Allmen and the Dragonflies

by Martin Suter

  In a rare moment of self-sufficiency, he went into the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea all by himself.

  9

  The opera premiere subscription was another core item on Allmen’s list of basic needs. If you couldn’t afford that, you really were broke.

  Allmen had already secured two of the most sought-after seats while his father was alive: center orchestra, fifth row. His father had made no objection to paying over four thousand francs each year because this counted as an investment in his son’s education. He once accompanied his son to a Magic Flute premiere, but had to abandon his seat soon after the overture due to a persistent fit of coughing.

  These days the two seats cost twice as much. They were still in the name of Johann Friedrich v. Allmen. However this season Allmen had sublet the second. One of his many wider acquaintances, Serge Lauber, an investment banker, had offered him six thousand francs, cash in hand. That was an offer Allmen could hardly refuse in his situation, as it financed half of his own seat too, and he had been behind with the subscription payments since the start of the season, although he hadn’t received a reminder. With such long-standing subscribers and generous former donors one showed a little patience.

  This wet fall evening it was the premiere of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. Allmen looked forward to the opera nights, which he always began with an aperitif in the Golden Bar and rounded off with a late supper from the small menu at Promenade.

  He was wearing a midnight-blue tie, minimally patterned, and a seasonally dark suit made by his long neglected English tailor, under a navy cashmere overcoat made by the latter’s equally neglected colleague in Rome.

  Herr Arnold took his umbrella from him by way of a greeting and opened the door of his 1978 Fleetwood Cadillac. Allmen was a regular customer of Herr Arnold, who owned two taxis, a Mercedes diesel and this shiny black and chrome American conveyance, which he took out of the garage for fans, such as Allmen. For these customers Herr Arnold worked on account, sending a monthly invoice. The fact that these had been paid rather irregularly of late must surely be for administrative reasons. Someone who lived like that could hardly have money worries.

  Allmen reclined on the wine red leather seat in the back of the Fleetwood, enjoying the short journey from the villa district to the city center. Herr Arnold, a compact, circumspect man in his sixties, was the kind of taxi driver who talked only when he was asked a question. He did not inflict his political, religious or traffic-related problems on his passengers. Allmen appreciated that nearly as much as the lovingly maintained interior of this whispering giant.

  They glided slowly over the wet asphalt, lit by brake lights, headlights and streetlamps. The silhouettes of pedestrians and their umbrellas rushed past the shop windows. The loudest sound inside the car was the brief hiccup as one of the rubber seals on the windshield wipers caught every other time it returned down.

  “Can you still get those seals?” Allmen asked, so that the journey wasn’t quite so silent.

  “No. I have to cut them to size myself. And if the rubber’s too hard, or the strip’s too narrow, this is what happens. Does it bother you?”

  “Not in the slightest,” Allmen said.

  “Well it sure bothers me. It drives me crazy!” Herr Arnold fell silent, shocked at having revealed his innermost feelings.

  Allmen assured him once more that he, the passenger, really wasn’t disturbed by it. He had asked purely out of interest.

  Shortly afterward, the car pulled up at the Golden Bar. Allmen signed the receipt for the journey and gave an ample tip to Herr Arnold, who then held up his umbrella for Allmen, accompanying him the few steps over the sidewalk to the entrance.

  10

  As its name implied, the Golden Bar was decorated, in the 1960s, with a great deal of gold. The shelves holding the bottles rested on gold bars, the counter and bar stools were gold painted, the mirrors and pictures gold framed, the ashtrays and snack dishes golden and the walls and ceiling papered with gold foil. Smoke and time had matted and darkened this excess of gold, leaving the bar looking more distinguished now.

  Allmen was a habitué. The bartender, an aging Spaniard with over forty years bartending experience around the world, and a gallery of similarly darkened brass plaques from international cocktail mixing competitions, had already begun measuring tequila, Cointreau and lemon juice in a battered shaker full of ice cubes as soon as Allmen appeared.

