by Martin Suter
Allmen leaped out of bed. He had to get the dragonflies out of the house, as soon as possible.
In the shower he put a plan together. He would pack the bowls in a suitcase with a few clothes and toiletries, and take the train to some random destination. There he would leave the suitcase. Perhaps in a locker. Or with left luggage. Or in a self-storage unit. He would improvise. The plan had another advantage: he wouldn’t be at home when Dörig appeared.
But the plan came to nothing. Allmen emerged from his room to ask Carlos for the dragonflies, already packed and dressed like an Irish country gentleman in a tweed suit with suspenders and a waistcoat, but Carlos was already gone. It was only half past six, half an hour before he normally started work, but he was gone. The table was set for breakfast. There was a note left next to the plate. In his childlike handwriting Carlos had written, “Muy buenas días, Don John, I have to run an errand. There is tea in the thermos and the coffee machine is prepared. Just switch it on and it will make the coffee. Disculpe, forgive me—Carlos.”
Allmen poured himself a cup of tea. What kind of errand had driven him out of the house at this hour of the morning? What could be so important he couldn’t even bring him his early morning tea?
He would have to wait for Carlos to return. He had no idea where he had hidden the dragonflies. Without his help he would never find them.
Assuming they were even in the house.
A feeling of helplessness swept over him. He pushed the teacup aside, went into the kitchen to the coffee machine and pressed “on.”
Soon a humming sound began, and grew louder. But it seemed forever till the water boiled, the kitchen filled with the aroma of coffee and the dark liquid came through the filter, first in drops then in a stream.
He took the full pot of coffee out of the machine and went back to the breakfast table. As he crossed the vestibule, he saw a bulky figure approaching the front door. Dörig.
The door was flung open, as if the owner had come home.
“You’re up early today,” he said, seeing Allmen fully dressed. His took in the suitcase, which stood by the coat stand. “Travel plans, I see.”
Allmen pulled himself together enough to come out with: “I was expecting you later.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Dörig smirked, pointing at the suitcase.
Then he stretched out his hand with the same demanding gesture as last time and stared at his debtor, lowering his forehead.
The only reaction Allmen could muster was a helpless shrug.
“No?” Dörig inquired sarcastically.
Allmen shook his head.
Dörig opened the front door and called, “Okay guys, do your worst!”
Three burly men in overalls came in. They were holding ropes and straps.
Allmen was paralyzed. He watched the men approach and closed his eyes.
But no blows came, no kicks, no pain. Their footsteps continued, first thumping over the floorboards then muffled by the carpets in the library.
Allmen opened his eyes hesitantly. He was alone in the vestibule. Nervously he walked into the living room and looked from there into the library.
Under Dörig’s supervision, the three men were busy with his piano.
Abandoning himself to fate Allmen watched as they took his Bechstein baby grand away.
As he left the house, Dörig growled, “The matter is now settled as far as I’m concerned.”
Allmen mumbled, “It’s worth much more.”
And that was the only resistance he could manage.
Allmen went back into the library and spent a couple of leaden hours in his reading chair. He saw Carlos coming and going, but Carlos didn’t notice him. He abandoned himself to his thoughts, waiting till it was lunchtime. He must have dozed off. But finally he heard sounds from the kitchen. It had got darker. It would start snowing at any moment.
Allmen eased himself out of the armchair. As he passed the spot where the rear of the glasshouse faced a tall thicket of trees, he sensed something move there.
The trees grew dense and dark there, the stems of tall pines and spruce rising through an impenetrable undergrowth of yew and bracken. Sometimes Allmen saw an urban fox emerge or vanish at this spot, searching for something to eat in the gardens and forecourts of the villa district.
He stepped back, stood in front of the glass panel and stared at the undergrowth.
He felt a hard blow to his chest. As he fell, he heard a muffled thud, and sensed pain at the back of his head.
PART III
44
“Don John. Don John. Don John,” someone was singing. Allmen opened his eyes.
“Don John. Don John. Don John.” Carlos was leaning over him tapping his cheek to the rhythm.
Allmen looked around. He was lying on the floor of his library, his head resting on a cushion. Carlos was kneeling next to him.
He raised his head slightly and felt a sharp pain in his left chest. He looked down at himself and noticed his upper body was naked. To his left was a pile of bloodied tissues. Another tissue was covering the painful spot on his chest. His jacket, waistcoat, tie, shirt and undershirt were scattered to his right. The last two were also slightly bloodied.
He sat up.
“Cuidado,” Carlos warned him. “Careful.”
Allmen took the tissue off his chest. He was bleeding slightly from what looked like a cut.
The back of his head hurt too. He felt around and found a large lump on it. It felt moist. When he looked at his fingertips they were tinged with blood.
“What happened?” But before Carlos could answer, he remembered. “Someone shot me!”
Carlos nodded. “It looks that way.”
“And why am I not dead?”
Carlos picked something up off the ground and held it up. “Un milagro, Don John, a miracle.”
