Parallel Stories: A Novel (174 page)

The old car, pulled over by the woods, was gasping for air, its overheated red body steaming and knocking in the reddening twilight.

The sky was blue over the low pine forest, light blue, the air mild for the season, somewhat misty, and the weather report did not call for snow during the night.

According to the map the farm was five hundred meters from here but a locked barrier blocked the trail-like dirt driveway leading to it. He had to jump high to hurdle it. He noted that the owners maintained the road but must not be using it much for vehicles. He saw no fresh wheel tracks among the old ones. He observed and carefully registered everything that might be important professionally, but in the meantime he was also daydreaming about his sweetheart, and he especially enjoyed his thoughts running on parallel tracks. Of course, it was enough for his happiness that he was walking here in the forest dressed in Christmas silence, breathing and moving his limbs, stiff from the long drive. As one coming home at last, body and soul rising to an unknown level of reality, excited yet relaxed. In his amorous daydreams, this was the definite impression he had of himself. As if he had found his own life’s unknown basic rhythm in someone else. The ground was soft in the woods, springy, sandy; he noticed no fresh footprints. As to the smells, he could choose between two kinds of pleasant sourness, and he became even happier because he was thinking of such trivial matters.

In the vaporous air he experienced differently the resin trickling down the rubescent trunks and the juniper crawling everywhere in great profusion, its berries ripened to a downy blue, sprinkling the rust-colored carpet of pine needles.

Later he waited patiently and a little insecurely at the edge of the woods. Everything that had led him to this point had something to do with smells, but smells were hardly palpable. He had a tendency to overdo little things; at least his intuition often told him something about a case that differed from what his factual knowledge and experience claimed. Döhring had to be alone; he hoped he was. The two locations from which Döhring had telephoned had been successfully identified, and before Kienast had set out he had listened to the recordings again. The call from Düsseldorf had been made in hysterical haste and the second call, made from the telephone of a solitary gas station somewhere near here, gave evidence of obvious panic. A person not in control of his conscience is unlikely to call the police right away, though Kienast realized that Döhring had meant the call for him, personally, more than for the police in general. And he did not seriously think Döhring was contemplating or preparing to commit suicide, though he was not a harmless boy, indeed was a serious threat to others.

Solitude has a tendency to magnify things that hardly have any perceptible significance for others.

Professionally there was no justification for him to set out from Berlin because of those insignificant phone calls. He could have said to himself, knowing what he already knew, that Döhring, given his mental tendencies, was not going to run away and would not even hang himself. And what if he did. Or if he chalked up another victim. That would make the case neither more valuable nor more complicated. Let him go on his insane way; let him go to hell. It’s just a shitty little case anyway. It would have been more sensible and more comfortable that way, if only because his mother was expecting him for Christmas Eve dinner. Although he had not become cynical in the midst of so much sorrow and dread, he never deceived himself or others that an individual life had any special value. He had a personal reason for not wanting to dismiss his unexpected idea. At least he wouldn’t be spending the next night with the woman: that was the most important thing. Give the suddenly turbulent emotion of love a little breathing space, retrieve from her a little bit of his freedom before any fateful turn of events and only then decide. Because he felt more strongly than anything else that it had already come to pass; at best he could give his conscience a belated blessing for what had already taken place in his senses and the higher regions of reality; he was still defending himself. His freedom was at stake, and he was not ready to part with it. I’ll fuck up Mother’s holy night, that’s true, I’m getting into irresponsible professional adventures because of a woman, that’s also true, but by the time I get to him, this unfortunate boy will have softened up and then I’ll kill two birds with one stone.

Kienast’s mother lived alone; his father had ended his miserable life by his own hand. In the family no one ever talked about the father’s depressions and manias, and since his death they never uttered those words or mentioned epilepsy or the father’s profession, which the father had given up prematurely so as to keep as far away as possible from his own father’s career—the latter being something that Kienast came near to, given the profession he had chosen. Although he did not dissect bodies, he knew as well as a well-trained dissector or renowned forensic specialist did what to find where, or what biophysical processes occur in the human system after death.

He could not have said in what area or how Döhring would soften up, but his mind was feeling its way in that direction. The morning of the day before, he had found significant clues and therefore could not forbid himself a few suppositions about the student. Even if there was something irrational in his interest and suspicion. Deep in his heart he pitied the young man more than was necessary. No investigation can be carried out without empathy, but this was too much warmheartedness; psychologically speaking, it was transference. As if he were unable to override his professional responsibility with the imperative of his love and was now asking himself, why have I come here, what am I looking for, why don’t I let him go, why am I messing up my evening and my night. One doesn’t do this kind of thing out of sheer pity, or rather, one should ask what trick of the soul does one’s pity conceal. He could not seriously imagine he had often disappointed his mother. Yet the belated rebellion gave him pleasure, that he had not even called and she might worry. This means that no matter how long a man lives he can never outgrow being a boy, which keeps him from coping independently with his life. Where is the big freedom then. Kienast was positively a good boy; he had been one even as an adolescent; the tragedy cooled off slowly in the family, though its narrative dimensions were so vast that it could never cool off completely. He got along with his older sister, something of a prankster, or at least he had managed to live up to the male role, not perfectly tailored for him, between the two women. And that was the very reason he could not forget that epilepsy in their family was hereditary on the male side.

This remained with him as a secret threat for both possibilities: that neither as boy nor as man had he behaved properly, or fulfilled his duties.

