In Lofty Circles
For all the magnificently painted ceilings and leather couches, this was another waiting room. He would pass the rest of his life in such places, hoping unconcerned dignitaries might conclude important business with time enough to spare for Edgar Poe. From terms in the army and at West Point, he was familiar with the ancient martial dictum 'hurry up and wait'. At the heart of the world's supreme military power, the rule was enshrined in national law. Prague was merely an outlying fiefdom of Berlin; this was the metropolis of waiting rooms, the central circle of prevarication. In Bohemia, Poe had fallen through cracks and been the last of the ignored. Here, he was merely the least of the hordes of the overlooked.
The hall was crowded with men whose finery suggested importance and worth. Within sight were enough feathered helms, gold tassels, sparkly epaulettes, polished buttons, medal clusters, white capes, shiny boots, brocaded waistcoats and striped trousers to outfit a comic opera company for a season. Yet supplicants paced with irritable energy or slumped in weary attitudes, revealing only powerlessness and irrelevance. Poe was a slumper, Hanns Heinz Ewers a pacer. He went back and forth like a sentry, hands clasped behind his back, neck stiff as a ramrod.
Their appointment was with Dr Mabuse, Director of the Intelligence and Press Department of the Imperial German Air Service. At nearly midnight, the building was still busy. The most Poe had gathered was that he was to be asked to write a book. He did not mention that in the last three years, he had been unable to complete so much as a humorous couplet.
Junior officers clutched document bundles, desperate to be relieved of the bad news they brought. Colonels, generals, a field marshal were levelled in rank by an age of waiting.
A clerk, his hair a peculiarly shocked bird's nest, sometimes emerged, like a figure from a cuckoo clock, from a tiny door to call a name.
'Von Bayern,' he barked. 'Hauptmann Gregory von Bayern.'
An elder, neatly uniformed without the trimmings, stood at the sound of his name and was ushered out of the room. Ewers's envious eyes bored into von Bayern's uniformed back as it disappeared smartly through doors marked with a gilded bas- relief of the imperial German eagle.
'They always get preference,' Ewers stage-whispered bitterly, meaning elders. 'The centuried fools don't know what year it is, but are sure of a commission and the opportunity to eclipse the work of an able new-born.'
Obviously, Ewers was eaten inside by resentment. Poe was learning more of his doppelg?nger.
In the first-class railway carriage, numbed by Ewers's reminiscences, Poe found his travelling companion tolerable only because his position guaranteed patronage, advancement or degradation. Ewers's stories of life in the service of the Kaiser were laced with the ironic, justified falls of those who had crossed or disappointed him. Each gem of truth in his autobiographical monologue was polished until it shone, then set in a tracery of arrant fiction.
It was an uncomfortable journey, with the etched faces of soldiers returning from leave always outside the compartment or in the darks between the carriages. The grey of their uniforms spread to their faces, showing colour only in the red around their eyes.
Apparitions haunted Poe still. On a nearby couch, squeezed between a puffy diplomat and a mightily whiskered general, was a man from the front, a wild-eyed walking skeleton wrapped in a uniform. Jittery at every heel-click on marble, a muddied despatch clamped under his arm, he was one of the living dead, a warm man who seemed more dead than the vampires either side of him. His dented helmet was smeared with French dirt.
The stomach of his coat was pink-tinged with his own blood. Any rank insignia he might once have worn were obscured or ripped away. The man's stretched face was a mask of pain.
The general, fussily eating live mice from a brown paper bag, pretended not to notice the state of his comrade. He shrank to one side to avoid actual physical contact with such a disgusting remnant. The diplomat too, concentrated on a mid-air spot in a direction that did not require him to look at the soldier. The worthies, new-born vampires of the most distinguished station, conversed over and around the mud man, discussing the course of the war. Both were confident of imminent victory because the German fighting man was the best in the world. With the Russkies out of it, there was no excuse not to take Paris before the thaw.
The soldier held his stomach as if digesting a caltrop and looked at Poe with a terrible gaze. For a moment, he was certain he had been recognised as the author of The Battle of St Petersburg, and that he had been tricked into answering for his failure as a prophet of modern warfare. The thought passed but he seethed at the likes of the general and the diplomat. They were far more responsible than Edgar Poe for the divergence of the course of the war from his vision.
'Poelzig,' announced the clerk. 'Herr Oberst Hjalmar Poelzig.'
