The Capital

by Robert Menasse

  His father had liked tarte au riz. That was a memory. He didn’t have an image to go with it. Such as the family sitting around the table and Father, his face beaming with delight, saying, “Mmm, at last we’re having tarte au riz again!” and Mother placing the tart on the table and Father exhorting the children to behave, saying, “Stop it! Calm down!” and Mother saying, “First a nice slice for your father,” and . . . all wrong! Of this there was no image in his memory, no film in his head, he couldn’t picture himself sitting at the table with his family, with a tarte au riz. There were only the words: “Father loved tarte au riz!” But why? Why these words? And where did they come from? These words as the memory of a life? And at the same time dead words, buried inside his head. Then he saw a gravestone on which was chiselled:

  TOUT PASSE

  TOUT S’EFFACE

  HORS DU SOUVENIR

  He stopped and gazed at this inscription for a long while. Then he bent down, picked up a pebble and placed it on top of the grave.

  So many ruined graves. The vandalism of nature. Headstones levered out by tree roots, slabs shattered by broken branches and fallen trees, stones swallowed by rampant plants. The decomposing memorials to human rivalry, the eagerness for representation. Dilapidated, mouldy mausoleums designed as monumental testimony to a family’s power and wealth, but now derelict and manifesting only this: transience. Signs in front of them erected by the cemetery management: “The lease for this plot expires at the end of the year.”

  Without money, even the graves die.

  He was tired and wondered fleetingly whether it might not be best to go back. But no, he wanted to make a thorough exploration of the neighbourhood in which he now lived.

  He took a left turn without looking at the signpost – “Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof”, “Commonwealth War Graves”, “Nederlandse Oorlogsgraven” – and here began the neatly ordered rows of identical headstones, which in their endless uniformity provided peace and a dramatic beauty after the animated, almost howling chaos of the civilian part of the cemetery, the perfect redemption for lives stolen, in an aesthetic of dignity.

  At the age of 24 years – died for the Fatherland.

  At the age of 20 years – died for the Fatherland.

  At the age of 26 years – died for the Fatherland.

  At the age of 19 years – died for the Fatherland.

  At the age of 23 years – died for the Fatherland.

  At the age of 23 years – died for the Fatherland.

  At the age of 22 years – died for the Fatherland.

  At the age of 31 years – died for the Fatherland.

  At the age of 24 years – died for the Fatherland.

  At the age of 39 years – died for the Fatherland.

  At the age of 21 years – died for the Fatherland.

  Mort pour la patrie, for the glory of the nation, slachtoffers van den plicht.

  Whoever walked along here inspected the rows like a general would an army of the dead, or a president might a military formation at a state reception in Hades. He closed his eyes. And at that very moment somebody addressed him. A gentleman who asked if he spoke German or English.

  A little German.

  Did he know where the mausoleum of unconditional love was?

  I’m sorry?

  The man said he’d read about it in his guidebook, did he understand? Yes? Good. So, in his guidebook . . . it must be somewhere here. The mausoleum of unconditional love. Don’t you know —?

  De Vriend didn’t know.

  Professor Erhart thanked him and continued on his way. At the end of the avenue he saw a building with a few people standing outside – maybe he’d find out more from them. He still had time. Most of the participants of the “New Pact for Europe” Reflection Group were only arriving this morning, which was why today’s first meeting was scheduled for 1 p.m. He, however, had come a couple of days earlier. He wanted to see something of the city too, rather than spending the whole time in an airtight, air-conditioned room. Back in Vienna he had no commitments and no family. In this respect he was in the most awful situation you could find yourself in at his age: he was free. It was thanks to his excellent academic reputation that he still received the occasional invitation, such as this one; he always accepted and prepared meticulously, even though – or perhaps because – he felt increasingly that he was no longer presenting discussion papers, but offering readings from his testament. Maybe that was his role now: explaining to his successors that a legacy existed that was beyond the zeitgeist, and it was their task to take possession of it.

  First of all Alois Erhart had visited the grave of Armand Moens, once a much-discussed and now forgotten economist, a professor at the University of Leuven, who already in the 1960s had developed a theory of post-national economics, from which he had inferred the necessity of establishing a United European Republic. The growing interlinking and interdependence of economies, the ever-expanding power of multinationals and the increasing significance of international financial markets would no longer allow national democracies to fulfil their essential tasks: intervening to shape the conditions in which people had to live their lives, and generally ensuring distributive justice. “Shut down the national parliaments!” – this was the battle cry of a true democrat, who wished to reinvent democracy taking into account the historical framework. The only reason his thesis had not been dismissed as scandalous or wildly utopian at the time was that the era had been so free-spirited, and this was also the reason why, ultimately, Moens was not able to prevail over the national economists, “the ruminants” (as he called them): “At first the wacky academic licence helped us, but in the end it consolidated the power of the really wacky ones,” he wrote in his memoirs.

