The Carpenter's Wife

by G. H. Holmes

  The road!

  She stood on the road. And there was a car coming, its Xenon headlights blinding her already. She stumbled toward the median, waving both arms like a windmill.

  “Heeelp!” Please, God…

  The driver slowed down, motor wailing as he shifted gears. When he flicked the brights off, she saw that the car’s hood was dark-colored. Then she perceived four interlocking rings on its front, marking it an Audi.

  Bert…?

  Then the car stopped.

  She read the license plate—and her hands flew to her mouth.

  For a moment the car sat and idled. Then the door popped open and Ralph got out and stared at her.

  She stood, transfixed and wide-eyed, and for the longest time none of them spoke; only the motor purred.

  He finally moved. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  She took one hesitant step.

  He spread his arms.

  Now she ran toward him and he caught her and pulled her close, and she buried her face in his shirt and sobbed.

  When she had quieted down, he held her at arm’s length and looked her over. “Got yourself knocked around pretty good.”

  She sobbed and her face sought his shirt again.

  He held her some more. Then he said, “Let’s go home.”

  38

  Saturday, 30 August 2003, The Small Hours, 18°C

  “Dives,” Bert heard himself say, “dives in misericordia.”

  Black fingers stuck out of the mossy sea at his feet, all of them pointing heavenward, and he wondered if there were hands attached that would pull him under once he began to walk on the water.

  “Dives.”

  He already knew he wouldn’t sink. He’d lain on the surface before and hadn’t sunk. The fingers had prodded him, had inflicted pain, but they’d been powerless to make him sink. Earlier, he’d reached below the surface and had felt the arms to which those fingers were attached, and now he wondered if there were hands too.

  “Dives,” he whispered.

  Now the fingers didn’t all point heavenward anymore, they pointed in every direction; some even pointed at him.

  At him.

  Bert stood motionless.

  They knew why he was here.

  Then the bow of a submarine rose from the sea. He watched closely; neither the submarine nor the sea moved.

  The silhouette of a sailor, reduced to black bones, drifted by.

  “Dives,” he breathed.

  He swatted at a fly, and the shadows below the surface began to murmur. Their murmur rose and was taken over by the trees; then it filled the sky. His gaze went back onto the sea. Below the surface lay the ancients; he heard them. They spoke about him; the ancients knew why he was here.

  “Misericordia.”

  Suddenly he sensed that something important had gone out of his life, something worthy to die for; it was as if somebody had switched off his private sun. He shivered. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something important was gone, and the coldness would now last forever. He didn’t hear the cloud of insects surrounding his head. Instead, he heard…

  The murmuring sea…

  On the other side stood people, new people; they were waiting for him. They called his name. Determined, he thrust his chin out and stepped out. He sank until his ankles were submerged, but staring straight ahead, he kept walking, kept swinging his cast-shod leg, kept poking with his cane, kept marching, undeterred; the bones of the ancients crackled below his feet, but he plowed on, and he didn’t sink.

  Then he stood among trees.

  Then he realized that Gina wasn’t with him. He turned in a circle, scanning the forest for her.

  That silly woman. He giggled. She was probably waiting by the car. Silly me, he thought. Of course she’s waiting by the car. This was a wonderful night, designer-made for their purpose. Gina loved the chase and he cherished the conquest.

  “Gina Gina Gina…” he sang to himself, hobbling through the night.

  Her colleague, the redhead across the desk with whom she shared her Gummi bears, was a woman worthy of conquest too, but he’d opted for Gina, flirting with the redhead only to make Gina jealous. Bert smiled.

  Chase and conquest.

  Certain words were just magical. What pleasure, to look into the eyes of a woman, observing the effect while you made her an honest compliment, while you said, “You’re the most fascinating person I have ever met; your beauty confuses me; I’m getting drunk just looking at you; your eyes! Look away from me,” or a variation of thereof.

  Trite?

  Not to the one on the receiving end. And of course you had to mean it. Women were sensitive.

