The Killing Spirit

by Jay Hopler

  Around eleven, Jonathan put in a call to Wister’s number in Hamburg, direct, not collect. Three or four minutes later, his telephone rang, and Jonathan had a clear connection, much better than the one to Paris usually sounded.

  “ …Yes, this is Wister,” Wister said, in his light, tense voice.

  “I had your letter this morning,” Jonathan began. “The idea of going to Hamburg—”

  “Yes, why not?” said Wister casually.

  “But I mean the idea of seeing a specialist—”

  “I’ll cable you the money right away. You can pick it up at the Fontainebleau post office. It should be there in a couple of hours.”

  “That’s—that’s kind of you. Once I’m there, I can—”

  “Can you come today? This evening? There’s room here for you to stay.”

  “I don’t know about today.” And yet why not?

  “Call me again when you’ve got your ticket. Tell me what time you’re coming in. I’ll be in all day.”

  Jonathan’s heart was beating a little fast when he hung up.

  At home during lunchtime, Jonathan went upstairs to the bedroom to see if his suitcase was handy. It was, on top of the wardrobe where it had been since their last holiday, nearly a year ago, in Arles.

  He said to Simone, “Darling, something important. I’ve decided to go to Hamburg and see a specialist.”

  “Oh, yes? … Perier suggested it?”

  “Well—in fact, no. My idea. I wouldn’t mind having a German doctor’s opinion. I know it’s an expense.”

  “Oh, Jon! Expense! …Did you have any news this morning? The laboratory report comes tomorrow, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes. What they say is always the same, darling. I want a fresh opinion.”

  “When do you want to go?”

  “Soon. This week.”

  Just before five, Jonathan called at the Fontainebleau post office. The money had arrived. Jonathan presented his carte d’identite and received six hundred francs. He went from the post office to the Syndicate d’Initiative in the Avenue Franklin Roosevelt, just a couple of streets away, and bought a round-trip ticket to Hamburg on a plane that left Orly airport at 9:25 P.M. that evening. He would have to hurry, he realized, and he liked that, because it precluded thinking, hesitating. He went to his shop and telephoned Hamburg, this time collect.

  Wister again answered. “Oh, that’s fine. At eleven fifty-five, right. Take the airport bus to the city terminus, would you? I’ll meet you there.”

  Then Jonathan made a telephone call to a client who had an important picture to pick up, and said that he would be closed Tuesday and Wednesday for “family reasons,” a common excuse. He’d have to leave a sign to that effect in his door for a couple of days. Not a very unusual matter, Jonathan thought, since shopkeepers in town frequently closed for a few days for one reason or another. Jonathan had once seen a sign saying, “Closed because of hangover.”

  Jonathan shut up shop and went home to pack. It would be a two-day stay at most, he thought, unless the Hamburg hospital or whatever insisted that he stay longer for tests. He had checked the trains to Paris, and there was one around 7 P.M. that would do nicely. He had to get to Paris, then to Les Invalides for a bus to Orly. When Simone came home with Georges, Jonathan had his suitcase downstairs.

  “Tonight?” Simone said.

  “The sooner the better, darling. I had an impulse. I’ll be back Wednesday, maybe even tomorrow night.”

  “But—where can I reach you? You arranged for a hotel?”

  “No. I’ll have to telegraph you, darling. Don’t worry.”

  “You’ve got everything arranged with the doctor? Who is the doctor?”

  “I don’t know yet. I only know the hospital.” Jonathan dropped his passport as he tried to stick it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

  “I never saw you like this,” said Simone.

  Jonathan smiled at her. “At least—I’m not collapsing!”

  Simone wanted to go with him to the Fontainebleau-Avon station, and take the bus back, but Jonathan begged her not to.

  “I’ll telegraph right away,” Jonathan said.

  “Where is Hamburg?” Georges demanded for the second time.

  “Allemagne! Germany!” Jonathan said.

  Jonathan found a taxi in the Rue de France luckily. The train was pulling into the Fontainebleau-Avon station as he arrived, and he barely had time to buy his ticket and hop on. He took a taxi from the Gare de Lyon to Les Invalides. Jonathan had some money left from the six hundred francs. For a while, he was not going to worry about money.

