by Martin Suter
“And I guess their identity is a professional secret.”
“Your guess is correct.”
If he had prevaricated for just a moment, Tanner might well have raised his offer. But haggling was so totally beneath Allmen’s dignity he agreed immediately. “It’s a deal,” he said. “This will help me through a short-term liquidity issue, otherwise I would never consider such a sale of course.”
Tanner pulled out a desk drawer, clearly open at the back, as far it would go, and reached right inside the desk. His head disappeared. Allmen made out a metallic snapping and clicking, and after a while Tanner reappeared, closed the drawer and counted twenty thousand-franc notes onto the desktop.
Allmen patted them into a wad like a practiced card player and slipped them nonchalantly into his top pocket. He stuffed the towel back into his pilot’s case and waited for Tanner to accompany him to the door.
“Should you have any more such dragonflies in your little collection, I would be interested,” Tanner said as he left.
Allmen hailed the next taxi. “Do you have change for a thousand-franc note?” he asked as he made himself comfortable in the backseat.
23
As he did every time he got hold of some money, Allmen did the rounds.
He paid his bill at Promenade, settled his account with the barman at the Golden Bar and went for a coffee at Viennois, dealing with the outstanding payments and leaving a breathtaking tip for Gianfranco. He called on his florist, his hairdresser and his bookshop. All this in Herr Arnold’s Cadillac, which he had himself driven home in. After he had settled that account too, he reinforced Herr Arnold’s faith in his creditworthiness with a more than adequate tip.
Carlos kept neat accounts of household expenses in a book in one of the kitchen drawers. Allmen consulted it and determined that he owed Carlos over four thousand francs. He placed two thousand-franc notes in the book. Paying off the whole sum would have brought his balance dangerously close to the figure Dörig was demanding.
Allmen didn’t intend to contact him. Now that he had money, he could cheerfully wait for Dörig to get in touch. He was looking forward to the moment when he could reach casually into his top pocket and hand him the sum without affording him the dignity of a second glance.
Allmen spent the rest of the afternoon reading in his glasshouse library. Black clouds gathered and forced him to switch his reading lamp on early.
24
The Golden Bar was filled with the muffled commotion of the cocktail hour. Allmen was on his second margarita, waiting for the arrival of “La Joëlle” as he was now calling her.
He was sitting at the far end of the bar as usual, where three aging loners typically sat, trying to chat with the barman, who had stationed his large red wine there. Allmen knew all three and exchanged small talk with them, between the coming and going.
One of them was Kellerman, a wasted alcoholic who carried it off with style, retired ophthalmologist, widowed for over twenty years.
The other was Kunz, a lawyer with a solo practice also functioning as the honorary consulate for the Republic of Surinam, where calls were mostly taken by a sputtering answering machine.
The third was Biondi. He owned a store selling golf equipment and belonged to Jack Tanner’s daily breakfast club at Viennois.
Allmen had saved the stool next to him with his coat, for Joëlle. Kunz seemed to resent him for this. He kept looking at the coat, then at Allmen as if forcing him to explain. But Allmen resisted the pressure to justify himself and kept silent.
Kellerman was highly loquacious however:
“When did you last have your eye pressure tested?”
“My eye pressure?” Allmen had never had his eye pressure tested, was unaware eyes could be under pressure, how this might be measured or what the consequences might be if it were too high or too low.
“You’re over forty, I believe,” Kellermann said.
Allmen nodded.
“Then you should have your internal eye pressure tested. Just to be on the safe side.”
“Safe from what?” Allmen asked, worried now. He had a slight tendency toward hypochondria and every new front which opened up in the battle for his health gave cause for concern.
“Glaucoma,” the aging eye doctor murmured.
“It puts you in a coma?” Kellermann’s voice was already somewhat slurred by now.
“Glaucoma. Optic nerve damage. Field of vision loss.”
Allmen automatically touched his right eyelid.
