by Dan Vyleta
But Lieschen simply went back to her colouring, drawing a person this time, fat of body and of limb; drew slits for eyes and a wide-mouthed, yellow funnel that jutted from its red-lipped mouth. Beer’s knee gave another creak as he stood up. He felt he couldn’t help the girl. It shamed him to admit that she was the least of his problems that night.
He walked into the kitchen. On the table there stood an array of beer bottles, five in number, placed in no particular arrangement and looking for all the world as though they had been plonked down at random. One of the bottles was open, the porcelain cork dangling from the metal hoop that attached it to the neck, and a third of the contents was missing. Beer fetched a glass, placed it next to the bottle, poured out an inch or so. It stood there, the foam first rising then settling in the narrow glass. He turned his back on it, took two steps out of the kitchen, only to run back and throw the beer down the sink. He did not want, in some unguarded moment, for the girl to come sampling what stood poured out on the table. When the time came, he thought, he would have to lock her in the study so that Teuben did not see her. She was vulnerable now, an orphan. As there were no living relatives, she would end up in an orphanage: the hunchbacked daughter of an alcoholic suicide. It would have been much better to remove her from the flat, but Beer was not sure where he could bring her. The janitor might have been happy to look after her, but she seemed so crushed and traumatised he did not dare suggest it, and after a fashion it was true: the man drew baths of blood and not of water. When the time came, he would have to lock her in. The thought repeated itself. When the time came. He replaced the glass on the kitchen table, a smear of dried-on foam climbing up its side. The clock struck eight. It was time to turn Eva.
He entered the bedroom without haste and went about his nurse’s business. Eva endured it without so much as a wink. While he was changing her nightgown into one of plain cotton, his eyes neither lingered on nor avoided her naked form. He had expected himself to be seized by agitation, but felt preternaturally calm instead, and found himself thinking that – one way or another – things would come to a rest that night. It’s the gambler’s moment of repose, he thought: when all the bets have been placed and the ball is spinning around its wheel. And he was strangely happy about this, the inexorability of fate, and strangely indifferent towards Eva, whom he’d worked so hard to save. It was as though all his feeling for her had long been exhausted and he was reduced once again to nothing more than his function, a doctor looking after his patient. He smiled at her without warmth, tucked the sheets up to her chin. A noise travelled in through the window he had opened, of young men talking loudly on a floor below. Beer turned, opened the door, lingered a moment to light a cigarette. And then, in that very instant, his hands still in his pockets, searching for the matches, a new tenderness rose up in him, fresh, livid, unexpected. He gave a cry, whipped around, fell to his knees beside the bed, green eyes watching him with the sadness of the damned.
‘Oh Eva,’ he whispered.
She winked at him to say she understood.
He stayed another hour. They did neither of them cry. Beer spoke a little, his lips bowed low over her ear. He was holding Eva’s hand.
‘It’s like this,’ he told her. ‘All your life you keep yourself hidden. Even from yourself. Your brother, now – Otto – he’s the type of man who lives at the surface of things. He has to paint his face to disappear, and seal his lips. Everything he says, it’s indiscreet, even when he’s telling lies. I think that it’s a gift of sorts. These days, of course, it might just help to get him killed.
‘But I – I never speak, not really. I use my words to hide behind. I don’t speak and I don’t act, even when I’m out and pursuing my vices. I feed them, it is true, but it’s only so that I keep them in check. All of my life I have been calculating the odds: an economics of prudence, buying off desire so I can live in peace. I am doing it even now, speaking to the living dead. But it’s better than not speaking at all.
‘I’m sorry, Eva,’ he told her. ‘I’m so sorry.’
The clock struck 9.30. Exhausted, unable to bear the wait any longer, Anton Beer ran out of Eva’s room, threw on his dinner jacket, locked up Lieschen in the study, and went downstairs to join the party.
