The following summer, already early September perhaps. The father of an acquaintance had died, a Stüssi-Moosi. She had been our housemaid about fifteen years before. She sent me word that her father’s farm was up for sale. I knew the farm. It was old and half fallen down. I was determined to buy it. An impressive view. Below, the Stüssi valley with the village of Stüssikofen, then Flötigen, the high Alps. Behind the farm a bluff fell steeply away. The village was a wide place in the road, still not in the real Alps. Old houses. A chapel. Now and again the pastor from Flötigen would preach. An inn. How astonishing that there still are villages without tourists. I was to deal with the “spokesman,” which is what they call a lawyer there. He lived in a room of the inn Zum Leuenberger, taking care of business in the taproom. With farmers for an audience. He seemed to be more the village judge, was smoothing over a brawl as I arrived. A cursing farmer with a bandaged head was on his way out. With the passing of time, I find it difficult to describe the spokesman. Approaching his fifties. He might have been considerably younger. A chronic alcoholic. Drank bäzi, a kind of schnapps distilled from assorted fruits. He looked sort of hunchbacked, but wasn’t. Peevish. The face bloated, not ignoble. The eyes watery blue, bloodshot. Crafty, for the most part, often dreamy. He tried to swindle me. He demanded double the price my former housemaid had indicated. Had some complicated story about difficulties with the Stüssikofen village council. He babbled on about unwritten laws. He claimed the farm was haunted, Stüssi-Moosi, the farmer, had hanged himself. Every Stüssi-Moosi farmer hanged himself. The farmers eavesdropped with brazen candor, mimed hanging when he mentioned farmers hanging themselves, put their right hands above their heads as if pulling on ropes, rolled their eyes, stuck out their tongues. I realized the spokesman was not trying to swindle me, but rather to prevent the farm from being sold—and then later on he swindled the family of our former housemaid. He sold the house for a song to a Stüssi-Sütterlin. Once he sensed that my interest in the farm was fading, owing more to the hostility of the farmers than to his subterfuges, he turned affable. Though of course he was also drunk by then. But not unpleasantly so. On the contrary. He began to be witty. Though in a vicious sort of way. He started to tell stories. The farmers moved in closer. They egged him on. Apparently they knew his stories. They listened to him the way people listen to someone telling fairy tales. He claimed he had been a famous lawyer in our nation’s largest city. Had made money hand over fist. Worked for major banks, for the city’s rich families. But his favorite clients had been the prostitutes. “My whores,” as he phrased it. He had countless wild stories. Especially about a fellow named Orchid Noldi. I assumed he made most of them up. But I was fascinated.
Less by the stories themselves than by the social criticism he packed them with. There was something anarchic about them. They corresponded not to reality but to his own brain. He got tangled up in a story about a murder trial. He imitated the defendant, the five judges. The farmers whinnied. He had won the trial as the lawyer for the defense. And then he declared that the acquitted man had been the murderer after all. The acquitted man, a canton senator, had hoodwinked him and the five judges. The farmers hooted, they were drinking bäzi now too. They had obviously heard this story many times and couldn’t get enough of it. They kept asking for the spokesman to go on, he played coy, they poured him some bäzi, he pointed at me, it wouldn’t interest me, he was sure, they poured me some bäzi, of course, of course, it would interest me. The spokesman told how he had tried to have the case retried, but the government and ultimately the supreme court had prevented it. A canton senator was a canton senator after all. Every legal hurdle, every trick, evoked peals of mocking laughter. That’s the way things were in free Switzerland, a farmer shouted and ordered another bäzi. And so he had done it his way, the spokesman said. He had waited until the councillor had returned from a trip around the world. He had learned the arrival time from the newspapers. Then he had told the police commandant what he intended to do. Who had then had the airport sealed