He had killed much more game than he needed, and for that he felt guilty, but he clung to the illusion that these lives had not been wasted.
Three days earlier, his hunting bag still empty, exasperated by the Voice, made anxious by the approaching darkness that would stop him from sacrificing blood, he had gone as far as the top of the mountain, and there, a few minutes before sunset, surrounded by sharp rocks, shivering with cold, he had seen the silhouette of an ibex against the dying light, a proud animal with a powerful chest and long, curved antlers. He had fired, and the ibex had fallen from the cliff with a thud. He had not collected it. It was too cold for that. But for that day, at least, the blood had been shed.
He told Marlene that a pregnant woman needed fresh meat. He told himself that, too, during daylight hours, as a way of calming himself down and convincing himself that he had not become a menace. He told himself it was the right thing to do. That it was his own will, not the Voice, that was making him hunt. A pregnant woman needed fresh meat if she wanted to give birth to a strong, healthy child. She needed fruit and vegetables as well, so he vowed to go down to the valley and buy some. But he never did.
If he went to the village, he would not be able to shoot, and deep in his heart he knew why the animals had to be killed. This was his compromise: trading animal blood against Marlene’s.
He had to protect her. He was no longer delicate young Sim’l, incapable of stopping his father’s hand. He was a man, a strong man. The past would not repeat itself.
And so he hunted. Blood in exchange for other blood. A life for a life.
And in fact, the Voice did fall silent after the killings.
For a while, anyway.
69
Captain Carbone had left a message, and two hours later they met in the café on the square, not far from the bus station.
It was a quiet place, with few customers, small tables, background music and a display of cakes. The owner, a fat man who looked like a drunk, was talking to Carbone. He had a wary expression, while Carbone was all smiles. The Trusted Man knocked on the glass window and gestured for them to come outside. You could never be too careful.
Despite the cold weather, the fat man was in his shirtsleeves. He looked the Trusted Man up and down, arms crossed. The Trusted Man did not introduce himself. Carbone obliged: a trusted colleague, a friend.
“Tell us again what you told me earlier.”
The fat man did not need to be asked twice. “He was tall. I’m one metre eighty and this guy was almost a head taller than me. Old, maybe sixty. Looking older, if you see what I mean. I see a lot of people here, and trust me, this man had come down from the mountains. A cheapskate.”
“Who are we talking about?”
“Your oddity,” Carbone said.
The Trusted Man had ordered him to report anything out of the ordinary that might have happened on the day of Wegener’s murder, no matter how insignificant. The fat man’s story was not the only one. Funny how so many bizarre events could occur in such a sleepy town. On the other hand, even just looking at the clouds you can make out all kinds of shapes.
Carbone had neglected nothing. As soon as his men reported a burglary, a tip-off, a drunken brawl, he would rush to the scene, investigate, ask questions. The Trusted Man was doing the same.
Even though up to now none of his meetings with the captain had led anywhere and the trail was going cold, the Trusted Man knew that looking at the clouds was not always a waste of time.
“For crying out loud, he actually grunted like a pig.”
This rekindled his interest. “Who?”
The fat man huffed with annoyance. “Are you listening to me or are you deaf?”
The Trusted Man smiled.
The fat man turned pale. “I . . . mean no offence.”
“A tall man, you say. One metre ninety, could we say?”
“It’s possible.”
“And he scared you.”
“Yes, he did.”
The Trusted Man raised an eyebrow. The bar owner had biceps like hams and looked like someone who picked fights. “An old man. You were scared of an old man.”
“You’d have wet yourself if you’d been there.”
“I doubt that.”
The fat man was about to retort, but Carbone took hold of his arm to restrain him.
“Tell us everything from the beginning. Calmly.”
The old man, dressed in black, had sat at the table. That one. The waiter had immediately seen that he wasn’t all there in the head. Because he had taken out bread and speck and started eating. A kind of travel bag like the ones sailors carry. No, not a rucksack. A bag, alright? Just a bag.
“Please go on.”
The fat man was becoming incensed. It was a bar, not a damn soup kitchen for retards and the homeless. So the waiter had told him to clear off. Nothing doing. Yes, perhaps he was scared, too. In fact, he really was scared, because he had come back inside and told him to get the rifle he kept under the counter.
“A rifle?”
Just to be on the safe side. There are a lot of weirdos around. But he had not brought it out. After all, it was just an old man, right? And they didn’t realise just how crazy he was. He had a knife, with a blade this long. A hunting knife. No, he hadn’t used it to threaten him. He had just put it down on the table. Are you even listening to me?
As the café owner talked, the Trusted Man nodded. It all fit together. The bus station. The Wolf. A scary old man.
Once he had what he needed, he left Carbone and the café owner talking and, without saying goodbye, headed for the bus station.
There were not that many buses listed on the timetable as arriving around the time the Wolf had been kicking up all that fuss in the café on the square. They all came from the west. A good sign.
The captain joined him. “What do you think?”
“The picture’s becoming clearer.”
“That’s what I think.”
The Trusted Man cocked his head, intrigued. “Really?”
“He’s not a professional. A professional doesn’t leave traces. There’s no way a hitman would pick an argument with a guy like that.”
