“I’m not much interested in making enemies,” I replied. “Is this an interrogation, Commandant?”
“Just curious, Spät,” the commandant sidestepped. “You’re not even thirty yet.”
“I couldn’t afford to dawdle my way through university,” I replied.
“You were our youngest lawyer ever,” the commandant remarked, “and now you aren’t a lawyer anymore.”
“The review board did its duty,” I said.
“If only I could get some image of you in my mind,” the commandant said, “it’d be easier for me to figure you out. But I can’t find the image. The first time I paid you a visit, your struggle for justice seemed plausible, and I felt a little shabby, but you’re not plausible at all now. I’ll accept this alibi of yours, but that you care about justice—that I no longer accept.”
The commandant stood up. “I feel sorry for you, Spät. You’ve got yourself involved in an absurd affair, that much is clear, and it’s caused you to become absurd yourself—but that probably can’t be changed. I assume that’s why you’ve let yourself sink to this. Has Kohler written you again?”
“From Jamaica,” I answered.
“How long has he been gone now?”
“Over a year,” I said, “almost a year and a half.”
“The fellow’s whizzing back and forth around the globe,” the commandant said. “But maybe he’ll return soon.”
Then he left.
Postscript: Three days later now. That I had slept with Daphne was something I concealed from the commandant. He didn’t pursue it really, nor was it important to him. I have thought long about whether I ought to record the fact here. But the commandant is right, it’s all become so pointless that there’s no point in concealing anything. Even the most shameful things are part of reality, and my role in Daphne’s downfall was a shameful one, even if the real reason was an act of revenge by the “genuine” Monika Steiermann. After the scandal broke, Daphne was nowhere to be found for almost a year. No one knew where she was, not even Lienhard, or so he claimed. Her apartment on Aurorastrasse remained empty, but the rent was paid. By whom, no one knew. Then she reappeared. In all her old glory. As if nothing had happened, though with a new retinue. What she had formerly done out of extravagance she now did professionally. Having been left in the lurch by her friends, she now made the rounds in her white Mercedes, demanded a horrendous price, and got herself back on her financial feet. Despite taxes. Local taxes, national taxes, army taxes, old age insurance, widows’ and orphans’ insurance. It was considered chic to sleep with her; there’s no need to wax epic. But neither do I want to conceal the fact that she did show up once at my place. About two in the morning she knocked at the door to my apartment on Spiegelgasse. I crept from the couch that I used as a bed, thinking it must be Lucky, turned on the light, opened the door, and in she walked. She looked around her. The window was half open, the room ice-cold (it was the middle of February), the “aerial views” were back up on the walls, my clothes were on the desk, my coat over the armchair. She was wearing a chinchilla—the story about her high price must have been true, or else the “genuine” Steiermann was still paying—she took off her clothes, tossing everything over the armchair, and lay down on my couch. I lay down beside her. She was beautiful, and it was cold. She didn’t stay long. She dressed again, reached for her chinchilla and laid a thousand-franc bill on my desk. When I protested, she slapped me in the face with her right hand, as hard as she could. One doesn’t enjoy telling a story like that, and I have never told it to anyone. And though I’m putting it down here, it’s only because every hope has been washed downriver. This morning, shortly before six, our friend Stuber from vice was here and reported that they had fished Lucky and the Marquis out of the lake (Steiermann’s villa is not far from where they were found). I was somewhat hurt when cheerful Stuber left again: He hadn’t asked me a single question; the commandant could at least have sent someone from the homicide squad. Lucky and the Marquis hadn’t made tracks out of the country fast enough. And so our national holiday, the First of August, 1958, began rather dismally. Besides which it was a Friday, besides which Daphne was being buried—the coroner had released the body for burial. At ten o’clock. On the First of August, people work until noon, even the gravediggers, a whole national holiday is too much for a small nation, we’re aware of our dimensions. I had just left my room when it began to thunder, thunderstorms being pretty much an everyday occurrence this summer. My VW is at the shop. (I had been parked above some lake or other, and then as the night turned wild and stormy, my Porsche and I—ah yes, Herr Prosecutor, this