  On the plane, he half slept, with a magazine in his lap. He was imagining being another person. The rush of the plane seemed to be rushing this new person away from the man left behind in the dark gray house in the Rue Saint-Merry. He imagined another Jonathan helping Simone with the dishes at this moment, chatting about boring things such as the price of linoleum for the kitchen floor.

  The plane touched down. The air was sharp and much colder. There was a long lighted speedway, then the city’s streets, massive buildings looming up into the night sky, streetlights of different color and shape from those of France.

  And there was Wister smiling, walking toward him with his right hand extended. “Welcome, Mr. Trevanny! Have a good trip? …My car is just outside. Hope you didn’t mind coming to the terminus. My driver—not my driver but one I use sometimes—was tied up till just a few minutes ago.”

  They were walking out to the curb. Wister droned on in his American accent. Except for his scar, nothing about Wister suggested violence. He was, Jonathan decided, overly calm, which from a psychiatric point of view might be ominous. Or was he merely nursing an ulcer? Wister stopped beside a well-polished black Mercedes-Benz. An older man, wearing no cap, took care of Jonathan’s medium-sized suitcase and held the door for him and Wister.

  “This is Karl,” Wister said.

  “Evening,” Jonathan said.

  Karl smiled, and murmured something in German.

  It was quite a long drive. Wister pointed out the Rathaus, “the oldest in all Europe, and the bombs didn’t get it,” and a great church or cathedral whose name Jonathan didn’t catch. He and Wister were sitting together in the back. They entered a part of town with a more country-like atmosphere, went over a bridge, and onto a darker road.

  “Here we are,” Wister said. “My place.”

  The car had turned onto a climbing driveway and stopped beside a large house with a few lighted windows and a lighted, well-kept entrance.

  “It’s an old house with four flats, and I have one,” Wister explained. “Lots of such houses in Hamburg. Reconverted. Here I have a nice view of the Alster. It’s the Aussenalster, the big one. You’ll see more tomorrow.”

  They rode up in a modern lift, Karl taking Jonathan’s suitcase. Karl pressed a bell, and a middle-aged woman in a black dress and white apron opened the door, smiling.

  “This is Gaby,” said Wister to Jonathan. “My part-time housekeeper. She works for another family in the house and sleeps with them, but I told her we might want some food tonight. Gaby, Herr Trevanny aus Frankreich.”

  The woman greeted Jonathan pleasantly and took his coat. She had a round, pudding-like face, and looked the soul of good will.

  “Wash up in here, if you like,” said Wister, gesturing to a bathroom whose light was already on. “I’ll get you a Scotch. Are you hungry?”

  When Jonathan came out of the bathroom, the lights—four lamps—were on in the big square living room. Wister was sitting on a green sofa, smoking a cigar. Two Scotches stood on the coffee table in front of him. Gaby came in at once with a tray of sandwiches and a round pale yellow cheese.

  “Ah, thank you, Gaby.” Wister said to Jonathan, “It’s late for Gaby, but when I told her I had a guest coming, she insisted on staying up to serve the sandwiches.” Wister, though making a cheerful remark, didn’t smile. In fact his straight eyebrows drew together anxiously as Gaby arranged
the plates and the silverware. When she departed, he said, “You’re feeling all right? Now, the main thing is—the visit to the specialist. I have a good man in mind, Dr. Heinrich Wentzel, a hematologist at the Eppendorfer Krankenhaus, which is the principal hospital here. World famous. I’ve made an appointment for you for tomorrow at two, if that’s agreeable.”

  “Certainly. Thank you,” Jonathan said.

  “That gives you a chance to catch up on your sleep. Your wife didn’t mind your taking off on such short notice, I hope? … After all, it’s only intelligent to consult more than one doctor about a serious ailment.”

