‘Hot and late in Australia, I am sure, but here, cold and early,’ she said brusquely.
Simmons, holding the receiver in one hand and a pen in the other, stared down at the notepad where he had written this woman’s name—Renate Klein, wife of Oskar Klein—and her extensive telephone number with its required international prefixes.
Thanks to the man at the German consulate, Simmons had acquired some very basic information. Mrs Renate Klein was an English teacher in a high school in Berlin. She’d married the man she knew as Oskar Klein in 1962 and they had four grown children, three of who were married with children of their own.
Mrs Klein had notified police immediately when her husband went missing. He had been gone for twelve days now, and she was certain he would not return. She had already emptied the wardrobe of his clothes and donated them to charity. Concern was growing among local German police as to her patent lack of distress.
As the man at the consulate explained, Renate Klein was expecting a call from Australia; she had been alerted late last night Berlin time that a body had been found, and she very much wanted to be called.
‘The sketch—it looks like my husband,’ she said to Simmons.
‘You’re sure?’ asked Simmons, and because of the echoing connection he heard his own voice repeated, most disconcerting.
‘No, I’m not sure. It’s a drawing. But I would say I am ninety-five per cent sure. And he’s not here, so he must be somewhere.’
‘I’m sorry you have to go through this,’ said Simmons.
‘I’m not,’ said Mrs Renate Klein.
Tony Simmons, surrounded by the photocopied letters, yellow highlighter illuminating Vivian’s scrawls, couldn’t quite put it all together.
Mrs Klein told him, matter-of-factly, as if she’d been saying the words verbatim for years, that she had not loved her husband for a very long time. He was still her husband, but that was only because she was Roman Catholic. Or, as Renate put it succinctly to Simmons: ‘We are only married because we are not divorced.’
‘Will you be coming out to identify the body?’ he said.
‘No thank you,’ said Renate.
All Renate wanted was for the death to be established, and a certificate issued in the name of her husband—Oskar Klein—so she could carry on disposing of his things without arousing such bothersome suspicion. Her children might miss their father, perhaps, but she would not miss her husband and no tears would she shed.
It astonished Simmons that Renate Klein did not ask how this man who looked just like her husband had died. And when Simmons explained it—in all its peculiar detail—she said nothing. She had no idea about the vintage suit. She had never seen any silver comb. Nothing rang a bell about a man who had died in Adelaide in 1948.
And why did Vivian’s letters refer to an Oskar Konig, when this woman was speaking about an Oskar Klein? Simmons was perplexed.
‘Have you ever heard the name Oskar Konig?’ he asked Renate Klein.
‘No,’ she said. ‘But I know about that Australian woman. I know all about her.’ Her voice was thick with disgust.
‘Which woman are you referring to?’ said Simmons.
‘I am sure you know who I am referring to: the one he had holed up over here in that apartment all those times,’ she said.
‘Are you referring to an Australian woman called Vivian Moon?’
‘Is that her name?’ said Renate Klein. ‘Why would I want to know her name?’
Simmons closed his eyes. He was disoriented by the conversation and the difficulty of the connection—his own voice swimming around in a soup of telephonic distance. ‘Mrs Klein,’ he said, ‘I’m going to have to make some calls and come back to you again tomorrow morning our time, which will be later tonight your time.’
‘Hmmm,’ she said.
‘Just for my records, what did your husband do?’
‘He was a teacher,’ she said. ‘Like me. He taught at a high school. Just a boring old chemistry teacher. I like being a teacher, but not Oskar, oh no. That was not good enough for Oskar. He wanted to be so special, the way he used to carry on, going on his mysterious trips, acting so important, making an ape of himself. I could not stand it. I have known about your Australian woman for so many years and I do not care. He can do what he likes. I really do not care.’
Simmons said, ‘Right.’ He said, ‘I’ll make those calls.’
‘It looks just like my husband,’ said Renate Klein. ‘He has to be somewhere, doesn’t he? So, it is him. I know it’s him. And do you know what else I know? I know that he is tremendously full of shit.’
