On the Edge

by Markus Werner

  It was past twelve when we got to the house. I wasn’t tired and suggested we still have a nightcap. Loos didn’t resist. I made a fire in the fireplace while he stood pensively beside me. He pointed to the sofa and asked whether this was Tasso’s deathbed. It stood in the same place, I said, but we had to take it out and burn it. I moved the two armchairs up to the fireplace, filled the cognac glasses, and asked what we should toast to. “To the witching hour, when ghosts appear,” he said. I asked whether he believed in ghosts. He stared into the flames and said nothing. I looked at his face, which seemed to keep changing in the flickering firelight. He suddenly said that the open fire reminded him of a ballad called “Feet in the Fire,” Conrad Meyer, did I know it? I said we had read it once in school—I couldn’t remember what it was about, except for one detail that must have impressed me. Wasn’t there a man in it who for some reason turned gray overnight? That was no detail, Loos said, continuing to stare into the fire. I asked him to tell me the ballad’s story. He shook his head. If he wanted to be alone, I told him, I would retire. I well knew, I said, what he wanted to think about. He could sleep here overnight, either in the chair or on the sofa. He said he still owed me the final account of what had happened a year ago, at least the part of it that had a hold on his soul. The time until his wife was released from the hospital had been empty, as if it had come to a stop. That it was still passing he recognised only by the slowly filling garbage pail. His happiness was great when Bettina came home, and yet also clouded again by the prospect of having to do without her, since a convalescent leave was indispensable. Now that there was, thank God, no need for post-operative treatment with radiation etc., she could pick any place she liked for her stay. She studied various prospectuses, including one for the Cademario Sanatorium and Wellness Hotel. And because she remembered that on the occasion of their Hesse weekend in Montagnola the two of them had snuggled up to each other in their Bellevue hotel room looking out across the valley and the gleaming lake to the chain of hills and the village with its massive sanatorium nestled high up on one of them—because Bettina remembered this, she immediately made her decision. He, however, had expressed his reservations about it: he would rather have had her in closer proximity, so that he could visit her as often as possible. She thereupon said that the best and simplest thing would be that they go on vacation together. He lost no time in going to the school rector and asking for a week off, which was granted him—naturally on condition that he make the absent time up. Bettina was delighted, just as, in general, her mood had become more glad-hearted day by day, despite occasional bouts of listlessness. The word glad-hearted had an archaic ring, of course, Loos said, but it fit. So they booked a room for two with a view to the south and a balcony, and at the start of the second week of June they drove down together in the car to have more freedom. He didn’t need to describe the sanatorium hotel or the spectacular view it afforded, since I had seen both. They were standing on the balcony with their arms propped on the railing, looking into the distance and also, with a slight vertigo, down into the depths of the valley. For the suicidal, Bettina had said, the railing—which didn’t reach even to her navel—presented a dangerously low barrier. He had countered that one wouldn’t exactly expect potential suicides to come to a wellness hotel. She conceded the point and gave him her hand. They stood on the balcony and felt like newlyweds. And their first night was really the epitome of a wedding night, at least partially. At this point he had to mention, as embarrassed as he was to do so, a kind of illness that still oppressed him today. He suffered from bruxism.

  Loos took a sip of cognac. I said, “Never heard of it. A male condition?” He shook his head. Bruxism was the medical term for nocturnal grinding of the teeth, or more exactly, for the grinding of the teeth in sleep. He himself hardly noticed it. Sometimes it didn’t occur, though other times it was very bad, in which case it might happen that the grinding woke him up and that the next morning he had pain in his jaws—complaints of the masticatory musculature—and sometimes even earaches. And precisely then, at Cademario, of all times, fate had been malicious enough to prescribe him a bout of pronounced grinding that outdid anything he had known before. The grinding itself would probably have been bearable—it was not a loud noise—but with him it unfortunately very often alternated with snoring, and the two together were of course too much for a fellow human being to endure. Bettina had hardly shut an eye that first night and was a wreck the next day. They discussed the problem, and it was clear to him that his grinding and snoring were completely ruining Bettina’s sleep and her recuperation along with it, so that he suggested they sleep in separate rooms. Bettina protested at first, but then reluctantly agreed. He tried to get a room at the sanatorium, a single of course, but, annoyingly, they were all taken. To rent a second double was hardly in question in view of the price.

