Splinter

by Sebastian Fitzek

  Benny stared at the rhythmically heaving chest of the naked man, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. Looking into those bulging eyes, he smelt the fear in which the dank little room was steeped. He could feel it on his skin and taste it under his tongue, and he knew that, in the next few seconds, he himself would be in excruciating pain – as if his own eyeball were being scooped from its socket and the optic nerve severed with a pair of rusty secateurs.

  7

  The Bleibtreu Clinic was situated in Französische Strasse, not far from the Gendarmenmarkt. An old building facelifted with glass and steel, it immediately conveyed that the only national-health patients privileged to enter its portals were the cleaning women who worked there.

  After the luxury of his preliminary car ride, which deposited him right outside the private elevators on Level 2 of the underground car park, Marc had been prepared for anything: for a koi carp pool in the reception area, Irish linen hand towels in the designer toilets and a waiting room fit to compete with a Singapore Airlines’ first-class lounge. But his expectations were surpassed when he found that the luxurious eleventh-floor men’s room afforded a panoramic view of Friedrichstrasse. Those who got up this far might be suffering from some mental disorder, but they could still piss on the rank and file. His father would definitely have approved of this tasteful squandering of patients’ fees. ‘Money only feels at home in an expensive wallet’ had always been a maxim of his.

  Marc, on the other hand, felt like a vegetarian in an abattoir when he was prevailed on to sign a pledge of confidentiality and fill in a patient’s questionnaire in the clinic’s modernistic waiting room. Half an hour earlier he’d had to surrender his mobile phone, all metallic objects and even his wallet to the security guard in reception.

  ‘Purely precautionary,’ Bleibtreu had explained. ‘You’d never believe the lengths our competitors would go to in order to steal the fruits of our research.’

  He had then excused himself and handed Marc over to a swarthy-looking assistant who ushered him silently into a dimly lit consulting room and disappeared without a word.

  The room reminded him at first sight him of a dentist’s surgery. Its central feature was a white, hydraulically adjustable couch connected to a computer console by numerous cables of different colours.

  ‘Electroencephalography,’ a woman’s voice said softly. Marc gave a start and swung round as the heavy door behind him shut with a faint click. ‘We’ll be measuring your brainwaves with that.’

  Part of the square room was partitioned off by a row of waist-high mandarin trees in tubs. He had failed to notice either the leather three-piece suite behind them or the woman doctor who now rose from one of the arm chairs.

  ‘My apologies, Dr Lucas, I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Patrizia Menardi, the inhouse neurologist here.’

  She came over to him with her hand extended, managing to look simultaneously affable and dominant, partly because she had a gentle voice but didn’t display even a hint of a smile. Marc detected a tiny groove in her upper lip, presumably the relic of an expertly performed cleft-palate operation. He felt pretty certain that her firm handshake and rather mannish demeanour formed part of a defensive barrier dating back to a time when she’d been teased at school because of her hare lip.

  ‘Actually, Dr Menardi, I only wanted to—’

  ‘No, no “doctor”. Just Menardi.’

  ‘Okay, then please forget my label too. I only use it when booking hotel rooms, but it’s never got me an upgrade yet.’

  Her expression didn’t change.

  Okay, so humour isn’t her forte.

  ‘When do I see Professor Bleibtreu again?’ he asked.

  ‘In a few minutes. In the meantime, I’ll prepare you for examination.’

  ‘Hold on, I’m afraid you’ve got it wrong. I don’t want to be examined. The professor was simply going to explain the nature of the experiment – purely hypothetically, because, from the look of things, I won’t want to take part in it at all.’

  ‘Really? I was told you’re our next candidate for MME.’

  ‘MME?’

  ‘The memory experiment. The professor will familiarize you with it as soon as he’s completed his rounds. Let’s make the most of the interval by taking down your particulars.’

  Marc sighed and looked at his watch.

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ he said, but he sat down facing the neurologist, who had returned to her armchair. She poured him a glass of water from a carafe and opened a slim folder lying on the coffee table between them.

