Beneath the Mountain

by Luca D'Andrea

  * * *

  My smile was as fake as a three-euro coin, whereas the expression of surprise on Brigitte’s face was genuine enough.

  “Hello, Brigitte.”

  She was wearing a pink-and-white-check dressing gown. She pulled the sides across her chest, maybe to protect herself from the cold.

  She shifted a lock of hair behind her ear.

  Her voice came out hoarse.

  “Salinger,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to have a little chat.”

  I didn’t wait for her to invite me in. I simply walked in of my own accord. After a moment’s hesitation, she closed the door.

  The interior was the usual mess, but Brigitte must have made an effort to tidy a little. The bottles on the shelves had disappeared and a few items of furniture showed marks of a clean-up. The little table in front of the couch was clear, no crushed cans, no bottles of Forst. The old newspapers, instead of being scattered everywhere, were piled in a corner. I noticed the blankets with which I had saved her from exposure. They were carefully folded, the album with the leather cover propped on them like a trophy.

  I held up the plastic bag and held it out to her. “I brought you some breakfast.”

  “You have Four Roses for breakfast?”

  “Not me,” was my reply.

  In the kitchen I found a glass. I held it under the tap and then dried it as best I could and went back into the living room.

  Brigitte had sat down on the couch, a blanket around her shoulders. Her legs bare. And shaved, I couldn’t help noticing. She had cleaned the house and shaved her legs.

  Hermann.

  I poured the liquor into the glass and held it out to her. “Cheers.”

  Brigitte turned her head away. I approached and put the glass in her hands. Then I squeezed them hard. Brigitte yelped.

  “What do you want, Salinger?”

  “To talk.”

  Brigitte gave a little laugh. “What about?”

  “Evi’s death.” A pause. “And Günther’s.”

  “Don’t speak his name, Salinger. I’m not drunk enough to bear it.”

  “You’ve had a visitor, haven’t you?”

  Brigitte didn’t reply. She tightened her hands around the glass. “That’s none of your business.”

  “You’re right. But I have this.”

  I took out the report. I didn’t give it to her. I held it tight between my index and middle fingers, like a playing card.

  “What’s that?”

  “The evidence that Günther never let you see.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “That’s the wrong question.”

  “What’s the right question, Salinger?”

  “Are you thirsty?”

  “No.”

  “I had a friend,” I said. “His name was Billy, he was a roadie for Kiss. He had his personal recipe for breakfast. Three parts milk, one part Four Roses, a raw egg, and powdered chocolate. Add two spoonfuls of sugar and stir well. Then the sun will shine again. Wouldn’t you like a little sunshine, Brigitte?”

  “You son of a bitch. Tell me what those papers are.”

  I could see it in her eyes. Brigitte was dying to have a drink. She was an alcoholic. A chronic alcoholic. Alcoholics can’t resist a drink. And I didn’t want her to resist. I was a bastard, but I didn’t feel any remorse.

  “The motive for Evi’s murder.”

  Brigitte started shaking. “You found it?”

  “Günther found it,” was my reply. “I’d never have got there without him.”

  Brigitte’s chin trembled. She started crying. Only then did I notice that she had made herself up. The eyeliner began running in dark rivulets. I found her pathetic. Worse. I hated her. She was nothing but a drunken slut who had lied to me.

  Hating her, I found the strength to rub salt in the wound. “Let’s talk about Evi, shall we?”

  “Get out.”

  “I’m not a policeman, Brigitte. I’m not into interrogations. Lamp pointed at the face and all that stuff you see in movies. I’m not like that. I’ve learned to listen to people. I would interview them, have long chats with them. And I always managed to get them to say what they never imagined they would tell a stranger. It was part of my job.”

  Brigitte bared her teeth. “Sticking your nose into things that don’t concern you?”

  “Listening to people. Observing them. Realizing when they’re telling the truth. And you lied to me. Drink. It’ll be easier for you to clear your conscience. I know you’re dying to do it.”

