by Max Landorff
Sitting there in his kitchen, Tretjak slowly started to feel something, which surprised him: he envied this young woman. A real job, a regular working day with a bicycle and a shoulder bag, and with what he guessed was a small apartment. And with wishes you could tie around your wrist.
Tretjak had always seen his extraordinary memory as a gift: it had served him well. Today, now, doing this work, it seemed to take his breath away. Each entry in his books which they discussed conjured up images, stories and destinies in his mind’s eye, lines of people appeared, long-passed situations played out again. While the tax inspector audited the past three years of his life from a strictly accounting perspective, he was sitting in his kitchen thrown back into the mess of human emotions and behavioural patterns. He suddenly felt unwell, felt that his pulse had started racing, that the palms of his hands had become clammy. For a short moment he thought about interrupting the appointment. Later he would think back to that moment and how things would have panned out if he had done just that. But instead he apologised and went to the bathroom. He took two Tavor and splashed cold water onto his face.
When he returned to the kitchen, Fiona Neustadt asked: ‘Are you alright? You look a bit pale.’
‘Yes, everything is fine,’ he answered.
She closed the account book lying in front of her on the table. ‘May I ask you a personal question?’
‘Sure.’
She took off her glasses, leant forward, with her elbows on the table and her head resting on her cupped hands, and looked directly at Tretjak. ‘I know the books of management consultants,’ she said. ‘I know the books of investment advisors and those of enterprise coaches... they all look different. There include project forecasts, project schedules, cost calculations. There are reverse remuneration, profit shares...’ She paused. ‘What exactly is your job, Mr Tretjak? For what kind of consulting are people willing to pay these kinds of sums?’
He almost told her: this has nothing to do with consulting. I am not advising my clients what they should do. I do it for them. I send them away, get them to leave their lives, and for a while step into their shoes. Only when everything is fixed do they return. Instead he said: ‘Where did you get this very beautiful watch?’
She smiled, lifted her wrist up and looked at the watch. ‘From my grandfather,’ she said, ‘I had always admired it, from when I was little. When I turned eighteen, he gave it to me. And one year later he died.’
She did not say: you didn’t answer my question. She did not even say: I understand, you can’t talk about that. She simply picked up the next accounts book, opened it, put on her glasses and said: ‘Each month you transfer 2,000 euros into the account of a church in Niederbayern. That is done by standing order. One could assume that this is a donation, but you have not applied for tax relief for it.’
Tretjak felt the tablets working as he became calmer. ‘I want to support the priest in that community. He does a great job. I don’t want him to think that I am doing it just because it is tax deductable.’
She looked at him: ‘Are you some kind of Robin Hood?’
The melodic tone of the doorbell chimed. The police would later record the time to have been 17.55.
‘I have a delivery for Mr Tretjak,’ the voice on the intercom said. A few seconds later the man connected with the voice was standing at the front door. He wore the orange jacket of a courier firm and was carrying a giant bunch of flowers in his hands, wrapped in see-through plastic. It was a distinctive bunch, exclusively roses, but in different colours. ‘I am supposed to deliver this to Mr Tretjak personally,’ said the guy. ‘And this message.’
Tretjak took the flowers and a little white envelope. Deep in thought, he closed the door.
‘Oh,’ said Fiona Neustadt when he came back into the kitchen with the flowers, ‘you must have left a good impression with somebody. And it seems not to have been a man.’
Tretjak saw that she was packing up her shoulder bag and making a move, wrapping up the appointment. He placed the flowers in the sink, closed the drain and turned on the tap. Still standing, he opened the envelope. It contained a card, on it a single, typed sentence: shrouds are white. Tretjak observed the water filling the sink. When its surface drew level with the edge, he absent-mindedly closed the tap. The church bells chimed six o’clock.
Only then did he notice Fiona Neustadt standing and ready to leave, with her bag slung over her shoulder and her jacket buttoned up, looking rather sheepish as though she had just witnessed an intimate moment. ‘I’d better be going now,’ she said. ‘We could speak on the phone about another appointment.’
Tretjak nodded silently. He would have to inform the inspector. Shrouds are white... What the hell was going on here?
‘I have written down another few questions for you... They are lying on the table,’ Fiona Neustadt said and turned towards the hallway to go. He heard her footsteps approach the front door.
‘Wait,’ he said, and followed her.
She stopped, turned towards him, her hand already on the doorknob.
‘Have you got any plans for tonight? Do you have a date or something?’ Tretjak asked.
There was an astonished look on her face. The look of a tax inspector who is asking herself whether somebody is overstepping the line.
‘I’m sorry,’ Tretjak said. ‘I didn’t want to... I just wanted to show you something.’
Now she smiled. ‘What did you want to show me?’
‘Forget it,’ Tretjak said.
‘I’m meeting a girlfriend to play badminton at 7pm,’ she said. ‘But afterwards I’m free.’
Tretjak hesitated another moment, but then he smiled as well. ‘Then you can exhaust yourself for a really long time,’ he said. ‘Because what I want to show you can be seen only when it is pitch dark.’
