Once again, Mike’s voice inside my head contradicted me.
What about Chief Krün?
True, Max also had a file on the richest man in the village and had crossed him off his list of suspects, but rich men can buy alibis easily. Alibis everyone must have believed, even that paranoid obsessive Max, but not Günther. Günther had reached the same conclusions as me. But he hadn’t had the courage to denounce his own brother.
These were the serious allegations he had hinted at to Brigitte when he was drunk.
It all made sense.
The man who had transformed Siebenhoch into one of the main tourist centers in the region was actually a vicious murderer. The money that every inhabitant of the village handled every day dripped with the blood of three innocents. Evi, Kurt, and Markus. One question remained.
What to do?
Go and have another talk with Brigitte, I told myself. Maybe some detail or other would come back to her. Maybe Günther had hinted at something that she had dismissed. Yes, I told myself, Brigitte might be the key to everything.
When I got home, I didn’t notice that the lights were off. I parked and hid the notebook in the inside pocket of my winter jacket. Then I took out the key.
“Where have you been?”
Werner’s voice.
I jumped.
“You startled me.”
“Where were you?”
I had never seen him in that state. He had dark rings under his eyes, skin so drawn as to appear almost shiny, and red eyes as if he had been crying. He was clenching and unclenching his fists as if he wanted to hit me.
“In Bolzano.”
“Have you checked your phone?”
I took it out. It was dead. “Oops.”
Werner grabbed me by the lapel of my jacket. In spite of his age, his grip was like steel.
“Werner!”
“Hermann called me,” he snarled. “He told me you’re planning to write a book. You asked him a whole lot of questions. You lied to me. You lied to your wife.”
Where my stomach should have been, I had a hole.
No lights in the house. No voices. That could only mean that Annelise had carried out her threat and left.
I felt myself sink.
“Does Annelise know?”
“If she does, I didn’t tell her.”
“Then why isn’t there anyone at home?”
Werner released his grip. He took a step back and looked at me in disgust. “They’re at the hospital.”
“What happened?” I stammered.
“Clara,” Werner said.
The Color of Madness
They wouldn’t let me see her. I had to be patient. Sit down, read a magazine. Wait for the arrival of God knows who. Ten letters: “Impossible.”
I started yelling.
They told me to calm down.
I yelled even louder and punched an orderly. To defend himself, he pushed me against a wall. I hit my head on a fire extinguisher.
Someone called security. Nine letters: “pointless.”
Not even the sight of the uniforms made me recover my self-control. I cursed the two officers who grabbed me as if I were a criminal. I wasn’t, but I belonged to the most dangerous of living species: I was a father driven mad by fear.
They had no choice.
They threw me to the ground and handcuffed me. I heard the noise of the metal closing and went wild. They gave me a couple of well-aimed punches to the kidneys and finally forced me onto an uncomfortable plastic chair.
“Mr. Salinger . . .”
“Take these handcuffs off.”
“Only once you’ve calmed down.”
A small crowd had gathered around us. A couple of male nurses, a cleaner who kept sniffling. A few patients.
“My daughter,” I said, trying to contain my anger. “I want to see my daughter.”
“That’s not possible, signore,” a nurse said, more to the officers than to me. “The child is in intensive care with her mother. The doctor says that—”
I raised my head, drooling from the mouth. “I don’t give a fuck what the doctor says, I want to see my daughter!”
I started crying.
Crying did me good.
Maybe it helped to soften them. I certainly calmed down.
In the end, the officer who had handcuffed me spoke to me, “If you apologize to the nurse, I think my colleague and I could forget what happened and let you go. But only if you assure me you won’t fly off the handle. Got that?”
I felt them taking off the handcuffs. They gave me some water.
It was lukewarm, but I drank it all.
“When will I be able to . . .?”
It was the male nurse I’d almost strangled who replied. “Soon, you just have to be patient.”
“Patient. Seven letters,” I muttered. “That’s a lot, seven letters.”
“Pardon me?”
“Nothing, I’m sorry.”
I waited. And waited.
There was a strong smell of disinfectant in the air. It was a smell Clara hated. I remembered the year before, when she’d been hospitalized with food poisoning and, as usual, I wasn’t there with her because I was heavily into the editing of Road Crew. By the time Annelise had managed to contact me, Clara had already had her stomach pumped. I’d rushed to the hospital. Clara was a little creature, not much more than three feet long, lying on a bed that seemed too big for her, as pale as the sterile gown they had made her put on. She stared at me with a look I would never forget.
Why didn’t you protect me? her eyes said.
Because I had things to do. I was far away.
I was an asshole.
And now here I was, my head in my hands, ever more terrified, waiting for someone to tell me what had happened. With that smell in my nostrils growing stronger with every passing minute.
Two hours later, a weary Annelise came toward me. I stood up and ran to hug her, but she pulled away and when I tried to kiss her she took a step back.
“How is she?”
“Where were you?”
“How is she?” I repeated.
“Where were you?”
It was a game that could go on ad infinitum. Her accusing me and me trying to find out what she was hiding from me. I felt my anger becoming uncontrollable again.
