He had thought - and he was hardly a fledgling in these matters, he assured himself - that something rare had passed between them, not just sex, a tawdry one-night stand, but a whole gamut of sexual emotions which were partly subsumed in the word love. He had written the word to her and there had been utter silence.
The ground beneath his feet grew unstable, wavered like water. When a man can’t trust his feelings anymore, the world becomes a leaking boat, he told his image in the mirror, attempted humour. One has to bail out. But his face stared back at him with that look of dour incomprehension.
And so he had gone to Heidelberg, bailed out into that other world of musty papers and inquisition documents. He had succeeded well enough. But then he had come back to all this, and that slight sense of nagging self-reproach, even though there was no justifiable reason.
Adam stepped out through the French windows. The sun was just beginning to set, rosy behind the distant white peaks. But the grounds before him had that soft glow of early spring. Everything was busy, in flux. He could feel it in the earth beneath his feet, in the chattering of the birds, in the glimmering greens of the trees and shrubs. The border of primroses he had planted just a few days ago was bright with purples and yellows and in the woods where he had walked this morning, he had found clumps of snowdrops. He would have liked to walk again now, but she should be here soon, was in fact already late. Perhaps her flight had been delayed. It would take time to hire the car.
Stubborn woman, not to let him go and fetch her. And what would he tell her?
He heard the car pull up just as he was pouring himself a glass of whiskey. He was already at the door when she rang the bell.
When he opened it to her, his carefully prepared speech left his lips. She was so beautiful. He had forgotten the sheer physical impact of that: the arch of her cheeks, the full lips, the deep blue-grey eyes beneath the cluster of corn gold hair, longer now. Against the pale cream of her suit and tawny blouse, her skin looked even finer, purer. And that look in her eyes, a kind of fearful wistfulness. He could sense her tension, see it in the white grip of her fingers on her bag. Almost, he put out a hand to ease it.
But she broke into quick fire speech and the moment passed.
‘I got here as quickly as I could. The plane was delayed.’
‘Come in.’
‘Where is Max?’ she strode past him.
‘He’s not here,’ he showed her into the salon, took the coat that was draped over her shoulders, gestured her towards an armchair.
‘But you said…’
‘I asked you to come.’
She glanced at him angrily. ‘Where is he?’
‘A drink? Some white wine?’
‘Where is he?’ she repeated stubbornly.
‘Sit down, Helena,’ he was brusque.
She met his eyes, her own blazing, ‘If this is some kind of trick…’
‘What do you take me for?’ he lashed out at her, then controlled himself. ‘Now will you please sit down.’
She perched at the edge of a dusky rose chair, ‘A glass of white wine, if you have it.’ Her voice was taut.
‘There’s some cold in the fridge. I’ll just be a moment. Make yourself at home.’ He said it quietly, smiled.
When he returned with a tray, she was standing at the back of the room, looking at one of Johannes’s canvases. She turned quickly at the sound of him.
‘It looks lovely in here. You’ve been working.’
‘Decorators,’ he murmured.
He handed her a glass.
‘Thank-you. Now tell me Adam, please. I’ve been worrying myself silly.’ Her voice was soft now.
He watched her sit down, cross her legs. He took a deep breath.
‘He’s dead, Helena.’ There was no kind way of saying it.
The glass tumbled out of her hand, rolled onto the rug. Her face had an almost transparent pallor.
He put his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t move, but he could feel the pulse beating heavily beneath the fabric.
At last she murmured, ‘Dead, dead? No not that.’ It was almost a whimper. Then shrugging his hand away, she leapt up, ‘How do you know?’ she turned towards him suddenly savage. ‘How do you know he’s dead. You don’t even know him.’
‘No. That’s why you’re here. That’s why I rang you. Someone has to identify him.’
He saw the sudden hope in her face and erased it quickly. ‘But I know it’s him. From the picture on his book.’ He went over the details now quickly, almost surgically.