off. But the spokesman had smuggled his way in, disguised as a cleaning lady in the cleaning crew. He had hidden a revolver in his detachable artificial breasts. A policeman had made a grab for his falsies. The spokesman had screamed that he was being raped. The police commandant had apologized and had the cop locked up in the airport jail cell. The farmers slapped their thighs and yowled. Then the spokesman told how he had shot and killed the murderer whom he had helped get acquitted. On the way to the first-class lounge. The senator had fallen face first into a cleaning bucket. He had done in the ’scallion just like Tell had done in Gessler on the path through the gorge, a farmer bawled out. The others shouted their approval. One helluva racket. That was real justice. The spokesman acted out his arrest. Described how the commandant had ripped his falsies right off his body. Climbed up on the table. Held his defense summation before the five judges who had acquitted the murdered man and now had to acquit his murderer. He had told those judges they could “go to hell with their justice system” and had become the spokesman for the Stüssi valley. Then he fell off his chair. A farmer, a half-full bottle of bäzi in his left hand, helped him up, pounded the story teller on the shoulders, declared that he himself was a Stüssi-Stüssi, and the spokesman was the only non-Stüssi in Stüssikofen, but a Swiss to the bone for all that, then he chugged what was left in the bottle and fell across the table, began to snore. The others struck up the former national anthem, whose first verse ends with: “Hail, O Helvetia! Sons hast thou e’en yet, like those Saint Jacob met, joyful in war.” The story seemed somehow familiar. I wanted to learn some further details, but the spokesman was too drunk for me to talk to him. Several of the farmers had stood up menacingly while the others were now singing the end of the second verse: “And should the Alps one day, e’er fail to guard the way, stand then with God, and like the very rock we’ll stand inured to shock, death itself we mock, by pain unawed.” I felt sorry for the spokesman. A star lawyer had ended up a down-at-the-heel backwoods pettifogger. He had committed a murder, had won his own trial, but the murder had finished him. I gave up the idea of buying the farm. I had to leave; in Stüssi valley there’s no love lost for city people, and since they could see by my car that I was from Neuchâtel, I was a no-good outsider, although I could speak the same language they did, though perhaps sing it less. I left the inn. “When thou walkest into light, bathed in rays of morning bright, upon the height behold thy might! When the Alpine snows turn pink, but think, O Swiss, but think, ye have now seen and scanned God in his high Fatherland!” rumbled behind me. They had switched to the new national anthem.
Then forgotten again. The old man in the wheelchair, his daughter, the drunken murderer in the Stüssikofen taproom surrounded by drunken farmers—they sank into my unconscious. My annoyance at not having been able to buy the farm concealed them. It wasn’t just on a whim that I had wanted to buy the farm. I needed a change. Back home again, I began to reorganize. Trash that had collected during forty years of writing and authoring was tossed away. Piles of unanswered correspondence, bills I had never seen and yet paid nevertheless, accounts I had never paid attention to, mountains of galleys, endless reworked manuscripts, fragments, photographs, drawings, caricatures, one helluva mess, some of which had to be put in order, some done away with. Mountains of unread manuscripts, submerged for decades in the flood of unanswered mail—I opened one at random. “The Execution of Justice.” Pitch the rubbish. As I was throwing it away, my eyes fell on the first page of the manuscript, and I read the name Dr.h.c. Isaak Kohler. I retrieved the manuscript from its plastic bag. A certain Dr. H. had sent it from Zürich, but I never read manuscripts people send me. I’m not interested in literature, I write my own. Dr. H.—I tried to recall. Chur, 1957. After a lecture. In a hotel. I went to the bar to have a last whiskey. Besides the elderly woman tending bar, there was a gentleman, who introduced himself to me as soon as I had taken my seat. It was Dr. H., the former commandant of the canton police of Zürich, a large and heavys
