He pointed to the two pieces of handle tied together.
“I smashed it against a rock. I hit it and hit it until I made my fingers bleed. When I’d finished, Günther was still punching Grünwald. He’d reduced his face to a shapeless mass of bruises. He’s killing him, I thought. But you know something, Jeremiah?”
He let the question hang in the air.
“I also wanted that beast to die.”
Beast, he said.
“But,” Werner continued after an eternity, “I didn’t want Günther to become a murderer. Günther was an instinctive person, very pure-hearted. If I’d let him kill Grünwald, he would have been riddled with remorse. I cried out. He stopped, his hands dripping blood, Grünwald under him, moaning softly. Bubbles of blood were coming out of his lips. I didn’t feel any pity. I ordered Günther to stop. And, maybe just out of habit, he obeyed me.”
A sigh.
“Max in the meantime had cleaned the baby’s face. She was no longer crying, but she was shivering from the cold; we warmed her as best we could. Hannes meanwhile had knelt by the body of his son, sobbing as if he really couldn’t stop.”
Werner took a deep breath. It was almost interminable.
“I knew that if I stayed there in the middle of that slaughter, I’d go mad. Just like Hannes. We had to come to a decision. I made a suggestion.”
“What suggestion?” I whispered.
“There are three kinds of justice, Jeremiah. There’s God’s justice. But God was looking away that day. No angel came to speak to us, to show us the way to follow. There was only a baby dying of cold, Hannes weeping, that madman’s wild eyes, and all that blood.
“Then there’s the justice of men. We could have tied Grünwald up and taken him down to the valley. Handed him over to the police. But I’d had dealings with the justice of men, and I hadn’t liked it. You remember the birth of Dolomite Mountain Rescue?”
“The expedition where your friends died?”
“I was put on trial. They said it was my fault. Since I was the only survivor, they decided it was my negligence that had killed them. How could that judge know? How could he know how it feels when you have to cut the rope tying you to a colleague with a broken back? What did his laws know about what happens in the mountains? Nothing. All that mattered to him was that I was alive and the others weren’t. So I had to be punished.”
“Beware of the living,” I said.
“I was acquitted on a technicality. The same law that had charged me released me over a comma inserted by God knows who, God knows why.” Werner shook his head forcefully. “Forget about the justice of men.”
“What’s the third kind of justice?”
“The justice of our forefathers.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, waiting for my reaction. There wasn’t one. I sat motionless until he continued his story.
“Our forefathers knew the mountains. Our forefathers worshipped the rocks and cursed the ice. In their day, there wasn’t the justice we think we celebrate today. They were born slaves and died slaves. They suffered hunger and thirst. They saw their children die like animals. They buried them in the hard ground and gave birth to others, hoping that at least these would be saved.”
He looked up, toward the ceiling and beyond.
Beyond the sky.
Beyond space.
“Our forefathers knew how to wipe away the blood of the living.”
I realized I was holding my breath. Werner’s words were hitting me in the chest like so many nails. Big, thick coffin nails. I breathed out.
In the meantime, Werner had stood up and unfolded the map on the table.
“This is where we found him, tied him up, and hoisted him on our backs. There was no need to say anything. We all knew the justice of our forefathers. We took turns, Günther, Max, and I. Not Hannes, Hannes could only cry and call to his son. He begged his forgiveness for not having understood him, for never having told him how proud he was of him. But the dead are deaf to our entreaties, so we tried to console him. In vain. He wouldn’t even listen to us, maybe . . .”—he sighed—“. . . maybe because we, too, as we dragged that bastard to the caves, we, too, were dead.”
I turned to stone. “The caves.”
Werner tapped on the map to show me the exact spot. “Since forever, our forefathers had thrown murderers, rapists, and troublemakers in there. Anyone who had shed blood, anyone who had tried to destroy Siebenhoch ended up there. No matter if they were rich or poor, nobles or peasants. The caves are big and dark. They welcome everybody.”
Did I see a sneer on his face?
I prayed it wasn’t true.
“Witches,” I murmured, remembering what Verena had told me. “Witches also ended up down there.”
“Yes.”
“The witches were innocent.”
“Those were different times. We knew Grünwald was guilty. And we threw him down there.”
“Weren’t . . . weren’t you afraid he might escape?”
Werner made a contemptuous sound. “Nobody’s ever got out of the Bletterbach caves. It’s hell down there. You remember the mine? Every now and again, the miners would knock down the wrong wall and drown. There are lakes under the Bletterbach. Some say also pits of sulphur. There’s a whole world.”
“And you threw him there.”
“It was where he belonged. It was Max and I who went down, with Günther shouting down to us from the surface every now and again. When his voice was little more than a sigh, we found a shaft. I’ve never seen such impenetrable darkness. It was like a huge evil eye.”
“Was Grünwald still alive?”
“He was breathing. Wheezing. He was alive, yes. Günther wasn’t a murderer. Before throwing Grünwald down the shaft, I took his license, the only document he had on him.”
“Why?”
