A crazy reaction. But the impulse was so strong that it took enormous willpower to resist. He would never be able to explain it in a sensible manner, and he felt compelled to leave, to disappear before something fatal took place.
So he backed away, holding his hands up in front of him. The man gave him a surly look, the woman stopped knitting. Hanck turned on his heel. He heard someone say: ‘It’s not over with that one . . .’
No doubt they knew what they were talking about. He wasn’t finished with it. He’d done nothing but spread a bad mood all around him, started questioning one thing after another. A hateful person. A dissident.
So eventually he ended up at the Colonial Club. It was the only lead he had. A false lead, by all accounts. When his glasses were empty, he went over to the bar to buy another round. A number of people had crowded up to the bar at that moment. When he went back to his booth, a woman was sitting on the other side of the table.
‘Was this place taken?’
‘Be my guest,’ he said.
She had a blue drink in a big whisky tumbler with a straw. She pursed her lips and sucked up a few drops without taking her eyes off him. She was quite large and voluptuous, with a wig of straight black hair and harsh make-up. He was grateful to see that she had short fingernails bitten down to the quick.
‘Subversive?’ she said.
Hanck wondered if he’d heard correctly. ‘Pardon?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was just wondering whether you’re like all the others in here.’
‘That’s possible,’ he said. ‘Although I can’t say I know what they’re like.’
‘Me neither,’ she admitted. ‘Not exactly. But I think that they’re those subversive types.’
‘And what does that mean?’
‘Critical elements . . .’ Her long, straight hair shook as she made a show of quoting what seemed to be the general consensus: ‘Critical of society.’
‘I see,’ he said. ‘Claustrophobics.’
‘Sort of,’ she said. ‘But I’m not one of them. I think we’re living in the best of all possible worlds.’
She wanted to drink a toast to that. He clinked glasses with her, albeit reluctantly. If he had objected or argued, he would have been immediately drawn into something; she seemed to be that type, someone who ‘liked to talk’, someone who could talk about anything.
But it was too late, he already was mixed up in something.
‘You’re sad,’ she said.
‘Am I?’ he said.
She tilted her head, squinted her eyes. ‘I know men.’
‘I suspected as much,’ he said.
She opened her eyes wide, pretended to be surprised, even slightly offended. ‘Now how am I supposed to interpret that?’
Hanck laughed, or smiled at least. He could feel it on his face.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘That looks much better. You could sell teeth.’
‘No doubt,’ he said.
‘Are they real?’
‘Believe so.’
‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘You’re a believer.’
‘I believe in my teeth.’
‘That’s all?’
‘That’s all.’
‘A person with such beautiful teeth should be happy,’ she said. ‘But then you have to believe.’
‘I tried,’ said Hanck. ‘Yesterday.’ He regretted his words at once. He didn’t want to get involved in a longer conversation.
‘Okay,’ she said.
‘Forget it,’ he said. As soon as he said that, he again regretted his words. The woman on the other side of the table seemed totally deflated, annihilated. As if she had found herself engaged in a more or less sensible conversation with a perfectly respectable man who suddenly, in the blink of an eye, had changed tone and wanted to get rid of her because she was embarrassing, coarse, a worn-out old hooker. She hunched her shoulders, her face fell. For some idiotic reason she made him feel ashamed. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I was standing in a queue.’
Nothing more was needed for her to regain her sparkle.
‘A queue for what?’ she said. ‘TomBola or the Old Man or . . . ?
‘Take a guess,’ he said.
‘Hard to tell,’ she said.
‘You’re the one who knows men.’
‘As far as colleagues go, I’ve never doubted TomBola,’ she said. ‘So it was the Old Man.’
Hanck nodded. ‘That queue hasn’t moved a metre in two weeks.’
‘It hasn’t moved a metre in two years.’
‘And how are we supposed to interpret that?’
‘Maybe it means that he’s very busy.’
‘But with what? Keeping tabs on his decadent family?’
‘Aha,’ she said. ‘A critical tone.’
‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘In any case, I couldn’t bear it.’
‘The queue?’
‘The mood.’
She nodded a bit pensively, sipped her drink, and took out a case of hand-rolled cigarettes. She lit one, and like everyone else she blew the smoke up towards the globe of the lamp, then plucked off a scrap of tobacco that had stuck to her lipstick.
‘And what was your purpose for being there?’ Apparently she then realised that Hanck had no desire to discuss it. ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘Of course it’s none of my business.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s not.’
Suddenly she held out her hand across the table. ‘I’m Lucy.’
‘Hanck,’ he said. She had a big but very soft hand, warm and dry.
‘If only I weren’t so tired . . .’ she said. ‘But I’m dreadfully tired . . .’
Hanck didn’t bite; he declined to ask her why. He sat there in silence for a moment, looking around the room in a way that he thought was discreet. But he was mistaken.
‘Are you waiting for someone?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You look like some sort of lousy detective.’
‘I may be lousy,’ he said. ‘But I’m not a detective.’
‘So what do you do when you’re not sitting here at five in the morning?’
He seized on the least plausible explanation: ‘I’m a writer.’