  Bert froze, paralyzed by the knowledge that a giant spider sat behind the bush straight ahead. He could see its legs; its cover was too small for the beast. Gooseflesh broke out on his back; the shiver started between his shoulder blades.

  “Dives,” he said with authority.

  He inched sideways, but now the trees behind him weren’t safe either. There were aggressive shadows; they were almost on him; the ancients—

  “Dives!”

  He began a furious hobble, brandishing his right arm like a rapier. Now he was by the spider bush, but that cowardly monster had crawled around it, hiding, keeping the bush between them.

  Down the slope waited an enormous black bug, big as a hut; he’d never seen a bug that big. Its stiff wings cut back in perfect symmetry and its bug eyes gleamed. It stared peacefully.

  Then he sat in the bug, grasping its steering wheel and looking out through its glassy eye. Then he was the bug.

  “Dives in misericordia.”

  The bug crawled through high grass until it was out of the forest. Behind, the spider and the ancients waved good-bye—the tree people, too, taller than all.

  The bug raced along on its narrow track, until pale tombs and sepulchers appeared to the left and right. Spirits swirled around them; then they were gone and the bug raced on.

  Then it slid into a brain-gray mist. The mist vibrated, discharging energy in white flashes. Bert groaned loudly, suddenly remembering Dives, the man who had no mercy on destitute Lazarus outside his gate. The dogs comforted Lazarus, licking his sores, but not Dives. Dives gave no crumb.

  “The fat man’s feast; the fat man’s feast…” The line began to repeat itself in Bert’s head.

  Then he saw Dives in Hell—!

  The man’s face was pinched, his eyes narrowed to slits, the pain too strong for his voice; the heat, the fire…

  But Dives knew what had brought him here; Dives knew.

  He needed to talk to Dives.

  “Dives!”

  Dives was rich in misery; but that was not all. Dives also had a message, a good message, one of hope and joy and peace, and… and something else. Misericordia wasn’t misery, it was…

  Who knew?

  Gina would know what Tom thought. Maybe the Amerikaner knew what the word meant. Then Bert wondered why Gina had never answered that guy’s prayer. Because there was a glass wall around him—a glass wall of fire.

  Dives heard the ruckus; he opened his eyes—and stared at him; he meant to speak, his lips moved. Bert strained. “Dives, I can’t hear you.”

  Suddenly a yellow seashell hovered in the sky, on a bed of orange, and Bert understood. Everything made perfect sense.

  The kid hated graveyard shift; you never knew in what particular frame of mind incoming customers might be that late at night.

  The easiest to cope with were the habitual drunks. They came, sometimes with their children, to fill up the car and then hung around to fill up themselves with the help of a few cans or chilly half-liter bottles of beer from the refrigerators. But then they left.

  What troubled the kid more were the Deutschhof gangs in the dark outside. They came in, bought booze, and then stood in the shadows somewhere between the parking lot and the station, where he heard them but couldn’t see them.

  They were one reason why he now kept a Walth
er PPK gas pistol on the shelf below the cash register. You could scare people with one of those. What he’d do if a real robber came in and challenged him was a different matter, one about which he tried not to think too much. Not thinking didn’t always help, as his friend Erkan, night attendant at the DEA station on Landwehr Straße, found out the other day, when a guy with a sock on his face had asked for the content of the register. Erkan had had no argument against the gun in the visitor’s hand.

  But the kid’s own Shell station had never been robbed before.

  He cocked his head; the gang outside seemed to have vanished; they’d been the young ones who never gave him any trouble anyway. Good. Sometimes, loneliness wasn’t bad. He reached for the magazine on top of his black Walther, the new edition of Lui.

  He flipped it open, casually noticing the car that drove up to pump number one. Then he immersed himself in the photos on his lap.