“One more point for me. It was you who mentioned a hitman.”
Carbone nodded. “That’s true. You were right. And he might have left other clues. Plus, if he took the bus, it means he doesn’t own a car.”
“A man who came down from the mountains.”
“Which tells us . . .”
Far from being annoyed by Carbone’s attitude, the Trusted Man cut him some slack. “That Marlene got lost. Or that she changed her mind at the last minute. It’s a possibility. Perhaps the clinic business was a diversion.”
“Bull’s eye.”
“There’s one thing I don’t agree with you on, Captain.”
“What?”
The Trusted Man took a deep breath of bus-station air saturated with exhaust fumes. “Although he isn’t a hitman, I think he is a professional. I think he’s used to death. You see, if what our friend in the café said is true, then the Wolf didn’t attack but merely bared his teeth.”
Carbone lit a cigarette. “He growled. He’s crazy.”
“Pigs are nasty animals. But they’re not stupid.”
“I still don’t follow you.”
“I’m saying he bared his teeth because death is something he’s familiar with.”
“He’s used to violence.”
“Not to violence. It was a clean, efficient cut, remember? He’s used to death.”
“Aren’t violence and death the same thing?”
The Trusted Man put a hand on Carbone’s shoulder. “You stick to using violence, Captain. Leave death to people like me.”
He moved a few steps away.
Carbone threw the cigarette he had just lit down on the pavement. “What are my orders? Do you want me to keep looking?”
“Forget about this business.”
“What about you?”
&n
bsp; “I’ll ask around. I’m very good at making friends, you know.”
They had reached Carbone’s car.
“What about us? Are we friends?”
The Trusted Man studied his face. “Would you like us to be?”
“I’d like to be able to sleep with both eyes shut.”
“Who wouldn’t like that, Captain?”
Carbone did not know how to respond. He opened the car door.
The Trusted Man put up the collar of his coat. “Give my regards to your wife.”
70
Crouching behind a mound, waiting for his prey to sniff the trap, Keller traced a perfect circle in the snow with his gloved index finger.
The world teemed with mysteries. They all had the shape of a perfect circle. That was one of the first lessons Voter Luis had taught him.
How does the marmot sleep for months without being sucked into a dream world? What do stars breathe that makes them burn so bright? How, after months of being trapped in ice, does the earth manage to yield fruit in spring?
Mysteries.
And yet every spring burst with crops, the marmot emerged from its sleep and the stars continued to glitter in the dark. Over and over again.
Miracles.
The world was a mystery and a miracle, and the shape of the mystery was a circle. Lissy’s incarnations were also a circle. The seasons changed, times changed, but Lissy was always the same. The first Lissy had given birth to a sow a little blacker and a little bigger than herself. The first Lissy had died. The new Lissy had started the circle all over again. Weak, sickly pigs until the final litter, when a female was born, blacker, bigger and hungrier.
A perfect circle.
The first Lissy had asked for just one sacrifice: Voter Luis. The second for another one: a traveller, frozen half to death, whom Keller had come across on his way back from the village. Killing him, he had told himself, had almost been an act of pity.
The third Lissy, the first to grow fangs instead of teeth, had asked for three: two poachers Keller had surprised in their sleep in early May and a woman in the autumn of that same year. It was hard to kill a woman. She had begged him to spare her and tried to reason with him. When he had told the woman about the Voice in his head, she had stopped screaming and tried to run away. He had had to run after her. About the men he remembered nothing, not even their faces.
But he did remember his fear when a carabiniere in camouflage clothing had knocked on his door and shown him a picture of the woman who had tried to run away. Her name was Gertrud Kofler. She had gone missing while picking mushrooms, he said. Had he seen her, by any chance? The Voice had told him what to say. It had worked. The carabiniere had asked if he could fill his flask. He had never come back. Keller had been nervous for months after that, and ever since, there had always been a Gertrud in the pigsty below the maso. Gertrud the fugitive.
Lissy’s fourth incarnation had claimed two lives. The fifth, another three, two of whom had tried to fight back. The sixth, the mother of the Lissy Marlene knew, had been born without fangs but was the first with that kind of albino tuft on top of her head, between her ears. She had wanted just one victim: a doctor who had got lost and knocked at the door of the maso, demanding help and looking disgusted when he saw the mess in the Stube.
Killing him had been a pleasure.
Meanwhile, the Voice had taught him many ways of throwing investigators off the scent. Keeping items of clothing and leaving them in valleys far from the maso. Scattering bullet-ridden shreds of flesh for the sniffer dogs, to suggest a gangland slaying. Keller was no longer afraid of being found out.
The Lissy Marlene knew was the seventh incarnation, the first to be born with two white stripes under her eyes. She was the biggest, blackest and hungriest of them all. So far, she had demanded nineteen sacrifices, and she was not even three years old yet. Lissy was hungry. Lissy was always hungry.
A rustling in the woods.
Keller adjusted the butt of the rifle against his shoulder and kept the barrel trained on the bale of fragrant hay in the middle of the clearing. That was where he had set his trap.
