“You know what I’m paid for, Max? Constructing stories that start at a and end up at z. And in this case, a is the ringing of a telephone thirty years ago. At one end there’s you, and at the other . . . Who told you? Kurt? Evi? Or maybe the beginning of the story is Markus, in seventh heaven, knocking at your door to tell you that Evi’s pregnant but that nobody is to know about it. It doesn’t matter, I don’t think it was then that you decided to kill them. No.”
It was all so clear now.
“When Annelise was born, the two of you took the train and went to Innsbruck. Was it January? Or February? The important thing is that when you saw the baby, when you took her in your arms, it was then that you realized that Evi would never be yours, never. Because you loved her, didn’t you? Only, she’d chosen Kurt and had a daughter with him. That baby was the outward sign of their love. You couldn’t lie to yourself anymore, couldn’t hope anymore that they would part. That was the moment you decided to kill them.”
From a to b.
From b to c.
And then . . .
“But not immediately. Not then. They would have found you out, arrested you in a flash. You didn’t want to end up in prison. You continued to pretend. You wanted to kill them here. And for a very particular reason, isn’t that so?”
Max was shaking his head.
Thunder rumbled through the Bletterbach.
“Triangles,” I said. “Triangles with the point turned upward. The symbol that saved my life in the caves. Three triangles with the point turned upward. A crown, that’s what that symbol was. Krone, in German. Krün in dialect. It was your grandfather who carved those crowns on the walls of the mine, wasn’t it? He was responsible for safety. The mine and the caves, a single labyrinth nobody dares enter. You’re the last person in Siebenhoch to know them like the back of your hand. Did your grandmother take you there? Because madness doesn’t grow by itself. It settles. Layer by layer. It takes time. Years. It was her, wasn’t it? How much resentment did she transmit to you? How much hate did it take, Max?”
Max didn’t react.
His stupefied expression was perfect.
Worthy of an Oscar.
Or maybe he was genuinely surprised.
After thirty years, someone had discovered the truth.
“Madness settles in layers, and then hate eats into it until a hunger for blood emerges. It’s a slow, cold process. You waited. They were your friends, you knew them. You knew that sooner or later Kurt and Evi would go back to the place where their love was born. The place where you would be able to create a perfect alibi: the distance from Siebenhoch. Nobody would ever think of arresting you. Of course, it might take a long time, but what did that matter? The Bletterbach has been here for millions of years and you’re a patient man. But in fact, it took only four months. Then the self-regenerating storm gave you an even better cover than you could have hoped for, didn’t it? But then . . .” At this point, I exploded. “What did you feel when Grünwald sprang up out of nowhere? When he screwed up your plan?”
I took a step closer.
It was time to bring this to an end, and to attack.
“How long did it take you to get here, Max?” I pressed him. “How long does it take, cutting through the caves?”
Werner’s voice filtered through my anger. A trembling voice. “It isn’t possible. It means that . . .”
He had got there.
The horror.
“It means,” I finished for him, “that in this story there are three innocents. Kurt, Evi, and Markus. And there’s a hero. Oscar Grünwald. Oscar Grünwald who saved the child, ruining Max’s plan. Oscar Grünwald whom you all killed.”
Just like on the Ortles, I thought. The innocents and the heroes die, the guilty are saved.
“No,” Werner moaned.
That was his last word. His eyes opened wide and he raised his hands to his belly.
There was no expression on Max’s face as he turned the knife in the wound he had made.
Annelise screamed, clutching Clara tight to her and turning her head away.
“It takes an hour and a half, Salinger,” Max replied, in a toneless voice. “Here and back. An hour and a half. But you have to swim. Omi had made me do it ever since I was your daughter’s age. Swimming in the caves in the dark was necessary to revive the blood of the Krüns. That’s what Grandma said. When the mine collapsed in ’23, the water flooded everything. The miners drowned. My grandfather got his calculations wrong. He got them wrong because he was tired, because he was paid as little as all the other beggars in Siebenhoch even though he wasn’t just an ordinary miner, he was responsible for safety. He died along with the others, although he was better than any of them.”