Bolanzo, Italy, 5pm
It was exceptionally hot for late spring. Maria left her apartment directly over the ice cream parlour on Waltherplatz just after 5pm. She had put on her blue woollen jacket and on top of that the navy apron. A bit too warm, but she did not mind. On foot it would take her eight minutes to get to the hotel.
The little Maria. There must have been a time when she had been pretty. But as a woman of 83 years, this was no longer a distinguishing characteristic, especially not for a woman like the little, old Maria, who had never known any affairs of the heart. No, she always said, I didn’t have time for any of that. She had been married to the hotel, for all these decades. Married to the hotel Zum Blauen Mondschein in Bolzano, one of the best in town. The owner of the hotel had changed a few times, yet standards had remained the same. Breakfast was served in the beautiful garden, as was lunch and dinner. From the rooms you could look down to the garden, and from the garden up to the windows of the rooms, framed by green shutters.
Maria had been a chambermaid at the Blauen Mondschein for almost 70 years and had seen the various owners come and go. When it had become known that the new proprietor had toyed with the idea of retiring Maria, the Mayor of Bolzano had written a letter. Bolzano was a complicated town, it had said, a little bit of Austria, a little bit of Italy; living together was a somewhat fragile, sensitive affair. One was proud of the Blauen Mondschein it said, especially because the hotel had always placed a special emphasis on tradition. And, as the mayor put it, part of that tradition was Maria Unterganzner. Italians as well as Austrians could not envisage the hotel without her. He was politely asked to consider that fact.
Maria was very slender and over the years she became more and more slender, which gave the impression that a mere puff of air could knock her down. But that impression was wrong. Maria was never sick, not even for a day. She sometimes had a fever and suffered extreme pains in her joints, but she never took time off because of it. She had a soft voice and seemed warm-hearted. Those who knew her better also knew that she did not show deep emotions. In fact, nothing daunted her, neither the big nor the small calamities. Whatever happened in the hotel over the decades, Maria would
show up for work the next day.
She never talked about the old days. Especially not about what might have been the hardest time the hotel had experienced. The owner had suddenly become very ill and could not work any longer. Her husband had not been there; had abandoned her overnight. One could see that the hotel was leaderless. The crisis had ended with the death of the owner. That was now over 30 years ago. When the hotel had organised a party on the occasion of Maria’s 80th birthday they had wanted to invite the little boy, who back then had lived with his sick mother in the hotel. His name was Gabriel Tretjak. Maybe Maria would have enjoyed seeing the now grown-up boy again, if he had come to the party. It had not been easy to find his address: St-Anna-Platz, Munich. Twice the invitation had been sent. But Tretjak had not reacted, had not even politely declined.
On this day, like every other day, Maria started her late shift with a short chat at the reception desk. She always asked whether any of the guests were titled, who was a doctor, a Professor X or a Magistrate Y. Or nowadays more and more often the guest was a Frau Professor or Frau Dr Z. Maria loved titles, and she loved to address the guests properly when she met them. Between 5:30 and 6pm she would turn down the beds in the rooms for the night. She liked doing this and gave it her very special touch: the crisp white linen was folded back in a sharp corner. A guest once told her that it looked a little bit like the floppy ear of a big white rabbit.
Maria knew that a professor had checked into room 242, a new guest, who had never stayed at the Blauen Mondschein before. Just before 6pm, Maria knocked on the door and entered when there was no reply. The first thing she noticed was the huge bunch of flowers standing next to the television. Different kinds of roses, and lots of them, in all sorts of colours. The flowers definitely were not compliments of the hotel, that much Maria knew. It only placed small bunches in the rooms, flowers from the garden. And in the garden, they only grew yellow roses and a few orange ones.
Only then did Maria notice that the professor was in fact in the room. He was lying on the bed, covered with a white sheet, which was not white anymore, but drenched in deep red. Maria now saw that the whole of room 242 was covered with blood, the floor, the ceiling, blood everywhere. Maria did not scream. She just left the room, closed the door, and ran down the hall to the stairs, maybe just a tiny little bit faster than normal. She flew down two flights of stairs and told the receptionist what had happened.
Fifth Day
15 May
Mörlbach, Jedlitschka Farm, 12.15am
A man should not try to prove to others what he is worth. He should prove to himself what he is worth. That’s what makes him attractive. Gabriel Tretjak had been a student when he read these sentences – in an interview with a French actress he adored. She didn’t want to notice immediately, she said, that a guy was wearing an expensive suit. In the morning, after she had gone to bed with him, she wanted to feel the jacket, casually tossed over the chair the night before, and feel that he thought he was worth wearing cashmere, preferably triple ply. Tretjak remembered these sentences. And he remembered how impressed he had been as a child when he saw a single word in the papers on a Rolls Royce specifying how much horsepower the engine had: ‘enough.’
Fiona Neustadt, who had only this afternoon looked into the high fees listed in Tretjak’s account books, was obviously looking out for a flashy car. Tretjak drove a charcoal grey BMW without a model number or any other visible distinguishing characteristics, but with enough power under the bonnet and special additional equipment inside, which was not immediately obvious.
