“Mark?”
“Yes?”
“Can’t you just stay at home?”
“I’m afraid not, but I’ll be back. There’s a lot going on at the moment.”
“Like what?”
“You don’t want to know, my love.”
“We could just pretend the world wasn’t there.”
“Well, yes, we could.”
“But?”
“But I have to catch the villains.”
“You don’t have to. You want to.”
“And you want to play with your dead people. I know you. You wouldn’t last long here, in ten minutes’ time you’d be jumping up and telling me there’s something you have to do, the old lady brought in last night can’t wait any longer.”
“Would I?”
“Yes, you would.”
“Two more minutes, okay?”
“Ten if you like.”
• • •
Even on the boat, she had sensed that this man would make her happy. She knew from the way he held her and consoled her, even though he was a stranger. A criminal investigator in the police force, how absurd. He’d surely have been able to see through her, tear off her mask and get her imprisoned, he could have ended her new life before it had even begun. But it had turned out so differently. Blum wanted the embrace that had begun so suddenly never to end, she wanted to become acquainted with those arms, those hands. She wanted him, for the first time ever she wanted a man, for the first time she thought such a thing possible. She was ready to let him come close to her without hesitation or fear. Very close. And he wasn’t deterred by her profession, he was not afraid of the dead.
• • •
She met him again. Back in the harbor in the Trieste, back in Austria. They understood one another and came together without many words. He was her friend, her protector, he was there when she buried her parents, he was there when she converted the Funerary Institute, he helped in any way he could. And after a while they shared their first kiss. They were sitting in the cool room, drinking beer, tired and happy. They had been retiling the preparation room, it was late summer, they were sweating and laughing as they sat on beer crates.
• • •
“Blum?”
“Yes?”
“This is the sexiest fridge I’ve ever sat in.”
“Do you often sit in fridges?”
“Well, I’m a cop.”
“So cops sit in fridges?”
“Of course.”
“You’re crazy.”
“No crazier than you. I mean, it was your idea to have our first beer in here.”
“This is our fourth beer.”
“Stop counting, Blum.”
“It really doesn’t bother you that this place is normally filled with dead bodies?”
“No.”
“I spent a lot of time in this room when I was a child.”
“With the bodies or without them?”
“With them.”
“Doors open or closed?”
“Closed.”
“Why?”
“It was my hiding place. They didn’t come looking for me, so I often spent hours in here. I just sat and watched the dead.”
“Pretty cold, wasn’t it, with the door closed?”
“Not in long underwear, a ski suit, gloves, and a hat.”
“Sounds a bit crazy, but I believe you.”
“You should.”
“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re honest with me.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Can I trust you?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“Because I have to kiss you.”
“Do you?”
“I can’t help it, I’ve been wanting to for the last two months. I really wanted to when I saw you on the boat. I’m sorry, I really need to.”
“So you have to trust me to kiss me?”
“If I kiss you, I’ll want to marry you. And then it’s surely a good thing to trust each other, don’t you think?”
“But you don’t know me.”
“Yes, I do.”
“When I was little I played with dead bodies.”
“And I put cats in a sack and drowned them. I put fireworks in frogs and watched them explode.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“I was curious.”
“Me too.”
“And that’s why I have to kiss you.”
“Don’t I get any say in it?”
“Certainly not.”
• • •
How lovely it was. How close their faces came, their lips. How their mouths met, soft, excited, trembling. Familiar and strange and lovely. Blum and Mark in the cool room. To this day their mouths have gone on touching.
It was a two-story Jugendstil villa in the middle of Innsbruck, with a large backyard with apple trees. When Hagen and Herta were underground Blum tore everything old out of the house: her parents’ bedroom, the old pine-paneled living room, the kitchen. Nothing was left except the old wooden floor; she kept that and sanded it down. The work took her hours. She scrubbed and painted, and Mark helped her. He offered to, and she thanked him. If you don’t have anything better to do. How can anyone be so friendly and kind? Are you really sure you don’t have a girlfriend? He said no, frowning, and Blum relished it all: the fact that he kept coming back, that he had decided to take care of her. That he thought she was beautiful, and took days off for her. That he even brought his colleagues to lend a hand. Half the province’s police officers helped them to tear down the walls and clear the rubble.
• • •
The Blums’ house was gutted and refurbished, the walls were painted in new, bright colors, and the old ghosts were banished. Together with Mark, she wandered all through the house at night, smoking them out. She and Mark went from room to room, and smoke rose; the scent of juniper, cinnamon, and orange peel lingered in the air. Whether Mark believed in it or not, he went with her, helping the witch with her exorcism, making an effort to feel the evil within the walls. They went from cellar to attic, flooding every corner with positive thoughts, and all that had been there before disappeared. Blum threw all thoughts of Hagen and Herta, of her old life with them, out with the trash. What was left was a dream house, an oasis of peace in the middle of Innsbruck, a modern Funerary Institute in the shade of the apple trees, managed by a young woman who treated both the dead and the mourners with respect. The business began to flourish. Like Blum herself.
