2008 - The Book of Murder

by Guillermo Martinez

  “I looked through the binoculars again and said I was amazed he could still be swimming at the same pace. I regretted saying it immediately. Ramiro seemed piqued and said that he swam out just as far every morning, as part of his training for the job. We said nothing more until Kloster reappeared, swimming on his back. He turned round at the last moment, before being dragged in by the breakers, shook his streaming hair from his face, and strode out of the water. He didn’t look in the least bit tired. Still dripping with water, he walked right past without glancing at us, picked up his things from the table, settled the bill, and left. I asked Ramiro if he ever came back in the afternoon and he said no. Nor had he ever seen him in town in the evening.

  “We had a bit of an argument then. I begged him not to have breakfast there any more and to go to the bar next door. He was annoyed and asked why he should. I couldn’t tell him the true reason. I wasn’t really sure myself what I was afraid of. I said I wanted to have breakfast there with him every morning but it made me uncomfortable having Kloster so near. He said he couldn’t leave his post, and didn’t see why he should have to move. Kloster should be the one to find himself another bar. His anger made me feel there was something he wasn’t telling me.”

  She stopped suddenly and leaned forward to stub out her cigarette, twisting and turning it in the ashtray, as if there were one particular memory she found humiliating that made it difficult to go on. She lit another cigarette and as she expelled the first cloud she waved her hand, but I couldn’t tell whether it was simply to disperse the smoke or in unconscious recognition that none of it mattered now. She took another drag on her cigarette and seemed to find the strength to continue.

  “In fact I don’t think he liked me having breakfast with him. There was a waitress there who was really pretty and sexy. She always wore tiny miniskirts and bikini tops. As soon as I saw her I thought there were too many giggles and glances between them. When I said this, he got even angrier and denied it, of course. But I really believed he was in danger and I wasn’t prepared to go away and leave him alone just because of a jealous scene. So I went back the following morning. I got there a little earlier. Kloster arrived soon afterwards, before we’d ordered. But instead of sitting at one of the tables outside, he went in and sat at the bar. At first I took this as a good sign, an admission that he’d seen me but didn’t want to face me. I wondered for a moment if perhaps, as Ramiro had said, it really was a coincidence that Kloster was there. I didn’t want to look in his direction and when the waitress had brought our coffee I tried to chat to Ramiro as if Kloster didn’t exist—and the waitress as well. I think Ramiro was even more pleased than I was that Kloster had gone inside and things could stay as they were. He was in a good mood and as soon as he finished breakfast he ran down to the sea, leapt over the breakers and swam out. I suppose he wanted to impress me. I watched as he grew more and more distant, beyond the buoys. He’d left the binoculars on the table and I followed him for a while. His strokes were more energetic than Kloster’s and he was splashing a lot as he kicked his feet, but he didn’t seem to be gliding through the water as smoothly as Kloster had. And he looked as if he was getting tired: he was twisting awkwardly when he lifted his head from the water to take a breath, he was losing his rhythm and his strokes were becoming jerky. He stopped and floated on his back for a while, resting. I thought he seemed agitated…exhausted. I don’t think he was half as far out as Kloster had been the day before. Even without the binoculars I could still make out his head and shoulders in the water. He swam back more slowly and when he was close to the shore, to show off or something, he did the butterfly for the last few yards. I think it was intended for the waitress rather than me. When he got out, breathing hard, I suddenly realised what Kloster’s plan was.”

  “Swim out really far and pretend to get cramp, making the lifeguard swim out further than he can manage and become exhausted. Drown the lifeguard.”

  “Yes, something like that. I assumed he was waiting for a day when the sea was rough. Then when Ramiro had exhausted himself, swimming out, Kloster would duck him under and drown him. If they were far out enough, at that time of day no one would see.”

  “Perhaps only you, with the binoculars.”