A deer emerged from the bushes and sniffed the air hesitantly. Simon put his finger on the trigger, ready to shoot as soon as the animal came out into the open.
The deer, a beautiful doe, approached the bale of hay, nostrils quivering. Keller waited. The deer snatched a mouthful, its thigh muscles quivering, ready to flee at the slightest sign of danger. A second mouthful, then a third. The animal’s breath condensed in little blue clouds. Keller squeezed the trigger.
The deer stepped to the side, at first frightened by the shot, then surprised by the sudden pain in its chest. One last little cloud of breath, and its heart stopped beating. It fell to the ground, dead by the time it hit the snow.
Keller propped the rifle against the mound, took out his knife and began walking down the slope – slowly, because his knee hurt.
Hunting was not a clean business, let alone a sport. The animal had to be gutted as soon as possible to stop the body fluids from poisoning the meat.
It took him a while to reach the spot where the deer lay on its back. As he did so, he thought once more with amazement that the world truly did teem with mysteries.
For instance, how could the deer, lying in its own blood, lift its head towards him, even though his best bullet had hit it right in the heart? How could the deer speak, speak like a human being and not an animal?
What Keller saw as he got to the circular clearing in the forest was no longer the deer, its chest torn apart by the bullet, but little Elisabeth propped up on the bale of hay, her hands on her stomach, her little dress stained with blood. Sweet little Elisabeth staring at him with those wide-open eyes of hers, eyes full of mystery and questions. “Why? Why? Why are you doing this to me?”
Keller dropped his knife.
“Why? Why? Why do you want to kill me?”
Keller rubbed his eyes, pressing hard until lights flashed in the darkness behind his closed lids. He opened them again and was astonished to see that Elisabeth was still there, looking at him and asking, “Why? Why? Why do you want to hurt me?”
He went closer.
“I’m hungry,” Elisabeth whimpered. “Give me something to eat, Sim’l. Why won’t you give me something to eat? I’m so hungry. Please.”
Keller looked at the little girl in the blood-stained dress, the blue flames glowing in her eyes, and his shock was swept away.
Just as when Voter Luis had grabbed the knife to kill Elisabeth, Keller understood.
The Voice.
The Voice that had been with him all his life belonged to Lissy. It had always been her. She was not up there, at Mutti’s side. She had always been at his side. Always. She had never abandoned him. He had never been alone.
“Sweet Sim’l,” she whispered. “Little Sim’l . . .”
Keller’s eyes filled with tears. He kneeled in the snow and took her in his arms. Her hair smelled of hay and sunshine – and blood. He cradled her.
“I’m so hungry, Sim’l. Why won’t you give me something to eat?”
He stroked her hair, then moved her face away from his chest in order to reply.
He heard a noise behind him and turned with a start.
He smiled.
Yes, the universe truly did teem with mysteries.
71
His name was Alex and he was a poacher.
Not that he was born that way, as he insisted on saying whenever he got close to someone, usually after the third beer. He was not yet thirty and had never turned down a job in his life. He had been born to get his hands dirty.
But he was not stupid. He was sensible. He knew he was often asked to do things that went beyond legality. Poaching was just one of many examples. He was not proud of it, but when the owner of the sawmill had made him redundant Alex had had to make his principles a little more flexible.
Poaching was a good way of scraping together a few pennies. It was hard work, bu
t he had never been put off by hard work. Of course, life at the sawmill had been something else. Set working hours, a routine as comfortable as a pair of old slippers. You could tell the odd joke, have a laugh. He had liked that job.
Then the Arabs in the Middle East started throwing tantrums, there was a crisis, and he was made redundant.
Staff cuts. The first time he had heard that expression, he had thought of a huge butcher’s counter, its tiles spattered with blood, on which Herr Egger, the sawmill owner, had put him and three of his other colleagues to turn them into sausages and fillets. The other three had cried and begged, one of them had turned to the unions, but Alex, realising it was a lost cause, had not been discouraged. He was strong and was not afraid of elbow grease. Plus, unlike his colleagues, he was a bachelor and had no mouths to feed. He had started looking for a new job.
He had to admit it, the past summer had been fun. He had cut hay and repaired roofs: plenty of fresh air, a healthy lifestyle. Best of all had been the month he had spent working in the market. It had been an opportunity to meet a lot of people and watch girls’ legs as they walked down the street.
Winter, though, had been another story. No seasonal jobs, no jobs indoors where it was warm. No prospects. His savings had shrunk to almost zero. So he had started smuggling rucksacks full of cigarettes across the border and poaching. Restaurant owners were not interested in where this or that stag came from. Their only concern was to get meat at a reasonable price, and Alex was always prepared to haggle. He enjoyed it. He found it fun.
The actual poaching wasn’t bad either, apart from the cold. Sometimes he was so cold he felt like weeping. But not for long. Work was work, and he was born to work hard. Sooner or later, winter would be over and he would go back to working in the market. Pretty girls, jokes, nice things to eat.
Alex had come all the way up here on the trail of a deer. A nice large female. That same deer the old man in black had killed with a shot that had drawn a whistle of admiration from him. A hundred metres, was it? A hundred and fifty?
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