by Peter Stamm
The two Japanese women had the generic ugliness of European or American performers in porn films that David had seen from time to time. That is, they didn’t have ugly faces, or ugly bodies. It seemed rather to be some kind of inner ugliness, lubricity or squalor. He remembered one film, in which naked women had been wrapped in cling wrap. He switched off the TV. Cling wrap, he put down on his shopping list.
He thought of the Japanese woman next door to him, tried to fix his concentration on her. His hand moved back and forth over her naked body. He liked the idea that his neighbor was lying on her own bed in her own flat, feeling some energy reaching her from somewhere, exciting her in some irresistible way. But he wondered whether his own state of excitement had any influence on the Japanese woman.
Then he thought about the dead kid that had been found. He was curious to learn more about the case. That seemed to him the priority just then. He left his apartment. He spent a long time looking for a newsstand. The newspaper, when he finally found one, didn’t have much more information than he already knew.
The police had christened the little boy Adam, and there was talk about a violent end. The boy was wearing orange shorts, and it was thought he had been in the water for about ten days. There were strangulation marks on his neck. A police inspector told the newspaper he had never come across a similar case, and he vowed to keep on at the case until the riddle was solved.
The riddle consisted of seven half-burned-down candles that had been found on the banks of the Thames. They were wrapped in a white cloth that had a name on it. The name was Adekoye Jo Fola Adeoye, and it was thought to be fairly common in Nigeria, he read.
David considered going to Tower Bridge, but then he changed his mind. He was unable to picture the dead boy. Each time he tried, he couldn’t do any better than those pictures that were screened to elicit contributions to famine charities.
He wondered if anyone would look for him if he failed to show up to work on Monday. Presumably Rosemary would be sent. She didn’t have a key to the apartment, as she stressed. If he didn’t open the door and let her in, she would have to go away, and try again the next day. The police wouldn’t be alerted until three or four days had passed. First they would ring, then the super would unlock the door. The police were the first to step inside, followed by the super and Rosemary. She screamed, a short, stifled scream, and then threw herself round the super’s neck. It was like in the movies. The policemen would make long, serious faces. David’s body would be lying on the bed, arms and legs severed, the sheets soaked with blood. His trunk would be buried in a normal-sized coffin, even though a child’s coffin would have done.
David sat in his living room. He was full of a wild rage, a rage against the people who had killed and mutilated the innocent boy. He wanted to do something, to bring about some change. But the people who understood the world didn’t do anything to change it. And the people who changed the world, didn’t understand it. David wasn’t sure whether he himself understood anything or not. He was just sure he wouldn’t ever change anything. He could picture himself dropping the TV set off the balcony into the park, or taking an ax to the Hansgrohe fittings in the bathroom. With a single blow, he shattered the washbasin. Water spurted from the pipes. He ripped down the shower curtains, he attacked the mirror with his ax, and it shattered into a thousand pieces. He swept the crockery out of the kitchen cupboards, and knocked over the refrigerator. The TV exploded at the foot of the building. Blood splashed down onto the carpet.
David dropped to his knees. He ran his fingers through the carpet tassels. He lay on the carpet, writhing like a sick animal. He thought of the dead cat, the mutilated boy, the Japanese women and the pseudoscientist, and the man with the kite. He thought about building a kite with his father as a boy. He saw his father’s expression, the concentration and the careful movements with which he assembled the pieces of wood and draped the colorful silk paper over them, fixed the string to the cross. When they flew the kite, David felt as though it was he himself who was speeding up into the air, steered but barely held by the frail string his father held in his hands.
David thought about how someone somewhere in this city had severed Adam’s limbs, his little arms and legs, with an ax, a carpet cutter, he couldn’t imagine. Someone would have to atone for what had been done to Adam.
David saw himself building a kite for the little boy. He wasn’t able to tell him much more than how to glue the wooden struts together, how to fix the string to them, the type of glue you used to attach the paper. He saw the child holding the kite, he saw himself running across a large meadow, with the string in his hand, both of them now were running. Let go, shouted David, and Adam let go of the kite, and it shot up into the air. David saw himself standing in a meadow, with the string in his hand. He looked up, Adam looked up. He felt the gentle tug of the kite. He was exhausted from running. Then Adam went over to him, and he handed him the string and laid his hands on his shoulders and said, careful, very slowly, I’ll hold you. It was just a kite, but Adam would remember it, even if the world split into two halves.
It was very quiet in the apartment. Only now did David register the quiet noises coming from the apartments on either side. He heard running water, footfalls, a radio. He got up, and went out onto the balcony. There was the Japanese woman, watering her plants that were growing in large ceramic pots. He said hello, and she said hello back.
“I’m your new neighbor,” he said.
“Nice to meet you,” said the Japanese woman, with a smile.
“Nice to meet you, too,” said David. He wanted to say something else, but instead he went back into his apartment. There’s no hurry, he thought, everything will sort itself out.
