“What’s a CT scan, Mamma?”
Clara had already finished eating. I was surprised by her appetite, it was a good sign. I helped her to clean her mouth with a white napkin, something I’d stopped doing the year before and really missed.
“It’s like radar. You remember what that is?”
I had explained it to her during our flight to Europe. I had no doubt she still remembered. She had a prodigious memory.
“Yes, it’s a kind of radio that helps planes not to crash.”
“Well, a CT scan is a kind of radar that helps to see inside people.”
“How’s it done?”
“Well . . .” I turned to the doctor.
“It’s like a huge washing machine,” he said. “You’ll lie on your bed and we’ll tell you to keep still. Are you able to keep still?”
“For how long?”
“A quarter of an hour. Maybe half an hour. No more than that.”
Clara was silent, thinking about this. “I think I can do it.” Then, to me, she said in a low voice, “Will it hurt, Papà?”
“It won’t hurt at all. It’ll just be a bit boring.”
Clara seemed relieved. “I’ll make up a few stories.”
I kissed her and just then my cell phone rang. I gave Annelise a mortified look and made as if to cut off the call. My thumb lingered over the red button.
It was Mike.
“Excuse me.”
I went out and answered.
“Partner?”
“Wait,” I said.
I went into a toilet that I hoped was deserted.
“You’ll have to hurry.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m in the hospital. It’s Clara. She had an accident. She’s better now.”
“What kind of accident? Salinger, don’t kid around.”
“She crashed into a tree with the sled. But she’s out of danger now. She’s fine.”
“What the hell does ‘out of danger’ mean, Salinger? What . . .”
I closed my eyes and leaned against an immaculate wash basin. “Listen, Mike, I don’t have any time to waste. Tell me what you found out. A whole lot of things have happened here in Siebenhoch.”
“I made more inquiries about Grünwald, but apart from more details about his theories, there’s nothing. Nothing about his death, I mean.”
“His disappearance,” I corrected.
“Do you really think he just disappeared, partner?”
“I don’t think anything.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“No, I’m not all right, but please go on.”
A brief pause. Mike lighting a cigarette. I would have done so, too, but it wouldn’t be wise to set off a hospital fire alarm just for a Marlboro.
“You remember that Evi? She came up again.”
“In connection with Hermann Kagol?”
“Precisely.”
“The report opposing the building of the Visitors’ Center.”
“You already knew that?”
“Yes. What else have you found out?”
“Little or nothing. The report was refuted, and five years later the Visitors’ Center opened its doors.”
“Shit.” I banged my fist on the wall.
“What’s happening, Salinger?”
“What have you found out about Hermann Kagol’s annual turnover from the Center?”
“Including the hotels and other properties in the area?”
“Yes.”
“Several million euros.”
I felt the bile rising into my mouth. “Do you think Hermann could have killed Evi?” I whispered.
“What reason would he have had?”
“Because she held up his Visitors’ Center project.”
“You’re way off track, Salinger.”
It was a reply I hadn’t expected. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that if I’d been that Hermann, I’d have kissed the ground that Evi walked on.”
“But . . . the report . . .”
“The report blocked the Bletterbach Visitors’ Center project. Only, the first project wasn’t Hermann Kagol’s.”
Dizziness.
There was too much white in here.
“What the hell are you saying, Mike?”
“The first project for a Visitors’ Center in the Bletterbach didn’t come from Kagol Construction. It was from a consortium in Trento, Group 80. The same consortium that built a whole lot of ski lifts in the area.”
I felt myself sinking.
The floor beneath my feet shook. And buried me.
“Salinger? Are you there?”
“Evi’s report helped Hermann?”
“Precisely. According to my calculations, Hermann would never have been able to afford such an ambitious project in ’85 anyway. Evi gave him a hand, quite a hand. Why would he have killed her?”
No reason in the world.
“Thanks, Mike,” I muttered. “Speak to you soon.”
I hung up without waiting for his reply.
I turned on the tap in the wash basin. I rinsed my face.
I breathed.
Hermann hadn’t killed Evi.
I looked at my image in the mirror.
Now, I thought, now you know what a murderer looks like.
I had Brigitte’s murderer right in front of me. It was me.
“‘Are the dead restored?’” I murmured. “‘The books say no, the night shouts yes.’”
It was a quotation from my favorite book, the one that went with me everywhere. John Fante’s words took on a new meaning in the mouth of the murderer whose contorted face was looking at me in the mirror.
I couldn’t stand it. I bent double, crushed by the awareness of what I had done. I ended up hitting my head on the ceramic wash basin. The pain was a relief.
* * *
It was a male nurse who revived me. Behind his concerned face, Annelise’s bloodless one. As soon as she saw me open my eyes, she walked out of the toilet, slamming the door behind her.
“When you didn’t come back, your wife got worried. You must have had a blackout.”
He helped me to sit up. I was breathing with my mouth open. Like a thirsty dog.
