About the upholstered chair, that day long ago. His father already on the train taking him to the front. His mother crying all afternoon, lying on the bed with the door locked, while he wandered around the house, in a daze.
When the clock struck seven, young Robert decided to make dinner. Eating something would do them both good.
He took the cold soup and put it to warm on the stove, sliced some cheese, laid the table and, when the soup was ready, poured it into the bowls. He went upstairs, stopped outside the bedroom, called his mother, who replied in a small, thin voice, and went back down and sat at the table.
His mother was not long in coming. Her face was pale and her eyes red. She smiled when she saw the table already laid, and she made to caress him, or maybe stroke his cheek, the way she did when she wanted to show her approval.
But then her gesture froze in mid-air.
Her face turned red and the veins on her neck protruded. Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes. Tears of anger. The caress turned into a slap.
She did not give him any explanation.
She sat down, muttered a prayer, crossed herself and started eating. Only then did Robert understand. He had laid the table for three. Three bowls, three pieces of cheese, three spoons.
He sat there for a long time, staring at his father’s empty chair. His mother told him to hurry up, the soup was getting cold. He ate, tasting tears instead of the food, staring at the empty chair, frightened to death. And by the time he had finished the soup, cleared the table and washed up, his fear had changed to anger. The same anger that had made him wander for hours on end along his father’s hidden paths.
In the bedroom of the villa by the Passer, as he felt the icy cold penetrate his bones, Herr Wegener realised that on that distant day, young Robert had understood the meaning of a terrible word. The worst of all. Not “war,” not “death.” Not even “grief.”
He had understood the meaning of the word “irreversible.”
The empty chair. As irreversible as the trajectory of the train that had taken his father to the Russian steppes. As irreversible as the trajectory of a bullet.
Even so, for the third time within the past few hours, he picked up the telephone, which felt as heavy as lead. He dialled the number, heard mechanical noises, rustling.
Were he able to explain about the empty chair, he thought, the Trusted Man would understand. If he could make him feel as if he were in the same vice he himself was now in, then everything would change. He had merciful eyes, the Trusted Man.
The weapon.
But weapons were innocent. Weapons didn’t fire of their own accord.
That was what “irreversible” meant. He had been the one to say, “I want it.” He had been the one who had pulled the trigger.
He let out a moan that was also a sigh and a sob.
At that moment, the connection was cut.
53
Even though the Stube was lit, the icy cold scraped at her bones. But it was not the cold that was making Marlene shiver.
“Have you got everything?”
Keller smiled.
She pointed at his knee. “Maybe it’d be best to wait a few more days.”
He smiled again and stamped his boot on the floor. The wood-and-wire casing that kept the dislocated joint firm creaked.
“I think I’d better come with you,” Marlene insisted.
Keller checked that his greatcoat was done up under his throat. The wound on his face had healed.
“You’re not obliged to do this, Simon Keller,” Marlene went on, her voice cracking. “Please think again.”
Keller put on his gloves, kissed her on the head and went out.
The landscape was a glistening abyss of snow and darkness. He heaved his holdall over his shoulder and went down the wooden steps. At the bottom, he attached the snowshoes to his feet, tested their grip on the blanket of snow and turned to Marlene, who was looking down at him from the top of the steps, arms folded to shield herself from the cold, face streaked with tears.
Keller raised his hand in farewell, and Marlene did the same.
Limping, he set off.
Marlene did not close the door until his dark shape was swallowed up by the slope.
54
Dawn.
Were it not for his knee, and the wood-and-wire casing that imprisoned it, making every movement awkward, he would have been much quicker. He was familiar with the paths and could find them even when they were hidden under the snow.
After walking for six hours, Keller reached the point where the cream-coloured Mercedes had left the road. The place where their paths had crossed. If it weren’t for his memory and his eyes, accustomed to recognising trees as though they were old friends, he would not have noticed it. The Mercedes was in the ditch at the side of the road, buried under at least three metres of snow. Nobody would see it. The girl was safe, at least until the spring.
Keller massaged the thigh of his injured leg. His knee would never be the same again. The ligaments were torn. He would have to use a stick for the rest of his life, like a cripple. When that kind of thing happened to animals, there was nothing to do but put them down. The thought made him smile. He tried to take a step, tested his knee’s resistance by carefully shifting his weight.
It hurt.
He took off his gloves. His hands were so numb that he clenched his fists a few times to get the circulation going. He undid his greatcoat and took a linen pouch from one of the pockets. He smiled. Marlene had embroidered his initials on it.
He slid a few poppy seeds out of the pouch, calculating half a tablespoon. On second thoughts, he added a few more. Just to be on the safe side.
He chewed them slowly.
55
Midday.
Keller sat in a bus that was puffing and chugging under its load of Bau’rn, worried-looking holidaymakers, layabouts with alcohol-reddened cheeks and women in headscarves. There were also a couple of kids looking around, turning their heads here and there like owls perched on a branch.
On the seat next to him, a little girl sat on her mother’s lap, staring at him, her fingers in her mouth, snot coming out of her nostrils. Her mother, a tall, slim woman, was asleep with her forehead against the window, snoring softly.
