by Håkan Nesser
They weren’t bad pages, however. On the contrary: the story started in a little village out by the sea, unclear where; two little girls are digging in the sand and gradually find a dead body. The language was simple and pared back, I don’t know what I had expected, but that my efforts as copyeditor would not need to be all that burdensome seemed apparent in any event. Always something, I thought, and turned off the lamp.
‘Well, what do you intend to do?’ Urban said as we settled down at the breakfast table next to the south wall the next morning.
‘Do?’ I said. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Come on,’ said Urban. ‘You don’t intend to just sit here and stare after all this? For Christ’s sake, we’re sitting on the key to a crime mystery that baffled the police for three decades!’
I took a slurp of yogurt with honey and thought.
Partly about his subtle gliding from you to we. Partly about how wise it had actually been to initiate him in my secret. The mystery writer in his schizophrenic soul seemed to have taken command completely this warm, cloud-free morning.
‘Henry, damn it, answer me!’ he insisted. ‘If you’ve said one thing you have to say another. Why have you kept quiet all these years? I promised to wait until today to ask, and now it’s today. Why didn’t you tell the police that she’d been at your place that last night? Good Lord, you made love with the Snake Flower the same night she disappeared, that changes everything—’
‘It doesn’t change a thing,’ I interrupted.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just what I’m saying. It doesn’t change a thing. Everyone knows what the Snake Flower was doing up to eleven o’clock on 27 May 1967. What time she got to the party, who she sat next to, what she talked about and when she left. I happen to know about what she was doing three, four hours more. What does that matter?’
Urban thought a moment.
‘Do you think she bicycled home when she left you?’
‘What else would she have done?’
He shrugged. ‘And why did you keep silent?’
‘Why shouldn’t I keep silent?’
I said that in a light tone.
In reality I still didn’t know why I chose that track. Had never been clear about that; actually it probably hadn’t been a considered decision. When the first shocking news came that Vera seemed to have disappeared, I hadn’t said anything about our night together, and then in some way it became more and more impossible the longer it went.
I simply kept it to myself. No one knew about it, no one had seen us together; it was of course a game of coincidences, but that’s how it was.
That was how it remained.
In retrospect, of course, I tried to justify my actions; it wasn’t particularly difficult. For whatever happened to Vera that night after she left me, I had no part in it. This was the crux of it. I had no guilt. My own frustration and despair, when I started to realize that she wasn’t coming back, was punishment enough. There was no reason to start making myself a suspect as the cherry on top of everything. No reason at all.
A hopeless dream had come true in fairy-tale form for a few hours – only to change key and be transformed into a hopeless nightmare for the rest of my life. That was how it came to appear. How it felt.
To fly and to land.
And her parents? What reason was there to add a stone to their burden by letting them know that the last thing Vera did was get drunk and go to bed with a boy . . . even if I never harboured any sympathy for Aaron’s Brethren and their teachings, it was hard to see what good that would do.
‘All right,’ said Urban after sitting and chewing the threads of thought and a bite of sausage a while. ‘I guess you had your reasons. But even so . . . sure as hell this puts the whole story in a new light.’
‘Hardly,’ I said. ‘Some lunatic killed Vera that night. The only thing my effort changes is that it presumably happened a few hours later than was thought. Let’s talk about something else.’
‘You’re forgetting one thing,’ said Urban.
‘What’s that?’
‘The message at the hotel. Have you already had sunstroke?’
I sighed.
‘A joke,’ I said.
‘Joke?’ Urban snorted. ‘That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Have you told anyone else about your and Vera’s night?’
I reluctantly shook my head.
‘You see,’ said Urban. ‘Who in that case would write such a message?’
I didn’t answer. We kept eating in silence a few minutes.
‘If deep down you didn’t want us to talk about this, you never should have told me,’ Urban observed with a therapeutic sneer.
‘Fucking two-bit psychologist,’ I said. ‘Just go examine your navel or something, I’ll take care of the dishes.’
The good weather held up. After the dishes were done I devoted a couple of hours to sitting in a reclining chair in the sun and reading Urban’s book.
It held up too, I thought. Slowly and deliberately he unravelled an old, dreadful story with incestuous undertones. He had truly succeeded in exploiting the double movement of time – forwards and backwards – that is so characteristic of a good crime novel, and the story was exciting. Here and there I made notations with a pencil when I thought a linguistic correction was justified, but overall I had few objections. Not to the plot and not to his way of presenting it.
Urban, for his part, sat in another reclining chair and worked with a number of files he had with him; we had both coffee and beer within reach, but by one o’clock it was too hot to sit in the sun. My host moved into the shade under a horse chestnut, I myself took a dip in the lake and had another swim.
When I came back, Urban was sitting on the dock with a beer in one hand, a cigar in the other and his feet in the water.
‘I’ve been thinking about something,’ he said. ‘Would it actually be so strange if she was alive? If she simply took the chance and ran away that night . . . it could have been one of those occasions in life when a door is suddenly opened. She got an opportunity to leave through it and start a new life . . . and she did. Can’t very well have been all that great to live out there among all those fanatics . . .’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve thought about it for thirty years . . . hoped for that for thirty years, maybe, but if I’m going to be honest, I don’t believe it.’
