by Håkan Nesser
‘Don’t get too close. Are we supposed to get out and have a look?’
‘No. We’re going to take a little flight. You’re up for that, aren’t you?’
And at that point, before Daniel Fremont had time to grasp what was about to happen, they were only fifteen or twenty metres from the edge of the quarry. Robert Bendler kept the accelerator pedal pressed to the floor, a shower of gravel and stones flew from the spinning tyres while his passenger tried in vain to grab the wheel; and, as if projected from a cannon, they carried straight on, out into the void.
‘I’m not Tom Bendler,’ Daniel screamed. ‘I’m someone else.’
‘Someone else? And now you tell me?’ Robert Bendler had time to say, before they hit the ground in an explosion of stones, splintered glass, metal, burning petrol and body parts. A landing strip called Death.
The monk by the sea was standing in the same place.
Turned away, perhaps so that he didn’t have to see. Maybe the ocean he was surveying drowned out the sounds of what was being said in the dark consulting room too. Was that what Maria Rosenberg was thinking when she chose the painting? Not beyond the bounds of possibility.
They drank tea as usual. The therapist had hurt her hand and Judith had helped with serving it. It was the fifteenth of December and their first meeting after the funeral.
‘You must be feeling dreadful. Your husband and your missing son . . . both at the same time. What happened?’
‘I think they’d made a deal. It must have been something like that.’
‘A deal? What kind of deal?’
Judith looked at the monk. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t even know they’d gone off in the car.’
‘But it was your husband who was driving?’
‘Yes. There wasn’t much left, of the car or their bodies . . . but yes, at least that could be established.’
‘And no skid marks? I’m sorry . . . I’ve been reading the papers.’
Judith drank some tea. ‘No, he must have done it deliberately.’
‘He took his own life and your son’s at the same time?’
‘Apparently.’
‘Would you like to talk about it? We can save it if you like.’
She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t want to save it. I want . . . I think I want to get through it and move on.’
‘That’s good. It’s important for you to be able to look forwards.’
‘Thank you. I’m trying, at least.’
‘Are you sleeping at night?’
‘So-so.’
‘Are you eating properly?’
‘Not much, but sufficient.’
‘That’s good enough. You’ve been through an enormous amount recently and it’s important for you to be able to concentrate on simple, everyday things. And to get some rest. Would you like me to ask you one or two questions, or would you prefer to hold the conductor’s baton yourself?’
The therapist gave her kindly smile.
‘You’re welcome to ask.’
‘All right. Which is the harder to bear, that Robert is gone, or that your son turned up and disappeared? If you can separate them?’
Judith considered the question.
‘When all’s said and done, that Robert’s gone.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, even though I knew he was dying. When I try to think about Tom, I just get confused . . . I thought he was an imposter when he arrived. I was quite sure he was dead. And suddenly he is . . . properly dead. Sometimes it feels as though I dreamt it all. And then . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘And then, I can’t understand what happened . . . It’s difficult. Why Robert did what he did. And I’ll never get an answer.’
Maria Rosenberg nodded.
‘Probably not. But you ask yourself all the time?’
‘More or less.’
‘It’s not been a month yet. There’s an old method for dealing with questions that have no answer.’
‘A method?’
‘Yes. Stop asking them . . . the questions.’
She smiled again. Deep in thought, Judith drank more tea.
‘What are you thinking?’
‘That Robert never agreed to have him declared dead. He was right on that point. And then Tom comes home after twenty-two years, and . . .’
‘. . . is pronounced dead,’ the therapist filled the pause. ‘You know, Judith, many things have been discussed in this room – I’ve been sitting here listening for over forty years – but your story surpasses almost all of them. I’m glad to see you coping so well, despite everything.’
‘I have a very good therapist, that makes it easier.’
‘Thank you. But are you intending to stay in the house?’
‘I think so.’
‘Don’t do anything hasty. How’s the dog?’
‘He’s old, but I hope he’s still got a year or two left.’
‘Excellent. And Christmas?’
‘I’ve had a few invitations, but I think I’ll stay at home.’
‘You’re not afraid of being lonely?’
‘No. I’ve got a big edit to get through.’
‘Of course. What’s this one? Erasmus?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well then. As for me, I’m going away over the festivities, but I’ll be back in the new year. Shall we book another session for the beginning of January?’
Judith gazed at the monk again. His enigmatic figure and his absolute integrity.
‘No, thank you. I think maybe we should have a break. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’d like to see if I can manage on my own.’
Wrinkles appeared on Maria Rosenberg’s brow, but were instantly smoothed away.
‘My dear friend, that sounds like an absolutely excellent suggestion. But you must promise me one thing. Get in touch if you ever feel you need a cup of tea.’
‘I promise,’ Judith Bendler said.
SIX
Wanaka, New Zealand, 1996
The treatment centre was on the side of a hill with a view over Roy’s Bay, and it was his third.
Both of the previous establishments had been on the North Island, one on the outskirts of Auckland, and the other in Hastings. Neither of them had worked; he had run away from one and been thrown out of the other. But they were a long time ago, at least ten years before he ended up in Queenstown.