Keller had his black hat on his lap and his holdall tight between his shins. Each time the bus jolted, pain shot up his leg. He could not find a comfortable position. He tried not to think about it and just concentrate on the surrounding landscape.
The road wound halfway up the mountain. Every now and then, Keller would catch sight of a maso, high up. More often, there were tiny clusters of houses gathered snugly around long, pointed belfries. The bus would stop long enough to allow passengers to get on or off. The same expressions, the same faces. There was not much traffic despite the time of day. Partly it was the snow, he heard two men saying three rows away, but mainly it was the economic crisis. What with unemployment and rising taxes, how many people could afford the luxury of travelling by car?
The bus stopped for the umpteenth time, braking suddenly and waking the little girl’s mother with a start. Whispering gently, the woman wiped her daughter’s face. She looked up at Keller in embarrassment, as if he had caught her red-handed neglecting her duties as a mother and, judging by her clothes, as a Bäuerin. What was a Bäuerin doing on her own, on a bus?
Maybe times were changing, Keller thought. Then he took a closer look at the little girl’s face and understood. She had a fever. She was ill. Her mother was probably taking her to see a specialist. That was why she had left the shelter of the maso. Many things were changing, but the mountains were not among them.
The engine rumbled. There were still kilometres of snow and deserted roads to go. His leg was hurting. It was as though he had a red-hot iron stuck under his kneecap. He chewed some more poppy.
“Opa?” the little girl stammered.
Keller smiled. Opa: Grandpa. Nobody had ever called him that.
“Wha
t’s that?” the little girl asked, pointing at the pouch of poppy seeds.
“It’s my medicine.”
“Is it nice?”
“It’s medicine. It’s not supposed to be nice.”
“Are you ill, Opa?”
“Don’t be rude to the gentleman, Anna,” her mother cut in.
“Anna,” Keller said. “What a beautiful name.”
“Thank you,” her mother replied for her. “Please excuse her. She’s little and she wants to know everything.”
The woman was young, not much more than twenty. A girl, in Keller’s eyes.
Opa. Grandpa.
“That’s a sign of intelligence,” he said. “An intelligent child is a precious gift.”
The woman blushed, uncomfortable speaking to a stranger, uncomfortable receiving compliments.
“Are you better now, Opa?”
“Much better, little Anna.”
The girl smiled.
Keller bent forward and untied the strings of his holdall. He spread it open with his hands until he found what he was looking for. He knew it was there.
“A tribute to a polite little girl,” he said, handing her a wooden figurine.
“You shouldn’t . . .”
But the little girl had already grabbed her new toy, eyes wide open and glistening with joy.
“It’s just a pastime. I have dozens of them in my maso.”
“What do you say, Anna?”
“Thank you, Opa.”
Slipping out of her mother’s arms, the little girl shifted closer to Keller and kissed him on the cheek. He was as surprised by this as the young woman.
“Did you see, Mamma?” the little girl said, beaming. “Opa gave me a little pig.”
56
Evening. No darkness. Lights everywhere. Sleet.
Merano.
The little girl and her mother had got off a few stops earlier. They had said goodbye and thanked him profusely. The bus had set off again. A thousand stops on a journey that never seemed to end. Keller had dozed off.
He had been woken by the driver’s voice announcing the end of the journey.
Trying not to put too much weight on his injured leg, Keller got off the bus and looked around. There were far too many lights.
He was used to just one colour at this time of day: black. Black seemed to have been banished from Merano. He told himself he was in a town now. Towns had different rules.
In the mountains, black meant safety. Black attracted the rays of the sun and, with them, heat. Black in the midst of a snowdrift could save your life.
White was the colour of mourning. When a local Bau’r was to be buried, people went down the mountain in a long procession to the small village church. Everybody came, it was a sign of respect. At funerals, women did not wear black headscarves, they wore white ones. Death was the colour of innocence.
He walked, doing his best not to collide with the passers-by, who all seemed to be in a rush, their heads down. There were cars (not many, admittedly, but far more than he was used to seeing) whizzing past, splashing the pavements with slush-blackened snow, as well as the odd motorcycle, traffic lights, brightly lit shop windows displaying merchandise that bewildered him.
He could not fathom men’s fashions. Why did they wear jackets like that in the winter? Didn’t they freeze to death? And those moccasins. They would not even withstand an April shower. And how could people afford these prices?
As for the women’s clothes shops, they made him avert his eyes. He remembered the glances Voter Luis gave Mutti, glances charged with desire. He also remembered how she would blush with embarrassment and, above all, with pleasure.
Mutti was beautiful, and Elisabeth would have been beautiful, too, with that raven hair of hers and those long legs that made you think of a spider. He would sometimes call her his little spider. But why show off so casually what was meant to stay hidden?
A man does not desire what he can see, only what he imagines.
Maybe, he thought, what his eyes were seeing was not about seduction. Maybe there was something else hidden behind these lights, these shop windows, these strong, pungent smells.
In his final years, Voter Luis kept saying that Death loved the mountains. It loved them the way you love a game that is fixed from the start. An exhausting fight for survival from which no one emerged the winner. No one except Death.