  Jonathan felt a bit dazed, and he was also distracted by the decor, by the fact that it was all supposed to be German, and that it was the first time he’d been in Germany. The furnishings were quite conventional and more modern than antique, though there was a handsome Biedermeier desk against the wall opposite Jonathan. There were low bookshelves along all the walls, long green curtains at the windows, and the lamps in the corners spread the light pleasantly. A purple wooden box lay open on the glass coffee table, presenting a variety of cigars and cigarettes in compartments. The white fireplace had brass accessories, but there was no fire now A rather interesting painting that looked like a Derwatt hung over the fireplace. And where was Reeves Minot? Wister was Minot, Jonathan supposed. Was Wister going to announce this, or assume that Jonathan realized it? It occurred to Jonathan that he and Simone ought to paint or paper their whole house white. He should discourage the idea of the art-nouveau wallpaper in the bedroom. If they wanted to achieve more light, white was the logical—

  “ … You might’ve given some thought to the other proposition,” Wister was saying, in his soft voice. “The idea I was talking about in Fontainebleau.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t changed my mind about that,” Jonathan said. “And so this leads to—obviously I owe you six hundred francs.” Jonathan forced a smile. Already he felt the Scotch, and as soon as he realized this, he nervously drank a little more from his glass. “I can repay you within three months. The specialist is the essential thing for me now. … First things first.”

  “Of course,” said Wister. “And you mustn’t think about repayment. That’s absurd.”

  Jonathan didn’t want to argue, but he felt vaguely ashamed. More than anything, Jonathan felt odd, as if he were dreaming, or somehow not himself. It’s only the foreignness of everything, he thought.

  “This Italian we want eliminated,” Wister said, folding his hands behind his head and looking up at the ceiling, “has a routine job. Ha! That’s funny! He only makes out that it’s a regular job with regular hours. He hangs around the clubs off the Reeperbahn, pretending he has a taste for gambling, just as he’s pretending he’s an oenologist. I’m sure he has a friend at the—whatever they call the wine factory here. He goes to the wine factory every afternoon, but he spends his evenings in one or another of the private clubs, playing the tables a little and seeing who he can meet. Mornings he sleeps because he’s up all night. Now, the point is,” Wister said, sitting up, “he takes the U-bahn every afternoon to get home, home being a rented flat. He’s got a six-month lease and a real six-month job with the wine place to make it look legitimate. … Have a sandwich!” Wister extended the plate as if he had just realized the sandwiches were there.

  Jonathan took a tongue sandwich. There was also coleslaw and dill pickle.

  “The important point is, he gets off the U-bahn at the Steinstrasse station every day around six-fifteen by himself, looking like any other businessman coming back from the office. That’s the time we want to get him.” Wister spread his bony hands palm downward. “The assassin fires once if you can get the middle of his back—twice for sure, maybe—drops the gun, and bob’s your uncle, as the English say, isn’t that right?”

  The phrase was indeed familiar, out of the long-ago past. “If it’s so easy, why do you need me?” Jonathan managed a polite smile. “I’m an amateur, to say the least. I’d botch it.”

  Wister might not have heard. “The crowd in the U-bahn may be rounded up. Some of them. Who can tell? Thirty, forty people, perhaps, if the cops get there fast enough. It’s a huge station, the station for the main railway terminus. They might look people over. But suppose they look you over?” Wister shrugged. “You’ll have dropped the gun. You’ll have used a thin stocking over your hand, and you’ll drop the stocking a few seconds after you fire. No powder marks on you, no fingerprints on the gun. You have no connection with the man who’s dead. Oh, it really won’t come to all that. But one look at your French identity card, the fact of your appointment with Dr. Wentzel—you’re in the clear. My point is—our point—we don’t want anyone connected with us or the clubs. …”

  Jonathan listened and made no comment. On the day of the shooting, he was thinking, he would have to be in a hotel, he could hardly be a houseguest of Wister, in case a policeman asked him where he was staying. And what about Karl and the housekeeper? Did they know anything about this? Were they trustworthy? It’s all a lot of nonsense, Jonathan thought, and wanted to smile, but he wasn’t smiling.

