There are fewer and fewer of them. Very soon there won’t be any camp survivors left. Do you see? We have to put them at the very centre of our jubilee celebrations. That is the idea: they are testimony to the horrific crimes that nationalism precipitated in the old Europe, and at the same time they are testimony to all that we have in common, which became so profoundly evident as a result of the camps, which . . .
It was so damned cold by the open window.
. . . and the Commission represents our common values with regard to human dignity and the law, and so . . .
Martin tossed the cigarette out of the window and took a step backwards. Fenia flicked her cigarette out too and closed the window.
Do we know how many are still alive?
I don’t. All I know is that barely a dozen were there for the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and I reckon all of them were between eighty-five and ninety-five. Apparently more than two hundred came a few years back.
Good. So find out how many are still alive. Then we need to discuss how we’re going to do it in practice, how we’re going to put them at the centre of our celebrations. All of them, or . . . do you know what I’m picturing? Thousands —
There can’t be that many!
No, wait! If we invite them all with their families and descendants, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, that will probably add up to thousands, and then, how should I put it? – she made an expansive gesture – then we’ll declare that all of us are symbolically their children, and we’ll declare our children to be their grandchildren and —
I don’t know for sure, but I think that most descendants of Auschwitz survivors live outside Europe.
Yes. But. Does that change anything? Perhaps it does. So . . .
She thought for a moment and then said, The other points in your paper are O.K., let’s leave them as they are for now. The usual things that need to be thought of for a celebration like this one. But what we need, and quickly, are facts and figures. How many are still alive, and how many of them live in Europe?
Once again she paused to think. Martin wondered whether he ought to sit down again, but Fenia herself made no move to do so. She stood at the widow, gazing outside. Eventually she said, Perhaps one would suffice. Essentially we only need a symbolic figure, for a united Europe, for our common values, for the ambitions of our work here.
First she wants thousands, then only one. How should he proceed from here? He looked at her. She looked down and brushed the ash from her blouse.
When Professor Erhart came for the first meeting of the “New Pact for Europe” Reflection Group, he was the only one with a briefcase. That was so odd. It struck him straight away and he sensed that the others registered it too; whether with amusement or mere surprise, at any rate they noticed.
He was the last to arrive because he had got lost on the way there. The meeting was in the Résidence Palace behind the European Council building on rue de la Loi, a place that to all intents and purposes was impossible to miss; you came out of Schuman Metro station and there it was in front of you. Beside the European Council building there was, however, a construction site and in front of it a closed-off pavement, with barriers and temporary concrete bollards. Reckoning that he needed to circumnavigate the entire construction site to get behind the Council building, Alois Erhart continued down rue de la Loi, but could see no opportunity to turn left and find his way into a parallel street that would take him to the rear of the Council building. Then he saw the entrance to Maelbeek Metro station, which meant he had walked an entire stop from Schuman. The diversion couldn’t be that long! He saw no other option but to continue uncertainly a short way down the street until finally he turned into a side street to the left, rue de Trèves, then left again, rue Jacques de Lalaing. He read the names as if the very fact of these streets having names at all might afford him comfort. He stopped, took the map of Brussels from his briefcase and worked out that if he continued on Jacques de Lalaing he would arrive at chaussée d’Etterbeek, which ran beneath rue de la Loi, without any opportunity – or at least none that was marked on the map – of coming up behind the Council building. So he turned and retraced his steps all the way. Once back at the construction site he noticed a small and discreet gap between barriers and yellow hoardings that led to the Résidence Palace.
