by Håkan Nesser
Hasn’t she changed curtains in thirty years? I thought. Is she still alive, old Mrs Kuntze, can that even be possible?
I never investigated any of these questions. This mild late-spring day was nonetheless filled with all the unexpected and mysterious memory strokes of reunion, and when I returned to the Continental rather late in the afternoon, my head was so packed with impressions and recollections that I felt both dizzy and overstimulated.
What was awaiting me in reception hardly made things better. The redhead was replaced by a stick-thin youth with stubble and a nose ring; he stopped me just as I was about to step into the lift.
‘Excuse me. There was a message too.’
‘A message?’
He handed over an envelope with the hotel logo. I thanked him, put it in my pocket and went up to my room.
Kleerwot, I thought, removing a piece of paper folded in two. Of course he can’t make it. The lout.
But that’s not what it was. The message was brief and handwritten. I stared at it a good long while.
About time you came back. I’ll be in touch.
Vera Kall
I sat down on the bed to counteract the vertigo. Felt a slight but noticeable taste of metal on my tongue, and wondered how in the hell a woman who had been dead for thirty years could know that I had returned to K–.
3
Of my four years at Doggers, I came to spend two in the same class as Vera Kall – the last two. The reason was my so-called victory lap in the second year; hardly an honourable victory lap, naturally, although on the other hand I had skipped a year back in primary school because I was considered precocious, so as far as age was concerned, towards the end of high school I was on a par with my classmates.
I have already touched on how my Platonic flame wandered between a handful of the girls in this congregation. Love is eternal, it’s the objects that shift. That may be, but there was one object that was constant. Vera Kall. I loved her simply from the first moment, and I was hardly alone in that predicament. I think all of us desired her equally strongly. The whole male dozen. Even someone like Carl Maria Erasmus van Tooth, who otherwise was a real bookworm and only liked literary figures.
That my closest brothers-in-arms – Urban Kleerwot, Pieter Vogel and Niels Bühltoft – worshiped Vera Kall I knew with certainty; we had talked about it at the Grubby Bun on more than one occasion. That Niels had fallen was obvious, by the way, to anyone and everyone; he could not talk intelligibly if Vera was within his field of vision. When he was supposed to read or present something during class he was forced to demonstratively turn his back on her to keep from stammering. Everyone has their problems.
Pierre Borgmann and Thomas Reisin, who had a reputation for being a bit more advanced than the rest of us, had both – each one separately – tried to approach Vera in a slightly more manly, Mediterranean way. But, to everyone’s great relief, they had been amiably but firmly brushed off.
Vera Kall didn’t run around with boys. Especially not those kinds of boys. Vera Kall was not cut from that cloth. Could they accept that?
No, they couldn’t, but they did anyway.
Yes, we probably all loved her. And maybe deep down we were grateful that she didn’t give in and choose one of us. Better to be part of the admiring dozen, the yearning flock, and still have both your yearning and your lot.
Better no one than someone who wasn’t me. I think we thought that way. I know of course that I did.
Urban too. Pieter and Niels.
For Vera Kall was a revelation. A goddess in female form. The words fail, but yet . . . her hair, dark and thick as the night, her half-almond eyes, her smile and irresistible half-millimetre gap between her front teeth. Her slender body and her lithe way of moving, as if gliding along through existence, indolent and effortless as a female panther. She was a symphony. Or a sonnet. Or any damn thing at all. Completely natural and completely unaware of all this perfection, who could even make a double class in Latin with senior master Uhrin pass by as if in a transfigured shimmer. That’s how she was. The Snake Flower.
‘Send Vera Kall into the UN General Assembly,’ Niels Bühltoft proposed on one occasion, ‘and we are going to have peace on earth within half an hour. Or a world war.’
Presumably he was completely right.
Presumably senior master Uhrin was also completely right when he could not take his eyes off Vera while he contemplated the final sentence during the double period the last Friday in the month of April in 1967: Quem di diligunt adolescens moritur.
Whom the gods love dies young.
Unapproachability played its part, of course. Vera Kall was not someone who went out dancing. Vera Kall didn’t hang out by the jukebox at the Grubby Bun existentialist cafe and smoke crinkled Lucky Strikes. Vera Kall didn’t stand in front of the stage at the Grotto, rocking in time when the area’s pop gurus executed their mediocre interpretations of ‘Satisfaction’, ‘My Generation’ and ‘Do-Wah-Diddy-Diddy’. And when they played ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ she was never the one you saw standing there . . . other than in the deepest space of imagination.
And she didn’t take part in the picnics or the class parties in the temporarily parent-free houses, where we tried to smoke ourselves high on dried banana peels in corncob pipes and drink ourselves intoxicated on premature, half-fermented gooseberry wine that tasted like it had already passed through one or two digestive systems. My God, what rotgut. It was Bühltoft who would always steal it from his dad’s cellar.
No, Vera Kall stayed at home.
Her parents kept her at home.
