The Mechanical Music Cabinet of Siegfried Eberhard

7/30/2019 The Mechanical Music Cabinet of Siegfried Eberhard

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The Mechanical Music Cabinet of Siegfried EberhardI had only recently returned from my brief and, if the truth be told, fruitless trip to Lichtenfels

when I received Brunner's message. Lichtenfels had promised a great deal the initial surveys

had suggested the recently uncovered vault was of great significancebut damp had got in and itwas in such a state of degredation that there was little I could do but take some photos and makethe long journey home, where I promised myself a holidayNorfolk, perhapsbefore the

excitement of the new term and all its attendant distractions. The message was characteristic of

Erhard: terse, slightly over-formal and quite unlike the man himself; but he requested that, if thetime be available to me (he never could quite shake the habit of transferring German datives to

English) I join him in a small but very promising project in a little town on the Rhein. He gave a

few more details, yet I must admit to mixed feelings, as after the disappointment of Lichtenfels I

wasn't greatly keen on another long drive straight back to Germany, but I enjoyed Erhard'scompany and he was a fascinating man to work with, a true master of his field, who also took

great delight in mechanical devices of all forms and sizes.Rdesheim turned out to be a pretty enough place: a smallish collection of half-timbered housesclustered close to the Rhein, where in summer the tourists queue for hours to float over the

grapes (or so the rather badly translated sign describes the little cable-car ride to Assmanshausen;

such points have always irritated me) but in January it keeps itself to itself. The alleys are free ofthe riot ofRamsch and tat that spoils them and the vines, bare of leaves, seem like the rows of

Echion's men before flesh covered their bones. I was glad to get inside the Wirtshaus and out of

the driving rain to find Erhard at a corner table.He greeted me warmly and for some time we talked fo anything but what he called 'real work.'His son had recently graduated (to Erhard's limitless disappointment he had become a lawyer)

and his wife's sister (a sulky lady who ran a nasty restaurant in Hirschaid near Nuremberg) had

lost her dog to a passing Mercedes, which amused him no end, almost as much as the anecdote

about his detested colleague who had set fire to his coat while using a blowtorch to strip paint athome. Eventually, though, we both felt obliged to discuss his reasons for calling me to

Rdesheim.'It's nothing, really,' he said, although as he spoke I could not help but notice how often and with

what apparent nervous agitation he flicked the ash from his cigarette. For as long as I had known

him he had been a man of extraordinary delicacy and skill in brushworknever had I seen such

a steady handand equally broad, expansive gestures over a glass of red wine. But now hismotions were cramped and agitated, and I noticed, too, that the ash-tray contained a great many

cigarette-butts.'You'll like ths room, I think,' he went on. 'It's in a nice state, and the vault is in surprisingly good

condition, listed in the archive as the result of work in 1563, although the maker's name wasn'trecorded. Lovely, though, and yielding some fascinating material for study. What struck me is

that whoever mixed the base layer of plaster used some very odd ingredient indeed. It's quite

unlike anything I've seen: perhaps you'll make more of it than I've managed to.'


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'And what's the house like?''Now, my friend,' (and at this he brightened) 'is part of the fun for me. It houses the mostremarkable collection of music boxes and the like, mechanical musical instruments, and so on.

All sorts, really: there are some delightful clocksfascinating mechanismsgramophones,

barrel organs. All manner of little wonders.'As he described this, his old ebullience returned, and we spent the rest of the eventing working

our way through the excellent local Sptburgunder, Erhard describing with lively enthusiasm the

intricacies of barrel organ construction and the various theories about how early twentieth

century piano rolls were recorded. 'At least,' he remarked, 'we will have Schnabel and von Sauerto accompany our work.'The following morning brought brighter weather and I took the opportunity to take an early walk

before breakfast, not least to clear a slightly fuzzy head. As a rule I do not drink while away on aprojecttrembling hands are undesirable in my line of workbut Erhard has a constitution that

seems impervious to the effects of alcohol, and I had let myself be swept along past my bedtime.