5
Beer was met by the first signs of the party no sooner had he stepped out his door. Noises rose within the stairwell, of drunken men shouting, laughing, breaking into song. Halfway down, a youth of eighteen, nineteen years was sitting on a step, his body bent double, clutching his thick flaxen hair. A companion, some years older and swarthy in complexion, was squatting next to him and whispering ceaselessly into his ear. Both men were wearing brown shirts and armbands, had tucked their trousers into thick woollen socks. Beer stepped past them without greeting and continued towards the noise. On the next landing three policemen in dress uniform were passing a carafe made of cut glass back and forth, trading snatches of popular songs in which they had substituted the lyrics for pornographic equivalents. Just then, one of them dropped the carafe’s heavy stopper and watched it bounce down the stairs, then drop into the central chasm and shatter on the floor below. All three of them burst into laughter. Beer passed this group, too, without so much as a word.
When he turned the next bend of the large and littered staircase, he saw from afar that the door to Speckstein’s flat stood wide open. Laughter rang out from it, followed by a trumpet’s comic whistle. In the doorway, straddling the threshold and leaning casually against the doorpost, stood a tall, thin SS officer with a pointy chin and finger-wide moustache. A cigarette was smoking in his long-boned, handsome hand. When the doctor tried to walk past him, he reached out with a sudden movement and took hold of Beer’s arm.
‘Are you sure you are invited?’ he asked, eyeing the dinner jacket with some suspicion, then leaned in close to blow cigarette smoke into Beer’s face. Before Beer had time to formulate an answer, the man let go of him again.
‘But what the hell. Go ahead. Most of the food’s gone, but some of the lads brought beer and spirits. You might just catch the tail end of the show.’
Inside, the flat seemed strangely empty until Beer reached the doorway that led to Speckstein’s living room and study, where a tight press of people stood shoulder to shoulder and were pushing and shoving for a better view. The air was hot and stale here, a mixture of smoke and sweat. Muttering excuses, and taking advantage of a group of three or four elderly gentlemen who disrupted the crowd with their attempt to leave, Beer managed to squeeze past the outermost row of spectators and slip inside. All eyes were directed to the far end of the room, where Otto Frei stood upon the dining-room table, which had been pushed against the wall. Used plates and dirty cutlery had been stacked at one end of the table; at the other a big terrine of soup still presided amongst several towers of bowls. The space in between served Otto as his stage.
The room was dark, lit only by a desk lamp that a pimply youth in an ill-fitting suit held angled at Otto’s painted face. The mime’s body, dressed entirely in black, was visible only as an outline, all apart from the white cotton gloves that emerged from the surrounding darkness with a curious intensity. One of these gloves – the right – was holding a rolled-up newspaper. Just now there was no movement to Otto’s body or his face. He stood stock still, chin out, legs spread, the paper raised like a club above his head, in the aspect of a man who is listening intently for some faint and far-off noise. The audience was quiet, hushed: it, too, was straining its ears. Beer looked around himself but in the near darkness it was impossible to make out anything but shadows; the glow of cigarettes hung scattered in the dark.
And then a strange, soft buzzing rose within the room, as of a fly caught against a windowpane, struggling to get out. The sound was so vivid, and the mime’s reaction so immediate and natural, that Beer did not think to search for its origin in anything but the air in front of Otto’s scrunched-up face. The mime’s head and eyes were following the fly’s trajectory. Disgust, anger, then c
unning flashed across his whitened features as he watched it dart in front of him before settling on the rim of a champagne flute that balanced precariously at the top of a pile of dirty crockery. The mime took aim with infinite deliberation. Twice he raised the newspaper as a conductor raises his baton, wrist first, preparing the fortissimo, then, dissatisfied by his approach, cut short the down-swing and started the motion all over again. Each of his movements was accompanied by a subtle variation of the fly’s buzzing. It was as though it too were watching him and preparing its evasive manoeuvres. At long last he swung, his face lit up by such a blissful sense of triumph that half the audience burst out laughing, then stopped themselves lest they shoo the fly. The tip of the newspaper caught the champagne glass at the side of its stem and lobbed it with surprising softness high into the air above the audience’s heads, from where it was plucked by a brown-sleeved arm and hand. As for the fly: it escaped, buzzed furiously around its attacker, then settled on the mime’s white and twitching nose. He stared at it, cross-eyed, began to slap at himself with wild abandon, gouging first one eye, then the other, slapping each cheek in repeated motions, then hitting his crotch on a mistimed back-swing, to the merriment of all. The fly sought the only shelter left to it and flew into his gaping mouth, then bounced half-crazed between his puffed-up cheeks, its constant changes of direction closely mirrored by the bulging roll of Otto’s eyes.
