Sanctuary

by Luca D'Andrea

  Then came the hospital, where, numbed by drugs, he had ample time to meditate. His family, ashamed of his mental illness, disowned him. That was no big deal: he had never really loved them. When he recovered, he noticed that the pain caused by the fire had not halted the disintegration process, but had merely slowed it. So once he was discharged, he went looking for the prostitute.

  Instead, he found her pimp, a man with rotting teeth and rank breath, who beat him up. After he had finished, he dragged him to the apartment of a lawyer, a man highly respected in the criminal community, who was called in whenever a dispute had to be settled. The pimp would have accepted compensation, but the young man had no money, and the pimp (who, in his heart, believed he loved the prostitute who had nearly been killed) asked permission to kill him. The lawyer asked to be left alone with the culprit.

  They talked.

  And, as they talked, the lawyer realised that this young man possessed a rare talent: he felt no emotions. He compensated the pimp from his own pocket and got rid of him. Then he put the young man to the test. He told him about a card sharp who had been cheating the wrong people. The young man found him and killed him. In killing him, he became real again.

  The lawyer was impressed with his work. The young man killed cleanly, and had proved to be a real bloodhound. The lawyer told him about a group of people who needed a weapon like him. They were known as the Consortium, and they were capable of showing gratitude. He would be well rewarded for his services.

  The young man had no use for any reward. The world belonged to him, it was there for him. He would have refused if it had not been for one word the lawyer used.

  “Weapon.”

  A weapon, the young man thought, dazzled, was just metal that destiny had turned into an instrument of death instead of a hoe or a tin can. A weapon was innocent. The guilty one was the person who pulled the trigger. A weapon looked at the world with eyes full of mercy. A weapon was the point from which irrevocable trajectories unravelled.

  So a weapon he became.

  106

  They said goodbye at the door. The Viking was the first to leave, stooped against the lashing wind. Then it was the turn of fat Peter, who set off singing a dirty song.

  Only the second Peter was still left. Of the three old men at the inn, he was the one who had drunk the most but had remained the most clear-eyed.

  “So you were raised by a man of faith, were you?”

  “They said he was a holy man.”

  “But you’re not a man of faith.”

  “No.”

  The second Peter rubbed his hands to warm them. “You’re not a mountain man either, but you want to go up there.”

  The Trusted Man looked in the direction the second Peter was pointing: the black, gaping mouth of the valley. “That’s right.”

  The second Peter spat on the ground. “You don’t believe in the devil, and yet you want to meet him.”

  A twisted smile appeared on the Trusted Man’s face. “You could put it like that.”

  “And you really expect me to believe you’re not a man of faith?”

  107

  It was the smell of burning that led him to the maso. If the wind had not brought that acrid blast to his nostrils, he would have given up.

  He had left early in the morning, wearing the latest fashion in ski suits, padded and windproof, after spending the night preparing the equipment and checking the maps. With a spring in his step, he had entered the valley, heading north.

  A few hours later, he had got rid of the skis and put on crampons to go up above where the vegetation ended, trying to avoid being seen (yet feeling like a target at every step). He advanced, hidden by ice-covered rocks, increasing his pace whenever there was nothing to take shelter behind.

  Every so often, he would stop, take a sip from his flask and check the map. Then he would take off his rucksack and move his shoulders about to restore circulation. He would drink, catch his breath and resume walking.

  The further he went, the scarcer the signs of human presence became. At first, there was the occasional mountain hut with closed shutters, then ruins half buried in the snow and finally nothing.

  In the meantime, despite himself, he could not stop thinking about the words of the three old men. Their description of the Spider, Voter Luis’ son. A man who did not want anything.

  They were wrong.

  Everybody wanted something. Money, sex. Some wanted revenge, others fame. Most people were content with food, a warm bed and a simple life. But sex, money, fame and food were merely masks concealing the truth.

  All men, in the secrecy of their own conscience, knew they were not real. They asked for a faithful companion, a well-paid job, a magnificent castle, but what they yearned for was something that would tear them away from their illusory state. That was why, once they had reached their long-desired goal, they would sink into a painful, dismayed emptiness. They realised they had asked for the wrong thing. They had longed for reality but were terrified by it.

  All of them, except one.

  The three old men had no way of knowing this, but if there was one person who did not need to ask for anything, it was not the hermit in the black greatcoat, but the Trusted Man.

  He did not need to ask for anything because he was everything. That was why men were afraid of him and, at the same time, fascinated by him. They sensed that there was something different about him. And they were right. He was real, while they were not. He had realised this years ago.

  And yet those words tormented him, and he kept thinking about them all day. He thought of them as he climbed ever higher, increasingly self-absorbed even as he trod the mountain slopes and searched the horizon.

  The fading daylight had caught him by surprise, and he was on the verge of turning back. He knew he would not find anything at night, except death from exposure.

  And he would indeed have turned back, if it had not been for the smell of burning.

  108

  The Trusted Man followed the smell, and the smell led him to the maso up there on the rocks, outlined against the sunset. But he was not looking either at the sunset or at the maso. He was looking at the fire. And in the middle of the fire he saw the Wolf. Or rather, the Spider. He was walking strangely, hunched over, wrapped in his greatcoat, his black hat pulled down over his head.

