“That’s impressive,” I commented.
“In ’85, I was hardly ever in Siebenhoch. Nor the following years. I came for the feast days and even then I wasn’t around much.” He sighed. “Do you have regrets, Salinger?”
“Lots.”
“Then you’ll understand why I’m so hostile to the idea of seeing that horrible story in print.”
“No problem,” I replied. “I’m interested in the Krampus and the legends. The rest is background. I can easily leave it out. I don’t want to write a book that’s going to upset anyone. Knowing me, I’ll probably never finish it anyway.”
“How can I thank you?”
“By allowing me to smoke in here.”
Hermann opened wide a window. “I’d be glad to keep you company, Salinger, but I quit.”
We were interrupted by a sudden scratching at the door. Hermann’s face lit up.
It was his dogs. Two Dobermans that sniffed me and then ran to fete their master. Hermann returned their affection with genuine love.
“Ulysses and Telemachus.”
“Heroic names.”
“They’re all I have.”
“You don’t have any family?”
“I have my business. I have the Visitors’ Center. Three hotels, two of them in Siebenhoch, and I’m the Krampusmeister. But no children. No family. I didn’t have time.”
“Too much work?”
Hermann again stroked the heads of the two Dobermans lying at his feet. “Too much work, yes. That’s why I lost Günther, too.”
Hermann sat back in his armchair. He drank a glass of water while I savored the taste of the Marlboro.
The cold coming from the window had numbed half my face.
“Even though I was away, I knew everything that was going on in the village. I knew about Günther and his problem.”
“The drinking?”
“Of course, but Günther was . . .”—Hermann assumed a dark tone—“. . . a weakling. Does that strike you as cruel? Please tell me the truth.”
“Yes, it does.”
“He was my brother, but to me he was a source of embarrassment. I was living proof that you can make your dreams come true by yourself, just through force of will. I’d turned four cows into an empire that was growing day by day. I had a nine-figure turnover, Salinger. Politicians came and licked my ass. I attracted envy as if I was a nice juicy piece of shit in the middle of a swarm of flies. And I would swat those flies away. One word from me and a haulage firm lost half its orders, one sign and building material companies collapsed like sandcastles. I had innovative ideas, and those ideas bore fruit. The world was mine.” He raised his fist. “Günther, on the other hand, was a weakling. Like our father. He also drank like a sponge. He died of cirrhosis of the liver.”
“But Gunter had seen that—”
“That carnage? What of it?” Hermann cut in, contemptuously. “You know how many dead workers I’ve seen in my career? Bricklayers drowned in cement or falling off scaffolding, technicians blown up by explosives. An endless number of dead people. But do you think I started drinking and feeling sorry for myself?”
“Maybe Günther wasn’t made of the same stuff as you.”
Hermann sighed. “No, Gunter wasn’t made of the same stuff as me. He was too sensitive. As big and fat as a bear, language that would have made our poor mother faint, and yet he had a heart of gold. I only realized that later, when the euphoria of those years passed. For me the ’80s and ’90s were a kind of festival. I was working eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. I never stopped to think about important things.”
“Things like a family?”
“And Günther. I often told people I was an only child. His death was merely the fitting end to a wasted life. One less drunkard, I told myself, and went back to signing contracts, supervising projects, and having my backside kissed by some local councillor as if nothing had happened. But when it comes down to it, we were similar, Günther and I.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because Günther had his drinking and I had my work. It was my drug. And when I started to slow down, I began looking back. And thinking about Günther. I realized I’d behaved like a real asshole. I wondered if I could have saved him.”
“But how?”
Hermann looked at me as if I had just landed from Mars. “I was rich, and I still am, Salinger. I could have taken him to some specialist clinic to be cleaned out, I could have paid for him to travel around the world, and have as many whores as he wanted. Whatever it took to get that demon out of his head, I could have bought it. Instead I left him alone. Here. This is the house we grew up in, and this is where Günther lived. I had it almost completely refurbished.”
“Almost?”
“When it dawned on me what I’d done to Gunter, I went crazy. I don’t know why, but I took it out on these four walls. I wanted to raze them to the ground. But it was my house. Our house. So I decided to refurbish it from top to bottom. I didn’t have the courage, though, to touch his room, it stayed exactly as he’d left it the last time he was here.”
“I’m no specialist, but that strikes me as pretty insane,” I couldn’t help saying.
“Sometimes, I think that, too. Do you want to see it?”
I followed him upstairs.
While the rest of the Kagol house was furnished with care and with furniture of great value, the room that Hermann showed me was a dump.
The planks on the walls were black with soot, the bed was worm-eaten, and the windows were of an opaque glass that almost entirely blocked the light.
There was a bottle on the cupboard next to the unmade bed. And under the bottle, two 1,000-lire banknotes.
“What do you think, Salinger?”
He was about to add something, but a voice interrupted him. It was the housekeeper. An urgent phone call from Berlin. Hermann cursed.
“Business,” he said. He apologized and ran downstairs two steps at a time.
I was left alone, with that time capsule in front of me. I couldn’t resist. Even though I could hear Hermann’s voice muttering in the distance, I walked into Günther’s room.