  They were standing on the balcony discussing this, when his wife had lifted her arm, pointed to the elevation of the Collina d’oro on the other side of the valley, and said, “Why not go to our Bellevue!” That had made a lot of sense to him, despite the more than four kilometres straight across that would separate them while they slept. And they did not regret adopting this solution, on the contrary: it became something special to take leave of each other every night and find each other—and themselves—again the next morning, it intensified their feeling of attachment. It was like a return of their love’s spring, except that their married life had never really entered an autumnal period. They hadn’t made any connections with other guests: they only needed each other and went walking for hours in the woods of chestnut and birch, although with rests. Once Bettina said that she was a little anxious about returning to the real world, to which he countered that birch woods too belonged to the real world. Yes, she said, only no one heard the tumult of war in them. She was alluding to the Kosovo war, which had deeply upset her. “Do you know?” she went on, “I feel the atrocities there like blows to my own head; they daze me and rob me of clear-sightedness.” He had replied that it affected many people the same way, and that was something creditable, but also dangerous, because numbness only strengthened the perpetrators. Then one could also say, Bettina observed, that bewilderment was both a decent and an indecent response to a devastating madness. So it seemed, he had said to her, and she hugged him passionately and squeezed herself against him, as if to say that there was still also something utterly uncomplicated on earth.

  He had taken Bettina out twice and drunk a bianco di merlot with her on the Bellevue terrace. She had said she thought he might be able to see across to her balcony at the resort from here, or better from his room, at least if he had a telescope and she was waving her white bathrobe. Feeling a little foolish he bought one of the smaller telescopes in Lugano. On the morning of the fourth day, at 9 AM sharp, with the atmosphere clear and the resort in full sunlight, they performed the test with smashing success. He could see it clearly, Bettina’s white bathrobe, clearly, though it hardly looked bigger than a handkerchief. Then he drove over as he did every morning to have breakfast with Bettina. She hadn’t yet got dressed, and he marveled once again at how enchanting she looked in her white bathrobe and the orange kerchief wrapped like a turban around her head. She reacted with childlike pleasure when he told her that he had been able to see her waving—he would never forget the delight in her eyes. No valley, he had then thought, no valley was wide enough to separate him from Bettina. While she was dressing they arranged to repeat the waving game the next day, again at nine, after her swim—she swam every day from 8:30 in the indoor pool. Then they had breakfast, and he couldn’t recall what they did the rest of the day.

  “You see, Mr. Clarin,” said Loos and turned his gaze from the fire to me for the first time, “you see now how right I was about the licking flames on Pentecost.” “Thomas,” I said, “why the ‘Mister’?” He didn’t hear me, he was looking steadily into the flames again. Minutes went by. “Fresh raspberries,” he said suddenly. “I remember those. They g
ave them to us that evening for dessert.” “I know,” I said. “Your wife ordered them as an appetiser because she was afraid they might be eaten up by the others before she was through with the main course.” “He knows shit,” Loos murmured. Although it seemed clear to me that he was thinking out loud, probably without realising it, I was pretty bewildered and couldn’t explain his crassness any more than I could his return to the ‘Mister’. Minutes went by again. He was crumpling visibly. I stood up and brought him a glass of water. “You should have brought handcuffs,” he said, before drinking the water. “For me or for you?” I asked. “For me, naturally,” he said. I asked what crime he’d committed. He didn’t answer. He straightened his body. Then he said, “I’m sorry, I got a little confused. I’m feeling better now. I think I can finish. Don’t put another log on, I’ll make it short.”

