“And you are convinced that it was I?”
“No, absolutely not! I advanced this supposition on an off-chance, in order to see, from your reaction, if you had something to tell us on a subject still in its preliminary stages, in narrative subinfeudation … a period quite enthralling for us.”
“You’re following a lead?”
“Of course—actually, several. Things are moving fast, in many directions.”
“And as for the murder of old von Brücke?”
“That’s a different matter. Pierre Garin and Walther immediately accused you by name. The latter even asserts that he fired at you in order to avenge his father’s death.”
“And do you take him at his word?”
“His entire story holds together quite coherently: chronology, the various times of your movements through the city, additional testimonies, not to mention the quite convincing motives which impelled you to parricide. In your place, I should have done the same thing.”
“Except that I am not the Oberführer’s son. That he was a Nazi, that he abandoned his very young wife because she was half Jewish, that he showed excessive zeal in the Ukraine does not concern me as family business.”
“You’re wrong, my dear fellow, to persist in this dead-end path, especially with your murky past, your unknown supposed father, your childhood tossed back and forth between Finistère and Prussia, your defective memory.…”
“While your Walther is clarity itself, without incriminating circumstances and entirely above suspicion. Have you seen his sado-pornographic drawings and paintings?”
“Of course I have! Everyone has. You can even buy some fine lithographic reproductions of them in a specialized bookstore in the Zoo-Bahnhof. During the downfall of the Reich, one makes one’s living as best one can, and Walther has now acquired the status of an artist.”
It was at this moment that the stiff nurse in a starched white uniform came back into my room without knocking, presenting me with a little transparent plastic bag in which, she announced in a dry, limpid German, were the two bullets extracted by the surgeon, who was offering them to me as a souvenir. Lorentz held out his hand to take the bag before I could do so, and examined it with a look of surprise. His verdict was prompt: “These are not nine-millimeters, but seven-sixty-fives. Which changes everything.”
Jumping up from his chair, he followed the nurse out of the room without a word, taking the disputed bullets with him. I therefore had no clue as to whether the change in question had any relation to me. I was then entitled to an insipid meal, without anything of a cheering nature to drink. Outside, night was already falling, made livid and uncertain by the effect of a very thick fog. No lamp, however, was turned on, neither inside nor outside.… The calm, the gray … I lost no time in falling back to sleep.
Several hours later (how many I don’t know), Gigi returned. I hadn’t seen her come in. When I opened my eyes, awakened perhaps by the little sounds of her presence, she was standing in front of my bed. There was something abnormally exalted on her childish face and in her gestures; but this had nothing to do with joyous excitement, or with an excess of exuberance; it was rather a sort of hallucinatory restiveness, such as is produced by certain poisonous plants. She tossed on my blanket a tiny hard, shiny rectangle which I immediately recognized even before I picked it up: it was Walther’s Ausweis, the one I had used by an unhoped-for stroke of luck as I came out of the macabre tunnel, leaving the doll shop by the cellar exit. And she said very rapidly, with a kind of cruel sneer: “Here! I’ve brought you this thing. An additional identity card can always come in handy, in your line of work. The photo really looks like you.… Walther won’t need it anymore. He’s dead!”
“He’s been killed too?”
“Yes, poisoned.”
“Does anyone know who did it?”
“I do—in any case I’ve heard it from a reliable source.”
“And … ?”
“Apparently it’s me.”
The narrative she then began was so complicated, so rapid, and so confused in places that I prefer furnishing here a summary without unnecessary repetitions and digressions and, above all, put in a plausible order. I sum up, then, and I resume: in one of the licentious nightclubs near the Sphinx, known as the Vampir, Walther frequently went to drink a house cocktail made out of the fresh blood of the young barmaids dressed in attractively lacerated vaporous blouses and serving the gentlemen drinks and certain other pleasures. That evening Gigi suggested to her master that she might perform for him—but in private—that role he so appreciated in the Vampir, and reproduce the ritual with her own blood. Of course, he accepted enthusiastically. Doctor Juan himself performed the sacrificial saignée, in one of the rare crystal champagne flutes still in stock. In addition to some strong alcohol and red pepper, Gigi, alone in her toilet stall, added to the mixture a sizeable dose of prussic acid, giving the resulting drink an incontestable scent of bitter almond, of which Walther was not in the least suspicious. Just touching it to his lips, he declared the thing delicious, and drank off the love potion in a single gulp. He was dead in a few seconds. Juan remained absolutely calm. He circumspectly sniffed the remains of the vermilion liquid which adhered to the sides of the flute and stared insistently at the girl without saying a word. She did not lower her eyes. Then the doctor pronounced his diagnosis: “Cardiac arrest. I’ll write you a certificate of ‘natural death.’” Gigi replied: “How sad!”
Once I left the American Hospital, I went with her to the island of Rügen for what she called our honeymoon. However, and by mutual agreement, it was with her disturbing mama that my legal marriage would take place upon our return. Gigi considered this solution more prudent, more in accord with her own nature: without a doubt she loved slavery, but as an erotic game, and insisted above all things on her freedom. Had she not just demonstrated as much?
My impulses of tenderness, as of possession, happened to be somewhat limited by my wounds. My left shoulder had to avoid certain movements, and my left arm remained in a sling, out of precaution. We had again taken that same train, to Berlin-Lichtenberg, from which I had disembarked fifteen days earlier, and in the same direction—that is, to the north. There was a large crowd on the station platform. In front of us was standing a motionless, compact group of rather tall, very thin men with long close-fitting black coats and broad-brimmed felt hats, also black, waiting for something, since the train from Halle, Weimar, and Eisenach had already been in the station for some time. Beyond this funereal or religious group, I thought I glimpsed Pierre Garin. But his face had changed slightly. A new beard, which might have been at least eight days old, covered his cheeks and chin with a vague shadowy mask. And dark glasses hid his eyes. With a discreet movement of my head, I indicated this ghost to my little fiancée, who after a quick glance in his direction confirmed without the slightest emotion that it was indeed he, informing me furthermore that the luxurious overcoat he was wearing had belonged to Walther. It was Joëlle who had told Pierre Garin to take what he liked from the dear departed’s wardrobe.
This made me feel, strangely enough, that he had stolen my own clothes. I moved my free hand to my inside jacket pocket, where the stiff Ausweis was in its accustomed place. Doctor Juan had, at our request, made out the death certificate in the name of Marco von Brücke. Lorentz readily gave his consent. I liked the idea of my new life, many as pects of which fit me like a glove. A sharp pain in my left eye reminded me of the battles on the Eastern front, in which I had been involved only by proxy. Once we had arrived in Sassnitz, I would have to buy dark glasses to protect my damaged eyes from the winter sun on the sparkling white cliffs.
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Repetition Page 16