‘Why is that?’ Urban asked, taking a puff.
I got up on the dock. ‘Where would she have gone?’ I said. ‘If it had been London or Paris or New York, maybe, but a farm girl from Samaria outside K– . . . no, it’s not so easy to just bicycle into a new life.’
‘The bicycle?’ said Urban. ‘Her bike was never found, right?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not as far as I know.’
Urban smoked, drank and thought.
‘So the murderer would have buried both her and the bike, huh?’
I did not reply. Took the beer bottle from him. ‘Oh, well,’ he said. ‘The last word is probably not said. We’ll have to wait and see. It’s good to be a bit prepared, in any event.’
‘What the hell do you mean by that?’ I asked.
I got no answer from Urban, but a few hours later in the afternoon there was grist for his mill. Plenty of grist. I had taken a walk south along the edge of the lake, while Mr Mystery Author devoted himself to the six perch that he had taken out of the net in the morning and which would be our dinner. When I returned he was standing out on the lawn and welcomed me with his beard parted in a crooked smile.
‘The mystery deepens,’ he said.
‘Fat man speaks with forked tongue,’ I said.
‘She’s coming on Saturday. Vera Kall.’
‘What the hell . . .?’
It turned white inside my head and I sank down on the reclining chair. Why white? I thought in confusion. Why not black, like usual? Urban observed me with interest, then he waved a mobile phone; one of the very latest models, evidently, not much b
igger than a pack of cigarettes.
‘She phoned,’ he explained. ‘On this. Vera Kall. She’s coming here on Saturday and wants to speak with you.’
‘That’s impossible,’ I spit out.
‘Nothing is impossible,’ said Urban Kleerwot, stuffing a new cigar in his trap. ‘Would you like a beer?’
7
We sat outside and carried on quite a long discussion that second evening. The air was warm, the mosquitoes buzzed, of course, but a couple of smoking kerosene lamps kept them at a distance.
And then Urban’s cigars. Pfitzerbooms, the sweeter sort; he had changed from Luugers fifteen years ago and never regretted it, he maintained.
We talked both about old recollections from the high school years and about Vera Kall. In some way I had dropped my guard after the news that she intended to come here and see me; it was simply no longer possible to defend myself against Urban’s attacks.
Perhaps I had no great desire to, either. In certain respects, it felt almost nice that there were two of us in this, despite what I had previously muttered about amateur psychology and the like. If the Snake Flower truly was alive and wanted to talk with me, I presumably needed all the support I could get. Even from someone like Urban Kleerwot.
If it was good or bad that he started to fall back into his professional therapist role, I had a hard time deciding. In any case, now and then while we sat there and argued I had the feeling that he viewed me much more as a client than as an old friend from youth.
Although perhaps it was just imagination, and actually I didn’t care about that. To the degree it was necessary to make decisions before Saturday I was rather grateful to be able to leave it in Urban’s hands. At least it felt like that this evening, and I soon understood that if you’d let the camel’s nose under the tent, then that was it. Despite his profession, Urban Kleerwot was not much for discretion and tactical retreats.
The questions were given, in any event. Especially mine about the telephone call: How did she sound? What did she say? Did you recognize her voice? How the dickens could she know that I was right here?
Urban explained in an orderly fashion.
Yes, she had sounded calm and collected on the phone. Introduced herself as Vera Kall, simply, and asked for me. Urban had said that it had been a long time and that unfortunately I was on a walk along the lake shore at the moment . . .
Then she had hesitated a moment, evidently. Answered that it didn’t matter and explained that she intended to come and visit on the following Saturday to have a conversation with me.
At lunchtime, if that was acceptable.
Of course it was, Urban had assured her. She thanked him and then hung up.
No, he hadn’t recognized her voice, and didn’t have a chance to ask how the hell it happened that she was alive and knew where she could find me besides. That’s how it was with that.
‘And you didn’t try to find out anything else?’ I asked, a little irritated.
‘Of course,’ said Urban, blowing smoke in my face. ‘I asked a number of intelligent questions, but she was no longer on the line. As I said.’
‘Why does she want to talk with me?’
‘She didn’t say.’
‘Do you think it was her?’
‘How the hell should I know that?’
‘Intuition, for example.’
‘I forgot to turn it on.’
‘You damned idler.’
‘I’m on holiday. Cheers.’
So, gradually, when we had just decided to forget about the net-laying this evening, we started to direct focus towards a particular point: namely how she – Vera Kall or her representative – could be keeping track of me like this. Could know where I was staying and how she could get hold of me. Both at the Continental and out at Urbanhall. Here at least it was possible to speculate a bit, Urban thought.
For regardless (he maintained) of whether Vera Kall was alive, or if this was merely someone passing herself off as her, then it was clear as day that it all must have to do with my showing up in K– again. My return to the scene of the crime, so to speak. It could not just be a time-related coincidence that someone – Vera or Miss X – had waited for thirty years and then happened to decide to strike right now. Impossible. Out of the question. It was my journey here that started the stone rolling, lit the beacon. As sure as . . . amen in church.