A sallow-faced officer arose and sauntered through the doors. Poe assumed he had shares in munitions. Only someone making money could look so arrogantly satisfied.
Ewers still paced, fuming. In the motor-car that conveyed them from the railway station to the Chancellory, Ewers had impressed the driver with the urgency of their mission. The name of Mabuse was well enough known to spur the man to an over-enthusiastic burst of speed. A ferocious honk on the horn startled a horse into rearing. Ewers chuckled while two soldiers tried to calm the beast and the car sped by, eagle pennants fluttering. Now, in this huge room, he was diminished. His true position emerged as each of his humble solicitations was pointedly ignored or waved away by hawk-eyed clerks. If he had not been so tired and thirsty, and conscious of his own bad clothes, Poe might have enjoyed the braggart's slow shrinkage.
A young veteran, a burned arm twisted into a batwing against his side, face snouted and angry with scars, entered with a trolley of newspapers which he hawked around the room. A colonel learned from the front page that secret information he was to hand over to his High Command was now common knowledge. Poe thought to buy a paper, but realised he had absolutely no money about him.
Ewers did his best to impress upon a clerk that his career would suffer dreadfully when it was found by Dr Mabuse that he, Hanns Heinz Ewers, had been kept waiting. He suggested darkly that a word from him ensured transfer to active service on the Western Front. The clerk humoured him but action was not forthcoming.
Strangely, Ewers was the only person in the room inclined to complain. The field marshal sat meekly, waiting. It was very German. Everyone knew their rank and place and stuck to it. All very reassuring, providing one had a seat on the pyramid. Anyone whose station could not immediately be determined from a glance at an epaulette was the equivalent of an Indian 'untouchable', excluded entirely from the caste system.
The soldier suppressed a groan and hugged his stomach as if a shrapnel fragment were working its way through. Poe thought a trickle of blood was seeping through the soldier's coat. His red thirst was excited but the battered and filthy soldier was revolting to his sensibilities. Poe would have to be starved indeed to feed on such poor meat.
The mood of the room suddenly changed, as if smoke had been scented in the air. The supplicants were like a herd of grazing deer, alert to the tread of a hunter. A susurrus of whispering swept past like a wind and Poe heard a name, repeated.
'Dracula ...'
The main doors were held open by attendants. A noisome party was coming into the room. Even Ewers stopped pacing to come to attention.
'Dracula ...'
The Graf von Dracula was the Elder Vampire of Europe, Master Strategist and Great Visionary, Architect of Victory and Defender of the Kind. It was due solely to his colossal schemes that the vampire condition was spread throughout the world. Uncle-by-marriage to Kaiser Wilhelm II, he was rumoured to have a greater say in the conduct of the war than Hindenburg or Ludendorff.
'Dracula.'
Soldiers marched in, boots and breastplates clattering. Elders of the Graf's Carpathian Guard, they had fought at his side through the centuries. With them, they brought an icy stink, of old spilled blood and discharged guns.
'Dracula.'
Poe had written to the Graf many times early in the war, encouraged by the elder's endorsement, never retracted but also not mentioned much these days, of The Battle of St Petersburg. He had never been granted a reply.
'Dracula ...'
The repetition of the name was almost a cry, almost a prayer. An adjutant was dragged in behind a pair of wolves which snapped and snarled on leashes. Ewers jumped at the approach of the beasts. Poe had heard these were Dracula's lieutenants from his warm days, transformed by his powers into faithful familiars.
A tall vampire came through the doors at a striding pace. He wore a grey cloak over a simple uniform. Poe noted the leather holster at his belt, the shiny-peaked black cap, the pointed ends of his moustache. While other elders clung to their own times, Dracula changed eternally with each war. While his generals advised the tactics of Waterloo and Borodino, the Graf deployed machine-guns against cavalry charges and ordered the digging of trenches across the whole of Europe. He was the great adapter, the supreme pragmatist.
A dowager knelt before the Graf and kissed his hand, pressing lips to spade-like nails. He tolerated her attentions but was eager to move on.
Though not given to fawning on the great, Poe stood to present himself. A word from Dracula would free him from the abominable Ewers and find him a suitable position. General David Poe, his grandfather, had been a warlord also, in the Revolutionary war. There were too many in the way. The Graf could not venture among the generality without being surrounded by the grateful, the solicitous, the opportunist.
