ZAGREB
The Early hours of Sunday 3rd February 1923
A rude awakening: After cigars and brandy we retire to our compartments. The day’s exertions and the rocking of the train soon send us to our slumbers. We are rudely awakened by knocking at our doors. The night conductor was waking us and to announce we had arrived at Zagreb. It was only ten past three in the morning. The train had stopped. “Zagreb” the conductor announced again. He held a clipboard and list in his hands. Our names were on it for getting off at Zagreb. There was no mistake he assured us with an official tone. Our most precious luggage was already in the process of being deposited on the platform.
The Cloaked Man: And then a face appeared at a window. A figure was standing on the fog-shrouded platform, peering into the train. He wore a dark cloak and held a skull in his right hand and a lamp in his left. His features were indiscernible, veiled by the shadow of his hood. He began spouting nonsense we thought, in a muffled voice and broken English; then Hubert recognised he was reciting from Middleton’s Revenger’s Tradegy, Act 3 Scene 5. The mysterious man then mentioned Nicholas Cartwright by name, and Pierre too – and then spoke of the Sedefkar Simulacrum. Our interest now piqued, he taunted us to follow him. We stepped off the train and grabbing our luggage, shuffled after the man as he exited the station.
Human Skin: There was something pinned to our luggage – illuminated text on what might be a piece of skin. The message was cryptic – it spoke of love and worship, it spoke of alabaster limbs and scrolls of skin, and it spoke of emptiness (handout #1).
On a dark and foggy night, we found ourselves standing outside the station in a damp cobblestone street hemmed in by gothic architecture and infrequent dispersed gas streetlamps. The mysterious cloaked figure vanished into the swirling fog.
Turkish Rug: We cross a medieval bridge and arrive at a small plaza with a gothic fountain at its centre. A rug flaps out of the sky from somewhere above the fountain. The rug has an embroidered message. It speaks of love and worship, and white, white hands, and the murder of a man three times with a skinning knife (handout #2). We are reminded of the triple murder case of Mehmet Makryat in London.
A Fish out of Water: Our eyes are drawn to a flash of silver. A small silvery fish is flapping on the cobblestones. Hubert scoops it up and drops it into the fountain.
The Fallen Madonna: Moving on we reach a statue of the Madonna. Tied to it is a wretched woman in rags. She looks like she’s been left to starve. She sees us and cries, “Why cannot my son be like the son of God also?” Pierre cuts her bonds. She responds by berating him for the act. “Why did you cut me free!?” And then her bonds constrict of their own accord and lash her to the statue once more. We leave her.
Strait Jacket: We cross another bridge and enter a courtyard surrounded by a rusted iron fence. There’s a bundle on the floor. The bundle is a strait jacket. Another message is written inside it, in dried blood. The message speaks of lust, hunger, thirst, killing and revelling, ‘my shrivelled skin’, ‘my dead heart’ (handout #3).
We think of the shrivelled skin of the leper in Constantinople, 1204. We know the leper is Fenalik. Fenalik must have survived for centuries. Putting together the dead heart with previous references of white, alabaster limbs, we think of the nosferatu witnessed in Venice by Letty – the creature that butchered Venetians even while we were in that city. Is this Fenalik too? Does he still exist?
Leaving no stone unturned: In an adjacent street we see a man on his hands and knees, turning over cobblestones and replacing them one by one. “It must be here” he repeats like a mantra. The man speaks with a Croat accent, but each of us hears his voice in our head speaking our own language: French for Pierre, German for Ludwig, English for the others. We ask what he’s looking for? We offer to help. But the man ignores us and continues with his fruitless task.
Sheet Music: We reach a church. We hear an evil snickering sound and look up to see a stone gargoyle grinning like it’s alive, but it’s just stone. Letty screams. Her fear of dolls it seems extends to small carved demonic effigies. A piece of paper blows in on the breeze. It’s a piece of sheet music with lyrics that tell of a weak man with a longing to possess a thing of beauty beyond his worth, revealed on a golden stage (handout #4).
The sheet music and lyrics reminded us of the opera in Milan and the torso of the Simularcum being brought onto the stage. Faccio, our adversary in Milan, desired the piece of the simulacrum. He was inexplicably murdered in a manner impossible for the Italian police to fathom. The Milan newspapers called Faccio’s gruesome murder, the work of the devil.
The Bear: The bells toll for 5.0 am. We briefly catch sight of the cloaked figure once more and hurry after him. We lose him in the fog again. We find ourselves in a courtyard, standing before a stuffed bear, and other animals. The bear holds a note. The message upon it speaks of love, pain, a path to dreams, loving the needle, the dreamer and the other world (handout #5).
The message and menagerie of stuffed animals are clearly reminiscent of Lausanne where we sought Edgar Wellington at his taxidermist shop. Edgar had syringe marks up his arm. He’d been taking a drug to enter a dreamworld version of the city – a version ruled by the Prince. The Prince is more familiar to us as the Duke – Duc Jean Floressas des Essientes – whom we met in 1923 Lausanne and read about in Smith’s 1893 journal, residing in Constantinople. The cloaked figure, when reciting Middleton on the platform, spoke of a Duke.
More to come when I return in a few days….