  “That’s what I found most chilling: he wanted to kill Ramiro in front of me. And afterwards it would be his word against mine. It seemed so incredible, so unreal, I couldn’t tell anyone. At that very moment there were people nearby on sun loungers reading Kloster’s latest novel. And while I was imagining all this Kloster was inside, at the bar, quietly having coffee and reading the paper, apparently not even aware of us. A little later he went for a swim, going out as far as the day before. Then he left, without even glancing in our direction.”

  “And then?”

  “Then…There were two or three more mornings that went the same. Kloster would sit at the bar and read the paper. He only passed by us when he went for a swim. When he was in the sea I was trembling inside and I had to keep watching him until he came back and left. I realised that he was going out a little further each time. I think Ramiro had noticed too, and, as if it were some sort of competition—macho nonsense—he tried to swim just as far. Then we had the row about the cup of coffee.”

  “The cup of coffee?”

  “Yes. I asked again if we could switch to a different bar. Another one had opened, nearer his post. That left him no excuse. He got annoyed and asked why we should move when it didn’t look as if Kloster had any intention of bothering us. Or had something else happened between him and me? I knew he was only pretending to be jealous—he just didn’t want to have to stop ogling the waitress’s tits. I said I was fed up with the little tart bringing me my coffee cold. It was true: she seemed to do it deliberately. He hadn’t even noticed because he quite liked his coffee lukewarm. We started arguing and he told me not to bother having breakfast with him any more if I was just doing it to keep an eye on him. He said I could go and find another bar myself and leave him alone. I went home in tears. My mother and Valentina were about to go out mushroom gathering so I went with them. It was my parents’ anniversary the next day and my mother always made a mushroom pie, which only she and my father liked. Actually, I don’t think Daddy really did, but he’d never dared tell her because it was the first thing she’d ever cooked for him and she was very proud of her recipe. We always went to the same place to pick the mushrooms, a little wood behind the house where very few people ever went. My mother considered it to be almost an extension of our garden.

  “When Valentina was out of earshot I told my mother about the row. She was surprised and a little alarmed to hear that Kloster was there. She asked why I hadn’t told her about it immediately. She wanted to know if he’d tried to talk to me and I said that since he’d seen me he’d had his coffee inside the bar and had never come near me. This seemed to reassure her. I almost told her what I was really afraid of, but my mother thought I’d become a little obsessed with the death of Kloster’s daughter. At the time she even suggested I see a therapist. I couldn’t see how to tell her that I thought Kloster was planning a murder without its sounding crazy. I ended up telling her about the waitress and my row with Ramiro. She laughed and said I should go back the next day and have breakfast with him as if nothing had happened and it would all work out. My mother was terribly fond of Ramiro and she couldn’t believe the quarrel was serious.”

  “And you listened to her?”

  “Yes, unfortunately, I did. When I arrived Ramiro had already got his food; he hadn’t even waited for me. Kloster was already there, in his usual place, at the bar. It was a cool, blowy morning and the sea was rough. The water was murky, with a big swell and spray flying in the wind. I ordered coffee with milk and when the girl finally deigned to bring it to me it was, of course, cold, but I didn’t say anything. Actually, neither of us said much. The silence was horribly tense. When Ramiro finished his coffee he took off his tracksuit to go for a swim. I asked if it wasn’t dangerous with the sea s
o rough. He said he’d rather go in the water than stay there with me. And then he said something even more hurtful that still makes me cry when I think of it. I watched him dive into the first big breaker and emerge on the other side. He had to swim through quite a few big waves until he got beyond the end of the breakwater, where it was a bit calmer. But he still seemed to be having trouble. Because the sea was so rough I’d lose sight of him every so often, but he’d reappear, a tiny dot in the waves. At one stage I couldn’t see him at all and when his head reappeared it looked as if he was waving to me desperately. I was frightened and I grabbed his binoculars, and when I spotted him again he was going under. I jumped up, terrified. The beach was empty and immediately I thought of Kloster. Not caring about anything, I ran inside the bar to beg him for help. But when I opened the door I saw that Kloster was no longer there. Can you believe it? He was the only one who could have saved him, but when I went into the bar he’d left. He’d left!”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I ran to the next breakwater to get the lifeguards, and the owner of the bar called the lifeboat. It took them almost an hour to retrieve the body. By the time the boat got back to shore a crowd had gathered, as if to witness the landing of a huge fish. Children were shouting with excitement and running to tell their parents: “A drowned man! A drowned man!” The lifeguards had laid a blanket over him but his hands were uncovered. They were blue, with a tracery of white veins. They carried him on a stretcher to the promenade where an ambulance was waiting. A woman police officer came over and asked me for his parents’ phone number. It all seemed like a bad dream. My legs gave way. Then, as if from somewhere very far away, I heard people shouting at me and felt them patting my face. I opened my eyes for a moment and saw a crowd of strangers around me and the face of the policewoman peering at me. I wanted to grab her arm and scream, “Kloster! Kloster!” but I fainted again.