THE STOP
We sat on our packs on the platform. Daniel and I had taken off our T-shirts and were sitting there stripped to the waist, Marianne was wearing cut-off jeans and a bikini top. We were sweating. The tin roof cracked in the heat, and the hot air simmered over the rails. The train would be at least two hours late, the stationmaster had told us. For once, we weren’t even annoyed; it struck us as miraculous that there should be trains running in this heat.
“Too bad we don’t have any music,” said Marianne.
The station café was shut. Daniel said he would go into the village and find some ice cream. He was gone a long time, and when he finally came back the ice cream was already all soft, and we ate it in big bites. Then we heard the whistle of a locomotive. Not even one hour had passed. In the harsh light, a train emerged. It looked as though it were hovering over the rails. Very slowly it came nearer. The stationmaster came out of his office. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and a cap. Slowly the train drew into the station, and moved past us. The brakes squealed long and loud. The cars were old. They were painted white, and had red crosses painted on the sides. At last the squealing stopped, and the train jerked to a halt. Then there was silence.
The white train stood there, and nothing happened. Only the telephone kept ringing in the station office, and finally the stationmaster went back into his office, and shortly afterwards the telephone stopped ringing. A fat man in black clothes rapidly crossed the parking lot next to the station. He was sweating, and mopped his brow with a white handkerchief. Shortly before he reached the train, a door opened, the man went inside, and the door shut again.
“Your back is getting all red,” said Marianne. “Do you want me to put some lotion on you?”
“What is it with that train?” asked Daniel. He got up and walked down the platform to the very end of the train.
“All sick people,” he said as he came back. “A special train, going to Lourdes.”
I noticed that the blind in one of the windows had been pushed very slightly up. A face appeared in the narrow crack. Someone was looking at us. Then blinds started going up in some of the other windows, and other faces peered out at us. Some people dangled their arms out of the windows. In some compartments there was no one looking, but even there the bli
nds had been pushed up a little, and I could see beds with people lying on them, moving. I saw a back, a head, a leg, sometimes a pillow that was being turned over. The sick people seemed to be in constant movement, they really seemed not to be well, they must be in pain, or suffering from the heat. They seemed to me to be very far away from us. A nun in white robes and a white winged bonnet was looking at us from one window. Her face bore a vaguely triumphant expression.
“All sick people,” said Marianne. “Honestly, you’d have thought they’d never seen a bikini in their lives, the way they’re staring.” She stopped rubbing sunscreen into me, turned away from the train, and pulled on a T-shirt.
“It must be bloody hot in there,” I said.
“Well, we’ve got exactly the same thing ahead of us, too,” said Marianne. “Do you suppose they’re infectious?”
“Why are they staring at us like that?” I asked.
There was a deathly hush. Only occasionally someone would cough. I lit a cigarette.
“Sometimes I think life would be more straightforward if you were ill,” said Daniel. “Then you would know what to do, at least.”
“Do you think the sick people believe in it?” asked Marianne.
“Sure,” I said, “but it won’t do them any good.”
In the window immediately in front of us stood an old woman. Her arm hung down inertly. She was moving her fingers as though to test the material, or letting sand trickle through them. Behind us there was a noisy clatter. The metal shutters of the station café were being drawn up. A man in a white waistcoat brought a few plastic tables and chairs out onto the platform. When he disappeared back into the restaurant, I followed him.
“Water,” Marianne called after me, and Daniel: “Me, too.”
At the bar stood the stationmaster, who must have come in through the side entrance.
“A fatality,” he said to me, and jerked his head in the direction of the white train, “and in this heat.”
“It helped an aunt of mine,” said the barman, “she had shingles. When she got back from Lourdes, it was gone. But the miracle wasn’t confirmed. It made her so angry.”
I ordered drinks for us.
“You’re young,” the stationmaster said to me. “I know when I was your age, I didn’t use to think about things like that. A healthy constitution is the best present.”
When I emerged from the café, Marianne said: “They’re taking someone off the train.”
“A fatality,” I said. “I know. I heard.”
The door of one car had been opened. Standing with his back to us was a man in a luminous orange waistcoat. His neck was glistening with sweat. He carefully backed down the steps, followed by a stretcher, followed by a second man in an orange waistcoat. The fat man in the dark suit and a nun brought up the rear. The sick people were now staring at the little group that had stopped next to the train. Then the nun ran along the train with little short steps,calling something, and flapping her hands, as though to shoo away chickens. A few of the sick people drew their heads in. Daniel laughed. The two ambulance men carried the stretcher away. The priest followed them.
“Can dead people sweat?” asked Daniel. “Or does all that stop right away?”
“They all knew it,” said Marianne, “but they all kept staring at me anyway. Isn’t that horrible?”
“I’m sure they must expect losses,” said Daniel.
“It’s horrible,” said Marianne, “someone dies before our very eyes, and I go on rubbing cream into your back to stop you getting silly sunburn.”
“He was dead when they got here,” I said, “that’s why they made a stop here. That’s why they traveled so slowly.”
“What does that have to do with it?” asked Marianne.
When the train moved off, the last of the sick people drew in their heads. The blinds came down.