  ‘Marc Lucas, thirty-two, honours degree in jurisprudence.’ She tapped the relevant section of the questionnaire in front of her. Marc had been meant to complete it at the same time as signing the pledge of confidentiality, but he’d lost interest halfway through and given up.

  ‘You passed both examinations with distinction and gained your doctorate in juvenile law. Congratulations – very few people manage that, to the best of my knowledge.’ She nodded admiringly.

  ‘And you now work with socially disadvantaged children and young people in Neukölln?’ she asked casually, her eyes straying to the watch on Marc’s wrist.

  ‘It’s a fake from Thailand,’ he lied, inserting a forefinger beneath the strap. He didn’t feel like explaining how he could afford a luxury watch that cost as much as a family saloon car on a social worker’s salary, even if it had been a birthday present from Sandra.

  ‘Your father was a lawyer too.’ She took a photo from her folder and held it so Marc couldn’t see.

  ‘You’re very like him,’ she said, and went on leafing through the file. Marc didn’t react, despite his urge to snatch the questionnaire from her hand. His resemblance to his father was striking indeed, although outsiders didn’t find it so noticeable because their similarities related mainly to character and outlook on life. Frank Lucas had also been a fighter. Like Marc, he had made up ground by going to evening classes and then devoted himself to representing the underprivileged. In the early days, when Frank still couldn’t afford an office of his own and had set up shop in his living room, half the neighbourhood used to sit on his sofa and enlist his advice. Deceived wives, drink drivers, petty criminals caught red-handed – they’d used Papa Lucas more as a pastor than a lawyer. He often gave his ‘friends’ time to pay or waived his fee altogether, even though Mama Lucas gave him stick because they themselves were behind with the rent.

  In the course of time, however, some of the petty criminals whom he’d represented pro bono made a career for themselves – villains who could suddenly afford to pay cash and never asked for a receipt. As Frank’s clients descended the ladder of criminality, so his practice gradually picked up, though not for long.

  ‘Your father died young,’ Menardi went on. ‘Cirrhosis of the liver, undiagnosed. Your mother, a housewife, died not long afterwards.’

  How does she know all this?

  Unless his memory was playing tricks he hadn’t completed those sections of the questionnaire, nor the ones that followed.

  ‘You have a younger brother named Benjamin?’ Menardi asked.

  Marc’s throat tightened. He reached for the glass of water. The neurologist had evidently wasted her time scouring the Internet.

  ‘Benny. At least, that’s what he called himself the last time we spoke.’

  ‘Which was when?’

  ‘Let me think.’ Marc took a sip and replaced the glass on the coffee table.

  ‘It was, er. . . Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. . .’

  He counted off the days of the week on his fingers.

  ‘At a rough guess, on a Thursday around eighteen months ago.’

  ‘The day he was sectioned?’ Menardi shut the folder and tapped her front teeth with her pencil. ‘After another unsuccessful suicide attempt?’

  The pressure on his throat increased again.

  ‘Look, I don’t know how you got hold of all this information, but I certainly didn’t come here to chat abou
t my family history.’

  Marc started to get up, but she restrained him with a soothing gesture.

  ‘Then please tell me about the traumatic experience that prompted you to contact us recently.’

  He hesitated for a moment. Then, after another glance at his watch, he subsided on to the sofa once more.

  ‘I hear voices,’ he said.

  ‘What sort of voices?’

  ‘There they go again. Someone just said, “What sort of voices?”’

  Menardi gave him a long look, then made a note in her folder.

  ‘What’s that you’re writing?’ he demanded.

  ‘I’m making a note that you take refuge in humour. It’s typical of creative and intelligent people, but it makes them harder to treat.’

  ‘I don’t want treatment of any kind.’

  ‘You ought to consider it, though. Would you care to describe the accident for me?’

  ‘Why ask me if you already know everything?’