“For fuck’s sake tell me how my daughter is!” I screamed.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the male nurse get up from his post. “Is everything all right, signora?”
“Yes, fine, thank you,” Annelise replied automatically.
“Answer me, dammit,” I whispered, grinding my teeth.
I was beside myself.
As if what was happening was her fault.
“She took the sled and had an accident.”
“What kind of accident?”
“She went to Welshboden,” Annelise said, staring into the distance. “I didn’t even notice. I thought she was playing in the garden. Instead, she took the sled and went to Welshboden. She dragged it behind her, can you imagine? A five-year-old.”
I could imagine the scene. Clara making her way to her grandfather’s place. A determined five-year-old panting at the side of the highway, observed by passing motorists, obstinately dragging a wooden sled as heavy as she was.
Why had she done it?
Because I had promised that we would play together that afternoon. And she had grown angry because I’d broken my promise. Yet another promise. I’d had to go to Bolzano, to dig into Hermann’s past.
Then . . .
“Werner lost sight of her for a moment, he was in the attic. And Clara . . .” Annelise closed her eyes. “The east side, Salinger. At top speed.”
The side I had forbidden her to use. The one that led straight to the forest.
“How is she?”
“Cranial trauma. The doctor says she’s lucky to be alive. I saw the sled, Salinger. It’s all smashed up . . .”
I tried to take her hand. She imme
diately shifted.
“Will they have to operate?”
“Her whole head is bandaged. She’s so small. So helpless.” Annelise’s voice was a lament without tears. “Do you remember when she was born? Do you remember how frail she seemed?”
“You were scared of breaking her.”
“Do you remember what you said to reassure me? Do you remember, Salinger?”
I remembered. “That I would protect you. Both of you.”
“I tried to call you. Your phone was off and I. . .” She shook her head. “I didn’t know anything. There were the doctors, and the ambulance. My father crying and telling me Clara was strong and would be all right. And there was . . .”—she stammered—“. . . there was the snow, Salinger, the snow was red. So red. Too red.”
For the second time I tried to hug her. For the second time my wife retreated.
“Where were you?”
“In Bolzano. My phone was out of battery. Mike called me. We spent a bit too long talking. I kept forgetting to recharge the battery and . . . and . . .”
I couldn’t continue.
Red. The red snow.
Snow.
The Beast, I thought. The Beast kept its promise.
Just like in my dream.
“Why did you go to Bolzano?”
“I wanted to buy you all presents.”
“You’re a liar.”
“I beg you.”
“You’re never there. Never.”
“Please.”
Her words hurt like punches.
“You’re never there,” she repeated.
Then she withdrew into a silence more painful than a thousand words. We sat down.
We waited.
At last, when I’d lost all sense of time, a doctor approached us.
“Signor and Signora Salinger? Clara’s parents?”
* * *
My daughter’s skull.
I was looking at the X-rays of Clara’s cranium attached to a luminous display screen. “In 200 million years this will be her fossil,” I kept telling myself. I couldn’t stop staring at it, which prevented me from listening to what the doctor was trying to explain. The doctor had circled a darker area with a felt-tip pen. It was here that Clara had crashed against a damned red fir tree. The trauma. It looked like such an insignificant stain. No bigger than a ladybug. All that anxiety for a tiny little stain.
I didn’t understand.
“Doctor,” I said, tapping the X-ray with my fingers, “it can’t be so serious, can it? Just a little stain. A ladybug. Seven letters.”
The doctor stood up, approached the luminous screen and, using a pencil, went over the mark made with the felt-tip pen.
“If this hematoma is reabsorbed by itself, as I just said, the child will be able to go home without any need for intervention. If the opposite happens, she’ll have to be operated on.”
I went from being stunned to being dismayed. “Are you telling me you’ll have to open my daughter’s head?”
The doctor retreated. He withdrew toward the desk, as if to put as much space as possible between my hands and his neck.
I was sure that he knew about what had happened in the corridor with the two security guards and the male nurse.
“Signor Salinger,” he cleared his throat, trying to maintain a detached, professional tone. “If the hematoma isn’t reabsorbed by itself, a surgical intervention will be necessary. I don’t want to alarm the two of you, but the risk is that because of the trauma your daughter may lose her sight. Perhaps partially, perhaps totally.”
Silence.
I remember the silence.
Then Annelise’s weeping.
“Can we see her?” I heard myself say.
I walked behind the doctor, a frightening emptiness in my head.
* * *
She was alone in a room. She had little tubes everywhere. Complicated equipment was humming. A few beeps every now and again. The doctor glanced at the medical chart.
I looked at the tiles under my feet, studied the cracks in the plaster on the walls, stared at the shiny metal of the bed on which Clara was sleeping. Then, at last, I managed to find the courage to look at my daughter. She was so small. I would have liked to say something. A prayer. A lullaby. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t do anything.
They walked us out into the corridor.
