by Max Landorff
He left the bank on Sendlinger Street and sensed in himself some little bit of vitality. He had finally done something again. He had transferred some money, had had a few letters typed into a bank computer, at least that was something. In the morning he had called the estate agent, yes, he was going to take the flat, immediately. Only one big room, with a doorman downstairs in the building, not far from the Isar River, only a short distance from the zoo. He had made a decision, placed a telephone call, at least that was something.
Tretjak had not returned to his flat at the St-Anna-Platz after the murder of Rosa Lanner. Even the thought of turning the keys in the lock induced physical pain. He had known immediately that this location didn’t exist anymore for him. Because of her murder there, only the past could now exist in those rooms. And the past was not a category in his life. There could be no other choice but to get rid of the flat as quickly as possible.
When the police let him go after a night in the cells, he had stayed in the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, one of the best addresses in town. Then he had changed his hotel every two days, partly because that had structured the days, checking out, checking in, so that at least he was doing something. He felt best when he was with Fiona, when he stayed with her overnight. When he woke up in the middle of the night and felt her beside him. When the fear came and he heard her breathe. He felt calmer when Fiona was there.
In fact, it helped him if anybody was there. Tretjak sat in crowded restaurants and tried to start a conversation with the punters there. He got into a taxi and told the driver to show him Munich, that he was a tourist with only a little time to spare, just passing through. Those trips could last a couple of hours. Tretjak asked lots of questions, questions about Munich, the answers to which he already knew. Whoever is still talking is not dead, that’s what he had once read in some poem.
Gabriel Tretjak could no longer stand to be alone. And this had to happen to him, the very one who had considered himself the master of being alone, who had always thought that being by yourself was the only true elixir of life. Tretjak knew what was behind his not being able to be alone anymore: he couldn’t stand himself any longer. But he didn’t know anything more than that. A centrifugal force had taken hold of him. He felt like he was going to disintegrate into his component parts if he sat still or stood there, concentrating only on himself. Only movement protected him, movement just for its own sake, without concept, without plan. Or when Fiona casually kissed him.
In other words, exactly those things which had never helped him in the past helped him now. His life had been turned upside down and he had no logical explanation for why this had come to pass. And he had no idea how his life was supposed to continue. It drove him crazy that he had no answers to the question: what was happening to him here?
Tretjak had stopped taking Tavor two days ago. In the end, he had been popping pills like cough drops. But he had hardly noticed any relief anymore. The very last time he had taken it, he had even thought that the stuff was causing a completely new kind of fear in him.
It is said that such crises are the hours of true friends, those you can call in the middle of the night and say: I need you. I need your help. Can you come over? The problem was that Gabriel Tretjak’s friends were of a different nature. They knew other sorts of telephone calls from Tretjak: you have to immediately do this and that for me. Don’t ask why, just do it. And it worked the other way around as well. They contacted Tretjak saying: can you do me a favour? They knew they could depend on one another. They were friends, but they had their own unique code. A code which should not be violated.
But still Tretjak had done just that, in his way. He had sent an email to Stefan Treysa over the weekend: I’m not feeling well. I would like to ask you for advice. I have a proposal: you are a therapist, aren’t you? Or you were a therapist once upon a time. I would like to make an appointment with you, as a patient. Just one hour. I fear I won’t make it any other way.
Only a few minutes later Treysa answered: Of course. Monday at 12.30, at my office on Buttermelcher Street?
Tretjak looked at his watch, he still had an hour. He walked down Sendlinger Street, turned left in the direction of Mueller Street, straight and then right onto Hans-Sachs Street. He came to the Hierlmaier Antiquarian Bookshop. He entered the shop, and the ring of the door’s bell summoned a very large man from the back of the shop, whose belly was so big that his blue work apron hardly closed around it.
‘Servus, Mr Tretjak,’ Max Hierlmaier said, using the traditionally more intimate Bavarian version of ‘Hello’.