The coffee at breakfast was less poisonous than what one usually encounters in hotels such asmine, and the landlady kindly provided a boiled egg that I might be spared the horrors of coldham for breakfast. I asked after Erhard, but he had, it was reported, gone on ahead of me while I

was out taking the air, so I gathered my case and found theMechanisches Musikkabinetta short

walk from the hotel, at the head of a narrow street that ran down, across the railway tracks, to theriver.The place was as extraordinary as Erhard had given me to believe. A sullen cleaning lady let me

in (through the horrors of her accent (somewhere between Hessisch and Plattdeutsch) I discerned

that the building was otherwise deserted, theBetriebsleitung being away until the museumreopened in March) and I found myself wandering rather aimlessly, Erhard not answering my

calls. From every corner gleamed mirrors mottled with age, surrounded by frames of gaudybouquets of carved flowers. One great instrument filled a whole wall of a large room and, in thehalf-light that filtered through the shuttered windows, I could make out 'Webers

Wundersymphonie. gebaut 1910', next to which stood a glass cabinet containing dozens of dusty

boxes labelled with the names of Beethoven, Widor and Strauss; the paper rols, I assumed, tofeed into the machine to bring it to life. Through a heavy set of double doors I passed into a

cellar where a turbaned sultan grinned from the shadows of an ancient fairground organ. I paused

for a moment to let my eyes accustom themselves to the dark, and, in the stillness, was surprised

to hear a squeaking noise. Fearing a rat (I have no head for such things) I whirled round, to find alittle puppet swinging on a seat on a miniature carousel. I assumed I must have brushed against it

as I came in, but to my relief it did not seem damaged, for that would certainly have brought the

wrath of the cleaner upon my head.

I made my way through the house, pausing at times to admire an interesting window or suchlike.

It was a goodnot wonderfulexample of a patrician's house, one of those places that grew

over time, and I wondered how much of the old building was left, as the rooms through which Ihad passed all bore the stamp of many renovations in many tastes. Everywhere, though, there

were musical instruments of all kinds. I was drawn to a beautiful old gramophone; to me it was a

mystery how anyone could derive sound from the thing, although to Erhard it was a beautiful


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mechanism to be pored over and analysed as a distraction from plaster dust and old pigments. I

sat for a moment on an unprepossessing chair, ugly enough to be intended only for staff, Ithought, which gave me a terrible fright when it started playing Die Lorelei on a little musical

box inside the seat. Another room contained a collection of mechanical accordions, faintly

grotesque, I thought.I found Erhard working in a room that was strikingly different to its predecessors, and it

confirmed my hopes to find some remnant of the original house. It was almost square, about ten

feet across, and with a heavy vault apparently of the local sandstone (not unlike the church at

Bingen in colour, it occurred to me at the time) with some very well preserved frescoes. Atemptation and expulsion from Eden flanked the doorway, and Samson and Delilah were

exchanging hair-care tips to my right. It was mostly Old Testament scenes, painted rather

charmingly, and Erhard was working on a small scaffold on the opposite side of the room,

concentrating intently on a large panel dominated by a writhing, open-mouthed fish which wasclearly in the middle of making a meal of Jonah. In this painting, Nineveh was a many-towered

place, where bits of Nuremberg, Eichstatt and Cologne provided the immediately recognisable

features.

'Wonderful, isn't it?''I should say so. You've made a real find here.''Have you seen the tiles? I'm regretting not getting someone who knows a thing or two aboutceramics to have a look.'He had a point. I registered that the floor must easily predate the vault by four hundred years, and

it struck me that I'd seen a similar pattern in the pilgrimage church of St Walpurgus in Leudsdorf

while working there a few years back. In the corner of the room, and more recent than the vaultby about the same age as the floor predated it, stood a grand piano, to which Erhard directed my

attention.

