Intrigo

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘How do you know that?’ I ask.

  ‘He says so.’

  ‘How long has he been standing there?’

  ‘Ten minutes maybe,’ Bloeme says. ‘I just came up. Simone fetched me.’

  I did not know that Frau Linkoweis’s first name was Simone. But she nods in confirmation while she digs her nails into my upper arm. Sigisbard and Simone? I think.

  ‘Please,’ she repeats.

  ‘What do you intend to do?’ I ask.

  Bloeme paces around and fumbles in his chest pocket for cigarettes. He has a butt behind his ear but he does not seem to be aware of that.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘What the hell should we do? That this should happen today of all days.’

  Simone Linkoweis starts crying loudly. I wonder quickly what Herr Bloeme meant by ‘today of all days’. Maybe he has a birthday or something.

  ‘Do you think he’s serious?’ I ask. ‘It’s possible that—’

  ‘He’s serious,’ Bloeme says. ‘No doubt about it. He’s seventy-five, damn it!’

  I don’t understand what his age has to do with the seriousness, but don’t bother to investigate that.

  ‘Shall I go in to him?’ I propose instead. ‘Do you want . . .?’

  Simone Linkoweis is staring at me from close quarters with an expression that balances between helplessness and desperate pleading. I gingerly release her grip from around my arm.

  ‘Stay here,’ I say. ‘I’ll go in and look around.’

  ‘Just don’t get too close,’ Bloeme says. ‘Then he’ll jump!’

  I nod and walk cautiously in through the doorway. Come into the hall, but from here you can’t see the balcony. I continue to the right into the living room, which is so cluttered with furniture and decorative objects that you almost can’t move in it, and through the open balcony door I see him.

  He is truly standing just as Bloeme described. The black wrought-iron railing is no more than seventy or eighty centimetres high and I understand that it has not entailed any difficulty – not even for a person with Sigisbard Linkoweis’s deficient flexibility – to step over it. He is standing there, turned at an angle from me, with all his concentration aimed out at the courtyard and down. I know that it must be a fall of at least twelve metres and the courtyard is paved with uneven cobblestones. Without a doubt he is going to kill himself if he lets go.

  And he is holding on with only one hand on the transverse bar. Leaning out a little too.

  I remain standing in the middle of the room, at a loss. He has not yet noted my presence, but the distance between us is five or six metres. I quickly try to assess the situation. Without a doubt a hasty sortie could be ill-fated – especially as there is a rocking chair and a table in the line of attack.

  I observe him. He is dressed in grey trousers and a thin tan cardigan. If he has truly been standing out there for ten minutes it must mean – if nothing else – that he is cold. The temperature is not much above freezing.

  ‘You deceivers!’ he calls out suddenly in a strong voice, and I realize that he is addressing some listener or listeners out there. I take a cautious step to the side and sure enough catch sight of a woman on another balcony right across the courtyard. I don’t know what her name is, but I have run into her a few times and recognize her. She has a Dachshund that usually has a green jumper on.

  ‘If you call the police I’ll jump at once!’ Sigisbard Linkoweis threatens. ‘And then all of you are going to be destroyed! I am in contact with the prince of the universe!’

  I understand that caretaker Bloeme has made a more or less correct assessment of his mental state. I take a step closer. Come up level with the rocking chair.

  ‘I am so damned fed up with all of you!’ Linkoweis roars. ‘So damned fed up! Soon I’ll jump and then you’re going to die like flies!’

  I hesitate. Nothing happens for well over half a minute. Herr Linkoweis’s hand, which is squeezing the railing, looks desperately white and bloodless. I decide to try to come at least a little closer.

  ‘I am in despair! I can no longer bear to be in despair!’

  I round the table. There are only three metres left now, but then I happen to bump into a pedestal with an urn on it. I catch the urn but the pedestal falls to the floor with a crash.

  ‘Beg your pardon?’

  He turns his head and discovers me.