“I can do it, I . . .”
“You had a nasty knock. It’d be better if . . .”
Feeling dizzy, I grabbed hold of him and struggled to my feet.
“I’m fine. I have to go. I have to . . .”
He objected. I didn’t even listen to him.
When I was outside the door of Clara’s room, I didn’t have the courage to go in. I could hear Annelise’s voice and my daughter’s chatter. I stroked the door.
Then I kept on walking.
I couldn’t face them.
* * *
Back home, I headed for the kitchen. I dug up a bottle of Jack Daniels and started drinking it. The first sip was like acid going down through my esophagus. I coughed and spat. I held out. Stoically, I stopped the retching. Another sip. More acid. All I could think of was Brigitte’s head split in two by the rifle shot. The blood spreading over the floor. I took a deep breath, trying to ease the nausea. I didn’t want to throw up, that wasn’t my aim. I wanted to get drunk. I wanted that total dreamless blackness that I’d experienced after banging my head in the hospital toilet. Before Annelise . . . The thought of Annelise was unbearable to me.
I drank some more.
This time, the Jack Daniels went down without burning. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I headed for the living room and sank into my favorite armchair.
I took out a cigarette.
I had lost feeling in my hands. It took me a while to get the lighter to work, and when I succeeded I found myself staring at the flame like an idiot, wondering what it was for and why it seemed so important to move it closer to that white tube sticking out of my mouth. I flung the lighter across the room and spat out the cigarette.
I kept on drinking. My head grew as he
avy as lead.
I tried to lift the bottle of Jack Daniels.
I couldn’t do it. It slipped through my fingers.
And then there was darkness.
When I came to, I was lying on the bed. I looked around, lost. I was plunged in darkness. How had I gotten here? Judging by my confusion, I must have dragged myself here all on my own. My last memory was the noise of the whisky bottle smashing on the floor.
I stared in front of me.
I tried to move.
“What did you imagine you were doing?”
I trembled.
I didn’t recognize the voice that had emerged from the darkness.
“Who are you?” I said. “Who are you?”
The voice turned into a shadowy figure. It looked gigantic. It moved jerkily. The dead, I thought, the dead move like that.
The shadowy figure switched the light on.
Werner.
Using all my strength of will, I got up off the bed.
“I’ve had a bad day.”
Werner didn’t comment. “You need to fill your stomach. Can you get downstairs on your own?”
“I can try.”
Getting down the stairs was laborious. Every movement reverberated in my cranium like a hammer blow. I accepted the pain. I deserved it. I was a murderer.
Twice a murderer.
First the men on the Ortles, and now . . .
Werner cooked some eggs, which I forced myself to swallow. I ate bread, and a slice of speck. And drank a lot of water.
Werner said nothing until I had finished. Only then did I notice his posture. He was rigid on his chair, his face contracted.
He struck me as being in pain, but above all embarrassed.
“I’m not keeping an eye on you,” he said. “I dropped by to ask for something. It’s my back. All my life I’ve boasted I never took anything stronger than an aspirin, but now . . .”
“Does it hurt?”
“I’m not a boy anymore,” he said regretfully.
“Why don’t you see someone about it?”
“Forget it, Jeremiah, I’ve never liked doctors. Don’t you have anything for the pain?”
Everything in him, the tone of his voice, the words he chose, clashed with what I read in his eyes. People like Werner hate two things: appearing weak and asking for help. I stood up, went into the bathroom and grabbed the box of painkillers that had been prescribed for me after September 15.
“Vicodin,” I said when I went back into the kitchen.
Werner reached his hand out for the box. “Can I take two?”
“One will be enough.”
He popped the capsule into his mouth.
“Annelise won’t be home this evening,” I said. “She may never come back.”
Werner took my packet of cigarettes. He lit one and I did the same.
“In a marriage, there are bad times and good times. They both pass.”
“What if they don’t?”
Werner didn’t reply.
He sat staring at the smoke rising to the ceiling, where it flattened out and became invisible.
When he’d finished the cigarette, he stubbed it out in the ashtray and stood up, using the table for support.
“I should be getting back to Welshboden.”
“Take the pills with you, they may help.”
“I’ll be fine tomorrow, you’ll see.”
“Take them anyway. I don’t need them.”
Werner put them in his pocket. I helped him on with his jacket.
Outside, it was dark.
“Jeremiah . . .” Werner said. “Can you hear it?”
I pricked up my ears. I tried to figure out what he was referring to.
“I can’t hear anything.”
“The silence. Can you hear it?”
“Yes.”
“Ever since Herta died and I was left alone, I’ve hated the silence.”
Two Conspirators and a Promise
Brigitte’s funeral was held two days later, on February 10.
The postmortem had been little more than a formality and the pathologist’s report predictable. Brigitte had committed suicide. Max came to tell me in person that morning, as I was trying to clean the house in preparation for Clara and Annelise’s return.
