Under the Ice

by Gisa Klönne

  Martina tries to imagine Frank kicking the dachshund, torturing it, cutting off an ear, perhaps even killing it – a kind of delayed revenge for his damaged lawn. She tries to imagine Frank torturing Jonny, raping him, abducting him, killing him. But she can’t, and when she realises that she’s making an effort to conjure up such images, another rush of coldness courses through her body. What’s going on? What’s happened to us? How low have I sunk? Not only do I no longer trust my own husband’s capacity for love, I even suspect him of murder.

  ‘Mummy, where are you? We’re ba-ack!’ Marlene and Leander come running into the garden. Martina heaves herself off the swing, as slow and stiff as an old woman.

  ‘I’m in the garden. Come here, my sweets!’ Her voice sounds too high, but there’s nothing she can do about it. She kneels in the grass, spreads out her arms and forces herself to smile.

  *

  His father is in a room of his own now, a shrunken outline under sterile sheets, dwarfed by a stand hung with plastic pouches. From one of the pouches medication drips into a transparent tube that vanishes beneath the duvet; another is half filled with a yellow liquid – urine. The constant beeping and humming of the monitors is louder than the sick man’s breathing – if he is still breathing. Hesitantly, Manni pulls the door shut behind him. It’s hot and stuffy, and the curtain at the window dims the evening light to semi-darkness. His father lies motionless, his eyes closed; another tube coming from his nose is connected to a machine that pumps oxygen into his lungs. Manni walks to the foot of the bed, stubbing his toe on one of the wheels, and sending the bed crashing into the wall. His father doesn’t stir. Manni had bought a box of brandy chocolates and a bottle of orange juice in the hospital cafeteria; now he realises how pointless that was.

  Still, he deposits his gifts on the table at the window, resisting the temptation to pull back the curtain and fling open the window – to suck fresh air into his lungs or, even better, to jump out into the park below. On the bedside table are flowers that could only have come from his mother’s garden, and a family photo taken on the day when Manni was promoted from the vice squad to the murder squad – Manni and his mother standing behind his father’s wheelchair, his mother beaming with pride, Manni more serious, and his father’s gaze fixed on a distant point behind the photographer. Manni leans over the bed. Apart from a bit of stubble and some broken veins on his cheeks, his father’s skin is like wax. His eyes remain shut.

  From the car, Manni rings his mother, glad that she is no longer sitting in the hospital corridor in a state of paralysis, but has driven home to look after her garden and the two cats. Her voice sounds flat; they talk trivia.

  ‘Kind of you to pay for the private room,’ she says as they’re saying goodbye. Manni feels too tired to confess that kindness doesn’t come into it; if anything, it was an attempt to buy himself a clear conscience.

  A little before 9 p.m. he manoeuvres his GTI into a parking space outside his flat. No new witnesses have come forward since Martina Stadler’s television appearance, but the questions remain: Where is Jonny? Is his stepfather a murderer? What happened to the dachshund? At home, Manni slips off his Nikes and tosses newspaper and junk mail into the paper recycling box. He opens the window and breathes in the warm, exhaust-laden air. His fridge contains three bottles of Coke and half a carton of UHT milk, and there are two pizzas in the freezer. What has happened to Jonny Röbel? Manni performs a few mae geris, yoko geris and a skilled ushiro mawashi against the sandbag. He must go to karate training more often, or he can forget his second dan. His fists deliver a flurry of tsukis. He has to find this boy. But right now he needs a break.

  A quarter of an hour later, showered and changed, he is stepping into the jumble of voices and clinking glasses of the beer garden. He buys himself a wheat beer at the bar and fights his way between the tables of tanned people all talking at each other. He still feels restless – burnt out and keyed up at the same time. The gravel crunches underfoot. He usually likes the sound, but now it seems to mock him.

  Then he sees her – the blond hair, the silver hair clip, pale top, jacket tied casually around her hips. She is sitting on the wall alone, with her back to the beer garden. Beside her is an empty glass. A waitress carrying a heavily laden tray passes Manni and he snaps up another customer’s beer, stilling the waitress’s protests with a hefty tip.

  ‘I’ve brought you a refill. May I?’ He holds out his prize to Miss Cat’s Eyes and gestures to the wall beside her.

