When she’d finished there was a moment’s silence. Then Landen said, “What would you like to know?”
She looked at the cat and concentrated. “Very generally, I’d like to know how to deal with someone like that. What he believes in, what he’s thinking. If you’ve got any idea where he might have come from.”
Landen took a sip from his cup and then put it back down in a graceful movement. He pursed his lips. “It’s tricky, I mean, I know practically nothing about the man.” His uncertainty made him somber, and fleetingly Louise found Landen incredibly attractive. “I’ll speak to him, if you like.”
“Yes,” she said. “I would like that.”
Landen had gone upstairs; Bonì and Niksch waited in the small hallway. She took her mobile from her pocket. The translator sounded just as cheerful and slick, even though the job had fallen through. “Oh well, perhaps another time,” she said. “And thanks for thinking of me.”
“Sayonara,” Louise said, cutting her off. She closed her eyes. She was seriously regretting not having asked Landen for a dash of something in her tea.
“Look,” Niksch said. He was staring at two narrow, parchment-like scrolls on the wall, an Asian symbol painted on each. “Mad, isn’t it? And it means something, too.”
She opened the front door and looked at the gravel path, the fence, the little street with mostly affluent-looking detached houses. Filbinger lived here somewhere. There weren’t that many options; Günterstal was a small place. Filbinger used to be a menacing name, a politician’s face on television, a bad feeling. Now, thirty years on, he’d become a person who lived, slept and ate somewhere. Had her parents known that Filbinger was just a man? Probably not.
“It could be saying anything,” Niksch said.
“Such as?”
“Such as, you have to take your shoes off, and if you don’t you’ll drop dead. Or that every visitor has to leave a bit of their little finger here. Or how to manufacture poison gas, or build a bomb.”
She sighed. “Call Hollerer, Nikki.”
Hollerer was fine but his feet were frozen. Lederle and he were hungry and demanding cherry cake. The monk had just walked across a little wood; they had watched him through the trees. Sometimes the distance between him and the Daimler was twenty yards, sometimes a hundred.
A shiver ran down Bonì’s spine. One hundred yards. How could you protect someone that far away?
Niksch had turned back to the scrolls. “It’s making me nervous, not being able to understand this.”
“Call Amelie and ask her to bake a cherry cake.”
At that moment Landen came down the stairs. He put on a turtleneck sweater then gestured to the scrolls with his chin. “The left-hand one is ‘Happiness,’ the one on the right ‘Friendship.’”
Louise stepped out on to the path, chuckling. Landen and Niksch followed. When she got to the garden gate she turned. Now only the upstairs light was on. She shuddered.
Niksch opened the gate for her. “Amelie’s dead,” he said.
Amelie accompanied her through the northern part of Günterstal, through the narrow arch of the former Cistercian convent on Schauinslandstrasse. Amelie’s pasta parcels, Amelie’s underwear, the rucksack. She wanted to warn Landen that what they were going to do might be dangerous, but Amelie wouldn’t let her.
As they crossed the Dreisam, she pictured Hollerer and Lederle. They were sitting in the Daimler, observing the monk and talking about what happened when your wife died. As it turned out they weren’t a bad match.
What must Hollerer have thought yesterday when she told him to say Hi to Amelie?
“Nikki,” she gasped. “Stop!”
She got out. Filbinger, Amelie and Bermann—all a bit much for one day, she thought angrily. She felt like throwing up, but not in front of Richard Landen. In the pockets of her anorak she found only her mobile, purse and house keys.
She slumped back into the passenger seat. Niksch drove on in silence. Landen was quiet too, and yet she felt his presence behind her. She felt him and now and then she felt the house too, and the upstairs light and the willow.
She turned her head halfway. “I’d like you to know that this might be dangerous.” Her voice sounded gruff and sour. She tried to be polite: “Something’s not right, someone’s following the monk, someone who might turn violent . . . Do you still want to come with us?” Landen went pale, but he nodded.
Beside her Niksch mumbled something incomprehensible, then wrenched the steering wheel to the right and stopped. They were outside the shop of a gas station. Louise felt for the handle and thought how fortunate it was that she’d never been here before.
