And do what had to be done.
“I put on his clothes. These clothes. And I cut his throat while he slept. I should have made him suffer. Should have filled him with terror, the way he’d filled little Lissy with terror. But that would have been revenge, and revenge isn’t worthy of a man of faith. Pity, though, is. I acted out of pity. He was still my father, and before he lost his mind he’d been a great man.”
Marlene looked at Keller’s gnarled hands spread open on the table: the damaged knuckles, the scars, the dark spots on the frost-bitten skin.
A killer’s hands.
“Do I scare you, Marlene?”
Marlene had not replied immediately. She had looked at those hands and thought of the torment he must have felt, having to watch over his little sister’s body. She thought of those years of fear and terror, years of such extreme solitude that it was impossible to see an end to it.
No, Keller’s hands were not a killer’s hands.
“It wasn’t murder,” she said. “It was justice.”
44
There was only the candle flame. If you looked into it, you could see miracles and mysteries. Men and women writhing in pain behind the façade of a hotel. In the wind howling outside, you could hear the echoes of their screams.
Alone in the villa, surrounded by snow-covered vineyards, Herr Wegener smiled. It was a beautiful sound. As beautiful as the acrid stench of petrol that reached his nostrils, making them sting.
Four twenty-litre jerry cans standing by the door. It rushed to your head like the best champagne in his cellar. Wegener could see Georg standing guard. He was waiting with him.
Indoors, by the light of the candle, Herr Wegener was seething with hatred.
You can’t be the baker’s wife and not know who in the neighbourhood has a sweet tooth. That was what Carbone had said. God, how he hated that son of a bitch.
He hated everything and everybody. And soon this hatred would turn into slaughter. Because Carbone was right – he was the baker. The local cake lovers had no secrets from him. They were all in his notebook.
Names, addresses. Meeting places.
The hotel. A bullet marked its location on the map spread open on the table. The candle flame produced an infernal glow, caressing the brass.
Bullets with hollow tips. A few grams of concentrated death.
In Wegener’s head, it was a perfect plan. The motivation was as clear as daylight. Revenge. He would strike in such a way that it would be impossible to ignore him. A show of strength to attract the Consortium’s attention.
To force them to call the Trusted Man back.
On the map were the words GRAND HOTEL STEINHOF. Wegener read them as “casino.” An illegal casino that belonged to the Consortium. Useful for scraping together a bit of money, but not just that.
The Consortium had no need of money. How much could it possibly rake in from an illegal gambling house, even such a high-class one? A mere trifle for an organisation whose takings would be the envy of quite a few puppet regimes in Africa. This casino had a different purpose, a much more forward-looking one.
Nobody played watten or briscola or any other silly card games there. There were no cheap cigarettes or stale wine. They played blackjack and poker.
It was a different world.
You entered from a well-lit street in Merano and ended up amid the blinding lights of Las Vegas. Behind the façade of the Grand Hotel, there were roulette wheels, beautiful long-legged blondes from northern and eastern Europe, cocaine on silver trays.
Nobody swore, nobody cursed. Patrons accepted their losses with a smile and toasted the croupier. It was a classy place for classy people. Why complain about a bad hand or the whims of a little ball? Just being there already meant you were a winner.
You weren’t admitted to this casino with a tip or a wink. You received a formal invitation in silver lettering on thick paper. We request the honour of your presence . . . A place for the elite. Security was 100-per-cent guaranteed, since the purpose of the casino, not far from the racetrack and located one floor below the lobby of one of the town’s best-known hotels, was to facilitate meetings, handshakes, agreements, friendships.
Handshakes were the source of the Consortium’s power. Money was the result.
“We request the honour of your presence,” Wegener said out loud, the candle flame reflected in his eyes.
He had thought of everything. Two cars blocking the road. An act that cried: “Big trouble ahead.” It wouldn’t just be revenge, it would be a show. A show to prove to the Consortium that here, on his territory, the master of ceremonies was Herr Wegener.
