Intrigo

by Håkan Nesser

  Even if my thoughts this first month revolved a great deal around Ewa, and what it could mean that she had actually been sitting at that Beethoven recording here in A. six months ago (I had checked that it really did take place in the Concertgebouw), it was still the work with Rein’s text that more and more came to monopolize my concentration.

  It was heavy and sluggish, the first pages had been no exception, but despite this there was something that soon started exerting a certain control over me. Something hidden, almost: as if the manuscript contained a message or a subtext that he had made every effort in the world to try to conceal. I didn’t really know what, but sensed early on that there must be something. The text was dense and tangled, sometimes downright incomprehensible, but the feeling that under it all was something that was simple, pure and clear became increasingly undeniable the further into the whole thing I got.

  It was not particularly extensive either, the manuscript. Just a little over 160 pages, and if I managed to maintain a pace of fifteen pages a week, I ought to have made my way through it sometime around the end of March or beginning of April. A first draft, that is. Then naturally a period of refining and corrections would commence, but there could hardly be any doubt that I would be done in June as agreed.

  But the subtext captured me. Enchanted me and baffled me. None of Rein’s previous works had contained this degree of complication, and at the same time, of course, there were also the peculiar circumstances and restrictions concerning the publication itself. There must be some reason that he absolutely wanted to bring out the book in translation instead of his native language; both Kerr and Amundsen had scoured the annals, but were unable to find anything similar – certain texts smuggled out from various dictatorships, naturally, Solzhenitsyn and others, but nothing in this style. I know that I tried to abstain as much as possible from thinking and starting to speculate about the matter, but the more time passed, and the deeper into the book I penetrated, the more convinced I became that it was there, in the text itself, that these circumstances would be explained. The answer to the question of why Germund Rein’s book must come out in translation was in the book itself and nowhere else.

  Despite this growing insight, I still resisted reading ahead. Steadfast and unswervingly faithful to my method, I moved ahead line by line, paragraph by paragraph, page by page. The temptation was there, but I overcame it without particularly great exertions.

  It is hard to describe Rein’s text. The primary stylistic device was without a doubt the interior monologue, which seemed to wander between the protagonist R and the author himself, sometimes also to the woman M. The only other character in the book, at least in the beginning, was a certain Mr G, and in dense, more or less dream-like sequences, Rein depicted some kind of relationship between these three figures. As I already mentioned I could early on discern a triangle drama between the two men and the woman; certain incidents – or situations in any case – recurred now and then, reproduced in widely diverging registers and terms. That the relationship between R and G was not the best, as well as that R seemed to be very close to the first-person narrator who was sometimes glimpsed, I could hardly avoid noticing.

  Throughout January, this was also all I really managed to be clear about. It is possible, of course, that I would have realized the true relationship much sooner if I hadn’t had Ewa to think about and devote my energy to besides, but that is merely speculation. Perhaps both of my projects were needed as relief from each other; when I think back I am often struck by how wholeheartedly I must have devoted myself to either the one thing or the other during this time. Either I found myself deep inside Germund Rein’s text, or else I was searching everywhere for my missing wife. I never mixed. I kept my missions separate, like oil and water, which I think was completely the correct method.

  By the very last days of January I was extremely tired of my one-sided and hardly productive concert monitoring, and I decided to seek new paths. Under the heading ‘Private Detectives’ in the phone book I found no less than sixteen different names and bureaus, and after my work at the library one evening I had arranged a meeting with a certain Edgar L. Maertens at his office on Prohaskaplein.

  ‘Will you describe your problem, sir?’ he began after the introductory preludes were over with and we had sat down, each with a cigarette and a glass of beer. He was older than I had thought, almost sixty, with close-cropped grey hair and gentle blue eyes that inspired a certain confidence.

  ‘Have you been in the business very long?’ I asked.

  He smiled weakly.

  ‘Thirty years.’

  ‘That long?’

  ‘It’s a world record. You can safely confide in me. Well?’

  I took the photographs from my inside pocket and spread them out in front of him on the table. He observed them hastily.

  ‘A woman.’

  It was not a question, just a tired statement. He took a puff on the cigarette and looked at me. I chose to remain silent.

  ‘First, I have to ask if you’re sure that you really want to go through with this.’

  The tone of resignation in his voice was bitter and unambiguous. I nodded.

  ‘Surveillance or missing?’

  ‘Missing,’ I said.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I prefer disappearances.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘When did she disappear?’

  ‘Three years ago. A little more.’

  He made notes.

  ‘Name?’

  I provided it and added that it was unlikely she still made use of it.

  ‘You’ve checked that?’

  ‘Yes. There is no one by that name in A.’

  ‘And you have reason to believe that she is here?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Will you please tell your story in brief terms.’

  I did so. Naturally omitted certain decisive parts, but made an effort to include everything that might otherwise be essential. When I was done, he did not reply immediately. He leant forwards across the table instead and studied the pictures of Ewa a bit more carefully.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll take on the case.’