From a distance it appeared as if the monk was stationary. It was only when they got to Lederle and Hollerer, who had climbed out of the car, that Louise saw he was going resolutely on his way. The dusk appeared to be sucking up the black dot. Another few minutes and the monk would vanish into the gloom. Glass clanked against glass as they got out.
Richard Landen nodded briefly when she introduced him to Hollerer and Lederle. Then he set off in pursuit of the monk. She was about to follow him, but Hollerer asked, “What about the cake?”
There she was again, Amelie. She shook her head.
“Bonì, can I have a quick word?” Lederle took her to one side. “Nothing, nothing at all,” he said. “Are you sure that . . .?”
Lederle’s skepticism reminded her of her deal with Bermann. The abyss. Sick leave, rehab, desk job. For a moment she felt panic. “Have you spoken to Rolf?”
“Today? No.”
She nodded and said, “Reiner, I am sure.” But then she asked herself if it was true. She turned to Hollerer, who smiled wearily. He looked at a loss. But she felt that he trusted her, for whatever reason.
She looked at Niksch.
Yes, she was sure. She’d seen the figures and heard the voices. But more importantly she’d seen the monk’s fear.
“So what’s happening now?” Hollerer said.
“Niksch and you are going to stay, Reiner’s going to drive me back to Freiburg. I’ll come back at eight to relieve you.”
Lederle looked doubtful; Hollerer nodded. “And we’ll check in with you now and then,” he said.
“Yes we will,” Niksch said.
“OK, thanks.” She looked over toward Landen and the monk. The monk had stopped and turned. At that moment the two men put their hands together and bowed their heads. They were standing close to one another. The monk said something before turning his head away and coughing.
“Bonì, I don’t know, perhaps I should come back with . . .,” Lederle began.
“You go home, you’re needed more there.”
Lederle held his breath and blinked. “I’ll have a chat with Rolf, he can’t let you hang around here,” he said.
“I’d rather you didn’t. He doesn’t know I called you.”
Lederle rubbed his eyes with his index finger and thumb. “Which I suppose means I can’t claim the day as overtime.” He looked at her again, but didn’t appear to be expecting an answer. Sometimes he said things that were typical of the Lederle she knew before his wife’s diagnosis. The complaint about overtime was one. Not a week would go by without a grumble about unpaid hours. Now these things weren’t so important anymore, and sometimes he said them out of habit, probably without even realizing. “I’ll relieve you around four tomorrow morning,” he said.
“Stay at home, Reiner.”
“Then you could have three or four hours’ sleep. Come on, three or four hours’ sleep is better than nothing.”
She nodded and set off after Landen.
Ten minutes passed before Bonì realized that the monk wasn’t going to tell Landen anything of substance either. But at least now they had his name: Taro. She looked at him and wondered why she was so disappointed.
“Try again,” she said.
Landen asked the key questions once more: where the monk came from, where he was going, how he’d been injured, who he was fl
eeing and why he wouldn’t go with them to Freiburg.
The monk smiled and said nothing. The smile was mechanical; his eyes remained black and lifeless, drained of all softness and sensitivity. They reminded Louise of the eyes of Landen’s china cat.
Since that morning Taro seemed to have crossed an invisible boundary. He no longer took an interest in what was happening to him. Essentially he’d stopped running away. He appeared to have retreated into another world, an intermediate realm. They’d lost him altogether.
“Shit,” she cursed.
“Please be polite,” Landen said.
“Fucking shit. Try again.”
“He’s not going to talk to us. You have to accept that.”
She came close to the monk. That familiar tang tickled her nostrils again, stirring memories: their trek through the forest, the warmth in the cavity behind the rocks, the feeling of inner peace. “Would you like me to look after you tonight? Would you like me to be here in case they come back? Would you like that?”
Landen translated.
The monk looked at her and shook his head.
“Sayonara,” she said, moving away. She heard Landen speak, then the monk, then Landen again. Then shoes crunched in the snow.
