Latest revision as of 03:35, 2 June 2017

A Crime in Cordor

Author's Note: During a plague year, an elderly woman was brought into the clinic of the Temple in Cordor. She wished to make a full confession. As per her request, I have recorded her tale in ink, so others might know the truth of her deeds. - Shäalira, the younger, on the 14th of Tarsakh, 76AR.

When Emma Zunz returned home from the Loewenthal weaving mill, she found a parcel at the far end of her building; it had been sent from Amn, and it informed her that her father had died.

She was misled at first by the wax seal and the scroll; then the unknown handwriting made her heart flutter. Emma had read that goodman Maier had succumbed to an overdose of veronal and died on the second floor of the hospice at Athkatla.

Emma dropped the scroll. The first thing she felt was a sinking in her stomach and a trembling in her knees; then, a sense of blind guilt, of unreality, of cold, of fear; then, a desire for this day to be past. Then immediately she realized that such a wish was pointless, for her father's death was the only thing that had happened in the world, and it would go on happening, endlessly, forever.

She picked up the scroll and went to her room. Furtively, she put it away for safekeeping in a drawer, as though she somehow knew what was coming; she was already the person she was to become.

In the growing darkness, Emma wept over the suicide of Manual Maier, who in happier days had been Emmanuel Zunz. She recalled summer outings to a small farm on the Cordor outskirts, she recalled (or tried to recall) her mother, she recalled the family's small house in Lower Cordor that had been sold at auction, recalled the verdict of prison, the disgrace.

She recalled the edition of the Arelith Scribe with the article "Embezzlement of Funds by Scribe," and she recalled (and this she would never forget) that on the last night, her father had sworn that the thief was Loewenthal - Aaron Lowenthal, formerly the manager of the mill and now one of its owners.

Emma had kept this revelation secret, even from her best friend Lysa. Perhaps she shrank from it out of profane incredulity; perhaps she thought the secret was the link between herself and her absent father. Loewenthal didn't know she knew; Emma Zunz gleaned from that miniscule fact a sense of power.

She did not sleep, and by the time first light defined the window, she had perfected her plan. She had tried to make that day (which seemed interminable to her) be like every other. In the mill, there were rumors of a strike; Emma declared, as she always did, that she was opposed to all forms of violence.

When her workday was done, she went with Lysa to the Cordor bath house. She discussed with Elsa and the younger of the Kronfuss girls which show to see at the Rosewind Troupe.

Home again, she ate early, went to bed, and forced herself to sleep. Thus passed the day before The Day.

That morning, impatience weakened her. Impatience, and the remarkable sense of relief that she had reached this day at last. There was nothing else for her to plan or picture to herself; within a few hours she would have come to the simplicity of the fait accompli.

She had overheard from the dockmaster that the Salacious Sylph, a sloop from Luskan, was to weigh anchor from Pier Three.

Emma cornered Loewenthal's secretary in front of a meat vendor in the Merchant District. She insinuated that she had something to tell Loewenthal, in confidence, about the strike, and promised to stop by his office at nightfall. Her voice quivered; the quiver befitted a snitch.

Returning home, she lay down after lunch and, with her eyes closed, went over the plan. Suddenly, alarmed, she lept out of bed and ran to the dressing table drawer. She opened it; where she had left it the night before last, she found the scroll. She began to read it, and then tore it up.

To recount with some degree of reality the events of that evening would be difficult, and inappropriate. One characteristic of hell is its unreality, which might be thought to mitigate hell's terrors but perhaps makes them all the worse. How to make plausible an act in which even she who was to commit it scarcely believed?

Emma lived in Lower Cordor. We know that evening she want down to the dirty lane of the promenade. On that stretch, she might have seen herself multiplied by windows, made public by sordid street lamps, and stripped naked by hungry eyes. She stepped into two or three bars, observing the routine or maneuvers of other women.

Finally, she ran into some men from the Salacious Sylph. One, who was quite young, she feared might inspire in her some hint of tenderness. So she chose a different one so that there might be no mitigation of the purity of the horror. That man lead her to a door, then down into gloom.

In the time thereafter, in that welter of disjointed and horrible sensations, Emma Zunz thought (she could not help thinking) that her father had done to her mother the horrible thing being done to her now. She thought it with weak-limbed astonishment, and then, immediately took refuge in vertigo.

When she was alone, Emma did not open her eyes immediately. Eventually, she sat up and tossed the coins out the window.

Dusk found her dressed and walking, weary. Paradoxically, her weariness turned into a strength, for it forced her to concentrate on the details of her mission and masked from her its true nature.

Aaron Loewenthal was in the eyes of all an upright man; in those of his few closest acquaintances, a miser. He lived above the mill, alone. He feared thieves; in the courtyard there was a big dog, and in his desk drawer, as everyone knew, a gonne.

Bald, heavyset, dressed in silks, with his dark-lensed pince-nez and blond beard, he stood next to the window awaiting the confidential report from his employee, Zunz.

He saw her push open the gate and cross the gloomy courtyard. He saw her make a small detour when the dog (tied up on purpose) barked.

Things didn't happen the way Emma Zunz had foreseen. She had dreamed that she would point the firm gonne, force the miserable wretch to confess his miserable guilt, and explain to him the daring strategem that would allow justice to triumph. Then a single slug in the chest would put an end to Loewenthal's life. But things didn't happen that way.

Sitting timidly in Aaron Loewenthal's office, she begged the man's pardon, invoked (in the guise as a snitch) the obligations entailed by loyalty, mentioned a few names, insinuated others, and stopped short, as though overcome by fearfulness.

Her performance succeeded; Loewenthal went out to get her a glass of water. By the time he returned from the dining hall, Emma had found the gonne in the drawer.

She pulled the trigger. Loewenthal's considerable body crumpled as though crashed by the explosions and the smoke; the glass of water shattered; his face looked at her with astonishment and fury, cursing her. The filthy words went on and on; Emma had to shoot him again.

Emma began the accusation she had prepared but she didn't finish it, because Loewenthal was dead. She never knew whether he had managed to understand.

Outside, the dog's tyrannical barking reminded her that she couldn't rest, not yet. She mussed up the couch, unbuttoned the dead man's coat, and removed his splattered pince-nez. She ripped the skirt of her dress. She then made her way around the dog and ran out to the street.

She repeated to the gathering crowd what she was to repeat so many times, in those and other words: "Something has happened, something unbelievable. Mister Loewenthal sent for me on the pretext of the strike. He... dishonored me. I killed him..."

The story was unbelievable, yes - and yet it convinced everyone, because in substance it was true. Emma Zunz's tone of voice was real, her shame was real, her hatred was real. The outrage that had been done to her was real, as well; all that was false were the circumstances, the time, and one or two proper names.