64
A thin moon was high in the pale sky when Cora Franks knocked on the screen door of Elsie Simmons’s yellow house, where a Christmas wreath was stuck fast to the flyscreen.
A call from Elsie sounded from inside: ‘Come in!’
‘It’s just me, Els,’ said Cora as she went along the hallway and into the living room, where Elsie was sitting in lamplight with the radio playing softly.
‘Oh, Cor, you came,’ said Elsie. ‘You didn’t have to come.’
‘I did,’ said Cora. ‘It’s a day for company.’ And she put her bag down and sat on the small armchair next to Elsie.
Cora had come directly from the wake. Fred was having a wonderful time sitting in the bistro at the big shop table. Gosh, he was so good at being Fred: the man who everyone liked talking to because he was so easy and fun and good.
Fran and Betsy were in their element too, and Cora had felt very included—appreciated—and the whole evening had been a tonic for her. She was in a lovely frame of mind. But she knew what the day meant for Elsie too, so she’d picked up her bag and told Fred to stay, and she’d walked in the twilight. It was the anniversary of the death of Neville Simmons, Elsie’s husband, and something of a tradition for them to spend it together.
‘Shall I pour us a glass?’ asked Cora.
‘You’d better,’ said Elsie, and Cora went over to the cabinet and brought out the brandy. She emptied a generous measure into two crystal glasses and gave one of them to Elsie as she sat down again.
‘To Neville,’ said Cora.
‘To Neville,’ said Elsie, and they clinked their glasses and drank.
‘The best mayor the Gather Region ever had,’ said Cora, with a wry smile.
‘And the worst husband,’ said Elsie Simmons, and the two of them nodded silently.
‘I’ve got a lot to tell you, Els,’ said Cora. ‘Tony came into the shop yesterday, asking about—you’re not going to believe this—about that silver comb Vivian Moon stole from me all those years ago.’
‘No,’ said Elsie. ‘What’s that about? Did the daughter have it? What’s her name again?’
Cora shook her head. ‘Benny,’ she said. ‘And I don’t know. Maybe. You know, I have a funny feeling it has something to do with the man who died—even though I don’t see how it could. I just came from his funeral up at the Public Hall. Did you hear about that?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Elsie. ‘That was a funny thing for them to do.’
‘It was really very nice,’ said Cora, and she told Elsie a bit about it, and how her speech had gone very well. Fran and Betsy had put a lot of effort in, and so many people had come. It was really just an excuse for a get-together for some people, but others seemed quite moved by it. She reached into her handbag and pulled out the funeral brochure they’d printed, with the sketch of the man on the cover, and she handed it to Elsie.
Elsie peered at it. She blinked a few times, very deliberately, and looked some more.
‘My eyes, Cor,’ she said. ‘I get these floaters in my eyes.’ But Elsie kept on looking at it, blinking and looking, and then she turned her head to the side. ‘That’s the man who died?’ she asked.
‘That’s him,’ said Cora. ‘It’s a good likeness.’
Elsie stared at the picture intently now, and then she looked up at Cora and said, ‘He’s familiar.’
Cora looked back at Els
ie with such surprise. Her wonderful friend, Elsie Simmons, who was fading so much with age, she still had the light in her. Every so often she still shone so brightly.
‘He’s familiar, Cor, and you know the first thing I think of when I look at that face is that time Viv looked after Tony. Do you remember that? There was a man hanging around, and I didn’t like it one bit. Remember? The way Viv went about with men; it wasn’t proper. And when I look at this face, it just makes me think of that time. Remember that man, Cor? The one who was hanging around?’
Cora said, ‘No,’ and she held her hand out for the brochure and Elsie gave it back.
‘We saw him knocking one time when Viv wasn’t home and he was acting like he wasn’t sure if he had the right house. Then, when you asked him what he was up to, he kind of ran away. He was a strange sort of fellow. Definitely not from around here.’
