Intrigo

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘Well . . .’ the policewoman hesitates to start with, ‘she asked for paper and pen, and there is nothing in the regulations that prohibits that.’

  ‘You gave her paper and pen?’

  ‘My colleague did.’

  ‘Your colleague gave her paper and pen?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then I was supposed to tell her that she had been given time with the priest.’

  ‘The priest?’

  ‘Yes, she had asked to speak with a priest.’

  ‘You went to her cell?’

  ‘Yes. I peeked in through the hatch and saw that she was lying on the floor.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I unlocked it and went in. She was lying on her stomach. First I asked how she was feeling and when she didn’t answer I turned her over . . . there was a little speck of blood on the floor and then I saw her eye.’

  ‘You understood what had happened?’

  ‘Yes. She had driven the pen into her eye.’

  ‘The whole pen?’

  ‘Yes. Nothing was sticking out.’

  ‘Was she dead?’

  ‘Yes, I called for help but we could immediately determine that she was dead.’

  Brief pause while the camera focuses on a slighter darker spot on the green floor.

  ‘How did you react?’

  No response to start with. The camera slowly turns upwards to a close-up of the policewoman’s face, and you can clearly see that she has a hard time knowing where to focus her gaze. But still no especially strong agitation, as stated. The left corner of her mouth twitches a couple of times.

  ‘It was terrible . . .’ she says at last, more as a concession to convention, I think.

  Then the reporter says that his name is Erich Molder and the picture goes back to the news studio.

  ‘We repeat,’ the woman with the wide-open eyes says, ‘that Mariam Kadhar, wife of the deceased author Germund Rein and recently sentenced to twelve years in prison for his murder, only an hour ago has taken her life in the police jail on Burgislaan, where she was awaiting transfer to the women’s prison in Bossingen. Mariam Kadhar was thirty-nine years old. We will return with more details during our regular news programme.’

  Then the broadcast is over. Doris finally takes a puff on her cigarette, I observe her spotted forearm – how it rises and falls while she does that. Then she turns off the TV. I get up from my place by the window and leave the premises. Out on the street the strong sunshine strikes me like an electric shock. I stand there for a moment and close my eyes while I hold onto a bicycle that is parked against the wall. I feel a peculiar, strong dizziness and the taste of metal on my tongue is acrid and clear.

  After a few seconds I have recovered and start walking in the direction of Ferdinand Bolstraat.

  I read this over. Find that it is a completely correct description. It can be added that it was Monday 17 May, and that it was the warmest day so far that year.

  I refill water from the scratched carafe and a cloud of mist forms on the ouzo glass. Sit alone under the parasol and wait for the siesta to be over; I have slept for an hour on a bench under the bougainvillea north of the church, but now I am sitting here with my envelope.

  Hotel Ormos. There are three others here in the main town, but it is Ormos that has grandeur. Grandeur and a view. Below me, far out on the battered spit of land, is the castle, the old fortress, to which an improbably dusty bus transports tourists all day long.

  Except during the hours of siesta. It is starting to end now; the heat is still paralysing, but the sun is oblique and the shadows are spreading out between the houses. As soon as Mr Valathakos comes out and unlocks the security grille to his souvenir shop, I will make my way over there. It is right across the alley; Valathakos is the only tradesman in town who uses a grille, and there are those who shake their heads at him and call him an ass or an Athenian, even though he is just as native to the island as they are and, unlike many others, lives here year-round.

  When I introduce myself, it turns out that he has nothing against being treated to an ouzo at Ormos. He locks the grille firmly again, and we sit down at the same table where I had spent the last hour.

  I feel some nervousness; there is only a week left of my stay and Mr Valathakos is a trump card. I have known about it for several days, simply waited for the right opportunity, and as I push the photographs over I can feel the blood rising in my temples and beads of sweat on my upper lip. They are cold and do not taste a bit like salt.

  Before he observes the pictures we make a toast. Then he lifts his wide-brimmed straw hat and wipes his forehead with the back of his hairy fist. Puts the hat in place and lights a cigarette.

  He proceeds meticulously. Draws his fingers across his blue-black stubble and studies long and well. Then he nods and asks if I have a map.

  I unfold it. He laughs and makes a gesture towards his shop, and I confirm that I acquired it just there. He straightens it, looks back and forth across it a couple of times, as if to orient himself and check that it really concerns the right island. Then he signals for a pen. I hand one over and he draws a large, clear cross in one of the small bays on the north side.

  ‘Boat!’ he says. ‘No road!’

  I nod. Fumble among some bills in the chest pocket of my shirt, but he makes a discreet, dismissive gesture with his hand.

  ‘No Italiano,’ he explains. ‘Greek.’

  I apologize. We lean back and finish our glasses.

  At Albert Hijn I buy four bottles of whisky and just as many cans of cat food. I can still distinguish a clear element of rationality in my actions during these days. I water the flowers, clean out Beatrice’s litter box and fill it with new sand. Pour food into the bowl – a substantial dose that ought to last a couple of days – before I sit down in the armchair and start drinking with no purpose other than to achieve an agreeable degree of unconsciousness.