  Forty-five years earlier Erhart, then a budding student, had heard a guest lecture Armand Moens gave in Alpach, and ever since he had regarded himself as Moens disciple. He had faithfully read all his publications. By the time Erhart published his own first work and sent it to his teacher, Moens was already terminally ill. He responded with a letter, but that was the end of their exchange, for Moens died a few days later. Now an emotional Erhart stood by the grave:

  ARMAND JOSEPH MOENS

  1910–1972

  In front of the gravestone and to the side was a small enamel sign on which was written:

  “Toen hij het meest nodig was,

  werd hij vergeten”

  Studenten werkgroep “Moens eed”

  aan de Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

  On the grave there were fresh flowers and a bottle of schnapps. And good luck pigs in various sizes and materials: plastic, fur fabric, wood, ceramic – Alois Erhart couldn’t explain the pigs. He took a photograph. Then a second one, this time of the headstone and the sign without the pigs.

  While researching the location of Professor Moens’ grave he had stumbled upon a reference to another tourist attraction in the city cemetery: the mausoleum of unconditional love. Which he was now looking for. A Brussels baron – Erhart had forgotten the name – who had made his fortune from mining in the Belgian Congo, had fallen desperately in love with a woman on a trip to the colony. He brought the woman back to Brussels to marry her – “A negress!” This led not only to his ostracism from Brussels society, but also to some legal problems, which he ultimately overcame after a lengthy battle, partly by paying out considerable sums of money, and partly through the assistance of the best lawyers. The baron’s love weathered all storms. “I’d rather be rejected with this woman than respected without her!” When the wedding was finally permitted to take place, none of the guests turned up save for mad old Countess Adolphine Marat, who after the ceremony invited the couple back for tea in her palais. The witnesses were two workers repairing a manhole cover in the road outside the registry office, and who were willing to interrupt their work for a quarter of an hour for fifty francs apiece. Countess Marat, who received a hostile reaction for having welcomed the newly-weds into her house, justified herself with the le
gendary words: “If he is prepared to give that woman his name, then the least I can do is give her a cup of tea!”

  This woman, whose name was Libelulle (Professor Erhart had remembered this, it meant “little dragonfly”) died soon afterwards in 1910, in childbirth. Their son had been stillborn, strangled by the umbilical cord. Racked with grief, the Baron – oh yes, he was called Caspers, Victor Caspers – commissioned a French architect to build a magnificent mausoleum in the Cimetière de la Ville for his beloved, a prayer room in the roof of which was an aperture, precisely calculated and designed so that each year, on the day and hour of her death, a patch of light in the shape of a heart would fall onto her sarcophagus.

  This is what Professor Erhart had come to see. He had expected to find notices and signposts, but there was nothing of the sort. Were there several Brussels cemeteries? Was he in the wrong one?

  He had reached the building he’d seen from a distance and where a largish group of people had now gathered.

  He was nonplussed when he spotted a large and unmistakable figure standing amongst those assembled: it was the policeman who had questioned him in the hotel, he was absolutely sure it was the overweight inspector. The professor stopped and stared, their eyes met. Erhart wasn’t sure if the inspector recognised him, and in any case the policeman’s attention was drawn elsewhere when two men who had approached at speed greeted him and exchanged a few words before entering the building which, as Erhart now saw, was the crematorium chapel.

  It was not Inspector Brunfaut’s job to be present at the cremation of a murder victim. Nor was there any reason relevant to the case for him to be there. Following a murder the body is impounded and given a forensic autopsy. After that it is released for burial or cremation. If the victim’s identity is known and there are relatives, they organise the funeral. If the identity is not known, a cremation is carried out within forty-eight hours of the autopsy, by order of the city. A municipal official turns up, checks the paperwork, confirms that the corpse is reference number X or Y, gives a five-minute speech about the transience of life and eternal peace to satisfy the minimum level of dignity as stipulated by E.U. funeral guidelines, then the coffin sinks into the combustor. Later the ashes are scattered on the lawn beside the crematorium – which effectively means they’re tipped out – and a plaque with the name of the dead person or, if this is unknown, their police reference number is affixed to a column. It was highly unlikely that a suspect, let alone the perpetrator themselves, would turn up to this ceremony, given that nobody apart from the officials involved were aware of the time and place. But there were always members of the public, people who regularly went for walks in the cemetery, pensioners, widows, local mothers pushing prams, who would stop out of respect or curiosity.

  Inspector Brunfaut had not come because of the case he was working on, but because this was the anniversary of his grandfather’s death. Many years ago an impressive number of people, which got ever smaller as the years rolled on, had gathered at his grandfather’s grave each year to pay their respects to this hero of the Belgian Resistance. Stories were told, schnapps was drunk, songs were sung. And to round it off, the Brabançonne. When they got to “Les peuples libres sont amis!” the geriatrics sounded like a bunch of madmen, so ardently were they singing, bawling even. At the line “Le Roi, la Loi, la Liberté!” there was always one who, like a conductor, would stop the choir abruptly with a swish of his hand and cry: We can’t have everything! What could we do without? And the rest would reply: The king! And what can’t we do without? Tutti: Justice and freedom!