The latter seemed most probable, at least it was seen that way in the inner circle. In my circle. She was an only child, her house was out in the sticks – out in the forest even – in the vicinity of Kerran and Maalby. The father, Adolphus Kall, was pastor in the congregation Aaron’s Brethren; known for their strict, sometimes Old Testament rules of living. Which made them all the more unfamiliar with anything else. One of those sects simply, there were a few in K– and the surrounding area at that time; the countryside had been known for freethinking since the 1800s and that’s the way it was.
That Adolphus Kall’s daughter would run to dances or pop concerts or shady high school parties was naturally beyond the horizon of what was reasonable. It was what it was. Seemed to be part of the conditions, in some obscure way.
And beauty flourished and desirability grew. ‘It’s so annoying,’ said Pieter Vogel. ‘It’s like showing Niagara Falls on film to someone thirsting in the desert. Like a sunrise on the radio, I’m going to castrate myself.’
Our metaphors seldom made much sense.
Not Pieter Vogel’s and not anyone else’s either. Possibly senior master Uhrin’s.
Quem di diligunt . . .
A prophesy with a month-long fuse.
The Snake Flower.
It was actually just Pieter Vogel who gave her that name, but it had nothing to do with metaphor. The name originated from an old detective novel – The Snake Flower from Magdala, by Richter-Frich, I think – that he hadn’t read, but came across along with ten others in the same genre for a song at Willmott’s Used Books.
The Snake Flower from Samaria, thus, because the Kall farm was named Samaria. There were plenty of farms and villages with Biblical names in the countryside around K–. Jerusalem. Cana. Capernaum. One of the district’s biggest and most notorious hog farms was in Bethlehem. If it is Our Lord’s intention to be everywhere present, then he seems to have been so to the highest degree in this seedy part of the country.
In this seedy time.
Now Pieter Vogel’s invention was no common name for Vera Kall; we only used it now and then in the inner circle, but someone must have said it in front of some journalist, because when the newspapers started writing about it, that was exactly what they called her. The Snake Flower from Samaria.
And when you saw her beautiful, slightly mysterious face in all the pictures, you understood that it was a rathe
r appropriate name.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Graduation that year was set for 29 May. Two days earlier, on Thursday, the tradition-encumbered exam party was held. By custom it took place in the Limburg dining rooms, a venerable establishment with an abundance of stucco, cornices and nondescript chandeliers – plus experience of similar events since the early thirteenth century or something.
In principle, the programme was divided into three parts.
First, a leisurely arrival in the new graduation suit or dress. Drinking of bubbly beverage in the formidable foyer with columns of black granite and five-lane staircase of polished pommerstone up to the magnificent dining hall. Witty conversation between teachers and students; this exceptional evening was the first time you stood on any sort of common footing with your mentors and tormentors, hopefully also the last.
After this slightly anxiety-filled half hour the long dinner itself commenced, where as far as possible the students were placed next to some pedagogue and had to show themselves practised in the arts of conducting table conversation, not spilling, not drinking wine to excess, honouring their father, their mother and their school, and behaving themselves in the most general terms. You did not talk about Vietnam and not about the situation in Gaza. The hell you did, God forbid.
Three courses, coffee, brandy and an endless number of brilliant speeches. ‘O Jerum’ and the scent of blossoming fruit trees through wide-open windows. Student songs and ‘Oh See My Youth’ and for the most part an inspired evening.
Third, there was a dance and bar service. The Doggers school band played, with a mixture of jazz and inoffensive pop tunes in the repertoire. The Hollies and such. Rounding off about one o’clock, deadline one hour later. The faculty were expected to start trooping off at the end of dinner, this year like every other.
This year like every other attendance was good. Almost one hundred per cent, both among the older as well as the younger set. Even moss-grown old lecturer Krüggel, who could barely stay awake during his own classes, was on the scene. Even double adjunct Bisserman, who was said to be both homosexual and alcoholic.
Even the Snake Flower.
Forty-two teachers, both male and female, if you want to be precise, one rector magnificus Laugermann, 196 students.
One hundred and ninety-six hopeful male students and blossoming female students on their way out into life. One of them on their way out of it.
She had arrived early in the afternoon by bicycle, as usual. In the winter you took the bus from the country, but in the summertime velocipede was the norm. Dress, shoes and accessories in a cardboard suitcase on the carrier. Shower and preparation in the customary manner with her girlfriend Claire Mietens, over in the Deijkstraa block. Then in company to Limburg’s, the festivities and journey home. It had not been agreed that Vera would sleep over at Mietens, even if that would have been a simple matter.
Simple for the Mietens family, that is, not for father Adolphus. Vera Kall would sleep at home. Would bicycle home to Samaria when it was over at Limburg’s. Over ten kilometres through the forests and the summer night, that was nothing to fuss about. God holds his hand and watches over his . . .
A lot was written about this in particular.
About the unreasonable and antiquated attitude of Aaron’s Brethren to youth and morals. About Pastor Adolphus’s stubbornness. Letting a young, beautiful girl travel alone through the forest in the middle of the night. Was that wise? Was that Christian?
What was it other than a sign, when it later turned out the way it did?
That was how it was written about in the newspapers, although no one really knew what happened. Other than possibly Our Lord, and if he did, he kept silent.