He spat on the ground and looked at me.
“Think about it, Salinger,” he said. “An hour and a half. And barely thirty minutes to find them under this spur. Thirty minutes. It was destiny. Those three had to die. And the child had to die, too.”
He took out the knife and Werner fell to his knees. In a single fluid movement, Max aimed the blade at Werner’s throat. “Let go of the branch.”
I dropped it.
“Take three steps back.”
I obeyed.
Max assumed his good uncle face. “When did you start sticking your nose in this business?”
“A few months ago.”
“A few months!” Max roared. “Even that drunkard Günther suspected something. Who do you think made sure he found the report?” Beside himself with anger, he yanked Werner’s head. “And you? Thirty years spent thinking you were a hero. Thirty years and you didn’t understand a thing.”
Werner bowed his head in defeat.
Max displayed the blade of the knife. “It’ll be harder with you people, but much more enjoyable. An axe is too . . . crude.”
“Wouldn’t a gun have been enough?” I said. “Didn’t you have a rifle?”
“They wouldn’t have suffered enough. All the humiliations I’d endured. They had to pay. To taste a little of my shit. The shit Siebenhoch used to flavor everything I’d eaten since I was born. The heir to the man who’d caused the mine to collapse. As if a child could be guilty of anything. Oh, how they enjoyed taking their revenge on us. Making fun of us, laughing at our poverty. Just like Evi laughed when I told her I loved her. She thought it was a joke. A joke, can you imagine? She preferred Kurt. That son of a bitch. The rescuer. The hero. But in the end they both had to eat their words.”
Annelise let out a sob, which drew Chief Krün’s attention to her.
I didn’t want Max to look at her. Not until I was the one holding the knife. So I tried to gain time by bringing him back to his narrative.
“But then Grünwald showed up,” I said, as if interviewing one of the protagonists of my stories.
“Markus tried to run away. A coward to the end. He slipped and hit his head. I reached him to finish him off, but he was already dead. He just made me waste time. I cut off Evi’s head, took it in my hands, and put it down in front of Kurt’s eyes. He was dying, but he was still lucid and I wanted him to see it. Then I threw it away. When Grünwald suddenly appeared, screaming like a madman, I panicked and ran.” He let out a cry of annoyance. “I thought it was Omi. I thought she’d come back to take me to the caves. Now that I’d avenged my grandfather, Ihad to stay down there forever, with him.”
In his eyes there was an abyss.
“When I calmed down, I saw that Grünwald had found the child. And the axe. And an idea came into my head. A wonderful idea, Salinger. Those three bastards had got their just deserts. But what about the others? The ones who made fun of me because I went to school with broken shoes? The ones who laughed at Omi, at Frau Krün, because she’d lost everything when the mine collapsed? Her money, her husband and even her honor. A woman who’d been married to the Saltner of the mine! All those country bumpkins who thought they were better than us Krüns, even though we’d protected the miners of Siebenhoch for two centuries! I reali
zed it was a way to turn their pathetic forefathers’ justice against them.”
Max was panting like an animal.
He was an animal.
“I turned back. I went to Verena’s party. Hannes arrived, then Günther, and together we went to pick up Werner. We came here and I pretended I didn’t know anything. I had everything under control. Almost everything,” he corrected himself. Then his eyes darted toward Clara. “How many letters are there in the word ‘end,’ sweetie?”
Hidden by Annelise’s body, Clara replied in a trembling voice, “Three.”
“Three,” Max echoed.
The blade disappeared into Werner’s throat. Werner slumped to the ground, spurting a gout of dark blood. His eyes rolled backward. His body jerked. Once, twice, three times.
The end.
Max didn’t even deign to look at him. He wiped the knife on his jacket. I stared, hypnotized, at the brown stripes on the rain-soaked fabric.
It was our turn.
It was at this point that I heard it.