And Cora Franks, who had indeed looked at that dead man at Curios with some spark of recognition—a spark that kept dying out as soon as she’d sensed its flash—looked at the sketch then and, while she couldn’t remember the man, she could remember herself saying to a man, outside the cottage on Wiyanga Crescent however many moons ago, in a tone of particular disapproval, something along the lines of: ‘Excuse me, sir, who are you looking for? Can I help you with anything? Sir, why are you walking away?’
65
Simmons stayed on at the station after the phone call with Mrs Renate Klein, his mind swimming around in currents of information.
He went out to the kitchenette—he was the only one left at the station—and he made a cup of coffee and took a few biscuits from the tin to eat at his desk.
The light was beginning to fade outside and he switched on his desk lamp, which lit up the pile of letters, the highlighted sections of Vivian’s handwriting, her copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
Jenny had taken the girls straight home after the funeral and they would be waiting for him. And now, having borne witness to the bitterness of Renate Klein, he felt a rare desire to be with Jenny, to be with the girls, all four of them together in the house.
Simmons picked up the Rubaiyat and flicked through it again, stopping to read an underlined poem about love, then he carried on flicking until he reached the very back page, where there was a lot of writing in different coloured pens. He’d missed it earlier, this back page. There were several blank pages at the end of the book, and then this: the final page and the inside of the back cover, which was covered in Vivian’s writing.
There were quotes he had already read inside the book written out again—they may as well have been in actual Persian for all he understood them. But in red pen Vivian had written Everything now is O.K. with a love heart below it, and Simmons nodded to himself, understanding immediately what she had meant. O.K. for Oskar Konig. Or was it Oskar Klein? Whoever he was, it was the little symbols Viv had drawn there underneath that really caused him to focus.
She had drawn, in black pen, a crescent moon and a crown.
Simmons smiled.
The silver comb, sitting in the clear plastic bag, was in his drawer and he got it out for comparison. The crescent moon and a crown hallmarked on the silver; Vivian had copied them down exactly. And it was in a flash that Simmons stood up and went over to the box of Vivian’s books that sat on the floor near his desk.
He bent down and rummaged through them until he found what he was after. Then he went back to his desk, and opened Vivian Moon’s German–English dictionary.
Simmons thumbed through the German section, searching, until he found K, and he raced along, his finger tracing down the page to settle on the word konig.
The English translation was written alongside it.
It was king.
Simmons cleared his throat, the sound of it reverberating in the small office. Excitement had built in him, just with the game of it, because it was certainly a game. It had been a strange game all along, and of course Simmons had had no choice but to play. And if a man with some imagination—with aspirations to great importance—wanted to be someone else, well then he may as well make himself a king. ‘He wanted to be so special,’ Renate Klein had said. He was desperate to be mysterious and interesting, desperate to impress, thought Simmons, in life and in death.
He looked down at the Rubaiyat once more, at the copied symbols, the quotes, all of them so pathetically hopeful.
Vivian Moon and Oskar Konig: a crescent moon and a king’s crown.
What a romantic pair, thought Simmons with some disdain, what an odd tribute this all was, and he made a clicking sound with his mouth—thinking, thinking—and it was before the thought had even formed that he thumbed backwards in the dictionary—a big chunk of pages—until he got to the G’s, and ran his finger down the page.
A big wide smile came over his face when he found the word he was looking for and saw its meaning. He shook his head and laughed to himself, just a little, out loud in the office.
‘Very good,’ he said.
Gift was the German word.
Poison was the English translation.
66
Driving up to Odette’s house the following morning, rain started to fall lightly on the dirty windscreen of Benny’s car.
She put the wipers on but the rain was so light they only smudged the dirt on the screen, and so she drove along watching an indistinct road, glad that she knew it a little by now and was ready for the turn.
