Intrigo

by Håkan Nesser

  So rely on me, dear Henny, I am going to manage this. Now just give me a couple of dates and a couple of places to choose from, then I promise to leave word in my next letter about how many days your husband still has left to live.

  Otherwise – during my absence – we have finally got a little snow here in Gobshejm, and the river is frozen over. What is it like in Grothenburg?

  Wonders your devoted

  Agnes

  P.S. Once again a thought pops up when I think I’m through writing. Do you know if any other people know about David’s infidelity? Friends, acquaintances? It’s often the case, after all, that people choose to keep silent about knowledge of this type – out of some sort of misdirected consideration, I think, which actually is only an expression of cowardice and comfort.

  And does anyone know that you have found out about it? Right offhand I cannot assess whether these questions are significant or not, but you can always take them into consideration anyway.

  The dogs are restless, especially Wagner. Maybe it was too much to leave them with the Barth family for two weeks, but that usually works without a hitch. Maybe it is also Erich’s absence that enters into it, yes, naturally it must be that way: a sort of accumulated sense of loss that floats up to the surface when I too was away from them for a time.

  For my part, I catch myself feeling a certain sense of loss too. For Erich, that is. Even if we had no love life the last few years and were actually never very close to each other, there had been good times. At long last I realize that perhaps it is only retroactively that we can understand ourselves. It was never the fire or the leap I was seeking when I chose Erich, naturally not, but life is not primarily constructed from these elements either. Requires their presence in a different way, I think. A sort of . . . well, what shall I say? . . . a sort of illusory companion perhaps? Possibilities that are awaiting off-stage and that wait to make an entrance in the event that.

  If it were to be so.

  Words. I am tired. Had a hard time sleeping in New York. An effect of jet lag presumably, although it is usually worse in the other direction. Woke up often at three o’clock in the morning and could not fall asleep for several hours. Tried to read but concentration failed me. Wrote a couple of letters to Henny but tore them up. In the end I mostly sat and stared at miserable movies on the TV, or listened to music on my portable CD player. Coltrane and Dexter Gordon, two of Erich’s favourites that I have taken over. Sat there above Central Park’s Magritte-like inaccessibility, that is, and tried to imagine how everything would work out. What life is going to look like in three or six or twelve months. I felt no worry, I don’t now either, only a kind of restrained, reluctant fascination. I hadn’t thought that I would need to kill again, but the conditions are clearly such – just as definitive as unpredictable, another sort of companion in the wings evidently, and once they come forward and introduce themselves suddenly you no longer have any choice. Once they have stepped onto the stage, so it is.

  Two weeks still remain before classes start. It’s nice. I seem to have an excessive need for rest and reflection this winter. Spend almost no time with people. Spend time with the dogs instead – with thoughts about my beloved and about the future.

  We are sitting at a table in the school cafe when I see that Henny and Tristram Singh are holding hands with each other. It is a Friday in early March, the sun filters in through crooked Venetian blinds and stripes part of Henny’s hair and her left shoulder; there are half a dozen of us, empty coffee cups and cigarette butts in the ashtray. Schoolbooks. A scattered deck of cards.

  They are holding hands so tenderly somehow, almost shyly, I don’t think they want any of us to notice it. Halfway under the tabletop, it seems.

  Or perhaps it is actually the other way around. Perhaps in reality they feel that we must notice it, but through this studied modesty?

  I experience a moment of dizziness and then a sudden, strong nausea. The vomiting reflex that shoots up inside me is so powerful that I just barely manage to force it back. I get up quickly, my chair tips over and falls backwards on the floor, I rush out without a word.

  In the toilet I empty out of me all I’ve eaten during the day, all I’ve eaten during my life, it feels like that, and while I am down on all fours retching, a splitting headache comes. Razor sharp and with white heat.

  What is happening? I think.

  Am I dying?