  There was no doubt: it was him.

  The hunt was coming to an end.

  Luckily for the Trusted Man, the Spider was busy, because if the man had turned, his own life would have been over. The Trusted Man quickly climbed onto a mass of rocks that stood higher than the maso. The cold and the fatigue were mere memories. Once he had reached this vantage point, he looked down just in time to see the Spider go back into the house. That did not worry him. From where he was, as long as there was daylight, he had an excellent view.

  He took a metal box from his rucksack and set it down on the snow. Then he took off his gloves and breathed on his fingers until he could feel the blood circulating again. The temperature was plummeting. The Trusted Man opened the box and assembled the rifle with quick, efficient gestures.

  It was his favourite: a 7.92-calibre Mauser 98k, which seldom missed.

  He fitted the Zeiss scope and the silencer, the latter not because he thought he might attract attention – he assumed there was no living soul for kilometres around – but for fear of provoking an avalanche.

  He put the box back into the rucksack and pulled out a rolled-up camping mat. He spread it on the snow and lay down on top of it, his left leg straight and his right slightly bent. The perfect position for shooting. He propped the butt on his shoulder and the barrel on the rock, then looked through the scope at the blueish flames the Spider had been stoking.

  The Spider had dug a spiral trench around the maso, which stood at its very centre. Not satisfied, this strange mountain man had filled it with bundles of firewood, then set them on fire.

  A blue fire.

  The Trusted Man had seen fir
es like that before, but natural ones. They called them will-o’-the-wisps. Except that will-o’-the-wisps were the result of dead organisms decomposing, usually in swamps and marshes. Here, there was only ice and rock.

  He wondered if the Spider had sprinkled some chemical devilment or other on the firewood. As it was impossible to tell why he had done so, the Trusted Man was not interested. The owner of the café in Merano was right: the Spider was mad. So why bother trying to understand what he was doing?

  The Trusted Man emptied his mind. The Zeiss scope framed the door of the maso.

  Night replaced twilight. The sky was clear, and there was no sign of the moon. Or of the Spider. It was getting colder. Every so often, the Trusted Man would breathe on his fingers, never taking his eyes off the door of the maso.

  The starlight was reflected in the snow, creating a strange, hypnotic impression in conjunction with the blue flames of the spiral bonfire. The wind rose.

  The Trusted Man squinted. He was breathing slowly, counting his heartbeats. He took a bar of chocolate from the pocket of his ski suit and chewed it without tasting it.

  The only light in the maso came from a small window on the raised ground floor, right next to the door. The Trusted Man assumed it was the Stube.

  But for the blazing firewood, he would not have waited this long. He would have burst into the house. But if the Spider had set that strange spiral on fire, the Trusted Man thought, he must have done it for a reason. Sooner or later, he would come back outside.

  Best to wait, ready to shoot from a distance. It was more certain that way. He was three hundred metres from the maso. Even with this wind, it would be difficult for him to miss. He had managed to hit the target in much worse conditions.

  Suddenly the door of the maso was flung open, and warm light spilled out, followed by the black shadow of the Spider. The Trusted Man blinked. The Spider was carrying more firewood in his arms. He kicked the door shut behind him with his heel and came down the steps.

  The Trusted Man did not shoot. He watched as the Spider threw wood where the flames had died down and sprinkled powder on it. The blue glowed even brighter.

  The Spider was obviously limping. Was he injured? There had not been any indication of a struggle in Wegener’s villa. Maybe he had been in a fight since then. Or previously. Or perhaps the Spider had been born lame. Keeping him in the centre of the scope, the Trusted Man followed the Spider as he went back up the steps.

  The Spider opened the door wide. The Trusted Man felt his shoulder muscles relax. The Spider stood out clearly against the light from the Stube. The Trusted Man pulled the trigger.

  The Spider fell.

  109

  Marlene had lain curled up by the cellar door for hours, listening to Simon Keller chopping wood, singing and muttering, then to his heavy footsteps going back and forth in the Stube. It had occurred to her that he might want to set the maso on fire, with them inside it. The prospect had appealed to her. Better to die, even such a terrible death, than remain down here one more minute, one more second. She was going mad.

  No, she was already mad, she was sure of it.

  She had begun to hear sounds coming from the monolith. The rustling of a faraway, endless forest. The hissing of the wind between sheets of ice. Noises that had turned into voices. Mamma telling her that she would soon become like her: crazycrazycrazy, because she had wanted all that moneymoneymoney instead of being a shit shoveller, as was written in her stars. And when Simon Keller returned, Mamma had cackled, he would not find any Marlene in the basement. No Marlene the Brave or Marlene the Whore, just a tiny, squeaking little mouse, and then . . .

  In an attempt to dismiss all this clamour, Marlene had begun telling herself stories. Out loud, and increasingly louder. Clinging to something that would help her not become like Mamma: crazycrazycrazy. Klaus did not deserve a mother like hers.

  The voices ceased for a while. Then, as she was drifting to sleep, it was Onkel Fritz’s turn.