It was only now, during this invisible game of tennis, that Beer caught sight of Yuu and thus was able to pinpoint the origin of all the sounds: the buzzing, the whistle of displaced air when Otto swung his baton, the booming slaps when it collided with his cheeks. The fat Japanese sat on the windowsill at one side of the table, half hidden by the curtain that fell around his shoulders like a cape. Balanced on his meaty thighs there lay a variety of objects – a rattle, a cheese grater and spoon, a pan filled with rice – that he would manipulate with his left hand while his right pressed his trumpet to his lips. His eyes, meanwhile, were trained across and on the stage, taking in each little movement and translating it into sound. He matched it so closely that even once alerted to his presence it was hard to believe that it was Yuu and not the stage that was the source of his sly ruckus.
The act came to a close. Otto, shaking his head from side to side, had finally managed to knock the fly unconscious. Dizzy himself, stumbling from one end of the table to the other, he plucked the fly from his lips, then tore out each of its wings (two scraps of confetti came loose between his fingers and fluttered down into the crowd). He smiled, bent low to find a soup bowl perching in the dark, and with a magnificent little plop, dropped in his emasculated enemy before taking hold of a spoon and returning to the pleasure of his dinner. A fanfare sounded, the lights were turned on, the artist showered with thunderous applause. Soon after the audience began to disperse. Otto retired from his table, accepted the bottle of beer proffered to him, and was lost in the crowd. Beer, amused despite himself, turned away from the stage, and availed himself of the opportunity to look around, scanning the crowd for familiar faces.
Virtually the first person Beer saw was Teuben. The detective was leaning casually against the windowsill and laughing at somebody’s joke; when he caught sight of Beer he cocked an eyebrow in a lazy greeting. Turning away from him, his merriment gone, Beer lit a cigarette and pushed deeper into the room. His eyes found Zuzka, sitting near the wall opposite the impromptu stage, her hands and eyes on her lap and seemingly heedless of the bustle that surrounded her. Just now one of the guests approached her and addressed a few words to her hunched back, then shrugged and left when he was unable to draw a reaction. Speckstein himself was sitting in an armchair not far from her, looked grave and sweaty, and more than a little drunk. Unsure where else to go, Beer pushed over to their side of the room, knocking over an open bottle of schnapps that had been placed carelessly on the ground. He stooped to righten it, then, their eyes now level, caught Zuzka’s glance from a few feet away. She blanched, looked away, her legs re-crossing in front of her. Her face looked as though she had been crying, and her blouse gaped at the stomach, exposing a half-inch of skin. She was the only woman in the room.
More determined now, Beer worked his way over to her. There were people everywhere, flushed and talking, more than thirty in this room alone. The carpet was speckled with cigarette butts and ash, bits of dropped food. A man near the window had thrown it open and was yelling something at the street below. Not far from him, another had switched on the wireless and was dialling his way through the stations: static crackling and mixing with the other noises, before he settled on a rendering of Wagner, blaring tinnily from the wooden box. Beer reached the wall, shouldered past a pug-nosed drunk in a chauffeur’s uniform who was holding two shot glasses to his eyes like goggles, to the loud laughter of his friends, and arrived at Zuzka’s side. In the absence of another chair, Beer lowered himself to one of his knees and muttered a stiff, formal greeting. She pretended she hadn’t heard and he had to repeat it before she looked up and answered him curtly with the conventional response.
‘This is not quite the party I had pictured,’ he told her, trying to make light of the chaos surrounding them.
She flashed him a cold, absent look.
