GAMES OF THE HANGMAN

by VICTOR O'REILLY

  Heiligenschwendi did not seem to exist as far as Fitzduane's Michelin guide was concerned. He tried Baedeker with no more luck and was beginning to think that someone was pulling his leg when the Hertz girl came to his rescue. She had lived in Thun, only a few kilometers from the missing village. She produced a large-scale map of Switzerland and triumphantly circled "Heiligenschwendi" in red felt pen.

  The Hertz girl had not exaggerated about the beauty of the village. After he left Thun and started to climb the twisting road, again and again, the different views were breathtaking. The sun blazed in a clear blue sky. As he drove higher, he could see the lake sparkling below.

  He parked the car in Heiligenschwendi. Vreni's house was some ten minutes away at the end of a narrow track, and he was advised that it would be easier to walk than to drive. It would be difficult to turn the car around, especially when the snow still lay on the ground.

  There was a newly built woodshed outside the farm. Slatted side walls allowed the wind to circulate and dry the wood. Inside, the logs were cut to a fixed length and evenly split in a way seldom seen in Ireland. They were stacked impeccably, properly spaced, edges aligned to the nearest centimeter.

  The farmhouse was built into the slope of the hill and looked as if it were several centuries old. Its timbers were mottled and discolored from generations of harsh winters and hot summers. Melting snow dripped from overhanging eaves.

  When Vreni opened the door, Fitzduane could smell gingerbread. He was strangely moved when he first saw her and was momentarily unable to speak. She was so like Rudi, yet somehow different. The reason came to him as he looked at her. Fitzduane had never seen Rudi except disfigured in death. Vreni was warm, young, beautiful, and very much alive. There was a smear of flour on her cheek.

  Fitzduane had bought flowers in Bern. He offered them to her. She smiled and raised her hands, palms toward him. They were covered in flour.

  "You're thoughtful," she said, "but keep them for a moment—will you?—until I wash my hands. I've been baking gingerbread men for my cousins for Easter."

  Outdoor shoes and clogs stood in a neat row beside the door. At her request Fitzduane added his own and donned the Hüttenfinken she offered him. The thick leather-soled socks were heavily embroidered in bright colors. He padded into the warm glow of the house, then into the small kitchen, whose walls were lined with cabinets and shelves. He could see no processed foods. Instead, there were bundles of dried herbs, jars of different colored grains and pulses, and hand-labeled bottles of liquids. A wood stove radiated heat from one corner. A scrubbed wooden table bore several trays of cooling gingerbread shapes. Other baking materials were obviously still in use.

  She led him through the kitchen into the next room. As he went through the door, he noticed that the wood stove connected into a two-level stone bench built into the corner of the room. Above the stone bench was a man-size circular hole in the low ceiling. Vreni saw his interest.

  "It's a sort of central heating system," she said. "The stove in the kitchen can warm this room here through the stone benches. Also, if we want, we can open the circular trapdoor above the benches and the bedroom above will be waned. It's called a choust. When it's cold, I go to bed from here through the trapdoor. It saves using the stairs outside."

  Fitzduane was intrigued, Ireland traditionally being a land of romantic but inefficient open fireplaces. Vreni left him for a few minutes to finish her baking and to wash her hands. He felt the top stone bench. It was pleasantly warm. He noticed a system of baffles that could be used to adjust the flow of heat.

  The room was of a comfortable size. It was furnished adequately, if sparsely, for what was obviously the main room of the house. There was a wooden table and four simple upright chairs. There was a low bed in one corner made up with cushions to serve as a sofa. Several bean bags and other huge cushions were scattered around. There was one pine bookcase. There were none of the normal electronic devices of modern living—no television, no radio, no stereo. The one incongruous note was struck by the presence of a telephone on the floor just beside the sofa.

  He walked over to look at the books. Most of the titles were in German and meant little to him, but to judge by the photographs and symbols on some of them, they revealed more than a passing interest in left-wing politics. Several books were either by or about a Rudolf Steiner. The name struck a chord in Fitzduane, and then he remembered a German mercenary he had run into a few times called Rolf Steiner. Somehow he didn't think the books referred to the same man.