I remember the fluorescent lights. The plastic armchairs. Annelise trying to stop the tears. I remember finding myself in front of a mirror, in a bathroom that stank of bleach. I remember the anger I saw in my eyes. It was making my stomach clench, forcing me to look at the world from behind a red, animalistic veneer that I didn’t recognize as mine. What I was feeling was the worst kind of anger. The kind of obscure sensation that drives you to commit the unthinkable.
It was anger caged inside a prison of powerlessness. I couldn’t do anything for Clara. I wasn’t a surgeon. I didn’t even have any real faith, which was why my prayers sounded empty. Just like my curses. Who should I curse if my concept of God was so nebulous as to be evanescent? I could curse myself, and I did so a thousand times. And I could try to comfort Annelise. But the words coming out of my mouth were thin and tasteless. As tasteless as the coffee we drank at three in the morning, sitting at a table in the cafeteria on the first floor of the hospital in Bolzano.
I had to give vent to my feelings, or I would explode. I thought again about the dream. Clara with her eyes gouged out. Clara in danger of blindness.
Three letters: red. Six letters: yellow. Four letters: blue. Five letters: black. Another six letters: purple. Another four letters: pink. And green and all the shades in the world, lost. Vanished. No more colors for Clara.
No color except one. I was sure of it.
Five letters: white.
White would pursue my daughter to the end of her days. Blindness was white. It transformed the world into a palette of mist and ice.
As I saw Werner looking around for us and raised my arm to attract his attention, I realized that it was all the fault of white.
Of the Beast.
It was a crazy thought, I was aware of that. But far from running away from that madness, I threw myself into it headfirst. Better madness than the nightmare I was living.
I trusted the madness.
If I could track down the Bletterbach killer, I would defeat the Beast. And in doing so I would save Clara’s sight.
A Tree is Murdered
I left the hospital at dawn. I tried to persuade Annelise to follow me. I told her she needed to rest and to eat some decent food. To get as much of a grip as she could. She looked like someone about to have a nervous breakdown. She was squeezing a handkerchief between her fingers, tormenting it according to the flow of her thoughts. She had aged ten years in a few hours. She replied that she wouldn’t leave without her daughter. I kissed her lightly on the forehead. She didn’t even look at me. I wanted to tell her that I loved her.
I didn’t do so.
I left her in the company of Werner and went back to Siebenhoch alone. Once through the door, I felt a pang in my chest. The house was dark, ghostly, without Clara’s voice to light it up. I wept a little, standing there, the wind ruffling my hair. I didn’t even have the strength to close the door. I stayed there, motionless. When the dawn finally turned to morning and I had lost all feeling in my hands because of the cold, I summoned up the strength to confront the silence and went in.
I filled my stomach with a couple of eggs and made myself an abundant dose of coffee that provoked a spasm but at least woke me from my lethargy. I smoked two cigarettes in quick succession, watching the wind shake the tree tops. I switched on my computer almost without realizing it and typed in everything I had discovered about Hermann and about Grünwald. The two reports. The Jaekelopterus. Everything. After a while, I realized I was pounding on the keyboard as if trying to destroy it. I put even more energy into it. By the end, my eyes were full of tears.
The Bletterbach killings were poisonin
g my soul. But I couldn’t stop thinking about them. I called Werner.
No, no news. Yes, Annelise was OK.
“Are you sure?”
“What do you think, Jeremiah?”
“That you’d really like to smash my face in.”
“Not right now, son. I just want the doctors to tell me that Clara will get better.”
“She’ll get better.”
I was sure of it.
Clara would get better because I would defeat the Beast.
* * *
The wind had driven a big cold front from the Balkans over Alto Adige. It would snow, crackled the car radio. More whiteness, I thought, and I switched it off. I parked just behind the cemetery in Siebenhoch.
I lingered in a bar, where I had a coffee and a croissant. Finally, trying not to be too conspicuous, I headed for Brigitte’s house. I walked with my head bowed, like the few people I passed along the street.
The icy wind brought the smell of snow. I cursed it, and in doing so felt even more determined. Anything to save Clara.
I stopped.
A black Mercedes, the latest model, was parked outside. A kind of gigantic shiny cockroach with darkened windows. It looked harmless, a car like many others. But it wasn’t. I knew that car. I’d seen it many times since I arrived in Siebenhoch. It was Hermann Kagol’s car.
I withdrew behind a porch.
I waited, as the first snowflakes started falling from the pearl-gray sky.
He appeared.
He was wearing a camelhair coat with the collar pulled up and a wide-brimmed hat covering half his face. But it was him, I recognized him immediately. I noticed that, as he came out, he double-locked the door. He had a key to the house and acted as if he were the master of it. Was I surprised? Not at all.
I clutched to my chest the plastic bag I had brought with me. If I had ever had any second thoughts about what I was about to do, seeing Hermann coming out of the house swept them away.
The Mercedes maneuvered. A white puff from the exhaust pipe, then it glided silently away.
I counted to sixty. A minute was more than sufficient. With big strides, I reached Brigitte’s house and rang the bell. Once, twice, three times.
There was no need to ring a fourth time.
Beneath the Mountain Page 23