Seven men. He had chosen them with care. The toughest he had, veterans of robberies and ambushes. The weapons were ready on the table. Black, glossy and perfectly oiled. Czech-manufactured Škorpion machine pistols. Barrels filed, magazines full. Selectors on automatic. To one side, semi-automatics, with a small bag of Benzedrine next to them. White, amphetamine-based capsules to give his henchmen a kick. The same drug that fighter pilots used, or soldiers in the jungle. He wanted them bloodthirsty.
It would be another Vietnam, the likes of which no one around here had ever seen.
That was the plan.
Phase one: arrive and get rid of the guards, men with holsters under their arms who patrolled the entrance discreetly and professionally.
How many times had Herr Wegener smiled at these men, with Marlene in an evening dress on his arm? And how many times had he won and lost in that room filled with velvet and glittering with gold?
Too bad for them. They must be given no time to beg for mercy.
Phase two: burst in. Seven masked men and one showing his face. Him. The spectacle required a director and a star. He would be both. And then would come the slaughter. Spray the casino with lead. Men in dinner suits, long-legged whores, waiters, croupiers: he wanted them all dead.
All of them.
Phase three: the jerrycans of petrol. Over the gambling tables, the sofas, the ornamental plants, behind the bar. And then strike a match and unleash hell. He could already see the bodies writhing in the candle flame and hear their screams as he listened to the wind.
Two knocks at the door.
Georg.
“Sir . . .”
That one word was enough. Wegener understood.
45
Wegener ordered Georg to wait outside in the car, with the engine running. Georg nodded and left. The squeak of the door hinges set Wegener’s teeth on edge.
With an angry gesture, he swept the map off the table. The hollow-tipped bullet bounced off the wall, and the Benzedrine capsules were scattered across the floor.
Wegener put his hands over his ears. The wind no longer sang of revenge and reprisals. Now it was telling a different story, a story of scorched earth. He could not bear it.
He knew how certain things went. He could imagine them. Someone approaches you and offers to buy you a beer. He asks you how things are going. Then he whispers a piece of advice in your ear. Ulysses never made it back to Ithaca, he says. The Cyclops feasted on his flesh. Did you know that? The rest is nothing but lies.
Then he smiles, and you know what he means. You realise he’s giving you an opportunity.
So you quickly nod, quit your stool and go home to pack. The man who offered you a drink is the Cyclops. You owe it to fate that you’re alive. And you can’t spit in the face of fate.
“Fuck Wegener, and fuck his wife.”
Run while there’s still time.
Wegener pressed his fists to his ears.
He could not stop thinking about it.
His men. The seven men he had chosen for their ruthlessness and determination. All it had taken was a murmur from the Consortium and they’d bolted, leaving him alone and defenceless.
What did it mean? He knew perfectly well, but couldn’t admit it to himself.
And he could not stop imagining it.
A persuasive voice on the telephone. Siegfried never pierced
the Dragon’s chest with a spear. The Dragon is too powerful. Do you want to end up like him? You’re an intelligent person. You have a family. You have friends. Do you really want to lose everything? And for what? For someone like Wegener? Don’t you know Wegener’s finished?
So when you put the receiver down, you feel that life is wonderful, you feel how sweet the air coming into your lungs tastes. You feel the desire to make love to your wife, to hug your children, to joke with your old friends. And you don’t give a fuck about Wegener. It’s his life. His revenge, his downfall. Why stand up to the Dragon?
Scorched earth. That was what the Consortium had done. The weapons, the petrol, the drugs: all in vain. There would be no bursting in. No hotel on fire. No slaughter.
Herr Wegener swallowed a couple of times. Once more he recognised the taste of humiliation. He stood up, but his legs gave way and he was forced to sit down again.