“I’d like to know what time they’ll get there,” said Marianne. “How far do you think it is from here to Lourdes?”
“No idea,” I said. “I can’t imagine they’ll be there before tomorrow morning.”
“People are forever traveling,” said Daniel, “even sick people. Even dead people. I’m sure they’ll take him back to wherever he started out from. As if that made a difference.”
I thought about the train rolling on through the night, going through towns and villages where people were asleep in their houses and didn’t have a clue about those sick people who were unable to sleep because they were so excited, or in such pain. And how tomorrow morning, the Pyrenees would soar up out of the haze in front of them. “A train full of sick people,” I said, and Marianne shook her head.
DEEP FURROWS
Dr. Kennedy appeared to be expecting an answer. He took a big swallow from his glass of beer, and looked at me. Birth, he had said, wasn’t the opposite of death, it was the same thing.
“We come from death, and return to death. It’s like entering a room and leaving it again.”
Of course it was a commonplace, he said, everyone knew that the body was put together from chemicals, from inorganic matter, and would revert to it at the point of death. That’s what they taught you at school, and then you forgot it, and started believing in some type of nonsense instead. I looked over at the musicians who were sitting and chatting in a ring in the middle of the pub. From time to time one or another of them would play one or two notes, sometimes one of the others would join in, but the melodies were invariably drowned out by the noise of the conversations. I had been given the name of the pub by Terry, whom I had met by chance on the street a couple of days previously. I was lost and asked him for directions, and he had accompanied me. We talked about music, and he recommended the community center to me. That was where they played real Irish music, he said, and everyone who had an instrument could play along. Sometimes he sang there himself. He painted as well, and wrote poems. He would give me a poem of his, if I came by there. When we parted he handed me his card, which read: Terry McAuley, genealogist. It was a laminated card, and once I’d read it, Terry put out his hand and I gave it back to him.
I had gotten to the center early, and had looked over the building. In one room there were a couple of guys facing each other, playing guitars, in another an old man was rehearsing a song with a group of children. The Gaelic text was up on a board on the wall, but the man spoke English with the children.
“As you sing, you ask the question, and give the answer,” he said.
There were a few grown-ups sitting at the back of the room, listening. The doors to all the rooms were open, and the music mingled in the corridors. There was the sound of a bodhran from somewhere.
I went into the pub. The musicians came in one by one, a dozen men and women of all ages. They unpacked their instruments, fiddles and guitars, tin whistles and drums. A man tuned his fiddle, a woman played a couple of scales on a flute, the other musicians talked and laughed among themselves. Then Dr. Kennedy turned up and sat down opposite me, even though there were still some free tables.
I wanted to be quiet, but he immediately started talking to me. He introduced himself, and I told him my name. After that I didn’t say a whole lot. With Dr. Kennedy, though, it was first one thing, then another.
Terry had come in, and sat down at the bar. I waved to him but he didn’t react, it was as though he didn’t see me. He ordered a pineapple juice. Did I know Terry, asked Dr. Kennedy. An unfortunate man, he said, an epileptic. He had used to work in the carpet factory, but had had so many fits that finally they’d had to let him go. Now he was unemployed, and living off the state.
“He used to be a good singer. Plus he was the best whistler in the region. He won competitions.”
Then the doctor expressed his anger with Ireland and the Irish. It was incest, he said, that was to blame. That was what was at the root of the Troubles, unemployment, religious fanaticism, and alcoholism. That was why he himself had married a German woman. To import some fresh blood into the region. He had gone to Germany to look fo
r a wife, a mother for his children. His wife was a Luther, and yes, some distant relation of the Reformation figure.
There was a short pause in the conversations all around. Dr. Kennedy was just saying he had three daughters, and in the sudden lull it sounded far too loud. A few of the guests laughed and looked across at us, and then everyone started talking together again.
The pub we were sitting in, the doctor went on to explain, had once been a fire station, then a community center in which only Gaelic was spoken. Nonsense, that was. Now it was open to everyone. Where did I come from? Switzerland was a beautiful country. There the peoples had mingled. Not like here.
Later on, Terry sang, and a few musicians accompanied him. But he wasn’t a good singer, and eventually the musicians got bored, and ran away with the songs. Terry stumbled, and got tripped up on the words. Then the small audience clapped, till he put up his hands in modesty, and stopped singing.
I got myself a beer at the bar. When I came back, Dr. Kennedy asked me how long I planned on staying in Ireland. And why didn’t I come and visit him. He often entertained visitors from abroad. Was I free tomorrow evening, for example. He gave me the address and stood up. I didn’t get up.
The next evening, I went to Dr. Kennedy’s house. It was on a hill at the edge of the city. I took a bus that drove through poor suburbs, and then out over green fields. The land on which the doctor’s house was built was enclosed in a tall brick wall. On the wrought iron gate was a sign, Deep Furrows. I rang the bell. The gate opened with a low hum. As I walked through the garden to the house, the doctor came out to meet me. He shook my hand, and laid his arm on my shoulder, as if we were old friends.