The Book of Murder

by Guillermo Martinez

  “It didn’t seem like that from what she said. Or rather, from what she implied. Of course I couldn’t ask her directly, but from something she said the message was clear, and somewhat humiliating. She gave me to understand that you’d moved quickly during that month. Anyway, I couldn’t dictate a single line. I was furious, and obsessed with the thought that I’d lost her. She seemed like a stranger, sitting there in her chair, someone I really knew nothing about. I couldn’t focus on my work at all. I realised bitterly that using typists and stenographers had worked for Henry James because he was indifferent to the charms of women. The great Disrupter is not Evil—nor the infinite as our Poet believed—but sex. Like my wife, I had underestimated Luciana. And now I was abject, in thrall to her, like a sex-obsessed teenager. I despised myself. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me again at my age. Several days passed like this: I grew increasingly tense; I couldn’t dictate at all. It was as if the silent barrier she’d erected had also blocked the flow of my novel. I couldn’t move forward with her but I was afraid now that I couldn’t move forward without her either. What I’d once considered the perfect system had become a nightmare. My most ambitious novel, the work I’d spent years nurturing in silence, to which all my previous novels had been precursors, was now halted, interrupted, as I waited for a vibration, a note, from her motionless, closed-off body.

  “At last one morning I managed to pull myself together and recover my momentum, my self-respect. I began dictating one of the most cruel scenes of the novel—the first methodical slaughter by the Cainite assassins—and I found myself being carried along by my words. They seemed to be dictated by another voice inside me, a free, savage, powerful voice. I, who had so often mocked myths of inspiration, the romantic posing of writers who boasted that their characters dictated orders to them. I, who had always written just one sentence at a time, wavering, regretting my choice of words, making minute corrections, was now swept along by a wave of vociferous primitive violence that left no time or room for doubt, that spoke for me in a fierce but welcome outpouring. I dictated at unprecedented speed, the sentences rushing, tumbling out one after another, but Luciana kept up and never interrupted. She seemed to be possessed by the same facility, as if she were a virtuoso pianist only now allowed to show off her skill. It lasted maybe a couple of hours, though it seemed time no longer existed and I was in a trance beyond human measure. I glanced over Luciana’s shoulder and saw that we’d advanced by ten pages—more than I usually wrote in a week. I was overcome by good humour and saw her differently for the first time in days. Maybe I’d exaggerated and jumped to conclusions. Maybe she just wanted to wound me, and mentioning you was an adolescent tactic to make me jealous. I made a couple of jokes and she laughed in the same relaxed way as before. In my enthusiasm, my sudden euphoria, I misread the signs. I asked her to make coffee. She straightened in the chair, arched her back, and then rubbed her neck and made that cracking sound I’d waited for for so long. I was standing very close to her and thought it was her way of sending me a sign, of checking that her secret signal still worked. A second chance. I placed my hands on her shoulders and drew her towards me so as to kiss her. I’d made a fatal mistake. She struggled and pushed me away. I let go of her immediately but she screamed, as if she really thought I was going to attack her. We stood for a moment in silence. She was shaking and looked distraught. I couldn’t understand what had happened. I hadn’t even touched her lips.

  “My daughter came to the door. I suddenly realised that my wife might also have heard the scream. I managed to reassure Pauli and when she closed the door Luciana and I were alone again. She went to pick up her bag and looked at me with horror and disgust, as if I’d committed an unforgivable crime. With barely contained fury she said she’d never set foot in my house again. I found her tone of moral outrage infuriating, but I managed to control myself. I simply said that she’d given me all the signals. This made her even angrier. She kept saying, “What signals? What signals?” getting louder and louder. She stumbled over her words and seemed on the verge of tears. I was completely taken aback—her reaction seemed so sudden and excessive, but in the confusion of accusations I heard her say she’d sue me and slowly it all seemed to acquire a different meaning. A sordid, repellent meaning. I remembered that a few days earlier she’d seen me sign several contracts for translation rights. She could easily have seen the sums involved. And in emails I’d sometimes discussed my earnings. I’d always been particularly generous to her. It was my way of showing I was pleased with her work. She saw me taking trips and accepting invitations from different countries. She must have thought I was a millionaire.”