This third place was called My Brother’s and Sister’s Keeper, a somewhat biblical name, and the reason he had finished up here was that he had met an angel. She was called Norah and one morning when he opened his eyes in the hospital in Queenstown, she was sitting by his bed. At first he thought he was dead and had, by some procedural error, been sent to heaven, but then he felt a sudden stab of heartburn and realized he was still alive. Whatever went on up there with Our Lord, it didn’t include heartburn.
How he came to be in hospital was rather unclear. He remembered nothing about it, but someone had supposedly found him in a ditch somewhere near Promised Land. When he eventually regained consciousness, a bearded doctor informed him that if he didn’t immediately give up all forms of drugs, including alcohol, he would be dead within six months.
At which point he would not be rubbing shoulders with angels; the bearded doctor didn’t mention that, but he worked it out for himself.
But then one day – he must have been in for at least a week, detoxed and cared for as well as possible and soon to be discharged – she was sitting there. Angel Norah Perkins. She was around twenty-five, with blonde, slightly curly hair and skin that looked as though it were made of marzipan and porcelain. And eyes as blue as lavender.
The first thing she said when she opened her rose-red lips was: ‘I’ve come to help you find the narrow road. You’ve been travelling too long on the broad one.’
He tried to reply, but could only emit a sorrowful wheeze. When she handed him a glass of water and her fingers brushed his, he almost fainted, but recovered himself.
‘We h
ave a home up in Wanaka. I’ve been sent to collect you.’
He took a deep gulp of water and said: ‘I’m a bad person.’
She smiled. ‘Through faith you’ll become a better person. But it’s up to you whether you want to come with me or not.’
He considered it for a second.
‘I’ll come.’
‘Hallelujah,’ said the angel.
That was in February. Now it was November; he had been staying at My Brother’s and Sister’s Keeper for more than six months and it wasn’t an exaggeration to say he was a new man. A better person. A humble believer.
Drug-free for the first time in twenty-five years. It was Norah Perkins who had saved his life, just as she had promised she would. He knew that if she had been an overweight sixty-three-year-old cripple with a hairy wart on her cheek, instead of the lovely creature she was, he might never have gone to Wanaka. But the Lord moves in mysterious ways, and even if he had fallen in love the moment he saw her, he had been released. She was an instrument of God, and you don’t flirt with an angel.
The treatment centre really was a home. He thought that in some ways it was his first home. He had recounted his life story at the meetings that were held three times a week. With honesty, repentance and as well as he could remember. Other residents had told their stories, each worse than the one before, but that was the way to move on. The narrow road had no shortcuts; the only way to be forgiven and born again was to open one’s heart.
He would have liked to stay on the green hillside overlooking Roy’s Bay for the rest of his life, but that was not to be. He knew he had to venture out into the world, perhaps bear witness to the Gospel, and one evening he had a conversation with Norah herself about what he should do and how.
Not least about where he should go. She was familiar with his background in detail – apart from a certain stabbing, which he had kept to himself for the sake of everyone involved – and she offered a tentative suggestion.
‘How would it feel to go back?’
‘I don’t know,’ was his honest reply. ‘But I suspect there’s only one way to find out.’
‘Go where your heart takes you,’ Norah Perkins instructed him. ‘For God lives in your heart and He will not fail you.’
He nodded, and so it was decided.
‘You need to get in touch first and find out how things are,’ said Norah; there were times when she sounded less like an angel than others.
‘Will you help me find the telephone number?’ he asked. ‘If I can borrow the phone, that is?’
She nodded. That was no problem. There were generally no problems at all at the treatment centre My Brother’s and Sister’s Keeper.
He made the call one morning in the middle of September, without considering the time difference. There was a slight interference on the line. Like waves breaking on a pebble beach.
‘Hello?’
‘Judith Bendler?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Tom.’
REIN
Translated from the Swedish by Paul Norlen
Adapted into the film Death of an Author
ONE
I had two reasons to travel to A., perhaps three, and because my intention is to recount everything as precisely as I’m able, this is the starting point I choose. The journey to A.
As I see it in this unwritten present, of course there is a risk that things will run together, become unclear. That perhaps I haven’t fully succeeded in separating all the events and connections, and then of course it’s a good rule of thumb to use the chronology that is available anyway. Even if – at least this is my hope – I have not yielded to the temptation to venture too far back in the warp of time.
Who can say when something actually begins?
Who?
The first reason was thus that radio concert. Beethoven’s Violin Concerto; as commonly known it is in D minor, probably written in 1806, originally for the violinist Franz Clement, and it is said that Beethoven himself considered it such a masterpiece that he never bothered to write anything else in that genre. Unsurpassable, in other words.
