by Moss, John
After eating, he shifted his furniture so that his large teak and leather chair gave him the best possible vantage on the Klimts. Sipping his wine, he sank into exhausted reverie, curiously free of dread or regret. Alive in the moment.
A wonderful phrase, he thought. “Alive in the moment.”
Madalena Strauss gazed at him. The piercing green eyes from the Beethoven frieze looked deep into his wandering thoughts, searching, perhaps, for something she had lost. They were haunting, whereas the eyes in The Kiss were taunting. And yet they were the same eyes, the same woman, the woman he knew and her great-grandmother who had died at Ravensbrück.
Karen was in the room with him, but they weren’t using words. She was in the air and among the familiar objects, the scents and textures and the quiet sounds of his breathing, of his clothing, and of the city outside, filtered through cement and glass.
He got up and reversed the Klimts. They talked to each other in the way paintings do, but their conversation was different, depending on their relative position. When he set The Kiss face down on the side table while adjusting the other, he noticed the writing again that had been hidden when the paintings were nested together.
1902 Rachel Damboch
The words were inscribed in India ink but were hardly legible, not so much faded as the result of a pen pressed very lightly.
He assumed Rachel Damboch was Lena’s great-grandmother. The year would have been the date Klimt did the painting. There was something infinitely touching being able to connect with such a private and revealing detail from the past. As he walked into the bedroom and stretched out on the bed, he wondered if the writing was in the woman’s hand or the artist’s.
He woke after a long sleep, sluggish and morose. Back in the living room, he realized his dreams had been thronging with images of Madalena Strauss and Dimitri Sakarov, the repulsive embodiment of all the evils that she had endured. He felt oppressed. He knew Lena was dead. It was her choice. He didn’t know how or even where. The details seemed unimportant.
He wished she were there to explain why she wasn’t. The more he thought about her, the more despondent he became. And angry. He wasn’t grieving; he felt sorrow, but that wasn’t the same. Her reckless concession to fate was highly manipulative. He did not believe in fate.
Conflicted, Harry?
Yes, conflicted.
You were a little in love with her, weren’t you?
She gouged out a man’s eyes.
And cut off his testicles.
Or not, Sailor. Nothing is quite what it seems.
But sometimes it is.
All through the day Harry puttered. He dusted, did laundry, went down to the Harbourfront shops and bought delicatessen groceries.
Madalena stayed in his mind. She had risen above her humiliation only to embrace her demise. He wondered how she had done it.
When her death attracted Sakarov’s attention, would the Russian make the connection with Harry Lindstrom in Toronto, Canada?
Hell, Harry could hardly make the connection himself.
Another day passed and then another. A week went by. Then an item from Austria in an online news service caught his attention. A woman’s corpse mutilated by passing boats had been pulled from the Danube where it meets with the Wienfluss. He read a brief article in the English language Vienna Times online that said a corpse was wearing a watch with a cracked crystal and mors certa engraved on the back. Death is certain.
He checked other papers and found something in German, in the Wiener Zeitung. Apart from her name, which leapt from the text, a few other words were familiar: Polizei Zentralkommando, Herrengasse, Gumpendorfer, Marchettigasse, and Totschlag, which he understood to mean “homicide” but didn’t know whether it referred to her job or her death. When he used Babel Fish to translate, he still wasn’t sure, but the words kupfernes and rotes Haar came out as “copper red hair.” His eyes blurred for a moment and stung from the salt when he pressed them clear.
God, oh my God.
He remembered how she had challenged him on using religious expletives.
And how he glibly responded that the God he had long since abandoned had shaped the world they lived in.