Lucy gave a big yawn, holding her hand in front of her mouth and lightly fluttering her fingers, as if in apology. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘A skald or an author?’
‘Either,’ he said.
She paused to think, as if it were a reply that required a certain amount of contemplation. ‘Difficult profession.’
‘Definitely,’ he said.
‘But . . . but then you’re like all the others here.’ Her face lit up, she seemed almost relieved. ‘There are both skalds and poets here, but between you and me, most of them are really lousy.’
‘Unbeknownst to me,’ he said.
‘How pedantic you are.’
‘That’s my style.’
‘They’re just . . .’ She leaned across the table so as to speak more softly, more intimately. ‘They’re just drunken pieces of shit, if you get what I mean . . .’
Hanck nodded. He understood. ‘The world isn’t fair.’
‘If you’ll forgive me, I assume that’s why you wanted to see the Old Man.’ She smiled, sure that she was right. He saw no reason to correct her. ‘To get a little head start . . . Okay, he’s the right person for that. Absolutely.’
She sat there nodding for a moment. The matter was clear. It was time for Hanck to return her friendly interest. He said obligingly, ‘What about you? What do you do otherwise?’
She gave him a big smile, showing yellow teeth, a gap in her upper jaw. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘Even the obvious can have different names,’ he said.
‘Difficult profession too.’
‘No doubt,’ he said. ‘Rather similar.’
He stood up, excused himself politely, and headed in the direction of the arrows on the signs for the toilet. They led out to a long corridor with shiny, yellowing paint on the walls, through a door an
d out to the yard where at last he found two metal swinging doors labelled ‘Ladies’ and ‘Gents’.
On the men’s side there was a long, stinking urinal along one wall and several stalls with doors. The drain from the urinal was clogged up, so he opened the door to the first stall. It was occupied. In the fraction of a second before he closed the door again, he glimpsed a number of details that only later could be put together into a coherent scene: a black clergyman’s cassock, a white collar, a bright red face, a leather belt, the nape of another person’s neck, a well-shaved leg, a large-size woman’s shoe, a filthy floor.
He relieved himself in another stall and left. Lucy was still sitting at the table when he came back. He sat down, sipped his drink. The beer was starting to get warm and stale.
‘What is it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You look so . . . Hmm, I don’t know.’
‘The beer has gone stale.’
‘That’s not it.’ She turned her head, gave him a sidelong glance. As if that would make him easier to read.
‘A clergyman is dying out in the toilet,’ he said.
‘Dying?’ she said. ‘What do you mean?’
He described what he had seen, in great detail, interpreting the fragments that he’d glimpsed in the brief moment when the stall door had stood open: a clergyman who was pressed into a corner with a belt around his neck, with the end tied to a water pipe up near the ceiling, orally penetrating a woman who would soon see him blessedly deceased and plunder him of anything of value he had in his possession.
Lucy stared at him, first wide-eyed, then giving him that sidelong glance again.
‘Typical author,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing but prejudices.’
‘I saw what I saw,’ he said.
‘There’s nothing to indicate that the man is a clergyman even though he’s wearing a clergyman’s cassock. And there’s nothing to indicate that the other person was a woman just because a high-heeled shoe was on the floor.’
‘Okay,’ said Hanck. ‘I’m sure death doesn’t give a shit.’
‘How shocking.’
‘I’ll never do it again.’
She smiled, perhaps thinking that he meant to be funny.
‘I mean how squalid.’
‘A nice way to go.’
‘To think that no one has ever asked me for that.’
Well, at least the matter of her profession was now cleared up. ‘Don’t look at me,’ Hanck said. ‘I have no intention of asking you.’
‘There’s no order in here,’ she said. ‘It’s just like out there. I’ll be damned if there’s any difference any more.’
‘Have you been out there?’
‘You can bloody-well believe it,’ she said. ‘I’ve given head to giants. Sucked-off the great ones.’ She raised her hands to ward off any questions. ‘No names. Nobody is going to come here and say that I tell tales.’
But he had no intention of asking her any questions. He said, ‘I’ve never been out there.’
‘It’s hell for a woman alone. A matter of survival. Staying on your feet. But I was lucky. One day, after many years of waiting, I was found worthy to move here, to be allowed in.
I came here believing that things would be better. Some semblance of law and order. Like in the past. But there’s sodding little of that. Pretty soon it’s going to be as bad in here as it is out there. They’ve lost control. What’s needed is . . .’
She fell silent, stopped herself. Hanck wondered just how far she would go. He recognised this type of talk, he’d heard it in other places. Perhaps the exact same opinions were being vented at the other tables, among the young radicals who lacked personal experience about how things were in the past but had a clear notion that times had been better, that laws and regulations had guaranteed the safety of citizens, that people had elected a government for the common good. It was impossible to say whether they were reactionary or revolutionary, or perhaps one presupposed the other.
‘Yes?’ he said. ‘What is it that’s needed?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said, taking out a cigarette and lighting it. She took a drag, calm and controlled. ‘So what are you unhappy about?’
‘Did I say I was unhappy?’
‘I can tell. There’s something blocking your way.’