* * *
I let go of the branch and threw myself toward Annelise and Clara just as the mud overwhelmed us. The Bletterbach was transfigured into an apocalypse of water, sludge, and debris. I grabbed my daughter by the elbow and lifted her into the air just in time before a piece of wood as thick as my thigh lashed the air where her head had been. She let out a cry that was also a sob. We fell. I flailed about. I managed to catch hold of a fir tree. The rock under which Kurt had pitched the tent became a cascade of mud. Werner’s lifeless body was swept away.
“Annelise!” I yelled.
She didn’t respond. Some debris must have struck her. I couldn’t see any blood, but her eyes were clouded over.
She was clinging to a root, looking into emptiness.
What about Max?
Where was he?
For a moment, I hoped he had been swallowed by the abyss, but I was wrong. Somehow, he had managed to grab hold of the chestnut tree and hoist himself to his feet. The knife still clutched in his hand, his face twisted in an expression of rage, he pulled away from the tree and began advancing, as the water swirled between his legs. He was inexorable.
“Mamma!”
Clara’s voice succeeded in waking Annelise. She turned to me, her eyes trying to get back into focus.
Max was towering over her, panting. He was holding her by the hair, her head tilted back, her neck exposed.
“The whore’s daughter,” Max said. “Let’s be done with it, Salinger.”
I threw myself toward him. My screams were the screams of the Beast.
The blade of the knife rose to the sky, ready to cut, when a flash of lightning filled the air with electricity. The crash of thunder made the walls of the Bletterbach tremble.
A fraction of a second. A moment’s hesitation.
It was enough.
I struck Max with my fist, knocking him backward. He spat, coughed, waved his arms. I struck him again. The pain in my knuckles paid me back for all the suffering endured until that moment. I grabbed him by the throat and lifted him. I struck him a third time. And a fourth.
By the fifth, I’d lost feeling in my hand.
I didn’t stop.
I wanted only one thing: to kill him.
All at once, I felt a burst of heat and the sudden pain blinded me. It was the knife, going right through my knee. Max lacerating the flesh, pushing and pulling. My flesh. My cartilage.
My leg gave way. I slipped and fell. The water dragged me away, while the pain grew and grew. I knocked into Annelise and we embraced. I felt the warmth of her body. I even felt her breath on my neck. But I also felt the tiredness. Resignation followed. It was nice to die like this. I’d been given the possibility of this last contact with the woman I loved. I closed my eyes. I felt a sensation of total peace. No more pain, no more fear.
No more Bletterbach. There was only death, and it was waiting for me.
Fade to black, as Mike would have said.
It was Clara who saved me.
“Papà!”
Her broken voice tore me from my lethargy. I couldn’t die. Not yet. Clara needed me.
I raised my head from the mud. I opened my eyes. The pain returned, the fear, the anguish.
The determination.
Still clinging to Annelise, I tried to move through the debris toward our daughter. I bumped into a rock. I grabbed hold of it. Annelise pressed herself against me.
“Salinger!” Max roared. “Salinger!”
He was on his feet, standing in the middle of the current.
A demon.
He opened wide his arms, yelling my name. Maybe he would have liked to add a curse or a threat, but he didn’t have time.
Something scythed through his leg at the height of his thigh, describing a half moon of blood in the air.
Max stopped yelling.
His back went rigid. His head fell back, his mouth gaping.
I saw his body rise thirty centimeters above the surface of the water, the horrible stump of his leg bleeding and kicking, the arms flailing.
Then . . .
Something emerged from his thoracic cage. Something that looked to me like a gigantic claw. Something that smashed the bones and went right through him. The monster of the Bletterbach.
The Jaekelopterus was there. And it was hungry.
It had had Max. It wanted me. And Annelise.
It wanted Clara.
There was only one thing to do.
I grabbed Clara. I grabbed Annelise.
I breathed in. I breathed out.
I closed my eyes and let the current carry us away.
