‘Exposed neck crimes’? What exactly is that?
You don’t know?
No, says Yadanuga. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard of it.
Hanina almost admits that it’s the first time he’s ever heard the term too, but Shakespeare preempts him:
Haven’t you noticed that lately all kinds of people in the media, artists and academics, are wearing jackets with Chinese collars, over black tee-shirts that expose their necks?
So …?
Have you ever thought about what kind of crimes are typical of this population group?
What kind of crimes?
Think about what’s characteristic of this sector, suggests Shakespeare. These people travel a lot. They fly to congresses, lectures, exhibition openings. They come for one night to some little town in the Bavarian alps, the next day they’re giving a lecture in Elsinore or Helsingborg, and two days later they’re spending the night in Edinburgh or Paris, and before they return to Yale or Cambridge, they manage to fit in a trip to Bali to take in the Barong Festival.
So? demands Yadanuga, whose head is beginning to spin.
These people are developing a multiple identity syndrome. On the one hand—one identity is not responsible for what the other identities do, and on the other hand—it’s very difficult to keep track of their activities, because they’re here today and somewhere else tomorrow. Do you understand? The investigation of exposed neck crimes requires
sharp senses, special insight and tremendous skill, explains Shakespeare and thinks of the unavoidable murder, the liquidation of the maniac who might be Tino the Syrian and who is definitely threatening the life of Winnie a.k.a. Melissa Timberlake, and he concludes with the fateful words: And that’s what Francis does.
Nice story, says Yadanuga. Now let’s hear the simple truth.
That is the truth, Shakespeare tries to sound as convincing as he can, but Yadanuga isn’t buying it:
Bill, he says, I really enjoyed your flight of fancy, but enough is enough! Come back to reality. Tell me the sordid truth, without any embellishments. You got yourself involved in a dangerous, criminal affair, and you involved someone else as well. Am I right or wrong?
The truth is she is called Melissa. A New Yorker whose parents got divorced when she was four, and ever since she had lived with her alcoholic mother, who would come home drunk in the early hours of the morning, every time dragging a different man behind her to finish the night with. At the age of twelve she ran away from home for the first time, and became a streetwalker.
You got mixed up with a New York whore?
She’s a sales assistant in a fancy shop on Sixty-something or Eighty-something Street off Madison Avenue in the daytime, and at night she’s an unhappy prostitute.
Go on, says Yadanuga.
A highly educated girl. Doing a doctorate on a family of British hangmen, says Shakespeare, and Hanina’s voice breaks. He puts the bottle to his lips, takes a healthy swallow of the bittersweet Knob Creek, and finishes with an Arabic curse.
A whore doing a doctorate on a family of hangmen?! Shakespeare! There’s a limit! protests Yadanuga.
She’s from a family of hangmen herself, explains Shakespeare. Her grandfather was a hangman. He executed the Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg.
Yeah, sure! laughs Yadanuga. I suppose you met him too, and he gave you a piece of the rope that hanged Hans Frank or Baldur von Schirach.
No, says Shakespeare. Her grandfather was killed in a work accident. He sat down on an electric chair in order to demonstrate the routine to a group of apprentice executioners, and someone, apparently a cleaning woman, raised, or forgot to raise, the switch by mistake.
Good going, Bill! says Yadanuga. Shakespeare himself would never have come up with an invention like that.
I didn’t invent it, Shakespeare defends himself. It’s what she told me. By the way, a lot of hangmen ended their lives on the gallows. There was a well known case of a hangman who had a stroke at the moment he was hanging the convicted man, and there were also a number of gangster-executioners, who were sentenced to death and executed, which proves that the death penalty is evidently not a deterrent.
And is the prostitute a real prostitute? Yadanuga asks again, to make sure he understood correctly.
The mother of prostitutes, says Hanina. She receives customers at home, and at the same time she does phone sex as a sideline.
Where exactly does she work as a sales assistant? asks Yadanuga.
What do you know, says Hanina, I’ve forgotten the name of the store!
Aha! Yadanuga hurries to widen the crack that has suddenly opened up in the story. What kind of store?
Fashion, says Hanina. What’s the name again? Something that sounds like a killer. Not Rudolf.…
Stephane Kellian? suggest Yadanuga.