Poe dashed forwards, running through his accomplishments in his mind. The conversation of Poe and Dracula. This was to be a moment in the history of imagination. As he neared the Graf s party, the air seemed richer, thick and liquid. Close to the warlord, Poe's step slowed as in a dream. Background noise was blotted out and Poe heard the beating of a huge heart, a drumbeat of life drowning all else.
The Graf's great head turned as he strode. His eyes passed over Poe without recognition. Poe skidded to a halt, gaping at the elder. Dracula hurried on. A pair of plumed Carpathians, one a warrior woman with a tattooed face, covered his back. Their hostile gaze drove Poe back. The elder swept through the room unquestioned, leaving supplicants in his wake. The weeping dowager had to be comforted by an aghast junior officer.
Poe felt the passing of the unusual conditions that obtained in the immediate vicinity of the Graf. Normal sounds and smells poured back in, setting his senses a-jangle.
The presence of the warlord was overpowering and did not fade fast. Ewers was electrified, unable to contain his nervous energies. Newspapers riddled with bad news from the front were abandoned. Officers hung together to propose new paths to victory. Everyone knew a big push was in the offing, striking at Paris before the Americans arrived in force.
Poe could not forget Dracula's eyes.
The eagle doors were held open for the Graf's party. They moved into the hallway and mounted a wide set of stairs. The doors closed but Poe still heard boots on the marble steps. The heartbeat pulsed in his brain, setting a pace for the progress of empires.
Over three-quarters of the vampires in the room were of Dracula's bloodline. Poe felt excluded: Virginia never knew the name of her father-in-darkness, though she thought he might be a Spaniard. He called himself Sebastian Newcastle. The vampire had sought out the poet of the uncanny and found only Mrs Poe at home, then begun the process of her turning on a motiveless whim. That neither Poe nor Virginia demonstrated an aptitude for shape-shifting proved Newcastle was not of the Dracula line. At odd times, Poe was obsessed with tracking the vampire who had turned Virginia, but his enquiries always petered out.
The waiting hall settled again. Even the Graf's heartbeat, which had chimed with the throbbing of Poe's own blood, was gone.
He looked at the front-line soldier, alone on his couch. Unlike the general and the diplomat, he had not stood in the mighty presence. His lap was stained scarlet. Blood dribbled down his breeches and into his boots. A recent wound had opened. The man might die in this waiting hall.
His hollow eyes had followed the Carpathians and were fixed on the eagle doors. Sourly, the soldier turned away and spat on the floor. As he hunched forwards to hawk, his upper body shook badly. Having emptied his throat and nose, he sank back slowly into the couch.
'This is absurd,' Ewers said. 'Such foolishness will not go unrewarded, Herr Poe. Of that you can be ...'
The clerk emerged again and looked at them.
'Ach,' Ewers was delighted, 'at last.'
'Baumer,' the clerk said, voice ringing. 'Feldwebel Paul Baumer.'
Ewers was enraged at being passed over again. He looked about for the unfortunate sergeant, ready to breathe fire in his face.
'Paul Baumer,' the clerk said again.
No one came forwards. Poe looked at the soldier and saw the last flutter of his closing eyes.
'I think this man is Baumer,' he said, looking.
The clerk tutted disapproval as his attention was called to the messenger from the front.
'Feldwebel Baumer,' he said, 'you may go in now.'
Baumer's shoulders moved but he could not lift himself. His despatch slipped from under his arm and plumped on to the marble floor.
'This is absurd,' Ewers said, as if Baumer were personally blocking his path to Dr Mabuse's office.
Poe could tell, from the change in the smell of Baumer's blood, that the man had died. His grip on his stomach relaxed and his arms eased away from his wet midriff. An insect landed on his hand and opened its wings, showing itself to be a butterfly. The clerk brushed the butterfly away as he checked the man's stilled pulse. He summoned attendants to remove the corpse. Blood pooled in the indentations Baumer left in the couch. The diplomat, indifferent to the death, caught the butterfly in his hand, considered its markings, then popped it into his mouth.
The desk seemed to cover the breadth of a tennis court. Dr Mabuse's chair was elevated so he could peer over his expanse of polished wood and gaze down on the heads of those seated on the other side. The Director of the Press and Intelligence Division displayed an obvious need for others to look up to him. Poe noted him to be a man of small stature.