  A cavernous voice, like an ogre’s, mumbling obscenities. Because in actual fact, Onkel Fritz had not struck her to punish her for theft. One thief does not hit another, not even if she has wings and thinks she’s a Thieving Magpie. No, Onkel Fritz wanted to tear her clothes off, roll her in the muck and hurt her, hurt her so much.

  Because that was what she deserved. She was just a shit shoveller, shit shoveller, shit shoveller. And a whore, of course. Her mother had said it, but Onkel Fritz had realised it much earlier.

  Hoping Simon Keller would hurry up and kill her, Marlene started to cry. That was when she felt something leap in her belly. Maybe it was her imagination. But no, she had felt it. A small drop of warmth in the midst of the cold she was feeling. Klaus.

  The ghosts vanished. The monolith was once again what it was: a heap of old books and nothing else. But not Lissy. Lissy had been watching her constantly through the window, but she was just a sow and would never be able to get past the metal bars into the cellar. She could carry on biting them with those fangs of hers that she had instead of teeth, and perhaps even damage the iron, but the truth was that Lissy was always hungry and a disgusting lump of fat like her would not be able to get through that window in a million years.

  This thought gave Marlene strength.

  And so, without Mamma’s racket, Onkel Fritz’s obscenities and Lissy’s eyes, Marlene the Brave started to think again. And as she thought, she smiled. And as she smiled, she started searching.

  Because Onkel Fritz was right. Marlene the Brave was a shit shoveller. A real shit shoveller. How much of it had she shovelled in her life? Tons. Chicken shit, goat and cow dung. And pig shit. Enough to fill a lorry. Except that the shit was not done with the moment she had left the mountains. She had had to shovel shit after that, too. Even though it did not always stink.

  Shit was the smiles that said “Here comes the whore” whenever Wegener introduced her to his associates at some social occasion. Shit was the tears whenever she heard Wegener give orders over the telephone. Shit was the jewellery, the nail polish, the clothes. Shit was Old Mother Frost. The world was one huge open-air pigsty.

  And Marlene knew how to deal with shit.

  Seek and ye shall find, she kept muttering. Seek and ye shall find.

  110

  Cautiously, the Trusted Man got to his feet, pointing the Mauser, still with the Spider in the centre of the scope. He stretched his legs and shook off the snow. He arched his back. His vertebrae cracked.

  He began his descent. The wind made his eyes water, but he did not close them even for a second. When he was thirty metres or so from the maso, his face paralysed from the cold, he began to feel the waves of heat coming from the Spider’s spiral bonfire. He kept going.

  He knew the Spider was not dead. He had not shot to kill. If that had been his intention, he would not have taken so many precautions. He had shot to wound.

  The Spider and the Vixen. He wanted to know what connected them.

  The Spider’s knee was in a bad way. There was a pool of blood all around it. The black-clad old man was moaning, his face turned towards the Stube. The Trusted Man pressed the barrel of his rifle to the back of his neck.

  “Where is she?”

  The Spider was about to turn, but the Trusted Man pressed harder, preventing him from doing so.

  “The girl. Marlene.”

  “There’s no Marlene here.”

  “The girl with the sapphires. Where is she?”

  The Spider said nothing.

  “Hand her over,” the Trusted Man said, “and I’ll spare your life.”

  “There’s no Marlene here. There’s just Lissy.”

  The Trusted Man frowned. Who was Lissy? What had he missed? “Where?”

  “Down there. With my father. And my father’s father.”

  The Trusted Man bit his lip. It was so cold that he felt no pain.

  The old man was delirious. Or pretending to be.

  “I’m only interested in Marlene. Then I’ll let you
live.”

  “With this leg?”

  “Where is she?”

  Lying there on the ground, the old man was losing a lot of blood.

  “Don’t faint.”

  “In the cellar, beneath the Stube, there’s a door. It’s locked.”

  This made no sense.

  “Have you locked her in?”

  “Yes.”

  The Trusted Man searched the old man’s pale face. “Did you kill Wegener?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  The old man closed his eyes tight. “Sweet Lissy, little Lissy.”

  The Trusted Man moved the barrel of the rifle from the back of the old man’s neck to the mangled knee and pressed down on the wound.

  A terrible grimace on his congested face, the old man cried louder, “Sweet Lissy! Little Lissy! Sweet—”

  The Trusted Man fired again. The old man screamed. The chanting ceased.

  “It makes no sense. It makes no sense.”

  The old man turned slowly towards him. Now that the Trusted Man was able to look him in the face, he realised that the old man’s pupils were narrow and his eyes watery. He was under the influence of some drug or other.

  “The world teems with mysteries.”

  That statement did not make much sense either.

  “The key,” the Trusted Man said, on edge now. “You said the door is locked. Give me the key, and I’ll make the pain stop.”

  The old man gave it to him. As soon as the Trusted Man’s hand closed over it, the old man grabbed his wrist and pulled the Trusted Man towards him. He did it so quickly that the Trusted Man had no time to react. One moment he was pointing the rifle at the old man, the next he was on the ground, lying on top of him. Eye to eye. The Spider was strong.