  “When I came to I was in hospital. I’d been given a tranquilliser and had been out for twenty-four hours. My mother told me it was all over. A routine postmortem had shown asphyxia by immersion, probably caused by hypothermia and cramp—the water that day had been very cold. Ramiro’s parents had arrived from Buenos Aires and returned immediately with the body so as to hold the wake there. Then I told my mother about what had happened that morning, as I remembered it: my despair when I saw Ramiro go under and how I’d run to get Kloster and found that he wasn’t in the bar. The only day he’d left early, without going for a swim. My mother didn’t find this odd: it had been obvious that the sea was dangerous that morning. The hazard flag had been up on all the beaches since first light and probably Kloster had decided, quite rightly, to go home and leave his swim for another day. When I insisted that I found it suspicious, my mother looked worried. “It was an accident,” she said. “God’s will.” I think she was afraid I was going to start obsessing about Kloster again. She refused to discuss it any more, at least not till I was out of hospital.”

  “You think Kloster saw that your boyfriend was drowning and went home, leaving him to die?”

  “No. From where he was sitting he could hardly see the sea. It wasn’t that. Or at least it wasn’t just that. I didn’t know exactly how but he’d achieved what he’d set out to do: to have Ramiro die before my eyes.”

  “Did you go back to the beach during that time? Did you see Kloster again?”

  “I did, but not immediately. I stayed in my room, crying. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way Ramiro had looked annoyed and left to go for his swim. And the insulting thing he said. It was my last memory of him. I couldn’t bring myself to go back to that beach for two or three days. I was truly afraid of Kloster now and felt too weak to confront him. Then I did go back very early one morning. There was a new lifeguard and, with the usual throng of people in January, everything seemed different. I looked inside the bar: Kloster wasn’t there. I went in and talked for a while with the owner. She said that the writer, as they called him, had left the day after Ramiro drowned. He said he had to get back to Buenos Aires to start on a new novel. I sat at the bar, at the place where Kloster always sat, and looked out at the table on the beach where Ramiro and I used to sit for breakfast. I wanted to see through his eyes. You could just see those few tables and the lifeguard’s chair. At low tide you couldn’t even see the line of the breakers. I stayed there a long time, until another couple sat down at what had been our table and I felt like crying. I realised I didn’t want to spend another day in Gesell so that evening I came back to Buenos Aires.”

  “So was that all? You didn’t speak to Ramiro’s parents?”

  “I did. I went to see them as soon as I got back. But I’d gone over and over it in my mind and had gradually accepted that it couldn’t be anything other than a terrible accident. What could I have said to them? That out of a desire for revenge, for having been sued for a few thousand pesos, Kloster had somehow engineered Ramiro’s death? I mean, I hadn’t seen anything more than an accident, and when I spoke to them they were already resigned to it, and even a little embarrassed that Ramiro had been so reckless. His mother had always been very religious: she was a member of the same church as my father. She spoke of the peace that follows grief, when you finally accept someone’s death. As I left their house I too experienced a strange sense of calm, for the first time in ages. I felt that whatever Kloster had wanted he’d undoubtedly achieved it, and that our respective tragedies had made us quits. That with Ramiro’s death, however sinister it might seem, some sort of balance had been restored. One death each. I tried to forget the whole business and for a few months my life almost went back to normal. I think I would even have forgotten about Kloster had it not been for the fact that his name was in the papers more and more often and his books seemed to be in all the shop windows.