et man, old-fashioned, with a gold watch chain across his vest, the sort you seldom see nowadays. Despite his age, his bristly hair was still black, his moustache bushy. He was sitting on a high bar stool drinking red wine, smoking a Bahianos, and he addressed the woman tending bar by her first name. His voice was loud and his gestures were quite lively, a man with no affectations, who at once both attracted and frightened me. He drove me back to Zürich in his car the next morning. I paged through the manuscript. It had been typed. Above the title, handwritten: “Do what you want with this.” I began to read the manuscript. I read it through. The author, a lawyer, was no match for his material. The present kept interfering. He waited till the end to tell the most important part, and then all at once he ran out of time. He hurried it. For the most part the work of a dilettante. And certain scenes disconcerted me, too. And then the chapter headings: an attempt to bring order to disorder. And some of the names. Who has a name like Nikodemus Molch, or Daphne Müller, or Ilse Freude? And who keeps a whole army of garden gnomes? Hadn’t the commandant remarked that he loved Jean Paul? I couldn’t ask the commandant. He had died. 1970. Then I read the letter the commandant had enclosed: “Just back from Stüssi-Leupin’s funeral. Only Mock was there. Joined him at the Du Théâtre, ate liver dumpling soup, tournedos rossini with green beans. Afterward a long search for Mock’s hearing aid. The waitress had carried it out on the platter. As far as our justice fanatic goes, he really did manage to sneak into the airport. As part of the cleaning crew. And he fired the shot too, and was so frightened when the gun went off that he fell face first into his bucket; fortunately Kohler didn’t notice a thing, a four-engine job was just taking off. The assassin couldn’t have done any damage in any case. He was wrong. I had checked out the secondhand dealer. The bullets in the alpine horn were carefully prepared blanks. Afterward didn’t know what I should do with our justice fanatic. He was at the end of his tether. I didn’t want to hand him over to the courts. Stüssi-Leupin (see above) took him on. Got him a job. That was several years ago. Your Dr. H., Commandant Emeritus.” I placed a call to Stüssikofen. The keeper of the inn Zum Leuenberger answered. I asked for the spokesman. Dead. “Pegged out” last week. What had they called him? Called him? Spokesman. Where was he buried? In Flötigen, he thought. I drove there. The cemetery lay outside of town. Enclosed by a stone wall. A wrought-iron entrance gate. It was cold. The first time I had sensed winter coming on that year. Something about cemeteries makes me feel at home. I played in a cemetery as a child. It had individuality. Every dead person had his own grave, you saw gravestones, wrought-iron crosses, pedestals, columns, even an angel. On the grave of one Christeli Möser. But the Flötigen cemetery was a modern cemetery, a cemetery ratified by the Flötigen town council ten years before. Whatever had died previously was no longer to be found. Since the cemetery’s size was limited and could not be expanded—the price of land was too high—only ten years’ rest in local soil was allowed. Then off to eternity. But during those ten years, you had to lie nice-and-proper-like. Each in a grave like every other. With the same flowers. The same gravestone. Chiseled with the same script. And so the dead lay in ordered ranks, even the one I was looking for. Disorderly in life, orderly as a corpse. The last one, next to a still-empty grave. The stone and the flowers (asters, chrysanthemums) were already in place. On the gravestone:
FELIX SPÄT, SPOKESMAN, 1930–1984
Back home again, I read the manuscript through once more. It must have been a typed copy of the original. Despite whatever poetic turns of phrase might have crept in by way of the commandant, it was the most authentic available. As far as Spät’s tale goes, in Stüssikofen he had boasted of a murder he had never committed, and in Munich Kohler had blamed the murder on someone he had wanted to get rid of along with the murdered man. I had the manuscript xeroxed. I found Dr.h.c. Isaak Kohler’s address in the telephone book. I sent him the copy. Several days later I received a letter from Hélène Kohler. She asked me to pay her a visit. Her father’s condition precluded her leaving home. I telephoned her. The next day I entered the Kohler estate.
