“Do you remember Calambert?”
“The man who . . . that girl? . . . Yes.”
She nodded. She’d driven here a few days after the case had been wrapped up, after Annetta had died. There were no photos on the windowsill then, the sofa was in front of the fireplace. Sitting bolt upright on a kitchen chair, her mother had said, “That poor girl. That poor, poor girl.”
“I can’t come to terms with it.”
“With what?”
“That I’m responsible for his death.”
Her mother stopped and looked at her. “It made me proud. For the first time in my life I was proud of something.” Her eyes were full of resolve, vaguely reminding Louise of the warrior her mother had once been.
“He was married with a young daughter, Mama.”
“He killed a girl. He raped and killed her.”
“Still.”
“I was proud of you, Louise.” Her mother’s voice had gone cold. But her grip around Louise’s wrist remained firm.
They turned and went back along the path. Beyond the meadow and the hill a handful of dark houses had come into view. Smoke rose from chimneys. A weary, warm yellow shimmered through a few windows. Louise imagined tidy kitchens, simple wooden tables, old people drinking coffee. Niksch, staring at a tiny cup with green liquid. A black china cat on a windowsill.
Landen, she thought. He would have asked the right questions.
“How bad is it, your drinking?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, can you stop?”
Louise raised her eyebrows. She thought of Calambert and of Mick. Those long, free weekends. The winter, the snow. Of the fact that she now had a fourth snowman: Niksch. “Of course I can,” she said.
Her mother nodded. “You started before, before Calambert,” she said. “You started because you didn’t have any children, because you weren’t happy in your marriage, but you don’t want to admit this because then you’d have to admit that I was right, that your husband couldn’t be trusted for five minutes.”
Red-hot anger shot into her limbs. But she was tight-lipped. She could hardly complain that her mother was reinventing her past if she withheld essential information from her.
“It’s not meant to be a criticism, Louise. I mean, women fall in love with words, not values.”
“Can we just drop this, OK? I’d rather you told me if you had a boyfriend back then.”
Her mother let out an irate laugh and snatched her arm away. “Whether I did or didn’t, it’s irrelevant—that’s not why our marriage failed, Louise.”
“Correct. It failed because of Filbinger.”
“No, it failed because I married a Frenchman who suddenly became a German. Sometimes things really are that simple.”
“Here, they’re simple.”
“Yes,” her mother said, taking Louise’s arm again.
While her mother prepared dinner Louise sat on the sofa wondering why her own marriage had gone down the drain. There was a simple answer to this one. In the space of five years Mick had cheated on her with half of southern Baden.
There were probably more complicated answers too. Answers that were more insightful, that contained a higher degree of qualitative information. But to get there you had to take a path through a jungle of awkward questions. Was she boring in bed? Had he ever loved her? Why hadn’t he wanted children? Was it just that he didn’t want children with her? As a policewoman, was she unsuited to marriage and a family?
With a groan she reached for her mobile.
Hollerer had woken up, asked about Niksch, then fallen straight back to sleep. She picked up the wine glass from the floor by the sofa and thought: Niksch is here, Hollerer. Here, where everything’s simple.
Her eyes locked on to the strangers’ faces on the windowsill. Friends from the village, her mother had said, giving names that she’d immediately forgotten. Stranger-friends. She tapped in Richard Landen’s number. Once again the Japanese woman by the name of Tommo answered, and once again she hung up. She crawled under the blanket and imagined that Landen and Tommo had complicated questions for each other, and were on the hunt for complicated answers. Answers that helped them achieve mutual respect without actually understanding each other.
Then she fell asleep.
It was dark in the sitting room when she woke, and there was no light coming from the kitchen either. Just a reddish glimmer from the hissing embers. Her phone read 21:54. She felt for the wine glass. It was gone.
On the stove was a covered pot of pasta with meat sauce. She wasn’t hungry, but she knew that her body needed something to eat. Half-heartedly she lit the gas beneath the pot. Her hands were shaking, her palms wet. In a metal breadbasket she found the remains of a baguette. She broke off half. For a second or two she could see Niksch before her, döner in hand. His beautiful, friendly lips, closing with relish on bread, meat and tomatoes.
When she sat down at the table she heard footsteps in the room above.
A few minutes later her mother appeared in the kitchen in her pajamas and said, “I didn’t want to wake you.” She went to the cooker and turned down the flame. Then she removed the lid, stirred the pasta and added a pinch of salt.
“I want something to drink, Mama.”
“In the cupboard behind you is red wine and pastis. If you want anything else, we’ll have to . . .”
“No, that’s fine.”
“Would you pour me a glass too?”
Louise put the wine and pastis on the table. “Have you already eaten?”
“Yes.”
While her mother was serving some pasta on to a plate, she drank half a glass of pastis and quietly gave herself a top-up.
“Did they chuck you out?”
“I’m on sick leave.”
Her mother put the plate in front of Louise and gave her a cursory stroke on the arm before sitting down. Louise stared at the pasta, the light-brown sauce. It was so familiar, her mother’s spaghetti bolognese had looked the same for forty years.
