May 16, 2004
The Doomsday Canticle: Part IV
This is the fourth installment in a Lovecraftian round-robin that my friends at Rhetorical Device, Ftrain and Logodrome are posting as we write. Jack wrote the beginning , Paul wrote the next one, Alex wrote the one after that, and this is mine. In this installment, our hero tries to get some information out of Ivar Krueger, the Match King.
(update)
a reader writes
"on Ivar Krueger, the Swedish "match king" of the 1920s and early 1930s, it is odd that you would depict an interview with him when, in fact, he committed suicide in the Spring of 1932 at his Paris apartment shortly after having lost a bid for essential loans in New York. At thatmoment his industrial empire, which had been built up on the basis of a pyramid scheme, was coming apart. That having been said, what does that imply for your article?"
Which just goes to show that i have no business writing this sort of thing.
He was expecting to find a hotel at the address, so he was surprised when he found himself standing in front of a long Georgian Terrace. He scanned the doorways and found the number, 257, then walked up to the door. On the left, there was an embossed sign that read Svenska Tändstick, and beneath the name, an insignia: three matches, two of them lit. He rang the bell, and the door opened instantly.
Inside he was greeted by a pale young man in a stiff suit. Like the elevator-man at the director's office, he looked familiar, but Charles couldn't place him.
"Mr. Cahill to see Mr. Krueger."
The man smiled and checked his watch. "Mr. Krueger will see you now. First floor, second left."
Upstairs, Charles peered down the length of the long hall in both directions before opening the double doors to Krueger’s suite. He was immediately overcome with a powerfull odor -- a hint of perfume, a flower of some kind, undercut by the odor of something rotten, like the sweet ripeness of a mouse decaying in the wall. At the head of the room a man behind a mahogany desk hovered over a large orchid. He held two thin tweezers, and he was working them into the flower, his brow wrinkled with concentration. The instruments made a wet, clicking sound in the flower's bell as he worked, and Charles was reluctantly reminded of the battlefield surgeries he had witnessed during the war. His stomach began to turn.
"Ah, Mr. Cahill, thank you for seeing me." Krueger waved with the instruments. "Pardon me, I'll just finish here."
He turned his attention back to the flower, mumbling as he worked: "hak...ahk...ahk, yes!" The flower bobbed unsteadily on its long stem.
With a start, Charles realized who the man was.
Krueger lay the instruments on the table, pulled off his gloves, then wiped the metal tools down and placed them in a drawer. He moved the flower to the corner of the desk.
"Please. Sit."
Charles walked to the leather chair in front of the desk. He was ill at ease. When the director had instructed him to go to a Mr. Krueger for information, he hadn't anticipated it would be Ivar Krueger, the businessman who, since the war’s end, had consolidated the once simple matchmaking business into a global empire.
"Tell me what you have discovered about the Codex Shapirius," Kreuger began.
Charles hesitated, trying to gauge his interrogator. He resolved to tell him nothing he wouldn’t already know.
"They were forgeries."
"And the originals?"
"It's not clear if there were any. Not yet at least."
Krueger smiled and rubbed at a spot in the table. He reached for his cigarette case and offered one to Charles, then took a wooden match and lit his own, before reaching out to light his guest’s. Charles was compelled to lean over the desk past the flower to get to the flame. The smell from the plant was overpowering, and he was happy for the dulling effect of the smoke.
“The director tells me you were in the war," Krueger said.
"Yes."
"You suffered the trenches?"
"Yes, Sir," Charles said, regretting the “sir” immediately. Questions regarding his service -- even from men who hadn't fought -- always brought out a martial formality in him.
"And let me ask you this: In those trenches, the men became very superstitious didn't they? Many of them lost their minds?" Krueger paused to swallow a mouthful of smoke, then continued. "They saw things in the dark and the mud. Things that they couldn’t explain. And they fell into habits of mind to keep sane."
Charles stole a look at the strange plant. What was Kreuger getting at?
"I've heard that men in the trenches resolved never to light three cigarettes with the same match. Two was ok, but it seems that lighting three cigarettes took exactly the amount of time it would take an enemy marksman to sight and kill the third smoker." Krueger mimicked holding a rifle and jerked his hands to suggest a shot. "Three to a match."
"I never heard that phrase, Mr Krueger, not while I was in the war," Charles said, immediately regretting the tone in his voice.
Krueger crushed out his cigarette and clasped his hands together.