46
Simon Keller had told Marlene about Lissy and Voter Luis, but he had left many things unsaid. Because even though the story of Lissy, Sim’l and Voter Luis was as simple as a circle traced in the snow, that circle had the shape of mystery and miracle.
And Keller had kept quiet about both.
47
Voter Luis had sketched the beginning of this swarm of mysteries and miracles at nightfall, while Sim’l and Lissy were hunched over their dinners.
The children ate slowly, focusing on every spoonful of soup, which, as usual, was meagre and flavourless. Salt and oil had run out a long time ago, and the maso’s vegetable garden yielded only bland potatoes and bitter herbs.
All at once, Voter Luis, who had not eaten and was just watching them, arms crossed, stood up, supporting himself with his crutch, took a bag full of pungent-smelling powder, opened it and threw a pinch into the fire. Blue flames flared up, much to Elisabeth’s astonishment and young Sim’l’s concern.
Voter Luis put the bag away, took up his hunting knife, bowed his head and recited in a whisper, “And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body be cast into hell.”
Sim’l understood immediately.
He understood that bereavement had become an unbearable torment, a hell for Voter Luis. A man of faith should have found comfort in the thought of his beloved sitting in the presence of the Father, but Voter Luis could only wallow in grief.
Sim’l at last understood why Voter Luis could not look his daughter in the face, why he could not play with her, why he would punish her for a trifle, why he kept saying that she was nothing but a useless extra mouth to feed.
In being born, Lissy had killed Mutti and trapped Voter Luis in a spiral of despair that neither opium nor alcohol nor the Word could break.
Sim’l understood too late that Lissy was the eye that caused him to sin.
Voter Luis raised the knife and plunged it into his daughter. A single thrust, straight to the chest. He drew out the blade and went into his bedroom, leaving Sim’l in tears, rocking his dying little sister, trying to comfort her.
Little Lissy could comprehend neither her death nor her dying. With what was left of her strength, a single drop of blood marring her emaciated face, she pointed anxiously at her soup bowl and whispered as her soul was already on its way to heaven:
“I haven’t finished, Sim’l. I’m hungry. Keep it for me. I’m so hungry . . .”
Then, just before leaving him, Lissy transfixed him with that terrible look that seemed to be asking, “Why? Why, Sim’l? Why didn’t you save me?”
Sweet Lissy. Little Lissy. It’s alright. It’s . . .
The following day, Voter Luis buried the body and burned Lissy’s clothes and toys on a wretched bonfire outside the maso. Sad flames that were not blue.
Those had already been lit.
From that moment on, it was as though Elisabeth had never existed, and Voter Luis resumed his usual activities. Drinking too much and chewing poppy seeds, shut up in the cellar.
All that was left of Lissy was a memory and two little bells hidden in Sim’l’s mattress.
Now it was Sim’l’s turn to drown in his own personal hell. Because without Lissy, he did not know if he would ever feel as tall and strong as an ash tree. Because he had been unable to stop his father.
Naturally, he wrote: it was his duty. He copied the Word, although the Word did not provide the comfort he was hoping for. And after he had finished his first Bible, Voter Luis pulled him by the arm and shut him in the cellar.
“It’s time you saw the Kellers’ work.”
In the dark, for the first time in the presence of the Bibles of past Voter, those severe volumes that seemed to whisper their terrible wisdom, Simon felt his bladder relax and his trousers become wet.
Voter Luis left him there for two nights, without food or water, to pray, hallucinate and tremble. He thought over and over again about Lissy’s face and her final words until, terrified and blinded by hunger and thirst, he was struck by a sudden intuition – Voter Luis would have called it a revelation – and was swallowed by the darkness of despair.
When, on the morning of the third day, Voter Luis opened the door to let him out, Sim’l almost didn’t notice. Because there was something worse than his feelings of guilt over not saving Lissy. The Scriptures left no room for doubt: the sins of the father would be visited upon the children.
That meant that in the eyes of the Lord, it was he who had killed sweet little Lissy.