  "Anthroposophy," Vreni said. She held a steaming coffee mug in each hand. She gave him one and then curled up on a bean bag. She wore a loose cotton blouse of Indian design and faded jeans. Her feet were bare. They were perfectly proportioned and without blemish.

  "You know the teachings of Steiner," she asked, "Rudolf Steiner?"

  Fitzduane shook his head.

  "He was an Austrian," she said, "but he worked mainly in Switzerland. Anthroposophy is a philosophy of life he developed. It means knowledge produced by the higher self in man—as opposed to theosophy, knowledge originating from God. Anthroposophy covers all kinds of things."

  "Like what?" said Fitzduane.

  "Science, education, architecture, a biodynamic approach to farming, and so on," she said. "It even includes eurhythmies. He had a great-aunt of mine dancing barefoot in the morning dew when she was young."

  Fitzduane smiled. "And you follow his teachings?"

  "In some ways," she said. "Particularly his ideas about fanning. Our farming methods here are completely natural. We use no chemicals or artificial fertilizers, no unhealthy additives. It's more work, but it's better, don't you think?"

  Fitzduane sipped the hot liquid she had given him. It was a disturbing yellow-brown color and tasted bitter. "I guess it depends what you're used to," he said.

  "You like it?" she said, gesturing toward his mug. "It's a special herb tea, my own recipe."

  Fitzduane smiled. "I was going to blame Steiner," he said. "Anything that tastes this awful must do you good."

  Vreni laughed. "My herb tea is good for everything. It cures the common cold, cleanses the insides, and promotes sexual vigor."

  "They used to call that kind of thing snake oil."

  "You don't know what you're missing," said Vreni. "Would you like some real coffee instead?"

  While she was making the coffee, he continued his browse through the books, steering clear of Steiner. On the bottom shelf, title facing inward, and almost hidden by a row of encyclopedias, was a familiar volume: The Paradox Business, by Hugo Fitzduane. He flipped through its pages. A pressed flower and a small piece of printed paper slipped from it to the floor. The flower crumbled as he tried to pick it up. The paper was a ski pass. The book fell open at a full-page bleed photograph of Colonel Shane Kilmara.

  He called out to her in the kitchen. "I see you've got my book," he said.

  "We do?" she said, and there was amusement in her voice. "I'm afraid I didn't know. Most of those books are Peter's."

  He replaced the book exactly as he had found it. He could still taste the bitterness of the herb tea on his tongue.

  There were two windows in the room. Through one Lake Thun could be seen below, bright blue in the sunlight. The second window was set into the end of the room and was at right angles to the first. It looked along the track to a small barn about fifty meters away. The track seemed to end there.

  There was something strange about Vreni, something he could not as yet identify. On the face of it, she was calm and self-assured—in fact, so self-assured that it was easy to forget she was only twenty. Her manner suggested experience, a certain knowing-ness that he had most often encountered in the young in combat zones, where maturity came fast if you were to survive. It was a lack of illusion, a loss of innocence rather than the judgment that came with full maturity. It showed most of all in her eyes.

  Yet in contrast with her poise and assurance were other emotions. He could sense undercurr
ents of fear, sadness, and loneliness—and a great need for someone to confide in, for someone to help her. There seemed to be things she wanted to say but was afraid to.

  Together with his coffee, she brought him a small glass and filled it with an almost colorless liquid. The bottle had fruit floating in it, some berries he could not identify. He tasted it with some trepidation, but it was delicious, a homemade schnapps distilled from fruit grown on the farm.

  "We have a communal still in the village," she said. "You can make five liters per person per year without paying any tax, and one liter for each cow. It is used as a medicine for the cows, or at least that was the custom. Now I think the cows don't often see their share."