When he saw Fiona Neustadt standing, as arranged, outside Scarletti, the ice cream parlour on the Rotkreuzplatz, he immediately noticed that she had not followed his instructions. She was wearing jeans, trainers, a thin grey sweater and a black leather jacket. He caught her attention by honking and she got into the car.
‘Where is your hat?’ he said while turning the car around and taking off in the direction of the middle ring road. ‘And where are your gloves? You’ll be freezing. It is cold where we’re going.’
‘Go ahead: tell me, where are we going?’
He had already noticed this afternoon that she had an iPhone. ‘Would you like to put the coordinates of our destination into your smart-phone?’ he asked.
‘Google Maps?’ she asked and took her phone from her jacket pocket.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Google Maps is too limited. Put M-51 into an ordinary search engine and look for pictures. Capital M and the numbers 5 and 1.’
Fiona Neustadt typed the digits onto the display. He turned off the ring road and connected with the autobahn in the direction of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. It was already after midnight. The roads were empty. Tretjak had only ever been alone when he had driven along this route. He had surprised himself a little, by making it different today. But recently he had surprised himself a lot. More and more often he felt the urge to change things a tad, to change his habits, his rituals, and mess up his principles a little. Like a planet wanting to leave its orbit.
‘Ah,’ he heard from the passenger seat. He saw the image on the display of the iPhone when he glanced over to his side.
‘M-51 is the Whirlpool Galaxy. It is 25 million light-years away and part of the Hounds Constellation. This is where we are travelling tonight, if you agree.’
Tretjak had no idea whether Fiona Neustadt knew what a galaxy was, whether she was looking at the image appreciating the fact that here was a mass of billions of suns, very similar to our galaxy, the Milky Way. He did, however, sense that the picture impressed her. The arms of the spiral lunging out, the red and blue dots, which showed the age of the suns, the dark dust bands between the brilliant light sources – all this in front of the pitch dark sky of the universe.
‘Do you have music in the car?’ she asked when he took the exit marked Hohenschäftlarn.
‘No,’ Tretjak answered. ‘I’m afraid you have to find a radio station you like. I practically never listen to music. But we’re almost there.’
He directed his car towards Mörlbach. The road ran through hilly territory, through fields and forests. During the day one would have been able to see the Alps from here. Now, however, it was totally dark, only occasionally a light appeared, which belonged to a house. Once the car lights picked up a deer on the right side of the road. For the last few minutes they had driven in silence, and this silence was getting a bit tense.
Tretjak picked up his telephone and hit speed dial. ‘Frau Jedlitschka, it’s me, your tenant,’ he said. ‘I am going to be there in a few minutes. Could you switch off the lights on the farm? Thank you.’
How many times had he offered to have a remote control system installed so that he could switch off the lights? But the old lady had told him that she couldn’t sleep because of the bad circulation in her legs and was up anyway, sitting in her kitchen. The young family was sleeping in the annex and would not be woken up by the telephone. Between Mörlbach and Bachhausen Tretjak made a sudden and sharp turn onto a dirt road. It was now almost eight years ago that Tretjak had crisscrossed this area south of Munich to find the ideal position for his telescope. He had got lost many times, had talked to the wrong people – it had been a time-consuming business. But then suddenly, from the top of a hill, he had spotted the Jedlitschka Farm. It was lying there, totally by itself, not a single neighbour anywhere close by. There was a big old farmhouse, the first floor framed with a wooden balcony decorated with flowerpots full of geraniums. Next to the old farmhouse was a small annex, almost like a bungalow, with a terrace and a round plunge pool for the children. In front of both buildings was a yard paved with concrete, with a wooden barn on the left and two wheat silos on the right of a brick-built shed for the tractors and trailers.
Tretjak had been interested in the back of this shed. From there one had unobstructed southerly views, with a deep horizon and not another house in sight, which could have produced light pollution at night. The Jedlitschka family back then was made up of the old farmer
and his wife, plus their son and his wife and two small kids. Tretjak had negotiated with the old farmer, an open and friendly man with a Bavarian moustache covering a small harelip. He had gone there twice and then they had had a deal: Tretjak was allowed to construct a small observatory with a permanently installed telescope. For the space and the bit of electricity he needed he wanted to pay an annual rent. The farmer had suggested 600 euros, and Tretjak, who thought the sum embarrassingly low, had countered with 800. Laughingly, old Jedlitschka had shaken hands on 700. He did not want a contract: ‘If you are quiet and don’t need any light you can look up at the sky from here for another 20 years if you want.’ The old man had died since then, struck down by a heart attack sitting on his Bulldog-tractor in the middle of the corn harvest, but the arrangement persisted. Once a year, just before Christmas, Tretjak visited the family and brought them small gifts. Otherwise they did not get to see him at all, because he came only when it was dark. A path circled the whole farm, leading directly to the observatory, the small white building with the rotating cupola on top of the roof.