  “She told me that at the time she wasn’t really thinking of suing you, it was just an empty threat. It was her mother who persuaded her. Surely you don’t believe it was all part of a plan? That she could have been so calculating?”

  “I’ve just read the fairy tale she told you,” he said coldly. “Don’t you find it odd that she left out so much? You can ask her about everything I’ve just said. Or do you believe that I would jump on a woman out of the blue? Nothing like that had ever happened to me: I couldn’t understand it. I don’t mean the rejection, but her extreme reaction. The only thing that made sense of it was her threat to sue me. I couldn’t believe it at first. After she’d left I wondered endlessly if I had really done something so bad. I’d only tried to kiss her. Once. I dismissed it as an empty threat, but then the solicitor’s letter arrived. No doubt about it, two days later there it was. I was alone in my study when I opened it. I saw her handwriting and the absurd sum she was suing me for and still thought it was something she’d done in the heat of the moment after she left that day. The first line, with the accusation of sexual harassment, made me boil with indignation. But it seemed so crazy that I didn’t even consider replying. I simply tore it up so that my wife couldn’t read it. I’d told Mercedes that Luciana would no longer be coming because she’d got a full-time job. She was surprised Luciana hadn’t said goodbye to Pauli but left it at that. Pauli, on the other hand, wouldn’t stop asking for her.

  “A month passed and nothing more happened so I thought things must have blown over. But then the postman rang the bell again one morning. I was in my study and, not wanting to disturb me, my wife went down to sign for me. By the time she knocked at the door to hand me the letter, she’d read the name of the sender. She placed it on my desk and stood behind me, arms crossed, waiting for me to open it. I think she read the first line at the same time as I did. It was a repeat of the first letter, demanding more money. My wife saw those two words, the despicable accusation, and tore it from my hands. By the time she’d finished reading it, Mercedes was shaking with hatred and joy. It was the opportunity she’d been waiting for for a long time—the chance to leave and take Pauli away from me for ever. She screamed insults, waving the letter, saying she was going to keep it, so that when Pauli grew up she’d know what kind of person her beloved daddy really was. Of course she wouldn’t let me explain. She wouldn’t listen to anything I said and I don’t think I would have had the strength to explain at the time anyway. I’d lied to her the day Luciana left and in her eyes this could only mean I was guilty. I was stunned, reduced to silence. I felt a disastrous sequence of events had been set in motion and all I could do was wait for the consequences. In fact our marriage had been over for a long time. But before I tell you about Mercedes, to be fair to her there’s something I must show you,” he said suddenly, and stood up. “If I can find it. Or better still, come with me.”

  I got to my feet, and he indicated an archway leading to another part of the house.

  ∨ The Book of Murder ∧

  Seven

  I followed him down a wide corridor with an oak floor. There were several doors leading off it, all closed. He opened the end door and we went into his study. The first thing I noticed was the large window looking on to an unexpected sunken garden, with several trees, and climbing plants covering the walls. In the fad
ing light I could see an immense desk covered in books and papers, with two rows of drawers, and a swivel chair in front of it. A laptop occupied a small space in the middle, between piles. A chaotic jumble of yet more papers and books seemed to have accumulated at different times on a table in the centre of the room. Kloster motioned me to the only other chair, miraculously clear, and started searching through desk drawers. At last he seemed to find what he was looking for, pulling from the bottom of a drawer an old, slightly creased TV listings magazine with an actress I didn’t recall on the cover.

  “This is the only photo of Mercedes I’ve kept. Here she is, as she was when I met her,” he said, handing me the magazine. I realised it was his way of explaining why he’d married her, of showing me the only, misguided but excusable, reason. Across the years the hairstyle looked slightly ridiculous, but the face and eyes were captivating. The sensual pout still achieved the desired effect, and there was something resolute in the full curves of the body, displayed with studied nonchalance. I thought to myself that it must have been difficult to take your eyes off her. Kloster switched on a lamp and went to the window. He stood with his back to me, looking out at the deepening gloom of the garden, as if he wanted to keep away from the photo.