  Before the opera he always drank two margaritas. They put him in an expectant, cheerful and receptive mood. He sat on a bar stool and nodded to the bartender, who nodded back with a smile, wound a napkin around the shaker to protect his hands from the cold and began to shake—in his unfathomable rhythm, half the secret of his legendary cocktails.

  The bar was full, the after-work crowd in business dress giving way to the first of the premiere crowd, of whom Allmen knew several faces, and nodded to them. His premiere subtenant, Serge Lauber, was nowhere to be seen. They normally met here and walked over to the opera house together. But sometimes he was delayed and they met in their seats.

  The long-serving bar pianist was playing “Where or When,” as always when Allmen was in the Golden Bar. And as always Allmen sent him a glass of house white, which the old man raised for a conspiratorial toast toward Allmen, without interrupting the music.

  The bartender brought a fresh bowl of warm almonds and a second margarita. Allmen kept his eye on the door. The people arriving now were out of breath, their umbrellas dripping wet. Allmen was annoyed he hadn’t asked Herr Arnold to wait, as he used to. Damned economizing!

  He had already signed the check and left the bartender’s tip on the gold tray when a woman entered the bar. She was wearing a calf-length, green mink coat, with a platinum blonde bob, cherry red lips and black sunglasses, which she raised now in the dim lighting, to look around the bar.

  “You must be John,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’m Joëlle. Most people call me Jojo.”

  Allmen slid off his bar stool and took the strong, green-gloved hand in his. He was certain he had never seen her before.

  “Come on, it’s time we left,” Joëlle said.

  Allmen must have stared at her in consternation, because now she burst out laughing. “Sorry, Serge gave me his ticket. He can’t make it today.”

  Allmen fetched his coat and followed the woman. Outside the bar she was met by a young man with an umbrella. He accompanied first her and then him through the rain, now descending in bucketsful, to a Mercedes limousine parked half over the sidewalk with its hazard lights flashing.

  During the short drive to the opera house Joëlle drank a whisky on the rocks from the icebox recessed into the back-rest and smoked a cigarette. Allmen declined both offers. There was also time for her to tell him she lived in New York, but was staying with her father at the moment. He was pampering her after a ghastly divorce.

  11

  When Allmen came to help his new companion out of her coat at the coat check, she turned out to be wearing a kind of kimono, in honor of Madame Butterfly.

  “Oh, a kimono,” he said without thinking, and scoured the floor for a hole to sink into.

  “Goes with the opera,” Joëlle beamed and gave a little pirouette. Allmen was saved by the bell.

  She must have been in her late thirties, not an especially beautiful woman, but she knew how to get around that. The strands of her bangs, backcombed at her hairline and reaching down to the bridge of her nose, hid her low forehead. Her small, close-set but wonderfully emerald eyes were enlarged with flamboyant use of eyeliner. She had an attractive, boyish figure, and made her way, even through the premiere throng, rushing toward their seats, with a dancer’s grace.

  During the overture her hand crept onto Allmen’s thigh. By the end of the first act it had reached his crotch.

  12

  Jojo was snoring. She lay on her back in her larger-than-life bed, as the less-than-ladylike sound emerged from her less-than-cherry-red lips.

 
; The sound wasn’t wholly inappropriate, Allmen thought. That evening she had proved herself unladylike in every sense. Never in his life—and his life had been eventful in this regard—had a woman thrown herself on him with such insatiable hunger as this platinum-blonde opera acquaintance. In the back of the limousine, watched in the rearview mirror by the chauffeur’s eyes, he had managed to fend off Jojo’s advances. But once they were in the hall of the huge lakeside villa, he let her drag him up the wide flight of stairs and into her diva’s bedroom like a lioness her prey.

  There she undressed both of them simultaneously, threw herself onto the bed along with him, gobbled him up and then gave herself to him with a wantonness he had never encountered before.

  Immediately afterward she had fallen into a deep sleep, and soon began to snore.