  Other glossies were Coup, Maxim and Tomorrow, but his personal favorite was still Lui. It had the best women, straightforward pictures, and not much else. Playboy had million-dollar sex and the stories weren’t bad, okay; Coup went the farthest, showing things Playboy didn’t dare show, but Coup was also so artificial. It tried too hard. Below those there were Praline and Neue Revue and a host of other raunchy mags. Lacking all sophistication, they were good enough for boys in puberty, but of no use to a young adult such as himself. Lui had all the sophistication he could presently stand.

  The kid looked up and glanced out the window; the guy by number one should be done by now. The car still sat there, its mid-section hidden by the pump, but he saw no one.

  Strange.

  He closed the mag and slid it onto the shelf under the register. Then he got up and watched. It was raining again; he heard the soft splatter and saw the station’s pavement getting submerged. But there still was no motion by the car. He checked his watch: seven minutes.

  Something was wrong. He reached for the gun—when the world outside the window suddenly burst into flames with a whomp that shook the building.

  “Whooow.” He steadied himself on the counter.

  Black smoke poured through the open door and the kid smelled gasoline. Then he saw the black Audi behind the pump engulfed in bright-orange flames. The pumps closer to his cashier’s station began to turn brown and their lacquer flaked off. When he saw the rubber hoses melt and sever, he punched a series of buttons, shutting down all pumps, cutting the gas supply to each one. He worked quickly, smacking gum so forcefully that the earrings in both his lobes wiggled. If the tanks blew, the whole quarter might get incinerated.

  Once done, he reached for his mobile phone and ran out the back door, where he dialed 112 for the fire brigade.

  Flames flickered, casting shadows on the walls of darkness. According to the stench, a well of sulphur had to bubble somewhere close by. The air in Dives’s realm was unbreathable and Bert found the heat beyond anything he’d ever experienced.

  But he was here.

  “Dives,” he said through clenched teeth, standing in front of the one who had the answer. “Dives, I have come.”

  The fat man lay on a stone shelf as if sleeping. His skin was clay-colored and not a hair was left on his head.

  “Dives.”

  The fat man’s eyes opened; he was clearly in pain.

  “I have come.”

  Dives blinked and got up on one elbow. Then he motioned him closer.

  Bert shivered in spite of the blaze when he bent down and saw the blue tattoos on the man’s gray face and the net of ten thousand wrinkles. He was staring into the face of a lost man. Here lay one of the ancients who hadn’t made it. To Bert he seemed as if he’d once been a magician from Egypt, but he’d only been a rich man in his days on the surface. They fondly called it that down here: the surface.

  The old man struggled inwardly and Bert saw pity on his face. Dives was not a bad man; his compassion was that of an upright man. The message he’d share would be true.

  The message.

  “Dives in misericordia,” Bert said, his tone solemn.

  Dives grimaced and shook his head.

  “Misericordia,” Bert said, as if to clarify.

  His lips parted, then Dives spoke, but out came barely a whisper. “Misericordia.”

  Bert’s gaze grew intent.

  “Mercy,” Dives said.

  Misery, mercy…

  “Rich… rich in mercy.” The fat man frowned. “But you have not followed God.”

  “But I have,” Bert said.

  “Created God in your own image.” Dives was plagued by pain that Bert felt too. “But He is rich in mercy. You must not die and join me. Call on Him and live—” He leaned forward. “Call.”

  “Call on whom?”

  “Not the idol but the Living God.”

  Bert’s tongue ran over his lips. “But how?”

  “Jesus the Nazarene was once here. He came to suffer in your stead…” The sage fell silent. Then he turned around, away from Bert.

  “Jesus,” Bert said, closing his eyes. “Jesus!” He inhaled. Then he shouted the word with all his might. “Jesus!”

  The chamber of the damned reverberated with the echo.

  The Malteser ambulance’s horn was off now; the blue light still spun. The car was swaying around a corner when the monitor-beep began to come in intervals, kicking the top line on the electrocardiograph back into action.

  “Got him,” said the medic holding up the bottle with the intravenous feed. “You’re a genius, Herr Doktor.”