  “Not long after we were married, before Pauli was born, I started noticing the first signs of…instability. I suggested we separate but she threatened to kill herself if I left. I believed her. We had a sort of truce and, with desperate cunning, she made sure she got pregnant. She had an appalling pregnancy with a series of complications, but I couldn’t tell if they were real or imaginary. After the birth, Mercedes was exhausted and stayed in bed for a month. She rejected the baby. She wouldn’t touch her, she wouldn’t even let me bring her near her. I had terrible trouble convincing her to hold her long enough to breastfeed. She said Pauli had drained her completely and was now sucking the remaining life out of her. It was shocking to see: she really did seem to have lost something irrevocably during the pregnancy. Her face had become bloated, her features sunk in fat, and she didn’t get her figure back. When at last she got out of bed she started eating with cold determination, like an automaton, as if she wanted to do herself as much harm as possible. And, as if it had flown off and alighted intact, all her beauty was superimposed on Pauli’s little face. I’d never seen such a close resemblance, apparent so early, in a baby. She looked exactly like her mother, like Mercedes at her most luminously beautiful, when I first met her.

  “Mercedes eventually came to accept her, but in the meantime Pauli had got used to me and she cried if Mercedes tried to hold her. This didn’t help, of course. I persuaded Mercedes to see a therapist and for a time things seemed to improve. She made an effort to get close to the baby and eventually Pauli stopped crying with her. She also tried to lose weight, but didn’t manage it. After a while, she gave up: she’d decided not to go back to work anyway. In fact she was entirely absorbed by one thing only: getting Pauli away from me. I’d taken care of the baby day and night for the first months so of course she was more attached to me. I adored that little girl, with a violent, absolute love that I’d never felt for anything or anyone. Not for Mercedes, and she knew it. She couldn’t conceal her jealousy and did everything she could to keep me away from the child. The first word Pauli said was ‘Daddy’ and Mercedes accused me of teaching her to say it, secretly, behind her back, just to humiliate her. In her madness she really believed we were at war. Things got even worse because Pauli took a long time to learn to say ‘Mummy’. That’s when I noticed the first symptoms of something that terrified me so much I couldn’t even admit it to myself: Pauli was afraid of being alone with her mother. I started finding small marks on her skin: scratches, sometimes a bruise. It only happened when the two were left alone. But there was always a reasonable explanation, because in her own way Mercedes was very clever. Sometimes, before I got a chance to ask, she’d say that Pauli had had an accident, or that she’d scratched herself because her little nails were too long. She pretended to be even more worried than I was by these small injuries. But I noticed that she left hot cups of coffee within Pauli’s reach, and didn’t rush after her if she started crawling towards the stairs. She seemed to be looking for ways for Pauli to injure herself. Of course that was too horrible to contemplate, and I couldn’t think how to confront Mercedes. I felt Pauli’s life was in danger and that I could only keep her safe if I had her in sight at all times. I made sure she learned to speak as early as possible: I wanted her to be able to tell me if her mother hurt her. And indeed as soon as Pauli could speak she no longer had any accidents or injured herself.

  “For a while I thought the nightmare was over, but it was only a temporary reprieve while Mercedes planned her next move. She hated her daughter—there’s no other word to describe it. Especially because since Pauli had learned to speak she had made it even more obvious how much she adored me. Mercedes couldn’t stand it and, for the first time, she mentioned divorce. She’d been against separating but now, coldly, methodically, she started echoing the reasons for it that I’d given her years earlier. But the real reason, and we both knew it, was that she knew she’d get custody of Pauli. It was a perfect, simple way of taking her away from me. I was desperate. I bluffed, I pleaded, I humiliated myself. For the first time she sensed the power her threat gave her. And she made the most of it. It was a new toy, a source of unexpected pleasure. Like the fisherman’s wife in One Thousand and One Nights she demanded, demanded, demanded. And I gave her whatever she wanted. Mainly it was money—money we couldn’t afford. She delighted in squandering it on fripperies in front of me. She became cynical and when she made some particularly large expenditure she said it was for the good of literature, because now I’d have to write another novel. I made myself write a book in under a year, far quicker than usual, just to get the advance. In the novel a writer strangles his wife. I knew she wouldn’t even bother to read it. It’s exactly what I should have done—strangled her. Because then Pauli would be alive today. But I thought I’d found a way to appease her and that with our monstrous pact Pauli was safe. Mercedes made fun of her and her infatuation with me, but otherwise she left her alone.