"Charles, I don't mean to offend. It is just that I am in the match business, and I am interested in anything that effects my business, even superstitions."
This was going nowhere. Charles decided to try his own questions. "Can you tell me about the Athatakos Mechanism?"
Krueger stood and walked to the bookcase.
"Charles, I am a student of forgeries great and small. The great religious forgeries are familiar to us: The Letters of Ignatius, the Scroll of Al-Ahzab, In your own country there was Smith’s Revelation, one of my favorites. These are interesting to us because they changed history. Then there are the forgeries of art: A.D.’s woodcuts, Van Megeren’s Vermeers, and they are interesting in as much as they upset the meaning beauty. Do you think about beauty often Charles?"
Charles remained silent, but he realized that his mind had been drifting to Kitty.
"…Yes, I imagine you do.” Kreuger rapped his knuckles against the side of the bookcase as if he were testing it to see if it was hollow. “And then there are the base forgeries: the bills, the papers, the passports. These are often considered the least interesting by collectors, since they have no historical value, but I am most drawn to these -- do you know why Charles?"
"I can't say that I do," Charles replied.
"Because these are the forgeries that enable men to change, and that is so much more interesting to me than the forging of art or history. Wouldn't you agree?"
“I wouldn’t know,” Charles said. “But what of the mechanism?”
“It is the only forgery that can change all three -- history, beauty, and the soul.”
The interview was not going as Charles had hoped. He decided to change his line of questioning.
“What can you tell me about Shapira’s grave?"
"Shapira’s grave. The better question would have been what can I tell you about Shapira. Shapira, Mr. Cahill, is only a name and names can be passed around. You are looking for the Shapira who arrived at a Sir Clermont-Ganneau's home with the box of objects they call the Shapirius-Codex; the same Shapira who is buried beneath a stone bearing his name in an unremarkable graveyard outside of Crooswijk.”
So he was buried in Crooswijk. At least he would leave the interview with that knowledge.
Krueger continued: “But this is just one Shapira among many. Shapira forged thousands of objects and Clermont-Ganneau repudiated thousands more -- including many objects Shapira had nothing to do with. You have been looking for a name in a book. But names can be changed, and books can be forged."
"So the Shapirius-Codex doesn't exist?'
Krueger laughed. “Of course it exists!"
"And where can I find it."
"You'll have to ask Shapira."
“But Shapira’s dead. He killed himself in Rotterdam."
Ivar Kreuger regarded him kindly. "Young man, death is the most common of forgeries."
Krueger pulled the giant flower to the center of the table. There were wires hanging out of the bottom of the pot, and Charles noted that they disappeared somewhere beneath the desk.
"Do you have any hobbies, Mr. Cahill?”
“I find that my work and my family keep me from them,” Charles said.
Kreuger lifted a long green petal. “One should always have a hobby. I love flowers, and I love radios, and I try to toy with both whenever possible."
Kreuger turned the flower-pot towards Charles so that he could see inside its bell. The green and orange petals looked like two hands bound at the wrists, the fingers opened like claws. Inside there was something black and webbed. Charles realized that it was a speaker of some kind; Krueger had not been performing surgery, he had been wiring electronics into the plant.
Without warning, the flower spoke. It was a crackling voice, grating and unnerving, but unmistakable: the director.
"Cahill" The plant rasped. Charles gripped the arms of his chair. Had the plant been listening in? The sound of the director’s disembodied voice made his stomach drop with anxiety. He leaned forward and addressed it. “Sir? But this is impossible. Aren’t you in New York?”
The flower breathed heavily, coughed, then spoke: "That isn’t important. What is important is that there has been a change of direction at the bank. From this point on, Krueger will be your director.” Charles sank into his chair, overwhelmed. The talking plant and the impossible distance were unnerving enough, but something in the director’s voice sounded as if he were being forced to speak against his will.
"Go to Jerusalem... Find the Athatakos Mechanism ... report back to here with your findings." The plant made a terrible rattling sound, then fell to a low buzz. It was finished speaking.
Krueger pushed the plant to the side and reached underneath his desk. He handed Charles a folder. "Everything you need is here. Now go, I must attend to business.”
Charles felt the assistant's hand heavy on his shoulder and he stood to leave. On the way out he turned and looked at the Match King. Kreuger was leaning down over the flower. He was whispering something into it, and the plant hissed and crackled back, the sounds of the electronic whispers like flies buzzing around a fresh meal.