It was Allmen’s left suspender. The broad strip of woven fabric was the same shade as the suit, and was attached with buttons to the pants; the suspenders and suit were from the same tailor and belonged together. The adjustable clasps were large and made of brass, with Allmen’s initials etched into the outer cover—the tailor’s little gag.
One of them was now badly malformed and unreadable. The cover was bent inward, and the clasp behind had come out of the hinge and stuck out now, sharp and dangerous.
Allmen understood. The buckle had deflected the bullet. The clasp had made the cut. A miracle indeed.
Supported by Carlos he struggled to his feet. The pain at the back of his head got sharper. Allmen touched the bump with his hand again.
Carlos pointed to a small side table. The impact of the bullet had thrown Allmen off balance. He had fallen back and banged his head on the little table, which had made him lose consciousness briefly.
There was a small, clean bullet hole in the glass. The dark green undergrowth looked threatening.
Allmen drew the drapes. The movement caused a stabbing pain in his chest. He felt the area around the wound. His ribs were sore from the force of the bullet.
“Un milagro,” Carlos repeated, and genuflected.
Allmen’s legs gave way. Carlos propped him up and led him to the reading chair then wrapped him in a blanket.
Allmen blacked out.
When he came to there was a fire burning in the wood stove. All the drapes were closed and the standing lamp was giving out its comforting glow. Allmen was wearing a t-shirt and a cardigan. No idea how Carlos had managed to put them on him.
“What time is it?”
“Nearly five.”
“Don’t you have to work, Carlos?”
“I took the afternoon off.”
Allmen burst into tears. “My nerves,” he sobbed. “It’s my nerves.”
Carlos patted him awkwardly on his forearm.
Gradually Allmen pulled himself together. The awareness he had narrowly escaped death receded to the background and another rose in front of him. “Where are the dragonflies, Carlos?”
; “In a safe place, Don John. When you need them, I’ll get them.”
“I may need them soon.”
“Then I’ll bring them soon.”
“Tell me where you’ve hidden them.”
“In the piano, Don John.”
45
Carlos never made jokes. And Allmen stared in horror at the place where a few hours ago his Bechstein had stood.
He looked at Carlos, sitting stiffly on the edge of the leather armchair, an impassive expression on his face.
“In the piano?” Allmen repeated in disbelief.
All of a sudden Carlos’s face stretched into a broad grin. Then he revealed his two gold capped front teeth and laughed.
Allmen joined in hesitantly. But then he was gripped by a fit of hysterical giggles. He held the painful spot on his chest and laughed, choked, coughed, laughed some more and slapped the alarmed Carlos repeatedly on the thigh.
Once he had calmed down and composed himself, like a long-distance runner still breathing heavily after reaching the finish line, Carlos said, “Don John, una sugerencia, nada más.”
“Sí Carlos?”
“A veces hay que luchar.” Sometimes you have to fight.
46
That same evening Allmen moved to a hotel. It had become too dangerous to live in the gardener’s cottage.
He decided on the Grand Hotel Confédération, an elegant if stuffy five-star establishment in the city center. Allmen knew the manager there. He used to run the République in Biarritz, where Allmen had been welcomed as a regular guest in his good years.
He had been intending to book a standard room but decided against it, fearing this untypical modesty could be misinterpreted and damage his creditworthiness. He booked the junior suite.
Carlos helped him pack and carry his two suitcases to Herr Arnold’s Cadillac.
Allmen saw him standing pensively in front of the wrought iron gate watching the car drive off.
The journey took a mere ten minutes. Reception had been instructed to inform the manager as soon as Herr von Allmen arrived. They chatted briefly, Allmen describing the building work at his villa which obliged him to move to the hotel for a few days.
Then the manager took him in person to his suite. He had taken the liberty of upgrading him, moving him from the Junior to the Rose Suite, where Herr von Allmen used to accommodate his guests.
Allmen had never set foot in the Rose Suite, and had no idea how generously he had offered hospitality to his guests. And those had been the guests he wasn’t especially close to and hadn’t wanted to accommodate in the villa.
The suite included a spacious vestibule with a guest bath, a wardrobe and three doors. Two of these led into bedrooms, each with their own bathrooms, the other to a large salon with a winter garden and a view of the old town.
Allmen felt at home immediately. He unpacked his suitcases, ordered a club sandwich and a half bottle of Bordeaux and rang the bell for the first round of the fight.
47
“Yes?” Her voice sounded American and sleepy.
“Is that you Jojo?”
“Who is it?”
“John. John Allmen?”
“What time is it?”
“Seven thirty.”
“Are you crazy? You’re seriously trying to get me out of bed at seven thirty in the morning!”
“In the evening. It’s seven thirty p.m.”
“Shit.” She put the cell phone down. Sighing, coughing, silence. “Half one. One thirty p.m. I’m in New York. What do you want?”
“Your father. I have to talk to him.”
“I’m not traveling with my father.”
“I didn’t know you were in New York.”
“Sorry, I forgot to ask your permission.”
“How can I get hold of your father?”
“Try calling him.”