  She looks up at him. He thrusts the beer glass a little closer. ‘I wanted to buy you one the other day, but unfortunately I had to leave.’

  ‘I’m about to go.’

  ‘Just one beer. The night is young.’

  Up on the railway embankment an Inter City Express glides past, the windows a single strip of light above the park. A half moon hangs in the dark blue sky.

  ‘First a beer. And then Paris,’ says Miss Cat’s Eyes. ‘Or Amsterdam.’ She takes the glass and clinks it against his. ‘Sit down and we’ll have a beer, if that’s what you want. But none of that “You’re-the-woman-of-my-dreams” stuff, please. I’ve had enough of cheesy chat-up lines that end in a quickie and a “See ya, babe” before the night is out.’

  ‘No problem.’ Manni sits down next to her and takes a big gulp of wheat beer. Then another. A few seconds later, his brain is functioning again. What did she just say? She’s fed up with chat-up lines? Or was it quickies?

  She looks at him. A smile plays in the corners of her mouth; her cat’s eyes glint.

  ‘Mean, eh? Takes the wind out of your sails.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Another gulp of beer. ‘I prefer slowies myself.’ Great, Manni, unbelievably original. The woman seems to come to the same conclusion; she looks at her beer glass as if wondering whether it would make a good missile. Manni continues quickly.

  ‘If you ask me, I’d go for Amsterdam.’

  ‘Aha. And why?’

  Green, greeny blue, blue? It’s too dark to tell what colour her eyes are. But her lips are nicely curved and her breasts – bloody hell, get a grip. What was the question? That’s right, Amsterdam.

  ‘The canals,’ says Manni, ‘the boats. Imagine . . . a houseboat . . . this summer . . .’

  ‘Cruising along a dyke in one of those houseboats is like gliding over a meadow; you’d think a herd of cows might come on board at any moment.’ She talks dreamily, without looking at Manni.

  ‘Sounds lovely.’

  ‘I did it once.’

  They clink glasses again and sit in silence, watching the strips of light from trains that might be going to Amsterdam and the display of flashing neon on the glass façade of Cologne Tower in Media Park. A boat, a breeze, and Miss Cat’s Eyes on deck in a bikini – or, better still, without. For the first time in days, Manni begins to relax. He finishes his wheat beer and signals to a waitress.

  ‘No more for me, I must be going.’ Miss Cat’s Eyes swings her long legs purposefully over the wall and gets up. ‘Bye, stranger.’

  Manni wants to protest, to persuade her to stay – at least ask her what she’s called. But before he can say anything, she’s vanished into the throng.

  *

  It’s a big country. Big and empty. The minutes pass, but far below there is nothing but green, broken only by the sparkle of enormous lakes. I must be crazy, Judith thinks – crazy, deluded, a raving lunatic – if I think that down there, in those vast tracts of emptiness, I can find a woman who doesn’t want to be found – a woman I don’t even really know. She turns away from the aeroplane window and orders coffee from one of the eager flight attendants. The plane took off late; it’s evening in Cologne now, and in two hours they’ll land in Toronto where it is afternoon. Both seem unreal. It’s as if she has lost all sense of time since setting off on this journey – as if she’s at odds with her biological clock.

  Five hours later, Judith is being guided through Toronto by the navigation system of a fiery-red hire car.
In the rear-view mirror the glass tower blocks of Canada’s most populous city glow in the evening light – the glittering metallic building blocks of a giant child. High above them, the tip of the CN Tower pierces the sky.

  Professor Terence Atkinson’s secretary had laughed loudly when Judith had asked where an ornithologist might go to watch common loons. ‘Loons! Those birds are everywhere.’ But the secretary did tell Judith that Charlotte had visited Professor Atkinson several times at the institute in May. ‘A colleague from Germany, right?’ Of course Professor Atkinson had been pleased to see her. Then the German woman had stopped coming, the vacation had begun and, just like every year, Professor Atkinson had left for his holiday house on Georgian Bay with his wife and children and boat. Cozy Harbour the place was called – that much information, at least, Judith had managed to coax out of the secretary. A tiny flyspeck in an expanse of rugged green next to a big light blue patch – that’s what it looks like on the map Judith buys at a filling station.