  It had not occurred to me that he might decline, but I realized now that it was hardly a dream job that I was asking him to perform.

  ‘Of course I can’t promise any results,’ he explained. ‘I suggest that we give it a month, and if we haven’t tracked her down by then, I’m afraid we’ll have to write off the matter. I assume you want discretion.’

  ‘Full discretion,’ I said.

  He nodded.

  ‘Concerning the fee,’ he started to wind up, ‘I take only half if I fail.’

  He wrote two sums on the pad in front of him and turned it around so that I could read. I understood that I would not feel inclined to continue using his services after our agreed month.

  ‘What do you think about the chances?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘If she really is here in the city we’ll probably catch sight of her. I have a small staff.’

  ‘Baker Street Irregulars?’

  ‘More or less. Does she have any reason to lie low? Other than what follows from your story, that is.’

  I thought.

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘You hesitate.’

  ‘No reason I know of, in any event.’

  ‘And you haven’t seen her in three years?’

  ‘Almost three and a half.’

  He put out his cigarette and stood up.

  ‘Are you really sure you want to get hold of her?’

  His persistence on this point was starting to irritate me a bit.

  ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘Because most people manage to get over a woman in three years. But not you, I gather?’

  I stood up too.

  ‘No, not me.’

  He shrugged again.

  ‘You can give me a couple hundred up front. I assume that you intend to stop by
now and then to hear how things are going?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I suggest Mondays and Thursdays. If anything acute happens we can be in touch, naturally.’

  We shook hands and I left him. Back on the street the rain had picked up again, and I quickly decided to slip into the first available bar.

  It was called Nemesis, it turned out, and while I sat there and sucked up my dark beer, I didn’t really know if I should interpret the name as a good or a bad omen. In any case, I thought I could sense a feeling of movement after the hopeless tramping in the same spot of the past few weeks. For the time being I decided to put my hope in this vague impression.

  Because the rain kept up, I also remained sitting at Nemesis for several hours before I was able to make my way home more or less dry-shod. I do not have the faintest idea what time it may have been when I crawled into bed, but when I woke up by and by, it was February and there was a red-haired woman lying by my side.

  I never found out what her name was, and she didn’t seem particularly eager to introduce herself. Without making much fuss she showered and left. All she left behind her were a few strands of hair on the pillow and a faint scent of Chanel No. 5.

  I stayed in bed until twilight had descended properly. Then I got up and gradually took off towards the library, but out on Ruysdalekade the wind was so strong that I turned around completely. Returned home and made cinnamon coffee instead. Sat down with Beatrice in the armchair. Turned up the heat to max and listened to Bach’s Brandenburg concertos in the cassette player the photographer had left behind.

  Listened to Bach and thought about Ewa.

  It was 15 August that we set off. Exactly as planned, we gave ourselves a few days to get through Germany and I felt that I truly loved her. We had been married for almost eight years at this point, but never before had I experienced this love this strongly. Something had matured between us, and I knew that things could actually not be better between two people than they were for us during this trip. It is hard to specify what the feeling actually stemmed from; I seemed to discover features in my wife that I had never seen before, but whether in reality the change was in her or inside myself I could not figure out. Not then and not later.

  Because of this change in my attitude, her recurring talk that she had a lover and that we had to separate was rather a great strain for me. I also tried several times, in a number of different ways, to talk her out of her illusion, and at last I asked who it was.

  ‘Mauritz,’ she answered simply.

  It was at a rest area along the Autobahn. We were eating egg sandwiches and drinking coffee, the weather was beautiful. Black and white cows were grazing on a clover meadow that sloped down towards a waterway, I recall. An unusually beautiful rest area overall.

  ‘Mauritz Winckler?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re out of your mind,’ I said. ‘All women fall in love with their therapists. You have to forget that nonsense.’

  She looked at me seriously.

  ‘I know that I’m hurting you,’ she repeated. ‘But my honesty is the only thing I have. He’s going to meet me down in the mountains. We’ve agreed on that.’

  Then I struck her and then we didn’t talk any more about it for several days.

  It was during this first week in February that I started to catch sight of the hidden message in Rein’s text. Or one aspect of it, at least. Late one evening, a few minutes before closing time, I was still sitting at my usual table and studying what I had got down during the day. The last sentences read:

  R’s entire obsession with the total moment, this instance where all crooked shortcomings and failed ascents are tumbled over, will perhaps nonetheless never see the light of day, an insight that has long been found in M. To live side by side, or parallel or for his neighbour; the doubt has never existed in the woman, nothing has been questioned; there on the shore she is simply there on the shore, simply there, solely. A present heavy thing in the stone-dead security of the sea, the shadows and the screeching gulls. Oh, sterile mother vanity! Cold fish, cold fishes; seaweed, rotting seaweed, a wind that does not struggle, does not speak, does not invite, has nothing to report after a long, long journey. Such is M.