  Methodically and without haste I empty one glass after another. Let the alcohol spread and take command, but without getting carried away, without falling down in hollows of dead water and indisposition. Without engagement, actually – a quiet, clinical type of drinking, where with an isolated part of my awareness I continuously keep the process under strict supervision and control. I’ve done it before and I know what it’s about.

  Sometime during the early night hours I start occupying myself with the pencil. With the pencil and the eye. Try, and really succeed, to balance a pencil between the eye and the hand. The well-sharpened tip resting against the slippery surface of the eye – a certain, albeit infinitesimal, pressure is necessary to hold it in place – the back end against a point in the very centre of my lightly cupped palm – supine position; the pencil more or less vertical, anything else is doomed to fail . . . balance in this way and let the impulses be sent out and cancelled, sent out and cancelled. It is a difficult procedure, undeniably; the tip easily slips out of position and gradually I understand that it is evidently not possible even with the most intense pressure to penetrate the eyeball itself. What instead ought to be the result is that the pencil penetrates into the brain above or below the eye, which is doomed to give way, glide around in its socket; leave free passage but hardly let itself be pierced and penetrated . . . it is an irritating conclusion in a way, a slippage from the absolute perfection that had vaguely occurred to me, but which I naturally have to resign myself to accepting anyway.

  I wake up in sharp morning light. Make my way to the bathroom with a bottle and continue drinking. The first gulps come up again, but gradually I manage to keep the burning drops down. Then lie there in the darkness and the faint odour of sour gastric juice and urine and let the hours and the seconds eat their way through the day.

  Another night falls. I have vague recollections of it, likewise of the next day; at some point the whisky is finished, I find a bottle of sweet wine out in the kitchen cupboard. It is a disgusting drink and towards evening I find myself in the
bathroom again and have turned my stomach inside out. A cold, merciless sobriety is approaching, I am swimming in cold sweat and foul-smelling anxiety, try to curl up on the floor in a protective foetal position, but am constantly torn in two by shivers and shaking. Explosions in nerves and flesh. Spasms and sudden states of breathlessness, before I finally sink down into a black and dreamless sleep.

  A series of telephone rings comes and goes. Beatrice comes and goes. Through the half-open bathroom door new daylight seeps in. I fall down into sleep again. More ringing, aches in the right hip and shoulder against the hard floor. Finally I get up.

  Finally I get up. Drink water straight from the tap, rinse my hands and face. More ringing. I hurry slowly out into the living room and answer.

  Haarmann.

  Private detective Haarmann.

  ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I have news.’

  Silence.

  ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’ve found her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who? Your wife, of course. How are you doing, really?’

  ‘Just fine. Excuse me, I just woke up . . . where is she?’

  He pauses, I think he is lighting a cigarette.

  ‘If you come here I’ll give you the information you need. Bring cash along so we can settle the account at once. Does an hour from now suit you?’

  I look at the clock. A few minutes past ten. Morning, that is; it is no longer clear to me on what day of the week.

  ‘In an hour,’ I say.

  ‘Life is failed. But when a door is opened, you have to go on. It is a duty and nothing else.’

  That was what she said and I knew of course it was something she had read or heard. It was often that way with Ewa. She picked up phrases and sentences from every possible source: movies, newspapers, debate programmes on TV; could then conserve them for weeks and months, to reproduce them much later as her own in situations and contexts that in some way seemed to have relevance for what was said.

  Like this summer morning.

  Failed?

  In retrospect I know that much of what she said during this particular period came from Mauritz Winckler. Perhaps I understood it even then, it was just that I didn’t care all that much about it. I did not react; she was my wounded bird, I was her husband and benefactor, that was how we related to each other . . . I was the solid ground, Ewa the lost hind in the marsh. Her opinions came and went, moods and affect shifted from one day to the next, sometimes from hour to hour. But I always listened to her and I never wavered; stood there firm and unshakeable so that she could crawl up every time she risked sinking too deeply.

  The rock. The fixed point.

  The adagio was over now.

  I thought back on these things while I wandered through A. that warm day in May. The address was far away in Greijpstraa; I could have taken the tram, of course, but something prevented me. Presumably only the time factor; I needed time, needed a long walk before I was ready to stand face to face again. Perhaps also some time at a cafe along the way. It was a warm day, as stated. Yet another one.

  Haarmann had wondered if I wanted to find out the details or if I was content with name and address.

  ‘Name?’ I had asked, and he explained that her name was Edita Sobranska nowadays.

  ‘Edita Sobranska?’

  ‘Yes, apparently.’

  I said that I could easily manage the rest myself and that I was not interested in how he proceeded to track her down. He nodded and perhaps there was a sign of doubt in his eyes, but my expression did not change. He handed over a card with name, address and telephone number. I put it in my wallet and paid what he asked. Eight hundred gulden without a receipt.

  ‘Do you mean your life, or whose life is this about?’ I remember that I replied that time.

  ‘Ours,’ she answered immediately and surprisingly. ‘Our life together.’

  It was out of the ordinary that she managed to continue her argument after I had made an objection.