‘A man was found, drowned in the lake, probably suicide the police say, though it could have been an accident. Everyone around here knows I’ve been looking for an old man. It’s a small place. So they called me in and I called you, to make what is known as a positive identification.’ He shrugged, ‘I thought you’d want to know. And I couldn’t think of anyone else. I’m sorry.’
She stared at him, incomprehension in her eyes. ‘So it’s not certain?’
‘No, it’s not 110 per cent certain.’ He let it go. He couldn’t dissuade her of her hope if she wanted to cling to it.
She slumped back into the chair, the fire gone out of her. She looked wretched, like a small girl who had been utterly abandoned. He would have liked to hold her, comfort her, but he suspected she would lurch away from him.
‘Would you like that glass of wine now?’ he asked softly.
She gazed at him as if she couldn’t remember who he was. ‘Wine?’ she repeated mechanically, then her eyes focussed. ‘Shall we go and see this person now?’ she stood abruptly.
Adam glanced at his watch. ‘It may be too late. But we can try if you like.’
She nodded.
‘My car?’
She nodded again.
They drove in silence, the night darkening around them, the headbeams cutting holes through the banked road.
‘When did you learn all this?’ she asked at one point.
‘Yesterday afternoon. But I don’t have your number at home.’
He could feel her eyes on him for a moment.
‘And when did it happen?’
‘On Easter Sunday probably. Just after I got back.’
‘You’ve been away?’
He nodded.
‘To see your family?’
Her voice had an odd ring to it.
‘No. In Heidelberg. Research for the book.’
‘Can you really tell from a picture?’
‘Perhaps not.’
The police station in Murnau had a sleepy nighttime air about it, as if crime only took place in regulation hours. But the officer in charge found someone to accompany them to the morgue.
Their footsteps echoed hollowly on the stone stairs and the key in the locked door clattered, too loud. Inside the air was chill. One in a row of fluorescent lamps flickered on and off as if it were engaged in a struggle for life. It emitted a high pitched sound.
Adam saw Helena shiver, saw the officer cast her a worried look.
‘She won’t faint, will she?’ he whispered to Adam, ‘He’s not pretty.’
Adam put his hand on her shoulder as the man pulled open the numbered vault.
There was a heavy translucent plastic sheet covering the body.
Helena leaned involuntarily against Adam. Her entire being was focussed there, in that plastic sheet, moving slowly backwards away from a snow white head, a pallid face strangely smooth, like the plastic, except for the blue and yellow blotches. It was Max and wasn’t Max.
She stepped forward wanting to touch him, shake him awake, somehow breathe expression back into that blind face. She touched his cheek lightly. Like wax. Her finger left an imprint.
A host of dizzying contradictory thoughts and emotions whirled through her.
How could she have let him die, when he had written to her, called out to her? Her father perhaps. Now she would never know. She should have found him somehow, prevented this. It was because of Adam that she hadn’t persisted, had fle
d. Suicide? No. Someone had done this to him, had pushed him. Someone who was against him. Some corporate executive interested only in profits. Some nuclear cabal. She should have found him, helped. Why didn’t the body move? Emily’s body hadn’t moved, but she had said goodbye to her. There was repose on her features. Not here. Not in Max.
Helena let out a single angry scream, part sob. It beat against the walls of the cavernous room.
Then quiet.
She felt rather than saw the officer looking at her expectantly.
‘This is Max Bergmann,’ she whispered.
He pulled the plastic sheet up quickly. ‘You’ll sign the form upstairs?’
Helena nodded.
Later, she was dimly aware of Adam manoeuvring her towards a noisy overheated bar, putting a glass in her hand. The brandy seared her throat. She couldn’t meet his eyes.
A wind had come up. As they drove in silence, clouds scurried across the sky. The moon emerging from their passage was as bright as a neon light. Trees and hills stood illuminated for a moment and then vanished into darkness. Once, she thought she saw a child standing bleakly in front of a small house wave at them.
Then they were back at Seehafen.
