The Proof in the Topfenstrudel

Note: the following story is a sequel to “Mexican Day.” Dedicated to Marty B.

Frau Boetterwein smiled as she pulled a tray of piping topfenstudel from the huge oven that had saved five generations of Boetterweins from the wolves, the jackals, the dreckige schweine who’d for that brief but fateful time had desecrated her beloved Vienna with their mere presence.

The baker’s smile blossomed as she turned toward the window that faced onto Herrengasse and the flow of commerce, pleasure, and diplomacy that had transformed her ageless city. The American soldiers and opportunists inquiring about doughnuts and pound cake and crestfallen only to find the finest tortes, strudels, and marzipans to be found on the continent. The Englishmen with their smug pride in having freed their Northern European neighbors from that shamefully Austrian-born, German-bred monster, their subtle implication that the Viennese were somehow not to be trusted.

But these interlopers could not quelch Frau Boetterwein’s love for her native city, her heritage, her family’s craft, and the loyal regulars who had survived the war, the Occupation, the aftermath of the whole schlamassel. Her heart brightened as she spied not one but two of her dearest “patrons” approaching from different directions. The timing had been flawless: The topfenstrudel were the Professor’s favorite. She hustled to prepare more humble fare for her highly reliable clockwork afternoon customer.

The Professor called genially as he entered, ringing the brass bell over the door as her other client slipped in. Frau Boetterswein beamingly displayed the fresh tray of cheese-and-raisin confections. The ancient old man, who’d won several pyrrhic victories against tuberculosis over the years, clapped weakly with a toothy grin.

“Lassen Sie mich den Zucker hinzufügen,” she sang as she reached for the confectioner’s sugar on the counter behind a pastry case full of such treasures as Pan’s Lost Boys could only imagine. “Heute ein dutzend?”

The Professor nodded eagerly, and she set to work.

“Professor.” The former teacher turned to see a face he thought never to encounter again.

“Pfannkuchen,” the old man muttered, with a small twist of the lip that was simultaneously bemused and contorted by dread.

Not that he knew or even suspected this day would come, though his own theories and postulations suggested he might have.

**

“Are you here to kill me?” the teacher asked quietly. Frau Boetterwein grasped the edge of the case, gawping between the two.

“You left me to die.” Pfannkuchen noted, seemingly neither pained nor outraged. Then again, his quarry had no reasonable measure for judging how his nemesis might convey pain or outrage. “I might argue you betrayed me, but that would imply a loyalty or even a concern that never existed. I was simply your means to an end.”

“I did not betray you – the very concept is absurd. And I certainly did not leave you to die. Well, not entirely.”

“Please spare me your academic equivocating. You left me to a hell beyond your imaginings.”

The old man’s already enfeebled mind struggled to comprehend what was transpiring, and the effort taxed his failing stamina and aged joints. He leaned against the heavily laden teigkasten. “You must understand – the university had dismissed me so abruptly, we were forced to flee so urgently.”

“You and your whores.”

“I had no time to attempt to contest for the return of my laboratory effects or study notes or apparatus,” the professor continued, seeing little purpose in defending Anny or Hilde, given that the indiscretions and appetites were his to shoulder. “Much less to try to explain you to those puritanical old women. I did not leave you. You were taken from me.”

“As you took me from Hilde. Or did she give me freely, for what, the good of science?” Pfannkuchen’s eyes were fixed on his. Those devilish eyes.

“I find myself in the unusual position of admitting I have no explanation or excuse for my actions. I might only plead that in those days, what we proposed might as well have been tales from Andersen, Grimm, Carroll. Even within the university community, the scientific community. They had no scope, no vision. If I were to make them understand, I had to present physical evidence, a template upon which the Einsteins could build.”

The tired old man smiled, and Pfannkuchen momentarily bristled. “If I might dare ask, you somehow have managed to confound my most fanciful hypotheses.”

“You had two. Two hypotheses. You talk of vision. You could only figure out two possibilities.”   

“Please,” the professor murmured, injured but a scientist to the end. “Educate me. But if I might beg, whatever it is you might have planned for me, might we repair somewhere else? Frau Boetterwein is a fine woman, and she provides an immeasurably valuable service to the world.”

“There we agree.” Pfannkuchen said. He turned to the stout old woman, who’d been frozen above the gugelhupf during nearly the entire exchange. She scrambled to package up the professor’s topfenstrudel. “As for what I have planned, it is done. Your death will be recorded as tuberculosis – there isn’t as yet even a name for what you’ve been living with over the last year. But it will get much worse – a fitting limbo between life and a merciful death.”

“Professor?” the baker whispered tremulously.

“Do not worry,” Erwin consoled, patting her liver-spotted hand as he accepted his parcel.

Pfannkuchen turned as they reached the door. “So long, and thanks for all the milk.” The bell tinkled as they moved into the street. The cat chuckled. “I forgot. Douglas Adams isn’t even 10 yet. Now, there’s a guy with imagination.”

“What happened in there?” the professor asked as they proceeded down Herrengasse, the bag of topfenstrudel bouncing against Schrodinger’s dissipated thigh. “Are there other states of being, other universes? And, Pfannkuchen, where did you acquire the ability of human speech?”

The tom shook his head – the passing wife of a U.S. State Department envoy took it for a reaction to the light shower beginning to fall. “You scientists are so insular in your disciplines. Any veterinary student could tell you the structure of the feline larynx and vocal cords makes human style speech impossible. I have friends in places that would destroy your mind, and most don’t ‘talk’ with their mouths, anyway. Frau Boetterwein simply believes you’re growing demented, which is just a bonus. And don’t call me Pfannkuchen. Pancake, my furry ass. I go by Waffles, or Mr. Waffles, if you’d like to display a little belated respect.”