'There's Schnabel for you. Shall we listen to his Chopin? There's something rather magical aboutlistening to the piano roll, much more than a recording. It's as if he were in the room, but just that

we cannot see him.'I must admit that, to my ears Schnabel was on pretty poor form, the tempo lurching around andthe chords decidedly lumpily struck, but Erhard took evident delight in watching the fragile roll

work through the mechanism. Together we examined Jonah as Schnabel struggled with the

Waterfall etude, and Erhard hummed the bass line quietly under his breath. The scene was even

more rewarding from close to: the city was realised in great detail, and I could see why Erhard

was so keen to understand the techniques of the plastering, as I had never seen anything quitelike this in this region. He was it was right that it was unusual, and I looked forward to the

challenge of uncovering its provenance.'It's a wonderful piece. Tell me about the discoveries you've made.''It was fabulous. The room has barely been opened for a hundred years: it's only when they

brought that piano in that they decided to make it available to the public. There's not much light

the window over there looks north, but the vines coming so close to it keep the worst of the


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weather away. The plaster was a little cracked but that's easily enough fixed, and someone tried a

century or so ago to touch up one or two of the details. They didn't do a bad job, and I've beenable to take their additions off without too many problems.'Whoever painted this city, though, seems to have paid more attention to that than the fish. Just

look at the crudeness fo the colouring of its scales, and compare that to the way he's drawn the

crowd on the shore. The odd thing is, I found this fellow in the middle very crudely painted over,with no attempt to disguise what had been done, but with great, thick strokes, as if they wanted

to erase him entirely. They came away easily, but he's an odd-looking fellow, don't you think?' Erhard was right, the figure was striking, even among the lively characters gathered on the sea-front. They were a typical gaggle of yokels, but he wore the dark robes of a Lutheran minister

and, even though he was little more than two inches high, I could clearly see he wore an

expression of extreme, ferocious hate, and his right hand was raised to point directly to the

viewer. What struck me most was the distinctiveness of the features: a strong, almost aquilinenose and dark brows. It gave the impression of having been painted from life. 'What do you think of him?' I asked. 'I don't remember any mention of this chap in the legend.

Do you think there's some local significance in him?'

'There may be. There were plenty of fiery preachers in this region, some of whom came to quite

sticky ends. It was the usual diet of millenialist blood and thunder, denouncing earthly pleasures

and whatnot.''That might ruffle some feathers here.''It got to the point where there was a church pulled down after the preacher refused to stop

calling for a peasants' uprising. It wasn't far from here, just over in Assmanshausen. There's a

lovely record of the trial in the archive there, but nothing remains of the church itself. Everythingof value was grabbed and sold off, much to the ire of the locals, who saw him as something of a

saint.'We talked a little longer, but, as was our habit, fell to working silently, each absorbed in his ownlittle patch. Every now and then Erhard would put a little music on the piano, and a jerky

rendition of Brahms broke the stillness for a little while. I couldn't quite say why, but Erhard

seemed to relax a little when the music played, and I noticed that my hand moved more steadily.I'm not sure how long we worked for, but the weak light eventually got the better of me, and

when I suggested that we pause for coffee, Erhard did not argue. Instead, he positively sprang

down from the scaffold and, after a swig from a Thermos, insisted that I follow him through the

door on the opposite side of the room to that through which I had entered. It lead into a roomlonger and narrower, but with the same low, heavy vault. This was plainly decorated, but there

was a very interesting crucifixion scene painted on the west wall. While by no means of the same

quality as the Isenheim altar, it possessed the same sensibility of agonised suffering, bloodoozing from around the nails, and the crown of thorns digging into Christ's brow. There weredonors along the bottom, looking fervently upon their redeemer. This room had once been the

chapel, and I noticed the floor continued the deep red tiles with their distinctive herringbone

pattern. There were cabinets on either wall, mostly containing little musical boxes, but myattention was drawn to a nice medieval crucifix, gold with pretty filigree. The cabinet was

unlocked, so I inspected the piece, finding a small inscription, an odd mixture of old German and


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fragments of Latin. I could make out the name of the saint Sebald, but little more, and asked

