by Martin Suter
They were in the villa’s dining room, windows opening out onto a veranda, the garden and the lake. It had stopped raining, but the clouds were still lurking low, reflected gray-black in the water.
The room was tastefully furnished, as was the whole house (except for Joëlle’s room). The owner’s penchant for Art Nouveau could be seen everywhere. The villa itself was also from this period.
Joëlle’s father was Klaus Hirt, the businessman. Allmen had discovered this much already. Via his enterprises, Hirt controlled several of the country’s major financial companies. He never appeared in public himself, and when he appeared in the media, it was always with a photo showing him as a middle-aged man, which he had long since ceased to be.
Allmen had never met him, but he now knew they had roughly the same build. The clean shirt fit him. The collar was just a little loose. Joëlle had handed it to him saying, “Keep it. My dad has hundreds of them.”
“I can hardly wear a shirt with the initials K. H.” Allmen had objected. “I have initials of my own.”
“Then throw it away. Or clean your shoes with it.”
The late morning light was not sympathetic to Joëlle’s makeup, which did not blend with her complexion as it had last night in the Golden Bar, at the opera house, in the limousine and the bedroom. It contrasted with it. Application, structure, pigmentation and transitions were all evident, like a painting you had got too close to. And yet she still looked good. It was her charisma, the charisma of someone in a good mood, happy even. Allmen suspected this might have something to do with him. Not him as a person, more the fact that he was still there the next morning. Not necessarily something which happened to Jojo often.
There were frequent, long breaks in the conversation throughout their breakfast, the kind of silences which for couples often precede confessions, announcements and declarations of love. Allmen intervened each time with a deliberate banality to rob the silence of any deep significance. This time he hit out with, “Lovely house, I must say.”
Jojo reacted more crossly to Allmen’s rhetorical sabotage each time, like a cat deprived of its mouse. “Too much Art Nouveau if you ask me. I can’t stand the sight of it anymore, but daddy is addicted to the stuff. He can sit for hours trying to hypnotize a vase. At least two women left him because of it. I can hardly blame them.”
“Gazing on beauty is a meditative act,” Allmen said thoughtfully. The statement provoked Joëlle to leave another significant pause.
Allmen checked the time. “I’ll order a taxi. I have an appointment.” He took his phone out of his top pocket, but Joëlle put her hand on his.
“I’ll take you.”
“That’s very sweet, but you don’t need to.”
She kept her hand on his and looked him in the eyes. “Oh I need to alright. That way I get a bit more of you.”
This was not part of Allmen’s plan at all. That way he would be seen to leave the house empty-handed, true, but he would need both hands in the back of the limousine, under the furtive gaze of the chauffeur in the rearview mirror, to fend off Jojo’s advances.
18
Allmen was not a driver. Although he had once learned, and still possessed a driver’s license, folded up small and no longer legible along the creases, he believed that to drive yourself was just as degrading as carrying out any other kind of work which someone else would do better if you paid them.
For this reason he did not own a car. But for the task he faced tonight he could not delegate the driving. Which was why he was now at the wheel of a black Smart he had borrowed from a friend.
Driving a vehicle yourself was ludicrous enough; the vehicle itself shouldn’t be a joke too. And the way he was driving, his back hunched over, hands clamped neurotically to the wheel, was just shameful. But he hadn’t had much choice. The Smart was the only vehicle his friend could spare, a former university chum who had founded an advertising agency after dropping out of college. “You won’t want to give it back,” he had assured Allmen, handing him the key and getting into his Porsche Cayenne.
Now after a humiliating trip through the city center, he was driving down the endless road along the lake. Joëlle had given him the villa’s address. He had asked her when they stopped at the gate to Villa Schwarzacker. She took this to mean that he wanted to visit her again; she let go of him, and didn’t insist on coming in with him briefly. “But you must show me your villa some time,” she had said in parting.
It was a dry night, but pitch-black. The dense, low blanket of cloud hanging over the city and its outskirts refused to budge. It was two in the morning, scant traffic. He had already passed number 200. The properties were getting larger, the numbering more erratic. The last sign he’d been able to make out was 276. Since then he had passed several entrances with no number, glimpsing gables through mature trees, flags, avenues of poplars.
A car with its headlights on full beam came around a bend from the opposite direction too fast. Allmen tried to flash a reprimand, but instead switched on the windshield washer. The water, the wiper fluid and the lights turned the windshield into a blinding white, impenetrable surface and forced him to slam on the brakes. It was awhile before he could see or drive again properly, and when he saw number 362 in the light of his headlights, he realized he had overshot by a long way.
He turned around at the next opportunity, and drove at close to walking pace back past the properties, looking carefully for house numbers.
At last he came to number 330. This must be the house next door.
A pair of headlights came toward him and flashed. The car signaled, and disappeared behind the hedge. Joëlle’s Mercedes limousine. As Allmen passed, the electric gate was closing itself.
He drove on a little, turned in a driveway, switched the lights off and waited. Five minutes, ten, fifteen. The he drove back and stopped outside 328b.