  She drives north, obeying the navigation system which she has fed with the coordinates of Cozy Harbour. She has left the sprawl of Toronto behind her, and now the landscape is dominated by fields, woods and gently rolling hills. Nothing to detain or distract – only wide-open countryside, and the odd farm here and there. Night is approaching; the light is soft. The pungent smell of a dead skunk drifts in at the half-open window. Judith stops at a coffee shop called Tim Horton’s, where she eats a sandwich and buys a big cup of takeaway coffee, although her stomach seizes up at the prospect of yet more caffeine. She smokes a cigarette in the car park and goes on her way. Darkness is coming fast now and the driving is more strenuous; the lights from the oncoming cars dazzle her. The only radio station that doesn’t tail off into white noise after a few minutes plays country music. But Judith forces herself to keep going until the headlamps of the oncoming traffic are on the point of blurring. Then she follows the neon sign of a motel into the blackness off the highway.

  The room smells of disinfectant, like Charlotte’s house in Cologne. It contains the bare minimum and, although it’s a no-smoking room, it’s done out in depressing greys and yellows reminiscent of cigarette ash and nicotine. As if to taunt Judith, the crooked frame with clouded glass above the bed holds a print of a loon. She has a shower, wraps herself in a sheet and sits on the wooden veranda with a bottle of beer from the minibar. The neon sign flickers and occasionally the sound of traffic drifts across from the Trans-Canadian Highway. There are three cars in the parking lot in front of the low building, but there is otherwise something unreal about the scene, as if Judith has landed in one of those Edward Hopper paintings, where the human figures are dwarfed by architecture and landscape.

  Judith opens the bottle of beer and rolls herself a cigarette. Perhaps Charlotte spent the night in the very same motel – although it’s about as likely as winning the lottery. The air caresses Judith’s naked skin like a lover. She smokes and listens to the darkness until she’s so tired that she no longer minds the smell of disinfectant in the room. Her last thought is of the Death tarot card. She wonders why a black skeleton with a black scythe should have a positive meaning. Then she falls asleep.

  Wednesday, 27 July

  Breathlessness, sweat-soaked skin, a pounding heart. Thronging images. A blond boy laughing, his arms around a shaggy dachshund. A desperate young mother begging for her son’s life on the evening news. The buzz of hungry flies. Scabbed blood, where there should be a floppy ear. The mark of a dog’s sharp teeth on a furry throat. Elisabeth is lying in bed, with open, stinging eyes. The night drags on tortuously slowly and she is at the mercy of the images. Her only comfort is Barabbas’s rasping breath in the passage – how would she get through the night without it? Someone cut an ear off the missing boy’s dachshund, the news reporter had said.

  I must go to the police, thinks Elisabeth. I must tell them that Barabbas savaged Jonny’s dachshund to death and that I buried it. I’ll say I’m sorry. Maybe they won’t take Barabbas away from me – maybe they’ll let him live, at least. It would be wrong to keep silent; it would be a sin. A child’s life is more important than a dog’s.

  She reaches out a hand and turns on the bedside lamp. Soon the blackbirds will start to squabble and a strip of light will appear in the sky to the east. But although Elisabeth is longing for morning, she knows that the day will bring no respite. She must go to the police. She heaves herself to a sitting position and then waits for her pains and dizziness to subside before getting up. Barabbas pads across the floorboards to say good morning. Side by side they go into the bathroom, where Elisabeth slips on her dressing gown. Then they head down the steep stairs to the kitchen.

  It’s too early for breakfast, and in any case she has no appetite. She hears Carmen’s voice: You must drink, Mother. Obediently, Elisabeth pours herself a glass of milk and makes sure Barabbas has water in his bowl. Missing Jonny and his dachshund, Dr D., look up at her from the newspaper which is still lying open on the kitchen table. She can’t go to Cologne; it’s too far, and where would she leave Barabbas? But there’s a police station in Neurath too. Hello, Elisabeth hears herself say, I’d like to make a statement . . . The missing dachshund that’s lost an ear – I buried it in Frimmersdorf. She needn’t tell them Barabbas savaged the dachshund to death. Nonsense, the police are bound to find out and once she has them here in the house asking questions, she won’t be able to lie.

