by Håkan Nesser
My contact with private detective Maertens was regular, as we had agreed on. On Mondays and Thursdays I took the route past his office on Prohaskaplein after my work day at the library, and each time he just shrugged a little apologetically and explained that no leads had yet been discovered.
After a series of such visits, I had undeniably started to lose heart. Maertens never seemed the least bit embarrassed that he hadn’t achieved any results, and the arrangement had already cost a fair amount. At last I asked him flat out if he thought there was any prospect at all of succeeding, but he only answered that it was impossible to make a prognosis.
When I left the detective bureau that evening – it must have been sometime in mid-February – I had a grinding sense of discouragement. I had single-mindedly and slowly worked my way up to page ninety in Rein’s manuscript, over halfway in other words, but the past few days’ progress had been sluggish. The language was virtually impenetrable in numerous places, and even if I was now rather easily finding the right expressions and formulations, I often thought that the text did not give any meaning at all. No meaning that I was in a position to discover, in any case. Just a hopeless uncontrolled inner monologue, most often placed with the protagonist R, dream-like here and there, constructed of words and text masses instead of images. My suspicions of a hidden message increasingly seemed to amount to nothing, and the only thing I had to look forward to, I assumed, was an additional seventy pages of the same mush. It can’t be denied either that I started wondering what readers this subjective, concrete prose could actually find, and whether Kerr and Amundsen were actually making a fuss about nothing and rubbing their hands together too soon.
The ‘Like the poet’ sentence was of course still there to brood about, but that these seven words would constitute the whole point of this posthumous text seemed rather unlikely, to me anyway.
When I stepped into Nemesis that evening – yes, I am rather certain that it was just 15 February – I know that most of all I had a desire to tell Rein to go to hell. Upon closer reflection, however, I realized that was probably exactly what he’d already done.
I had two beers standing up, then I continued straight home. My mail was on the stairs, consisting for the day of a single, rather thick letter, and when I saw the return address I understood that Kerr had finally sent the account of Rein’s death I had asked for. (It was only long afterwards that I found out about the accident with his daughter, which naturally was the reason that he took so long.)
Sometime later, I was sitting in the armchair with a cup of tea and Beatrice over my feet, reading Kerr’s account. It was six pages long, he had undeniably exerted himself to some extent, and when I was done, I immediately went through it all one more time.
There was no particularly noteworthy information as such, nothing I didn’t know already, but now when I had all the circumstances served up in this compressed way, I thought I sensed one or two points in common with the text I was in the process of translating. Nothing I could immediately put my finger on, but I decided to go through what I had written down so far as carefully as possible the next day, to see if that possibly might produce something.
Externally, at first glance, not much mystery rested over Rein’s death. On Friday 19 November he had gone with his wife and his publisher to the couple’s house out by Behrensee. After an evening and night of rather heavy drinking, the wife had woken up at some point around lunchtime the following day, and sometime later found a farewell letter that was still in the typewriter. It was brief and perhaps not completely unambiguous (the exact wording had not, however, been leaked to the press), but when Rein’s motorboat was found the following evening, abandoned and striking against the stones in a bay a dozen kilometres further north along the coast, the connection, of course, started to be sensed. The police were contacted, but it took, as stated, almost a week before Mariam Kadhar went along with the fact that her famous husband actually made his way out to sea that night, or early in the morning, and then took his life by putting himself in the embrace of the water. The only passage of the letter that leaked out was: ‘I am carrying our old bronze woman with me, so at least I avoid coming up to the surface and embarrassing you all . . .’
The old bronze sculpture, a piece weighing almost fifteen kilograms, was indeed missing, and it was thus presumed that Rein had tied it firmly to his body somehow before he heaved himself overboard.
It was thus based on the position of the found boat, prevailing wind and current conditions, plus the combined weight of Rein and the bronze woman, that one then tried to make calculations about where the physical remains of Germund Rein had probably found their final destination. The margin for error was great, naturally, and the prognosis that dragging him up would be successful was about as good as finding the sunken Atlantis. Consequently, they had refrained from trying – other than as much as was required to show a little goodwill, anyway.
Concerning the reasons for Rein’s suicide, there were different reactions and theories, but at this point none of them showed any major deviations from what usually comes out in such circumstances.
Why had he done it? Should someone have understood? Hadn’t he sent any signals? And so on.
But what do we actually know about what goes on inside those nearest to us and about their deepest motives? This byline of Bejman summarized general opinion in Allgemejne. Nothing at all.
That was it, the extent of Kerr’s account. He had some questions too: in particular, of course, he wanted to know what I would do with it. Because I hardly knew that myself, I had no intention whatsoever of doing as he wished and sending a written report. Instead, I put the sheets of paper back in the envelope, got up and stood by the window, and yet again observed the decreasing movements out on Ferdinand Bol. A feeling of the enormous emptiness and futility of everything hung over me for several minutes, I recall that I smoked a cigarette and thought about whether it actually was possible to kill yourself if you simply jumped head first down onto the pavement. I hardly believed it. Presumably I would only inflict some kind of depressing and lasting disability on myself, which there would truly be no point to.