Landen caught up with her. “There’s one thing you have to grasp,” he said. “He’s different from you. Completely different. He thinks differently, believes differently, feels differently and lives differently.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you’ll never understand what he does or says. And certainly not why he does or says it, or even doesn’t say it.”
They stopped. The gray patch in Landen’s eyebrow was crimped downward. “You’d never really understand him even if you knew more about him.”
“I see it differently.”
“I know. That’s how most people think. Nobody wants to accept that you can never really understand another human being. Especially not someone from a different culture.”
Bonì looked back. The monk had plunged deep into the grayness. A dozen yards farther on, dusk ended in a wall of black. Soon the forest would swallow him up.
In the other direction, Niksch was kneeling by the patrol car putting on snow chains. Hollerer and Lederle were looking toward her. Voluminous clouds of vapor formed in front of Hollerer’s face; barely visible cotton-wool balls flew from Lederle’s mouth.
She looked at Landen. “I still don’t get what you’re trying to say. What am I supposed to do with someone I’m apparently never going to understand? Do I simply abandon him to his fate? Is that what you’re saying? Just because he’s different? What kind of crap is that?”
“Please calm down,” Landen said.
“Oh, you’re good.”
“You don’t need to abandon him to his fate, you just need to respect him . . .”
“. . . and then abandon him.”
“Let me finish.” Landen had raised his voice, but he went on more softly. “You have to respect him, and that’s really hard. It would be the tour de force of the enlightened individual, because to respect somebody you don’t understand is the most difficult thing imaginable.” The kink in his eyebrow evened out and he looked at her warily. It was the caginess you saw in the eyes of suspects when they feared they’d given themselves away. What was going through his mind?
She decided not to ask. Not now, at least. She grinned. “Understanding, respect . . . are you a moral apostle, or what?”
Landen smiled. “Let’s just say the term ‘apostle’ comes from the wrong religion.”
As they walked on he said, “Don’t give up on him.”
“I’m not. I’m just infuriated by him.”
“That’s something he would never understand.” Landen stopped again. The fleck of gray shot up and for a few seconds something flickered in his eyes. He told her she must never forget that behind the faces of strangers, behind the otherness, lay an infinite and fascinating universe of thoughts, feelings and experiences. Thousands of questions and answers that weren’t so different from her own; it was just that they’d emerged from a different perspective, which would make her questions and answers appear in a new light, if she ever allowed it.
Bonì struggled to listen. Her eyes were focused on the eyebrow, this strangely animated patch of gray that both irritated and attracted her. All of a sudden a flux of mysterious things was set in motion inside her. Warmth flowed through her body, her skin tingled, her throat constricted.
Not that too, she thought.
The eyebrow stretched as if its work was now done and it could relax.
Disgruntled, she walked away.
The monk was no longer visible from where the cars were parked. For a moment Bonì panicked, but Niksch reassured her. It was a narrow strip of woodland and a dirt track ran around it to the south—no problem with snow chains. He cracked his knuckles confidently. His face was red and steam rose from his shoulders. He sneezed into his hand. “I’d love another döner later,” he said with a grin. “Any chance?”
She smiled. “What about you, Hollerer?”
“A four seasons’ pizza, if it’s no trouble.”
“It’s got mushrooms, boss.”
“I like mushrooms.”
“Yes, but by the time you get home the pizza’s cold and you have to put it in the oven.”
“I think I can probably manage that,” Hollerer growled.
“Mushrooms . . .”
“Shut up, Niksch.”
“You’re not supposed to heat up mushrooms,” Louise said.
Hollerer rolled his eyes. “Then make it a four seasons without mushrooms.”
“But then it’s only three seasons,” Niksch said.
The blanket of snow had broken up all around, exposing tar and gravel. Lederle steered the Daimler along narrow roads, Bonì navigating through the darkness to the place where he’d joined them that morning. In the past—before—he had been able to find his way anywhere blindfolded, but since the diagnosis, he’d increasingly lost his sense of direction. Lederle’s anxiety about his wife seemed to have corroded vital areas of his brain.
“Up there on the right, Reiner.”
“OK.” Lederle turned, then looked into his rearview mirror and asked, “What do you actually do?”