It lurked out there somewhere, it would not be wise to awaken it with intemperance. But he knew he was scaring himself in vain. The yellowed final report prepared by the racial biology service’s expert was included among the family papers, and he had gone over it in great secrecy even before his father’s death. It set his mind at ease because according to strict genetic estimations, in his family at worst only a male grandchild of his would be in danger. And one reason he feared engaging in a deeper, more serious relationship was because he did not want to have children. He considered both the world and himself unsuitable for raising children, and was unwilling to discuss even whether it was worth discussing such a possibility. Or whether there was a suitable world. It even occurred to him that he might comply with the verdict of Nazi science and have himself sterilized, which his father for inexplicable reasons had not done despite expert medical opinion.

Which meant that his children could thank this happenstance for their being born, which was not very encouraging.

And Kienast for once in his life could allow himself to break a promise to his mother.

He did not expect this complete illumination. The solitary house with all those lights on might be full of members of Döhring’s family preparing for the holidays, but there was nobody to be seen behind the windows or in the clearing. He saw no garage door, there was no ramp leading up to a garage or old-fashioned carriage shed, and he did not see any car parked outdoors.

Was he at the right place; he knew he could not be mistaken about that. When the basket was filled Döhring put the short-handled axe among the freshly cut wood, lifted the basket as high up against his side as he could.

He had to kick the shed door open with his knee.

His grandfather had taught Döhring that the devil tends to disguise himself and never sleeps deeply. And even if he sometimes dozes off, a careful peasant never leaves an unguarded axe, hatchet, knife, pitchfork, sickle, or scythe near him, because that’s the first thing the devil reaches for when he awakens from his brief slumber. Yet now he headed unwarily toward the house, carrying his basket. He didn’t even look back, the door still worked on the old spring, he heard it slam closed properly behind his back.

For the moment Kienast did nothing, let the poor boy go; within himself, though, he was jubilant to see how things were coming together, how damn lucky he was, and maybe his future wouldn’t be so miserable after all. He can’t afford to fuck it up now. He called to the student from the edge of the woods but not until the student with his basket of firewood reached the middle of the clearing and became defenseless. He greeted him with a loud friendly good evening, called him by his name, and addressed him as mister, all in compliance with police regulations. However, in his surprise, Döhring’s body was shaking from head to toe, which the detective could also see clearly.

Döhring immediately recognized the voice. He thought it best to put the basket on the ground, nice and slow.

His bodily response dissipated the specters and alien beings that had been gathering around him; they vanished, evaporated in the light evening mist, so that he could consciously attend to the presence of the other man. He couldn’t utter a word, let alone return the greeting. He stood with his head bowed, and as his gaze fell and lingered on the old axe on the cut wood—because very clearly it did linger there if only for a moment, and his defensive posture could not escape Dr. Kienast’s eyes—he thought of one thing only, that he would not cease his activities.

He would continue doing the job he had begun, as the Creator continuously placed successive tasks within his reach.

However, Isolde had urged him—and the reason she had not begged him more urgently was that she did not want him to become violent with her—not to think anymore about any kind of creator or anything like that, and just stop whatever he’d been doing.

The first thing she’d do after the holidays would be to get her lawyer involved, if Döhring had indeed done such a foolish thing and was now making a mountain out of a molehill.

She would not tell her parents what he had done, she could promise that. She did not believe they’d think of coming to the farm before New Year’s Eve, he’d be safe there. But he must promise not to take a single step without a lawyer and make no phone calls to anybody anywhere.

She really couldn’t stay with him, however strongly she felt it was necessary. She knew, sensed in her every pore that Carlino was not only lying but also possessed by madness, he was insane; what she saw and heard were the lies of that insanity. But that evening, her agent was expecting her at dinner in Paris with representatives of the Drouot auction house. Over dinner they were going to prepare a large-scale benefit auction for which they had great expectations.

These are all stupidities, those thoughts of his, he should believe her, and he can’t go on torturing himself with them. He’d taken some impossible ideas into his head that were nothing but barefaced lies, he had fallen victim to some clever deception, he should believe her.

She spoke hurriedly, heard herself hurrying, and was a little ashamed of herself.

Such things simply did not happen in their family. She had no idea where Carlino had come up with such an idea. Who had told him such a thing. Something that nobody had thought about, let alone taken seriously for at least two hundred years; why is he going around scaring her or himself with it now. If he can be taken in by such idiocies then there’s not much point in his studying philosophy or psychology.

But that’s exactly what he was trying to do, to look into the depth of things, Döhring said, defending himself.

Things have no depths or surfaces.

Isolde should know. In the fashion business, she had to learn the lessons of pragmatic philosophy well.

It’s a good thing he hadn’t joined some crazy cult, or maybe he should join the neo-Nazis.

Isolde should not exaggerate, should not mix up different things. He was interested in very concrete questions, and that’s hardly the same thing.

But it is, Isolde cried out, with the full force of her penetrating voice, and she blushed deeply in her anger.

Döhring went along with this childish quarrel, repeating that no, it’s not the same, because he wanted to see Isolde surrender, at least to him. But she could not or did not want to understand his allusions. At least for the sake of their own peace of mind, for their private use as it were, she should confess what she had done. What she had been keeping to herself for decades, which, by the way, everyone knows about.

Gerhardt Döhring killed at least four people because of the gold that had vanished.

Then he had to realize that Isolde didn’t remember anything; no matter how he tiptoed around the subject, she did not want to acknowledge and would not admit anything; and he fell silent.

If she did not understand what was at stake or if she did not want to understand, then let there be tranquillity.

Then let her quickly take herself off for Paris.

He realized that it was not by chance that it wasn’t happening. It was not by chance that Isolde was slow on the uptake and kept denying and denying. Things that fail to occur have the same value as divine portents. Isolde was the only person, the last one who to some extent tied him to his family, and this tie had to be loosened so that he could be perfectly free in his actions and able to carry out his mission. He never understood how he’d wound up among them. He despised his stepmother and had always hated his lily-livered father and ass-kissing younger sister, who allegedly resembled their mother.