Erhard to translate it for me.'Funny you should pick this,' he said. 'It seems to be from Assmanshausen see where it is

dedicated to mejne Kircke Sankt Seb. Asmanshn.' I wouldn't be at all surprised if this didn't

make its way here after the destruction of their church. But, my friend, take a look at this. It's abeautiful piece of work, Bohemian, from about 1780. There's no mark, but I wouldn't be at all

surprised if it came from Murau's workshop. I'd dearly love to open it up and have a look, but

the work is so fine I'm terrified I'd break it.'In his hand he held a small brass box, in length and breadth about the size of a cigarette packet,

but about two inches deep. He flicked a small clasp, and the lid opened to reveal a tiny bird, no

more than an inch high, which, worked by clockwork, flapped its little wings and sang quite

wonderfully. So remarkably lifelike was the effect that I asked Erhard if I could look at it, but, ashe passed the box to me, he suddenly withdrew his hand, and, had I not been ready to take it

from him, the bird would certainly have fallen.'The blasted thing's cut me!' he exclaimed, and there was quite a nasty-looking wound in histhumb. It was already bleeding, but not so severely that a tissue pressed to it would not stem theflow. 'I think I've had enough of that little thing,' he went on. 'Just the other day it scratched me

nastily while I was inspecting the maker's mark. I'll mention it to the management: there must be

a problem with the spring.'After this, we continued working, but Erhard was not happy. He played more music than usual,

and even though we had electric lights with us, insisted on downing tools as soon as it began to

get dark outside, which was well before five. I was expecting to work late into the night, as we

had often done together before, but he packed his things and left almost without a word to me. Imust admit, I was glad to be back in the hotel, even just for the banal conversation with the

landlady about the weather prospects (which did not bode well). We ate, and after supper satwith a glass of wine, talking about the day's work. At around ten I mentioned I might like to goto bed, as I wanted to make progress on the plaster the next day, but Erhard suddenly became

agitated, as he had been the previous night.'Don't go to bed yet, old sport,' he said. 'Stay and talk a little longer. It's not late, and I do enjoyhaving your company.'I was tired, but I would not leave a friend who was clearly lonely. What struck me more, though,

was that he seemed frightened. He would not talk of it though, and I did not want to intrude, sowe played a quiet hand of cards and, eventually went our separate ways to bed.The next couple of days passed without any incident worth recalling here. Erhard and I madegood progress on the painting, and only once did we run into the formidable Putzfrau, whose

broom and evil temper we took pains to avoid. We kept to a regular schedule, starting workearly and finishing as soon as it began to grow dark outside, and our evenings were full of good

companionship and excellent wine.The third day of my stay in Rudesheim was beautiful, and it felt like a shame to spend one'svacation indoors when the sun was shining and a crisp, cool wind was blowing. As the chair-lift


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was out of action, I resolved to take a walk over to Assmanshausen, which was little more than a

mile away through the vineyards. Erhard would not join me, as he was in the middle of somedelicate work, but was pleased when I told him I did not intend being out much beyond the early

afternoon. The walking was easy, thanks to the fine, gravelly soil, and I soon found myself in

the narrow lanes of the village. It was dominated by a baroque church, a rather nasty sixteenth-

century thing full of bad italianate paintings and leaflets about the mother-children charitable dogwalk. The village had made its fortune from wine, and there were some impressively substantial

dwellings on its fringes, including a fine Schloss, replete with a slightly unconvincing tower that

would look more at home on stage in Bayreuth. That, unfortunately was closed, but the littlemuseum in the Rathaus was open, and I was reminded that this stretch of land had once been the

frontier of the Roman empire, the wall beyond which only savages were to be found. There was

a section devoted to the religious upheavals of the early sixteenth century, and from this Igleaned that the trial had been a truly vicious affair, even for those troubled times. Torture was

routine, and they even fetched a specialist from Nuremberg who brought with him a selection of

vile machines, which were put to use on whole families, children being forced to sit on spikes