too I confess—and Madeleine [was it Madeleine?] skidded off Tüfweg into the bushes; Lucky took care of the whole thing, the girl was in the hospital for two months, and I had my old VW back. Had. I had had it back. I could have picked it up long ago, but my credit has run out with the garage. I am afraid of my bills.) So I had to take a streetcar to Daphne’s funeral. Why it was exactly that I pushed down on the handle of the door to the Assembly Hall of the Saints of Uetli and why, when the door opened, I grabbed one of the two umbrellas that I had left there six days before, is no longer clear to me. Was it out of pure thoughtlessness or some macabre sense of humor? I don’t know anymore. Although it was only nine-thirty, the sky had already turned dark black as I ran through the old city to the Bellevue, using my umbrella like a walking stick. The whole world seemed nervous, and I was in a hurry, the way you are before a thunderstorm, and the one that was about to break must be a beauty, since it was still morning. Typical Daphne, I thought. From the Bellevue I took the streetcar. Actually, given the weather conditions, it was nonsense to go to a funeral, but I climbed mechanically into the overfilled streetcar all the same. Now and again the sun broke through the black wall of clouds, as if a spotlight were being turned on and off. At Kreuzplatz, a stout but rather small man got on—he was clad in black, had a shiny bald head, well-kempt black beard streaked with white, and gold rimless glasses. The fellow looked so much like Winter that I automatically thought at first it must be the murdered man returned as ghost to attend the burial of his daughter, and he was carrying a funeral wreath, though I couldn’t read the inscription on the ribbons. A great many people were already gathered at the cemetery. All the local celebrities were present, no one is immune from nostalgia; none of her new clients had showed up. But Daphne Müller was not the only reason to pay a visit to our trimly planted municipal cemetery that morning. In the grave next to hers, Prosecutor Jämmerlin was being entrusted to eternity. His demise was likewise a matter of general sorrow, since there is indeed nothing sadder than no longer having something to be annoyed at. Fortunately, the mourning was well mixed with schadenfreude. His end had not lacked for comedy. He was at the sauna, which he visited once a week, had sat down naked next to the naked Lienhard, and had proved quite incapable of surviving the shock. And so people mourned up their sleeves. The simultaneous burials had their advantage, too. You could take part in both at the same time. I pondered who had come to whose burial—the mayor, Prosecutor Feuser, and several acquitted sodomites to Jämmerlin’s, in hopes of harassing the dead man in his grave; Lienhard, Leuppinger, Stoss, and Stüssi-Leupin to both; while Friedli, Lüdewitz, and Mondschein were probably there for Daphne’s interment. Everyone had brought an umbrella along. Pastor Senn stood beside Daphne’s grave, Pastor Wattenwyl beside Jämmerlin’s. Both ready to go. I waited impatiently, shifting my weight from one leg to the other. It thundered. But neither Pastor Senn nor Pastor Wattenwyl began to pray. The elderly man I had met in the streetcar had set down his wreath (there were no others beside the coffin), TO MY HALF-SISTER DAPHNE, HUGO WINTER. This had to be Winter the grammar school teacher. It thundered again, this time a mighty crack. A gust of wind. Everyone waited and waited, the people at the neighboring grave even looked over our way, they were all waiting for something. I didn’t know for what, until I noticed: From the entrance to the cemetery came a wheelchair, the “genuine” Monika Steiermann was b
eing shoved in march rhythm toward the coffin by a gaunt nurse. The dwarf had made herself up garishly, a cinnabar wig sat atop her head, in imitation of Daphne’s hair, making the little woman’s head larger still; she was wearing a miniskirt, which looked like a baby’s frock, and a pearl necklace that hung down over the wheelchair, dangling between her crippled legs; in her lap she held an object wrapped in black cloth. Next to her walked a thickset man in a dark suit that was too short and tight for him, the filthy-rich boor Äschisburger, MP. He was dragging a wreath behind him. Even the mayor and Feuser, in fact the gravediggers as well, left Jämmerlin’s grave and moved over to Daphne Müller’s. Pastor Wattenwyl stood alone. He probably would have loved to join them. Renewed cracks of thunder, more gusts of wind.
“Damn,” someone beside me said. It was the commandant.
The nurse had pushed Steiermann up to the open grave, Äschisburger tossed his wreath on the coffin, the ribbon read TO MY BELOVED MONIKA, YOUR MONIKA.