‘Servus, Mr Hierlmaier. I have a job for you. A flat in Munich. Everything that is in the study has to be transported into another flat. Everything else in the flat should be cleared out, sold or otherwise disposed of.’
Max Hierlmaier knew about this kind of removal. He had organised them a dozen times at Tretjak’s behest. Little to take along, lots to throw away, that was the rule. Tretjak had once explained it to him: ‘People don’t want to carry too much ballast into their new life.’
Hierlmaier asked for the name of the flat’s owner. ‘It’s in my name. It’s about me this time. It is a private move, you might say.’
‘I see,’ Hierlmaier said, ‘I’ll take care of it personally, if that’s the case. I’m interested to find out what your home looks like. I believe that you can read a lot about people when you see their flats.’
‘You won’t find a lot to read in my home, I’m afraid.’
‘Mr Tretjak, I tell you: nothing is a lot as well.’
Tretjak finally told him that he shouldn’t be surprised to still find traces that the police had been in the flat. The police had combed the flat for evidence for days, and then cleaned it afterwards.
‘OK,’ Hierlmaier said, ‘not a problem.’
Tretjak left the shop and, walking in the direction of Buttermelcher Street, thought of the only enquiry he had responded to in the past few weeks. Apart from that one, he had completely gone to ground. No matter what method people had used to try to contact him, the sender had received the same reply: Gabriel Tretjak was not reachable for the foreseeable future, he would neither read nor listen to any enquiry. On that point Rainer Gritz had been mistaken, there were by no means fewer enquiries than before. But he had sent a response to one person. She had recounted her life in just a few lines: she was an affluent lady, without any family, and had been the mistress of a very famous Munich celebrity, a fact which nobody had been allowed to know. Now the man had died. And with him had gone her life, her past. She wanted to change this retrospectively, wanted as many people to find out about the truth as possible, about the fact that she had existed and that she still did. She wanted her life back, at least to be able to talk about it and remember it. That’s all I want to achieve, the woman had written, really. I cannot organise this myself. Can you?
Surprising himself, Tretjak had answered: Yes, I can. But I have to ask you to be patient. I still need a little time.
He got the response he had expected: I have waited such a long time. A few more months won’t make a difference.
He found the idea intriguing: it was not like the other cases, when he had had to correct the past, this time he had to prepare a grand entrance for the past. It was mad that he had even sent the email. Did he ever want to work again? Would he be able to? Wasn’t it completely clear that it was over? That the Fixer couldn’t fix anything anymore? Too much had happened, there was not one single stone left in place from his old life, he thought. On the other hand: could he ever really stop doing what he was doing? He had to think of Dimitri Steiner and his death. With people like us, Tretjak thought, in the end there is always a reckoning. Those kinds of thoughts drove him crazy, and yet he couldn’t stop them.
Tretjak had reached Buttermelcher Street. Still seven minutes to go until half past. He was standing in front of a shop selling leather garments: the window display was mainly made up of chains and collars with spikes on them, and in between stood naked m
ale display dummies brandishing whips. For a split second he changed the subject of his thoughts: he knew a few homosexuals, and all of them were polite and sensitive human beings. How did that go together with the whips? Was he missing something?
It was one of those autumn days which can make Munich sparkle like no other city. That set off his next chain of thoughts: would he miss Munich if he left? How would it be if he went away and then returned to the city, would he feel like he was in an old movie which had continued to run without him? Tretjak liked Fiona’s plans to go away together, for example to Brazil, a good place to live, or to Moscow, good for business. He liked her enthusiasm, her strength, which had started to pull him along.
Stefan Treysa had made coffee, and on the table a plate of buttered pretzels was waiting. As usual, Treysa was alone in the office, except of course for the parrot, who was quickly making himself heard with loud cries of ‘woof’. They were sitting on two office chairs opposite each other, with the small table bearing the pretzels between them. Tretjak thought that his friend looked even smaller, even thinner than usual.