  "And what does Mr. Steiner think of that?" he asked. She threw back her head and laughed again, and for a few moments all the undercurrents were gone. All he could see was a young, beautiful girl with no cares and her life ahead of her.

  Outside, the light faded, and it began to freeze again. He helped her bring in more wood from the shed and, away from the warmth of the farmhouse, shivered in the cold of the evening. She showed him around the house. They climbed through the circular trapdoor into the master bedroom. It was sparsely furnished apart from a low handmade double bed, covered with a sheepskin rug, and an old carved wardrobe. A SIG service rifle rested on two wooden pegs on the wall. Vreni saw him glance toward it.

  "That is Peter's," she said.

  Fitzduane nodded.

  "Peter owns this farm," she said, "but he is often away. I don't know when he will be back; it is dull for him here."

  "You don't have a photograph of him by any chance, do you?"

  Vreni shook her head. "No. He has never liked being photographed. Some people are that way." She smiled. "They think their souls are being stolen."

  Next door to the bedroom was a workshop and hobby room. There were piles of ski equipment. Several planks were removed from the inside of one of the walls. -

  "Woodworm," she said. "They have to be replaced."

  "Why not just spray them?"

  "There you go with your chemicals again," she said. "It is wrong. We are just killing nature."

  "I understand your father is a director of a major chemical company," said Fitzduane, "among his many interests."

  Vreni gave him a look. "That is not so widely known. You are well informed."

  Fitzduane shrugged. Silently he cursed himself for breaking the mood of the conversation now that she was talking more freely.

  "There is much that my father has done, and does, that I do not agree with," she said. "He supports a system in Switzerland that is wrong. He pretends to lead a respectable upright life, to be a leading citizen in the community, to support worthy causes and to be a model for others, but it is all hypocrisy. He and a few thousand others in high positions in business, politics, the army, and banking manipulate our so-called democracy for their own selfish ends. They control the press, they are in league with the unions, and the people suffer. All over the world the people suffer."

  Suddenly she grabbed him by the hand—her mood changed in a flash—and, giggling, pulled him with her out through the workroom door. "I've got a surprise for you," she said.

  Because of the steep slope of the hill on which the house was perched, the second-floor workroom led to a path outside that ran around the back of the house. There, separate from the living quarters but under the same weather-beaten roof as the old house, was storage for hay. In one fenced-off corner were several lambs nestling together. They sprang to their feet when the door opened and stood blinking in the light of the single electric bulb. One lamb was smaller than the others and had a brown woolly coat. Vreni ran forward and scooped the little lamb into her arms. It nuzzled against the familiar warmth of her breasts.

  "Isn't he lovely?" she said. "So soft and cuddly, and he's mine. Peter gave him to me. His mother died, and I fed him from a bottle like a baby."

  Vreni stood there with the lamb in her arms, her face loving and gentle, her cares momentarily gone. He could smell hay and milk and the warmth of her body. She stood very close as she placed the lamb in his arms. Then she kissed Fitzduane just once, gently.

  Back inside the house, Vreni busied herself making supper, something of rice and vegetables and herbs. They ate in the sitting room in the glow of an antique oil lamp, and they drank homemade red wine. Afterward there was more coffee and schnapps. The cows certainly weren't going to get much of a look-in.

  Vreni sat on her bean bag again and began to talk about Rudi.

  "When we were small, it was all so simple. Mommy was still alive then and married to Daddy. It was a happy home. It was lovely growing up in Bern. There was always so much to do. There was school and all our friends; there were dancing classes and singing classes. In the summer we went walking and swimming. In the winter there was skiing and tobogganing and ice skating. At weekends, and sometimes for longer, we'd go to Lenk. Daddy has a chalet there—a very old place, very creaky. Rudi loved it; we both did. We had a great friend who taught us skiing there. He farmed in the summer and would take his cows high up in the mountains. From time to time we would go with him. He never seemed to get tired, and he taught us all about the different wild flowers."

  "What was his name?" Fitzduane felt a sense of betrayal as he asked the question. He was friend and confidant, but first he was interrogator.