while their mothers watched. The pastor was named as a certain Glasl, whose body, so the

legend had it, did not decompose after his hanging, but was kept in secret by the villagers until itwas stolen (or, to my mind, became too unpleasant to keep in one's house).There being little else to detain me, I made my way back across the fields to Rudesheim,enjoying the watery sunshine and looking forward to sharing my findings with Erhard. I found

him in the room, quietly working on Belshazzar's feast, although he gave something of a start

when I came in. I told him of what I'd read in Assmanshausen, to which he expressed deep

disdain, calling the villagers 'buffoons' for stubbornly holding on to their 'ridiculous' faith. Thestory of the 'unverweslicher Korper' of Pastor Glasl amused him greatly, and he roared at the idea

of people shuffling it from one place to another.I was keen, though, to have another look at the painting of the crowd, as, although I knew therecould be no final verification of the identity of the man in the pastor's robes, I couldn't help a

certain childish curiosity. What struck me, though, was that the crowd was different to the one I

had inspected a few days before. There was a particularly ugly farrier whom I had not seenbefore, and there seemed to be more children milling about.

'Have you been working on this section again, Erhard?' I asked, as it seemed like many of the

faces in the crowd had been very recently retouched.'No, I've been working over here. Why do you ask?''It's just that the crowd seems different from the other day. Oh, I must have overlooked them

when I was examining this fellow in the centre. They're in lovely condition, though.'With this Erhard agreed, and remarked that they did look very fresh, almost, in one or two cases,

as if the paint were barely dry, but we attributed this to the a trick of the light, which was brighterthan we had grown used to.We worked on, falling back straight away into our old routines, and Erhard put music on every

now and then, extolling to me the virtues of Schnabel's performances of Beethoven. However,when he got up to change a roll at the end of one sonata, he paused, and asked me to

listen. Quite clearly we could hear one of the organs playing down in the cellar, immediately

recognisable as Fuk'sEntry of the Gladiators, a piece which I had always detested. Erhard was


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very angry, and cursed the Putzfrau for her carelessness in knocking one of the fine old organs so

hard that it started playing, and resolved to speak to her about it in the morning.

The following day I again breakfasted alone, the landlady telling me that Erhard had again gone

on ahead, mentioning something about making the most of the light. I hurried after him, to findhim already in the room, his hands shaking as he unpacked his brushes and tools. I had neverseen him so agitated, and his voice quavered with anger.'The stupid Putzfrau! Dumme Sau! How dare she? She knows full well that I leave this place

locked when I leave. This is eine Schande. Ich hab' die Nase voll, I tell you.' 'But Erhard,' I sought to placate him, 'what has she done? She's not touched the painting has she?' 'Oh I don't care for that. The woman's accused me of leaving one of the barrel organs switched

on overnight; she says she heard it playing at god-knows-when-o'clock this morning, because she

lives just over the road. Stupid woman! And that, after she had the nerve to lie about turning oneof the things on yesterday afternoon''But we heard nothing as we left, and I saw you lock the door to the courtyard.''Well, she swears by it. She says she knows the one, too: it's a foul thing a couple of rooms awayfrom here. Built for an American circus owner, and covered in puppets and monkeys and thatsort of muck.'He shook as he said this, and, slamming his case down on the piano lid, he strode from the

room. I followed, almost at a run, as we swept through the chapel where yesterday's accidenthad happened, and into an adjoining room, half of which was given over to a workshop of some

kind. The instruments in here were a far cry from the beautiful workmanship of the other rooms:

they were festooned with cheap puppets, little dolls in shabby pink frocks, and evil-looking

monkeys with leering eyes and gaping mouths, grasping at violins and cymbals. Erhard turnedwhen he got to the largest of them, frantically directing my attention to the pile of paper on the

floor before it.