‘Isn’t there always something blocking the way?’
Lucy shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’m who I want to be,’ she said. ‘Do you get to be who you want to be?’
‘I did once,’ he said. ‘Not any more.’
‘Thrown out?’ she said. ‘Not allowed to be with the one you want to be with?’
‘You could look at it like that,’ he said.
‘But you’re a writer,’ she said. ‘Don’t let anything stop you.’
That was a truth he had never even considered. Of course he couldn’t admit as much to her, and he wondered what he should say in order to seem as familiar, in a professional sense, with this truth as he ought to be. But he didn’t have to come up with anything. Lucy gave a big yawn, spread out her arms on the tabletop, leaned her head on her arms and fell asleep. She must have had a long and strenuous night behind her.
A short time later Lucy woke up.
‘Good morning,’ said Hanck.
She stretched, composed her features, blinked her eyes, patted her cheeks lightly with her fingertips. She was soon herself again. ‘What time is it?’
Hanck looked at his old wristwatch. ‘Five-thirty.’
‘It’ll be daylight soon,’ she said. ‘Do your teeth get even bigger then?’
‘No,’ said Hanck. ‘I promise you.’
‘There!’ she said. ‘Look!’ She signalled with a tilt of her head. ‘There you have your clergyman!’
Hanck looked. He saw a man wearing a black clergyman’s cassock coming from the yellow corridor. It was him. The man had survived. Hanck felt relieved.
‘How nice you are,’ said Lucy. ‘You care.’
He didn’t exactly see it that way, but he let her believe whatever she liked. ‘A life is a life.’
‘Or else you’re just drunk.’
‘I’m not drunk,’ he said.
A conciliatory smile, very tactful and carefully weighed, appeared on her face. She was good at that, she’d undoubtedly had the same discussion on a daily basis, with other men who claimed to be more or less stone-cold sober. Only a foolish or at least an inexperienced woman would have insisted otherwise.
In hindsight he had to admit that he’d been both a miserable and a drunken detective. If Lucy had made an indecent proposal then, he would have jumped at the chance. He had a rather vague concept of what qualities he valued in women; he regarded himself as broadminded, but in this situation he was quite sure that the woman in question had just the opposite characteristics of the few he liked.
But no invitation was forthcoming. On the other hand, she took a piece of paper and a pen out of her handbag and started writing. ‘Wait,’ was all she said. She wanted him to wait and allow her to write in peace. And she actually knew how to write. The pen raced over the paper, shaping the words, as far as he could see in the dim light, in an elegant and restrained hand.
Hanck didn’t understand what she was up to, so he focused his attention on considering whether to toss back another round or whether he’d had enough. The night had already been squandered and ruined. None of his hopes had been met. The one he sought hadn’t shown up; he would be forced to come here again, on another night, maybe several. He should go home, get some sleep, rest up so he’d have the strength to come back.
Lucy covered two full pages, took out an envelope, slipped the papers inside and licked the flap closed. She inscribed a name on the front and held the envelope in her hand for a moment before handing it to Hanck. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Take this to the VIP entrance.’
Hanck took the envelope and looked at the addressee. It said: ‘O’Dean aux mains.’ He looked
puzzled.
‘The VIP entrance,’ she repeated. ‘It’ll take five minutes, tops, before he’s standing there with his trousers down.’
‘Thanks,’ said Hanck, ‘but that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.’
Lucy placed one of her big warm hands on his arm. ‘Metaphorically speaking. Excuse me a minute . . .’ She got up from the table, picked up her handbag, and disappeared in the direction of the ladies’.
She never came back. Hanck sat there for a while, he didn’t know how long, holding the envelope in his hand and waiting. But the woman was gone.
He stuck the envelope in his coat pocket and left. On his way home he passed a smoking dustbin. He decided to throw the envelope away.
Then the night came to an end, a wasted night, or so it might seem.
It was daylight by the time he got home, and he fell asleep at once. When he awoke late in the afternoon, he couldn’t remember exactly how the night had ended, but he was absolutely positive that somewhere he had stood leaning over a smoking dustbin with that envelope in his hand and then watched it glowing amid the remnants of all sorts of rubbish.
He hauled himself out of bed, feeling terrible, and went out to the hall where his coat lay tossed on the floor, wrinkled and wet. In the inside pocket were both the revolver and the envelope. It smelled of smoke. Part of the addressee’s name had dissolved in the rain, but he could still see that it said: ‘O’Dean aux mains.’
He stood there holding the envelope and felt himself reeling. There was a knock on the door. He didn’t want to see anyone, didn’t want to talk to anyone. He held his breath, standing as still as he could manage.
Another knock, a bit harder, a bit louder.
Hanck stood there, without moving, waiting for whoever was out in the stairwell to give up and go away. It was probably a customer. They usually gave up after a few minutes.
But this was clearly someone who possessed both will and patience. Another knock. ‘Hancken?’ he heard from the stairwell. ‘Hancken . . . are you at home?’ It was the shopkeeper. His eyes opened wide when Hanck finally opened the door. ‘Hancken . . . what’s happened?’
The Hurricane Party Page 21