  Brigitte flung the glass at me. I dodged it by a whisker, but I couldn’t stop her throwing herself at me. She stank of alcohol and sweat. But she was weak. Her body had been destroyed by all those years of abuse. It didn’t take me long to extricate myself. I lifted her off me and forced her to sit down on the couch. Then I let go of her wrists. Brigitte huddled up, her legs under the blanket, in a fetal position. Her expression was filled with hate.

  “Give me the bottle, you piece of shit. I might as well take advantage.”

  God forgive me, but as I passed her the Four Roses I was smiling.

  * * *

  Two swigs were enough to calm her. By the time she’d had four, the anesthesia of the alcohol had made her eyelids heavy, her jaw slack. I grabbed the bottle from her hands.

  “Give me that.”

  “You hated Evi, didn’t you?”

  “Give me the bottle.”

  I gave her back the bottle but was careful that she didn’t drink too much. I didn’t want her lifeless on the floor. I granted her a last gulp, then took it back.

  “How do you know that?”

  “That album isn’t an album of Evi’s triumphs. It’s an album of Brigitte’s wasted life.”

  “You’re a real gentleman, Salinger,” she said sarcastically.

  “And you’re someone who’s sleeping with the brother of your dead fiancé.”

  Brigitte looked me up and down. “You don’t understand a damned thing, Salinger.”

  “Then help me to understand.”

  “Pass me the bottle.”

  I gave it to her. Then I lit myself a Marlboro.

  “I didn’t always hate her,” Brigitte said, staring at the clear liquid in the bottle. “She was my best friend. We got along well. We completed each other. She was day, I was night. We had our great plan.”

  A dribble of Four Roses ran down her chin. She wiped it with a listless gesture.

  “During her last year at school, all we did was talk about it. We liked having a secret that was all ours. It was something adventurous and . . . exclusive. It made us accomplices. We’d saved up. Everything was ready. We wanted to leave. To get out of here. And we wanted to do it together.”

  “What about Markus?”

  “He would join us when he turned eighteen.”

  “What was the destination?”

  “Milan. It was the capital of fashion, the papers were always saying that. I’d be a model and Evi would study to become a geologist.”

  “Evi would have left her mother alone?”

  “She was an alcoholic bitch, Salinger. There was no choice. And besides, Evi had said that after graduating, with the money she earned from her work, she would pay for her to go into rehab. She always had a solution, dear Evi,” she added with a certain bitterness.

  “Was it an excuse or did she really believe it?”

  “She really believed it. She was a daydreamer, but she wasn’t a liar. And that made her even worse, you know? But I only realized that later. At the time we were excited, happy. Then she met Kurt and fell in love with him.”

  “And you were cut out.”

  “You have a good memory, Salinger,” Brigitte sneered, and poured herself another dose of bourbon.

  “It’s my job.”

  “When she left, I hated her. I hated her with all my might. I felt abandoned, don’t you see? She told me she’d write to me and that we’d phone each ot
her every day. And for a while, the first year at least, we did. Then . . . It couldn’t last. She had Kurt and her new life in Innsbruck, and me?”

  “And you?”

  “I’d lost control. I became Brigitte the slut. But I didn’t give a damn what other people said. I drank as much as I wanted and fucked anyone who had a cock between his legs. I was angry, furious with the whole world. I lost my job in Aldino, but found another one that was much more lucrative. A nightclub in Bolzano. I moved my ass on a stage, rubbed my tits in the faces of those perverts, and got them drunk. I took ten percent on their orders and my tips ended up in a common chest that we divided at the weekend between us girls.” A pause. “Plus the extras, but those were personal.”

  “Extras?”

  “I started prostituting myself. In ’84, I’d begun using cocaine. The magic medicine that wiped out every nasty memory and left me bursting with energy. I didn’t feel anything. Just euphoria.”

  “Cocaine costs money.”

  “A lot of money.”

  She closed her eyes. A grimace as the white-hot flame of the bourbon descended from her throat to her stomach.

