‘They’re going to kill me …’
He was scared. He couldn’t help it: his teeth were chattering! His whole body was afraid, his whole body was giving way, and he looked as if he might faint at any moment.
‘You’ll have to take him through the neighbours’ house,’ a voice said. ‘At the bottom of their garden, there’s a door that leads to the street behind.’
It was Hans speaking. They all looked at each other, still in the semi-darkness. They were waiting for the inspector to make up his mind. He finally declared:
‘It’s worth a try …’
Aunt Maria threw herself into her son’s arms, but there was no reaction from his big body.
‘Be brave!’ she said.
Liesbeth did not come down. Anna, like her mother, said:
‘Be brave, Joseph!’
He let himself be taken out, moving as he had when he was a sleepwalker. They had forgotten all about Cornelius. The old man, huddled deep in his armchair, did not get up, just watched the strange procession as it brushed past him.
Anyone could have climbed over the separation wall, and yet so clumsy was Joseph that they had to give him a push and hold him up. There were people at the windows, pointing him out to each other. But the neighbours didn’t raise the alarm, preferring to keep out of it.
Aunt Maria quickly came back into the kitchen, wiping her eyes.
‘You should go to bed, Father! Come …’
Helping Cornelius to his feet, she said softly:
‘It’s better this way. They’ll release him tomorrow. At least he’s safe …’
He went up by himself. Liesbeth, seeing him come in, left the room. There were still as many cries, still as much stir outside, but it all seemed less serious now that Joseph had gone.
Besides, the carpenter now came out of his house, looking self-important, and cautiously approached the groups.
‘They’ve taken him away,’ he announced.
‘Who?’
‘The murderer! He even came through my house! The inspector took him out the back way.’
‘Who went out the back way?’ cried a bad-tempered voice.
‘The murderer!’
‘Has he run away?’
Two different rumours were circulating: the first was that Joseph Krull had run away (it was even said that he had broken his leg jumping through a window), but then the better-informed asserted that he had been taken to prison.
Maria Krull was as weary as if she had done a fortnight’s wash all by herself. And yet she was still standing! It was as if she was afraid to sit down.
She went into the lounge, started up the stairs, opened the door to her room and heard a voice saying to her:
‘Hans will have to go …’
Old Cornelius could not be seen because the room, the least exposed in the house, was now in complete darkness. That was perhaps why these words had a particular resonance, taking on the weight of an utterance by a biblical prophet.
‘Try to sleep, Father!’
Ever since they had had children, she had always called him that.
‘He’ll have to go!’ he repeated.
‘Yes … Tomorrow …’
She closed the door again, went into the next room, her son’s room, and realized that the agitation had not yet receded.
She glided across the polished wooden floor and went downstairs. She hesitated to switch the lights on, for fear that the slightest glimmer would excite those outside even more.
‘Are you here, Anna?’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘What about Liesbeth?’
‘I don’t know where she is. In the lounge, perhaps?’
Maria Krull went there, to avoid leaving her daughter with Hans. But he wasn’t in the lounge. From time to time, they saw him pass, looking helpless, searching for his place, feeling that the walls themselves were rejecting him.
‘Come, Liesbeth. You’re going to drink something before going to bed.’
The inspector was back outside the house. He was moving about a lot, gesticulating, shouting, charging into the groups.
‘I tell you I’ve just had him taken to prison! Ask the carpenter next door. So there’s nothing more for any of you to do here.’
As for the girl in the red hat, her mother had long since fetched her and taken her home. The girl had thrown a tantrum in her bed because she hadn’t been allowed to see everything through to the end.
‘If you don’t disperse, I’ll call the fire brigade, and they’ll turn their hoses on you.’
There was still some anger, but also a lot of laughter. The driver of the first tram in the line wisely decided to ring his bell insistently and move forwards in slow motion, pushing part of the crowd back towards the central reservation.
‘He’s been arrested!’ the policemen yelled, cupping their hands. ‘Go home, or the firemen will turn their hoses on you!’
Maria Krull made up her mind to turn the light on in the kitchen, poked the stove mechanically and shook the coffee pot, in which there was still some lukewarm coffee left.
‘Fetch the rum, Anna.’
In normal circumstances, they had to be ill to be allowed alcohol. But Aunt Maria herself poured some into her daughter’s coffee, and an unaccustomed smell of hot rum hovered in the kitchen.
Nobody was paying any attention to Hans. He stood there with his back to the door frame. They didn’t offer him coffee.
‘It seems to be quietening down,’ Anna said.
‘It’s almost midnight!’
It was rare, in this house, to see the pale clock face mark such an hour! But they were so exhausted, their nerves so shaken, that nobody made a move.
They weren’t thinking. They were listening to the noises from outside, which they could no longer distinguish one from another. The bells of the trams were already like a promise of a return to life.
Putting on a bold front, Hans lit a cigarette and remained to the end. The three women were finally sitting, their elbows on the table.
‘It isn’t a real arrest,’ Aunt Maria said, as if to answer certain unspoken questions.
Because Joseph was in prison!
‘As long as he doesn’t panic,’ Anna said.