When he entered the building he had no idea where to go, of course. In the middle of the foyer was a desk where two exceptionally friendly girls gave out information. No, they didn’t know where in the building the European Policy Centre was located. They had never heard of the think tank “New Pact for Europe”. Was there a name? Professor Erhart gave them his name, one of the girls typed it into her computer and said with a friendly smile that she was sorry, very sorry, but nobody with that name was in the building. But that’s my name, the professor said, I thought you meant . . . O.K., I’d like to . . . one moment! He had printed out the e-mail with all the details of the first meeting, and now opened his briefcase and took out the sheet of paper. Here, he said, Mr Pinto, European Policy Centre, first meeting of the “New Pact for Europe” Reflection Group, you see! Max Kohnstamm Room, 4th floor —
Oh, the girl said, say no more! Fourth floor! The lift is over there on your right.
So, he was the last to arrive. But not excessively late. If he hadn’t got lost he would have been excessively early. Usually he was the first to arrive, for fear of being late.
He had carried his briefcase in his left hand the whole time because of the pain he still felt in his right arm. Now he also felt a tugging pain in his left. He lifted the briefcase and pressed it to his chest, his arms crossed. He was trying to relieve the strain on his arms, but it looked as if he were using his briefcase as a shield, as if he were bracing himself. Such was the picture he presented as he entered the room.
A man came up to him, beaming.
Herr Erhart?
Yes.
The professor from Austria!
From Vienna, yes.
I’m António Oliveira Pinto, the head of our Reflection Group. Delighted to meet you, the man said. He spoke perfect German.
I’m so sorry I’m late, the building site . . .
Yes, the man said with a laugh, Europe is a confusing building site. And that’s why we’re here, it’s our job to discuss what we’re actually building.
I’m not an architect, and —
Ha ha! Viennese sarcasm, I presume? Very good. Right, I suggest you help yourself to some refreshments and we’ll begin the round of introductions in the meeting room in twenty minutes. Not an architect – ha ha, very good!
Alois Erhart stood there, briefcase against his chest, and looked around. A buffet had been laid out, men and women stood at cocktail tables, the members of the think tank, eating with plastic forks from paper plates, chatting and glancing in his direction, or not chatting, smiling and glancing in his direction.
Alois Erhart took the briefcase in his left hand again, to free up his right in order to hold a plate . . . But how was he going to serve himself pasta salad or roast beef? Clamping the briefcase under his right arm, he grabbed a plate with his left hand and tried to scoop some pasta from the dish with his right. The briefcase dropped. As he bent to pick it up, the pasta salad he’d shovelled onto his plate slid off onto the floor. He put the briefcase down, it tipped over. It made him feel strangely nervous to see the briefcase lying there, so he took it and leaned it against the wall. Now he felt uneasy about being so far away from his briefcase while he was helping himself from the buffet. He put the plate down, fetched the briefcase again and wedged it between his feet while he served himself. Now he had to make his way to the cocktail tables. The plate in his right hand and a glass of apple juice in his left, he attempted to somehow manoeuvre the briefcase between his feet by taking small, shuffling steps, almost tripping in the process. He gave the briefcase a gentle kick, took a step, nudged it again with his foot, trying to push it to the nearest table. By now he – or his briefca
se – was the centre of attention, and Professor Erhart saw that nobody else in the room had one. A few were carrying rucksacks, standing assuredly with their humps and free hands; the others had wheelie cases beside them, which they casually rested a hand on. And there he was, the old man with his schoolbag.
It was indeed his schoolbag. He had got it very late, only in senior school. There had been no money before then. Or his father thought it pointless to fork out for a briefcase when he had so many sports bags in stock. These were made of cloth, a sort of duffel bag you closed with a cord which then formed a loop that served as a handle. It was little more than a glorified gym bag and the young Alois felt ashamed that his father, a shopkeeper and thus a businessman, forced him to go to the middle-class grammar school in Amerlingstrasse with this strange sack that no other pupil had. When eventually he was given a real briefcase he was delighted. It was leather and stitched by hand. His father had bought it at Weinberger’s, a “manufacturer of fine leatherware” a little further down Mariahilfer Strasse, at a handsome discount after he had given a generous discount on ski equipment for the bag-maker’s son.