  “However, I never completely dropped my guard, so when I spent that month in Italy I hired the nurse who’d looked after my mother at the end as a nanny for Pauli. I spoke to her privately; she was the only person to whom I’d ever confided my fears for Pauli’s safety. She listened and promised she wouldn’t let Pauli out of her sight, and would watch over her even while the child was asleep. She’d once looked after a woman with Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, whose behaviour was very like Mercedes’s, and she suggested I seek medical help on my return. I telephoned every day and it all seemed to be going well. Too well. When I got back, I realised that Mercedes had given a perfect performance during that month, convincing the woman that she was a devoted mother and that I was a dangerous deviant who’d been trying to turn Pauli against her since she’d been born. I sensed that the two of them had formed an alliance. I found out later—much later, unfortunately—that the nurse had told Mercedes everything I’d said about her. This must have put her on the alert and precipitated her plans, but I didn’t pay enough attention to the signs. I was so happy to be back, to hug Pauli again, and especially to know I’d be seeing Luciana again the following day.”

  He paused, and when he spoke again he sounded desolate, as if he still couldn’t make sense of the sequence of events.

  “Then there was the business with Luciana, and suddenly Mercedes was holding that letter. Her letter of triumph. In less than forty-eight hours she’d initiated divorce proceedings and obtained a court order barring me from the house—the house bought entirely with my money. She stayed on there with Pauli. I had to go to a hotel while my solicitor appealed against the order. I’d never had to go to a lawyer before and now I was involved in two cases. In my first visit to the solicitor’s office I learned an unforgettable lesson about what I could expect from the justice system.
I started to tell the solicitor what had happened with Luciana but he stopped me: what had taken place between the two of us when we were alone in a closed room would be of no interest to a judge as it was Luciana’s word against mine. Legally the accusation of sexual harassment had no importance: it was simply a way of officially stating that she’d been dismissed. “The law doesn’t care about the truth,” he said, “but only about versions that can be proved.” The discussion would shift to the question of unpaid social security contributions and pension payments. In other words, bits of paper that could be produced. I was to be quite clear that it all boiled down to money and I would have to decide whether I wanted to settle by offering such-and-such a sum during the conciliation phase, or wait for the judge to specify a different figure after the court case.

  “I pointed out that the line in Luciana’s letter about sexual harassment was being used by my wife to support her divorce petition. The solicitor said I should prepare myself for much worse accusations: it was all part of the game. I told him about my fears for Pauli’s safety, now that she was alone with her mother. He asked if anyone else had seen the cuts and bruises I’d found on Pauli when she was a baby. He said he had children himself and they often hurt themselves. Perhaps my wife was less vigilant than I was? Had Pauli ever had a particularly serious accident? Did she have any permanent marks or scars? Was I absolutely certain that my accusations were well founded? I had to admit that nothing bad had happened to Pauli in the past few years. He asked if the nurse I hired during my absence had noticed anything unusual that she might testify to. I had to say no. He held up his hands as if to say there was nothing he could do. Again, he said, it would be my word against another’s. I asked if we couldn’t file a writ, even if only as a warning. He said no judge would take it into consideration, because you needed much more than a vague accusation to deny custody of a child to its mother. He thought it best not to use their ploys, but to play the rationality card throughout the case. He told me to leave both matters with him and that he’d get on with obtaining an access order as soon as possible so that I could see Pauli again.