Treysa started with a short introduction on the role of a therapist. In principle, it was impossible to be the therapist of a person one knew very well, a family member or a friend. A therapist always had to be able to keep his distance, to take an outside view, to be able to interfere effectively. A therapist should never be part of the system, which he was supposed to judge. Treysa smiled: ‘All right, let’s attempt the impossible,’ he said. ‘We have 45 minutes. I would suggest that the next session be tomorrow. We can discuss how to proceed then.’
Tretjak nodded.
‘I’m asking you what I always ask at the beginning: why are you here?’
‘Because I feel bad. Really bad. I can’t sleep. I’m afraid. I’m not taking the tablets anymore. Maybe you’ll say that is good news, but it’s not. I know that it sounds idiotic, but with the tablets I still somehow had the feeling of being in control. But then I felt as if exactly this attempt to stay in control was making things even worse. I feel completely helpless, I think for the first time in my life.’
‘I don’t believe that. I think you only blocked helplessness from your life. And now it’s back.’
Tretjak was silent.
‘Gabriel, I’m going to summarise what has happened in the past months. There were several murders, gruesome murders. Acquaintances, close acquaintances of yours were killed. And your cleaning lady. A poor, elderly lady. And who did all this? Your father. Let me repeat this: your father committed these murders, your father with whom you have always had a disturbed relationship.’
‘I know what has happened. You don’t have to tell me the story again.’
‘Yes, I do have to. Because I’m telling you for a very specific reason. How can a man who has experienced such horror not be in a crisis? How can a man who has lived through all that not think that the ground beneath his feet is trembling? Let me put it simply: there has never been a man who has had more reason to be in a crisis than you.’ Treysa took a gulp of his coffee and said: ‘Could it be that you should acknowledge this fact, before we talk about everything else?’
‘No’, Tretjak said.
‘What, no?’
‘You know me, Stefan. I have a philosophy of life, to which everything else is subordinated. I live by that philosophy. You can call it a crutch, I don’t care. An important pillar of that philosophy is that I cut off everything behind me. What is past is past. Doesn’t make a difference anymore. Nothing that happened a long time ago, nothing that happened a few years ago, not even what went on the day before yesterday. That is my principle.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Treysa said. ‘And there were moments when you had me almost convinced. A life without a past? That’s a real challenge for a psychologist.’
‘But right now it doesn’t seem to work,’ said Tretjak, ‘just when it is supposed to. Because every indication is that all the evil lies in the past. The murders, my father, everything. You know that I’ve been trained in the techniques of expunging the past. I’ve tried everything, but nothing has worked. Everything is bubbling up, so that I’ve got the feeling that I consist only of the past. I’m dreaming you can’t imagine what kind of dreams.’
‘Tell me one dream.’
‘One comes back every night. I’m a little boy, about ten years old, and I’m walking across a meadow, holding an older man’s hand, towards a clearing in a forest. Then the man says to me, “do you see the bird there, the big bird?” And I’m actually seeing a big bird hop into the meadow, a crow, black, as big as a human being. I want to run towards it. “No”, says the man, “I don’t mean the little bird, I mean the big bird, the really big bird. Look carefully!” And then I see it. There is no clearing in front of us, but everything in front of us is just one giant bird, an eagle as big as a hundred trees. I feel that I am gasping with excitement. And then I wake up and I’m drenched in sweat.’
‘Interesting dream,’ Treysa said.
Tretjak took one of the pretzels and said: ‘What is this all about? What, may I ask, is the message?’
‘Of the cuff I would say that the little boy, the little Gabriel, was not allowed to be a child. He sees only the small bird, not the big one. One thing is clear: your childhood is coming to the fore with this dream.’ Treysa also reached for a pretzel. ‘Do you remember poor Professor Kerkhoff and his thesis about the Factory of the Soul?’