One Letter at the End of the Rainbow
I remember the pain. The waves of mud and the cold in my bones. The world sliding into a bottomless abyss. Even now, Clara’s screams echo in my head, as does her sudden silence, which was even more frightening. The descent ended, although I don’t know how or when. We waited in silence in a niche in the rock for the monster to discover us and tear us to pieces.
It didn’t happen.
I cradled Clara. I cradled Annelise.
The rain began to ease off. The drops grew thin, a damp dust through which the first rays of the sun were refracted, creating rainbows. No more rocks from the sky.
The mud gradually stopped its descent.
Then, a thousand years later, the chirping of insects. The call of some animal or other. A partridge appeared amid the bushes, stared at us and disappeared in a flurry of wings.
The clouds grew thinner. The sun gained strength. It looked huge and very beautiful.
The gorge of the Bletterbach was no longer roaring. It had had its fill of death.
Then I started crying. Not from the pain. Not because of Annelise’s empty eyes. Not even because of Clara, who was moaning in her sleep.
I cried because I had seen it.
The Jaekelopterus Rhenaniae.
The monster with claws and eyes like black wells. The creature God had decided to sweep away, but which the Bletterbach had nursed in its entrails like a loving mother. I had seen it. I had seen what it was capable of . . .
But the post mortem report says otherwise. No claws, no monster. No Jaekelopterus Rhenaniae. Only a big branch from a fir tree that the fury of the current had turned into a harpoon. In other words, or so it seems, it was the Bletterbach that had closed the circle.
But in those terrible moments, as the Bletterbach abated, I cursed, I wept. I went crazy. And when the madness gained the upper hand, I saw the ghosts arrive. They got out of a bright red helicopter. Moses with his severe features, Ismaele with his Lampwick expression, Manny with his quiet confidence, and Christoph with his usual air of someone who can never quite take anything seriously.
Werner was with them, too.
As they gently peeled Clara from my arms and placed a blanket over Annelise’s shoulders and checked her pupils, I tried to tell them that I hadn’t wanted them to die, that if I could turn the clock back I wouldn’t
go down into the crevasse and so the avalanche wouldn’t kill them.
Their reply didn’t need words.
They were there.
It’s Rule Zero.
* * *
I almost died three times while I was on the operating table. The knife had severed some nerve or other and a nasty infection had done the rest. My right leg will never be the same as it was.
When Mike saw me after the Bletterbach, he burst into tears and couldn’t stop sobbing the whole time. But Mike makes things out to be more tragic than they are. Deep down, he’s always been a big softy. I’ve become pretty nimble with the stick, you know.
You should see me: a dancer.
In the Belly of the Beast won a prize of which Mike is very proud. He says it’ll open a lot of doors for us, but he also knows there’ll never be another McMellan-Salinger production. I think, though, that constantly saying it does him good, so I don’t contradict him. As Bob Dylan used to sing, “the times they are a-changin,’” and they don’t always change for the better.
At first, the real problem was my head. And it was a big problem. Enough to make Dr. Girardi, the psychiatrist to whose care I was entrusted, fear that I would never recover my equilibrium. I put all I had into it and now I’m better. Hermann helps me to keep busy. He’s planning to open a center for recovering alcoholics. And he wants me to give him a hand. Impossible to say no to someone like him. To quote Bogart: I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Annelise, too, has had to fight.
Her arm was in pretty bad shape. Even now, when there’s a risk of rain, she takes painkillers. Three times a week, she sees a physiotherapist. She has her battles to face, like me. Nightmares, bad memories, anxiety. Often her eyes cloud over and then I know she’s thinking about Werner, whose body is still somewhere in the labyrinth of caves below the gorge. But every day she smiles a bit more.
Like me.
Our medicine has five letters: “Clara.” It’s because of her that on bad days we find the strength to get out of bed. It’s because of her that our laughter is gradually becoming genuine again. It’s because of her that we make love at night, as clumsy as a couple of teenagers.
Beneath the Mountain Page 36