Pastor Senn stepped forward, flinched at the next crack of thunder, and all in attendance moved in closer. Against my will, I was pressed up right behind Steiermann and found myself between the nurse and the commandant; in front of him was Äschisburger, and in front of the nurse, Stüssi-Leupin. The coffin was lowered into the grave. There was no one at the adjoining grave to lower Jämmerlin’s coffin, Pastor Wattenwyl was still gazing over our way, Pastor Senn timorously opened his Bible, announced John, chapter 8, verses 5 to 11, but never got to read his text. Monika Steiermann lifted up the object she had been carrying and smashed it, with a strength no one would have thought her capable of, into the grave, thumping it down onto Daphne’s coffin with such force that it broke through the lid. It was the bronze head of Mock’s “false” Monika Steiermann. Pastor Wattenwyl came stumbling over, and Pastor Senn was so terrified and confused that he automatically said: “Let us pray.”
But here came the first heavy raindrops, the gusts kneaded themselves into a storm wind, and the umbrellas opened up. Since I was standing behind Steiermann, I wanted to protect the dwarf and opened my own as well. I pressed a button down near the handle, and to my bewilderment my bumpershoot flew off, ascended, circled above the gathered mourners, and fell, as the wind suddenly died, into Daphne’s grave like a great black bird. A lot of people had to suppress their laughter. I stared at the umbrella handle I was holding in my hand: It was a stiletto. I realized I might well be standing guard at the grave of the murdered woman with the murder weapon in my hand, while the pastor said the Lord’s Prayer. Then the gravediggers began to work away with their shovels, and the coffin with Jämmerlin inside could be lowered now as well. The nurse rolled Steiermann away, I had to make way for her but was still standing there with my stiletto, umbrellas closing all around: The thunderstorm, sparing our cemetery out of piety, was unleashing itself on the center of town—cellars were still being pumped out late that evening—while lightning flashed all about. People were celebrating now. Garish, overpowering sunlight flooded the shoveling gravediggers and the thronging crowd as it exited the cemetery. Pastor Senn saw to it that he got out of there as quickly as possible, and Pastor Wattenwyl just hung around in total confusion; the mayor and Feuser had already left. Only Lienhard was still standing at Jämmerlin’s grave, watching it being shoveled full. As he walked by me he was weeping. He had lost an enemy. I stared down at the stiletto again. Its tip was dark brown, as was the groove in the thin blade.
“Your umbrella is no longer useable, Spät,” the commandant, standing next to me, remarked; he took the umbrella-handled stiletto out of my hand and started off for the cemetery exit.
The Sale: A postcard Kohler sent from Hiroshima has reassured me, he’s going on to Singapore. Finally have time to report the crucial material, even if it was as stupid as it is crucial, and as inexcusable, despite my financial straits. I sent Stüssi-Leupin the reports, and two days later he received me in the living room of his home some distance from the city. The term living room is an understatement—more like an uninhabited hall. The room is square, I’d guess sixty feet by sixty feet, three sides of it glass, no door visible anywhere; beyond one of the walls is a view down to an old town, through which, since it has been spared an autobahn, an endless line of cars rolls, lending the landscape a lively, ghostly look in the dusk as chains of light move along the arteries of the old walls; through the other two glass walls you look up to erratic blocks, lighted from the rear, tons and tons of mass that Mock has hewn into those granite gods that ruled the earth before man, ripping mountains up out of the depths, rending continents apart, monoliths, casting gigantic phallic shadows into the empty hall—for except for a grand piano, the only other furnishings were two club chairs placed on a diagonal across from it. The grand piano stood almost at the entrance, in the worst conceivable spot, next to a wooden stairway that led to a gallery, which must have led to several rather small rooms, since the house had looked to me, as I drove up in my Porsche, to be all on one floor, and I recalled that from the town below I had thought it was a bungalow. In one of the two club chairs sat my former boss, wrapped in a bathrobe, immobile, illumined only by a floor lamp between the two chairs. I cleared my throat, he didn’t move, I walked across the multicolored ingeniously patterned marble tiles that covered the hall floor, Stüssi-Leupin still didn’t move. I sat down in the other club chair, sinking into a sea of leather. Beside the chair I discovered an uncorked bottle of red wine sitting in a basket on the floor, a small tulip-shaped crystal glass, and a bowl of nuts; the same items were placed beside the club chair in which Stüssi-Leupin sat, about twelve feet away, except that there was also a telephone in front of him on the floor. I gazed at Stüssi-Leupin. He was sleeping. I thought of the portrait Varlin had done of him, which I had always considered exaggerated, for only now did I realize the genius with which the artist had captured him: under a tangled pelt of snow-white hair, a square peasant skull, brutally hewn into shape, a nose like some sort of tuber, deep creases that led down to the chiseled chin, the unspeakably defiant and yet gentle mouth. I looked at this face as if it were a familiar and yet puzzling landscape, for I knew little about Stüssi-Leupin; although he had been my boss for several years, he had never exchanged a single personal word with me, which was perhaps the reason I didn’t stay with his firm.