  Allmen lay propped on his right arm and looked at her. The light was softened by the pink lampshade, but he could still see the marks of a life filled with too much sun, not enough sleep, too much fun and not enough love. He felt what he always felt in these situations: the connection he had persuaded himself he felt, without which he couldn’t go to bed with a woman, had gone. He studied the stranger next to him without affection. This time it was worse: he felt used by her, and resented her for it.

  He got up to look for a toilet.

  13

  The bedroom had two doors. They had entered via one of them, so the other must lead to the bath. He opened it, and found the light switch.

  He was standing in a large, black-marble bathroom, with a double vanity, a glazed shower cubicle, an old school kidney-shaped Jacuzzi and two further doors. The vanity was strewn with cosmetics, the mirrored cupboard doors open, behind them a chaos of tubes, tubs, pots, packs, bottles and medication packaging.

  On a bath stool next to the shower lay a damp, black towel, in the Jacuzzi another. Underwear and clothes hung over the edge of the tub. There was no toilet. It must be behind one of the two doors.

  Allmen tried one at random. It opened only half way. A piece of furniture was standing just behind it. He slipped past it into the room, switching on the light.

  This was not a restroom, but a room the same size as Jojo’s bedroom. And it had clearly once been a bedroom, sharing the bathroom with the other. Now it was a gallery.

  The light Allmen had switched on came from a series of simple glass vitrines, one of them placed in front of the door. Like aquariums, they were grouped around a solitary leather armchair in front of which was a small glass table.

  What they contained was a collection of Art Nouveau glassware: vases, lamps, bowls. It was immediately clear even to Allmen, who knew precious little about Art Nouveau, that they were the work of the legendary Émile Gallé.

  Allmen was not worried he would be caught. They were alone in the house. Jojo had assured him of that in the hall. So he took the time to have a proper look, pausing for longer at an especially fine group of pieces.

  They were five bowls shaped like wide, open goblets. Their glass ranged from totally opaque to semiopaque, in shades of creamy gold, rust, ice, snow, cinnamon, silver, licorice and cacao. They were each decorated with a large dragonfly. All were golden eyed, all different, but all of them looked as if caught midflight in the glass while it was liquid.

  Every one of the five pieces was perfectly executed, breathtakingly beautiful.

  Allmen tore himself away, switched off the light and returned to the bathroom. He tried the other door and found the toilet.

  14

  He lay on his back staring with one eye at the molded plaster ceiling, dimly lit by the night light. Jojo, whom he now thought of as Joëlle again, was still snoring. He had tried to turn her on her side twice. The first time she had emitted a groan, stopped snoring briefly, then turned onto her back again.

  The second time she had shaken him off, hitting his right eye with her elbow. He had to get up and bathe his eye in cold water to stop it from swelling up. Now he was lying with a damp cloth over his eye, cursing Joëlle, Lauber and himself.

  He would have left ages ago if it hadn’t still been pouring rain, and if he’d known where he was. He’d been so busy on the way here fighting Joëlle off, he hadn’t paid attention to the journey.

  According to his phone it was just after three when he decided he would leave anyway. Somewhere in this house there must be an envelope, a magazine or something with the address on it.

  He gathered up his clothes and went into the bathroom. His eye didn’t look good. It was red and already swollen.

  As he dressed, his rage at the slut, as he now called her, increased. He looked in the mirror, saw his crumpled, lipstick-smeared shirt, saw his swollen eye and felt like a gigolo thrown aside without his pay.

  Instead of returning to the bedroom and leaving the house from there, via the corridor, he opened the door to the glassware collection, wiping both door handles clean with a dry cloth. He cleaned the light switch too, and turned it on. Without thinking twice, he went straight to the vitrine with the dragonfly bowls. It was locked, but the key was in the lock.