She couldn’t summon the energy to leave the car. She forced herself to put one foot in front of the other, found herself in a chair, Adam hovering around her.
He put a plate of scrambled eggs on the table in front of her.
She pushed it away.
She heard his voice as if from a great distance.
‘He was an old man, Helena. Let him have his death.’
‘What do you know about it?’ she lashed out at him.
He shrugged. ‘Nothing. I don’t know anything.’
The way he said it gave her pause.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I’m upset.’ She met his eyes at last.
‘I know.’
‘Would you like to be alone, lie down?’
She nodded.
He made her a pot of tea, found her bag, brought all of it and her up to the little lemon yellow room.
‘If you need anything, just shout. I’ll be across the hall.’ His eyes rested on her for a moment and then she was alone.
The next thing she knew, she was lying in bed, her head buried in a pillow. It was wet. Her face felt streaked. She had been crying. Why had she been crying? An image of plastic leapt into her mind, a corpse wrapped in plastic with a pale plastic face. Max.
Helena sat up, cradled herself. The room was dark. She couldn’t remember getting undressed, going to bed, switching off the light. Couldn’t remember anything except Max’s dead body.
She grappled for the bedside lamp, saw the pot of tea untouched on the table. She glanced at her watch. It was three o’clock. She had slept. And now she was awake. And alone. So alone, the twin poles of her universe gone. Emily gone. And now Max gone. Gone forever. The very thing she had dreaded just those few months back when she had read the notice about Max Bergmann in the paper. ‘Feared dead.’ And now he was. It was almost as if she had misplaced him and by doing so, left him to his fate.
But Max wouldn’t commit suicide. The Max she knew respected life too much. She had seen him, bent over his tiny seedlings, separating one from the other with delicate gestures so as not to bruise or damage. No, he wouldn’t willfully take a life.
An accident then? Adam had said there had been a boat. But that made no sense either. Max was physically adept, at the worst, knew how to swim. He had tried to save her that once. And they had often swum together in that small lake, murky with its own vegetable life. Max would strike across it with a young man’s vigour. No, no, not an accident.
Suddenly Helena was afraid. A cacophony of voices seemed to have sprung out of the walls to rail at her. Her fault, they screeched. She hadn’t investigated to the source, hadn’t dug deeply enough, hadn’t sought the proper help, had let her own stupid fantasies of Max-the-father blot her vision.
She hid under the duvet. But the voices were still there and that waxy corpse, wrapped in plastic. They would suffocate her. Helena leapt up. Adam. She would go to Adam. A live presence. Any live presence.
She knocked softly on his door and was met by silence. She pushed it open. Everything was dark, but he had left the shutters open and the stars cast a faint light into the room. She could see the bed, the outline of his shape sprawled beneath the white sheets. She groped her way towards it.
It came to her that he might be angry with her. She shunned the thought. He was alive, warm. What did anything else matter? She looked at him for a moment. His face, half buried beneath his arm, was turned towards her like it had been that last time. Was she doing the wrong thing?
She let the thought fade, slipped quietly beneath the sheets. It was warm. That was what she had wanted. And she could hear his breath, even, reassuring. A bulwark. She touched his arm. That too was warm. It moved beneath her fingers. Not wax, not plastic. Alive. She turned to sleep, snuggling just a little closer.
He stirred. His arm encircled her. She felt safe, protected.
Then there was a muffled sound in her ear.
‘Helena?’ his voice was husky with sleep.
‘I was frightened. I snuck in. I hope you don’t mind,’ she mumbled quickly.
‘My poor darling,’ he stroked her hair, held her more tightly.
Something in her moved, a fluttering of birds in her womb. Like the last time. An ache. She held herself very still. He was smoothing her nightie down over her, his hands light over her breasts, her legs.
‘Sleep, now,’ he murmured.