  “When Evi died, I was happy. My best friend had been torn to pieces and how did I react? I took the car and went down to Bolzano. I did so much coke, it was a miracle I didn’t end up in the cemetery. I gave it away to anyone who wanted it. After a while, I found myself naked, on the floor, surrounded by at least five guys who were drinking and fucking me. Then someone gave me another line of coke and I don’t remember anything more.”

  “And Günther?”

  “Günther was an angel. He was the one who got me off coke.”

  “But not off booze.”

  Brigitte shook her head. “You’re wrong. The first months were hell. I wanted my magic powder. I wanted to get high. Günther took time off work. He was here night and day, in the house, keeping guard over me. Whenever he went out, he’d lock me in. If I could, I’d have killed him, but inside me there was a little voice that understood what Günther was doing. And also understood that this was my opportunity to change my life. To become . . .”

  “Better?”

  “Normal, Salinger. And for a time I was.”

  Brigitte bit her lip until the blood spurted. When she noticed, she wiped it with her hand and then sat staring at the little red spots on her fingers.

  “Günther started investigating Evi’s death.”

  “Did he tell you?”

  “No, I figured it out for myself. And I started looking at him differently. He was no longer the man who’d picked me up from the street and given me a new life. My knight in shining armor. Günther had gone over to the enemy. He’d become . . .”

  “A photograph in the album of Brigitte’s defeats?”

  “Evi,” she said contemptuously, “Evi, always Evi. But she was dead. Dead and buried. That bitch was six feet under. And with her, that blasted Kurt who’d taken her away from me. And yet even when she was dead, she kept tormenting me. Can you believe it? It was a kind of curse. Günther just kept repeating how unfair what had happened was. Hours and hours discussing who it could have been and how and when and . . . Fuck!” She screamed. “Fuck! I couldn’t stand all that talking anymore. There was only one way to keep Günther close to me.”

  “By getting him drunk.”

  Brigitte nodded.

  Her expression turned from angry to desperate.

  She raised her hands to her face. “God will never forgive me for that, will He, Salinger?”

  “You certainly haven’t.”

  I listened to Brigitte weeping softly, saw the make-up trickling down over her chin. I lit a cigarette, feeling a dull pain at the back of my neck.

  Suddenly I realized what I was doing. I realized I’d forced a ruin of a woman to confess her pain, using her demon as bait. I became clearheaded again, at least for a few moments. Clara was in the hospital and instead of being with her and my wife, I was torturing a victim with this terrible business. Torturing, that was the word.

  Disgusted with myself, I stubbed out my cigarette and walked over to the couch.

  I stroked Brigitte’s forehead. I took the Four Roses out of her hand.

  She didn’t even notice. She continued crying and moaning like a wounded animal. I flung the bottle at the wall. It shattered into a thousand pieces, inundating the room with splinters.

  Brigitte looked up at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I deserve it.”

  I felt the urge to embrace her. She must have noticed because she shook her head.

  “You don’t need to console me, Salinger.”

  “It’s just that . . .”

  Brigitte nodded. “I can see it in your eyes. You’re angry. Why?”

  “My daughter. My wife,” I gesticulated, realizing that I was incapable of explaining the confusion in my head. “This story,” I said. “I . . .”

  I couldn’t utter another word.

  “I’m not a whore, Salinger. Not the way you mean it.”

  I stared at her, without understanding.

  Brigitte pointed at the front door. “Hermann. We aren’t lovers.”

  “I saw him come here. I thought—”

  “You thought wrong.”

  “I couldn’t figure out where you found the money to—”

  “To drink?” Brigitte said, disconsolately.

  “To pay the bills,” I corrected her. “I thought wrong.”

  Brigitte didn’t reply immediately. She let her eyes wander for a while. She lay back on the couch and smoothed her hair.

  “The Bletterbach killings, Salinger,” she said. “When it comes down to it, what is that story all about?”

  “A murder,” I replied.

  “You can do better than that, Salinger.”

  “Evi, Markus, and Kurt?”