“I don’t have his number.”
She sighed. “One moment.”
He waited. Finally she returned to the phone and gave him two numbers, the landline and the cell.
“Was there anything else?” Was he imagining it, or did she sound friendlier now? Hopeful?
“No. Nothing else. Thank you.”
She hung up.
48
He imagined the shrill ring of the telephone echoing through the lakeside villa. The room waiter knocked with his snack. Allmen held his hand over the mouthpiece on the old-fashioned hotel telephone and called him in.
He wedged the receiver between his ear and shoulder, signed the bill and handed the waiter a banknote. At the villa no one was answering and the ring tone gave way to a busy signal. Allmen hung up. Now he realized how reckless he’d been just calling the waiter in. How could he have known it was actually the waiter? And not the man who had nearly killed him that afternoon.
He bolted the door and dialed Klaus Hirt’s cellphone number.
A hoarse male voice answered, immediately. “Yes?”
“Allmen. Is that Herr Hirt?”
“Who’s asking?”
“Allmen. Johann Friedrich von Allmen. A friend of your daughter, Joëlle.”
“She’s away.”
“I know. New York. I just talked to her. She gave me this number.”
“She shouldn’t have done that.”
“I have to talk to you.”
“Do you indeed? I don’t. At my age there’s nothing much I have to do.”
“It might be of interest to you.”
“There are very few things which are still of interest to me.”
“Do they include Gallé bowls with dragonflies?”
There was a short pause at the other end. Then Allmen heard coughing and after that a clearer voice: “Even they don’t interest me as much as you might imagine.”
“But enough to meet me?”
“Tomorrow afternoon. Shall we say three p.m.? At my house. You know where it is.”
Allmen sat down at the table where the room waiter had set out his food, took a sip of wine and started on the club sandwich. He wasn’t a massive fan of club sandwiches. He had ordered it only because this international room service classic reminded him of his earlier life. When he’d had no worries, above all not financial. When he’d lived in hotels as if they belonged to him. When he’d felt safe and secure everywhere.
49
He sat with a book and the rest of the Bordeaux in the winter garden. A few floors below him the trams slid by and the heavily wrapped pedestrians hurried along the sidewalk to get in out of the cold. The bright rows of office windows began to show their first dark gaps, and low-lying mist created colored auras around the neon signs crowning the banks.
Allmen had got comfortable, taken off his tie, switched his jacket for a cashmere pullover and his shoes for the leather travel slippers he always took with him on hotel stays. He would have felt silly in the hotel’s own terry cloth slippers.
Once he had turned a page his hand became still. But the trembling had retreated inside him. And there it continued, like an earthquake with its epicenter deep beneath the earth. The calm which had taken hold of him since he had decided to fight was just superficial. Like so much in his life.
He stood up abruptly, switched the light off in the winter garden and withdrew to the sofas in his salon, his heart racing. He had suddenly realized what an easy target he would be for a gunman on one of the rooftops opposite.
He suppressed the urge to quell the inner unease with a beer or two from the minibar. There was something shady about having a drink from the minibar. Like drinking bitters from your briefcase.
He had first got drunk at fifteen, visiting his parents. His father kept a stock of schnapps which he bought from neighboring farmers and gave to other farmers and local politicians he wanted to do business with, pretending it was home distilled. Fritz helped himself to a bottle from this supply, took it to his room and drank nearly a quarter of it. Straight from the bottle. Out of lovesickness.
After he had sobered up and recovered fro
m the ghastly hangover, his father said, “It’s fine to drink. But never alone.”
Since then drinking alcohol had always been a public activity for Allmen. And it could be deemed public as long as one other person was involved. Even if their role was simply to pour it.
He got changed again.
Just after office hours ended, the Confédération bar became a meeting place for bankers. There they swapped work gossip, moaned about their bosses and raved about their children, who they had left waiting with the mothers.
Around seven the sales staff from the surrounding stores took over, followed by hotel guests drinking an aperitif with their dinner guests.
Then it went quiet in the Confi, as insiders called it.
Allmen sat with his second beer at the bar. There was just one bartender on duty. He was passing the time by polishing glasses, drying cutlery and wiping tables. After the movie houses and theaters closed a few more guests would drift in, not many—the bar was not directly on the theater crowd’s route—but there would be a little more life in the old Confi yet.
Allmen ordered another beer. He was enjoying the sensation of being in a hotel. It was a little too close to his home, but it was so international he could imagine he was anywhere in the world.
Tomorrow he would leave this safe haven. First he would show his face at Viennois and see what people were saying about Jack Tanner. There had been nothing in the papers yet.
Then he would make his way to the lion’s den. At the thought his heart missed a beat each time. But nothing could happen to him. He and Carlos had taken care of that.
Before the first of the theater crowd arrived, Allmen signed his bill. He didn’t want to meet anyone he knew tonight. And there were plenty of them around this city at this time.
50
There it was again, that hotel moment he so loved: waking in the half-light of a strange room and not knowing where you were—which city, which country, which continent.