• • •
After the kiss in the cool room, Mark moved in with her. Love suddenly filled the old villa. It was all like a dream, a fairy tale come true, just like in the books that Blum had read, the stories in which she had taken refuge. It was the happiness of others that had kept her alive, and her own longing for it. Something she had never really believed in now lies beside her. She wants everything to stay as it is, nothing to change. She says so every day, every day she asks him not to stop loving her. A kiss before they begin each new day, and then, thankful for it, she moves away from him and jumps out of bed. In the old days Blum would never for a moment have thought that happiness could fill her like this. That she would be granted little human beings and would love them. Back then she didn’t like to think of what would happen next, she simply flung herself into Mark’s embrace. She hadn’t dared to think of children. She was afraid the happiness would go away if she asked too much of it, that love would disappear overnight. Having her own children, seeing them grow up, loving them—for three years Blum dismissed the idea from her mind. She couldn’t imagine being a mother, she was afraid of repeating what she had learned. Lovelessness, coldness of heart, she didn’t want to find out whether she was another Herta or Hagen. When Mark broached the idea, fear constricted her throat, kept her quiet. She didn’t dare to try for them, not for a long time, but in the end she overcame her fears. Her wish for
children was too great. But she was granted her wish twice. They were miraculous little creatures. Blum worried over every tear they shed, every fit of crying, she took care of them and touched them whenever she could, she carried them around for hours, caressed them, spoke lovingly to them. She lay awake at night looking at her angels as they slept. To this day she sometimes doubts that it can be true, that they are really here.
Uma and Nela are upstairs with Karl, Mark’s father, who is sitting reading the morning paper when the girls storm into his kitchen. He is a kind old man who makes hot chocolate for the children, laughs with them, helps them to play with their building blocks, who loves them and would do anything for them. Uma is in the crook of his arm, Nela is spooning up hot chocolate from a pink cup. Karl tells them stories over breakfast; he is a blessing to everyone in the house. Mark and Blum brought him to live with them two years ago. He had suffered an infection from a tick bite, and then took early retirement after a stroke. He now needs help in many situations—he would never ask for that help, but he is glad of it. There are things that he forgets these days, things he can no longer remember. Mark didn’t want to leave him on his own in his little apartment, and so Blum suggested converting the unused second story of the house. Knowing how much he meant to Mark, she wanted Karl to live with them. For a long time he had done everything for his son. Mark’s mother died young, and Karl was the only parent he could remember. When Mark woke up, when he went to sleep, Karl and only Karl was there. Karl brought the boy up on his own: two men at the breakfast table, fatherly advice when he had a spare moment. They stuck together as much as they could. Mark spent a good deal of time on his own, a little boy under the covers, but a little boy who could always trust his father to come back. Who knew that nothing bad would happen to him, that the bond between them was stronger than anything else. Mark was a loner; as a teenager he knocked around like a stray dog, but he was happy, as happy as possible, because of all the trouble that Karl took. He told Blum about his life as a motherless adolescent, about those frequent father-and-son chats in the kitchen. Karl would sit at the table with his evening glass of beer while Mark washed the dishes.
• • •
“Do you know what you want to do, Mark? After school, I mean?”
“I’m going to join the police. Same as you. The criminal investigation department.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, boy.”
“Yes, I do.”
“It’s not always a pleasant job.”
“What job is?”
“We went to pick up a young mother at her apartment today. She’d shaken her baby to death. Her sister found them and called us. The mother was sitting on the floor cradling the baby; she cried when the paramedics took the child out of her arms. She said the baby wouldn’t stop crying. She just wanted peace.”
“We’re out of dishwashing liquid.”
“Did you understand what I was saying, Mark?”
“That’s life, Papa.”
“No, it isn’t, or it is only for people like me who decide to earn their living that way. You don’t have to see things like that, you can avoid it.”
“But I don’t want to.”
“You should go to college, Mark, and then the whole world’s your oyster, you can always join the police later.”
“But I want to join right away.”
“Why?”
“If it’s good enough for you, then it’s good enough for me.”
“I know your mother would have wanted you to go to college and study. Economics or medicine.”
“But my mother isn’t here.”
“I know.”
“You really don’t have to worry about me.”
“I’m so sorry, Mark.”
“What for?”
“Everything.”
“You did everything right by me, everything, don’t you understand that? So now drink that beer and stop worrying.”
• • •
Twenty years later Karl is telling the children stories. Uma and Nela love him: his beard—they rub their smooth skin against it—his voice, his arms tossing them up in the air, his laughter. Karl’s life is a simple one now. There are no more crimes, no more corpses, only the children and the armchair where he spends his days. He sits in it, listening to music for hours on end or sits out on the terrace, holding his face up to the sun. Mark always keeps an eye on his father, covers him up when he has fallen asleep in his chair. The children love him; their parents can see it in their faces when they come down from the top floor and repeat the stories that Grandpa has told them.