‘Yes,’ Tretjak replied, ‘I remember well. I’ve got to thinking about it quite often lately.’ Images appeared in Tretjak’s mind’s eye, brief clips. The arrogant face of Harry Kerkhoff. The strange message about the racehorse in the hotel restaurant in Sri Lanka. Then the news of Kerkhoff’s murder. That’s how everything started, the whole nightmare. ‘Yes,’ he repeated, ‘I often think of Harry.’
Treysa once more summarised Kerkhoff’s thesis. ‘Kerkhoff was a biochemist and brain specialist, not a friend of psychology. “If one absolutely has to work with this strange term, the ‘soul’,” he had always pontificated, “then one has to imagine the soul to be something like a factory.” And he had thought of a factory with huge machines, which perform various functions. The machines produce, repress, plan, and when the human being feels fine these machines work perfectly and in harmony. In that case, nobody would think about stopping the machines or questioning them. Kerkhoff was convinced that it was best to just leave everything the way it was. If that human being, however, wasn’t feeling so good, then it was time to go into the engine room and check out what was defective.’
Tretjak was able to almost automatically complete Kerkhoff’s theory: if everything is functioning well, you still need to oil and fuel the machines. ‘He always told me, OK, you block out the past, but you therefore have to provide your soul with sufficient other stuff. You, for example, have to become a megalomaniac...’
‘That was Kerkhoff’s idiosyncratic method...’ said Treysa, and had to laugh.
‘Yes, megalomania was his thing, wasn’t it? And in a way, it’s mine as well. Kerkhoff told me that you have to be successful, very successful, you have to be diligent, you have to create your own world of experience. You cannot allow your soul even the briefest moment to turn around and look back.’ Tretjak paused. ‘Now it obviously has turned around.’
Stefan Treysa stood up. And then he sat down again. ‘Yes, well, no wonder with all that has happened. The factory has been damaged from the outside. And we now have to get into the engine room and start up the machines again.’ It was totally silent in the room, and nothing could be heard outside either, not even the parrot. ‘Tell me about your Fiona. What kind of story is that? I’ve seen you two a couple of times and you look good together.’
‘She thought she had caught a cool guy. And what has she got now? A ruin.’
‘Some women like that. Have you got plans?’
‘Fiona always makes plans. Start anew somewhere else, go away. The two of us.’
‘And you?’
; Tretjak thought about it. He thought for a long time, too long in fact to say just something casual. ‘I mistrust her. I feel mistrustful. I ask myself why she is saying what she says, doing what she does. I ask myself whether there is an ulterior motive. This is what I think. I can’t help it.’
‘Is there a reason for this?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t mistrust only her. I don’t trust anybody. Even you. I can imagine that when I leave here, you’ll call somebody to tell him how to get me. Because you are a part of a big conspiracy. I’m constantly imagining these kinds of things.’
‘I’m not surprised. With your kind of job, I would think the same way. Particularly considering what happened to you.’
‘Stefan, you asked me about Fiona. I think this woman is terrific. At times I even think I love her. But how is that going to work with a guy like me who is so overly suspicious? I’m damaged, really damaged. A guy like that should keep his hands off nice women.’
‘Hmm,’ Stefan Treysa said, ‘maybe that’s right.’
‘There is something else,’ Tretjak said, ‘I’ve given you my father’s letter to read, his farewell letter. What do you think?’
‘I’ve never read something so terrible. I use the word very rarely, it doesn’t really belong to my vocabulary, but that letter is really evil. I can’t think of another word for it.’
‘Yes, I agree,’ Tretjak said, ‘but there is something wrong with that letter. Why did my father commit suicide at that very moment? He kills my cleaning lady and then himself. Why? Why doesn’t he continue? Why doesn’t he totally let loose it and do God knows what? I don’t understand. And there is one point in that letter which is particularly strange. I don’t know whether you remember. He writes...’