A few nights later, she fishes Kurt the big black dildo out of the shoebox at the back of her study closet and looks at him, holding him at eye level. “What do you think, big man? You want to try again?” But she is not stirred to lust; there is not even a flicker. She does however appreciate his phallic beauty, and thinks that his sensual sculpted gleam is marred only by the ugliness of the dangling white electrical cord. She finds a pair of garden clippers, cuts off the cord and puts him on the bedside table.
“So much has happened since we first met,” she tells him, and she lies down on the bed and folds her hands behind her head. She wishes she didn’t feel so sad.
Mimi sticks her nose around the door, pads into the room and jumps on the bed. She has never done this before.
Melusine turns to the dog and wraps her arms around Mimi’s kind furry warmth. “Good dog,” she says, “good dog.”
30.
MELUSINE VISITS HANS at the park every day and on the days when she cannot make it, Jonas goes. And when Nika’s in the area, she stops by for a while. He sometimes remembers who they are but other times, not.
He is triumphant about his success at staying awake during the night and napping while sitting upright on his bench during the day. He tells everyone loudly that he killed his sister but they all chalk it up to the ravings of a broken mind.
But Melusine is not so sure and once things have settled down, she has the chance to think about it more and do some investigating of her own.
She takes a day off work and drives to the nearby town of Erfurt where Hans grew up. She goes to the police station, identifies herself and asks the police officer behind the desk if she can talk to someone about a twenty-five-year old case. She gives all the details she can and the man disappears. To her surprise, she does not have to wait for long before he reappears with another man who is holding a file.
“This is Herr Kommissar Klein,” the desk officer says, “he can help you.”
The police commissioner smiles and shakes her hand. “Follow me.” Klein takes her to a comfortable lounge area at the back of the police station.
“Let’s look through this together. Your main purpose, I gather, is to try to ascertain whether your husband could have killed his sister as he is now claiming he did, although, your husband is now sadly indigent and also an alcoholic and therefore his testimony is, in all likelihood, the ravings of a distressed lunatic?”
“That would sum it up, yes,” Melusine says. The brutal succinctness of his speech leaves her feeling slightly dizzy and she forces herself to concentrate. Klein gives her a look.
“I’m going to get you a coffee,” he says. “This would be stressful for anyone.”
He comes back with a large mug of coffee and a few snacks from the vending machine.
“I insist,” he says and she nods and takes a bar of chocolate; she has been so preoccupied about the visit that she hasn’t eaten all day. But she puts the chocolate aside, anxious to get on with things.
She figures the police commissioner is in his early fifties; he is a tall and good-looking barrel-chested man with clear blue eyes and an army-cut hairstyle. Something about him reminds her of Gunther but she pushes that thought away.
“Where were we?” He picks up the file again. “Well, you’re not alone in wondering if your husband did in fact kill his sister. I got a call from your police department the day after he started telling the whole world that he’s the one responsible for her death. The newspapers called too. It was a really big national story, in case you didn’t notice.”
“I noticed,” Melusine says drily. “I noticed.”
“We hoped that the media attention might help, that it might jog somebody’s memory or something, but nothing new came to light. The Senior Police Commissioner from Frankfurt even called me to see if there had been any new developments and everybody asks the same question: is there any chance that he could have done it?”
“And?”
“It says here that your husband’s friends at the time swear that he was with them when she was killed. However, since we don’t know that she was actually killed, that puts their statement in some doubt.”
“Perhaps they just mean when she vanished?”
“Yes, but no one has a time for that either. A woman walking her dog thinks she saw the girl talking to a gypsy who was panhandling but she can’t be sure. It’s as if this girl was a ghost. The notes clearly indicate that no trace was ever found of her body or her belongings. She truly vanished. And as for other suspects, well, the father looked good for it. He’d taken his wife from her hometown when she was only fourteen, so detectives at the time put two and two together and got fourteen. And then the father ran away, which never looks good. After all, why run if you’re innocent?”
“Perhaps he didn’t want to be charged with a twenty-year-old rape and abduction?”
“Ach, I doubt it would have come to that. And if your daughter was taken, wouldn’t you want to stick around and see that the perpetrators were found and have your kid brought back home?”
“I agree, I’d never run,” she says. “So even though they could never prove it, they thought the father did it?”
“All the statements point that way. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful. The parents are both dead now and the house they lived in was torn down to build an apartment block.”
Melusine thanks the commissioner but she feels frustrated. Hans both could and could not have done it.
And what about his dreams?
The last time she saw Hans, he was almost rational.
“Tell me about her coming to you at night,” she had said. “And don’t worry Hans, it’s daytime now, she can’t get to you. But can you tell me why you think you killed her? You always said you couldn’t remember that day at all.”
“The Reverend helped me.” This is how he has taken to referring to the psychic from the Healing Lives Ministries — The Reverend. “She helped me. First we had to break down my ego so that my truest self could shine through. I needed to be stripped bare. And then, when I was my truest self, I tried to strangle a girl. I tried to kill her too and she was only kind and she loved me and I tried to kill her.”
