Visibly, there was no great change. Wherever he was, he was still in almost complete darkness. He could see just two soft LED lights hovering at the end of the room, reminding him of the lights on the USB stick of his laptop.
Leon, wheezing now, lay flat on his stomach on the floor. It was pleasantly cool.
Then he smelled the scent he had caught just a whiff of in the labyrinth, and all of a sudden he knew where he was and what had caused the vibrating noise. The noise that had stopped briefly at the moment he opened the trapdoor, and which was now shaking the floor again just as loudly as before.
Leon propped himself on all fours, crept over the cold tiles to the wall and pulled himself up to a standing position. He took Natalie’s mobile from his overalls and, shining the light around the room, confirmed his suspicion: he was in a bathroom, a completely normal one.
To his right was a washbasin, next to it a bathtub, and inside that an open and fully laden clothes horse. Between the washbasin and the tub, a bulky washing machine was just finishing its spin cycle.
Leon was wondering who it belonged to, and whose apartment he had unintentionally stumbled into, when outside the bathroom the hallway light went on.
19
‘Where are you, my darling?’
Ivana Helsing stood in the doorway in her dressing gown, both hands on her bony hips, sweeping her gaze around the bathroom.
‘Have you hidden yourself away in here?’
She hadn’t noticed the hole in her bathroom floor (at least, not yet), for Leon had just managed to shut the trapdoor in time and pull the rug over it. His neighbour must have heard the noise, even if it had been drowned out to a great extent by the roar of the washing machine. The hiding place he had found was so poor that Leon expected to be discovered at any second. He had jumped into the bathtub almost as Ivana walked into the bathroom, and now stood on trembling legs between the wall and the clothes horse. He had pulled the shower curtain hastily across, and even this seemed to have escaped the old woman’s attention. Clearly she was more interested in where her cat was hiding.
‘Alba, where are you this time?’
Peeping around the shower curtain, Leon shot a quick glance at the mirror over the sink, and saw Ivana pulling a little metal box from the pocket of her dressing gown.
‘Come on, my darling,’ she called, shaking the dry cat food. ‘I have some delicious treats here for you.’
She positioned herself next to the washing machine.
‘Alba? Can you hear me?’
She rattled the box again, but the animal showed no sign of revealing itself. She put the box back into her pocket.
Leon watched Ivana walk over to the mirror and take off her glasses. Then she blinked, as though she had a speck of dust in her eye. She seemed to be fighting back tears.
‘She’s just like you, Richard,’ she whispered, barely audible now. ‘She always leaves me alone.’
Leon’s senses were stretched to breaking point. He was stood in an uncomfortable position, one hand pressed against the wall, the other stopping the clothes horse from falling over. He was breathing shallowly and trying not to make any noise, but as soon as this next thought occurred to him (Hopefully I won’t need to sneeze!), he felt a prickling sensation in his nose.
Ivana was studying her face in the mirror. She massaged the sizeable bags under her eyes, shook her head and pulled her wrinkled skin down over her jaw. Then she checked her hair, which was grey but still thick, but she didn’t seem satisfied even with that.
‘Everyone leaves me,’ she whispered, turning the tap on. ‘They always do.’
Leon felt the muscles in his back tensing up. He wouldn’t be able to hold this position much longer, but how could he explain himself if a careless movement revealed his presence?
He could only hope that Ivana would hurry up. But she seemed unwilling to do him this favour; because she began to take her clothes off – even though there wasn’t very much that she could take off.
First she pulled the dressing gown down over her drooping, slightly forward-curving shoulders. As she was wearing neither a top nor a bra, Leon could see her breasts in the mirror. They were saturated with liver spots and hung over her ribs like half-deflated air balloons.
Leon felt ashamed for this unwitting, intimate insight his neighbour had granted him. And yet he couldn’t bring himself to turn away; not even when Ivana Helsing lifted up her varicose-vein-covered legs, one after the other, to take off her nude-coloured pants.
Leon had never before seen a naked woman of this age (he was guessing she was in her late seventies), but it was not her nakedness that had seized his attention, it was the tattoo on her back: two blue snakes wound themselves around her spine like a DNA helix, their heads turned towards each other on her bony shoulders, the sharp tongues knotting together into a kiss on her neck.
Ivana began to wash herself with a flannel, first her face, then her neck, and finally her breasts, and as she did so Leon’s nose itched more and more. The smell of clean washing made him think back to the legend of the Twelve Nights for a moment, which made the bizarre situation even more real. All of a sudden, Ivana began to sob loudly, and she threw the wet flannel against the mirror in anger.
‘You piece of shit,’ she cried out. Then she grabbed her dressing gown again and shuffled out of the bathroom without turning off the light.
Leon’s urge to sneeze disappeared with Ivana. He waited a while. Only when he heard the TV being switched on in the living room did he finally dare to leave his hiding place.
The apartment was laid out just like his: the corridor beyond the bathroom went left into the living room; on the right-hand side to the hallway, and the front door leading out into the stairwell just a few steps away. But there was a problem. Unlike his apartment, just one floor above, this one hadn’t been renovated for years. This was evident not just from the yellowing wallpaper and partially loose skirting boards, but also from the floorboards that creaked loudly with every movement.