True to habit I had curled up on the Barnesdale sofa with a couple of blankets over my legs. A glass of port was within comfortable reach on the table, accompanied by a bowl of nuts and a single wax candle. I recall that it struck me how the slightly flickering cone of light somehow seemed to embody the distance between myself and the music; the impenetrable land, that fuzzy but definite boundary between me and it. Outside, a persistent rain lashed against the window. We had arrived in the middle of November and the weather was the way it usually is this time of year. Dark, wet and gloomy. Gusts of wind swept through streets and alleyways, and in the past few weeks the temperature had alternated between zero and a few degrees above. At the most.
The broadcast started a few minutes after eight o’clock and I soon found myself in that state which encompasses both strong concentration and relaxation, and which is so characteristic, possibly even unique, of a good experience of music. Perhaps I also fell asleep for a few minutes, but I am nonetheless certain that I did not miss out on a single note of Corrado Blanchetti’s superb playing.
The cough came right at the end, during the very quietest part of the rondo, and thus it gave me something of a shock. I have reflected a great deal both on the sound and on my reaction to it, and I know that actually no doubt prevails in either respect. It was an electric shock, to put it simply. Electro-emotional; I was immediately sent into a state of trauma, and it went on for some time while I numbly listened to the final chord of the concerto, to the subsequent applause and to the announcer who explained that we had just enjoyed Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in a recording made by the radio symphony in A. The soloist had been Corrado Blanchetti and the date of the event was 4 May that same year.
I don’t want to deny that there was still some intellectual doubt from the very first moment. In no way was I foreign to the possibility that I could have heard wrong. That I was mistaken. I truly reasoned and rejected and contrafabulated quite a bit about this momentary auditory memory; I am not really a person who likes making decisions on the fly, but deep down – in the protected space of emotion – I knew of course that I was not at all mistaken.
It was her. It was Ewa’s cough. Somewhere in the audience during this more than six-month-old recording my missing wife had been sitting, and through a slight throat irritation she was unable to suppress, I got the first sign of life from her in over three years.
A cough from A. One and a half minutes from the end of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D minor. Of course, it may seem peculiar that something like that can happen at all, but in the light of much else, of what had affected me both earlier and later, for example, it does not seem particularly sensational.
It took me over a week – nine days, to be exact – to get hold of the recording from the classical music station (my tape recorder had unfortunately not been turned on during the broadcast, because I forgot to buy tape), but to the degree doubt had managed to sink its claws in me during this waiting period, they immediately released their hold when I sat down and listened again. Four or five times I wound backwards and forwards over the place in question, and each time I tried both to be neutral and to sharpen my attention before the sound.
Of course I can’t describe it. Are there even words for something like a cough? It strikes me what a small part of our reality and our impressions of it actually fall within the domains of language. So while it is completely possible for me, by means of a single brief auditory impression, to distinguish what is characteristic in a specific person’s cough – among millions – I hardly have an adequate word or expression to describe this sound. I assume that a precise distinction could be achieved by means of comparative audio frequency graphs and similar technicalities, but as far as I am concerned, from the very beginning this aspect has been both superfluous and uninteresting.
It was Ewa who coughed. On 4 May she had been sitting down there i
n A., listening to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto; I had known it at once when I heard it, and I knew it just as strongly after having listened again.
She was alive. Alive and somewhere. At least she was six months ago.
And that gave me a shock, as I said.
The other reason to travel to A. turned up about two weeks after the radio concert. Early one morning my publisher, Arnold Kerr, called me up and reported that Rein was dead, and that he had just received his new manuscript.
Naturally this sounded both puzzling and a bit contradictory, and the same day we met at the Cloister Cellar over the lunch hour to discuss the story.
Discuss the little there was to go on at this point, that is. Yes, Rein was dead, Kerr noted, poking a little apathetically at the fettuccini with his fork. Unclear circumstances, but he hadn’t been particularly healthy in recent years, so in a way perhaps it was no surprise. I tried to find out the details, naturally, but Kerr mostly sat shrugging his shoulders defensively, and it soon emerged that he didn’t know all that much about what had happened. He had only received the news by phone; Zimmerman had called the night before from A. and reported the fact, and Kerr assumed that all the detailed circumstances would come out in a press release, which admittedly seemed to be unusually long in coming, but which would probably show up before evening. Rein had been a well-known figure after all, both in his homeland and here and there in other parts of the civilized world.
Austere and considered a little difficult perhaps, but read and appreciated, to be sure. And translated into a dozen languages. It was here I came into the picture; or had come in, rather. Rein’s earlier works – The Tschandala Suite and the essays – Henry Darke had still interpreted and translated into our language, but as of Kroull’s Silence I had taken over. Darke’s illness put a stop to all translation assignments, and in several conversations I had also understood that he had never really been satisfied either with his final texts or with the relationship with Rein himself. At one of our last meetings – only a month or so before Darke’s decease – he actually stated that Rein inspired a sense of repugnance in him; at that time I had not yet met Rein personally and thought of course that sounded a bit peculiar, but over the years I have come to understand Darke’s standpoint more and more, I don’t want to deny that. True, I have not met Rein on more than four or five occasions, but I have been undeniably struck by something hard to digest in his personality. I have never quite managed to clarify where it came from, but the feeling has been there nonetheless.