As she ate she talked about Almenbroich, Bermann, Katrin Rein and the abyss.
At around eleven that evening her mother revived the warrior in her. She could not understand, she said hoarsely, how Louise had simply surrendered. Her cheeks were red, her mouth a tense, narrow line. She half stood up, as if about to launch herself at an invisible enemy. “Sue them,” she said, slamming her hand on to the table.
“Sit down, Mama,” Louise said. The wine was finished, the pastis almost gone too. She drained the last few drops into her glass.
Her mother slumped back into her chair. The blanket slid from her shoulders to the floor. She bent to retrieve it, and when she came up again her eyes looked shattered, a sign that she’d drunk too much.
“I haven’t surrendered, Mama.”
“Why are you here, then?”
“Because I need some time out.”
“And while you’re taking time out, they’re sorting out the facts.” Her mother’s voice now sounded exhausted, dark from drinking and from tiredness. Louise wondered who she meant by “they.” Her colleagues? The authorities? The men? “Sue them, Louise,” her mother said. “Fight!”
Both were silent for a while. The occasional crackling of wood drifted in from the sitting room. Otherwise it was eerily quiet in the kitchen. She looked at her mother, then at the two empty bottles, the two empty glasses. In her consciousness a single word reverberated: Fight. “Against what, Mama? For what?”
“What a question, Louise!”
She shrugged. “It can’t be done by fighting alone. There has to be something else.”
Her mother’s anger flared again. “Of course,” she said. “Capitulation.”
From a distance she became aware of the muffled ringing of her mobile. “That might be right for you, Mama, but not for me. I live today. There must be something else for me.”
Her mobile was on the sofa beneath her duvet. She recognized the number instantly. What now?
&nbs
p; As she sank on to the duvet, the down feathers gave a soft sigh. She wished her mother wasn’t in earshot. But she didn’t seem to be taking any notice of her daughter. She sat huddled at the kitchen table, frowning, perhaps thinking of a time when it was all about fighting or submission.
Louise cleared her throat twice. “Hello? Louise Bonì here.”
“Ah, Inspector,” Landen said. There was surprise in his voice. He mumbled a few words in Japanese, and in the background his wife replied. “I’m sorry to call so late,” he said. Two calls on two consecutive days in which the caller hadn’t said anything. They had, he explained with a cheerless laugh, thought it might be a pervert who wasn’t au fait with the latest technology. He paused, apparently waiting for an explanation.
But Louise had no desire to explain anything. She thought of all the things she wanted to ask Landen, and say to him. The things she wanted to do with him.
Then she thought of the filigree teacups and felt ashamed of her hands, her bloated body, the smell it gave off. Of the increasingly regular stolen moments in the bathrooms at work, the lies at parties, the many other lies, the weekends in bed. The increasing gaps in her memory. Of her craving beforehand and her contentment afterward.
Fight, her mother’s voice had said. But she sensed this wouldn’t be enough. If you didn’t know what to do with the territory you conquered, you didn’t start a war.
“Are you still there?” Landen said.
“Yes. I need your help again.”
“I thought you were on holiday?”
“I’m on holiday nearby. Will you help me?”
“This morning I didn’t get the impression that my help was welcome.”
“Drive with me to the Kanzan-an.” All at once she felt incredibly tired. She closed her eyes and leaned her head on the back of the sofa.
“Weren’t your colleagues—”
“Let’s leave that, OK? Do you have a car?”
Landen hesitated before answering. “Yes.”
“Great. Two o’clock tomorrow, at the monastery. Does that work for you?”
“No, it would have to be three at the earliest.”
“All right, three then. Thanks.”
After hanging up she stayed for a moment on the sofa with her eyes closed. When she opened them again, almost instinctively her gaze sought out the pictures on the windowsill. One of the frames reflected light from the kitchen lamp. In the dark she couldn’t make out the faces.
She was happy that there were no photos from the past in her mother’s house. No photos to show how much she had changed.
*
Her mother had started to clear the table. “Well then,” she said when Louise came into the kitchen. “You’re going back . . . You’re not just going to give up . . . You’re fighting . . .” Her movements were heavy and sluggish. Her breath smelled of wine.
“I’ll do that,” Louise said. “Come on.”
Putting her arm around her mother, she helped her through the sitting room. She climbed the narrow stairs behind her, but kept her hand on her mother’s hip. It felt warm and thin and alien.
She wondered whether she was right. Was she going to the Kanzan-an to fight? Or was there an essential difference between fighting and not giving up? Fighting for something meant excluding all other possibilities. Not giving up meant—in her case at least—finding other possibilities.
It was ice cold in the tiny bedroom. She switched on the bedside light. The window was tilted open. “Leave it,” her mother said when Louise went to close the window.
She plumped up the duvet and held her mother until she sat on the bed. Only now did she notice tears running down the tanned cheeks. “I can’t begin to imagine what you must have gone through,” her mother said. “In the forest, with your dead colleague.”