They all retained a painful image of Joseph. They would have liked to buck him up, put him back on his feet.
Anna, going from one thought to another, said:
‘I kept wondering when the Schoofs would finally decide to leave … Marguerite didn’t understand a thing …’
For hours now Liesbeth had wanted to cry, but she was so tense that she couldn’t.
Outside, the moon was up, and the various groups exchanging noisy comments as they made their way home were reminiscent of those evenings when a fireworks display brings an unexpectedly large number to the same spot.
The gendarmerie remained outside the house, along with the police. Some groups lingered, but they were mostly young men having fun, making loud jokes.
The mood in the kitchen was heavy. The light itself was heavier than on other evenings. When someone knocked at the door of the shop, everybody gave a start. Maria Krull got to her feet.
‘Who is it?’
‘The inspector. You can open the door now.’
Once the door was finally open and the moonlight streamed in, a strange spectacle presented itself: the shop in chaos, shards of glass strewn over the floor.
‘I’ve come to tell you it’s over. As you can see, it was the only way to calm them down. All the same, I’m leaving some men on guard all night.’
He would have liked to see what was going on inside the house. The light in the kitchen intrigued him. He tried to see over Maria Krull’s shoulder, but she simply said as she closed the door:
‘Thank you.’
She pulled the bolts and came back to the kitchen.
‘We should sleep,’ she said.
Nobody was sleepy, but they had to pretend to sleep! They had to get up, climb the stairs, say goodnight just like any other da
y, because in spite of everything life continued.
Hans still didn’t count. They avoided acknowledging that he was there, especially Liesbeth, who hadn’t once looked his way.
‘Goodnight, Anna!’
‘Goodnight, Mother.’
‘Goodnight, Liesbeth!’
They reached the first floor. Maria Krull opened the door to her bedroom and noiselessly switched on the light.
‘Where’s your father?’
The others stopped and saw the empty bed, the still undisturbed sheets.
‘Anna! Liesbeth! Your father!’
Aunt Maria ran down the stairs and rushed first to the lounge. Liesbeth called:
‘Father! Father!’
It seemed to all of them as if a draught had blown past them, as if there was a new emptiness in the house. They switched the lights on as they advanced, including those in the shop, and the light inevitably brought out the chaos and damage.
‘It isn’t possible!’
As Aunt Maria, in desperation, approached the workshop, she saw Hans opening the door. He had gone there instinctively! He left it to his aunt to switch on the light.
There was a muffled sound, the sound of Maria Krull falling to her knees, then a piercing cry from Liesbeth.
‘What’s going on?’ Anna asked, wild-eyed.
The workshop was the only room that hadn’t been touched by the chaos. The naked bulb crudely illumined the whitewashed walls, the half-finished baskets, the chairs where Cornelius and his assistant always sat.
Right beside Cornelius’ chair, a shadowy figure was swinging, casting an even longer shadow on the wall.
‘Father! Father!’
They hadn’t seen him come downstairs. They didn’t know when he had left his room. But then it had always been his custom to move noiselessly about the house.
And to say nothing.
He had hanged himself, nobody knew exactly why. But did they know why, after his wanderings, he had settled on the edge of this town, why, for years, he had lived silently in this workshop with his hunchbacked assistant?
What did they know about him?
He had come here alone. He had remained alone amid his family, with his patriarch’s beard and his mysterious or serene face. And he had left alone. He had hanged himself in his corner, near his chair with the sawn-off legs and a white wicker basket that would never be finished.
He had said nothing, and it was somewhat alarming, now, to wonder what he knew.
It was tempting to think that he had come not simply from Emden, an artisan wandering through Germany and France, but from much further away in space and time, from a fixed world depicted in Bible images, in church sculptures, in stained-glass windows.
‘No!’ Aunt Maria simply said as Hans stepped forward to take him down.
Liesbeth threw herself on the floor in a fit of hysterics, her cries reminiscent of those heard earlier in the street.
‘Shhh, be quiet!’ Anna said to her mechanically, her nerves equally on edge.
Hans retreated. In this room with its overly white walls, its one light bulb, they were all unwittingly making the shadows dance.
Aunt Maria had climbed on to the low chair.
‘Pass me a knife, Anna,’ she said, articulating the words clearly.
Liesbeth’s sobs must have been tearing her chest apart.
‘Where is it, Mother?’
‘There must be one on the workbench.’
Words that needed to be said, but which sounded hollow!
‘Careful. Hold him.’
Hans was glued to the wall as if afraid, both hands flat on the whitewashed bricks.
‘Don’t drop him.’
God alone knew how they managed it. The body descended slowly, and the head tilted and came to rest on the unfinished basket, which formed a pillow.
Maria Krull hadn’t yet cried. The stiff lines of her bodice, the folds of her black dress made her look like a statue.
Especially when she walked over to Hans and said to him:
‘You have to leave.’
‘But—’
‘You have to leave, Hans. Now!’
He caught fright. He looked at the three of them. Perhaps he felt that it was his turn to be the Foreigner, the cause of all the ills in the world?