Landen seemed reluctant to talk about himself. But gradually they learned that he taught at the South Asia Institute at Heidelberg University, lecturing on Tibetan and Zen Buddhism, and that he wrote the occasional article for academic journals and websites. “My wife,” he said eventually, “earns the money.”
Nobody laughed. It sounded too rehearsed. “So what topics are you teaching?” Lederle said.
“At the moment it’s ‘Shakyamuni’s first speech at Vulture Peak.’ Last semester it was ‘The political role of the Gozan.’”
“Well, well, who’d have thought it?” Lederle said.
“Indeed,” Landen said.
For a while nobody spoke. Lederle slowed a little. Outside it had become dark and they could see tiny lights glittering in the distance—sitting rooms lit up in Liebau, probably, Louise thought. Couples, families, friends, people like Niksch and his sisters and Theres, like Hollerer and Amelie, sitting in their Sunday best in small, cozy living rooms. A hill edged its way between the car and the lights. “What is a Kagyu House?” she said.
“A meeting house for Tibetan culture. Kagyu is one of the principal schools of Tibetan Buddhism.” Landen’s voice was that of someone well versed in patience. She wondered whether he was an engaging lecturer or a passive one. Whether the calm he exuded was in fact detachment.
She adjusted the rearview mirror so she could see him in the gloom of the back seat. “What do you think about Taro?”
“Sorry,” Lederle said, moving the mirror back.
“He’s young,” Landen said. “Early twenties at most. And he’s a Zensu, a ‘Zen child.’ That’s what they call Zen novices in Japan.” He pronounced the word “Zen” softly and deeply—“Z
zzenn.” Judging by his dialect, the monk came from southern Japan, from Kyushu island, but Landen wouldn’t swear by it.
“Have you ever lived in Japan?”
“A few years—in Tokyo and Kyoto.”
Unintentionally, Bonì thought of Landen’s wife, the Japanese woman who earned the money and whose surname was Tommo. “From Japan to southern Baden,” she said.
Landen said nothing.
“Maybe there’s a Zen monastery or something around here,” Lederle said. “Where he’s come from, or where he’s going.”
“Do you know where he’s come from?” Landen said.
“He was seen in Badenweiler, then in Kirchzarten, and yesterday in Liebau,” Louise said.
“Badenweiler,” Landen repeated thoughtfully. “In Weiterswiller in Alsace there’s the Ko San Ryu Mon Ji, and near Mulhouse the Kanzan-an.”
“Weiterswiller is too far north. Mulhouse is possible.”
“South of Zillisheim,” Landen said. “I haven’t been there myself, but I’ve seen photos. A place in the middle of the woods, if I remember rightly, set up in the 1970s. The ‘an’ at the end means ‘hermitage’; in Japanese, temples and monasteries usually have the suffix ‘-ji.’ Kanzan was a lay Buddhist from China, a poet and hermit—a ‘freethinker,’ if you like. He commands huge respect in Zen because contemporary masters testified that he’d reached a high level of enlightenment.”
“Do you believe in all this occult stuff?” Lederle said.
“You think of Buddhism as ‘occult stuff’?”
“No,” Louise said. “Just different.”
A few seconds passed before Landen said, right into her ear, “I’d like to tell you a story if you’d be happy to hear it.”
The warmth of his breath on her skin vanished all too quickly. She nodded. “Right again, Reiner,” she said.
Landen waited until Lederle had made the turn. Then, in his soft voice, he said, “At the beginning of the sixth century a.d. a scholar came to Shaolin Monastery on Mount Song in northern China. His name was Huike. When Bodhidharma, the first Zen patriarch in China, received him, Huike requested to be taken in as a pupil at the monastery. Despite many years of study he hadn’t found inner peace. But Bodhidharma sent him away again, saying that only those who never gave up teaching themselves could attain the state of inner peace. Huike withdrew to outside the gates of the monastery, where he sat it out for weeks in the snow, hoping that Bodhidharma would eventually agree to his request. But Bodhidharma was unrelenting. To prove that his determination to follow Buddhism was unwavering, Huike cut off his left hand.”
Zen and the Art of Murder Page 6