It was as if I were walking into the manuscript, as if it were commenting on me as I approached the wrought-iron portal to the garden of the villa. Nature herself was redolent of wealth. The October flora was anything but shabby. The trees downright majestic. Still almost in summer glory. No foehn wind. Ingeniously trimmed hedges and bushes. Moss-covered statues. Naked, bearded gods with youthful rear ends and calves. Quiet ponds. A pompous pair of peafowl. Everything deathly still and eerie. Only a few birds could be heard. The house entwined with wild grape, ivy and roses, heavily gabled, large and roomy. Antique furniture, priceless pieces. Famous impressionists on the walls. Later I saw Old Dutch masters (an ancient maid led the way). I was left to wait in Dr.h.c. Isaak Kohler’s den. The room was spacious. Gilded by the sun. Through the open French doors you could walk directly into the park. The two windows flanking the door went almost to the floor. Costly parquet. A giant desk. Deep leather armchairs. No pictures on the walls, just books to the ceiling. Every one of them a volume on mathematics or natural science, a considerable library. In a broad alcove, the billiard table, on which lay four balls. Through the open door, ancient Dr.h.c. Isaak Kohler came rolling, more delicate, more fragile, more transparent than ever, almost a phantom. He did not appear to notice me. He rolled over to the billiard table. To my amazement he climbed out of his wheelchair and began to play billiards. From a door at the rear came Hélène. Sporty—blue jeans, silk shirt, handknit sweater with three large red, blue, and yellow squares. She laid a finger to her lips. I understood. I followed her. A large drawing room. Another pair of open French doors. We sat down out on the terrace. Under an awning. The last time I’ve been able to sit outside this year. Old wicker chairs, an iron table with a slate top. A mower out on the lawn. The first piles of leaves. The peacocks among them. She said she had just been doing some gardening. A young fellow was turning over soil at the back of the park. Whistled as he worked. She was going to have to get rid of the peacocks. The neighbors were complaining. They had been complaining for fifty years now. But her father loved peacocks. She thought perhaps only because they annoyed the neighbors. He had simply let the peacocks scream. Despite the police, who had dropped by from time to time. Peacock screeches were the most ghastly thing you could ever hear. The houses all around them had declined in value because of the peacocks. The price of land had gone down. Her father had bought it all up. The neighbors no longer dared complain. Then she poured me some tea. Her father was a monster, I said. That might be, she said. Had she read the manuscript? Skimmed it, she answered. Spät had loved her, I remarked, he had had trouble writing about it, and she had loved him once too. Good old Spät, she said, the only person he ever loved was Daphne, his writing was liveliest when it was about her. He only imagined his love for her, Hélène. Had only imagined, I corrected her, good old Spät had died fourteen days before, in the Stüssi valley. “The tea’s cold,” she said, and tossed what was left in her cup across the terrace and onto lawn covered with yellow leaves, right at the feet of the young gardener, who happened to be passing by, whistling saucily.
Then the peacocks screeched. They normally didn’t do that at this time of day, she explained, they would stop soon enough. But the peacocks didn’t stop screeching. We had best go inside, she said, and we went inside, closed the French doors, sat down in two upholstered chairs, a small game table between us. Cognac? Gladly. She poured. The peacocks went on screeching outside, stubborn, eerie. Fortunately her father couldn’t hear the beasts, she said, and she asked if I had read the part about the genuine Monika Steiermann. All of that seemed most improbable to me, I replied. She had been invited to see her once too, on a summer evening, Hélène said, she hadn’t even been quite eighteen at the time and, like everyone else in the city, had thought Daphne was Monika Steiermann and had admired her, but had been jealous too, and had been jealous of Benno as well, because he had avoided her, and who all hadn’t he