* * *
What I was doing was wrong. In a way, it was a kind of desecration. I was looking into the cupboards (and under the bed and in the bedside table and . . .) of a man who had been dead for twenty-five years. A man who had lived a brief, unhappy life. Günther didn’t deserve what I was doing.
The thought didn’t stop me even for a moment.
I had just this one opportunity to establish whether or not what Brigitte had told me had a basis of truth. I had been under the illusion that talking to Hermann might yield some new information. But Hermann had said nothing to help me clarify my thoughts.
I panted as my fingers moved quickly amid boots with holes in them, drugs long past their expiration date, pajamas, underwear. There was also a mirror, but I preferred not to look at my own reflection. I searched. Time was passing.
One second. Two seconds, three seconds . . .
Quick. Quick.
If Günther really had had his suspicions, it was here, in this unhoped-for treasure, that I would find the right clues. I could sense it, just as I could smell the dust of decades prickling my nostrils. I felt in the jacket pockets, the trouser pockets, rummaged through prescriptions and postcards. I searched in a couple of mountain rucksacks. I searched in a leather bag devoured by worms. I searched in every damned nook and cranny in that room. Without finding anything other than old bills, dirty handkerchiefs, and a few out-of-date coins. I was bathed in sweat.
Then I saw it.
Behind a wardrobe. A music box. It seemed to vibrate, it was so promising. Holding my breath, I lifted it.
I stopped and pricked up my ears. I could still hear Hermann’s monotonous voice from the foot of the stairs.
Move.
I turned the music box over and found the battery compartment. I opened it, using my nails as a picklock. It was a pointless precauti
on: the acid from the batteries had spilled out, turning them into little sponges with an acrid odor that hurt the nostrils. No music would betray what I was doing.
And what I was doing was desecrating the grave of Günther Kagol.
I opened the box. It emitted a squeak and nothing more. Inside were a few official-looking typewritten papers. I unfolded them and tried to read them. There were stamps and a few rings. Beer, I thought. Or maybe tears.
I read.
What I read took my breath away.
It was the dogs that saved me.
I heard them barking, then Hermann’s voice calming them. I put the papers in my pocket, replaced the music box, closed the wardrobe, and pretended to be interested in the window frame.
“It’s lead, isn’t it?”
I hoped he wouldn’t notice the breathlessness in my voice.
“That’s how they used to make them,” he said. He looked at me, smoothing his moustache. “Do you want to ask me anything else, or . . .?”
“I’ve already taken too much advantage of your hospitality, Hermann. I’d like to photograph your workshop one of these days. If you don’t mind.”
“With pleasure. But I meant . . .” he said, letting his eyes complete the sentence.
“No Bletterbach. Let the dead rest in peace.”
The typewritten papers were burning a hole in my trouser pocket.
* * *
The following minutes spent in the company of Hermann have faded from my memory. Wiped out. All I can remember is my longing to get out of there and devote myself to my treasure.
Four pages. The paper was yellow and crumbly to the touch. The date at the bottom was April 7, 1985. Three weeks before the killings.
I reread them quickly. Then again. I couldn’t believe what Günther had discovered. For a moment, I put myself in his shoes, and what I felt was indescribable. I understood why he had drunk himself to death.
Those typewritten sheets were a hydro-geological risk assessment. A report that in a few lines, with a couple of graphs and several references to ordnance maps, demonstrated how the building of the Bletterbach Visitors’ Center would prove not only damaging to the ecosystem in the gorge, but also dangerous.
The foundations of the Visitors’ Center were laid in 1990, five years after a young geology student, in filing these four pages, had made herself an enemy that not even her smile could win ’round. The signature at the bottom of this document opposing the construction of the Center was Evi’s.
I could still hear the contemptuous way Hermann had spoken about Günther. But was a man who refused to accept his brother’s alcoholism also a murderer?
Maybe not, I told myself as I reread the report for the umpteenth time.
And yet Hermann Kagol had shown the world that he was someone it was best not to mess around with. Especially back then. To use his own words, Günther had had his drinking and Hermann his work.
But there was much more to him, in my opinion. Those four cows he was so proud of were not only four animals left to him by an alcoholic father. They were a symbol. The symbol of his social redemption. And the Visitors’ Center was the outward mark of his success.
Jaekelopterus Rhenaniae
The following morning, I updated the file on the computer, putting down everything I had discovered, attaching a scan of the document signed by Evi and noting all the hypotheses, questions, and leads that I could think of.
There were a lot of them.
Then I went for a long walk in the cold, hoping a bit of movement might chase away that sense of impending menace. It didn’t help. At lunch, I picked at my food and answered Annelise’s questions with monosyllables, until she got fed up and stopped talking to me.
All I could think about was Evi’s report. With those few pages, she had held up work on the Visitors’ Center for five years. Given the competition in the tourism field, five years are as long as geological eras.
