not, and not from mercy – with a flick of her tail, she propelled herself past Corinna and out of the door, leaving the two of us alone.

‘Hurry,’ Corinna said, turning to me. ‘Follow me if you want to live.’

At her words, my paralysis fell away. I fumbled at my disordered clothing. My heart was pounding, my mouth dry.

‘Hurry,’ she said again.

‘I can’t,’ I told her, gesturing helplessly. ‘My foot.’

With a look of exasperation, she crossed to the bed and, taking hold of my arm, pulled me to my feet. I had an impression of immense strength, as if she could have not just lifted me but thrown me for a hundred yards. Despite everything, her touch, rough as it was, brought me to climax again; there was no pleasure in it, just an involuntary spasm, a reflex that wrung my insides like a cold fist clenching. I groaned, and she glanced down with annoyance, as if I were a favoured pet that had reminded her I was only an animal after all. But perhaps she was equally annoyed at herself, for in the next second I felt a diminution of her presence, a dwindling, as if she had willed herself to become something less than she had been, than she really was. At that, I went as limp as a wet noodle and would have fallen had she not supported me with her arm. This time her touch had no untoward effect. And yet I marvelled, even in the midst of my terror, because I was standing. There was not so much as a twinge of pain from my bandaged foot. It felt as strong, as well, as ever. ‘How—’

‘This is no time for questions,’ she interrupted. ‘Or answers. Come – we must flee. Death approaches.’

And indeed, the gargantuan footsteps had not stilled in all this time, nor had the tintinnabulation of the bells. Corinna was pulling me towards the door. I paused only to snatch my tool kit. Then I followed her.