“You’re joking, aren’t you?”
“Let’s go upstairs.”
“Kris, I’m not budging from the spot until you’ve told me what we’re doing here.”
“Please, come upstairs with me, then—”
“Look, are you deaf or what?” Tamara breaks in, glancing at her watch. “I’ll give you two minutes, then I’m taking the tram home.”
Kris just looks at her. His expression scares Tamara. She doesn’t know what he’s thinking, or if indeed he’s thinking. She finds herself imagining a fish in an aquarium with its fixed, unapproachable expression.
I’ve slept with your brother!
she wants to yell at him. Kris nods once, very slightly, as if he’s made a decision, and goes to the trunk. He waits till Tamara is standing next to him. For one cruel moment she’s sure that the woman’s corpse is back in the trunk.
Sorry, all that to-ing and fro-ing
, Kris would say,
but we’ve got to hang her back up on the wall
.
In the trunk there’s a blanket, under the blanket there’s a pair of pliers, a flashlight, the dirty sleeping bag that they transported the corpse
in, and the two shovels from the shed. Kris’s voice reaches her ears as if from a long way off.
“Meybach called. We’ve got a new job.”
It’s her fourth cigarette, it’s her last cigarette. Tamara lets it fall to the ground and grinds it into the concrete.
“Did you know I only smoked if Frauke offered me a cigarette?”
“Everybody knows it.”
She studies the remains of the cigarette at her feet. Ash. Tobacco. A flattened filter. She rests her bottom against the passenger door. Kris sits facing her on a doorstep.
“I loved her, did you know that?”
Kris nods, he knows that. Tamara regrets opening her mouth.
We all loved her
, she thinks, and wants Kris to say it. Just once. She can clearly read the traces of the last few days on his face. His cheekbones stand out starkly, and in the lamplight his short hair looks as if it’s been cropped to the scalp.
“We all loved her,” he says. “But it has nothing to do with this business here, Tammi.”
“Why won’t you talk about Frauke?”
“What is there to say? She’s dead, and there’s nothing to be done about that. Of course I’m sad, of course I could cry, but our problem up there …”
He points to the apartment building.
“… is more important. We can talk about Frauke later, but I want to get through this quickly without starting any new ethical discussions about where and how the corpse is buried. That’s why you’re here and Wolf isn’t. And anyway I’m not sure how Wolf would react to a second corpse.”
“You don’t know how I’m going to react either.”
“You’re stronger than Wolf, you’re better equipped to deal with it.”
Tamara laughs.
“That’s a compliment.”
“You’re welcome.”
Kris stands up and knocks the dust off his backside. He walks around the car, gets the sleeping bag out of the trunk, puts the pliers in his jacket pocket, and shuts the trunk again.
“Whatever you decide,” he says. “I’m going upstairs now.”
Tamara puts out her hand and Kris gives her the sleeping bag. They cross the street side by side and walk into the building.
The door to the apartment is open, and the smell of cleaning stuff still hangs in the air. They glance into the kitchen and the bathroom before stepping into the living room. There is a man hanging on the wall. His feet float inches above the floor. His face has been beaten bloody.
“Relax,” says Kris.
“I am relaxed.”
“You’re not relaxed, Tammi, you’re breaking my arm.”
Tamara looks down; her hand is gripping his forearm. She lets go and shakes her fingers as if they’ve gone to sleep.
Please, Kris, don’t say anything now
.
Kris walks over to the corpse and takes a piece of paper out of the dead man’s jacket pocket. He looks him in the face. The blood isn’t just coming from the wound in his forehead. The man’s nose has been smashed in, and his lower lip has burst. Kris unfolds the piece of paper; the words are the same as they were on the one found on the woman.
“That mural again,” Tamara says and touches the wall, which is still damp.
“Let’s get started,” says Kris. “We’ll take the corpse down and …”
He stops and glances at the dead man.
“What is it?” asks Tamara.
“Don’t you think it’s strange that his eyes are open? The woman’s eyes were, too, do you remember?”
Tamara remembers how weird she found it that the woman’s eyes were closed later, when they came back from the hardware store. She also remembers what she thought:
Perhaps she got tired waiting for us to come back
.