  As a boy Émile Brunfaut had found this ritual fairly intimidating, the graveside frenzy embarrassing, and believed the mothball smell of the old men’s suits came from gunpowder. Later, after his parents had died, he began to feel respect and admiration for the man who had so terrified him as a child, and . . . yes, even pride! Later still, when tears were ready to spring from the ever-larger bags beneath his eyes, and he would have liked to embrace those who had gathered at this grave year in, year out, there was nobody left, no living soul who could remember his grandfather and his heroic deeds. Nonetheless, every year on this day he came to spend an hour in solitary contemplation by the grave. And because this was the way things had turned out today, he went afterwards to the crematorium, where his “case” was in the process of being incinerated. Not having anticipated that his presence there would bring him any further in his investigation, he was all the more astonished to spot a man he had spoken to during the initial questioning at the crime scene. To begin with the man had looked only vaguely familiar, and it had taken him a good ten minutes to work out where he knew him from. He ran at once out of the crematorium chapel, but the man was no longer there. Brunfaut hurried down a few tree-lined paths, but was unable to find him.

  He left the cemetery. Right opposite the gate was Le Rustique, a restaurant he always went to after visiting his grandfather’s grave. Brunfaut wondered why the windows in the first floor of the restaurant were bricked up. It was inconceivable that somebody living here objected to the view of the cemetery. Nobody bricks their windows up just because they find the view out of them depressing. Someone like that wouldn’t have moved in here in the first place. What mystery was hidden behind these bricked-up windows?

  As ever, Brunfaut ordered stoemp, his grandfather’s favourite dish and for himself a sentimental taste of childhood. Stoemp is stoemp, his grandfather had always said, and the most important thing, of course, was the quality of the sausage: it should burst when you stick the fork in. Which meant the skin had to be made of natural casings rather than artificial plastic, as was increasingly being used, a dramatic symptom of the death of Belgian working-class culture. Here in Le Rustique the stoemp was still authentic. Simple, genuine, perfect. Washed down with a draught Stella Artois and a small jenever to finish. Émile Brunfaut sighed, then drove back to police headquarters.

  When Émile Brunfaut arrived at the “mine de charbon” the duty officer said that the superintendent was already waiting for him and Brunfaut should go directly to his office.

  Brunfaut had explained he was going to the cemetery and would be back at 1 p.m. Everybody had nodded. It was now 1.05. Was the boss going to throw his weight around again? Brunfaut anticipated a reprimand because there was no justifiable reason for his having taken a stroll around the cemetery, and then to come back late as well. He shrugged – not really, of course, but in his mind – and waited patiently for the lift, then walked sedately down the corridor to the boss’ office, knocked on the door and immediately went in.

  A topsy-turvy world, he thought. He had just come from the cemetery, but to his mind the burial was taking place here. To the superintendent’s left sat the examining magistrate, to his right the public prosecutor, and all three wore a deadly serious expression.

  Please sit down, Inspector Brunfaut.

  Brunfaut wasn’t particularly surprised that the examining magistrate was breathing down the superintendent’s neck. He was the actual boss, after all; it was he who kept issuing instructions and demanding regular updates on how investigations were proceeding. The presence of the public prosecutor, however, immediately put Brunfaut on red alert: this signalled a political intervention.

  What use was being on red alert if the alarm bells didn’t ring until the consequences of the threat were already an irrevocable fact?

  It was indeed a burial taking place in this room. The burial of the “Atlas case”.

  Well, said Superintendent Maigret, before falling silent. Brunfaut was convinced that this fool owed his career to the coincidence of having been born with this name, a highly unfortunate coincidence for the city. He said nothing, watching impassively as Maigret searched for the right words. Then Brunfaut looked expectantly at Maigret, who turned for help to the examining magistrate, and the examining magistrate turned to the public prosecutor, who finally said, Thank you very much, Inspector Brunfaut, for your time. We’ve just been discussing the murder case at Hotel Atlas
, which, if I’m correctly informed, you . . .

  Yes, Brunfaut said.

  Well, Superintendent Maigret said.

  There are new developments, said the examining magistrate, Monsieur de Rohan. The only thing about this vain man that Brunfaut found interesting was his wife. He’d met her once at a Christmas party, a young, very slight woman with large, black-rimmed eyes. Every time she opened her mouth to say something she was stifled by a smiling de Rohan with the words, “And you, ma chérie, need to keep quiet now!” Brunfaut had wanted to sleep with her at once. He couldn’t tell whether this really was lust, or merely the desire to humiliate her husband. He had been drunk enough to whisper it into her ear – very directly, very stupidly. She stared at him wide-eyed, he was instantly ashamed, and she replied, Not tonight. Call me tomorrow!

  With a narcissistic movement of the hand, de Rohan touched his perfectly blow-dried hair and invited Superintendent Maigret to fill Inspector Brunfaut in with the latest developments. Brunfaut sensed that the public prosecutor was disgusted by the policeman’s ineptitude, that he was merely waiting for some straight talking so he could leave and turn his attention to more important matters.

  Well, Superintendent Maigret said. The situation was as follows: there were compelling reasons for no longer investigating this case.