seduced in those days, it had been downright chic to sleep with Benno, just as it had been chic to sleep with Monika Steiermann, although everyone was convinced that the two of them would marry, and that had been considered chic too, but she, Hélène, as Kohler’s daughter, had been out of bounds. Benno had stayed clear of her. And yet she hadn’t thought twice about accepting Steiermann’s invitation, perhaps she had secretly hoped she would meet Benno there, that’s how much of a crush she had had on him. She had told her father about it after dinner, over strong coffee. Her father had asked if she had been invited to the apartment on Aurorastrasse, and picked up the bottle of Marc, he always drank Marc at home. To Mon Repos, she had answered, no one had ever been invited there before. No, her father had replied, until now only he and Lüdewitz had been invited there. Might he give her some advice? She wouldn’t follow his advice, she had rejoined stubbornly. She shouldn’t accept the invitation, her father had said and finished off his Marc, that was his advice. But she had gone anyway. She had pedaled her bike to Wagnerstutz and had rung the bell at the entrance, after first leaning her bike against the iron fence, she went on to explain. She had been surprised when nothing happened. Then she had noticed that the large iron gate was unlocked, had opened it and walked into the park, but she had barely set foot in the park when she was overcome with inexplicable fear, she had wanted to go back, but the gate wouldn’t open again. Whereas until now she had been hesitant in telling all this, from here on she spoke as if everything that went on had nothing to do with her but had happened to someone else. According to her report, she was aware from that moment on that she had been lured into a trap. The neglected park lay in the glow of an intense sunset, a stroke of burning red that seemed malicious somehow. Mechanically she made her way up toward the invisible villa. The gravel crunched beneath her feet. Then she noticed a garden gnome beside the path, then three, and then several of them peering through the stalks of the unmowed lawn, among lupines and larkspur, rank overgrowth of cosmoses, malevolent in the twilight, despite their chubby-cheeked faces, especially when she noted gnomes smoking pipes and grinning down at her from the trees; disgusted, she hurried past these gnomes, until she found herself opposite garden gnomes with large, almost bald, beardless heads—glazed ceramic figures larger than the other ones, about the size of four-year-old children. She had not dared to go past them, but then she noticed that one of these gnomes was winking at her; she stared in terror at the figure. The figure began to grin. She hurried up through the park, among squadrons of obscene garden gnomes, until she reached a meadow without any gnomes, a gentle slope from which the villa was visible above her. She stood there out of breath. She looked back, hoping she had been mistaken. It all seemed like a terrifying dream. Then she spotted the grinning gnome again, moving toward her with small tottering steps; she ran toward the villa, ran through the open front door, she heard the patter of running steps behind her, she ran through a vestibule, then through a hall with a crackling fireplace although it was summer, all empty, with just the patter of running steps behind her. She then found herself in a den, slammed the door behind her, bolted it, looked about her. She was alone. The walls were covered with photographs of Benno. She threw herself into a leather armchair. A strange, sweetish odor. She lost consciousness. Then she came to again, she said, continuing her tale. Four naked colossuses had her in their embrace. Their heads had been shaved bald, and they stank of olive oil. They were slippery as fish. She couldn’t remember it all now. She fought back. Someone laughed. Then her thighs were wrenched apart. Professor Winter emerged, naked and pot-bellied. Above this lecherous faun she saw the garden gnome that had been pattering behind her. It was crouching atop a cupboard, and only then had she realized that it wasn’t a garden gnome but some female creature lurking and gazing down from the cupboard, and that everything that was happening was happening only for the sake of this creature with the almost bald head of an adult and the body of a four-year-old, that she had chased her into the villa so that things that could not be perpetrated on the creature, but that she wished to have perpetrated on her, would be perpetrated on Hélène; and once Winter had taken her, first Benno and then Daphne threw themselves on her; she was overcome by her only weapon, lust, and the more immeasurable her lust grew, the more tortured were the eyes of the creature. Its whole body quivered, a boundless envy in its eyes, as if shaken by the misfortune of being excluded from the lust Hélène was experiencing while being raped by creatures at her command; until the creature screamed “Stop!” in utmost horror and broke into sobs. Hélène was set free, the creature was carried out, and she was alone again in the den. She gathered her clothes together, there were still embers in the hall fireplace, then groping her way through the vestibule and the pitch-black park, she arrived at the entrance gate. It had been unlocked, she said, concluding her report, and she had ridden her bike back home.
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