  He opened it and took out one of the bowls. The finest, in his view. Against a milky background, the dragonfly stood out in caramel brown, its body black as a vanilla pod and its wings the color and texture of tortoiseshell. The stem of the bowl formed a sapphire bead at its widest point, divided at four regular intervals by large, white-marbled pearls of glass. The piece sat, cool and heavy, in Allmen’s hand. He locked the vitrine and wiped his prints away.

  Back in the bathroom he wrapped his loot in one of the black towels, turned off the light and returned to the bedroom.

  She was lying on her side now, and had stopped snoring. Allmen tiptoed toward the door. As he passed the bed she sat up and stuttered, “What, what, what?”

  Allmen started.

  Then she said, “Ah, okay,” and fell back into the pillow.

  She was lying on her back again. Allmen waited till he could hear her snoring. Softly, he left the room.

  15

  In her haste, his hostess had left all the lights on. The corridor and hallway were fully lit. Her life-threatening stilettos stood on the steps, and in the center of the foyer, like a green beast slain for its skin, was her mink. A little farther away, flung less elegantly than her fur, was his cashmere coat, sunk in on itself like an old sack.

  Allmen looked for an envelope with an address on the coat stand, where the mail was normally placed in such houses. Nothing.

  The doors leading to the other rooms were all closed. He didn’t want to open any of them and turn on the lights in case he could be seen from outside. Who knew, there might be a staff house out there from which you could see into the villa. And without light he would find nothing in a strange house.

  The villa was on the road winding around the lake. This was almost certainly called Seestrasse—Lakeside Avenue. He just had to find out the house number. That would be at the door to the house or at the gate to the property.

  He opened the heavy front door. Thick beads of rain glittered in the light which poured from the foyer. In the shelter of the porch he searched for a number around the door, on the pillars and frame, in vain. It must be on the gate.

  Allmen put his coat on and took an umbrella from the holder by the coat stand. He looked for a spot to leave his black towel bundle, then decided to bring it, to be on the safe side.

  The raindrops thundered down onto the umbrella. Allmen crossed the gravel driveway and found his way toward the gate in the dim light. It was at least fifty yards from the house and was not locked. There, on the right-hand pillar, half hidden by a cypress hedge, was the number, white on blue enamel: 328b.

  The road, almost certainly Seestrasse, ran straight as an arrow to the left, to the right it curved away inland, out of sight. From here headlights now shone, approaching fast and flooding the curtain of rain in blue halogen light.

  Allmen ducked behind the hedge and waited till the car had raced past.

  This brief intermezzo
brought Allmen back to reality. What on earth are you doing? Have you gone crazy? Are you planning to slip out of the house with a stolen Gallé bowl hoping not to be caught? Tomorrow they’ll notice the theft and you’ll be the only suspect. Have you taken leave of your senses, Fritz?

  Allmen always called himself “Fritz”—as his father had called him—in these rare moments of self-rebuke.

  Allmen stood for a moment longer, hidden in the cypress hedge under the pouring rain and thought about it. Then he pushed the black bundle in among the dense cypress branches and went back into the house.

  16

  Allmen woke up alone in a strange bed. The sheets were satin, the light of day filtered by opaque curtains, the space next to him still warm. It didn’t take him long to recall the events of the previous hours.

  The bathroom door opened and Allmen watched through half-closed eyes as Jojo—as he now returned to calling her for tactical reasons—entered the bedroom, rested, refreshed and preened. He closed his eyes completely. She opened the curtains energetically. He heard her footsteps approaching. He felt her weight on the mattress. He smelled a new perfume.

  “I swore you’d be gone by the time I woke up.”

  Her lips felt soft, her lipstick smelled of expensive makeup.

  17

  One hour later they were sitting beside each other drinking coffee at a table with space for twenty-four guests, in front of them the remains of an overgenerous breakfast they had not done justice to; butter, honey, preserves, orange juice, sliced meats, eggs, muesli, bowls of fruit, salmon and a cheese board. A domestic employee had served them and then withdrawn. She came only if Joëlle pressed a small remote placed next to her plate.