It also occurred to me that if Evi hadn’t been killed on April 28, 1985, and had been able to continue her battle for the conservation of the Bletterbach, of which she was obviously very fond (wasn’t it there, as Brigitte had told me, that her love for Kurt had blossomed? Wasn’t it there that Evi found peace when her mother flipped out?), maybe Hermann Kagol’s Center would still have been nothing more than a plan in its creator’s mind.
No Center, no money.
Money.
A major motive, as old as humanity. When it came down to it, even Rome had been built on the scene of a crime.
Romulus killing Remus over a simple land dispute.
“Papà?”
I didn’t even look up from my plate to answer her. “Yes, sweetheart?”
“Did you know that scorpions aren’t insects?”
“What?”
“Scorpions aren’t insects. Did you know that?”
“Really?”
Clara nodded. “They’re spiders,” she exclaimed, excited by the discovery. “They said so on television.”
I didn’t even listen to her. “Eat your potatoes, sweetheart,” I muttered.
Clara went into a sulk. I didn’t even notice. I was too busy following the thread of my thoughts.
I tried to calculate what the annual turnover of the Visitors’ Center must be. If the statistics I had found online were to be believed, the annual number of tourists paying the entrance fee was somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000. A decent figure, from which the running expenses, maintenance, and all the rest had to be deducted. But that wasn’t the only source of income. Because at least half the visitors who opened their wallets to gaze in awe at the Bletterbach stayed at hotels in Siebenhoch.
And they also ate their meals in Siebenhoch, bought souvenirs, basic foodstuffs, and other things.
“Papà?”
“What is it, sweetheart?”
“What are we doing this afternoon?”
I made an effort to eat a little stew, just to please Annelise. It was very good, but my stomach was closed. That sensation under the skin was still there.
“I don’t know, sweetheart.”
“Shall we go sledding?”
In my mind, the money circulating around the Visitors’ Center was becoming a river of gold.
“Of course.”
Who was the main beneficiary of that fortune? The community, but above all Hermann Kagol. The man who had sold four cows to become . . . what?
“Promise?”
I ruffled her hair. “Promise.”
Four cows and the roof of a henhouse as stepping stones toward becoming, for all intents and purposes, the boss of Siebenhoch. He owned the Visitors’ Center, and he owned the two main hotels in the village.
He had the biggest slice of the earnings.
Hermann Kagol.
I cleared the table. Then I sank into my favorite armchair and switched on the TV. My eyes saw, but my brain didn’t register.
Clara followed me like a puppy, her little face turned toward me. “Papà?”
“Tell me, ten letters.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“I’m watching the news.”
“It’s finished, five letters.”
It was true.
I smiled. “I think five letters needs to clear his head.”
“Shall we go out and play with the sled?”
I shook my head. “Later.”
“When?”
“I have something to do first.”
“But you promised!”
“A couple of hours, no more.” I stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“I have to go to Bolzano. But when I’m back, we’ll go on the sled, OK?”
* * *
I needed evidence. And the only place I could find it was the provincial land registry. There, I would be able to reconstruct the story of the Visitors’ Center.
And then?
Then, I thought just before the phone rang, I would think of an idea.
* * *
&
nbsp; “Did I wake you, partner?”
“It’s two in the afternoon and I’m driving.”
“I always get confused with the time difference.”
“Did you do your homework, Mike?”
The line was very poor. Mike’s voice kept cutting out.
I cursed.
Fortunately, I noticed the exit to a service station. I put on the indicator light, found an empty space, and parked. I switched off the speakerphone and raised the phone to my ear.
“First of all, it was a lousy job you gave me. Second of all, the whole thing’s a real mess. What kind of business have you gotten yourself mixed up in?”
I struck a match and breathed in the afternoon’s first mouthful of cigarette smoke. It made me cough a little. “A weird story.”
“I’ll start with the conclusion. Grünwald. Nobody knows what happened to him. One day he just disappeared.”
“When was this? In ’85?”
“April or maybe May 1985.”
“What do you mean April or maybe May? Can’t you be more specific?”
Mike’s voice turned shrill. “Why don’t you do all this stuff yourself, if you’re so good at criticizing other people’s work?”
“Because you’re a genius, Mike. And I’m just a humble hack.”
“Keep going.”
“And you’re the only person in the world who can help me get the chestnuts out of the fire.”
“And?”
“And nothing, this isn’t phone sex.”
“If it was, I’d save my money: do you have any idea how much an intercontinental call costs?”
“You’re using the network’s phone, aren’t you?”
“Do you want me to read you your horoscope, while we’re at it?”
“I want you to start telling me the story. April or May 1985.”
“Oscar Grünwald disappears. He was supposed to be giving a lecture in Ingolstadt, which is a place in—”
“Germany.”
“But he never showed up. The lecture was meant to be on May 7, to be exact. He was replaced by a certain Dr. Van der Velt, a Dutchman. Judging from the credentials of this Van der Velt, they won out on the deal. Grünwald was discredited, Salinger.”
“What does ‘discredited’ mean?”
While Mike was talking, I had dug out a notebook and a ballpoint pen from the dashboard. I placed the notebook on my thigh and started scribbling.
Beneath the Mountain Page 21