I waited. All at once his astonished childlike eyes were staring at me through his rimless glasses.
“Why aren’t you drinking, Spät?” he said, wide awake, as if he hadn’t been sleeping at all (and maybe he hadn’t been). “Pour yourself some wine, I’m going to do the same for myself.”
We drank. He watched me, said not a word and watched me.
Before we got around to speaking about this difficulty, he began, gazing straight ahead, and though he could well imagine the basis of that difficulty, he would like to add a personal comment, one that likewise had to do with the scruples now plaguing me, which had sent me marching off to him—well, well, that wasn’t quite right either, I had driven up in a Porsche after all, posh, posh.
He laughed to himself—something seemed to amuse him immensely—took a drink and continued. Had he ever told me his own life story. No? But why should he have. Fine. He was the son of a farmer up in the mountains, and his family was called Stüssi-Leupin to avoid confusion with the Stüssi-Bierlins, with whom they had, from time out of mind, been feuding over a potato field that was so steep they had to cart it back up into place every year, often several times a year, a field that with good luck yielded enough potatoes for three, four, servings of home fries, and yet on account of which people sued, thrashed and murdered one another. Were still at it. To be brief, after finishing his studies, he had moved back to his home village as a lawyer, to the Stüssi village, as it was called, and not only were the Stüssi-Leupins at daggers with the Stüssi-Bierlins, but also the Stüssi-Moosi with the Stüssi-Sütterlins, and so on through the whole Stüssi clan, though that had been the case only at the very beginning, at the founding of the village, if there had
ever been such a thing, nowadays every Stüssi family was on the outs with every other one. And in that mountain podunk, Spät, in that rat’s nest of family intrigue, murder, incest, perjury, theft, embezzlement, and libel, he had spent his apprenticeship as a lawyer for farmers, as their spokesman, as they called attorneys there, not with the intention of bringing justice to the valley, but to keep it out: A farmer who arranged an accident for his old lady and then married his dairymaid, or a farmer’s wife who, after she had deftly applied some arsenic to send the old man to the cemetery, married the farmhand—they were of more use on their farms than in prison. Empty prisons cost the state less than full ones, or vacant farms, and so the webs were woven and the beloved soil slid into the valley.
He laughed to himself.
“God, what a time that was!” he marveled. “And then the devil must have put a burr up my ass, and I go and marry a von Melchior, move to the lousy city, and become a star lawyer. What’s the weather like?”
“The foehn is blowing. Much too warm for December,” I replied. “Like spring.”
“Shall we go outside?”
“Fine with me,” I answered.
“‘Go’ is perhaps not quite the right word,” he declared, pressed a button on the arm of his club chair, and the oversized glass walls sank into the floor, the floodlights behind the erratics went out. We sat beneath the floating concrete ceiling as if under the open sky, illuminated only by the floor lamp.
A swanky piece of architecture, he declared, staring straight ahead. He felt like the Führer in his Reichskanzlei. But what else could you expect, Spät, as a star lawyer he had had to put up a Van der Heussen, although he would have preferred a podunk Friedli. Fate—you get to be all the rage. At one time these walls saw one party after another, the people in the little town had complained, podunkers all, until—well, that wasn’t the point. He had had the furniture removed. All modern stuff.
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