Now she was gone. Sakarov had given her death a strategic purpose. The world felt emptier. In his grief, Harry recognized a seismic shift had occurred in his life. The Klimts were more than collateral; they were a bond transcending death. He was obliged, no, compelled, to take up her cause. His grief was tempered with anxiety and confusion. So much of what she had described were crimes of cultural deviance. He could not take on entire religions, entire nations. Even with criminal adoptions, how would he proceed without hurting the children involved? Or well-meaning parents or misguided social workers? The thought of a single family being humiliated or destroyed, the pain of a child whose life has been thrown irredeemably askew by his anonymous revelations, was enough to tear Harry apart. He needed a gatekeeper as much as Lena had. Perhaps more. Not to bolster his conscience but to override it.
To find the gatekeeper, to find and filter the files, to cause the least harm, he would need help. Harry was not by nature a researcher. As an academic, he had showed little interest in citations and footnotes. He liked to think. Leaps of conjecture thrilled him. The laws of the world paled in relation to being in it. He didn’t give a damn about God but was fascinated by the need to believe. He was astonished at being a sentient self-knowing part of the universe, as painful as it sometimes was to be aware of anything at all. As an investigator, what he loved was the revelation, when the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. It was not for nothing that he found such delight in Miss Marple and even more in Poirot, or that redoubtable Canadian, Chief Inspector Gamache. They took little initiative—in fact, the mysteries came to them—but they revelled in their resolution. He resolved to hire a research assistant.
He placed an ad in several of the alternative newspapers. The person he was after wouldn’t be a reader of The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, The National Post, or that unholy of unholies, the Toronto Sun. After wrestling with the wording, he settled on something succinct and sufficiently enigmatic to weed out the dilettantes.
Help Wanted! Salander? Lindstrom.
He was pleased when his ad appeared in print. After three days with no response, he tried again,
Last chance? Come in person! Malone.
If the right person was out there waiting for work, she’d find him at lindstromalone.com. He was looking for Lisbeth Salander. What he got was Simon Wales.
Simon appeared at Harry’s apartment door just before midnight. In the crook of his arm he carried a current issue of Vogue with Gwyneth Paltrow on the cover. The security door in the lobby had been breached, but that was the least Harry would have expected from a respondent to his advertisement. He didn’t anticipate a neatly dressed young man wearing rimless silhouette glasses and a necktie with diagonal stripes. The dark linen suit was a perfect fit. The white shirt was immaculate. His shoes were black, well-polished, with laces.
Simon smiled. He was slight, with perfect teeth. Attractive but not ostentatious. Straight dark hair, dark brown eyes, long thick lashes, high forehead, a smooth, somewhat pale complexion, and an aristocratic nose, whatever the hell that meant. Early twenties.
“I’m here about the ad, Dr. Lindstrom.”
So he had done some research already. How much, Harry wondered?
“I understand Lindstrom-Malone is a small agency,” said the young man. “And Malone is no longer with us. You are a protégé of Superintendent Quin and a recent associate of the late Madalena Strauss. May I come in?”
Harry was nonplussed. He didn’t move.
“Do I get the job, Dr. Lindstrom?”
Harry took in his expensive wardrobe and patrician demeanour.
“Do you need it?” he said.
“Precisely,” Simon Wales responded, indicating he had been aware of Harry’s assessment. “Quality costs.” He flourished his copy of Vogue as if no
further explanation were necessary.
Harry stood to the side. Simon Wales passed by him and walked into the living room. Although the young man was lithe and of less than medium height, he was not diminutive. He gave the impression of coiled power. He walked to the centre of the room and unbuttoned his suit jacket but made no effort to remove it; briefly surveying his surroundings, he walked to the Klimts, standing first in front of The Forces of Evil, then in front of The Kiss, before returning to The Forces of Evil.
He turned back to Harry, who was amused by his visitor and at the same time disconcerted by his apparent capacity to access information. That’s what Harry wanted him for, but was it really so easy to find out the connection between Lena Strauss and himself? If a kid from Toronto could do it, so could Dimitri Sakarov.
“You will pay well, I am sure. But only if I provide the information you need. May I have a drink of Perrier? Chilled. I believe it is in the door of your refrigerator.”