“For two reasons. Because if the underground streams brought up his body, we didn’t want his identity to be discovered. He didn’t deserve a name on a gravestone. And then because I wanted something to remind me of the anger I felt at that moment. I knew that sooner or late it would fade. And I wanted it to stay alive. Whenever I feel it wearing off, I go up into the attic, open this box, and look that son of a bitch in the eyes. The anger comes back and with it also the feeling I had when we threw Grünwald down the shaft. The feeling that I’d administered justice.”
“The justice of your forefathers.”
“By the time we got back out in the open air, Hannes had an absent look in his eyes, while Günther was shaking like a leaf.” Werner crossed his arms and looked up at the ceiling. “Years later—it was just before that road accident—I met him by chance, blind drunk.”
“Here in Siebenhoch?”
Werner shook his head. “No. In Cles, where I was living. He wanted to get something off his chest. He kept cursing and hitting himself with a bunch of keys. He was bleeding. It was like he was crazy. Günther had been the last to leave the mouth of the cave, and he said that when we were down there, already some distance away, he’d heard voices, women’s voices. They were asking for help. It was a chorus, that’s what he said, a chorus.”
“Christ.”
“We were mad that night.”
“What happened to the child?”
Despite the birth certificate, I still couldn’t bring myself to call her by her name.
“We found a shelter, however wretched. We lit a fire. We took turns cradling her. She was hungry. All we had for her was water and sugar. She needed a doctor, but the storm still hadn’t abated.” Werner started pounding on the table. “It was a bombardment of rain, lightning, thunder. It lasted ages. Ages I spent thinking.”
“About what?”
“The child. She’d been born in Austria, after Kurt and Evi moved there, but nobody in Siebenhoch knew.”
“They weren’t married.”
“Precisely. Kurt was afraid of his father’s reaction. Markus knew about the child, but Markus had died trying to escape the mad
man we had just thrown into the caves. Who could that child be entrusted to? There were only two possibilities. Kurt’s family and Evi’s mother.”
“An alcoholic.”
“Precisely.”
“Weren’t there any other relatives?”
“There was Evi’s father, but what had become of him? And anyway, would you have entrusted that child to a man who had deserted his wife after turning her into a drunken whore? Plus, he was violent.”
I shook my head. “So you decided to keep her?”
“Nix. I decided I would help Hannes to get custody of her. I thought Günther might even be able to get his brother Hermann involved.”
“Why Hermann?”
“Hermann knew how to deal with the bureaucracy, and at the time was starting to make a few friends in politics. All things that could be useful to us. A risk, but . . . that’s what I decided that night. Then we went back. It was dark and cold. Siebenhoch was cut off from the rest of the world. We entrusted Hannes to Helene: they were both devastated about Kurt’s death. But I couldn’t imagine what Hannes would do in the next few hours . . .” A sigh. “For a few days, I would take care of the child. Max and Günther were bachelors, I was the only one who had a wife, don’t you see?”
“You took her home.”
“Herta . . . you should have seen her face. She was scared, terrified, furious with me because I’d risked my life, but the sight of the child turned her into another person. She took her in her arms, changed her, cleaned her, gave her food, and, while Annelise was sleeping, had me tell her the whole story.”
“Even about the caves?”
“She said we’d made the right decision.”
From somewhere, I heard the call of a crow.
The flames in the fireplace had turned to embers.
“That night, Hannes killed Helene. They found him with the rifle still in his hand, catatonic. It was Max who told me. He rushed to my house like a fury, almost knocking down the door. Soon the streets would be cleared, Hannes arrested, and the child would be handed over to social services.”
“That was when you decided to keep her?”
“We decided it together, Max, Günther, Herta, and I.”
“What gave you the right?”
“The child didn’t deserve to grow up in an orphanage. Nobody deserves that.” Werner wriggled in his chair. He seemed angry. “We would bring her up, surrounding her with the love Evi and Kurt could no longer give her. The love someone”—he almost yelled—“had decided they could no longer give her. By tearing them to pieces! To pieces!”
He grabbed the handle of the axe and flung it to the floor.
“It was still abduction. Of a minor.”
“Think what you want, Jeremiah. But try to see it as we saw it then.”
“How did you do it?”
“We had to wipe out the traces. We went back to the Bletterbach. We combed through the clearing in search of anything that could have alerted the police to the existence of Annelise. The doll, a baby bottle. We took everything away. We also took away the pieces of the axe. We were afraid the police would find fingerprints and screw up everything.”
I thought of what Max had shown me about the forensics investigations.
“A wasted effort.”
“We know that now, but then? We got back to the village just in time for the Civil Defense bulldozers to make their triumphal entry.”
“Annelise . . .”
“I stayed at home, waiting for the end of the preliminary investigations. I only went out to go shopping in Trento, and I was scared I’d be seen with a bag full of baby food and nappies. I saw policemen ready to arrest me everywhere. I was even afraid of the dark. As soon as the investigation was declared closed, Herta, Annelise, and I left. In the middle of the night, I put them in the car and we got out of there.”
“You went to Cles?”