It was written about and it was investigated. Because Vera Kall was never seen again after that night. She participated in the springtime of youth together with her 195 classmates. On 27 May 1967. Drank bubbly beverages and conversed on the steps. Sat at the table. Had her three courses, listened to the speeches, sang along with the rest, shed lustre on the party, especially over her table companion, lecturer Lunger, but in the break between dinner and dance she disappeared.
Sometime then. According to the police investigations and calculations, the Snake Flower from Samaria left the student party right after eleven o’clock. That was right before the time when the last witness – a certain Beatrice Mott – saw her out in the women’s bathroom; the last of these 251 (serving personnel included) witnesses, who the police in K– (reinforced with half a dozen detectives) spent the first weeks of June 1967 in questioning.
Questioning and questioning and questioning. Once, twice and even three times.
Thus, in the minutes after eleven o’clock (presumably not all that many, because Vera Kall was a girl you noticed), she leaves Limburg’s dining rooms, takes her bicycle from the bike rack under the chestnut tree out on the yard, pedals out into the summer night and disappears without a trace.
One knew this the next evening. One knew this after a month and one knew this thirty years later.
I use the word ‘one’. There are reasons for that.
4
The redhead did not come with a tray on Monday morning, so I had breakfast in the dining room instead. Contrary to habit I had two cups of black coffee. I had slept restlessly during the night; presumably dreamt a bit too, but nothing that let itself be recalled. In general I seldom remember my dreams, but this morning of course it was not particularly difficult to speculate about their content.
Vera Kall, naturally. While I sat there at a window table, browsing a little indifferently in the morning papers, I tried to somehow get this straight.
About what it could conceivably mean that a woman who died thirty years ago now wanted to make contact with me, that is.
Or maybe she hadn’t died? Had she been alive all this time without making herself known?
Or had the mystery of her disappearance been solved without my knowledge? Five or ten or fifteen years ago, perhaps – without my having found out about it? That was naturally not completely impossible, I had lost contact with K– completely, yet it seemed quite improbable.
I had always assumed that Vera Kall was dead. That she met her murderer that mild evening thirty years ago. How she would have acted in order to simply take off and then stay away . . . well, both I and many others had wrestled with that question for a long time without finding a hint of an acceptable answer.
And why? Why would she have chosen to disappear without the slightest warning? Two days before high school graduation.
Unreasonable, as I said. Out of the question.
That was, at least, what I thought until that Monday morning in June 1997.
I left my breakfast table and made my way out to reception. It was vacant behind the polished counter, but when I rang the bell the skinny youth showed up from an inside room.
‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I’m wondering a little about that message I got yesterday.’
‘I see,’ he answered, yawning.
‘How was it delivered?’
‘Huh? What do you mean?’
‘Did it come by phone, or did someone drop it off?’
He hesitated a moment and observed me with sleepy eyes.
‘No idea.’
‘Why don’t you have any idea?’
‘Because I wasn’t here to receive it.’
‘Who was here when it was dropped off?’
‘How would I know that?’
‘Perhaps you could ask one of your colleagues?’
He pulled on the nose ring and tried to frown. ‘Maybe. I’ll have to see.’
I couldn’t think of anything else to ask about. Thanked him and took the opportunity to pay my bill. Ten minutes later I left Hotel Continental and could tell that the coffee had given me heartburn.
As agreed, I met Urban Kleerwot on the big staircase to Doggers at exactly twelve o’clock. It was Urban’s idea of course, this nostalgic choice of place for the r
eunion.
He was a couple of minutes late, I guessed that it was on purpose. He simply wanted to see me standing there. Wanted to stroll in through the old squiggly cast-iron gates. Pretend to discover me. Let out his thundering laugh and throw his arms out in a big fraternal gesture.
It happened according to this plan of his. He almost turned me into pulp by throwing his bear paws around me and squeezing.
‘My God, Henry, I’ll be damned,’ he snorted.
‘Urb . . .’ I got out. ‘Let go.’
He had truly not shrunk. At 190 centimetres tall and approximately just as many kilos heavy . . . oh, well, maybe not really, but well over a hundred in any event. Despite bushy, slightly greying hair, beard and glasses, he was easy to recognize, and when he released his introductory grip and held me at arm’s length he noted the same.
‘To the dot. I’ll be damned, Henry, you haven’t aged a week.’
‘Not you either, Urban. Same fresh little flower you always were.’
‘I’ll be damned.’
‘You bet.’
We expressed an additional dozen phrases with approximately the same degree of finesse. Then he pulled out a bottle with green-glistening content from his jacket pocket. The label was missing, he screwed off the cap and tossed it over his shoulder. Handed the bottle to me with a solemn expression.
‘Nectar from sixty-seven,’ he explained. ‘Room temperature vodka-lime. You remember, don’t you? Cheers and welcome back.’
I drank. ‘My God,’ I said, handing over the bottle.
Urban drank. ‘Oh, man, that’s some bad shit,’ he admitted. Searched for the cap and screwed it on again. ‘But I have slightly more noble goods in the car. Thought we should just have a little memory jogger. When did you get here?’
I explained that I had been in K– since Saturday. Urban looked a bit surprised, then pounded me on the back.