Parallel Stories: A Novel (3 page)

Perhaps that woman occurred to him only because he knew this smell from her body.

He seemed to feel the tension in his tendons, the fine and disciplined trembling of his muscles.

The body does not forget.

This woman reached her climax gaping mutely, she screamed only seconds later, once past the peak of her pleasure, and even then she did it as if she had hoped to swallow it all back into herself. But no, he could hardly smell the perfume on the dark blue pullover; it smelled more strongly of tobacco smoke.

The perfume’s scent issued only from the body.

From the large room illuminated by fluorescent lights, two swing doors led to the corridor. Corpses were trundled in through one; through the other they were taken to the refrigerated room and from there to the official autopsy. The wings of one door kept flapping quietly because somewhere someone had left a window open.

Dr. Kienast heard no steps in the corridor. While he listened, the telephone rang next to him on the desk; he started a little; the phone rang again but he didn’t pick it up.

It wasn’t the first time that professional curiosity had swept him into a critical situation, and sometimes he had to cross the boundaries of his own good taste or even those of the law. If it had not been so, he probably could not have followed the thinking of criminals and would not have chosen this profession. He put down the pullover, picked up the blue-and-white-striped shirt and could tell with absolute certainty that the unknown man had not spent the last day of his life in this shirt and most probably not in this pullover, but had changed clothes in the afternoon or, he quickly corrected himself, in the early evening. These are rather simple matters. One could still smell the laundry detergent and the rinse on these articles, or even the deodorizer in the clothes closet. And his last hours the man must have spent in a place full of tobacco smoke, in an inn or bar, a cheap restaurant, a place unworthy of his social standing.

The perfume was detectable only on the lower third of the shirt and on the underpants. On the latter, the quickly perishing sperm was also sensed as an odor. The telephone kept ringing, but otherwise no action was heard anywhere. He stepped up to the legs of the corpse and, as if begging the indulgence of a fellow human’s mortal remains for what he was about to do, he touched the man’s foot and leaned over his loins. That is when the telephone finally stopped ringing, and in the still existing draft one could hear again the wings of the swing door flapping. He closed his eyes, perhaps involuntarily, because he did not want to see the dead man’s genitals from so close up while he took a whiff of them. He was immediately assailed by the strong smell of the penis. Otherwise, everything was as he had expected it would be. This penis could have been involved only in oral intercourse, not in a vaginal or anal one; the secretion tests would provide exact details. The odorous perfume had been smeared on the thick rich pubic hair and on the graying thinner hair running in a wedge shape up on the abdomen; from there it permeated the air in the large room. He did not want to lose a moment. He heard steps approaching in the corridor and he wanted to check his observation before the coroner returned. There was no smell on the chest, around the armpits or behind the ears, the last questionable locations. And now he felt he had done everything that had to be done and found out what he wanted to find out: the perfume was not the dead man’s own but a freshly applied strange one that was later smeared over his body. The swing door’s wings flapped open just as he raised his head.

As if he had been kissing the corpse.

At the noise of the door he quickly turned around and said he had finished doing what he needed to do.

Have you found anything encouraging, asked the coroner pleasantly.

He was the Pathological Institute’s physician on duty, with whom the detective had a daily and very cordial relationship. That meant that they had their unavoidable smaller or larger frictions but, as they say, could live with them.

I’ll leave that to you, Kienast replied politely, but I’d be very grateful, he added without the slightest trace of embarrassment, if you also smelled his stomach and pubic hair. There’s some kind of perfume, scented soap, who knows what.

Maybe you’ll recognize it, he added.

Sometimes, out of sheer self-defense, his colleagues pretended not to hear what Dr. Kienast said or requested. And not only those with whom he had rare contacts but also his immediate subordinates. Most of them used the informal address among themselves, yet they tried to keep Kienast, along with his obsession, at a safe distance. He was considered weird, a person who had to be allowed to have his way and be told to stop only if he was about to mix one up in some dark or unclean business. That’s what happened this time. Dr. Kienast waited for a while to see if the other man would do his bidding, but he did not. And not as if expressing disapproval, but as if he hadn’t even heard Kienast’s request.

Typically, Dr. Kienast would be stunned and mumble to himself.

He could not fathom why others were satisfied with so little of the obtainable knowledge, or what they did with their natural human interest or professional curiosity.

When he had finished the requisite tests, the coroner declared that the death of the well-kempt, well-nourished unknown male, about fifty years old, most likely occurred a few minutes before being discovered by that early morning runner.

Though possibly it happened a little later.

What’s more, it might also be possible, Dr. Kienast added somewhat sarcastically, that the corpse is still alive.

This man is a very recent corpse, replied the slightly insulted coroner, go on, look at him, please. He raised the lifeless hand, showed Kienast the fingernails, and then let the hand drop. And as if that had not been sufficient, he pressed his fingers into the corpse’s thigh muscles.

It’s possible, he went on explaining, that he gave up the ghost during the ten minutes it took your men to get to the scene in your cars. If that runner had come across him earlier, or reported him earlier, or if you and your coppers hadn’t fussed around so much, the ambulance people might possibly have revived him.

Dr. Kienast asked whether the body wasn’t in too good shape to have succumbed to a heart attack.

The coroner laughed, relieved, and asked him to stop his stupidities, he was talking like an amateur.

Oh, no, Dr. Kienast pleaded; he merely asked the question in such a silly way because he was wondering whether they should be investigating in an entirely different direction.

If he were fond of hairsplitting, replied the coroner, who did not quite see where Kienast was going with his strange reasoning, he would agree that, at first glance, the heart attack might not have been inevitable, but that is no basis for judgment.

Let’s wait for the autopsy, he added after a brief silence.

Doesn’t look like a used-up body, Dr. Kienast insisted.