The next bit went quickly: out of car, over to hedge, grab towel bundle out of the hedge, back into car and off.
PART II
19
Allmen was still sleeping when Carlos brought in his tea. That was not remarkable as it was five to seven in the morning. Carlos started his gardener’s job at seven.
Carlos was from Guatemala. Allmen had met him shortly after his father’s death while he was visiting a friend who lived with his parents in Antigua, in a colonial villa with several beautifully planted patios. A neatly dressed, polite gardener, one day Carlos approached Allmen and asked him, in so many words, if he could come back to his country with him. Allmen had just acquired the Villa Schwarzacker and was killing time till the renovation was finished by travelling through Central and South America. This was the last stop. The villa would need a gardener, and he agreed on the spur of the moment. Carlos applied for a passport and accompanied Allmen on a tourist visa. If he proved himself, Allmen would organize a residence permit for him. That was the deal.
Carlos did prove himself, but Allmen had underestimated the residence permit thing. After three months he was reluctantly forced to take his gardener to the airport and bid him a sad farewell. In three months’ time he would fly him back over again to stay another three months.
A couple of hours after this farewell Carlos was standing at the door to the villa again. He hadn’t gotten on the plane, and was in the country illegally from this point on. He was given board and lodging in the gardener’s cottage and paid four thousand francs a month—half this sum allowed his large family back home to live comfortably.
Over time, as Allmen’s financial situation became increasingly precarious and he employed ever fewer staff, Carlos’s workload increased. In the end he was not only the gardener; he cooked, served, ironed, cleaned, repaired, improvised, lied for Allmen and became ever more indispensable.
On the evening when he confessed to Carlos that he would be selling the villa, moving into the gardener’s cottage and would have to part from him, he simply nodded and said, “Muy bien, Don John,” then withdrew to the cottage.
Bu
t next morning, as Allmen was sitting at breakfast and Carlos was pouring him more coffee, he said in his formal manner, “Una sugerencia, nada más.”
This was not “just a suggestion,” quite the opposite. When Carlos said this, it meant he would outline a detailed plan from which he would not be dissuaded. This time it went as follows: Allmen would negotiate for him to work as gardener and caretaker for the new owner and he, Carlos, would move into the attic at the gardener’s cottage and continue working for Don John.
Allmen liked the idea. He could keep his indispensable Carlos, without paying the four thousand each month, which he’d cheerfully agreed to at a time when he had been more independent financially. He included the sum in his negotiations for the gardener’s cottage, as a flat fee to be paid for gardening and caretaking. After some initial resistance, the K. C. L. & D. Trust agreed to this condition too, so keen were they to acquire the prestigious Villa Schwarzacker.
From this point on Carlos worked for his boss for board and lodging. Between the gables of the gardener’s cottage were two attic rooms for staff and a tiny bathroom to go with them. Depending on Allmen’s financial state, Carlos also received bonuses: tips varying in size.
Allmen finished his tea and placed the cup back on his bedside table. Normally he would now lie back and doze off again for an hour or two. The dreams at this time of the morning were the most intense. And he had no appointments in the morning except the one with himself at ten in Café Viennois.
But this morning he got straight up after his tea. He hurried in the bathroom, dressed with the usual care and soon after eight he was in the library. The large room was filled with milky light, mist rising from the lawn and shrouding the contours of the trees.
On the carpet in front of one of the shelves was a pile of books. Allmen had removed them in the night to make space for the glass bowl. He had thrown the wet towel into the half-full trash can himself, taken the plastic sack out, tied it up and left it by the door for Carlos, who would dispense with it later.
And there it was, the dragonfly bowl, in the mist-softened morning light. Even more enchanting, even more mysterious than in the vitrine of its rightful owner.
A reasonable reward for services rendered.
He sat down at the piano, placed a dead cigarette tip between his lips and bashed out a few tunes from his songbook repertoire. A ray of sunshine slipped through the curtain of mist, found its way through the treetops and for a brief moment lit up a slender column of dust.
Allmen was pleased with himself and the world.
20
“Réservé” signs were placed on the tables used by the after-ten regulars, to prevent the occasional new customers from sitting at them.
Allmen was sitting happily with his second coffee, idly glancing through a newspaper straightened in a wooden holder. The review of Madame Butterfly was glowing, and now he realized how little of the performance he had taken in.
Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a new customer had entered and was approaching the old man three tables away who, as always, was occupying all four chairs.
Allmen looked up from his newspaper to observe the scene. The new customer had his massive back turned to Allmen, and was standing as if rooted to the spot in front of the regular. He, in turn, had begun freeing up a chair in disgust. Gianfranco was busy with the coffee machine, and hadn’t noticed this outrageous incident, otherwise he would have come to the rescue.
Now the man turned round and sat down, legs wide apart.
Dörig!
Allmen felt the tension at his chest again, which came with sudden reminders of suppressed unpleasantness. He nodded in fright at Dörig, but he didn’t react. He just sat there in his tight, buttoned up coat and stared at him. A living reminder of payment due.
