The Magic Circle Katherine Neville (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📖

year. But I kept feeling I was forgetting something. The travel leaflet Wolfgang gave me recommended bringing bottled water and plenty of toilet paper, so I packed those first. And though I didn’t know much about Leningrad in early spring, I did recall that Vienna in April was no Paris—it was bitterly cold, requiring “thermal chic.”

All the while, I was trying to collect my thoughts and to figure out what I could do about contacting Sam. It occurred to me that Sam might actually dial into my computer before tomorrow morning, to test out our new technique up front. I could pick up any such message on my way to the airport, and even if I had no time just then, at least I’d know where to fax back a message when I got to Salt Lake, or from Kennedy when we got to New York. It would be a good idea anyway, I realized, not to just dash off with no farewells, but to check in at work for any last-minute instructions from my boss, Pastor Dart.

I’d set my packed duffels beside the front door and was about to turn in when I heard Olivier upstairs. He was banging around with the skis, so I went up in my robe and fur-lined moccasins to see if I could help.

“You probably haven’t had anything to eat since brunch” was Olivier’s first comment. Which was perfectly true—I’d forgotten. “I was going to make smoked trout mousse on dilled rye bread for dinner, for the little argonaut and me, to commiserate over your departure tomorrow. I guess it will be just the two of us, dining as bachelors after that—but would you care to join us in a bite right now?”

“I’d love to,” I told him. Though I was dead on my feet, I suddenly realized I might have no time for breakfast tomorrow, and there’d likely be no food but peanuts on my flights till well past noon. “Shall I whip us up a hot toddy to wash it down?” I suggested. I wanted to apologize to Olivier for how our weekend had turned out, though I soon learned it wasn’t necessary.

“Bien sûr,” Olivier said with a grin, tossing the skis on the cold-room rack and hanging the poles up by their loops. “You’ve been forgiven some of my anger, my darling one, now that you’ve introduced me to the beautiful, bountiful Bambita,” he went on. “I think I’m in love—and she isn’t even close to being the cowgirl that I’ve always imagined I pined for in my heart.”

“But she and my uncle Lafcadio do seem to be an item,” I pointed out. “And they live in Vienna, pretty far from here.”

“That’s okay,” said Olivier. “Your uncle’s skiing days are over, even if his fiddling ones are not. I’m willing to follow this woman down the slopes like a slave forever, just to watch the way her wedeln swings—you know? And now that you’re so chummy with her brother, she might come here again to visit us one day soon.”

I went downstairs to heat some burgundy and soak a few Glühwein bags from my perpetual cache, to make my short-cut version of hot spiced wine. But as I was watching it heat up, something popped into my head that I’d nearly forgotten.

I crossed the vast, cold living room to the wall of books and flipped through the heavy volume H of my frayed Encyclopedia Britannica until I found the entry I sought. I was surprised to learn that, indeed, there had been a real person named Kaspar Hauser. His story was more than strange:

HAUSER, KASPAR

A youth whose life was remarkable due to the circumstances surrounding it, of apparently inexplicable mystery. He appeared, dressed in peasant garb, in the streets of Nürnberg on May 26, 1828, with a helpless and bewildered air.…

Two letters were found on his person: one from a poor labourer, stating that the boy had been given into his custody in October of 1812, that according to agreement he had instructed him in reading, writing, and the Christian religion, but that up to the time fixed for relinquishing his custody he had kept him in close confinement [and another letter] from his mother stating that he was born on April 30, 1812, that his name was Kaspar, and that his father, formerly a cavalry officer of the 6th regiment at Nürnberg, was dead.

[The youth] showed a repugnance to all nourishment except bread and water, was seemingly ignorant of all outward objects, and wrote his name as Kaspar Hauser.

The article went on to explain that Kaspar Hauser had attracted attention from the international scientific community when it was learned he’d been raised in a cage, and that neither his family nor the laborer who raised him could be found. At the time, there was apparently a huge flurry of scientific interest throughout Germany in things like “nature children” raised by wild beasts, as well as “somnambulism, animal magnetism, and similar theories of the occult and strange.” Hauser was put up at the home of a local schoolmaster there in Nürnberg, but:

On the 17th of October 1829 he was found to have received a wound in the forehead which, according to his own statement, had been inflicted on him by a man with a blackened face.

The British scientist Lord Stanhope came to see the boy and, taking an interest, had him removed to the home of a high magistrate at Ansbach where he could be studied more closely. His case was almost forgotten by the public when, on December 14, 1833, Kaspar Hauser was accosted by a stranger who wounded him deeply in his left breast. Three or four days later he died.

It seemed many books had been written about Kaspar Hauser in the ensuing hundred and fifty years, with wild surmises ranging from his having been assassinated by Lord Stanhope himself all the way to the belief that Kaspar Hauser was a legitimate heir to the throne of Germany, whose