  ‘Because I’d like to hear it from your own lips. My concern is less what you tell me than how you tell it. For instance, your attempts to make a joke of everything are far more informative than the fact that your wife might still be alive if you’d sent for help at once.’

  Marc felt as if the woman had opened a valve in his body and he was collapsing like an inflatable mattress. He could almost hear the hiss as all the strength leaked out of him.

  ‘What do you mean? I couldn’t summon help, I was unconscious.’

  ‘Really?’ Menardi frowned and opened the folder again. ‘According to this accident report, you called the emergency services. But not until fourteen minutes after the crash.’

  She handed him a printed form as thin and translucent as greaseproof paper. Looking up, he was doubly disconcerted to see the genuine concern on her face.

  ‘One moment,’ she said hesitantly. Her cheeks reddened and the sheet of paper in her hands developed a nervous tremor. ‘Are you telling me you can’t remember?’

  8

  This is impossible, Marc told himself. Quite impossible.

  He couldn’t have dialled 112. Not at that stage. True, it was his mobile number on the A & E report to which the clinic had gained access, God alone knew how. But it couldn’t have been him. He’d lost consciousness at once after hitting his head on the door frame and steering wheel in quick succession. At once, not a quarter of an hour after the crash.

  There was a knock at the door. Marc turned, expecting to see the neurologist reappear. She had left the room a few minutes earlier, looking worried. Instead, Bleibtreu materialized in the doorway, his face wreathed in an engaging smile that doubtless adorned many of the clinic’s publicity brochures.

  ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ Marc said sharply. ‘I thought I came here to forget. As it is, I’ll be leaving your clinic with a lot of my wounds reopened.’

  ‘I must apologize for Frau Menardi’s conduct, Dr Lucas. There’s been a regrettable mistake.’

  ‘A mistake?’

  ‘She wasn’t authorized to broach the subject.’

  ‘Not authorized?’ Marc clasped his hands behind his head. ‘You mean I really did call the emergency services?’

  ‘No.’

  Bleibtreu made a gesture of invitation, but Marc preferred to remain standing by the window rather than resume his place on the sofa.

  ‘It was a passer-by,’ the professor explained. ‘The man who was first at the crash scene had no mobile phone with him, so he reached through the shattered side window and took yours.’

  Several motorists were performing a horn concerto in the street eleven floors below them. It was either a traffic jam or a wedding. Marc parted the beige lamellar blinds but couldn’t see much. Immediately outside the window was some scaffolding swathed in plastic sheets.

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  Bleibtreu stared at him in surprise. ‘There’s a copy of the accident report in your file. Your email expressly granted us access to it.’

  Marc dimly remembered clicking a box on the download form. He couldn’t have cared less about anything that night.

  ‘Have you never seen the report yourself?’

  Marc shook his head. He’d never even asked about it. He could happily dispense with any more grisly details about the most terrible day in his life.

  ‘I understand,’ said Bleibtreu. ‘You’re still in the preliminary phase of the grieving process, of course.’

  1. Refusal to accept the truth. 2. Emotional turmoil. 3. Self-discovery and self-detachment. 4. A fresh attitude to oneself and the world in general. Marc knew those categories because part of his job was to counsel the street kids who washed up at his office. Although that configuration had helped him to gain a better understanding of those who had lost a close companion, he didn’t accept that it applied to himself.

  ‘I’m not in denial about Sandra’s death,’ he insisted.

  ‘But you’re trying to suppress it.’

  ‘I thought that was precisely your own recommended method, Professor. Forgetting!’

  Bleibtreu had joined Marc at the window. The weather had turned stormy, and the tarpaulins over the scaffolding were being plastered against it by the wind.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘paradoxical as it may sound, before forgetting comes remembering. I’m afraid we’ll have to go over the circumstances of the accident together.’

  Marc turned to him. ‘Why?’

  ‘In case we overlook any latent memories that may later sprout like weeds from the sediment of your subconscious.’ Bleibtreu laid an age-freckled hand on Marc’s shoulder, and for one brief moment this unexpected proximity breached his instinctive defence mechanism.