Alois was so proud of his leather briefcase that he kept it beside his bed when he went to sleep, so he could see it straight away on waking up. He loved the sound the clasps made, gleaming nickel that locked with a resounding click as he packed his bag for the school day. From time to time he would treat the briefcase with a type of grease to prevent the leather from cracking. There was a strap you could tie into loops for carrying on your back, but Alois never used it; he preferred to carry the briefcase in his hand like an adult, and at some point the strap got lost.
Then more modern schoolbags appeared, brightly coloured and with garish patterns, and made from some artificial material. Alois felt a combination of revulsion and pity whenever he saw children trudging to school with these ridiculous Snoopy and Batman boxes on their backs. His leather briefcase had accompanied him all his life. The leather was now a bit softer and had developed an attractive matt patina. And in it he kept everything he needed for an occasion like this: a plastic sleeve containing two sheets of paper with keywords for the five-minute introductory statement that he, like everyone else, was to give at the opening session; a plastic sleeve with the printouts of e-mails he had received from Mr Pinto in preparation for this meeting; a folder with his paper on the reform of the Union, which he intended to deliver as soon as he had the opportunity; a notepad and a pencil case. He wondered what the others kept in their bulging rucksacks and wheelie cases.
He had his first friendly exchange at one of the cocktail tables. Oh, so you’re Professor Erhart? Pleased to meet you. Very pleased. Delighted. My name is, my name is, yes and my name is. Him. Her. Him. Delighted to meet you. A French man started talking to him. Professor Erhart’s school French was not good enough to understand his dialect . . . until he realised that the Frenchman was speaking English. He concentrated on his pasta salad. Then António Pinto clapped his hands a few times and called out, Ladies and Gentlemen, may I ask you please . . .? Thank you, let’s get started.
Professor Erhart very soon sensed that he was out of place here, and that his cause had no chance in this company. They were all so similar. Only he was different. He had been informed that the think tank would meet six times this year, for two days on each occasion, at the end of which they would deliver to the president of the Commission a paper with the findings of their analyses, and suggestions for resolving the crisis and consolidating the Union. Alois Erhart had been amazed that they had only twelve days, and these spread throughout an entire year, to develop a plan for solving the European crisis. But he had viewed this invitation as an opportunity to inject his ideas into the system.
They were now all sitting in a circle in the Max Kohnstamm Room. Erhart took from his briefcase the sheets of paper for his introductory statement, everyone else took laptops or tablets from their rucksacks or wheelie cases, and António Pinto said with the broad, beaming smile of a man who has just enjoyed the happiest moment of his life, Once again, welcome, there was a crashing sound, the woman next to Erhart ducked, a man leaped to his feet, another’s laptop slid from his knees . . . What was that? A bird had flown into the window, yes, it must have been a bird. One man who claimed to have seen it said it had been a large, black bird. Everyone got up, crowded around the window and indeed you could see a speck of blood with a feather sticking to it.
How peculiar it was that Alois Erhart, such a conservative man at heart, would play the tragic revolutionary within this group.
If Inspector Émile Brunfaut had not been on enforced leave, he wouldn’t have taken the time to visit the doctor. And then maybe he would never have tried to solve the puzzle of the “Atlas murder”.
Now he lay with bare torso and unfastened trousers on the examination table, struck by the uneasy realisation that fear was creeping over him, a silent, paralysing fear. Breathe in deeply! Breathe out! A fear that took his breath away. It was strange that Brunfaut had never before considered his own mortality, even though he had regularly come face to face with corpses. But it was after all he who lived and had the job of ensuring those responsible for the deaths received a just punishment. As a rule this meant “life imprisonment”, which even when a killer was released early sounded like the incalculable eternity of a life whose end nobody could know.