  Doctor Werner Vogt grunted a reply and slipped the defibrillators off his hands. The stocky orthopedist on beeper tonight had a headache. He’d been drinking an excellent pinot noir with some friends in the evening, and now his stomach rose whenever the car made a sharp turn. Good thing the ride was short; the Shell station on Mainberger Straße lay just down the hill from Leopoldina.

  “Fluids?” he asked.

  “Plenty,” the medic said.

  Vogt steadied himself and looked at the charred body on the cot.

  “How much do you think got fried, Herr Doktor?”

  “Skin? I’d say thirty to sixty percent.”

  “Will he live?”

  “Depends—”

  “We’re there!” said the driver. Then the back door of the ambulance flew open.

  39

  Saturday, 30 August 2003, Morning, 28°C

  “I don’t want you to call him,” Gina said. She sat on her bed, her legs drawn up. “He’s a cruel person; the worst man I ever met.”

  “He just—”

  “No. Can’t you see he’s trying to tear our family apart? Have you ever thought of the children?”

  Ralph, sitting by the bed’s foot end, didn’t reply. A few moments ago he had surrendered to her insistent questioning and had admitted to Tom’s involvement in the scheme carried out last night.

  “You don’t know it,” she said, “but I know Tom Stark better than you think. He sent me e-mails every day for the longest time; and you get to know someone if you read after them every day.”

  “Did you invite him to write to you?”

  “Me?” She inhaled deeply. “You know how he is; he can talk; you’ve heard him; you fell for him more than I did.”

  Ralph’s Adam’s apple rose and fell.

  “He can be interesting. In the beginning we talked about God and that was good. He answered some of my questions that I had. But then changed, talked about money; he’s big on money, you know that. And then he…” She stopped.

  The look in her eyes became plaintive. “Ralph, both of us have taken that man serious. We were fools. You should have read some of his recent stuff.”

  Delors raised his brows. “Did you keep it?”

  “Deleted it all. Shouldn’t have. At the time I tried to pass off, you know, the undertone. Tried giving him the benefit of the doubt, when I should have said something to you all along.”

  “Like what?”

  “He wanted
me.”

  Ralph blinked.

  “He charmed me, he sweet-talked me, he romanced me, and made me compliments. For weeks. I admit, it felt good. You like to be praised, don’t you? But then he became insistent, asking for things I just couldn’t do.”

  “Like what?”

  “Do I have to become any more explicit? And when I finally convinced him that he didn’t have a dog’s chance with me, he came up with that sick plan of last night.” She sniffled. “He’s an American killer who destroys whatever he doesn’t get, and he doesn’t get me, and so he’s trying to destroy us.” Her shoulders began to shake and she buried her face in her hands. Then she wiped her eyes. “But we won’t allow that, won’t we, Ralph?”

  Ralph stared at her.

  “He’s a dog.”

  “And your notebook?”

  “My notebook?” The expression on her face became indignant. “That notebook was meant for you.”

  “Has Bert’s name—”

  “Bert’s name, Bert’s name; so what? He’s a madman; you’ve seen what he did to me last night.” Her torn and dirty clothes lay in a heap by the walk-in closet door. “I’m still thinking about lodging a complaint.”

  “Little late now.”

  “Look,” she said. “I used his name because a book like that needs that… flair, that forbidden air about it.”

  “Huh?”

  “Okay. You never write anything for me, do you realized that? And you know why? Because hot stuff’s not hot if you write it to someone you’re allowed to write it to. Bert’s name was just a help. Put your own name in its place and you’ve got it right.”

  “But…”

  “Okay, Bert was a fling; but that was a long time ago, and we talked about it. He once used to be a nice guy, but it’s over and you’re the man I love. Bert’s crazy, and Tom’s trying to kill us.” She huffed. “I never ever want to see that man again; you’re the only one I want to be with. Tom’s just as mad as Bert; they’re two peas in a pod, and if Bert’s dangerous, guess what Tom is. His government trained him to be mean and ugly; we’re no longer safe here. I’ll scream if I see him again. Even Romy said that he’s killed before.”