When these feelings ebbed out, in their place came a little wave of energy, and I decided to make cautious contact with Mariam Kadhar. Whether there would be any point to this was of course written in the stars, but it is just when we make these decisions, whose consequences we cannot foresee, that we feel dynamism bubble a little in our sclerotic veins.
I know that I’m quoting, don’t recall who.
When we arrived at Graues, our village in the mountains, it was early morning and we’d been driving all night. More correctly, I had been driving all night, while Ewa was lying in the back seat asleep under our blue-checked blanket from Biarritz. At least for the past few hours, while I listened to Poulenc and Satie on the car radio and saw the darkness rise out of the valleys.
It was a beautiful morning, without a doubt. The houses, the narrow alleys, the mountains and the whole world were washed clean and innocent. I parked on the sloping, uneven pommerstone square, got out of the car and rinsed the fatigue out of my face in the quietly purling fountain. The sun was just coming over the ridge in the east and cast a gentle glow across the sleeping facades. I stood and looked at them while the water dripped from my hair and I thought that, when it’s early morning, you can feel a sense of homecoming in any place whatsoever in the world. Then I woke Ewa, and I remember my disappointment that she wasn’t able to step out of her own tiredness and experience this eternal, quickly passing moment just as strongly as I did.
We found our way to our hotel, which was located a bit outside the community itself, clinging to the middle of a rather steep mountain slope and with an endless view of the peaks on the other side of the valley. We checked in, Ewa went back to sleep and I did too, after a while.
It was a tourist village, naturally, but mostly with an emphasis on winter and when, a few hours into the afternoon, we made an initial reconnaissa
nce tour, we discovered that there were blessedly few Germans and bleating Americans. We had dinner at one of three Gasthof, and when we were done Ewa said that it truly pained her that we couldn’t continue to be together. I asked a little sarcastically when her lover could be expected to show up, and she explained that he was already on the scene. In a little village in the next valley, to be more precise, and she had promised to call him that same evening.
We paid and went back to the hotel. Shared a bottle of wine on our balcony, and while we sat there she left me for a few minutes to make a phone call from down in reception. She soon came back and I now noticed that she was surrounded by that kind of transfigured light that I had sometimes seen in her in the time after we were first together. I poured more wine in the glasses and swore to myself that I would never, never ever, let any other man have her.
Somewhat later we made love. Hard and brutal, as we did sometimes, and afterwards, when she returned from the bathroom, she said, ‘That was the last time. I know that I’m hurting you, but that was the last time we made love.’
Suddenly I felt simply tired and irritated, especially at that meaningless nagging that she was hurting me.
‘You’re mine, Ewa,’ I said. ‘Don’t imagine anything else.’
She did not reply and we lay there silently for quite a long time before we fell asleep. Perhaps I sensed already that she really meant what she had said, and that I actually was already a loser. I know that now of course, but the way you choose to lose is not inessential.
After approximately ninety-five pages, Rein’s text suddenly became clearer. On one of the grey days of pouring rain around 20 February, I translated the following paragraph:
R’s obsession, to with thought and word divest every situation of its content, its facticity, its essence, is not only this simple. Is also to conquer and to subdue reality. The disclosure, the capacity to put it under the pen is to conquer it. M and G. To be able down to the last letter to describe and expose what it is that is going on, is to make them into nothing. So he believes, in this frenzy he makes notes day and night, with these weapons he objectifies and kills; kills and kills, and nonetheless they stand there. M and G. Stand there, things-in-themselves, two things, one thing, everything, and this cursed obsession only turns the spear and the knives against his own sunken chest. They and he. He and they. He knows. She knows. G knows. He must get out of his head now. Out of his heart. Must find a cliff for perspective, must get clear, understand. What do they intend to do? What are the plans, what kind of future are they chiselling out with this endless watchful carefulness? Suddenly, one evening at Dagoville, his fear gets a new name. An infernal name. He fears for his life. R fears. He picks up the pen and starts writing, it is now he gets started in earnest and this night and coming nights he is anchored in this fear.
I leant back. Looked around the room. The lamps were on at only two of the other tables; it was the usual old visitors – an elderly Jew with a white beard and skull cap who always sat here on Thursdays and Fridays and seemed occupied with some sort of Cabbalistic texts, and a woman in her forties who would come in now and then and with gloomy sighs sit over thick anatomy books for a few hours at a time.
Outside the window the rain came down steadily, across the street the yellow lanterns at Cafe Vlissingen had been lit. Of all the infinite cafes in this city, I think it was Vlissingen that had become my favourite place, I don’t know why. Nothing other than a subtle balance between a series of inessentials, presumably, but I understood that if I were ever to come to live permanently in A., this is where I would be a regular. I packed up my books and left my work table. My thoughts needed a beer and a cigarette, I felt that clearly, and when I looked back I realized that I hadn’t eaten anything the whole day other than the four biscuits that accompanied my daily cup of tea.