Dangerous manhunts, exchanges of fire and suchlike were what you saw on television, but not in his work, and if it ever did happen there were special teams to take care of it. In all his years of service, however, he had never come across anything like that, he had never been in a situation in which he’d had to confront the fear of death. But now, in the presence of this doctor, not a pathologist or forensic scientist, just a perfectly normal practising doctor who had just examined him, pushing a bit here, tapping a bit there, he . . .
Brunfaut buttoned up his shirt while the doctor wrote out a referral to a clinic for a precise diagnosis of the symptoms, and he . . .
He couldn’t help thinking of death. His own. Without any vanity. The doctor had a suspicion. He knew something. And in the clinic they would confirm what the doctor knew or suspected. The illness he would die of. All of a sudden Brunfaut was in no doubt that he was watching his death sentence being drawn up. He perceived this moment as unreal, at the same time perceiving himself as real in a dramatic way he had never experienced before. Nobody is so out of this world and yet so at one with themselves as the person who is suddenly lost in an impenetrable fog. Panic and the survival instinct tear the body to shreds, the head becomes hot, the chest cold and numb. The doctor tapped away at his keyboard most unrhythmically, staring repeatedly at the monitor with raised eyebrows, tap tap tap pause click pause tap tap pause, then a drumroll followed by an interval like the sound of a desperate heart plugged in to an amplifier. And Brunfaut, as if he were translating practice sentences into a foreign language, gradually formulated questions in his head, slowly and uncertainly: How react, how will, I? react when the results, when I have the results, black on white? Rise up and fight? Will I want to fight? Will I collapse, give up? Lie to myself, be lied to, hope, madly? Will I feel self-pity . . . or desire, will I still be able to feel desire, learn to feel desire, for the last pleasures? Will I be angry, or, or will I able to be affectionate? Affectionate to whom?
The doctor cleared his throat and Brunfaut couldn’t help smiling. There were times when being ill was idyllic, paradise. Very briefly, for a second at most, an image flashed inside his head: him snuggled up in a soft duvet, off school, his mother so affectionate, her hand on his hot forehead, so considerate, making tea and then cooking his favourite dinner to build him up. Dozing, dreaming, reading. The sweet experience of love in the form of sympathy and concern. And the certainty that everything would turn out fine. Everything was fine . . .
The doctor was on the telephone . . . Tomorrow morning is no go? . . . I understand . . . How about 1.00 p.m.? . . . D’accord! Many thanks!
That’s
tomorrow at 1.00 p.m. in Europe Hospital St Michel, the doctor said, nil by mouth in the morning if you can. Here’s the referral letter. The diagnosis, that’s to say the necessary tests might take three days. If it’s any longer you’ll definitely be able to go home for the weekend. The senior consultant, Dr Drumont, will take that decision. I’ve just spoken to him. You’re in the best possible hands.
And then something bizarre happened to Émile Brunfaut: the fear released. This was what he actually felt, and then thought: release.
Now he saw the death sentence or, let’s say, the acknowledgement of his mortality as a dispensation to act. He had to do what had to be done. Police officers on leave were forbidden from carrying out investigations on their own initiative. But what punishment could he now fear? To die knowing he had not acted, that would be the only punishment he should fear, that would be the most agonising death. Was he being melodramatic? History is nothing more than an oscillation between pathos and banality. And the mortal is pushed one way, then the other.
Inspector Brunfaut stood up and peered at the doctor with an expression his grandfather used to wear. The famous resistance fighter, after whom a street in Brussels had been named. His grandfather’s expression that had frightened him as a child. When he, little Émile, had lain in bed with the sage tea his mother had made, with a slight temperature, a runny nose and sore throat – being ill was idyllic, his paradise – his grandfather had stood over him, staring down and saying, There’s no such thing as being ill. You’re not ill until you keel over. And then you’re dead. And his mother coming into the room with the tea, exclaiming, What are you talking about? Leave the child in peace! Why are you scaring him? Brunfaut took the referral letter, thanked the doctor and left. In his mind he looked down at the child he had been, the child was terrified, the child was frightened. He was not.
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