“She had three times the normal level of alcohol in her veins. She was blind drunk, Salinger.”
“Right.”
Max noticed the bruise on my forehead, where I had hit it in the hospital. “What’s that?”
“It’s nothing.”
We had a coffee in silence. The weather was gray and gloomy.
“I heard Clara’s coming back today.”
“Did Werner tell you?”
“I ran into him in the pharmacy. He didn’t look good.”
“His back is playing him up.”
“He should see someone about it. Five years ago, I sprained a muscle. It hurt like hell. Then Verena dragged me to see a physiotherapist. Two sessions and I was like new.”
“Did you tell Werner that?”
“It just goes in one ear and out the other. He’s stubborn, but you’ll see, when he realizes he can’t lift Clara anymore he’ll come ’round.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Max played with his empty cup, then stood up. “Well, anyway, I just wanted to let you know.”
“Thank you.”
“Will you be coming to the funeral?”
“Will Hermann be there?”
“He paid for it all.”
“I think I’ll give it a miss.”
Max put on his hat with the Forest Rangers badge. “You’re a good man, Salinger.”
I wasn’t. I was a murderer.
* * *
I listened to the mournful tolling from the bell tower until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I switched on the TV at full volume.
At three in the afternoon, Werner knocked at my door.
I already had my jacket on.
“How’s your back?”
“It’s fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Look.” He bent forward then straightened up again like a soldier at attention.
“All the same, a check-up wouldn’t go amiss.”
“Let’s go,” he said, pointing to the car. “Our baby is waiting for us.”
They were already in the street when we arrived. Along the highway, there had been an accident that had slowed us down. Our bad mood vanished as soon as we saw Clara.
She was wearing a red hood and a beret pulled down over her eyes to protect her and hide the small bandage the doctor had said would have to stay on for a few days. Under her arm, the bear.
She signaled hello to us with her free hand.
Annelise barely smiled.
It was a delight taking Clara home. She was excited, couldn’t stop talking until after dinner, which I had made with care. Her favorite dishes plus at least half those that Annelise liked. I’d given full rein to the entirety of my culinary talents.
“The lady doctor said I was really brave.”
“Really?”
“She said she’d never seen a child so brave.”
She puffed out her chest proudly.
The female doctor who had given her the CT scan must have impressed her quite a bit. She kept quoting her.
“She showed me my brain. It was all full of colors. The doctor said you could see my thoughts. But all I could see were colored bits. Do you think the doctor can read thoughts, Papà?”
“A CT scan isn’t for reading thoughts. It shows the electricity in the brain. You can see the emotions.”
“Electricity? Like a light bulb?”
“Yes.”
“And with that the doctor can understand my emotions?”
“Of course.”
“You know what the doctor’s name is?”
I knew it, but pretended I didn’t. “I have no idea, sweetheart.”
“Elisabetta,” she said. “How many letters are there in Elisa
betta?”
“Ten.”
“It’s a beautiful name.”
“I think so, too.”
“Do you think I could become a brain doctor when I grow up?”
“Of course, sweetheart.”
We carried on like this until we noticed that Clara’s reflexes had become slower. She was starting to mumble her words and sway her head. She was pale.
Werner got up from the table. “I think it’s time for Ops to go to bed.”
“Ops,” Clara said, opening wide her eyes (which, I noticed, were red and weary-looking), “stay a while longer.”
Werner kissed her on the forehead. “Aren’t you tired?”
“I’m not tired.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, just a little.”
Werner left and I carried Clara to bed. I barely had time to switch out the light before she dozed off. I left the door ajar and went down into the kitchen.
I found Annelise sitting stiffly. She had a can of Forst in her hands.
I didn’t like her expression and I didn’t like the way she gulped the beer down in one go.
“We have to talk,” she said.
I knew what about, and I knew how it would end up.
Not a happy ending.
So I took her hands and opened my heart to her. “I know what you’re going to say. But don’t. Give me a month. If in a month you still want to tell me what you have in your mind, then I’ll listen to you. A month. No more. Do it for me.”
Annelise put a strand of hair between her lips. “A month.”
“No more than that. Then, if you want . . .” I didn’t have the courage to go on.
“For Clara,” she said. “For Clara.” She stood up. “But I’ll sleep in the study. I . . .”—her voice broke—“. . . I can’t stand it.”
* * *
The two conspirators did their job with great skill. Neither Annelise nor I noticed anything up until the last moment.
Around six-thirty, Werner appeared laden with provisions, said hello and, without a word of explanation, shut himself in the kitchen with Clara. Annelise went back to watching television, I withdrew into what had become my den, the little study where I spent hours looking at the ceiling or trying to read something.
Impossible. My mind would wander. I felt like a tightrope walker. Beneath me gaped the abyss of solitude. Werner was right: silence didn’t suit me. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life sprawling on a pullout couch (just as I was doing now) listening to the noises of a house devoid of life.
Beneath the Mountain Page 26