A Fragmentary Parable

["Herr Klamm, was said by Jeremiah to have related unusually disconcerting sentiments one morning before dawn. Initially relayed by messanger, the wax sealed letters were coherent if imperious dispatches addressed to Barnabas. Soon enough Herr Klamm’s reports came in the form of dashed off notes scribbled in black ink unsheathed by an envelope. The insistent solicitations pleaded for what he termed ‘absolute truths.’ As the morning dawned, the tempo of the notes increased, at first arriving hourly, then every 30 minutes and finally four per hour by 9 AM. The by now sardonic commands betrayed an unprecedented vitriol, even for Herr Klamm. An hour later these increasingly polemical insults were arriving once every five minutes, as Sordini and Sortini became overwhelmed, alerting Herr Erlanger of Herr Klamm's escalating aggression. The last message was addressed to Herr Erlanger and was a barely legible scribble, related in part here: ‘And you call yourself an official? You are nothing of the kind, of that much I can assure you. And what of your so-called existence? Aside from conniving to seal my fate with the Count, and hence cutting short my agony? You're nothing! You're lower than an ant, and yet I must abide you instead of strangling you – which would qualify as a crime before neither the law nor God, but rather a redemptive act of cleansing. No. You continue to live and on what basis? Mere matrimony. A sham. That duplicitous wife’s malingering liaison with the Countess!’ The Count had evidently beseeched the Countess to intervene, Herr Erlanger having been reduced to tears. Having now received multiple briefings on Herr Klamm’s still escalating churlishness, the Countess resolved to have it out with Herr Klamm. It was unclear who had instigated this chain of events, but Herr Klamm was determined to find the guilty party, or parties. He was quite convinced that vipers were everywhere, and what came to be known later – revealed to Herr Klamm alone by the Count, but suppressed to the broader public on higher authority – was that Herr Klamm's assessments were more level-headed than presumed. If anything, they were likely a wild underestimate of the scope of the infestation. But the deviation from established protocols was intolerable to the Count. Even the villagers were unsettled, especially since word had reached them courtesy of a laughingstock known by the almost certainly fraudulent title ‘Land Surveyor K’, a non-entity-outsider, whom no one trusted in any event. They took every opportunity to avoid ‘the outcast’ – or if they had to endure his presence, scurried away the moment one was noticed for doing so, lest the innocent be implicated. The tension diminished slightly once murmurs about a petition had been transcribed verbatim at the bar by one of Herr Klamm’s countless Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter. Even worse, the topic of a tincture of laudanum was broached. It was never confirmed by whom, or with what exact or even vague motivation, to say nothing of supporting medical evidence, the fateful liniment was proposed by persons unidentifiable. This healing overture was said to have been ‘well meaning’ by a majority of middle officials, but this was not a consensus view, not by a long-shot. And enough discontented mutterings were detected so as to quash the matter, for a time. It was further intimated – although this was almost certainly a distortion, if not outright malice – in certain outlying quarters of the village that Herr Klamm's health might be at stake. That his nerves were ‘fraying’. It was whispered between Frieda and Arthur that the Countess and her husband’s deputy had engaged in what was euphemised as a ‘row’, but which was rumored to have degenerated into an outright shouting match. It was further attested to – under oath – that the Count himself was obliged to intervene, being interrupted from his most crucial duties, involving sensitive secret punishments. All this then culminated in a confrontation in which the two most powerful officials of the castle nearly came to blows. This traumatic event induced intense fear in the villagers, such that an annual hour-long moment of silence to this day commemorates the narrowly averted clash. All agreed, although only silently and inwardly, just to themselves, never discussing the matter, that these ominous outbursts were atypical of Herr Klamm, whose iron will traditionally concealed any hint of his constant seething frustration at the shortcomings of his subordinates, and in particular what he called ‘the intrinsic insufferable insufficiency of the villagers’. Herr Klamm was quite renowned for his mordant alliteration, although more delicate natures found such observations lacking the requisite politesse. Oblique cat calls were then picked up on by an inexperienced Unterkastelan, pertaining to the alleged prospect of a duel. Unaware of the grave implications of this nevertheless scandalous pseudo disclosure, the boy was severely castigated by The Count himself, a rare deviation from the otherwise eternal bureaucratic chain of command. The boy howled with shame, but ultimately knuckled under and accepted responsibility for his rash and foolish accusation, even though it was an honest youthful mistake, merely to have disclosed a little more than the truth. The villagers, for their part, further conjectured that it was a matter of perceived honor. Others unknown, mostly likely from what only the residents there called the ‘Upper Town’, held that Herr Klamm had lost control again. And not for the first time. For his part, Herr Klamm was said to have been incensed at the implication that he could so blithely forsake what he tartly referred to as his ‘absolute duty’, which transcended not just the Earth, but God himself. It was unclear what was intended by this rather unconventional if not outright blasphemous outburst. This had quite naturally provoked embarrassed incredulity, if not teeth-grinding consternation in certain more influential quarters, including the salons of the Countesses’ most intimate confreres, although the Count himself was rumored to have portentously closed his eyes and cast down his head briefly, saying nothing during the remainder of the whispered reading of a 17 page report, which had been quickly compiled by an informal cabal of Undersecretaries, working in parallel and collating data gathered by the rarely acknowledged Tiergarten 4 wing of the Obersicherheitshauptamt. It was further suggested, although most likely by self-evidently lower officials of dubious rank and cruder habits, the kind almost certainly ignorant of any pertinent information, those often scrutinized by part-time volunteer agents, almost certainly whilst gossiping carelessly in the Hinterhof, that none other than Herr Klamm himself regarded the aforementioned recommendation of a common sensualistic potion as a deadly affront. Higher officialdom however had overruled Herr Klamm’s objections, and with the Count neither assenting nor dissenting, Herr Klamm was obliged to take the concentrated opium elixir, against his will. Herr Klamm was said to have suddenly wheeled on the pince nezed doctor with balled fists and burning eyes, tears glinting but not welling, merely clamping his eyes shut, then exclaiming defiantly with a terrible glare that it was ‘beneath my dignity to acknowledge your existence. Socrates too was poisoned by swine’. Having imbibed the absinthesque alleged restorative with a sneer, Herr Klamm in turn stormed off to the Gasthof, where a civilised Mittagsessen awaited him, already prepared and piping hot, consisting of braised hare, roasted potatoes with a too rich a Karinthian Bernays sauce – at least for Herr Klamm’s exacting taste – caraway seeded sliced beets, all washed down with not one but two Bohemian lagers – a rare indulgence for Herr Klamm – finishing with an Agnes Bernauer torte and a modest scoop of iced-cream. These were angrily wolfed down by Herr Klamm as a prelude to his return to the bureau at 14.45, where a peephole disclosed that he was operating at a diminished, yet nevertheless higher capacity than his primly efficient, at least when contrasted with even the Count’s higher Kastelans, immediate subordinates who were poised to…"]