R is afraid? I thought while I crossed Moerkerstraat. They and he? He and they?
I experienced a sudden feeling that I was out walking on thin ice.
Mariam Kadhar was a chain smoker.
She was a thin, dark little woman with Levantine features and a sensuality that was felt in the air. Presumably she was making an effort to restrain it. Without success: with or against her will, she was the sort of woman who gives an impression that she was naked twenty seconds before you met her. And of being so again twenty seconds after you’ve left. I introduced myself.
‘You were the one who called?’
‘Yes, I hope I’m not disturbing you, as I said.’
‘Have we met before?’
‘I don’t believe so. I wouldn’t have forgotten that.’
She took that in without blinking, and started showing me further into the house. In what must have been Rein’s library and study she had set out a tray with port wine, nuts and dried fruits on a little smoke-coloured glass table. The walls were covered with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, through a large panorama window you could look out towards the overgrown garden, which sloped down towards one of the canals. I tried to orient myself and decided that it must be Prinzengracht.
We sat down, and suddenly I wished that I was somewhere else. Or that I was sitting here, but that I was someone else. The sensation was rather strong and I remember that I closed my eyes hard and quickly to shake it off, which I won’t maintain succeeded very well.
‘You’ve translated my husband’s books?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which ones?’
I listed the titles. She nodded weakly several times, as if she remembered them one by one as I mentioned them. As if each book were also a part of her own life, it struck me. It was not unreasonable to assume that it really was that way.
‘You were married a long time?’
‘Fifteen years.’
I cleared my throat.
‘Well, I was in the neighbourhood, as I said. Wanted to convey my condolences. I liked him a lot . . . his books, that is. We only met a couple of times . . .’
Blather. She nodded again and lit a new cigarette. Poured the port, we toasted vaguely and without a word.
‘He talked about you sometimes,’ she said. ‘I think he appreciated your translations.’
‘Really? That makes me happy . . . it must be hard for you?’
She hesitated a moment.
‘Yes,’ she said then. ‘I assume that it’s hard. But I probably haven’t got used to it yet . . . even though several months have passed. Don’t know if I have the desire to get used to it either. You have to be able to live in darkness, too.’
‘Is it painful for you to talk about him?’
‘Not at all. I keep him alive that way. I’ve reread several of his books too. It’s . . . it’s as if they’ve gained a new meaning, I don’t know if it’s just personal . . . because I was so close to him, I mean.’
I understood that no more opportune moment would come up.
‘Forgive me for asking, but what was he working on before he died? What was he writing, that is?’
‘Why do you ask that?’
I shrugged and tried to look apologetic.
‘I don’t know. Just thought there was a line in his works that pointed ahead towards something . . . but there wasn’t anything else?’
‘Yes, of course he was writing.’
‘Yes?’
‘We just don’t know where it went.’
‘What do you mean?’
She hesitated again. Took a few quick puffs on her cigarette. I happened to think that the nerves of a person who chain-smokes like this could naturally not be in such great shape. Perhaps in reality she was more tormented by the conversation than I was. It was a thought that carried with it a sensation that I still had control. Vague and quickly passing, I think.
‘He was occupied with a manuscript the whole autumn, all the way until . . . well, until his death. It’s not around. Perhaps he destroyed it. Burned it or . . . took it with him.’
‘What was it about?’
She sighed.
‘I do
n’t know. He was secretive, he always was, but I think he was satisfied with it, because it occupied him. It showed on him.’
‘He was a great author.’
She smiled quickly.
‘I know.’
I drank a little port. Wished I had been in a position where I could continue asking questions. About why he had taken his life. About why she refused to accept it.
If she possibly had a lover whose name was G.
Naturally that was out of the question. Instead we talked a while about some of his books, primarily the two most recent ones, which I translated during an intensive eight-month period a couple of years ago and still had fresh in my memory, and we both expressed our regret that he had taken his last book with him into death. After approximately twenty minutes, it felt clear that she was bothered by my presence, and I understood that it was time to leave her alone.
At the door she stopped me a second.
‘I still don’t understand why you wanted to see me. Was there really nothing else?’
‘I’ve bothered you.’
‘No, not at all. I just got an impression . . .’
‘What kind of impression?’
‘That you had something more important on your mind.’
I tried to smile.
‘Excuse me. Not at all. I’m a great admirer of your husband’s writings, that’s all.’
She looked up at me, she must have been twenty-five centimetres shorter than me, and as we stood there in the doorway rather close to each other, I suddenly understood how it would feel to press her head against my chest. She held my gaze an extra second; then she took half a step backwards and we said goodbye without making contact.
Out on the street there was snow in the air. Big, heavy flakes floated slowly down between the dark houses, and I remember that I tried to catch a few of them with my outstretched hands, but they didn’t even seem to tolerate the nearness of my skin.
No contact here, either.