  It is not death. It is something else. I dream about these two hands braided into each other, the one white, the other mildly bronze-coloured. I have not spoken with Henny in a couple of days, which in itself is unusual; after my attack at the school cafe I have been home sick in my room. I don’t know, by the way, whether I am sick, I have decided to stay in bed for a while, simply. When Henny finally calls I say that I have a fever, I do not ask any questions about anything and I notice that Henny has a hard time with words.

  My mother sends for Dr Moessner who does not find anything wrong with me. Diagnoses me preliminarily as overexerted and recommends rest and fruit juices.

  On Friday, after a week, I am better and return to Weiver’s. I have missed a maths test, but that’s not the end of the world. Henny and a few other classmates ask if I want to go out in the evening. Vlissingen as usual, and then there is a rock concert at Embargo Club at Kleinmarkt. I decline, blame it on my having been sick; I have my eyes on Tristram and Henny the whole day, but see no handholding and feel no unseemly vibrations.

  But I am harbouring a sort of muteness and a thwarted agitation, which I almost cannot conceal.

  ‘What’s going on with you?’ Henny says after the last class.

  ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Don’t get any ideas.’

  ‘Get ideas?’ Henny says. ‘What ideas should I get?’

  ‘Don’t show off,’ I say.

  It is an unbelievably silly conversation, but we go through with it dutifully. Henny observes her brick-coloured nails for a while.

  ‘Is it because of that thing at the cafe?’ she asks.

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about,’ I say.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Henny says.

  ‘What is it that’s nothing?’ I ask.

  ‘Nothing,’ Henny says with a sigh. ‘Nothing is anything. Why are you so peevish?’

  ‘I’ve been sick,’ I say.

  Henny looks at the clock and we go our separate ways.

  The following week my mother travels to Bodensee for a conference. Tuesday to Thursday. I am alone in the apartment. On Wednesday I convince Tristram Singh to visit me in the evening and help me with maths. Besides English, Tristram has started participating seriously in mathematics instruction; obviously he has both greater aptitude and more solid knowledge in this subject than any of the rest of us, and it does not have to mean there are any ulterior motives in my inviting him. Not at all. Since my sick week I am behind; I don’t tell him that my mother is away until he is sitting on the couch.

  It takes three hours and a lovely acting talent that I didn’t know I had to seduce him; we finish a bottle of wine that I swipe from my mother’s supply in the pantry; I have never seduced anyone before and it is the first time whatsoever that I make love.

  It’s the first time for Tristram too. He tells me afterwards; I notice his worry but I convince him to sleep over. It isn’t possible for a young Indian to come home smelling of wine and love, I say. He calls his mother, they speak for a good while in a language I don’t understand. But I understand that he is lying to her. I think he says that he is at home with one of the boys in the class and that the last bus has gone.

  I love his nakedness; both the nakedness of his soul and his body. We don’t sleep at all that night, we touch each other as you can only touch each other the very first time. And possibly the very last. When the beaker and the content are one. Word and hand. Thought, mouth and sex. A wax candle is burning beside us in a bottle, a week later I write in an essay about fire that is reflected and shadowed and watered in soft bron
ze-coloured skin.

  Be careful, Miss Silberstein writes in the margin.

  For the remainder of the term – all the way until the family’s return to Delhi – Tristram Singh does not hold any hands. Not mine, not Henny’s. And not anyone else’s either. Henny and I avoid each other a bit, but well into the summer we go together on a charter trip to Crete. One evening we end up at a bar, get pleasantly drunk on retsina and tsipouro and then we make love on the beach under the stars, each with our own Greek youth.

  To:

  Agnes R.

  Villa Guarda

  Gobshejm

  Grothenburg, 14 January

  Dear Agnes,

  So nice to hear that you’ve been in New York. I love that city, in fact we lived there for a year when the girls were small; David had a contract with CBS and Remington’s. We rented an apartment in Brooklyn Heights, and I do agree with you that we must allow ourselves a week in the Big Apple. Or some other big city. Next autumn or winter hopefully, oh, how I wish we were already there. That all this was over and done with – but I have no doubt that it won’t go well and that we can soon meet again, no doubt whatsoever.