Louise didn’t reply. Her mother lay down and she pulled the duvet over her. “It’s not over yet, Louise. Don’t believe it, even if it looks that way. So long as women and children have to suffer, it’s not over.”
“Niksch wasn’t a child, Mama.”
“Of course he was.”
“Go to sleep now, OK?”
Her mother took her hand. “I was proud of you, Louise. I thought you’d go on fighting for me.”
“Night, Mama.”
“Do you know what I’m talking about, Louise?”
“Yes.”
“About men’s greed.”
“I know, Mama.”
“Good. That’s . . . important.” Her mother let go of her hand with a distant smile. “Will you come past the bakery before you go?”
“Of course. Good night.”
She shut the door quietly. On her way down the stairs Louise turned. There was no light coming through the crack in the door.
As she washed up in the kitchen she thought about how her mother had failed in all her ideals. None of her hopes had been fulfilled, or at least not those she knew of. Neither the political, nor social, nor the ones for her family. Did she still harbor ideals? Hopes? Simple hopes? Or was she now merely intent on healing her old war wounds? Who was her mother, in fact? What did she want, think, feel?
And Louise herself? What did she want and feel? Who was she?
She laughed softly when it struck her that she was asking all these questions while washing up.
That night she dreamed of Calambert. He was lying in the snow and she was standing over him. His eyes were open. He wouldn’t die, even though she was firing bullet after bullet into his stomach.
She woke and sat up.
The images from her dream had gone, but the anger she had felt remained. Uncontrollable anger.
In the past, her mother would have felt this kind of anger.
She left at around nine. The sun was shining, it was going to be a mild day. There might be snow over thirty miles to the north, but not here. A small world without snow.
When she stopped her car by the bakery, her mother came outside. They embraced briefly.
“Come some time in spring or summer, not always in winter.”
“We’ll finish painting your house.”
Her mother nodded and stepped back. “Say Hi to Mick.”
Louise looked at her. In her head a sentence began to form that was both simple and complex. Before it could be articulated she got back into her car and drove off.
8
Justin Muller looked just the same as last year, he spoke the same and smiled the same. It seemed as if it were only yesterday that she’d left Mulhouse after their last meeting. If she remembered right, he’d even been wearing the same checked jacket. A rock in the tempestuous swell of time. Unimpeded by the worries, failures and setbacks of a police officer’s year and the potential minor ailments of a fifty-year-old. His gaze wandered nervously over her body. “You look good,” he lied in French.
They were standing in his office. It was 2:15. There was barely any snow left in Mulhouse; the thaw had begun, moving from west to east. It must have reached southern Baden too. Landen would have no difficulty getting here. She pictured him crossing the bridge over the Rhine in a Mitsubishi or a Honda or a Mazda. An unpleasantly warm shiver ran down her spine.
“You really do,” Muller said.
His holster and pistol were hanging from the coat stand behind him. On his desk was the same photograph from last year, of him with his ex-wife and two sons. Streaks of light in their hair. A light-blue background. They smiled as if they were in a photographic studio.
“Thanks,” she said, also in French. “And how are you?”
“Fine.”
“Good. Listen, Justin, I’ve got to talk to you.”
He shook his head in dismay. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t got time.” He stretched out his arms, as if to encompass all the documents, files, notes, computers and telephones in the room. From his expression one might think that the entire backlog of things to do was about to collapse on top of him.
She waited. Nothing happened. “Let’s go for a little walk.”
All of a sudden she understood. Something had changed since last year. Muller was now on the other side. “What have they been saying about me?”
He looked up. “Who?”
“Well, Wallmer, Schneider, Bermann.”
“We haven’t spoken about you.”
“So what have you spoken about?”
“I’ve got to go now, Louise. Chervel . . .” Again he left his sentence unfinished.
She followed him to the door. “Of course you spoke about me. Bermann told you that I . . . that . . .”
They stopped and looked at each other. The corners of Muller’s mouth crept downward as if in slow motion. The tension vanished from his facial muscles. He blinked slowly, as if afraid that any rapid movement might encourage Bonì to continue talking.
“Why are you asking if you already know?” he said.
He went back to his desk, eyeing the photograph as he sat down. A ritual. A glance at the photograph each time he sat down. He’d done that last year too. Crossing his arms, he looked at her.
She pointed to the door behind her. “What about Chervel?” Louise sounded scornful. She realized too late that she ought not to have asked this question.
Muller blushed perceptibly, but said nothing.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’d hoped . . .” She went over and leaned on the table. She was grateful that he hadn’t forced her to say: Bermann told you I’m a drinker. He hadn’t wanted to hear it; she hadn’t wanted to say it. At least they had something in common.
Bonì lowered her voice. “I need a gun.”
He swallowed. “You’re in France!”
“Justin, I’m going to the monastery; there must be answers there. Bermann and the others . . . Did they tell you about the monk who’s disappeared?”
Muller hesitated a moment before giving the faintest of nods. He was remarkably pale. He put his hands on the desk and interlaced his fingers.
Zen and the Art of Murder Page 10