  “We sat on her balcony for a long time after the dinner that evening. I don’t remember what we talked about. I only remember that my wife cried when we said goodbye. I said I’d be back again very soon. But she couldn’t be consoled because, she said, she was weeping for happiness. The next morning, a Friday, the eleventh of June, I stood ahead of time at my window. It was another clear day, and the telescope on the tripod was in sharp focus. From sheer worry that I’d miss Bettina’s appearance I started looking at ten before nine. By nine I was already impatient when she didn’t appear at the stroke of the bell. She was otherwise very punctual. It got to be five after, ten after—no white bathrobe waving. Although I naturally told myself that she might have overslept or been detained at the pool by a conversation, or even that she had forgotten our arrangement, I became more and more nervous. I called her room number, and she didn’t answer. I waited till 10:30, tried to call her again, unsuccessfully, and then drove over—half-irritated, half-concerned—and up the hill to the sanatorium. The door to her room was locked. I knocked for a while—nothing. Then I took a quick look in the pool area and, just to be sure, in the exercise room. She wasn’t on the terrace either, or in the dining room, so I started looking for her in the park, by the outdoor pool, even in the greenhouse for cactuses. Nothing. I hurried back to the building, climbed the stairs, and knocked on Bettina’s door again. Then I went to the reception desk and, still panting, asked after my wife. The two women there looked at each other and both said, “There you are, at last!” One of them asked me in a low voice to come into her office behind the desk. She said that they hadn’t been able to give me the news, nobody knew where I was staying. It was her unpleasant task to tell me that my wife had had an accident in the pool, at 8:30. She had slipped on the edge and hurt herself falling—apparently a blow to the back of the head, otherwise she would not have lost consciousness. It might not be dangerous. They immediately took her to the Ospedale Civico in Lugano—did I wanted to call there right now? ‘I’ll drive there,’ I said and listened without comprehension to the directions she was giving me. After a number of wrong turns, I arrived at the hospital around noon and was brought to the intensive care unit. Bettina had waited for me, even if unconsciously. She didn’t close her eyes until I got there and her hand lay in mine. As her hand went cold, so did I. That’s the only thing I can remember, all the rest of it is gone. All the decisions and arrangements I made mechanically. It took two weeks for the feeling of numbness to recede, and that only happened when I opened her wardrobe for the first time. The sight of her dresses, skirts, blouses, jackets, hanging dead yet expectant on the hangers, redeemed me—I felt the frozen block in me melt away in an instant. And shortly after, I found in the little storage space next to her room three new, unused, blue suitcases that I had never seen before. I couldn’t explain either how they got there or why I was so moved to see them there.”

  Loos stopped. I asked in a low voice what Bettina had died of. Her large kerchief, he said, though piled up into a kind of turban, was too little to soften the impact. She had presumably died of a brain hemorrhage, though that was not verified. He had refused an autopsy. It was far more important for him to protect his wife’s body from the hands of strangers than to know the cause of her death.

  “Thomas,” I said, “I am deeply sorry to hear all this. I hope as friend, if you’ll allow me to call myself that, that you will eventually get over it.” “I’m already halfway there,” Loos said and stood up. “You are, incidentally, the first and only person who’s heard my story. I say this only in passing. And now I’ll be on my way.” “Listen,” I said, “I don’t want to be a nuisance, but I’d like to see you again, just briefly. I’m getting the car in the morning.” Loos thought. “I’m going to sleep late,” he said. “Around eleven I’ll be sitting on the terrace, as far as conditions allow.” “I’ll come,” I said. “I’m delighted.”

  I accompanied him to the garden gate, where he stopped and stood indecisively. I said, “So—till tomorrow. Have good dreams tonight.” He seemed not to hear me, or to notice my outstretched hand. The moon had set, and it was very quiet. I could hear only the light rustling of the bamboo hedge next to us and—it sounded somewhat eerie—the clacking of teeth. Was something wrong, I asked? Would he like to stay overnight after all? “You’ve helped me, Mr. Clarin. Thank you,” he said. “In what way?” I asked. “You’ve helped me very much, Thomas,” he said. “I was glad to listen to you,” I said. “You don’t need to thank me for it. And if I rightly understand you, that it’s relieved you to be able to talk—I think that’s wonderful.” Loos took a step toward me and said in a strained voice close to my ear, “Lay yourself to sleep with your false interpretation, and don’t forget to bolt the door.”

  Then he turned away without a word of goodbye and disappeared into the darkness.

  PART III

  Although I sat for almost another hour in front of the cooling ashes, I could find no explanation for his strange departure. I could only assume that by bringing the tragic events back to life in his narration Loos had fallen into a state where his inner turmoil expressed itself in disoriented behaviour. If that was the case, then it seemed pointless to try to interpret his behaviour and find some meaning in his final words.

  I went to bed. Loos kept circling through my mind. I would gladly have dismissed him as a lunatic so that I could calm down. I thought about the handcuffs. If somebody wants to be handcuffed, it means he has guilt feelings. If someone has guilt feelings, it means he’s assumed guilt. It doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a murderer. It doesn’t necessarily mean that he killed his wife by drowning her in the indoor pool. It doesn’t necessarily mean that she had an accident there. She never slipped. Loos has concocted a version of her death that exonerates him. Here’s the way it really happened: he drank too much and then lost control over the car on one of the hairpin curves on the road to Cademario. Resulting in the death of his wife. For example. For another example: he’s sitting in the room at the sanatorium while she stands out on the balcony. From the chair he sees how she bends over the railing, farther and farther, and he jumps up and cries “Bettina!”—and she falls the moment he cries out. And ever since: guilt feelings and lunacy. Makes perfect sense. “Don’t forget to bolt the door!” In other words: “Protect yourself from me, I’m a criminal!” “Lay yourself to sleep with your false interpretation!” In other words: “How can I feel relieved and free, when only I know the truth?” Just one thing remained unclear: why and for what purpose did Loos thank me? What can I have helped him with? I’ll ask him again tomorrow. He completely confided in me, as the “only one,” he said. He likes me. Why should he lie to me? What would he gain? A pool accident resulting in death: what’s unbelievable about that? Bettina was brought to the hospital and died. No health resort in the world would broadcast such an incident. “Checked out early,” they would say, if asked. I would like to finally get to sleep. Loos may or may not be mentally disturbed, but I would like to sleep. Or I could call Francisca, it’s her profession. She once claimed that everyone, psychologically speaking, oversteps the clandestine boundary between sick and normal several time
s a day. Absurd. As if we all have one foot in the nuthouse. Good night!