  No, perhaps he doesn’t discover me, because he is not wearing glasses. I know that he has rather poor vision, it is one of the things Frau Linkoweis mentions at regular intervals.

  Sigisbard sees so poorly, she always says. Soon he won’t be able to read any more, one day he’s going to be blind.

  But he is aware that someone is standing inside the room. ‘Who is it?’ he thunders, his voice surprisingly powerful. ‘Don’t come closer, or I’ll let go!’

  There is a streak of fear in him, I can’t avoid hearing it. I stand as if nailed to the floor and do not know what I should do. Behind me I sense that Frau Linkoweis and Herr Bloeme are on their way in. I moisten my lips and brace myself.

  ‘It’s just me, Sigisbard,’ I say. ‘Come to me and I will console you.’

  At first he does not react. Stands just as stiff as me, still with only one hand squeezing the railing. I hear the distant murmur of voices from outside; perhaps there are people standing on all the balconies, perhaps they have gathered down in the courtyard too.

  Several seconds pass.

  ‘Come closer so I can look at you,’ he says.

  I take three more steps and stop in the doorway. I could almost reach my hand out and take hold of him but I don’t dare.

  ‘Stop!’ he says. ‘No further. I’ll jump!’

  I don’t reply.

  ‘Who are you?’ he repeats.

  ‘It’s me,’ I say. ‘Come to me.’

  He hesitates for another few moments. Gradually adopts a completely different posture. Softer, more receptive. Perhaps he has never heard anyone say those exact words to him during his entire lifespan. Perhaps he has longed for them. He heaves a deep sigh, steps back in over the railing and I enclose him in my embrace.

  He is ice-cold and immediately starts sobbing.

  No, it is hard to see that as anything other than a sign.

  To:

  David Goschmann

  Hotel Figaro

  Prinsengracht 112

  Amsterdam

  Grothenburg, 12 February

  Dearest David,

  I know that it is not customary for a wife to send letters to her husband in this way (especially not in our day and when they are not apart from each other for more than a few days), but I simply can’t help it. Sometimes you get a thought or an idea, and there is no way to be rid of it other than to make it a reality.

  I love you, David. It is actually just this I want you to know – this, the most banal of all banal phrases, and even so the most heartfelt and weightiest thought we can entertain.

  It has occurred to me that in recent times we have not been able to show the love for each other that we once promised. It’s not your fault, not mine. Neither you nor I have any guilt in this. Let us in any case not reproach ourselves for anything – but isn’t it the case that everyday life and the tyranny of routines have eaten their way into our lives, David? I believe it’s that way, and I don’t imagine for a second that it could be anything else.

  But I know that it is important to break circles before they become vicious, we’ve talked about that so many times. It is so easy to take each other for granted, David, let’s not do that any longer.

  Let us realize that it is a blessing that we get to live with each other and see our girls grow up together. Let us once again give love the place in our lives that it rightly deserves.

  Let us love one another until death do us part, David, just as we once agreed on.

  Yes, it was only this simple – and difficult – thing I wanted to say to you with this letter, my beloved husband. I wish you a pleasant stay in A
msterdam, and I long to see you again when you come home.

  Yours forever,

  Henny

  If the night truly was dreamless I don’t know. In any case I cannot recall anything when I wake up at six thirty and it feels like I haven’t slept at all.

  Go out with the dogs; a long walk along the river over to Mannering’s Bridge. Over it and up through the woods all the way to the horst at Gandwitz. The air is mild up here; almost no wind but the fog has lifted. I rest a while, sit on a downed tree trunk and look out over the landscape; the dogs have run free, now they are lying and panting by my feet.

  My landscape. I can’t own it, of course, but I feel so clearly that nothing is going to make me leave this area. Here I am at home, I would walk over dead bodies to be able to stay here, words that show up without my needing to accompany them with a thought.