Hoping that the TV would be just as good an acoustic distraction as the washing machine, Leon crept out to the front door, and he probably would have made it past her unnoticed, had the telephone not rung.
The green phone with its old-fashioned rotary dial was right next to him, on a crocheted coaster, on the edge of a teak commode.
Looking around in desperation, Leon hesitated, before diving into the small room by the front door, which in his flat would have been his study. Down here the door had been removed, and the room was completely empty apart from a small removals box.
There’s nowhere I can hide, he thought, as the phone stopped ringing. And as he heard the shocked voice of Ivana Helsing behind him.
20
‘Herr Nader?’
Leon whipped round and saw a nervous-looking woman standing opposite him, fiddling anxiously with the belt of her dressing gown. Her glasses were a little foggy and her face was still wet from her tears. She was wearing polka-dot slippers, the joints of her knobbly toes pressing into the material.
Leon felt there was only one way he could get away with this.
‘What are you doing here, Frau Helsing?’
‘Me?’ she asked in astonishment. She smiled nervously.
‘Yes, what are you doing in my apartment?’
‘In your apartment?’ Her smile took on a tortured look.
Leon could almost feel her inner conflict. On the one hand, she knew him as her pleasant, unassuming neighbour. But on the other hand, she was afraid of finding out why he had suddenly appeared out of nowhere and was talking nonsense. And in that get-up! After all, he was standing before her in dusty overalls, his hair dripping with sweat and plastered to his face, his hands covered in dirt.
Leon’s thoughts raced. Simply telling the truth (I found a door behind my wardrobe through which I climb down into a shaft when I’m sleepwalking, and I got lost and ended up in your bathroom) certainly wouldn’t be of much help in defusing the situation.
‘Can I help you in some way, Frau Helsing?’ said Leon, continuing his charade, then he glanced into the empty room on the left and feigned a surprised expression. ‘Wait a moment, I . . .’
He inspected his surroundings like an actor stepping into unknown territory. Then he held his hand up in front of his mouth. ‘My God, I . . . I . . . Oh, this is very embarrassing. I’m afraid that I’ve . . .’
‘You’ve . . . what?’
‘Got lost.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Yes, I went downstairs to fetch the post and when I came back up the steps I was lost in thought. Your front door was open, and I must have thought I was already on the third floor, because I left my front door ajar too. Frau Helsing, I don’t know what to say . . .’
He let the last sentence hang in the air, searching the old woman’s face for a sign that she had bought his cock and bull story.
‘My front door was open?’ asked Ivana, not one jot less suspicious.
‘Yes, I know how it sounds, but I’m working on a big project right now, a commission I have to finish in the next few days, and whenever I think about some of the problems with it, it’s like I’m in another world.’
Leon began to sweat; he was aware that his story, like every good lie, had truth at the heart of it.
Ivana Helsing shook her head in disbelief and stepped sideways to look past him to the front door. Her expression darkened when she saw the chain was on.
Damn it.
‘I don’t believe it . . .’ she said softly.
‘I know it sounds crazy, but—’
‘I don’t believe this has happened yet again.’
‘Again?’ Now it was Leon’s turn to be confused.
Ivana sighed and rubbed one of her eyes, without taking off her glasses. ‘I’ve already spoken to my doctor about my forgetfulness, you see. He says it’s nothing to worry about, not Alzheimer’s or dementia or anything like that. Just the normal deterioration of the body as the years pass.’ She shook her head again. ‘But it scares me, Leon. I forget the simplest things. Like to drink enough water, for example. I should drink much more. And at night I sometimes leave the TV on. And Alba is always dashing past me through the door. You didn’t see her, by any chance, did you?’
‘No,’ said Leon. ‘But don’t worry. Forgetfulness isn’t necessarily connected to age,’ he added, trying to ease the situation. ‘I mean, which of us is in the wrong apartment right now?’
She couldn’t help but laugh, and at once much of the tension fell away.
‘I’m really very sorry, and I promise it won’t happen again, Frau Helsing.’
‘Wait a moment, please,’ she called as he turned to go.
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve just put some tea on.’ Shyly, she gestured towards the living room behind her. ‘Won’t you keep me company just a little, now that you’re here?’
She reached for his hand, seemingly unbothered by the dirt. ‘Please stay just a little.’
‘That’s really very sweet of you,’ Leon protested, ‘but as I said, I’m right in the middle of this pitch for an architectural project, and I . . .
As he shook her hand, his gaze fell on a set of armchairs grouped around an open fire in the living room. Over the fireplace hung an immense oil painting.
He stopped.
‘Is something wrong?’ asked Ivana, nervous again, turning to follow the direction of Leon’s rigid gaze.
‘Yes,’ he said absent-mindedly, letting go of her hand and walking into the sitting room, intrigued. ‘What’s wrong? Are you feeling unwell?’
‘Excuse me?’ Leon blinked. ‘Oh, no, nothing’s wrong. I’m just wondering about . . . this picture.’
He pointed above the fireplace, suddenly feeling dazed again.
‘Yes, what about it?’