• • •
The past is forgotten, Blum’s life before Mark. She sits at the breakfast table, smiling at the way Mark holds out his coffee cup, looking at her. Smiling as she spreads honey on her bread, tells the children how bees make honey, tells them not to dawdle, they have to go to school. She is impatient but still loving as she hurries them up, asking all the same if they want another slice of bread and honey. Watching them munch and smack their lips, spreading honey all over the table, while she talks to Mark.
• • •
“When will you be home today?”
“Late.”
“Difficult case?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“You don’t want to know, Blum.”
“Maybe I do.”
“The world’s a bad place; it’s enough for me to have to deal with it.”
“My hero, my rescuer, the good conscience of the city!”
“There’s something strange going on here.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“You can, you know. I can handle it.”
“Yes, but all the same no. I have to be certain first. Right now I’m on my own with it. I could be seeing a crime where there isn’t one.”
“Trust your instinct.”
“That’s the problem, because that’s exactly what I am doing.”
“You’ll get the guilty behind bars and make sure that justice is done. And I’ll see to the old man who’s been brought to the Institute.”
“How did he die?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Maybe I do.”
• • •
All is well, there’s no rage, no anger, no sadness, nothing like that. Nothing hurts, the clients aren’t getting on her nerves this morning, the children are behaving. There’s nothing to worry her; it’s a good day. Blum enjoys this untroubled feeling, her happiness when she looks at Mark. The corners of his mouth turning up, the peace radiating from him, his strength. She feels safe, protected. Mark is her home, he is there and he won’t go away. Never mind how loud she shouts, never mind if she gets angry, never mind whether she sometimes has doubts about life and fears it. Mark will be lying beside her when she wakes. She can sense him there, always.
• • •
Blum knows there is something troubling him, some cause for anxiety. It is gnawing away at him, silently and secretly, but Blum notices it. However hard he tries to leave his job behind when he comes home in the evening, he doesn’t always succeed. Blum can see that his thoughts are racing, that he can’t let something go. Something keeps taking his attention away from her and the children. Mark the policeman and his passion for his job. If anyone asks him what he does, he talks about it with enthusiasm. He says that there could be no better career in the world for him, nothing could stop him from believing in justice. He loves what he does, he believes in it, and he is also ready to throw away the rule book now and then to achieve his aims. Mark believes in his instincts, and indeed he feels more than he thinks; logic isn’t always his strong point. He follows his gut, trusts his nose, follows up after a remark, an impression. He believes in intuition, and he believes everything his father has taught him, all the little details that he has observed over the years, discussing his father’s assessment of a situation over his evening beer. Their long conversations about un
solved cases, even before Mark had really made up his mind to join the police. Karl was his teacher; he taught him how to be human. He might have smiled at the idea of instinct when he was sixteen, but he took it to heart, and he does to this day. Sometimes you have to make decisions, Mark, and never mind what other people say, you will have to do as your heart tells you. No violence, no infringement of the law. Don’t kick a man when he is down. You’re on the side of the angels and you must never forget it. Karl made Mark a police officer, one of the best. And one who sometimes lets pity take precedence over the law. Mark always tries to discover the reason for a crime; he wants to know how it came to pass, why someone comes to be guilty of an offense. Why they will risk contempt and imprisonment. Why a man is prepared to attack an ATM with a sledgehammer. A man like Reza.
It was six years ago. Reza was simply after the money, or some of it, just enough to survive on. He was hungry and wanted to buy food. He had put the CCTV camera on the facade of the building out of action with a stone, and covered the camera in the cash dispenser with sticky tape. When Mark came along he was hitting the dispenser for the umpteenth time. With all his might, again and again, bringing the sledgehammer down where the cash would be. Reza never noticed Mark charging at him. Mark forced him back. It was like the war: a soldier on the ground, injured, desperate, the enemy above him with a gun in his hand. Mark was aiming it at Reza as he made him lie flat on his front and surrender.
• • •
Reza is a Bosnian, and for the last six years he has been working as an undertaker. He is Blum’s assistant, her right-hand man. He lost everything in the war, his brothers, his parents, his house. Everything burnt down; not a trace remained. The fact that he survived was nothing short of miraculous; he had hidden, had watched the Serbs slaughtering his countrymen. Overnight, he had to learn what war meant, how brutal life could be, how bloody and raucous death was. He had nothing now, no one who was there for him or cared for him, no roof over his head, no money, nothing. Nothing but blood and war and killing. He had often simply struck out on his own. It had been easy. Even before he was eighteen he had killed people in the war to survive. The memories came flooding back. Reza talked half the night through, laying out his life before their eyes. Mark and Blum listened, openmouthed, as they heard what he had to say: incredible stories of a child toting a gun.
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