“Death loves mirrors. The world is its mirror. That’s why it’s written in Ecclesiastes that all is vanity. Vanity is the same as death.”
Maybe that was what the blinding lights and garish clothes were trying to do. Not to seduce, like the furs and feathers of animals in the mating season. On the contrary, they were trying to push life away, scare it off. And escape death.
Because death sought life. If you wanted to escape the former, then you had to frighten away the latter.
He carried on walking, deep in thought.
Merano.
“Town,” as Voter Luis called it.
The pain in his leg was just a minor nuisance. The heating in the bus, the poppy, maybe little Anna’s kiss, had all had their effect.
Not far from the bus station, on a square where some children were having a snowball fight, making a happy racket, there was a café. Inside, it was crowded. Women drinking steaming cups of coffee and eating slices of strudel with cream. Men underlining their words with emphatic gestures over glasses of spirits. The café also had a couple of small metal tables outside, along with some uncomfortable chairs. Keller sat down at one of the tables.
Whenever Voter Luis went into town (you could count these occasions on the fingers of one hand), he would always bring back two slices of Sachertorte, one for his wife, one for his son. Keller had not had any for years. He thought of Lissy, who had never got her slice of Sachertorte, and that made him a little sad.
He took a small package and a tin container out of his holdall and put them down on the table. Inside the package was the meal Marlene had prepared for him. Simon folded the napkin and was about to bite into the hard bread and speck when, to the words of a song (“Where is my happy ending?” a mawkish voice whined), a waiter came out of the café and approached him in an irritable, aggressive manner.
“You can’t eat here, old man. Go away.”
“I’d like a slice of Sachertorte.”
“Are you deaf? You have to leave.”
Keller put a couple of banknotes on the table. “I can pay. I’d like a slice of Sachertorte. No cream.”
“You’re scaring away the customers, you’d better leave. I don’t want your wretched money.”
Keller gave him a long stare, then put his hunting knife on the table next to the banknotes. “And I don’t need any cutlery.”
The waiter looked at him, then at the knife and withdrew. When he flung open the door, the background music had changed: a deep, gravelly voice was singing words that made Keller smile. “Um Elf’e kommen die Wölfe, um Elf’e kommen die Wölfe, um Elfe kommen die Wölfe, um Zwölf’e bricht das Gewölbe.”
The door closed. Keller took a couple of bites of the bread. All the customers in the café were now staring at him. A strange old man, tall and sturdy, with a hat on his head and a greatcoat as black as a raven’s wings, nibbling at the bread with precise, methodical bites, heedless of the waiter’s chiding. Heedless, too, of the café’s fat owner, who was nodding and turning red as the waiter explained the situation to him with broad gestures.
“You have to leave.”
Without waiting for a reply, the owner slapped Keller. The sandwich fell onto the dirty snow. Keller picked it up, then got to his feet. He smiled.
“I can pay. I just want a slice of Sachertorte. To see if it’s as good as I remember it.”
The owner put a hand on his shoulder. It was heavy. He squeezed, hard. “Just take your shit and go. I have a rifle behind the counter, and it’s loaded.”
Keller moved his face close to the owner’s and let out a squeal, just like a pig who kn
ows he’s about to be slaughtered, although without losing his smile. That was what terrified the owner: the smile. His knees gave way, and Keller held him up.
“A slice of Sachertorte. Thank you.”
He got it. Two slices, in fact. He ate one of them. It wasn’t as good as he remembered. Too sweet. He wrapped the other slice in the cotton cloth.
After a final sip from his thermos, he stood up. Marlene had given him very specific directions to Herr Wegener’s villa. Outside the town, by the river. An hour from the centre. He had time to look in a few shop windows.
With that strange Charlie Chaplin gait of his, he resumed his walk.
57
Gun loaded. Safety off.
Herr Wegener was alone, sitting on the bed he had shared with Marlene. The quilt in a heap in a corner, her pillow still redolent of her perfume. The 9-mm automatic, black and heavy, on his knees.
The window was wide open, and the breeze stirring the velvet curtains brought in sprays of sleet that melted on the carpet. Wegener felt the same way they did. Lost, weak, dying.
He wished he had the Iron Cross with him. Holding it tight in his fist might have brought him some comfort, but he had pinned it to the chest of a cruel man.
He had been regretting that for hours, remembering the moment when his father, his hands on his knees, his breath smelling of tobacco and coffee, his eyes filled with infinite sadness, had uttered the words that, years later, had prompted him to pick up the automatic, turn off the safety catch and cock the weapon.
“If you do the right thing nine times, it’ll bring you nothing but sorrow. The tenth time, you’ll understand why you did it. And you’ll be glad you did.”
Little Robert had not grasped the meaning of those words: he had been too innocent, too scared of that uniformed man who looked like his father but could not possibly be him, so pale and with such short hair. Kobold, who had little use for innocence and was blinded by hatred, had refused to understand them. Wegener, by now too tired to feel any hatred or fear, understood them as he watched the snow melting on the carpet.
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