  The word in. I stared at it. Reread the short section of text a few times and could not for the life of me see any sensible reason to italicize this insignificant preposition, and then I remembered a couple of other italicized words or phrases that had seemed unwarranted to me.

  I browsed back. There were only two places. On page four the word like. On page sixteen the words the poet.

  like the poet in

  Just at that moment, Frau Moewenroedhe came into the reference department and coughed discreetly. I packed up my papers and left the library. Once home on Ferdinand Bol I took them out again and browsed ahead in the text. After perhaps ten minutes I had skimmed through it all. In the whole manuscript only two more phrases were italicized:

  the earth’s on page 63

  ashes on page 158

  like the poet in the earth’s ashes

  It took a few seconds before I understood the connection, but it was stark once I saw it. ‘The Earth’s Ashes’ was the name of one of the stories in the collection The Dream Cupola. A rather short and tragicomic story about an author who, at the height of his literary career, is struck by compulsive thoughts and thinks that his wife wants to murder him. I pushed the papers away from me. Then two rather contradictory feelings appeared.

  The first was anger. Or irritation bordering on anger in any case, about something so incredibly silly. Why bake something like that into this frightfully heavy, in places almost unreadable text? Something so cheap! My barely suppressed antipathy towards Rein flared up, and I know that for a few seconds I toyed with the thought of sending the manuscript back to Kerr and Amundsen and asking them to burn it. Or find another, less fastidious translator.

  The other emotion is harder to describe. Something related to fear, perhaps, and I soon realized that my agitation and my anger probably mostly arose as a defence against this rather threatening sensation. One of these automatic, but arbitrary, Band-Aids for the soul.

  Like the poet in ‘The Earth’s Ashes’?

  It must be ten years since he wrote it. Five since I translated it. What the hell was the meaning? I tried to recall exactly how the story ended, but could not get it clear in my head.

  I went over to the window. Turned off the light and stood and observed the reality outside. For the moment it consisted of a lead-grey sky, a dark building exterior with a row of illuminated shop windows on the ground floor – Muskens Slaapcentruum, Hava Nagila Shawarma Grillroom, Albert Hijn. Some people on bicycles. Parked cars. The sound of a tram rattling past. Cars that came and went and street lights that were swaying in the wind.

  Objects that stood there and objects that dissolved. I remember what I thought, and I remember that there were no words for these thoughts, then or now.

  I don’t believe that my contempt for language was ever stronger than right then, as I stood in the window that evening with Rein’s italicized words grinding in the back of my head. After a while I went back to the armchair, put Beatrice on my lap and sat with her in the darkness a rather long time.

  After that I went out. Got intentionally drunk at some of the cafes in the immediate vicinity; my worry sat the whole time like an irritating flicker under my skin, an unreachable itch, and it was not until later, much later during the night, when I staggered up and vomited in the toilet, that it let go to some degree.

  The next day the sun was shining. Instead of going to the library I continued on to Vondel Park, where I then wandered around as long as the light held. Made a number of decisions concerning the immediate future, and in the evening I called Kerr.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he asked enthusiastically, but not without a trace of worry in his voice.

  ‘Excellent,’ I explained. ‘I just need some information.’

  ‘Yes?’

&nbs
p; ‘What is the name of Rein’s wife?’

  ‘Mariam. Mariam Kadhar. Why?’

  I did not reply.

  ‘Can you send an account of his death?’

  ‘Whose? Rein’s?’

  ‘Naturally. I need a detailed summary, don’t want to root in this myself. It might attract attention.’

  ‘I understand.’

  I could hear that this was just what he hadn’t done.

  ‘If you could go through the newspapers rather carefully?’

  ‘Does this have anything to do with the manuscript?’

  ‘It’s not impossible.’

  ‘I’ll be damned.’

  ‘As soon as you can, then?’

  ‘Of course.’

  We ended the call. I left the phone booth, and I understood of course that against my will I had fired up Kerr’s and Amundsen’s enthusiasm for the Rein project. In my mind’s eye I could see them rubbing their hands together. And why shouldn’t they? A publisher that came out with a posthumous book by the great neo-mystic, a book that cast new light over his death. What more could you really ask for? If you didn’t succeed in selling such a morsel, it would be just as well to change your line of business altogether.

  Personally, I did not feel particularly eager to take on the threshing at the library again, but knew I had to go further into the text. It attracted me and repelled me at the same time, but perhaps it was mostly a question of beating down the reluctant curiosity I had started to feel with respect to the circumstances around Rein’s death. It struck me that I ought to have asked if there was any G in Rein’s vicinity too, while I had Kerr on the line anyway, but I decided to postpone that to some later occasion. When all was said and done my supposed suspicions at this stage were nothing other than loose, unfounded fancies. By and by more light was shed on the case, but at that point – even during the next few days while I continued struggling with the inaccessible formulations in the manuscript – I was probably prepared to dismiss it all as rather fantastical. An instance of over-interpretation in peculiar circumstances, and not much more.