“What girl, Hans?”
He looked furtive and scratched his beard. Melusine thought she would never get used to seeing her formerly clean-shaven husband so thoroughly hirsute. “I paid her. I tried to kill them all. Even my wife. I tried to kill my wife too.”
“By strangling her?”
He looked away.
“My wife was dirty,” he said, turning his gaze to stare down at the ground. “But I tried to kill her before she was dirty. And then she came to me, Kateri did, and she asked me, why did you kill me when you loved me?”
Melusine was struck dumb by his assertion that she was dirty. What did he know about Gunther? He has referred to it before; her lies. It is clear he knows something. But he was right, he had tried to throttle her before she’d had sex with Gunther. But she had been with Gunther earlier that day, and she had been so happy — didn’t that constitute as much by way of infidelity as sex?
“I don’t think you killed Kateri,” she said. “What did you do with her body then? They never found her body.”
“She’s in the tree,” Hans said. “She’s in the tree.”
Melusine remembered him talking about the treehouse where he and Kateri would lie for hours and talk.
Before she takes leave of the police commissioner, she asks him about the tree house and he consults his notes.
“They were all over the tree, looking for evidence, of course they were. But there wasn’t anything.”
“Is the tree still there?”
Klein shrugs. “I’ll take you there myself if you like.”
They drive for half an hour but both the tree and the tree house are gone.
Melusine stands with Commissioner Klein at the place where Hans once lived and she is angry. She wants some answers; having to live with this incertitude is
not fair.
“May I ask you something else? I’ve asked our police officers but they say it’s not possible — I found a pamphlet that Hans got from the psychic fair, for Celestial Sound Vibrations. Is there a way you could contact them and ask them who Hans might have been talking to? Or look at the security cameras? Surely there must be a way that more policing can be done to find the Healing Lives Ministries? They’re the ones responsible, not for Kateri I know, but they are accountable for Hans.”
“You know how things get so neatly wrapped up in movies?” Klein asks. “It’s very rarely like that in real life. You should know that. Your husband was victim to a tragedy and now you and your son are too. There are no answers. There’s just putting one foot in front of the other, day by day.”
Melusine looks at him but she does not say anything.
He sighs and pulls a card out of his pocket. “Email me all the details on the pamphlet. I can tell you now that the security cameras will be a dead end, it was too long ago, but I’ll see what I can do about following up with this other thing.”
“Thank you,” she says, and she shakes his hand again. “For your time and your kindness and coffee and everything. Here’s me, putting one foot in front of the other.”
Melusine flips through the radio stations on the way home, trying to find some music but she feels haunted by uncertainty and the dismal facelessness of lives ruined.
31.
SUMMER PASSES and autumn arrives. Melusine spends a lot of time with Nika and Jonas who are regulars for dinner.
Melusine watches as Nika takes napkins out of the decorated wooden sideboard and folds them into ornate fans that she tucks into the water glasses. It always amuses Melusine and this time is no different.
“It looks pretty,” Nika says, grinning as she catches sight of Melusine watching her but then both of them fall sombre. “Ach, Melu, I know. Hans is in a bad way. He didn’t even recognize me today.”
Melusine nods. “I went by to give him his coat for the cooler weather and he looked at it as if he had no idea what it was.”
Jonas comes back from his run, and pulls off a sweaty t-shirt. “I’ll just have a quick shower,” he says. “You guys talking about Papa? It’s weird how we’re all living with this, this, which would have been out of the question not so long ago. And look, we all just get on with things.”
Yes, Melusine agrees silently, we get on with things. She stirs the sauce for the pasta and wonders if she should share the news she received earlier that day.
A letter had come for her in the post, not from Gunther but from the publishers who had reviewed her novel.
Good news, we love it! We’re looking at a spring launch which gives us lots of time. We’ll call you to finalize the contract. Also, do you have a follow-up novel? If so, send it along!
But Melusine has not written anything since she submitted the manuscript. She had hoped that Isolde would return to her and continue with the tale of her life but there was nothing. The book itself feels alien to her; she can hardly remember the intricacies of the story and she is amazed to think that such a sensual outpouring had come from her.
Melusine feels as if her entire life has gone quiet and numb. She feels like a clockwork doll, moving carefully and mechanically. When she hears about her book, she tells herself that she should feel joyful but she simply feels accepting. She accepts the good things in her life, like her book, and her brightly painted house and she accepts the bad, like Hans, and how much she still misses Gunther.
Later at the supper table, she tries to summon the energy to tell Jonas and Nika about the book but she does not have the energy to explain the whole thing, and certainly not the energy to pretend to be happy. She knows that Nika would be delighted and she is not up to being a mirror to Nika’s joy. It is easier to be quiet. And Jonas, how would he feel, with his father a crazy streetperson and his mother the author of an erotic novel?