Kris goes and stands right in front of the corpse, with his head on one side as if he was trying to find the right angle of vision.
“If someone hammered a nail through my forehead, I’d close my eyes tight, believe me.”
Kris leans closer to the dead man’s face.
“Look at this.”
“Kris, I—”
“Please, Tamara, look at this.”
Tamara comes and stands beside him. She sees the dried blood, which has followed the folds and wrinkles in the skin and is flaking off in places,
she sees the dust on the dead man’s eyelashes, the little veins in the open eyes, and the look that disappears into nothingness.
“When I spoke to Meybach the first time, he asked me if we’d taken a good look at the corpse. He said we could look all over anywhere, but the answer would still be in the eyes.”
“You mean something along the lines of
the eyes are the windows of the soul?”
“Something like that.”
Tamara shrinks back. “Sorry. I don’t see anything.”
“Because there’s nothing to see, we’re dealing with a dead person here. Wherever his soul has gone, his eyes aren’t going to help us much …”
Kris stops talking and turns around as if someone had tapped him on the shoulder. He stares at the opposite wall as if he’d never seen a wall before. Now Tamara sees it too. A little photo is pinned to the wallpaper at eye level. It shows two boys on a street; they’re balancing on one bicycle without their feet touching the ground.
Kris crosses the room and pulls the pin out of the wall. He holds the photo with outstretched fingers as if he didn’t want to dirty it. Tamara goes over to join him.
“How could we not have noticed that?” she says.
“We had other things on our plate.”
Kris points at the dead man’s head.
“Look at the height. It’s a line. Meybach wanted his victim to see the photograph even in death.”
Kris holds the photograph at a distance, as if he could recognize the boys in it better that way. He turns it over. The other side is blank. He looks back at the two boys and says, “Who are you? And what are you doing here?”
After Kris has put the photograph in his wallet, he takes the pliers out of his jacket. Tamara turns away.
“I’ll wait outside.”
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“I said, I—”
“Tammi, you can’t go, I won’t be able to do this on my own. If I could do it on my own I wouldn’t have brought you along. Someone has to hold him up so that the weight …”
He taps the pliers against his forehead.
“… is taken off the nail.”
“You want me to touch him?”
Tamara can hear that her voice sounds shrill.
“As far as I’m concerned you can pull the nails out as well if you feel like it.”
“Kris, stop it.”
“Come on, Tammi, it won’t take long. It’s just two nails. Please, don’t leave me hanging here.”
“Kris, that’s not funny.”
“It wasn’t meant to be. Please grab his hips and lift him up, I’ll do the rest.”
Tamara walks over to the dead man. She puts her hands on his hips, feels his belly and grips harder. The man’s fat shifts and there’s a gurgling sound.
“Don’t let go,” says Kris.
Tamara feels as if she’s going to throw up.
“Just don’t lose it on me.”
She can see him closing the dead man’s eyes.
“Can you get it a bit higher?”
She supports the corpse with her shoulder as well.
“That’s fine.”
Kris tries to use the pliers and swears. The nail is deep in the forehead. He can’t find the head of the nail, he pushes the pliers further into the flesh and is relieved that no blood comes out. The pliers hit something hard and grip the head of the nail.
“OK, I’ve got it.”
There’s a sucking sound, then a jerk, and the corpse slips down a bit. Panicking, Tamara wraps her arms around the dead man’s hips and feels that his trousers are wet. Kris supports the corpse with his free hand.
“He’s just slipped a bit,” he says. “Now I’m going to get—”
“Please, stop blabbering and get this over with.”
Kris drops the nail on the floor and stands on tiptoe to reach the hands, which are positioned one on top of the other. Tamara stares at a spot in the photomural and disappears into it. The good old bourgeois dream Germany of the 1960s. Forest with stag, lake with mountains all around it.
Why this ugly photomural? What’s going on in this lunatic’s head? And how long is Kris going to spend fumbling around up there? Please, let it be over soon, please
.
Tamara stands by the kitchen window, greedily breathing in the night air. The corpse is in the sleeping bag, the sleeping bag is in the corridor.