'The stupid woman's left this in a terrible state, and look how it's all fouled up in the mechanismthere!' I barely recognised him from the man with whom I had spent years in almost monastic

stillness, for he was now desperately trying to rearrange the tangled folds into their original

order.'Look at how it's all fouled up in the mechanism there,' he cried, and I would have been hard

pressed to deny that there were tears in his eyes as he tried to pry loose the torn and twisted paper

from the guide-pins.'Erhard, my friend, I think it's best left as it is. We'll call Feldkirchner (for such was themanager's name) and let him know what's happened. He'll sort it out. Let's go and find

somewhere quiet for coffee.''No, this won't take me a moment. I just need to lift this lever here, and I'll be able to free up thepins in the back.'I was worried. Inside the machine I could see rows of evil-looking pins that meshed into the

holes of the paper and I was worried Erhard would catch himself on one. They looked none too

clean, and I feared that even he, with his preternatural ability to keep a steady hand, would findhimself struggling in his work.'It's won't take long now. There's one last pin which seems to have snagged two layers of card,

but I'll free it directly.'


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Erhard seemed to have calmed a little now; perhaps it was the fact he could concentrate on a

technical problem that took his mind off his confrontation with the Putzfrau.I took to inspecting the marionettes on the top of the instrument, horrid little things. The girlsfaces were, I supposed, intended to be full of the flush of youthful beauty, but the sickly pink

paint on their lips gave them the air of some cheap tart, and the monkeys, I could not help but

think, could have been members of a black and white minstrel band. The inscription on a smalllabel explained this: the organ had been built for an American in the early twenties, and it had

lost none of the vicious excess of that era. The inscription was faded, and I had to peer closely at

it to make out the dates of the instruments manufacture, but I was interrupted by a shout fromErhard, calling me an ass and an idiot for knocking the power switch and turning the machine

on. I assured him I hadnt, but he was right, for the organs bellows began to wheeze and I could

hear the clanking of the mechanism.I got my hand out just in time, no thanks to your stupidity, muttered Erhard. That would have

torn my fingers off if I hadnt been quicker about it.This angered me, for I had at no stage touched the switch, which was in any case clearly visible

on the far side of the instrument. Erhard, however, was not to be placated, and stormed at me

that I should take more care, and that I was an incompetent fool. I felt it better to remain silent,and I turned and went quietly back to the scaffold, feeling it better to say nothing than to inflame

Erhards temper any more. He sulked, making a great show of not looking in my direction, andof making a great noise whenever he wished to find another tool or to move about on the

scaffold.

After a while I could stand it no longer and, making the pretence of taking some of the plaster

away to examine in more detail, I left him to his work. He did not even acknowledge myleaving, and I returned to the hotel where I found the small desk in my room was entirely

adequate to look over the sample. It was fascinating work, and I got quite lost in my analysis, for

when I looked up at the clock it was early afternoon. I took lunch in the bar, although the pork

filetswimming in grease did little to settle my stomach, and returned to my desk. Despite all themornings work, I was still no closer to ascertaining exactly what it was that leant the plastersuch remarkable smoothness, or caused it to take the paint quite so well. Whoever had mixed it

was a skilled craftsmen, and the materials were fine, but I could not account for its extraordinarywhiteness. So I worked on, spending some time writing up my thoughts, and did not notice that,

by the time I set my pen down, it was quite dark outside. That Erhard had not called for me was

no great surprise, but I hoped to find him in the bar with a drink and an apology ready for me.He was not, however, there. The landlady had not seen him, nor had any of the other staff, so I

resolved to return to the Musikkabinett and get him to end this stupid disagreement. It was a foul

evening, colder and wetter even than the last, and I was glad to get inside the house, despite its

darkness and unpleasantly cold atmosphere. The lights were all off, and I made my waytentatively upstairs, careful not to bump into any precious or fragile object. The gramophone

glowed eerily in the darkness, and I caught twisted reflections of myself in the mirrors that

covered so many old the old cabinets. I expected to hear the piano playing, but it was silent, andmy footsteps sounded unpleasantly loud. I was sure Erhard would hear my opening the door to

the vaulted room, but if he did so he gave no sign, and sat cross-legged in front of the crowd

scene in the Jonah scene. This, too, surprised me, for he had been concentrating on a detail on an