  Elisabeth stares at the telephone. Perhaps a phone call would be enough. A phone call that would help the police find the dachshund – but not her and Barabbas. But can’t the police find out who’s calling and where they’re calling from? Not a phone call, then, but perhaps a letter – an anonymous letter. Ignoring the stabbing pains in her shoulders, Elisabeth heaves Heinrich’s old Triumph Adler onto the dining-room table and feeds a sheet of paper into it.

  The one-eared dachshund is dead. Look for it in the woods near Frimmersdorf Power Station.

  Will the police take the note seriously? Will they find the grave? No, it’s no good. She pulls the paper out of the typewriter and tears it to shreds.

  The grey light of dawn is creeping into the garden. Elisabeth shuffles back to the kitchen, puts water on to boil for coffee, makes herself a slice of toast and opens a tin for Barabbas. What should she do? How can she tell the police without betraying Barabbas?

  Coffee cup in hand, she steps out barefoot onto the dewy grass. Five o’clock. It is silent – the day is holding its breath. Only the bells from St Martin’s drift through the air and a blackbird calls in the cherry tree. Elisabeth walks slowly round the garden. My life, she thinks. My house. My dog. It will all come to an end – it has to. And it will happen soon. But not yet. I’m not ready to leave all this yet. I can’t betray Barabbas.

  Elisabeth stops at the rose bushes. So beautiful, so transient. She dead-heads them, breathing in the sweet smell of their dewy buds. Perhaps there is a third way – a way that would require strength, a great deal of strength, but which might, if she could summon up that strength, succeed. The longer Elisabeth thinks about it, the more certain she is that she has found a solution. But she must be careful. She tosses the secateurs into her basket and hurries back to the house as fast as her back will let her.

  *

  They are suddenly there. At first they are only shadows, movements behind the bushes that edge his secret path and obscure the view of the school buildings and the playground. Tim feels his heart pounding and his mouth turn dry. He breaks into a sweat. Back to the bike yard, he thinks – right away. He turns round. No chance – Lukas is standing at the steel railings, about two metres away from Tim. He doesn’t say anything – just folds his arms in front of his chest and grins. Something rustles behind Tim and he wheels round. Viktor steps out onto the path, closely followed by his friend Ralle. And suddenly Daniel and Boris from Tim’s class emerge from the bushes too.

  Just pretend nothing’s happened; sometimes that works. Hunch your shoulders, keep your eyes on th
e ground – hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing – remain stolid, go your own way and hope that you get to the classroom before long, that a teacher appears or that they leave you alone for some other reason. Tim looks about him in panic. Straight ahead isn’t any good; he’s no match for Viktor and Ralle – and Daniel and Boris look dangerous too. It’ll have to be back the way he came, past Lukas. It’s true, Lukas twisted Tim’s arm so hard the other day that he saw stars, but maybe if Tim’s quick and makes himself very small, Lukas will leave it at a kick, like at the level crossing yesterday. Then he’ll make a dash for the playground and hope there’s someone he can hide behind.

  Tim walks towards Lukas. A mistake – he instantly hears footsteps behind him. Tim freezes in his tracks, his pulse racing. Lukas gives a slight shake of his head and plants his feet even more firmly on the ground.

  ‘Stay where you are, Stinker.’

  Step by step, they move in on him from all sides – silent, self-confident and united. Closer and closer they come – too close, unbearably close. Blood pounds in Tim’s ears. The school bell rings, as if from another world.

  ‘Let me go. Break’s over. I must go to class.’ Tim’s voice tails off. He presses himself up against the railings and the sharp corner of a textbook bores its way through his rucksack into his back. There’s no chance of escape; he’s cornered. What do they want of him? What can he do?

  Now they are so close he can see only their hard faces – and still they say nothing.

  They’ll soon leave you alone. Jonny’s words were an empty promise, a lie. They’ll never leave Tim alone; he’s a loser, a failure, a nerd, a laughing stock – someone who deserves to be tormented. Useless at sport, too timid, a teachers’ pet. When he says something, the other kids don’t understand him, and he never understand their jokes and innuendos. Only Jonny understood him; he could talk to Jonny. Jonny didn’t make him feel like a zombie; he made him feel like a normal, likeable boy.