No, she thinks, moving her pasta around on her plate, it’s better that she remain silent.
“Are you okay, Mami?” Jonas is watching her and she puts down her fork and sighs.
She cannot tell them that she feels like she is waiting, waiting for the next bad thing to happen; she is watchful, and she is waiting.
She pushes her plate away.
“Each half-baked feeling that passes by me…” she stops but Nika continues.
“I have registered for a life sentence with you that cannot be carried out.”
Jonas looks confused. “I know it’s Ingeborg but what does it mean?”
Nika takes Melusine’s hand. “It only feels like a life sentence now. Joy will return Melu, and we will be cheerful again, we will.”
Melusine summons a smile. “You’re right. And meanwhile there is always baking; I’ve made you your favourite plum cake for dessert.”
Jonas jumps up with enthusiasm. “Enough real food! I’ll clear these plates away.”
Four
at the end is the beginning
of daydreams
32.
IN EARLY OCTOBER, Melusine arrives at work. She parks and lets herself into the library, startled to find the main door unlocked. She is usually the first one there.
In the early days of Hans’s defection to the anarchical indigents, Melusine was regarded by the townspeople as a curiosity and the library staff welcomed a host of visitors they had not seen in a long time, and perhaps had never seen. But eventually, the townsfolk accepted the situation and Melusine was left in relative privacy.
She is surprised, today, to find her boss and a member of the board of directors waiting for her. “Did I forget about a meeting?” she asks and they look at each other and shake their heads.
“No, Melusine, you did not.”
She makes to join them and pull up a chair.
“Uh, no, you don’t need to sit,” the director says. “In fact really, you should stand.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“As well you should,” the director continues. “Beg our pardon, I mean. I have no idea how you thought you could do this. I’m astounded, Melusine Meier. And your parents, such good people. I knew them, did you know that? I used to have my pictures framed in their store. Your father had such a great eye for the perfect frame to bring out the beauty in a painting. One would think, Melusine, that you, given your upbringing, would know art from vulgarity, would you not?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Melusine says, baffled.
“And you even studied fine art, did you not? What I have no idea about, madam, is how you thought you could do this and just carry on — do this and get away with it.”
“Do what? Please explain. Again, I’ve got no idea what you are talking about.”
The director looks at Melusine’s boss and they both nod. The director pulls an art catalogue out of her briefcase and opens it.
There, as a double page spread is one of the images that Melusine is so proud of; one of the images that Gunther had taken. There she is, in all her naked glory, with her generous untrimmed bush wild and curly for all the world to see, her eyes wanton and her lips dark, wet and parted.
Melusine grips the table and her knees buckle. It’s not what you think, she wants to say. But she doesn’t say anything.
“That these images are part of an exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art in New York means nothing,” the director says. She is a bony woman in her late fifties, and she is thin but she has an unfortunate array of unsightly fleshy chins, all of which jiggle when she speaks. “You are one of many respected curators in this, our library, in this, our small town. How do you think parents will feel, having this image of you in their minds when you interact with their children? Did you really think you could remain part of our hallowed institution after exposing yourself like this to the whole world? Honestly, Melusine, I’ve got no idea what you were thinking and it doesn’t even matter. You can’t continue working here. You’re fired, with immediate effect. We don’t need more of a re
ason than this and we certainly don’t need three letters of warning. This catalogue is more than enough reason to let you go. You’re not the kind of person we want around our children. We should have known there was something fundamentally wrong in your home after what your husband did to that schoolgirl and everybody knows that he killed his sister because they were lovers. What astounds me is that your son appears to be relatively normal, but he’s young, there is still time.”
This last comment enrages Melusine and she swells with fighting spirit. She stands tall, and towers over the seated director.
“Director,” she says, “firstly, you have my sympathies that you’re such a dried-up old carcass of a woman that no one would ever wish to photograph you like this. You’ll never be the muse or subject of beauty in one of the world’s most respected museums. But I will. And you never had children because your womb is as barren as your mind and as dead as your soul. And if you ever so much as hint that there’s anything wrong with my precious boy, you will not withstand the fire of my wrath. Fine, I’ll leave the library, I’ll leave this ‘hallowed institution’ as you put it. But remember this, not one word about my boy, ever. Do you understand me?”
She is angrier than she has ever been in her life and she is gratified to see the director go pale.
Melusine turns to leave. “Oh, and one last thing. You say you have no idea how I could do this? I did this for me. I did this for fun. I did this out of the sheer joy of being alive. And I did it because it made me happy.”
She leans down, amused to see the director tilt backwards in her chair with a look of fright on her face and she grabs the catalogue and walks out without a backward glance.
33.
A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER, she is sitting at Ana’s kitchen table, sobbing inconsolably. “Jonas,” she wails.
“Melu,” Ana says, “don’t get me wrong but your life certainly turned out to be more interesting than I, or anybody else ever thought it would.”
“Jonas,” Melusine wails again.
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