Harry shuddered, like a premonition recognized too late. Simon Wales had apparently accessed more than information; he had made a clandestine tour of Harry’s apartment. When? While Harry was asleep? Or out? The door was kept locked securely as a concession to Klimt.
There was an awkward silence as Harry opened two Perriers and poured them over ice with a wedge of lime in each.
“Your mayonnaise is past its best before date. I’d suggest you throw it out, Dr. Lindstrom.”
“Okay. Sit down.”
“Simon Wales.”
“Simon Wales. We need to talk.”
“Yes, of course, but isn’t Elisabeth Bök the most beautiful woman, I mean, ever.” It wasn’t a question.
“I’m sorry,” said Harry. “Elisabeth who?”
“The woman who modelled for Klimt. Your pictures. They are very good.”
“Thank you. But who is Elisabeth Bach?”
“Bök,” said Simon Wales, modulating the vowel.
“That woman, green eyes, wonderful red hair, she haunts Klimt. She is in many of his paintings under various guises.”
“And that’s her name.”
“Yes.”
“And who is Rachel Damboch?”
“I’m sorry Dr. Lindstrom, I have no idea.”
“Please stop calling me Dr. Lindstrom. I get it, you’ve researched me. But I’m Harry now. And you are a student of art history?”
“Not in the formal sense. I have an abiding interest in the visual, the surface appearance of things.”
“Art as decoration.”
“No, decoration as art. The Austrian symbolist school, Egon Shiele, Gustav Klimt. And Vogue magazine.”
“God help us.”
“Harry?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing. Just testing the name, trying it out. It fits quite well.”
“It’s not an alias.” Harry hadn’t lost track of how easily Simon Wales had connected him to Lena. He was on edge. “Tell me about yourself, Simon. This is a job interview.”
“I’m sorry, I thought the interview was over. I’ll tell you whatever I can about you. I’ve been checking you out since your first ad. Then you pressed, so here I am.”
“Perhaps you could tell me about you. You know, the usual—education, aptitudes, character references.”
The young man did not smile. He adjusted his posture inside his well-fitting suit. He looked Harry in the eye.
“No criminal record,” he said. Then silence.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.” He paused. “You’re quite interesting, Harry. Am I hired?”
“What do you know about my connection with Madalena Strauss? No, hold on, first tell me, how do you know the name of Klimt’s model?”
“Elisabeth Bök?”
“And you’ve never heard of Rachel Damboch?”
“No.”
Then what the hell is the name on the back of the painting all about?
“Your paintings are very nice. They must be part of an interesting story.” Simon Wales tilted his head in deference to the genius on display. “It is wonderful to see undocumented originals. You are very fortunate.”
Harry flinched.
Student of art history? I’d say he’s an expert.
There was no point in denying the authenticity of the paintings. His visitor would have already checked their worth. He had had ample opportunity to walk away with them and didn’t.
“They belong to Austria,” Harry explained.
“The whole country! How expansive. Myself, I prefer the detail from the Beethoven frieze. The woman, Elisabeth Bök, she is not a conventional model. Perhaps that is part of what Klimt loved about painting her. Reminds me of Rossetti’s Jane Morris. He was in love with her, you know. You can see it in his Pandora pictures. She was married to William Morris, of course, so they never consummated their passion except through his art, as far as we know.”
Harry swirled the ice in his glass.
“I am very interested in models,” the young man explained. “That is why I read Vogue. I am interested in the correlation between money and taste. And then, of course, the infrangible faces of the models intrigue me.”
“Infrangible.”
Harry tried not to turn the word into a question. He had an erudite command of English; he knew what infrangible meant. But he couldn’t recall ever hearing the word in a conversation before, and certainly not by someone barely out of his teens, someone so literal he didn’t see irony in confessing an interest in models for their lack of personal presence.