“You don’t feel anything. Once you start to notice, it’s too late. Only one thing you can do: eye pressure and optic nerve tests every year after forty.” Kellermann finished his Red Label, heavily diluted with lukewarm water, and gave the bartender a sign with the empty glass. “I’m an old man, believe me.”
Allmen looked into Kellermann’s reddened, watery, sad eyes. “Is the test painful—unpleasant, I mean?”
“More pleasant than tunnel vision.” Kellermann took his fresh whisky and filled his glass to the brim from the little jug of tap water the bartender had brought along with it.
Biondi, sitting next to Kunz, looked along the bar, turning past his neighbor, past the stool bagged with the coat, past Allmen, to Kellermann. “A customer of mine has tunnel vision. Golf pro. Thirty-nine. Fit as a fiddle.”
Before answering, Kellermann attempted eye contact with Biondi past the three stools, leaning back dangerously. “Isn’t always the intraocular pressure. Can be a lack of oxygen to the optic nerve papilla. Can be. Not always, but it can be.” Kellermann righted himself using the golden rail at the bar, took a gulp of whisky and repeated. “Not always, but it can be.”
Thanks to this conversation, Allmen and the three men had missed the arrival of La Joëlle. Suddenly she was standing in a cloud of heavy perfume next to Allmen, waiting for him to help her out of her mink—petrol blue this time.
“Surprise!” she laughed.
“And what a pleasant one,” Allmen responded chivalrously, removing his coat from the stool and helping her onto it.
“We’re not going to Promenade.”
“Ah, but I reserved a table.” Allmen stood uncertainly in front of her holding both the coats.
“And I canceled it. Can I have a Bloody Mary? Actually on second thought a Manhattan. Bloody Marys fill you up. That would be a pity.”
One of the bar staff freed Allmen from his role as lackey, taking the coats from him. Allmen sat down next to Joëlle and waved the bartender over.
“Have you ever been to shaparoa?”
One of the newest, most fashionable restaurants in the city, shaparoa—the initial letter s was lowercased in the first of many of this establishment's affectations—was also undoubtedly the most expensive. Its opening had come after Allmen’s financial heyday. He had never been there. “Not really my thing,” he said vaguely.
“Oh, don’t be so fuddy-duddy.” The bartender brought her Manhattan. She drank it in one go, fished the maraschino cherry out by its stalk and swung it around. “I’ve reserved us a table.”
Allmen jumped. “But I thought shaparoa was booked up months in advance.”
Joëlle threw her head back, dangled the cherry above her mouth, opened her red lips and slowly lowered it. Before she had quite swallowed it, she said, “Depends who you are.”
After another Manhattan, Allmen signed the check and helped Joëlle into her coat. Kunz, Kellermann and Biondi watched. Whether with envy or schadenfreude, he couldn’t tell.
25
The staff at shaparoa were dressed like the crew of the Starship Enterprise: bodysuits in high-tech artificial fibers, with stand-up collars, Velcro fastenings, in a range of colors depending on their role and hierarchy, with sneakers in matching shades. They all wore headsets, to keep in touch with the kitchen and the head of service.
He was a large, shaven-headed man, whose tight spandex bodysuit emphasized a body its owner clearly subjected to many hours in the weight room. His eyebrows were ca
refully trimmed and inclined upward, and Allmen would not have been surprised if his ears were pointed.
He greeted Joëlle like an old friend, calling her “Jojo.” She called him “Vito” and introduced Allmen as “John. Almost the same as me, but with just one Jo.” She put a proprietary arm around Allmen as she said it.
There was a room for each course at shaparoa, which the publicity described as a “revolutionary gastronomic concept.” Vito escorted them into the “Amuse Bouche.”
The room was decorated with toys, tiny clown figures, music boxes and cartoons. Balloons floated on the ceiling and the cushions on the seats were amused faces.
“Same as usual?” Vito asked.
Joëlle glanced at Allmen. “If I may?”