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adjacent panel, but the greatest shock came when I saw that he had a brush in his hand and was

daubing great thick layers of paint over the robed man.Good God! I cried, what the devil are you up to?He hates us being here, so Im putting him away. Erhards voice was quite calm, and he

did not turn to look at me, but continued, putting layer after layer of thick, white paint over the

figure. Its him that made the bird sing, you know. Its been singing all afternoon. I tried tostop it, but it pecked me. He held out his hand, a mess of bloody pin-pricks, but pulled it away

when I tried to examine the cuts. He hates these things. But Ill cover him up and he wont

know, so I can work in peace.He terrified me. His eyes were entirely vacant, and his hand moved with a dull

repetitiveness from paint to wall and back again. I tried to talk him out of it, but he merely

mumbled incoherent sentences about having to complete the work, and I resorted to trying tohold his wrist, if only to stop him from further damaging the painting. At this, though, he

snatched it away, only to pause for a moment and to look in the direction of the next

room. Faintly, but quite distinctly, I could hear the sound of bird calls, and I rushed in, looking

around frantically for the little musical box. Before I could find it, though, I saw through the

other door that the awful monster which had nearly taken Erhards hand off this morning wasnow a wreck: the front was shattered and splintered, and the puppets lay strewn across the floor. With a start I turned and found Erhard standing beside me. I didnt want it to play

again, he said, quite calmly, so I stopped those nasty little apes with their cymbals andviolins. They wont trouble me now.

While he spoke I found myself frozen in horror. He had picked up the little musical box

with the singing bird, and was cradling it in his hand. The bird, which when first I saw it hadgently fluttered its wings, was now moving with wild agitation, swinging around on its little

brass peg to get at Erhards hands. To attempt to close the lid was clearly foolish, for the sharp

little beak would snap at any finger that came close. He held it away from his body, armsoutstretched, rather in the manner of a priest at the elevation, and began to wander towards the

door. I tried to stop him but he shrugged me off, and began to walk faster, breaking into a run as

I shouted for him to stop. I chased after him, but found myself impeded at every step by a

cabinet or some obscene contraption. By the time I gained the room with the gramophone, Iheard the front door slam shut.

It took an age to open the shutters, and even then I could not open the window, which

seemed to have jammed, and I could just make out Erhard running headlong down the alleywhich led to the river. The weather had not abated and the driving rain obscured him from my

sight with astonishing rapidity; I could only hope he had seen the lights of the train which was

racing towards the level crossing.Needless to say, I stayed no longer in that cabinet of horrors. Even as I left, I heard theterrible wheeze of cracked leather bellows, and I slammed shut the front door and ran to the

hotel, intending to call the police as soon as I was there. Of this, however, there proved to be no

need, for I was met by a young man in drab uniform, who asked me to sit down. It did not takelong for it to become clear that Erhard had not seen the train, and that the fact he carried his

Personalausweis in his wallet made the task of identifying a beheaded corpse rather easier. I

enquired of the musical box, but nothing had been seen. I can only assume he threw it into theriver.


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I returned to England, not wishing to stay any longer in Rdesheim, but took with me the

sample of plaster for my colleague, Stevens to look at. It was a few weeks later that we managedto discuss his chemical analysis of the compound.

You know, he said, as we walked across the quad, there seemed to be all manner ofextraordinary things mixed in with that plaster. All the usual stuff, but even bits of metalgold,silver and the like. Quite how it held together, I dont know, but I think it might have somethingto do with something rather nastier that I was able to isolate: the whiteness you remarked on

comes from the fact theres a good deal of bone in the compound, and I couldnt help but thinkthe quantities of iron suggest blood had been used at some stage as a binding agent. The oddest

thing is, that the bone may well have been human.

The Mechanical Music Cabinet of Siegfried Eberhard

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