Look at his legs, his chest, didn’t have a belly, must have swum or played tennis or who knows what, but he exercised seriously. And we’d better take samples from his abdomen and loins, he added casually, there is a good-size sperm spot on his underpants, and please take a sample from his anus too.

Who knows, the sperm may not be his. We should also know something more concrete about the mode of the intercourse. Judging by the look of his penis, he was not participating in a vaginal or anal pleasure.

He was very sorry, replied the coroner impatiently, but to say anything more or anything else now would be sheer irresponsibility. He must have a more thorough examination. Of course, he would have the sperm looked at especially. He would probably receive Dr. Kienast’s wish list, as usual. As to the corpse’s legs and his exercises, he thought that in his younger days the man bicycled a lot.

Why didn’t I think of that, the detective cried out in surprise.

The swollen veins, of course, the man definitely did bicycle.

And then everything continued on in the usual way.

In those anxious days, by the way, many people died of apoplexy or heart failure unexpectedly, suddenly, but on all the others there were identifying documents.

The weather changed all the time; now it was warm as if spring were coming; now the temperature dropped and it became bitter cold. Dry cold with some snowflakes. As if the weather wanted to contribute to the general upheaval.

The corpse was wheeled out through the other door and pushed into its temporary place. Cooled somewhat, that is where it would wait for its autopsy and the legal permits for samples to be taken from it. There was a small spot on its neck. Someone must have hugged him from behind, surprising him, and clung to him with lips stuck to his neck so vehemently, perhaps even bit him, as to “kiss out” the skin, as Hungarians would say, causing a black-and-blue spot, a love bite or hickey. Someone who had not seen him for a long time. Neither the coroner nor Kienast spoke of this, though both knew that this mark had to be recorded immediately. They’d pour dental wax over it, the negative would be filled with dental plaster, thus gaining an imprint of a stranger’s lips or teeth, which might determine the outcome of a case, because it might be the culprit’s lips or the teeth of the last eyewitness.

Thus far, no one had had a chance to compare the student’s statements with the coroner’s opinion.

Nor had anyone asked what the hell such a seemingly well-situated gentleman was looking for at night or at dawn in the disreputable park, or, if he had not been a corpse for very long, why was it that the snow on his arms and shoulders had not melted. Anyway, the detective still had many other things to take care of in the other case, of the patricidal girl. He also knew there was no point in racking his brain before he had all the forensic evidence in hand. The mother did not take the blame upon herself as an act of self-sacrifice but because it was her only chance for an acquittal. If her daughter admitted her deed, the mother could be punished for continued complicity. Sometimes it was better that Kienast put his cases to sleep in his mind, letting them continue working on a solution by themselves. And when in the afternoon, half-asleep and tired, with barely enough energy to mail some of the completed reports to the Public Prosecutor’s Office and to the Federal Investigation Department very quickly, his glance fell on the young man’s name again: Döhring.

Interesting, how these deeply neurotic characters enroll, if they can, to study psychology and philosophy. Which rather harms than improves their chances. In a few years, they become much smarter, but this does not necessarily make them more aware of their own problems.

He laughed aloud, and when he saw the young man’s address, Fasanen Street, he added several contented nods to his self-contented laughter. The young man has no worries, can go about getting educated with no fear of going to the poorhouse, he thought to himself, and then he quickly put the freshly opened file into an envelope—that is to say, assigned it to his current cases.

And early the following morning, the student, just as he had planned before, took the train out of the city.

The Creator Wanted It This Way

Whenever he left the city, he always felt as if he were giving up something for good, as if he had irretrievably left something behind. He paid little attention to these passing feelings, though he did register them at some level, because they offended his life principles.

He had nothing but contempt for sentimental people; he rejected emotions. Not to mention a kind of involuntary and irrepressible trembling that confused him completely. It reminded him of disorders and agitations he had otherwise carefully ejected from his memory. He had no idea where the trembling came from or how it left his bones and muscles, but he decided that the previous day had been much too emotional for him and he had better forget the whole thing. He didn’t want to bother with the act of forgetting either. To be precise, he was busy trying to forget about forgetting things.

From his present point of view, the city looked like a vast and bleak shunting yard. His train clattered across switches; birch trees were growing between abandoned tracks.

If he had taken his feelings seriously, if he had not rejected them, if he had allowed them to work on him at their own pace, he would have had to let his own bitterness and loneliness come too close, everything that caused his unhappiness and that he could not and would not want to acknowledge.

He had lived in the city for two years but had neither friends nor acquaintances. How else could he explain this except that this was the way he wanted it to be.

He did not say that yes, I am a prematurely embittered, rather sad person and the reason I chose to study these sciences is to steel myself against constant suffering, to give my mind some means to battle my gaping doubts, and perhaps these studies will help me find out what makes me suffer.

Listen, people, he would have shouted, all day long I pretend that everything is all right, but that makes me suffer even more. Help me, somebody, anybody, come, knock on my door, break down my door, anytime. No, he did the exact opposite. He allowed his feelings to come close in his mind only so that his mind would keep lifting the burden of his soul. In this way everything went on its predetermined course in a normal fashion. He told himself that a person was condemned to be solitary from the outset, every person was lonely, and people deceived themselves most when, given their reproductive urge, they looked for an excuse to establish a lasting companionship and then claimed that in the other person they’d found their famed happiness. Let them look to themselves. That would turn into their greatest grief. They know this in advance, still they go ahead. He is the more fortunate for having no inclination toward such self-deception. He can see that others do nothing all day but hate, miss, desire, adore, and possess one another, while he desires no one, misses no one, gets along fine by himself, and therefore has no one to torture or hate. A profitable situation: he can afford to observe dispassionately what those unfortunate ones, defenseless against themselves and everybody else, are doing to one another.