Dr Mabuse had white, flyaway hair and the red eyes of a newborn who drinks too much. He wore a surgical white tunic, the Imperial Order of the Iron Cross on a black ribbon around his neck. To the evident disgust of Ewers, the director exclaimed in delight at meeting Herr Edgar Allan Poe.
'I no longer use my stepfather's name, Doktor. Edgar Poe was I born, and am I again. The memory of John Allan need trouble us nevermore.'
Dr Mabuse's eyes gleamed. 'You were an inspiration to me, Herr Poe. Your tales, "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" and "Mesmeric Revelations", excited my fascination with the hypnotic arts.'
Before the war, before turning, Mabuse had been an authority on the subject of mesmerism, lowering himself to public displays. Naturally, a man of his talents and influence was in charge of propaganda.
'All wars need heroes, Herr Poe. This war most of all. Since they tend by nature to be unforthcoming, all heroes need to be publicised.'
Dr Mabuse spoke as if delivering a speech. Lamps on his desk made a shadowed mask of his face, bringing out the glow in his eyes. Early in the war, Dr Mabuse had toured gymnasia, addressing students. It was not uncommon for an audience to enlist en masse following one of his lectures.
'You have heard, of course, of Manfred von Richthofen.'
'The flier?'
'The flier. Our premier warrior of the air. Seventy-two victories.'
Poe had always been interested in the possibilities of man-powered flight. When warm, he had written The Balloon Hoax', and in The Battle of St Petersburg he had predicted the use in battle of airships and fighter aeroplanes.
'It is the crowing claim of the Allies that they are our masters in the air over the Western Front,' said Dr Mabuse, lips curving in a one-sided smile. 'Before spring, that will change.'
'Germany has better aeroplanes,' Ewers muttered.
'Germany has better men. This is the secret of our victory. No matter what mechanical devices are ranged against us, we Germans will prevail through the strength of our spirit.'
Dr Mabuse took a document from his desk drawer and slid it across his desk. Poe caught it and looked.
It was the mock-up of a book cover. Der rote Kampfflieger, by Manfred, Rittmeister Freiherr von Richthofen. The Red Battle Flier. The rough illustration showed a batwinged red shadow over a falling enemy aeroplane.
'Richthofen has written his autobiography?'
'The Freiherr is a fighter, not a man of letters. If his story is to be told, it will require a great spinner of tales. You, Herr Poe.'
He began to understand what was to be asked of him.
'You want me to ghost this book?'
'To "ghost"? Exactly. You shall be Richthofen's ghost.'
Ewers hovered in the shadows of the office. Poe wondered what his part in this was. If H.H. Ewers was so great a writer, why was he not clamouring for this honour?
'Herr Ewers will be on hand as a native German-speaker to serve as editor, should you need him.'
Ewers's brows contracted darkly. His pretended importance evaporated by the moment. It seemed he was less doppelg?nger than messenger boy.
'Transport has been arranged to the Chateau du Malinbois, where Richthofen is stationed with his Jagdgeschwader 1. Our modest hero has consented to be interviewed at length. Use his words if you can, but work them up into something more than a set of dry war stories. To be frank, my experience is that true heroes tend to the tedious. Capture the truth but put your own shine on it, Herr Poe. Let us have some of the spirit of your tales. Thrilling battles, extreme characters, hairsbreadth escapes. The book will be useless if nobody wishes to read it.'
Anonymity did not bother Poe. Considering his current doubts, it might be best if this were not generally known to be his composition. He was unsure if he could even manage low hack-work. But he had always been as much a journalist as a poet. If anything remained of his ragged muse, it could be stirred to this purpose.
'You must to work fast. Events are moving swiftly, as you will find when you reach the front ...'
The front! The Chateau du Malinbois was in the thick of the war. He would be in the glory of battle. Not as a soldier, but as a poet, he would take himself to war. This was a chance to right the wrong of The Battle of St Petersburg. If the world disappointed him, the world must be shaped to his liking.
'You must catch Richthofen's past but also tell of his present. As Germany retakes the air, you will be there to set the victories in stone for posterity.'
The director's voice was soothing and persuasive. Poe felt stirrings in his breast. A door opening in his mind: words would soon pour from him again. He stood to attention and saluted.
'Dr Mabuse, I shall endeavour to perform my duties, for the glory of the Kaiser and to the betterment of the cause of the Central Powers.'
'Herr Poe, that is all we can ask of you.'