  And one piece of good news is that I think I have found a date that seems very appealing. Naturally you’re the one who must have the final word in this question, but let me in any event propose the weekend of February 14–16, when David is taking part in an international workshop for theatre producers (or something along those lines) in Amsterdam.

  The reason that this weekend is so suitable is that I too will be away from home on those days. My boss, Dr Höffner, wants to encourage me and has sent me to a little translator seminar at the SBS Institute in Munich; like David I leave already on Friday afternoon and won’t be home until late Sunday evening. What could be more ideal, Agnes? Between Amsterdam and Munich there is a good five hundred kilometres, I can never get a more certain alibi.

  I have also – without David’s knowledge of course – found out what hotel he will be staying at; it is called Figaro and is located rather centrally along Prinsengracht. I still don’t know exactly where the workshop will take place, but if you bite at this proposal, obviously I will be able to find out both this and all the other details that may be of interest to us. All to facilitate your mission.

  I am also sending a photo of David in this letter, it is after all a number of years since you saw him and time has probably left its traces, I’m afraid. The beard comes and goes, I think it has to do with his constant midlife crisis. Sometimes he wants to look middle-aged and distinguished, sometimes he thinks he is twenty-five again. Well, men are the way they are, Agnes, that’s not news to you either, is it?

  Whatever; if we decide on this scenario, dear Agnes – Amsterdam in mid-February – then I am going to deposit another thirty thousand euros in your account. As soon as I’ve got the go-ahead from you, that is. Then we have half the total – fifty thousand – outstanding until after the murder. I think that is how it is done in those circles, at least I’ve seen it happen that way on TV. Half at contract signing, half upon delivery – agree that we are holding ourselves to a certain professionalism in any case!

  Concerning your question in the P.S. – or the questions, more precisely – I can very well imagine that David’s infidelity is known by a few of his colleagues (the male ones naturally), but I think none of our so-called closer acquaintances know anything about it. And I assure you that neither David nor anyone else has the slightest inkling that I’ve become aware of the betrayal. It’s part of the male arsenal of vanities that they think we are so easy to deceive, and in this case that is of course no disadvantage. On the contrary, dear Agnes, David does not harbour the slightest suspicion, you are going to shoot a sitting duck, or whatever it’s called.

  So write to me soon, Agnes, and let me know if my outlined proposal suits you. If it doesn’t, then we’ll think of something else, of course. But if you accept, yes, then we have no more than a month of waiting left, which feels nice, I assure you of that. For a long time I have started imagining that David is already dead, and you have no idea how trying it is to carry on a decent breakfast conversation with a corpse every morning.

  Although actually all is well, we have plenty of snow here too.

  Signed

  Your Henny

  To:

  Henny Delgado

  Pelikaanallé 24

  Grothenburg

  Gobshejm, 22 January

  Dear Henny,

  Thanks for your letter. Amsterdam! So funny that city will be the stage for our little drama. Do you remember that we were there together for a few days during an Easter vacation? In the second year it must have been – Claus-Joseph and Ansgar too, yes, of course you remember. That little youth hostel on Ferdinand Bolstraat and the sand dunes out at Zandvort. Claus-Joseph, who was so jealous that I could barely even order coffee from a male waiter! Those were the days, Henny!

  Or rather, they were not.