She rolled along the unsealed section towards Odette’s house—tiny stones flinging about from her tyres—thinking about the night before, and how she had spent a long time talking with Annie and Odette, and how good it had felt to be a part of their conversation.
Benny had slept in that morning, unusually tired. She’d made a coffee and drunk it at the kitchen table. The day was so grey and she’d really only done one thing before leaving the house: she made a call to her father. It was something she hadn’t expected to do, and from the surprise in Frank Miller’s voice he hadn’t expected her to do it either.
‘It’s really good to hear from you, Ben,’ he said. ‘Really good.’ And she thought about their brief conversation then, driving along the rough road, and she herself was surprised by how good it had felt to hear his familiar voice. He had told her a longish story about a sideboard and she’d been almost pleased to listen; and even though a part of her wanted to ask him so many questions, she simply didn’t.
As she came through the main gate, she saw Odette standing next to the long fence with the cows, emptying a bucket of feed for them in the misty rain. She turned and waved as Benny pulled up. Then they went inside, Bessel running ahead, and Odette took her raincoat off and hung it on the coat stand and there was music playing in the house, like always.
‘You’re tired,’ Odette said.
‘I am,’ said Benny.
‘So am I,’ said Odette, smiling, and she told Benny that a lot of people would be a little under the weather today after the wake, and that the gathering had continued after close. Annie and Tom had shut the doors and a few of them had carried on. Betsy Dell and Fred Franks were two of the most entertaining people in Cedar Valley and Odette had had a wonderful time.
The rain got heavier while they were talking in the farmhouse kitchen and it was loud on the tin roof. Odette made coffee, and she fried Benny two eggs in butter and Benny ate them quickly. After a little while they were both lying down on opposite couches, assessing the funeral service and how strange and good they’d found it, especially Cora’s oration, which had been surprisingly touching.
They talked a while like that—in the easy way Odette always made a conversation—both of them avoiding anything to do with Vivian Moon, and they decided on watching a video since the weather was so lousy, but first Benny suggested they go outside and watch the rain from the verandah; it had got so thick and heavy. So they went out and the air was cool and the cows were just standing there getting wet. Odette sat down on the rocking chair and Benny on a low stool, her back against th
e house.
‘This is nice,’ said Odette as they watched the paddock, and the atmosphere out there was different—somehow contemplative with the rain—and perhaps that was why Odette ventured after a spell to say, ‘You know, I’ve been wanting to ask you something, but I’ve been worried to ask it.’ ‘What is it?’ asked Benny, the wood of the farmhouse hard against her back.
‘How did Vivian die?’
‘How do you think she died?’
‘I think she killed herself,’ said Odette plainly, and she looked out at the sodden cows, who chewed away at their pile of feed and didn’t seem to notice the weather.
‘Yes, she did,’ said Benny, and her voice wavered a little, like there was wind blowing against it. It was hard, very hard, to say those words aloud to another person. Yet some relief came after she had said them. ‘She was living back near Adelaide, in a town called Hahndorf. I looked at it on a map. It’s just a dot.’ Then, sensing that Odette wanted more of an explanation, she added: ‘They think she took pills.’
It was true.
Vivian had been living alone. She didn’t leave a note. Frank had said that Nola Moon was too old to deal with anything and that Vivian’s brother was helping to clear out her apartment. In accordance with Nola’s wishes, there’d been no funeral.
Odette rocked back and forth slowly in her chair and said, ‘Right,’ and then they were quiet together, with Bessel there too, resting on his long belly, his paws hanging over the edge of the wooden boards.
The cows had finished their food and the little white birds were standing next to them on the grass, and when Benny looked at the cows, the cows stared back. The two of them, with such intensity, they bored a hole in the house with their eyes, as if demanding Odette return with another bucketful, and then, for no good reason, one of them startled and turned, galloping back into the paddock. The other did the same, it turned and bolted, hooves louder than the rain, and the white birds flapped up, flying off in different directions, and Benny had never seen cows run before and was astounded by their speed.
Cedar Valley Page 26