  The preliminary phase. Denial, suppression.

  9

  They sat down again.

  ‘There isn’t much to tell. We were on our way back from a little family celebration at her father’s place when it happened.’

  Bleibtreu leant forwards. ‘What was the occasion?’

  The wind was now buffeting the scaffolding so hard that its creaks and groans were audible even through the sound-proofed, double-glazed windows. Marc sighed.

  ‘Sandra had just been commissioned to write a new film script. She was an actress and screenwriter – but you know that.’

  Marc shuffled restlessly to and fro on the sofa as he spoke. Sandra had always laughed at him for being a fidget. He could scarcely sit still for five minutes in a cinema.

  ‘It was to be her first screenplay for a feature film. The Americans were prepared to pay a vast amount of money for it, and we’d been celebrating the news with her father.’

  ‘Professor Constantin Senner?’

  ‘The surgeon, that’s right. He’s. . .’ Marc hesitated. ‘He was my father-in-law. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Senner Clinic?’

  ‘We recommend it to any of our patients in need of surgery. Not that it happens often, I’m glad to say.’

  Before going on, Marc adjusted his position yet again and plucked nervously at the skin beneath his chin. ‘We were driving along a little-used road through the forest from Sakrow to Spandau.’

  ‘Sakrow near Potsdam?’

  ‘Then you know it. The Senner estate lies right beside the river, facing Pfaueninsel. Anyway, I was driving a bit too fast for a single-lane road. Sandra got angry with me – I think she threatened to get out.’

  Shutting his eyes for a moment, Marc strove, as he had so often, to suppress his recollections of that fateful drive.

  ‘What happened then?’ Bleibtreu asked cautiously. The more quietly he spoke, the more feminine his voice sounded.

  ‘To be totally honest, I don’t know. My recollections of the last few hours before the accident are a blur. I can’t remember any more than I’ve told you. My father-in-law attributes it to retrograde amnesia. Our little celebration and what we said on the drive home – it’s all gone.’ Marc gave a mirthless laugh. ‘I only remember the outcome, alas. The rest is up to you.’

>   Bleibtreu folded his arms on his chest, a pose that underlined the note of suspicion in his next question. ‘And your memory of those last few seconds in the car has never returned?’

  ‘In part, but only very recently. However, I’m never sure what’s a dream and what actually happened.’

  ‘Interesting. What do you dream of?’

  Marc shrugged. ‘As a rule, all I can remember the following morning are disjointed snatches of conversation. Sandra is going on at me about something – begging me not to prevent it.’

  ‘The end justifies the means – aren’t you always saying so yourself? Isn’t that your motto in life?’

  ‘You’re crazy, Sandra. The end never justifies taking a human life.’

  ‘What did you want to prevent?’

  ‘No idea. I suspect my subconscious is playing tricks on me and I’m talking about the accident itself.’

  Marc was just wondering whether he should really acquaint the professor with every detail of their last conversation when Bleibtreu asked the most agonizing question of all.

  ‘Why did she undo her seatbelt?’

  Marc gulped. Once, then again, but the lump in his throat only seemed to increase in size.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said eventually. ‘She reached back over her seat, probably for something to eat. She was in her sixth month – we always took something sweet with us in case she had a craving. And she often did, especially when she was in a bad mood.’

  He wondered if someone had removed the bar of chocolate from the glove compartment before the wreck went into the crusher. The thought almost choked him.

  ‘What happened then?’ Bleibtreu asked quietly.

  I saw she was suddenly holding something in her hand. A photo? She showed it to me, but it was colourless and coarse-grained. I couldn’t make anything out. In any case, I’m not sure the scene was real. I see it only in my dreams, though they’re becoming steadily more distinct.

  Till now Marc had only told his father-in-law about this dream, and only in outline, because he thought it might be a side effect of the medication he had to take for the splinter in his neck.