Not Kellian.…
What were you looking for there? Yadanuga attacks.
A cashmere suit.
For a woman?
No, for me.
A men’s fashion store, says Yadanuga.
Both. Men and women. I think it’s something like Lars.
Larson?
Is there a fashion designer called that?
I think so, I’m not sure.
No, it wasn’t Larson. Maybe Karlson.
Karl Lagerfeld?
Lagerfeld rings a bell.…
A cashmere suit you said? Is it supposed to be a Scotch fashion house?
Today they breed goats you can comb cashmere from in Mongolia too, in China, even in Texas, in Florida, and other places too, says Shakespeare.
When did you suddenly start taking an interest in cashmere? Yadanuga fails to conceal his surprise.
He was wearing a cashmere suit, says Shakespeare.
Who?
Adonis, says Shakespeare. Her pimp.
Ah-ha! … Yadanuga begins to put the strands he’s succeeded in untangling together, but Shakespeare doesn’t give him time to breathe:
Apropos cashmere—I’m not talking about the raw material. I’m talking about the mills and the wool industry, where the Scots are apparently still in the lead. Although it seems to me that the Italians are beginning to catch up with them, and they may even have gotten ahead of them by now.
Maybe, says Yadanuga, with the strands he’s managed to untangle getting tied up in a new knot.
Why don’t you throw out the name of some fashion house, maybe it will ring a bell, requests Shakespeare.
McLarn? Yadanuga takes a shot in the dark.
McLarn? ponders Shakespeare. McLarn.… we’re getting there, but no.
Leave off, says Yadanuga. It won’t come to you if you worry about it.
Suddenly I’m not sure it was on Madison either, says Shakespeare.
What difference does it make if it’s Madison or Lexington, Yadanuga tries vainly to get to the point.
Something strange is happening to me. To my memory, I mean, complains Shakespeare and looks at his friend in a plea for help.
There are hundreds of clothing stores in Manhattan, Yadanuga says reassuringly. You probably saw something you liked in a display window and went inside without looking at the name of the store, and when you saw her you forgot about the suit, because she grabbed all your attention.
That’s true, confirms Shakespeare, but it’s a little scary when whole sections of reality vanish into the mist like ships, until suddenly you aren’t even sure anymore if there was a ship there in the first place. Tell me, doesn’t it happen to you sometimes, that for a minute it seems to you that something that happened didn’t happen at all?
Or vice versa, says Yadanuga, sometimes it seems to me that something that never happened actually did happen.
Yes, Shakespeare agrees, sometimes the border is completely blurred, and sometimes it simply doesn’t exist.
Let’s get back to the girl, Yadanuga suggests. You said she was doing her doctorate?
Yes, Shakespeare replies absentmindedly. She gave me her phone number. I call, ask if I can come by. She says to
me: You can even stay the night. A thousand dollars a night, including breakfast.
Fuck-and-breakfast, says Yadanuga. And you went there?
I couldn’t refuse, Shakespeare reflects aloud. It was a cry for help.
She talked to you about the price, and you heard a cry for help?
Lately, confesses Shakespeare, everything sounds to me like a cry for help.
We’re in trouble, states Yadanuga.
Yes, Shakespeare agrees. Imagine all the human despair in the world in the laughing face of a child as fragile as Segestria Perfida.
As what? demands the baffled Yadanuga.
It’s a kind of spider with long thin legs the breadth of a hair.
You want to know something funny? says Yadanuga. A few days ago I came across a spider exactly fitting that description, when I stepped into the bathtub.
And what did you do?
I flushed it out with the shower hose, confesses Yadanuga. It went down the plug hole.
Murderer, says Shakespeare.
What was I supposed to do?
You should have put a sheet of paper into the tub, and breathed gently on the spider, so it would crawl onto the paper of its own accord, and then taken it to an open window, and blown gently onto it again, so it would fly outside to freedom.
Why all the blowing? inquires Yadanuga.
Because its legs are so thin and delicate, explains Shakespeare, that any touch could break them, and the trouble is that they don’t grow again.
It seems to me that she touched a sensitive spot in you, says Yadanuga.
I stayed for seven days and seven nights, laments Hanina, and we didn’t fuck once.
What happened? asks Yadanuga in concern, were you afraid of breaking her legs?