  “You’re tired,” Wister informed him. “Want to see your room? Gaby already took your suitcase in.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Jonathan was in pajamas after a hot shower. His room had a window on the front of the house like the living room, which had two windows on the front, and Jonathan looked out on a body of water with white lights along the near shore, and some red and green from the tied-up boats. It looked dark, peaceful, and spacious. A searchlight’s beam swept protectively across the sky. His bed was a three-quarter width, neatly turned down. There was a glass of what looked like water on his bed table and a package of Gitanes maize, his brand, and an ashtray and matches. Jonathan took a sip from the glass and found that it was indeed water.

  from IN THE BEGINNING

  A NOVEL IN PROGRESS

  Ian McEwan

  I arrived ten minutes late. The place was doing good lunchtime business. Conversation was at a roar, and stepping in from the street was like walking into a storm. You could imagine asingle topic—an hour later, there would be. The professor was already seated, but Clarissa was on her feet, and I knew from across the room that she was in the mood for a fuss. A waiter was on his knees, praying style, wedging a table leg. Another was arranging a cushion on her chair to bring her up to height. When she saw me, she came skipping through the din and took my hand and led me to the table as though I were blind. If only. I associated these skittish impersonations of a child with celebration—and mayhem. And we had some cause to raise a glass. Professor Jocelyn Kale, Clarissa’s godfather, had been appointed to an honorary position on the Human Genome Project. Clarissa had delivered her book the week before. I had just come from recording the last of my lectures. Three had been broadcast. Above all, it was Clarissa’s birthday.

  Before I sat down, I kissed her. Our tongues touched. Jocelyn half rose from his seat and shook my hand. At the same moment, champagne in an ice bucket was brought to the table, and we pitched our voices in with the roar. The ice bucket sat within a rhomboid of sunlight on the white tablecloth. The tall restaurant windows showed off rectangles of blue sky between the buildings. I had a hard-on from the kiss. In memory, it was all success, clarity, clatter. In memory, all the food they brought us first was red: the bresaola, the fat tongues of roasted peppers laid on goat’s cheese, the radicchio, the white china bowl of radish coronets. When I think how we leaned in and shouted, I seem to be remembering an underwater event.

  Jocelyn took from his pocket a small parcel done up in blue tissue. We drew down an imaginary silence on our table while Clarissa unwrapped it. Perhaps that was when I glanced to my left, at the table next to ours. A man, whose name I now know was Colin Tapp, was with his daughter and his father. Perhaps I noticed them later. Inside the tissue was a black box. Inside the box, on a cumulus of cotton wool, was a golden brooch. Still without speaking, Clarissa lifted it out, and we examined it on her pal
m.

  Two gold bands were entwined in a double helix. Crossing between them were tiny silver rungs in groups of three, representing the base pairs—the four-letter alphabet that coded, in permutating triplets, all living things. Engraved on the helical bands were spherical designs, to suggest the twenty amino acids onto which the three-letter codons were mapped. In the full light gathered from the tabletop, it looked in Clarissa’s hand like more than a representation. It could have been the thing itself, ready to cook up chains of amino acids which would be blended into protein molecules. It could have divided right there in her hand to make another gift. When Clarissa sighed Jocelyn’s name, the sound of the restaurant surged back on us.

  “Oh God, it’s beautiful,” she said and kissed him.

  His weak yellow-blue eyes were moist. He said, “It was Gillian’s, you know. She would have loved you to have it.”

  I was impatient to produce my own present, but we were still in the spell of Jocelyn’s. Clarissa pinned the brooch on her gray silk blouse.

  Would I remember the conversation now if I did not know what it preceded?

  We began by joking that the Genome Project gave away such brooches by the dozen. Then Jocelyn talked about the discovery of DNA. Perhaps that was when I turned in my seat to ask a waiter to bring us water and noticed the two men and the girl. We emptied the champagne, and the antipasto was cleared away. I don’t remember what food we ordered after that. Jocelyn began to tell us about Johann Friedrich Miescher, the Swiss chemist who identified DNA, in 1869. This was supposed to be one of the great missed chances in the history of science. Miescher had got himself a steady supply of pus-soaked bandages from a local hospital. (Rich in white blood cells, Jocelyn added for Clarissa’s benefit.) Miescher was interested in the chemistry of the cell nucleus. In the nuclei he found phosphorous—an improbable substance, which didn’t sit with current ideas. An extraordinary find, but his paper was blocked by his teacher, who spent two years repeating and confirming his student’s results.