He nodded, and soon the sommelier was opening a bottle of Taittinger Comtes de Champagne Rosé 2002, at four hundred francs.
It wasn’t the food which threatened to bankrupt Allmen—the culinary journey through the nine thematically decorated rooms cost him a mere three hundred and fifty francs per person—it was the drinks. As if wanting to put her date’s solvency to the test, Joëlle ordered the highlights of the wine list. Even before they had left the “Amuse Bouche” she had ordered another bottle of champagne, then returned it barely touched.
In “La Mer,” a room lined on three sides by aquariums full of tropical fish, she ordered not one but two bottles of Chavalier Montrachet, Grand Cru “Les Demoiselles” Louis Latour 1997, at six hundred and eighty francs a bottle.
She had herself accompanied through the remaining rooms by a Burgundy, the La Tâche Domaine de la Romanée Conti 1995, at one thousand, four hundred francs a bottle.
In “La Pâtisserie,” a salon decorated entirely in pink, turquoise and silver, they asked for the check, sated and, in Joëlle’s case, extremely drunk. It had come to five thousand, six hundred and seventy-three francs.
“Oops,” Joëlle gulped, and smiled impishly at Allmen.
They didn’t know him here. He wasn’t creditworthy. He had no choice but to reach nonchalantly into his top pocket and place the sum, plus a five-hundred-franc tip, on the pink tablecloth.
Joëlle ran her somewhat unsteady hand through his hair and purred, “Men who still pay with real money are so sexy.”
26
The chauffeur had a name now: Boris. He was practiced at dealing with his boss in this state, and stowed her gently and carefully into the back of the limousine. Then he opened the other door for Allmen and gestured with his head for him to get in. His look was reproachful, as if Joëlle’s companion was responsible for the state she was in.
Boris did not wait for the outcome of the destination discussion—Joëlle wanted “your place,” Allmen did not of course—and headed straight for the lakeside villa.
This time Joëlle was restrained throughout the journey. Perhaps it was the amount she had drunk, but perhaps it was that she now viewed Allmen as something with a long shelf life she didn’t have to gobble up all in one night. She snuggled up against him, but didn’t fall asleep.
The house was brightly lit. At the entrance there were several high-end cars in the color of choice this fall: black.
“You said you were at home alone.” Allmen sounded anxious.
“All I said was that my father wasn’t here.”
“And who are all these people?”
Joëlle shrugged her shoulders. “No idea.”
“The house is full of people, and you don’t know who they are?”
“Friends of my brother’s.”
“So your brother lives here too?”
She shook her head. “He just has parties here sometimes.”
Boris came with her into the foyer. The coat stand was covered with coats, and from the wide corridor leading to the large salon came the sound of talking and laughter. Joëlle was very unsteady on her feet now, and Allmen hoped Boris would help him out.
Which he did, leading her on past the staircase to a walnut door which disguised an elevator. “First floor,” he noted apathetically, and closed the door.
27
The bedroom was lit by the two dimmed bedside lamps, with their immense silk shades. The quilt had been pulled back on both sides, and something silky and lacy had been draped on Joëlle’s side. It looked like a room in a five-star hotel made ready for the night.
There was still no trace of Joëlle’s rapacious sexual hunger from the other night. She waved at him like a small child and disappeared through the bathroom door. “See you in a minute,” he heard her say before the door closed behind her. He heard her lock it.
Allmen sat in an upholstered chair which reminded him of the furnishings in “La Pâtisserie” at shaparoa. He was tired and had drunk far too much. And over the last few hours he had blown about half the money he owed Dörig. The thought kept flashing up in front of him, however hard he tried to suppress it. Worse: someone else had blown it.
Dörig kept appearing among the filler-thoughts from every area of his life he was using to try to block his head. Thickset and short-necked with red hands, he muscled his way in, like a lout barging into a packed elevator.
Perhaps he could appease him with half the sum.
If he still had that much.
He didn’t want to count the money out now. That would be an invitation for the man to invade his head completely.