He glared at me to convince me that I ought to agree. I nodded a little vaguely.
‘And who knew that you were coming here?’
I thought about it. ‘My wife . . . no, actually,’ it occurred to me. ‘I never talked about my plans. Hmm, no one . . . nobody, in other words. Other than you and me, that is.’
‘Ha!’ said Urban triumphantly. ‘Same here! I haven’t spoken with a soul about you . . . I’ve probably mentioned that I was going to the cabin, but the name Henry Maartens never crossed my lips.’
‘Thanks,’ I said for lack of anything else.
‘So . . .’ Urban Kleerwot continued, digging in his beard, ‘so someone happened to catch sight of you. The Snake Flower or someone else.’
‘The Snake Flower or someone else . . .’ I repeated. ‘Damn it, Urban, it’s not possible that she’s alive, you have to get that out of your head.’
He snorted. ‘Listen, you take care of your head, I’ll take care of mine! Now, what conclusions do you draw?’
I pondered a moment. ‘None at all,’ I said.
‘Weak,’ said Urban. ‘But hardly surprising. How old are you?’
‘Forty-nine. What does my age matter?’
‘How old were you when you moved from K–?’
‘Nineteen. Get to the point.’
‘I’m sorry if this wounds your vanity, but how great a chance do you think there is that someone would recognize your student mug after three decades? Hmm.’
He took a deep puff on the cigar and leant back. Looked as if he’d just made the decisive thrust in the prosecutor’s crown witness in his next mystery.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I understand. The hotel.’
‘Exactly,’ said Urban. ‘You’ve left your name in just one place. Hotel Continental. There we have the crux of the matter.’
And how the hell does she know we’re sitting out here in the woods then? I thought, but didn’t say anything.
Then I suddenly felt something flash inside my head, but it passed much too quickly for me to be able to perceive its content. One of those passes from the subconscious that perhaps I could have managed to catch twenty years ago, but which now just fell down into the indolent marsh of middle age.
To speak metaphorically.
‘What are you thinking about?’ said Urban. ‘You look cross-eyed.’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing you would understand.’
That night I dreamt about how I woke up.
Woke up that morning and sensed the aroma of Vera’s body in my bed.
The taste of her tongue in my mouth. The feeling of her warm skin, of her hands, her breasts, her womb. It was twenty past four, the blackbirds were singing and she was gone. An absence that pounded in every cubic millimetre of my pitiful rented room. My love nest. Our love nest. I got up, read her message, crawled back down into bed. Lay there and held my inexplicable, fragile warm happiness; recalled all we’d done during those inexplicable hours. Everything we’d said, everything we touched. That she loved me.
Then dreamt about how I woke up the next time late in the morning. How I went out in the summer, how the day passed by in a sun-entangled haze. How late in the afternoon I met my parents and my brother at the railway station; they came because of the graduation reception the next day, put up by the Reims family, where we also had dinner. I left them about eight o’clock, here the dream starts to fall, here everything is drawn slowly downwards in a relentless surging spiral, a maelstrom; twilight in the air, a cooler wind; I take the road past the Grubby Bun, there’s where I hear about it. The first rumour; Vincent Bauer and Clemens de Broot
are sitting and smoking out on the steps, I stop and bum a couple of puffs and hear that Vera Kall is missing.
Went up in smoke. Vera Kall, of all people.
She’s gone; no one knows where she is, it’s Ellen Kaarmann who knows about it, her father is a police officer.
At first I have some kind of short circuit. Vincent Bauer and Clemens de Broot shrink up and disappear in a whirling narrow tunnel. The same maelstrom, the same vortex, both in the dream and in the model for the dream. Their voices are distorted to an incomprehensible chatter. I smoke and smoke and hold onto the railing so as not to fall. The world totters and me along with it. The nausea comes in waves; I don’t fight it, little by little it ebbs out. ‘What the hell is going on with you?’ says Clemens.
I go into the cafe and get the story fleshed out. Yes, Vera Kall left Limburg’s sometime around eleven, Fritz Neller and Elizabeth Muijskens talked with her just a few minutes before; Fritz is playing pinball right now. There is some indication that she may have been a little tipsy, but who wasn’t? Hee-hee. Must have taken off homeward in any event, no one saw her the rest of the evening. Her bicycle is gone from the rack. Papa Adolphus reported to the police at eleven thirty in the morning. Before that all her classmates had been called, asking about her.
All the female classmates.
No one knows a thing. It’s a confounded mystery. What should one believe? What the hell happened? What happened to her? Vera Kall, of all people.
What do I think?
I don’t think anything. I smoke two cigarettes in rapid succession; glare down at the pinball machine and try to keep from screaming.
I was still sitting in the Grubby Bun of my dream when Urban woke me up.
‘You screamed,’ he said.
‘The hell I did,’ I said.
He observed me with a professional frown.
‘Must have heard wrong then. Breakfast is ready. Then we have a few things to accomplish.’
I took two deep breaths and woke up for real. Saw that it was ten o’clock in the morning. I don’t usually sleep that long. Cleared my throat and tried to raise the curtain again.