  On the way back the sun breaks through and I am thoroughly sweaty when I step into the shower. Then breakfast and packing. I wrap the pistol in one ski sock, put the ammunition in the other. Place it carefully at the very bottom of the suitcase; I don’t know why, actually, but perhaps it is natural when all is said and done. Perhaps even a professional murderer would pack in this way.

  At ten o’clock I’m ready, get the dogs into the car and drive over to the Barths’. We only exchange a few words, but friendly ones. They wish me a pleasant stay in Berlin; Herr Barth lived there for five years but he does not miss it, truly not. They are both off work for some reason, but the daughters are in school, of course.

  I’ll be back on Sunday evening, I promise to call when I know what time.

  ‘We can keep them until Monday,’ Frau Barth assures me. ‘It’s no problem.’

  ‘Or take them over completely,’ Herr Barth jokes. ‘Maybe the girls would start loving us then.’

  ‘Well,’ I admit. ‘I have a certain need for them too.’

  ‘You should have a guy instead,’ Herr Barth says, and his wife throws her arms out in despair.

  ‘What in the world would she do with a guy?’

  I usually try to emphasize poor Anne when I talk about the Brontë sisters, and I do that this time too.

  Stress that she only lived to be twenty-five – and that admittedly both Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall have their faults in comparison with Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, but what novels don’t?

  And that both her two older sisters certainly made sure to keep tight rein on her in one way and the other.

  Are they possible to get hold of? someone asks, and this semester too I loan out my copies of Anne Brontë’s two books.

  But I feel that I have a hard time concentrating on this subject – which is actually so dear to my heart – and I end the seminar twenty minutes early. Blame it on the fact that I have an appointment in Berlin to make, and none of the students of course has anything against ending a little early.

  I leave my briefcase in the office. To the extent I need to prepare Monday’s lectures I can come in a couple of hours early that morning.

  It’s no later than two thirty as I drive out of the car park and leave the university area. After only a five-minute drive I am struck by a compulsive thought. I stop at a car park right before the entrance ramp to the expressway to check that the suitcase is still in the trunk.

  It is.

  I would also like to check that the gun and ammunition are truly in place, but that can’t be done. Not in a car park in broad daylight.

  Take it easy, Agnes, I think when I am again sitting behind the steering wheel. You have to stay calm.

  But I notice that my pulse and my breathing are faster than normal. I want to convince myself however that it has nothing to do with nervousness. That instead it is that elevated sense of life, as I described to Henny, that is seeking an outlet.

  There are some difficulties with finding the hotel, even though I stop and check a street map before I drive into the city centre. A couple of one-way streets make me get lost, it’s the middle of late-afternoon rush hour too and there’s a driving rain, but at last I end up on the right street. I stop outside the moderately eye-catching entry, go in and get instructions from the desk clerk about how to get down into the garage.

  Check in, pay cash in advance without having to show ID, and lock myself in my room. Unpack the suitcase, push my gun between the extra blankets in the wardrobe and run a bath.

  Lie there for half an hour in the foam with an aroma of lime and freshly cut grass and relax. Drink up the little bottle of red wine from the minibar and smoke a cigarette. It doesn’t feel quite as depraved as it ought to; I think it is right in line with the key signatures of this journey. Again I compare myself with a professional murderer. Perhaps he (she?) would also choose to prepare himself (herself?) in just this way. Why not?

  I have dinner in the hotel dining room and then I go out. The rain has stopped but a biting wind is blowing. I acquaint myself with the neighbourhood and with the closest route over to the scene of the crime. It’s a route of no more than three or four hundred metres. A walk along barely illuminated streets, dark parked cars, a couple of poorly frequented bars. I slowly pass the hotel; it is better than I had imagined, there appears to be a real lobby, which naturally is an advantage. It surely won’t be any problem making my way in unnoticed. I probably won’t be stopped on the way up to the room.

  I am going to be in disguise besides. Not much, but still enough. A light wig and a pair of tinted glasses. No one is ever going to connect me with this murder, so why overdo it?