Primitives like Dörig could easily be palmed off. With half, with a third. As soon as they saw some money they found it impossible to say no. Better the bird in the hand. That’s what they were like.
One disadvantage: he would have to speak to him. Not just speak: negotiate. He couldn’t just thrust the notes into his hand and wave him away like an annoying fly.
But Dörig wouldn’t get violent. People like that didn’t get violent toward those who were giving them money and might give them more. Even when they owed them money. They just didn’t.
Or did they?
Allmen had to admit he didn’t actually have any experience with this type of person.
He heard sounds from the bathroom. Rushing water, clattering, footsteps, a whirring electric toothbrush. And through the other door waves of distant laughter from below.
What was taking her so long in there? Was she freshening up? Was she making herself pretty? Was she changing into something seductive? Allmen wasn’t wholly unsusceptible to that kind of thing. Not slutty underwear, that was too cheap. But classy lingerie, that was easy on the eye. Even if it was on a woman who got on his nerves.
Did she get on his nerves? Not all the time.
He was starting to convince himself she was endearing again, or at least acceptable.
The door opened and Joëlle entered. She was wearing an oversized pair of men’s pajamas and had cleaned her makeup off. She smiled dozily at him, got into bed and patted the pillow next to her. “Don’t be long.”
Then she switched the light off on her side.
28
The same chaos as last time filled the black bathroom. The clothes she had been wearing lay in restful communion with the towels and wash cloths scattered across the floor, on stools and in the Jacuzzi. The trash can was surrounded by used makeup-remover tissues which had missed the mark. An electric toothbrush was left in the sink, an open tube of toothpaste on the glass shelf with a long string of paste dangling from its opening.
Allmen searched for another toothbrush head. He wasn’t suddenly finding her so endearing he wanted to use hers. He found one next to the charger.
Standing at the sink with the vibrating toothbrush in his mouth, avoiding his reflection, his eyes fell on a bubble pack of pills, two of them gone. Allmen took them from the edge of the basin and turned them over. “Rohypnol, 1mg” was written there.
Next to the sleeping tablets was a glass with a little water left. Its rim held a trace of lipstick. The same maraschino cherry she had been wearing that evening. Jojo seemed to have no further plans for the night.
29
Once again Allmen was lying
in this strange bed next to this strange woman. A fall storm had built up and was whistling through the poplars lining the banks of the lake. The wind had swept the sky clear, and the moon, nearly full, cast a pale strip of light onto the carpet.
He could still hear occasional sounds from the party below.
He dreamed of his father. He was driving through a cloud of dust down the track to the farmhouse, honking the horn. Allmen recognized the car. It was the nearly new, cream Opel Kapitän his father had bought the day he signed the sales agreement for the Schwarzacker.
He was driving with his left hand. With the right he was pressing the horn and waving through the open window. Allmen stood, a small boy, at the front door to the house and watched as the car approached. Then he was suddenly sitting in the passenger seat next to his laughing father. Then he was behind the wheel driving toward his father, who was standing at the door laughing.
Allmen tried to brake but there were no brakes. So he honked.
He woke with a start. But the honking hadn’t stopped. It sounded as if it was coming from the ground floor.
Joëlle was breathing regularly and heavily into his ear. He flicked on the bedside lamp. She was lying in the same position she had fallen asleep in. Her mouth was slightly open and her eyelids weren’t closed tight either. The honking continued.
“Joëlle,” he whispered. Then at a normal volume: “Joëlle!” She gave no reaction.
Allmen held her right shoulder and shook her. No reaction.
The honking still hadn’t stopped. Now it was at a different pitch. Allmen got up, went to the door to the corridor and opened it softly.
He closed it behind him, stepped cautiously to the head of the stairs and looked down into the entrance hall. A man of around forty was standing at the open front door waving. He was answered by a car’s horn, and another, at a different pitch.
Allmen heard the cars’ motors grow quieter, and then louder, as they passed through the gate to the road and accelerated.