  Vreni was preoccupied. She answered his question almost without thinking. "Oskar," she said, "Oskar Schupbach—a lovely man. He had a face that looked as if it were carved out of polished mahogany. He was always so tanned, always outdoors, winter and summer."

  "Do you still go to Lenk?"

  "No!" she said. "No! Never again, never." The words snapped out with savage force. She started to cry and then wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hands. She sat on the floor on a cushion, back propped against the bean bag, legs stretched out, feet bare, head down. She looked about fifteen.

  "Why did it all go wrong?" she said. "Why did it have to? We were so happy."

  Fitzduane checked his watch. It was getting late, and unaccustomed as he was to driving on these frozen roads, it would take him a long time to get back to Bern in the darkness. Vreni looked up at him and read his mind. "You can stay here," she said, indicating the sofa. "The roads will be icy now, and I don't think you are used to such driving. Please stay; I'd like you to."

  Fitzduane looked out the window. The night was dark. He could see no moon, no lights of other houses, no headlights in the distance. He let the curtain drop back into place. He smiled at her. "Fine."

  Vreni unzipped one of the bean bags and rummaged inside. Her hand came out holding a small leather bag secured by a drawstring. She opened the bag and, with the contents, began to roll a joint. She looked up at Fitzduane.

  "Grass," she said. "Want some?"

  Fitzduane shook his head.

  She smiled at him. "It's the generation gap."

  He didn't disillusion her. She lit the joint and inhaled deeply, holding the smoke in her lungs for as long as possible. She repeated the exercise several times. The sweetish smell of cannabis smoke filled the air.

  "That's good," she said. "That's very, very good."

  She lay back against the bean bag again, her eyes closed. Faint tendrils of smoke emerged from her nostrils. She was silent for several minutes. Fitzduane drank some more schnapps and waited.

  "You're easy to talk to," she said. "Simpatico. You know how to listen."

  Fitzduane smiled.

  "It's incredible to think of it now," said Vreni, "but we were in awe of Daddy when we were small. He was a little brusque, somewhat stern, but we loved him. He was often away on business or working late. I remember Mommy would often talk about how hard he was working. We knew he had been a hero during the war. We knew he was a lawyer. We knew about something called 'business,' but we had no idea what the word meant in terms of people and their lives.

  "Mommy was idealistic. Daddy used to call her naive
. She came from another one of the old Bernese families just like Daddy, but she wasn't an ostrich like so many of that group. She didn't just want to safeguard her privileges and live in the past. She wanted a more caring society in Switzerland. She wanted some kind of justice for the Third World, not to bleed it dry with high interest rates and sell it arms and chemicals it doesn't need.

  "Funnily enough, I think that Daddy shared her ideas at first—or so Mommy said. But then, as he grew more successful and acquired power and influence, he became less and less liberal and increasingly right-wing and blinkered in his outlook. Too much to lose, I suppose.

  "We—Rudi and I—were about twelve or thirteen when we noticed things beginning to go wrong between them. There was no one incident, just a change in the atmosphere and a kind of coldness. Daddy was away more. He came home from work later. There were arguments, the normal sort of thing, I suppose. Even so, Erika came as a complete shock. She was on the scene for about a year before the divorce took place. They were married almost immediately after.

  "The reactions of us children were quite different. Marta, as the eldest daughter, was always very close to Daddy. She was a classic moody teenager, and she and Mommy had gotten on badly for a few years. So Marta took Daddy's side over the divorce and went to live with him and Erika. Andreas was of two minds. He was close to Mommy but was absolutely fascinated by Erika. He had a real crush on her. He used to get an erection when she was near."

  Fitzduane remembered his own initial response to Erika's reeking sexuality. He had every sympathy for Andreas.

  "Rudi and I were closest to Mommy. We were both terribly upset over the divorce. All that happy time was over. Rudi took it hardest of all. He took a real dislike to Daddy and, for a time, wouldn't even speak to him. Surprisingly he didn't blame Erika.