  Oh well, I have been to Amsterdam a few times in later years too, and I am reasonably familiar with the city. And the time suits me just fine: it is early in the semester, no burdensome correction tasks and such. I imagine that I will take the car up on Friday, so that I have plenty of time. The Barth family will have to take care of the dogs, I’ll think of some reason why I have to be gone over the weekend. I will not likely end up in any alibi situation, but I still think I prefer not to check into the same hotel as your husband. Something right in the neighbourhood perhaps, there are plenty of them along Prinsengracht. And you can trust that I am going to perform my mission in the best and most efficient way possible, Henny, the fact is that I almost feel stimulated by this, isn’t that a little perverse? It elevates the sense of being alive in some peculiar way. I have also – to be prepared for all eventualities – been out in the forest and test fired my gun. It worked just fine, possibly there is a little problem in that the shot will be heard very clearly, but good Lord, a bang in a big city? It could be a broken exhaust pipe or whatever. And regardless of where I choose as the exact place for my deed, obviously I am going to reach safety immediately afterwards.

  So I see no risks whatsoever, dear Henny. If you simply provide me additional details about your husband’s trip, I promise to send him off to the meadows of the blessed in – yes, when I look at the calendar on my desk I see that we are actually talking about a time period of just three weeks.

  Otherwise I think that he has aged with a certain grace. I recognized him immediately in the photograph – and I am one hundred per cent certain of being able to identify him even in a beardless state (twenty-five-year-old indeed, yes, talk about vanity!).

  Perhaps it would also be good if I got your mobile number and your hotel address in Munich at some point – because it would surely be a plus if I could report the result to you as soon as I’ve struck, Henny? A necessity even? A text message or something; we’ll have to agree on some sort of code, because I think we will need to have a channel that goes a little faster than letter-writing. What do you think?

  Oh well, these details are naturally simple to arrange for two women like you and me. I also think your financial plan seems appealing; you must understand how much it means to me to be able to stay in the house, dear Henny, and I truly look forward to having you as a guest here within the not too distant future.

  But first a trip in the autumn, as stated.

  And first of all Amsterdam on February 14–16!

  Signed your devoted ‘sister’

  Agnes

  ‘Living together has its time, separating has its.’

  Henny meets my gaze over the coffee cup, and her smile is bathed in both seriousness and mockery.

  ‘I mean us, Agnes,’ she clarifies.

  It is not until we have taken our university entrance exams at Weiver’s – and after the summer with the Crete adventure – that we go our separate ways for the first time, Henny and I. On 1 October Henny enrols in the Romance Languages department and starts studying
Italian; I have already started studying comparative literature. We have run into each other by chance on Kloisterlaan and slipped into Kraus’s cafe.

  I have moved away from home. Luckily got hold of a sublease for a studio on Geigers steeg, only a stone’s throw from Stefan’s Church. Henny is still living at home with her mother and her brother for the first year of university.

  ‘Life is not a hike across an open field,’ I say.

  ‘Nice to see you,’ Henny says. ‘But I definitely must hurry off.’

  University studies pick up speed. It’s over with Ansgar and Claus-Joseph. I go out for a short period with a young Finn by the name of Tapani; he is sweet and well-built in every way, but his severe melancholy, which appears as soon as he’s had a couple of drinks, means that I leave him. In October–November Henny has a brief affair with a married man; she doesn’t know that he is married until his wife catches him in flagrante and is about to kill them both with a golf club. After that incident, Henny decides to keep to herself for a while. She got a deep gash in the head above her left ear; the scar is going to be there her whole life, but as long as she doesn’t go bald no one is going to notice it.

  ‘I had a guardian angel,’ she says.

  ‘You were insanely lucky,’ I say.

  ‘If she’d picked up an iron instead of a wood I would have been dead,’ Henny says.

  In early November I become part of the student theatre group, the Thalia Company, and almost immediately get a major role in the production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. I play Masha for eight acclaimed performances in December and January. We are only amateurs but get good reviews anyway in both Allgemejne and Volktagesblatt. Both of the reviewers also underscore that my interpretation of Masha was inspired. I continue my literature studies, but contemplate ever stronger and secret plans to apply to some drama school by and by. Here is where my fire burns, I feel it clearly; I love it when the curtain goes up and you are blinded by the spotlights, I love moving people in the way you can almost only do in the magic space of the theatre.