‘Yes,’ she answered stiffly. ‘Uncle is put out.’
‘I haven’t seen you in the past two days. I thought you would look in and check on Lieschen.’
He paused, hoping Zuzka would pick up the thread. She didn’t. Unsettled, urged by a vague sense that he owed it to her – and to Eva – to explain himself, he leaned closer to Zuzka’s ear.
‘The man you saw,’ he told her quietly. ‘He visits me sometimes. Or I visit him.’
He paused again, looked for a way to couch the nature of his predilection.
‘Two nights ago he came around. In the middle of the night. It was reckless of me to let him in, and more reckless yet to fall asleep. I have been feeling awfully reckless of late.’ He tried a smile, felt a vein twitch at his temple.
‘The thing is, you mustn’t tell anyone, Fräulein Speckstein. Zuzka. Please.’
At this, she stood up and ran off. She never even turned her head to look at him. Her hands, he had noticed, had been bunching up the cloth of her skirt above the knees, and as she ran away now it fell awkwardly, its symmetry disrupted, the hemline rumpled at the front. As she left the room, some of the men looked after her. Beer saw Teuben peel himself out of his group by the window and follow her, smoothing down his hair as he crossed the room. It might have been best to follow them himself, but the doctor did not have the strength. Depressed, exhausted, Beer raised himself far enough to sit down on the chair Zuzka had just vacated. He was welcomed by the heat left by her buttocks. It triggered a sadness in him and he sat, hunched over, head bowed, in much the same aspect she had just abandoned.
6
Frau Vesalius was standing in front of the kitchen window, taking a break. She had not had a moment to herself since early that morning and was enjoying a cigarette. The party had exhausted her. All evening she had been bringing out more food only to watch it disappear within minutes. Things got even worse when the lout from across the yard showed up with the Chinaman in tow: the fat Oriental had come straight into the kitchen and scoffed everything in sight, all the while complimenting her profusely on her culinary skill. All by himself he had eaten the better part of one of the strudels, and much of the second pot of tripe soup. It was only with the start of the performance that she had managed to get rid of him and some peace returned to her kitchen. Frau Vesalius felt that her cigarette was well deserved.
Behind her, in the corridor outside the kitchen, some guests were loudly discussing the course of the war. The English were massing in France, and the Finns and the Soviets were fast sliding towards war. There was an urgent note of bravado in their drunken discussion, as of men who needed to impress upon themselves their heedless courage in the face of a future enemy. She had heard this type of talk before. It had been a little over twen
ty years ago that her son had had his legs shot off on the eastern front, three weeks before the peace of Brest-Litovsk.
Vesalius looked down into the yard. There were more guests there, officers by the look of them, standing near the tree and engaged in a game in which two of them were exchanging blows to the stomach while the others took bets on who would vomit first. Another man had taken off both his jacket and his shirt and was using the iron frame of the carpet-beating rack to perform gymnastic feats: presently he catapulted himself into the air, attempted a somersault, hit some tree branches and fell hard on to the ground. His friends’ laughter was soon joined by his own high giggle as he stood up beside them and wiped the blood from his face.
Frau Vesalius cast a glance at the kitchen clock. It was gone ten o’clock. The way everyone was drinking, the party would be over pretty soon; the Professor would run out of booze and those who were still standing would push off to find some girls. The men’s boisterousness did not disgust her. After all, they were young. The only thing she resented was that she would be asked to clean up their mess, and put up with Speckstein’s grumpy complaints.
A movement caught Vesalius’s attention, and she turned around to see Zuzka come running into the kitchen. She was moving too fast for the clutter of the room, her head bowed low, the features hidden behind the flow of her hair, and before she had taken three steps she crashed into the little table and chair. The noise startled the girl. She looked up and was evidently surprised that she had ended up there; turned to leave again, then stopped, her body racked by a sob. Vesalius watched her, mockery mingling with compassion. Zuzka noticed her look: she held it for a breath or two, and found enough warmth in it to join her by the window.
‘Here,’ the housekeeper offered. ‘Have one.’ She held out the packet.