Allmen turned back to his newspaper, but he could sense the steady gaze of his creditor. He was aware of Gianfranco approaching the table and leaving again after a brief, quiet exchange of words, busying himself at the Lavazza then returning shortly afterward with a drink.
Dörig didn’t react, didn’t touch the cup, just kept staring.
Allmen raised the newspaper slightly and peeped over it occasionally. The unpleasantness had stayed where it was. And with it the tension in Allmen’s chest.
Twelve thousand, four hundred and fifty-five francs. Once he would have spent that much in one night on hotel suites, plane tickets, entertaining at a decent restaurant. And now the sum was making him tense, making his heart race, his hands sweaty.
Final deadline Wednesday. What day was it? Monday?
Now there was some movement at the table. Gianfranco was standing there, being paid it seemed. He walked away again. In contempt.
Dörig stood up and left the café. Allmen watched him through the window.
As if Dörig could sense his gaze, he stopped abruptly and turned his head.
Allmen couldn’t prevent their eyes meeting.
21
A dining table with six chairs, hemmed in by an Art Deco sideboard in matte-lacquered black, took up most of the space in the living-dining room. In the rest a sofa and two matching armchairs (the other two were stored in the laundry) were crowded around a coffee table, all of them American Art Deco, which had once been among his many passions as a collector.
Again it smelled of Carlos’s favorite food as Allmen entered the room. This was Carlos’s way of saying he needed more housekeeping money.
Once the food was on the table, Allmen realized how urgent the warning was. There were no mince patties, not even guacamole. There was just beans and tortillas, the food of the poor in Guatemala.
He consumed it without comment. Carlos made no comment either. But the way he served it, with the best dishes and cutlery on starched damask, said all that needed to be said.
Allmen was unable to sleep for his siesta. He stared at the ceiling trying to banish the image of Dörig, that tight ball of aggression. Allmen realized he couldn’t palm him off with anything—except money. But he needed the small amount he had to mask the reality of his situation. He couldn’t afford to use it to pay off debts.
A quarter of an hour before he normally woke from his siesta, he got up, went to the library and sat at the baby grand—replacement value around eighty thousand francs.
He played a few of his desultory chords at first, but then took some music down from the bookshelves and played a Chopin nocturne, haltingly at first, then with increasing confidence. He felt as if he had never played so well. As if he were playing for his life. Or perhaps for the life of his piano.
After the final bars he sat for a moment, lost in thought, placed the felt cover back on the keyboard, closed the lid and walked to the bookshelf where the dragonfly bowl stood. In the golden light of this late fall afternoon, it too was a thing of incomparable beauty.
What was it worth? Certainly more than anything he had offered Tanner till now. His gut told him that with this piece he had entered a whole new league.
Had Joëlle’s father noticed the theft and reported it? And if he had, wouldn’t the police have sent photographs to all the art and antiques dealers?
He did something he had planned never to do: he called Joëlle.
“All alone in that great big house still?” he asked when he heard her voice.
She misunderstood this and said, “Even if my dad was here, you could still come over. He’s not old-fashioned.”
He wasn’t sure what to say to this. She added quickly, “But he’s not here.”
Allmen had found out what he wanted to know, and looked for a noncommittal way to end the conversation. But it wasn’t that easy to escape.
“Men,” she said, “who are still there the next day, then call the day after, are either after my money or smitten with me. Judging by your lifestyle it can’t be the money.”
It would not have been a good strategy to disabuse her, and he went as far as to invite her to Promenade the following evening, although his credit situation there was stra
ined to the limit already.
22
“I think I have something rather special for you, Jack.”
Allmen opened the case, took out a toweling bundle, unwrapped the dragonfly bowl and placed it on the polished surface of the desk.
Tanner looked at the bowl, then at Allmen, then back at the bowl and said, “Sit down.”
Allmen settled down on the sofa and crossed his legs.
Tanner carefully picked the bowl up off the table, examined it from all sides, touched it softly with his fingertips and looked at Allmen.
“Gallé,” Allmen said.
Tanner raised an ironic eyebrow. “You don’t say.”
“I used to collect the odd bit of glassware,” Allmen said.
Tanner looked up from the bowl, scrutinized Allmen, lowered his eyes back to the object and murmured, “Used to collect the odd bit of glassware. Is that so … ?”
The room was filled with silence again. Allmen heard the sedate ticktock of a pendulum clock with an inlaid face. Tanner lit one of his flat Egyptian cigarettes, whose exotic aroma Allmen had noticed immediately as he entered the sacristy.
“What do you want for it?” he asked straight out.
“Jack …” Allmen replied, “… I really can’t recall the price I paid back then …”
“Twenty thousand.” Tanner didn’t hesitate for a second.
Allmen, however, needed a little time to think. “I think,” he said finally, “that is somewhat less than I paid back then.”
“Entirely possible. But with collectors’ items of this type there are often objects of dubious provenance in circulation. There are only a few passionate collectors who will buy this kind of thing without asking questions.”