She could feel him hard against her back, his skin warm, firm. She didn’t want to sleep. She wanted him. Had never really wanted anyone before. Only him. It came to her in words, like a declaration echoing through her mind. One more time wouldn’t make any difference. Not here, in this house, far from everything. One last time, like a wake.
She shivered.
‘Are you cold?’
He reached for an extra blanket at the base of the bed.
She stopped his hand, brought it to her lips.
He leaned over her, his face dusky, posing a question.
She ran her fingers through that tumble of hair, brought his face down to her lips.
The kiss swept her up, seemed to lift all of her, carry her through time, so that the weeks that had separated them were obliterated as was everything that had passed within them. There was only this moment, stretching indefinitely over the landscape of their bodies. All she was aware of within it was the pounding of her heart in her ears, the sound of life itself. And the smell and touch of him in every nook and corner of her body, a cleansing, like a flood rushing through the stables of her self, sweeping away cobwebs of fear and the dry grass of old couplings.
At some point, she thought she heard him murmur, ‘Told you I was in love with you.’
She didn’t know whether she said anything in return, but in the morning when she woke to see the sun, already high, pouring through the window, the trees shimmering in its light, she had a sense that she was someone else or had entered a new joyous world.
The feeling didn’t last long.
At first she flushed to see the tumble of sheets around her. Adam was already up. Making breakfast, she imagined, and smiled at the thought. She fingered the sheets where he had lain, felt that strange trembling within her womb again. She lay back for a moment to wonder at it and then leapt up. It wasn’t right that he was always serving her. She would go and help him. In any event, she wanted to be near him.
It was as she was pulling on her nightie, smoothing it over this newly sensitive body of hers, that she remembered what she had forgotten. Max was dead. How could that grisly fact have evaded her? And here she was… Helena shuddered. She made the bed quickly.
As she padded towards the door, she looked up to see the row of photographs on the shelf-top. It was still there. Portrait of a Smiling Family. She had a sudden urge to smash it against the floor
. But she reminded herself, as she stood under the shower, that last night’s little escapade had been all her doing.
She quickly pulled on jeans and a jumper, pushed sockless feet into her boots and with her hair still wet, went downstairs.
He was in the kitchen, as she had expected. He was tossing pancakes like an old hand.
‘Regulation American breakfast for special days,’ he grinned at her. His eyes were warm, flecked with gold. He turned back to the stove, flipped the pancake onto a dish already heaped, and slid it onto the table.
‘That’ll do for a start.’ He walked towards her with open arms.
With an effort, Helena stood stiffly within his embrace for a moment, then moved away.
He gave her a curious glance as he poured coffee into mugs, motioned her towards a chair.
‘I’m sorry if I used you last night,’ she said. Her vocal chords felt taut, over strung.
He scrutinized her, ‘I don’t feel used, if that’s what’s bothering you,’ he said at last. ‘Love does sometimes take place in a pre-capitalist register.’
She didn’t know what he was talking about and she gave him a stony look.
‘Let’s just call it primitive barter, shall we,’ his voice took on an acid tinge when she didn’t answer. ‘I have something you want. You have something I want. They may not be equivalent in absolute terms, but since the absolute currency doesn’t exist, we make do with a satisfactory trade. Okay? But thank-you for mentioning it nonetheless. Now what’s really bothering you?’
He piled pancakes on their plates, poured syrup over them, glanced at her, then dug in.
‘You are going to eat the fruit of my labours, I hope.’
She nodded, ate. ‘Delicious,’ she murmured politely.
‘What is it, Helena?’
She met his eyes fiercely, ‘Max is dead.’
‘I haven’t forgotten.’ He chewed deliberately, gulped some coffee. ‘Look, it’s going to sound crass, but the perennial human reaction to death is sex. The books are full of it and I’m sure I could even dig up the relevant statistics without trying too hard. Does that make you happier?’
She scowled at him.
‘You’re the one who’s so keen on the natural. This is nature itself making a bid for the preservation of the species. So stop glowering at me,’ he ruffled her wet hair. ‘You look nice.’
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