“That’s what people think. No. That wouldn’t have been wise. Hermann helped us. Yes, Hermann knows, too. He had a property in Merano, a little apartment. Far enough away for nobody to recognize us. We hid there for nearly a year. It was Hermann and Max who produced the false papers. They never told me how they’d done it, and I never asked. But they did it, and it worked. It was only then that we moved to Cles.”
Werner lit himself a cigarette. He was pale, his forehead furrowed with deep lines.
The story was coming to an end.
“In the meantime, Max and Günther had spread a few rumors. Herta was pregnant: a difficult pregnancy that had required treatment and caused me to abandon the rescue team because I was scared of leaving my daughter without a father. Time passed and people stopped thinking about us. When we came to the village for a short holiday, everyone called Annelise by her name, as if they’d known her all their lives.” Werner shrugged. “That’s how rumors work. But there’s something else you ought to know.”
“Günther’s death.”
Werner crossed his arms over his chest, eyes shiny. “Günther, yes. The last time I saw him, in 1989, he was completely out of control. He’d found Evi’s report and had got it into his head that his own brother had been in cahoots with Grünwald. He wanted to kill him, he told me in so many words. I tried to dissuade him. To make him see how crazy that was. But a few days later . . .”
“The car accident.”
“His mind couldn’t hold out. And he killed himself. Günther was the last victim of the Bletterbach.”
He had finished. He filled a glass with grappa and held it out to me.
This time I took it.
“And now?” I asked.
“Now it’s up to you, Jeremiah. You have to decide. What kind of justice do you believe in?”
I didn’t know, so I replied with a question. “Why have you never told Annelise?”
“I thought of doing so at first. I told myself I’d wait until she was eighteen, when she was mature enough to understand. That’s why I was keeping the heart-shaped box. I knew that without proof, my words would only confuse her. Maybe she’d think her old man had gone mad. Then I realized that eighteen meant nothing. She was still a child, even though she was taking driving lessons and dreaming of America. I talked to Herta and together we decided that only a mother could accept what she and I did in ’85.”
“And by the time Clara was born . . .”
“Annelise was on the other side of the ocean and Herta was dying. Was there any point in telling her then?”
“No.”
“And now, Jeremiah? What would be the point in telling her this whole story now?”
There were at least a thousand answers to the question Werner had loaded on me like a million-ton burden.
“As far as the law of men is concerned, Annelise ought to know that her father died in that gorge and that the man who took his place . . .”—I said this with bowed head—“. . . is a murderer and a kidnapper. As for the law of God . . .”—I raised my head again—“. . . I’m not very knowledgeable on the subject. But I think that as far as the law of God goes, none of this matters in the least, and if it does, bringing up Annelise in a loving family, rather than abandoning her to an institution or worse, was the right thing to do.”
Werner nodded.
I forced myself to smile. “So one vote for and one vote against.”
“And the justice of our forefathers?”
Sadly, I opened my arms wide. “Look at me, Werner. I’m the son of immigrants, I don’t even know who my forefathers are, and frankly it’s never bothered me. I only have one father. A poor man who slaved away all his life making hamburgers at fifty cents a go to get me through school and pay for braces.” My voice broke for a moment, then I continued, “But I can speak for myself. I don’t know if what you’ve said is bullshit, or if you’ve told me the truth. I do know, though, that you spoke from the heart and I know you believe this story, mad as it is. Although madmen can also be very convincing.”
Werner stared at me for a few moments. He took a drag on his ciga
rette, coughed, and threw it in the fire. “Whatever you decide to do, do it quickly,” he said, leaning toward me, his eagle eyes going right through me. “Because I’m dying.”
“What—”
“The backache. It isn’t backache. It’s cancer. And it’s inoperable.”
I was speechless.
“Annelise . . .” I managed to say.
“She won’t hear it from you.”
“But . . .”
“What do you intend to do, Jeremiah?”
* * *
When I left Welshboden, the March air still smelled of snow, but further down you sensed the stench of decomposition. I was aware of a kind of weariness in nature around me, a weariness that I shared.
I sat down behind the wheel. My arms felt as heavy as if I’d been carrying logs all afternoon. My head was echoing with the screams of the Bletterbach.
During Werner’s account, I had clenched my jaws so tightly that now they hurt. I had the feeling I had been biting into a poisoned fruit. Somewhere, a snake was laughing at me.
Now you know, I said to myself.
No, now you don’t know a fucking thing.
I clutched the wheel, exhausted.
I was torn. On the one hand, I felt it would be only right to talk to Annelise. To tell her everything Werner had just told me. On the other hand, I told myself I didn’t have the right. It was up to Werner. I hated him for confronting me with that choice. It was an unbearable burden that belonged to him, not to me. I struck the wheel with what little energy I still had left in my body. It wasn’t right. But what was right in this business?
Evi’s death? Kurt and Markus’s death?
And what about Grünwald?
Hadn’t he been entitled to a fair trial? The justice of men, as Werner said contemptuously, is fallible and inclined to punish the weak, but it’s what distinguishes us from the beasts of the jungle.
Did I really think that?
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