  “A year passed. December came and I felt I didn’t want to spend the holidays in Gesell as usual. I thought the sea and the beach would bring back too many bad memories, so I stayed in Buenos Aires. The rest of the family left just after Christmas and I spent the time preparing for another exam. So I wouldn’t forget, I put a note in my diary to phone my parents on their anniversary. I think I would have remembered anyway: it was the day before the date of Ramiro’s death. I waited till the evening to phone. I assumed they’d spent the day at the beach and I wanted to be sure to find them at home.”

  She fell silent, as if a hidden cog in her memory had come to a halt. She stared at the cup she’d placed to one side and, as she bowed her head, the tears fell silently, as if she’d only just held them back till then. When she looked up again, teardrops still clung to her lashes. Embarrassed, she wiped them away quickly with the back of her hand.

  “I rang at ten. My mother answered the phone. She sounded happy, in a good mood. She’d made her mushroom pie, and she and my father had had dinner alone. My brother Bruno had gone out with his girlfriend and Valentina was staying the night at a friend’s house. She said they missed me and that it wasn’t the same without me. I said the wine had made her sentimental. She laughed and said yes, they had had some wine to celebrate. Then I spoke to my father for a minute or two. We joked about the mushroom pie. He said he’d eaten it all, like a good husband. He too sounded slightly emotional and he made me promise I’d go and see them one weekend. Before hanging up, he blessed me, the way he used to when we were small. I was very tired that night and fell asleep in front of the TV. I was woken at five by the telephone: it was Bruno, my brother. He was calling from the hospital in Villa Gesell: my parents had been rushed there with violent stomach cramps. Initial tests showed traces of a fungus called Amanita phalloides. It’s terribly poisonous but can easily be mistaken for edible species. Bruno had finished his medical studies by then so he had been able to have a frank talk with the doctors. He said we had to prepare for the worst: the toxins had spread through their digestive systems and could fatally damage their livers in a few hours. He’d requested they be transferred here to Buenos Aires, to the Hospital de Clinicas, where
he was a junior doctor. He thought they might have a chance if they could get liver transplants. He said he’d go with them in the ambulance. I went to wait for him at the hospital. As soon as I saw his face, I knew they’d died on the way there.”

  She fell silent again, as if her thoughts were once more far away.

  “Could your mother have made a mistake when she picked the mushrooms?”

  She shook her head hopelessly. “That was what I found hardest to believe. She always went to the same spot to pick them and there had never been any poisonous species there. She had a mushroom guide and she’d shown us the pictures and taught us to recognise the different kinds, but never, in all the summers we spent there, did we see a single poisonous specimen. That’s why she even let Valentina accompany her. There was an investigation immediately, which said that it was an accident, regrettable, but not unprecedented. Woods without toxic species can easily become contaminated from one season to the next. Each fungus has thousands of spores and a gust of wind is all that’s needed to spread them quite a distance. And this species of Amanita is particularly difficult to distinguish from edible species, even for people who are quite experienced. The only visible difference is the volva, a white swollen sac at the base of the stem. But the mushroom can often come away from the base, or else the volva can be buried, or concealed by leaf litter. After my parents’ death, some were actually found in the wood. They were almost hidden, and an inexperienced mushroomer could have been fooled. According to the report it had been silly to allow a child of Valentina’s age to go mushroom picking. They thought that it was probably Valentina who gathered the poisonous fungi without noticing the volva and that my mother didn’t recognise them once they’d been detached from the base.”

  “But what was your hypothesis?”

  “Kloster. It was him again. He’d reappeared, when I thought it was all over. I knew it as soon as I got Bruno’s call. When he mentioned the name of the fungus, I felt that if I opened my mouth I would just start screaming. Because it was me who had given Kloster the idea.”