48
The days went by. The months. The years.
All identical. Working in the fields. Voter Luis’ sudden outbursts of anger. The Word of the Bible, the sense of guilt. Lissy’s blood staining his hands. The hardship, the loneliness, the hunting.
The sleepless nights. The fear of damnation.
Finally, one morning, a sow was born. She was small and lively, but she was not like the others. She was special.
She had a black spot under her left eye, just like the drop of blood on Elisabeth’s cheek. The one Simon dreamt about every night.
His back covered in sores from Voter Luis’ lashes, Simon bent over the sow, took her in his arms and began rocking her and singing softly.
Sweet Lissy. Little Lissy.
That was when he heard the Voice. The Voice was inside his head, and at the same time it was all around him.
Simon nodded the whole time the Voice spoke to him. He stroked the sow one last time, went back to the maso, climbed the steps to his father’s bedroom and, as Voter Luis, drunk and dishevelled, slept, he put on his clothes.
Here I am, he thought as he adjusted the large hat over his forehead.
Then he cut Voter Luis’ throat.
When the man had drawn his last breath, Simon dragged the body outside and buried it next to his mother. Since Voter Luis had been a good father and a man of faith before losing his mind, he lit the Kellers’ blue flames and prayed for him.
After he had finished, he went back home, found the two little bells and took them to the pigsty. He tied one around the sow’s neck and held the other one tight in his fist. He spent the night there, singing to her.
Little Lissy, sweet Lissy.
He slept and did not have nightmares.
The next day, though, he woke in a state of anguish. Wearing Voter Luis’ clothes did not make him a real Voter. What if someone asked after his father? What would he reply? Would he have to run away? Leave the maso? The prospect left him with a sense of dread, deep in his gut. He had no idea what the world outside was like, apart from the village. There were times he even doubted the existence of anything beyond the mountains.
In his dismay, he asked the Voice for help, but the Voice kept silent.
He did not run away. And nobody came up to the maso to ask after Voter Luis. When he took a chance, went down the mountain and announced his father’s death in the village, people expressed their condolences but nothing else. Somehow, he kept going.
He wasn’t a Voter, but he was a Keller; he could scythe hay, dig for potatoes, shoot a deer, cure meat and stop wholesalers from cheating him with their scales when he sold them his produce.
Anything he had not learned directly from Voter Luis he found in his notes, and anything Voter Luis had not transcribed he discovered in the Bibles of past Voter. Through study, he became a good Kräutermandl.
The only joy of his day was filling the sow’s trough. Lissy was hungry, and he fed her. A perfect circle (though without mysteries or miracles) that brought him a little serenity.
The sow with the spot under her eye grew to adulthood, and Keller mated her with boars he bought at fairs. Each time, Lissy would give birth to a litter which would die within a few weeks. Each time, Keller would grieve, but no remedy suggested by past Voter seemed to have any effect on the sow.
Lissy started ageing faster than normal. Simon assumed there was something wrong with her blood. Anxiety came back into his heart. What would become of him without Lissy? He shuddered at the thought of her death.
The day Lissy, by now half blind, turned seven, as Keller stood pointing his rifle at a fox’s lair, he heard the Voice again.
It hadn’t happened since his father’s death, and he had started to think it had never existed. But seven years after Voter Luis’ death, the Voice returned.
It pointed him to a thick, wild part of the woods, where young Sim’l had fired a rifle for the first time. That was an important place, the Voice explained. He was to bring the sow here, set her free and go back home without turning back. The sow would find her way back on her own, pregnant. Her line, the Voice promised, would continue. A new Lissy would be born.
He would not be alone. He would never be alone again. It was a promise.
The Bibles of past Voter disagreed on many points, but all urged obedience, and so Keller, who was a man of faith, obeyed. He tied a rope around Lissy, dragged her into the forest and set her free. Then he left, his heart swollen with worry.
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