  I return to my own hotel. Watch a rather miserable French movie on the TV and read a couple of pages from a new dissertation about Lou Salomé.

  Turn off the light around twelve thirty and think about how the situation is going to unfold in exactly twenty-four hours.

  The following day I am awake by six thirty and I don’t know if I had any dreams. But yesterday’s incident with Herr Linkoweis immediately comes to mind, so perhaps I have had him with me during the night too.

  I stay in bed awhile and think about him. And about the postlude after I managed to get him off the balcony. Against his will he was transported to the hospital; he cried like a child and pleaded to be able to stay at home, but both the wife and his sister – a tall, misshapen woman with bitter features, who showed up at the scene almost immediately once the drama was over – were adamant. Herr Linkoweis clung firmly to me when the two orderlies came to take him to the hospital, but it was only used as a pretext that he was crazy and must be taken care of.

  ‘I am in despair!’ he shouted so that it echoed in the stairwell on the way down. ‘Don’t you all understand that I am in despair!’

  I suffered with him. But both the wife and the sister rode with him in the ambulance, and perhaps what happened was for the best. In any case I have a hard time seeing any more sensible solutions.

  I get up and make coffee. Once I’ve had breakfast, read the newspaper and showered it is eight thirty. I sit down and wait for David Goschmann to call.

  At ten o’clock he has still not called, and not at eleven either.

  I am incapable of doing anything. Don’t have enough concentration to read, start hand-washing a jumper in my narrow sink, but stop and leave the garment in wet and dirty condition over the back of a chair. Try to solve the crossword puzzle in the newspaper, it immediately turns out wrong. I need to go to the bathroom, but the telephone cord is too short for me to be able to answer if I’m sitting there. I hold it.

  Twelve o’clock. I know that he said twelve o’clock at the latest. When it is a few minutes past eleven thirty I sit down and stare at the telephone. Change my mind, lay down stretched out on the bed. Close my eyes and count my pulse rate.

  Think that Death is lying beside me in the bed, I don’t understand where this fantasy comes from.

  Now it is quarter to twelve. I finish the last drop of coffee from this morning and start feeling ill. A telephone never rings if you try to conjure the call, that is a good old truth. I mus
t try to think about something else. I stare out the window and think about whether Herr Linkoweis has come home. Or got a diagnosis at least.

  Ten minutes to. Nothing happens. Absolutely nothing.

  Five to.

  At two minutes to twelve the ring comes. I take a deep breath, place my hand on the receiver and wait for another ring. Do not want to seem eager.

  Answer.

  It is my father. He tells that he does not have any testicles left, but that he is going to be able to live a normal life anyway.

  I hang up. The bells in Stefan’s Church strike twelve.

  I arrive at Keller Theatre fifteen minutes late. The others are already there. David Goschmann is sitting on the edge of the stage in a black polo shirt and black, dangling corduroy legs; he stops speaking as I push open the door at the very back of the auditorium.

  Rottenbühle turns around and coughs into his hand. His cold does not seem to have got better. There are five of them sitting up there in the first row. Ursula and Vera, my sisters from Chekhov. Rottenbühle. And a new girl in the troupe, her name is Mathilde and her prospects in the industry ceased at the same time as silent film because she lisps.

  I walk slowly down the sloping left-side aisle. Cast a smile at Goschmann and sit down beside Vera.

  ‘Welcome,’ Goschmann says. ‘We’re talking about Goneril and Regan, and about the necessity of differentiating them. Two more or less identical characters will be neither dynamic nor credible on the stage. They suck the air out of each other . . .’

  ‘I understand,’ I say.

  Goschmann clears his throat and continues along the same track. During the whole afternoon I have had a clenched fist in my chest, now it is starting to move. Upwards and to the sides. I swallow and swallow. Why are both Ursula and Vera sitting here? I think. Which one of them . . .?

  ‘Excuse me,’ I say.

  Goschmann interrupts himself again. Rests his chin against the knuckles of his hand and observes me. The blue is not running over today.