She wasn’t interested.
And you? asks Yadanuga.
You’ll be surprised, he admits, but I wasn’t either.
I’m not surprised, says Yadanuga. Spiders with long skinny legs never gave rise to any irresistible lust in me.
Nor in me, admits Shakespeare.
So what did you do there for seven days and seven nights? demands Yadanuga.
Nothing, he says. Most of the time we did nothing.
Did you talk?
A bit, he says. Nothing to write home about. We talked a bit about vampires.
Vampires?! What’s there to say about vampires?
Nonsense, Shakespeare says dismissively. She chatted about vampires, and I answered her with any rubbish that came into my head. Nothing serious.
Seven thousand, Yadanuga calculates. You could have taken a suite overlooking the park, and still had enough left over for analysis.
When we parted, she didn’t want to take the money.
You’re kidding me.
She didn’t want it! In the end she agreed to take something as a Christmas present.
And you didn’t touch her all week?
I touched her, and she touched me. But nothing else, says Shakespeare. Nothing. We just rested.
Yadanuga holds out his hand and Hanina passes him the bottle. Yadanuga swallows, corks the bottle and lays a tender hand on his friend’s shoulder:
What are you still doing here, Bill, he says. You’re not really here at all. Get on a plane and go to her.
Yes, Hanina agrees sadly, I guess that’s what I’ll have to do.
And now let’s go down to the meeting, Yadanuga concludes, and put all your weight in the right place.
They turn round and step into the elevator, leaving the night and the cold, hard, pure moon behind them.
Smoke. Bluish-gray smoke stings his eyes. And the sweetish smell of grass. He passes his hand to and fro like a fan in front of his eyes, to get rid of the cloud suspended between the Himalayas, and out of the mist three burning dots smolder in front of his watering eyes, perhaps the cigarettes giving rise to all this smoke, or perhaps the eyes of Shiva, the Indian god with the third eye, which can see within, but when it looks out has the power to burn and destroy everything in its path. This third eye pierces the smoke like some kind of ancient laser beam. Smoldering like a red diamond in the head of an upright lingam, or in simple English, an erect penis. Hanina strains his eyes and manages to see through the smoke that this lingam is actually their energetic young graphic artist, Golan, whose two wives, Sati and Shakti, are supporting him on his left and right, each with a cigarette flickering in her mouth. Hanina rubs his eyes and waves away the smoke, and it turns out that Sati is Moran, the ideas woman, who brought Golan
to your advertising agency, and Shakti is your wife Mona, Hanina, Tyrell Shlush the scriptwriter reminds him, beginning at this moment to develop a subplot, because from the way they are sitting on the right and the left of Shiva-Golan, the upright lingam—it is quite clear that they will be impregnated by him, and perhaps they have been already, and the only question is which of them will give birth to Skanda, the six-headed monster, and which of them will give birth to the elephant-headed Ganesha, but a second look leaves no doubt that Mona-Shakti will give birth to Skanda, and the young Moran-Sati will give birth to the elephant man, or the man-elephant, and what does it matter anyway who gives birth to what, it is perfectly clear that from this three-sided fuck only monsters will be born.
Why are you stuck in the door? He hears the voice of Shakti-Mona.
This place smells like Shiva’s temple in Bangalore, says Shakespeare, to himself or to Yadanuga, who responds, ‘I thought it reminded me of something bad …’
And suddenly they’re there, racing along the thickly overgrown red dirt path, their straining lungs breathing the sickeningly sour-sweet smells of rotting tamarind and passion-fruits, as they drag the Alsatian with them, grunting and foaming bloodily at the mouth. And like a pesky fly buzzing round their heads, they are accompanied by the fateful moment when the guy with the beard realized that the four men following him are not innocent Shiva devotees, coming to beseech the god of the many faces, but members of a death squad who have been hot on his heels all the way from Frankfurt to Bangalore, and who are now closing in on
him—and in the fraction of a second, before they can grab him, the knife glitters in his hand and is buried in the Alsatian’s stomach. In the twinkling of an eye Jonas’s iron hand comes down on the back of the murderer’s neck, and the sound of a dry cracking of bones is heard, and the bearded man with the round face and the swollen lips falls broken-necked on the white marble steps, limp as an empty sack.