  Pentecost Sunday. After a miserable sleep, in which my dreams were confused and preposterous, I got up at nine. I felt better than on the previous day. I could have worked now and was irritated by the eleven o’clock appointment. It surprised me that I had let myself in for it just like that, without thinking for a second about my obligation or the project itself. That’s how strong Loos’s hold on me was. I felt surfeit, Loos-surfeit. I felt the way I often feel after one-night stands. Animated by wine and lust, I feel fulfilled and somehow remote from the world for a few hours, and then I wake up in the morning with the touch of a strange woman’s foot and shrink back with alarm and a feeling of surfeit.

  It all changed again once I started walking down to the Bellevue under a milky sky. I noticed that my spirits were high. My plan not to stay more than a half-hour yielded to the hope that I could eat lunch with Loos and be in his company again for as long as he was willing.

  I sat down at our table on the terrace. It was almost eleven and Loos nowhere to be seen. The windows of his room stood open, a sign that he was awake. I ordered a Campari. Loos was taking his time. I cleaned my spectacles. From time to time I looked up at the yellowish façade—nothing moving at the window. Maybe he had gone out for a walk. The waiter began to set the tables, a different one than the night before. After another half-hour I went into the restaurant; it was after all possible that Loos had forgotten where we were going to meet. He wasn’t sitting there. When I got back to my table my glass had been taken away. The table was unfortunately reserved for twelve o’clock, the waiter said. “For two people?” I asked. He nodded with irritation. I said I was one of them, so convinced was I that Loos had seen to it. “Ah, I see” said the waiter, and I sat down again and ordered another Campari. I looked up at Loos’s window with growing impatience. At twelve the waiter came back followed by an elderly couple and asked what name the table had been reserved under. “Loos,” I said, “Mr. Loos is a guest here at the hotel.” “Just a moment,” said the waiter. He hurried off, came hurrying back again, and told me that there was nothing reserved under the name Loos. “Strange,” I said. “There must be a misunderstanding, I’m sorry.” I took my glass. To the side and up the stairs from the terrace, on the level of the entrance to the restaurant, there were two uncovered granite tables. I sat down at one in such a way that I could see both the entrance and the terrace. It got to be twelve-thirty. Loos had said he would be sitting on the terrace by eleven, as far as conditions allowed. I had assumed he meant the weather conditions. That was perhaps a mistake, I now realised. Maybe there were other reasons that prevented him from coming. At one it occurred to me that he might have left a message for me. I went to the reception desk. I gave my name and asked the woman there if there was a message for me from Thomas Loos, who was staying here. “Loos?” she asked. She wrinkled her brow and reached for a book. “We have no guest by that name,” she said. “No, no, you do,” I said, “we ate here twice, yesterday and the day before, in the evening.” The woman looked again in the guestbook and asked me whether I knew the room number. “Not the number,” I said, “but it’s the room on the top floor on the far left, as you look from the terrace.” “Uh-huh,” said the woman, taking a third look at the book. She then gave me a rather unfriendly look and said, “I’m afraid I can’t help you.” “Listen,” I said, “Mr. Loos is my friend. We were going to meet here at eleven, but he didn’t show up. I can’t understand why you won’t give me any information.” “I can only tell you,” the woman said, “that no guest with the name Loos is or has been staying with us and that the gentleman who was in the room you mentioned checked out early this morning.” “A fairly large, heavy-set man with a strikingly deep voice?” I asked. She just shrugged her shoulders. I stared at her, flustered, and asked for his name. “I’m sorry,” she said, “we are obliged to confidentiality: customer protection.” “Yes, but he’s my friend,” I repeated, without realising in my confusion how little this statement was likely to help me. The woman only said that people normally knew their friends’ names.