“Yes, ‘the unbreakable sum of their parts,’ unchanging from one picture to the next, no matter how elaborate the background or exotic the clothing, their faces stay exactly precisely the same. It is uncanny, Dr. Lindstrom. I find it quite haunting.” He paused, then corrected himself. “Mr. Lindstrom. I’m sorry.” Another pause. “Harry.” Seeming satisfied, he continued, “Whereas an actress…” he gestured toward the cover illustration of Gwyneth Paltrow. “Each picture is different. In her face is an implicit refusal to be a commodity. She is not a starlet, she is an actor. Even airbrushed, she appears human.”
“And Elisabeth Bök?”
“A born actress. She is the same person and yet always different. Look at her eyes. Here they take in the world and there they keep it at bay. Here her posture is blatantly erotic; she is a proud exhibitionist. And there, in The Kiss, despite the relative modesty, the viewer is forced to be a voyeur. And what about you, which do you prefer?”
Who is this guy, Harry? I like him.
He scares me.
Sounds like just the person we need. But who the hell is Rachel Damboch and why is her name imprinted on The Forces of Evil?
On The Kiss, hidden by The Forces of Evil.
How appropriate. And how does he know about Miranda Quin, about Madalena Strauss, about me? I’m sure he knows about me.
Harry and Simon Wales talked deep into the night. When dawn loomed over Lake Ontario they walked up past St. Lawrence Market and found a twenty-four-hour diner for an early breakfast. In the end, Harry learned nothing more about Simon and not much more about how he worked, but he was awestruck by the extent of the young man’s formidable accumulation of random facts and his ability to make intuitive connections.
Harry realized his private investigator’s application had Miranda Quin’s name on it as a guarantor. His credit card account revealed his travel history, his email provided a detailed explanation for why he had gone to Vienna, and the rest was on public record, accessible to anyone inclined to dig deep, draw the lines, connect the dots.
Simon had apparently gleaned details of the accident at the Devil’s Cauldron from newspaper accounts, court documents, public records, and guesswork. He knew there had been no funeral service and assumed a private interment; he knew Karen’s body had never been recovered and that Harry, disconsolate, ravaged by guilt and loneliness, had burned their stone farmhouse on the Sanctuary Line to rubble; quite remarkably, he knew about Freya’s abducti
on when Lena was twenty-one; he knew about the brutal execution of Lena’s fiancé and about her own death. He knew all this from newspapers, legal documents, police reports, and guesswork. Perhaps spurred by an ongoing interest in the visual arts, he had apprised himself of sufficient information about Klimt and his cultural context that he had recognized the paintings on Harry’s wall as authentic.
He apparently knew nothing of Lena’s work to expose the international trafficking of children or about Harry’s involvement. He knew nothing about Dimitri Sakarov.
Harry learned about Simon only from observation. He decided he liked the young man sitting across the grey arborite table, eating bacon, fried eggs, sausages, pancakes, toast, and home-fried potatoes. The Lumberjack Special. Harry did a cholesterol inventory, then looked down at the remains of his own modest repast of dry whole-wheat toast and a single packet of strawberry jam.
He marvelled at how his new employee consumed this gargantuan meal with such fastidious good manners he might have been using a fish-knife to strip away morsels of salmon from tiny gelatinous shards of bone.
Harry wasn’t on a diet, just catering to the turmoil in his stomach that this young man had engendered by knowing how to do things through cyberspace Harry could hardly imagine. He liked Simon, but he was wary. How could you trust someone who had no story of his own?
When Harry returned to his apartment, he saw Simon’s copy of Vogue lying face up on his leather sofa. Gwyneth Paltrow on the cover was wearing a short beige skirt with legs slightly apart but angled to the side, both inviting and resisting the voyeur’s gaze. She was staring back at him. Karen occasionally used to read Vogue. The sprawling September issue was an annual treat Harry would pick up at the newsstand for her and she would immerse herself among its innumerable ads for hours on end, relishing it in much the way people used to read Thackeray or Trollope or Henry James, for flashes of illumination into lives that refused to run parallel to her own. He turned the magazine over but left it on the sofa for the time being.