  “Wrong. It’s about guilt. My guilt. And Hermann’s. Did you know that when Günther was alive he and his brother never spoke?”

  “Hermann was too absorbed in his work. His business was growing and he didn’t have time for anything else.”

  “They hadn’t got along even before that. Did he tell you about the four cows? He always does that. He says that’s where his empire was born.”

  “Isn’t it true?”

  “Yes, it is. Except that Günther didn’t agree. On the contrary. He thought it showed a lack of respect for the family. But Hermann was stubborn and one fine morning without saying anything to anybody he rounded up those four cows and took them away. Günther never wanted a cent from him. He said he was a social climber who’d forgotten his roots.”

  A gesture to sweep away the world.

  “Then when Günther died, years after his funeral, Hermann shows up here with a bunch of flowers. Dressed like a dandy. He says he wants to talk to me. He says ‘talk’ and I think ‘fuck.’ And I say to myself, why not? Let’s see if his cock is as big as his brother’s. But Hermann wasn’t interested. He wanted to make amends. He’d heard that Günther loved me. And a rich man only knows one way to get rid of a sense of guilt.”

  “Money.”

  “Every week he came here with an envelope. We talked a little, and when he went away he left the envelope in full view. If he was away on business, I’d get a check in the mail. Never enough money for me to get out of here. Otherwise he would have lost his way of clearing his conscience. He was using me, don’t you see? It would have been better if he’d fucked me.”

  “Didn’t he ever do it?”

  “Sometimes, I provoked him. I’d let him find me naked or I’d start to play dumb. Hermann would leave the money and go. He never touched me, not even once. Even now, after all these years, he comes here, leaves his money, and goes. In a way, I am his whore after all, Salinger.”

  I thought of how disgusting such behavior was. Hermann had used Brigitte to ease his own conscience. With that money, he thought he was honoring his dead brother. Wiping his conscience clean by using Brigitte and her demon.
<
br />   I showed her the pages of Evi’s report.

  Brigitte stared at them, eagerly.

  “This is a hydro-geological risk assessment. Look at the signature, do you recognize it?”

  “Evi.”

  “She hadn’t graduated yet, but at the time they didn’t split hairs about such things. All you needed was a diploma in surveying. Besides, she had good academic credibility. At least around here, that was enough, wasn’t it?”

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “This was Günther’s death sentence.”

  Brigitte read it. When she looked up at me, I saw a deep black well of despair in her eyes.

  “He kept it inside . . . for all that time.”

  “It must have been hard for him.”

  “His brother,” Brigitte murmured. “His brother. And I . . .”

  She couldn’t go on.

  Brigitte slumped against the back of the couch, prostrate.

  “Get out, Salinger,” she said.

  * * *

  I left, appalled at myself.

  I almost didn’t see it.

  Hermann’s black Mercedes.

  * * *

  Werner’s telephone call reached me as I was looking for a parking spot in the underground garage of the hospital in Bolzano. I arrived in a flash. Annelise ran to meet me. The whiteness wouldn’t be taking my daughter’s sight. My nightmare hadn’t been a premonition. An operation wasn’t necessary, the hematoma was being reabsorbed.

  The corridor spun around me.

  Annelise pointed to the room. “She’s waiting for you.”

  I rushed in.

  This time I didn’t linger over the green tiles, on which the rubber soles of my shoes squeaked, or the cracks in the plaster on the walls. I wasn’t afraid to confront reality.

  Clara was pale, her blue eyes circled with a purple tinge. She still had all those damned tubes coming out of her arms, but at least I knew she was out of danger.

  She called to me. “Papà.” It was wonderful to hear her voice again.

  I hugged her. I had to make an effort not to crush her. Clara clung to me with all her might. I felt her bones sticking out. I could put my hands around her pelvis. I chased away the tears.

  “How are you, ten letters?”

  “I have a headache.”

  I stroked her. I needed to touch her. I wanted to be sure it wasn’t a dream. “The doctor,” said Werner’s voice behind me. “He says she has a hard head.”