‘Monsieur Schoof’s money …’ he began, moving his hand to his pocket.
‘Just go!’
‘Liesbeth!’
She didn’t respond to him, didn’t turn her head.
He ran to the shop, pulled back the bolts, opened the door and almost bumped into two policemen on guard duty and some gendarmes telling each other stories.
‘What is it?’ they asked him.
‘Nothing! I’m going out …’
As long as he was within their field of vision, he had to force himself to walk at a normal pace.
Were people a little ashamed in the morning? Perhaps. But they were curious, too. They watched from a distance, the neighbours pretending to be drawn outside by some occupation or other.
At 8.30, they saw Madame Krull already coming back from town, where she had gone very early. She was wearing her black dress and her hat with the strings. The policemen moved aside for her.
She simply went into the house and came back out, without having taken off her hat, but bringing a chair and a hammer.
And on the shutter, which echoed now as it had echoed the day before to the impact of the bricks, she nailed a white sign with a black border, which she had gone to buy from a printer:
Closed due to bereavement
13.
It was years later, in Stresa, in the middle of August, when the heat was at its height. Waiting for the daily storm to break, which would only happen at the end of the day, Lake Maggiore was like a cauldron, the water so thick-looking it was as if the boats were caught in it, unable to get free.
On the promenade, the asphalt was melting. The hundreds of windows on the white façades of the big hotels were dark holes, like the cells of honeycombs.
Near the landing stage, where two travel agencies competed by means of gaudy posters and loudspeakers, coaches stopped, blue ones, yellow ones, black ones, filled to capacity, covered in dust, coming from Switzerland, Belgium or France, disgorging identical crowds in light-coloured suits and white dresses, dazed and exhausted from too many stops, too many arrivals and departures, too many hastily eaten meals, dragging with them children, coats, cameras and suitcases and only daring to look up at the Italian sky through dark glasses.
‘Joseph! Hold the boy!’
Three coaches had arrived simultaneously, but the passengers were not all scheduled to have lunch at the same hotel, and everyone was lost. There were loudspeaker announcements:
‘Passengers on the blue coach! Passengers on the blue coach! Lunch will be at the Hôtel des Grottes. Departure at exactly 1.45.’
‘Passengers from Geneva! Passengers from Geneva! Lunch at the Hôtel du Lac. Departure at …’
People searched for and lost each other, some asking information of a postcard seller.
Joseph was wearing a grey suit, a Panama hat and an open-necked shirt and holding a thin, fair-haired, spindly-legged seven-year-old boy by the hand.
‘Look, Daddy—’
‘Joseph! Tell Anna off! She doesn’t want to walk.’
The girl was three years old, as round and pink as her mother.
‘Anna, if you refuse to walk …’
People who had been here for weeks passed by, looking ironically at those pouring off the coaches. A couple stopped. A man called:
‘Joseph!’
It was so sunny and the air so sparkling that it was hard to see, and even the sounds became blurred.
‘Did somebody just call you?’ Marguerite asked.
‘I don’t know.’
They looked around them and spotted a middle-aged woman with a painted face. Her nails were painted, too, even her toenails, which protruded from curious-looking sandals.
&nb
sp; She wasn’t the one who had called. She was as surprised as they were. Her companion had left her suddenly and run forwards.
It was Hans, in white trousers, also barefoot in sandals, his skin tanned.
‘Joseph! What a nice surprise!’
The children, the boy especially, were looking at him in terror.
‘Let me introduce Lady Bramson, a good friend of mine … My cousin Joseph and his wife … Well, Joseph?’
‘Well, nothing!’ he replied, coldly.
‘Did everything work out? Just imagine, I had to go abroad right away. I did look in the newspapers, but there was nothing …’
Marguerite, who had recognized Hans, was pulling her husband’s arm, the little boy the other arm.
‘Still up there?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Aunt Maria?’
‘She’s there, too.’
‘What about the shop?’
Joseph nodded involuntarily, all the while looking for a way to escape.
‘What about Anna?’
‘She’s with her.’
‘And Liesbeth?’
‘She’s married … If you don’t mind, our coach—’
‘Are you touring Italy?’
Joseph had grown a little ginger moustache that made his face look different.
Lady Bramson was getting impatient. She had a fox terrier on a lead, and it was pulling away.
‘Are you a doctor?’
‘Yes.’
‘In the house that …’
Fortunately the guide from the French coach spotted Joseph and cried through his loudspeaker:
‘Passengers from the blue coach are asked to sit down to lunch. We leave again in twenty minutes.’
Hans was still trying to talk. ‘I’m here with a friend who …’
A handshake.
‘Yes … Goodbye …’
‘Goodbye. Did …’
Already the Krulls were swallowed up by the crowd on the terrace, where lunch was being served at breakneck speed.
‘Who was that?’ Hans’ companion asked.
‘A strange character. It’s quite a story.’
He grabbed the fox terrier’s lead and took a few steps in silence. His companion took out a gold lighter and lit a cigarette.
‘It was bound to end like that!’
‘What was bound to end like that?’ she asked, not attaching any great importance to the subject.
The Krull House Page 18