  ‘Our life?’

  ‘Yes, ours. We no longer give energy to each other. We’re not growing . . . we’re eating each other up and falling inward the whole time. Falling inward. Shrinking and shrinking, don’t you feel it? You must feel it, nothing is clearer than that right now. If we continue, one fine day we are going to be missing.’

  ‘Those are just words, Ewa,’ I said. ‘Words without meaning, you must realize that. They mean nothing.’

  ‘They mean everything,’ she said.

  Everything.

  Who is it who decides which words have meaning and which ones don’t?

  For a long stretch I walk along Prinzengracht. In the viscous, brown water ducks and Cherokee geese are drifting around in timeless indolence. Between Keyserstraat and Valdemarlaan the horse chestnuts were in bloom; the massive white-green branches seemed to strive upwards and downwards at the same time. Towards the sun and towards the water; I recall that I thought about this awhile, about this duality and about the fact that I could not explain whether it concerned a both/and or an either/or. Afterwards I see, of course, that the whole thing is completely fruitless pondering, but I remember the image; after three years I can still see the trees along Prinzengracht and I can see myself wandering under them that particular day in the middle of May. Wandering and wondering about these massive trees’ need for satisfaction.

  Warmth and water. Warmth or water.

  At Kreuger Plein I stopped. Hesitated for a few seconds between the cafes, before I sat down at Oldener Maas. Sat there for an hour at one of the tables out on the pavement, but I drank nothing other than coffee and a glass of juice with ice cubes.

  Felt strong irresolution while I sat there, perhaps it was related to the chestnuts. Now and then I took the card out of my wallet and looked at it.

  Edita Sobranska. Bergenerstraat 174.

  Tried to understand where she got the name from: it sounded Polish, without a doubt, but I didn’t know of a single Slavic connection in Ewa’s life. So why had she come up with it?

  Perhaps it isn’t her after all, I thought. Perhaps it’s a different woman altogether, and Haarmann was mistaken. Wasn’t that the most probable solution, when all is said and done?

  If it were so, if the woman on Bergenerstraat were to turn out to be someone other than my missing wife, then . . . well, then the whole case would have to fall. Then that would have to be enough; I am quite certain that I took that decision with me when I left Oldener Maas. That – whatever happened – it would be over now; this was the last day, it had all been going on far too long already . . . I ought to have realized that sooner, of course, but better late than never.

  Fifteen minutes later I had arrived at Bergenerstraat. It was a long and rather narrow street that went from Bergener Plein and ran in a north-easterly direction over towards the V Park and the athletic fields. Ordinary four- and five-storey buildings of dark brick on both sides. Black-lacquered entryways and close-set windows. A shop or two. Cafes at every third intersection, in round numbers.

  I stopped outside number 174. Looked around in both directions before I went up and read the name plates. Fourth floor: E. Sobranska. M. Winck. I felt the door. Locked. I rang the doorbell. No one answered, but a click was heard in the lock. I stepped in and started walking up the narrow, slightly sloping stairway.

  My first knock produced no reaction and I tried again, a little harder. I heard a radio being turned off inside the apartment and steps approaching. A key was turned a couple of times in the lock, the door opened and I stood face to face with . . .

  I want to recall that it took a second before I realized that it was her, but I’m not certain. She was simply dressed in black jeans and a long T-shirt with a batik print and her face was so familiar that I almost had to protect myself against it; yes, I think it was this strong
identification that, paradoxically enough, made me hesitate.

  I also want to recall that we stood quietly a short while and just looked at each other before we started talking, but here I am no longer convinced either. Perhaps in reality she started speaking at once, in any case she was the one who broke the silence that was now there to break.

  ‘I see, you’re here now,’ she said.

  She took a step backwards and I stepped into the little hall.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m here now.’

  She signalled to me to go on into the apartment. Went ahead and sat down on one of three armchairs that were placed around a low rattan-and-glass coffee table. I hesitated again, but then she nodded and I took a seat across from her.

  ‘I see, you’re here now,’ she repeated and her eyes oscillated a little, as I remembered that she used to do now and then when she was trying to concentrate on something unclear or difficult. I did not reply.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked after a while.

  I nodded and she left the room. I closed my eyes and leant my head backwards against the high, soft back support. Heard her bustling about in the kitchen with water, saucepan and cups; I sat there quite still and the thoughts and movements inside me were wordless and abstract far beyond the boundary of what is intelligible. But beautiful, undeniably beautiful; I know that I managed to note just that. Then I felt the presence of someone else in the room. I opened my eyes and saw Mauritz Winckler standing with his elbow leaning against a tall dresser, observing me.

  I observed back. He had the same round glasses and the same short, grizzled hair as four years ago. The collarless shirt and corduroy trousers might also very well have been the same that he had been wearing the few times I met him, but you never can tell.

  Neither of us uttered a word and after a minute or so Ewa came back with a tea tray. She stopped a moment in the middle of the room; looked at us in turn, first Mauritz Winckler, then me. Then she allowed herself a smile, hasty and transitory like a swallow’s flight, roughly, and set the tray down on the table.