‘The man, the portrait, isn’t that . . .?’
‘Albert von Boyten? Yes.’
‘You knew the architect who designed this building?’ Leon turned to look at her.
‘Yes,’ smiled Ivana, a little mischievously this time, and all at once the spark she must have had in her younger years was reignited. ‘For many years I was his lover.’
21
Leon sat opposite her on a chair from which, moments ago, he had cleared a pile of women’s magazines and crossword books, setting them on the coffee table.
Ivana sat bolt upright, without touching the chair’s backrest and taking care that the hem of her dressing gown didn’t come over her pressed-together knees.
‘I’m really sorry about your wife, by the way,’ she said as she poured Leon a cup of the steaming tea.
He tensed.
‘It’s the building, you know. If you’d spoken to me before you moved in, I would have warned you.’
‘About what?’
She put the teapot back on a coaster and interlaced her fingers on her lap, the tips of her thumbs drumming against one another and reminding Leon of the heads of the kissing snakes on her back.
‘It has eyes, you know. The house, I mean. Don’t you often feel as though you’re being watched? Sometimes I wake up in the night and feel like there’s someone sat on my bed. I turn the light on, and of course there’s never anyone there, but I just can’t get rid of the feeling. Sometimes I even look in the cupboard, such a silly goose, and can only go back to sleep again once I’ve assured myself that there’s no one there.’
She shook her head as she spoke – as older people have a tendency to do without realising – and Leon hoped that it wasn’t an early sign of Parkinson’s.
‘My God, you must think I’m a crazy old bat.’
‘No, not in the slightest,’ replied Leon, anxiously recalling how he had spied on her in the bathroom just a few minutes ago. Then he remembered the clothes horse, the wet sheets hanging on it, the Twelve Nights they were currently in, and the ghosts that were on the hunt for a new home.
He took a sip of tea and tried to concentrate on the pleasant subtle taste in an attempt to bring his thoughts back to reality.
‘My doctor says it’s all in my imagination and that it stems from the fear of loss I’ve had since Richard moved out.’
‘Richard?’
‘My husband. One day he just packed his bags and left, without even saying goodbye.’
Ivana had Leon’s undivided attention again; she didn’t even need to mention the direct parallels with Natalie’s hasty departure.
‘Do you know why he left?’
‘It’s this house. Albert von Boyten wanted to make some kind of artistic commune, open to friends and family who would be able to live here rent-free. That’s the only reason why I, a penniless artist, was able to get this apartment in the first place. I could never have afforded the rent in this neighbourhood on two painting sales a month and my part-time job as a nurse. He even let me stay after we had ended our open relationship and I was no longer his muse.’
Leon pointed at the painting over the fire. ‘Did you paint that?’
‘Yes. When we were still in our wild phase. Albert had a lot of women, and I didn’t mind. I don’t know a single artist who doesn’t have a colourful sex life. And if not actively, then certainly in their head. Even Richard, a theatre director, who I met at one of Albert’s parties, wasn’t bothered by my relationship with Albert. For a while, after we moved in here together, we even had a ménage à trois going on.’
Ivana smiled in the same mischievous way as before, when she’d told Leon about her relationship with von Boyten.
‘Clearly your benefactor had a soft spot for creative types,’ said Leon.
‘Oh yes. In his will he actually stipulated a quorum for artists to be granted apartments in the building.’
Leon nodd
ed. That explained why Natalie and he had been approved.
‘The house was supposed to be a creative oasis. But in the end it only brought him bad luck.’
She took off her glasses, which were slightly too large for her head, and chewed at the arms. ‘Just like it has to all its tenants.’
Leon raised his eyebrows. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘The pretty woman who used to live in your apartment, for example. She fell into the lift shaft and died. That set off an endless chain of tragic events.’
Leon nodded, thinking back to the cynical-sounding words of the building manager on the phone.
The last tenant was blind. She couldn’t even manage to operate the lift, let alone build a new entrance to her bedroom.
‘I’m no statistician, but over the years I’ve lived here now, an unusual number of tenants have died unnatural or at least premature deaths. Some committed suicide or were taken into psychiatric clinics – like Albert.’
‘Von Boyten?’
She nodded. ‘The biographies all say that Albert retreated to some unknown place in order to meditate, in keeping with his eccentric nature. It wasn’t a voluntary exile, though, but a private psychiatric asylum. He died there some years ago, mentally deranged.’
‘And his son inherited the house?’
‘Exactly. But it didn’t make him happy either.’
‘What happened?’
Ivana hesitated. It looked as though she was wrangling with herself as to whether she was able to share this secret.
‘No one knows exactly. His apartment was locked and shuttered from the inside. All his possessions – his money, clothes and documents – were still there. The only thing missing and which never appeared again was him. It was as though his own apartment had swallowed him up.’
No wonder the building manager didn’t want to put us in contact. It’s not even possible.
‘Which apartment did Siegfried live in?’ asked Leon, even though he was pretty sure he knew the answer.
‘I really don’t mean to scare you with my stories, Leon. But it was on the third floor, your apartment. As I said, I would have warned you against it had you come to me before signing the contract.’
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