Tamara can hear Kris’s voice from the living room. She has an image in front of her eyes that she has never seen and never will see: Kris leaning forward, with the digital recorder to his lips, apologizing to the dead man. Tamara is surprised at how calm she is now. Kris was right, she’s strong. This time once again she had no problem pulling the zipper of the sleeping bag right up to the top.
I’m getting apathetic, I’m burning on both sides, I—
Kris joins Tamara at the window. They both look into the dark courtyard. Lights are on in only two apartments.
“Are you cold?”
“A bit.”
Kris puts his arm around her shoulders. It doesn’t warm her, but it’s pleasant.
“Will you get the car?”
It’s like a week ago. Tamara goes down the steps, opens both halves of the gate, gets into the car, and reverses into the courtyard.
It’s exactly like a week ago. Except that Wolf isn’t here and Frauke isn’t alive and I’m no longer the person I once was
. She gets out of the car and looks up at the façade of the building. Kris’s face appears as a pale patch in the darkness. They look at one another across a vertical distance of four stories. A man and a woman dealing with a dead man.
They aren’t stupid, they go to find the same spot in the forest. One side of the grave has caved in, and the ground is waterlogged in places. It takes them half an hour to get six feet down.
The corpse slides into the hole with a soft rustle, a dull thump, then silence. Kris and Tamara look at one another for a moment, then start filling in the grave. They don’t say a word, and both hope they will never see that sleeping bag again. When they leave the clearing, it looks as if they’d never been there.
T
HE HOUSE WELCOMES
him like an old friend. Every visit is a journey into the past. As soon as the door opens, Wolf is enveloped in an aroma of wood and apples, even though no one has stored apples in the larder for more than a decade. Along with the smell there are the noises, and the way they sound in the various rooms. The creaking of
the floorboards, the clanking of the radiators or the echoing silence as soon as the doors are closed and peace settles again. Smells, light, space, and all the traces that people leave over the years in a place where they’ve grown up. Every time he visits, Wolf deliberately looks for these traces. He calls it nostalgia, Kris calls it frustration. In his opinion Wolf has never gotten over their mother’s disappearance.
“Be honest. You’re waiting for her to come back to the house one day and call you down to breakfast.”
Wolf knows his brother is right, but he would never admit it. Especially not in front of Lutger. Since their mother left them, their father insists that his sons call him by his first name, explaining that Father was too formal for him.
Kris and Wolf heard from their mother for the last time after the divorce was final. She said goodbye in a marvelously colorful postcard, and wished them all the best for their lives. The card had also been signed by someone called Eddie. When the brothers wanted to know who this Eddie was, Lutger changed the subject.
That was sixteen years ago, and since then they haven’t spoken about their mother. But although Wolf never mentions her, she still lives like a ghost in the house. Whenever he visits his father, he thinks he hears her movements, her quiet humming in the bathroom, the whisper of the curtains closing as she passes from room to room on the ground floor at night, or the gentle drumming of her fingertips as she waits impatiently for the coffee to percolate. Her constant presence is another reason why he likes going back to his childhood home.
“Man, am I glad you’re here.”
Lutger behaves as if he hasn’t seen Wolf for ages, though this morning they were standing six feet apart at Frauke’s funeral. Wolf knows what his father means.
As if Frauke’s death had separated us and brought us back together again
. They hug and hold each other tight. The smell of fresh-baked bread and chili comes from the kitchen.
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?”
They go into the kitchen, and Lutger points at the stove. Wolf leans forward and sees two loaves of bread.
“I couldn’t help it. I was just making chili when I had the idea of making some bread dough, and in the end I suddenly fancied some noodles. Fresh homemade noodles, you remember how delicious they are? So, what’ll you have?”
“I’ll take the chili.”
“Chili it is, then.”
Wolf sets the table as Lutger puts the dishes on mats, talking constantly as he does so. It’s always been like this. As if he had to fill their mother’s place with words. Wolf wonders, not for the first time, what it would be like if Lutger had left the house rather than their mother.
Where would I be now? Who would I be?
After dinner he goes upstairs to his old room to look for photographs. Tamara had asked him to. In the mid-nineties Wolf went through a phase of recording every day. He developed the films himself, and they fill countless albums that Lutger keeps in one of the cupboards.