He tapped the boy on the forehead. Gently. The boy recoiled. They looked at each other. The boy who was a man, who didn’t want to be a boy. And him. The man who wasn’t there. He asked the first question.
“Why?”
“What?”
“Tell me why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you kill her?”
The boy has jerked back as if the man had tried to hit him. It was like an answer. The man thinks it was an unambiguous answer.
Guilt
.
“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
“Good,” said the man, “good. Let’s start over again.”
He looked at the boy, he waited, then he repeated:
“Why did you kill her?”
The boy looked down and spat. The man looked at the spit on the carpet. Suddenly the boy jumped up. The man sat where he was, he didn’t flinch by so much as a millimeter. The noose dug into the boy’s neck and pulled him back onto the chair. He sat still again, red in the face and breathing heavily.
“If you relax, the pressure will gradually ease.”
The boy tried to relax.
“Poor boy.”
“I’m … I’m not a boy,” came the tight-lipped reply.
“Poor, poor boy.”
“I said, I’m …”
The man stretched out his hand and wiped a tear from the boy’s cheek. The boy tried to turn his head away, and the noose made him grimace.
“Fanni.”
“What?”
“Her name was Fanni.”
“I don’t know any Fanni.”
“She was my daughter. First you drove into the forest with her corpse, but then something happened. You had an argument, didn’t you? You changed your minds and buried her on your property. Why on earth?”
The boy tried to reply, but the man raised his hand.
“Don’t try to deny it. I watched it all, you understand? I saw it. Her name was Fanni. She was my daughter, and now she’s lying two floors above us.”
The boy looked at the cellar ceiling; when he lowered his eyes again, the man was holding his hands out to him.
“I had to dig up Fanni with my own hands. It was very undignified,
what you did to my girl. How could you bring yourselves to nail her to a wall? Tell me why you did that? Come on, talk to me. Why?”
The boy lowered his head, his voice was a murmur.
“… Shit, oh fucking shit, I knew we wouldn’t get away with it. I knew, knew, knew it, I …”
The man made the boy talk, he was patient, he had nurtured lots of boys in his life, and could tell when they broke and when they healed again. This boy was no exception. The man waited and said not a single word. Then the boy began to tell his story.
That was yesterday, now a new day has dawned, it’s Sunday, 9:21 in the morning, and the girl and the brother are running out of the villa. They’re barefoot, they must just have woken up. The man imagines how one of them looked out the window and discovered the lilies on the ground. Now they’re running. The man wishes he could see the expressions on their faces more clearly. Stop time and look at them from all sides. And if he could freeze-frame it, he would take the boat, row across, and stand next to them. He would like to smell their fear. Smell betrays so much. He doesn’t know who he should focus the binoculars on, so he tries to keep them both in view. As they kneel on the ground and push the lilies aside and start digging. They’re using their hands. They don’t even think of the spades in the shed.
Not yet
. He watches them, their mouths move, then the girl jumps up and runs to the shed.
Clever girl
, he thinks.
Yesterday the man learned the truth from the boy one piece at a time. He was amazed at what a story like this could mean, and was surprised when he heard that the second woman was dead. Frauke. How could so much happen in the short time that he was in the hospital?
“An agency that apologizes?”
“It was my brother’s idea.”
“Your brother must be pretty bright.”
“Please, that’s all I know. Can we bring this to an end now?”
The boy looked over at the cellar door.
“Can I go now? That’s really all I know.”
The man tilted his head, the boy went on talking hastily:
“I’m really sorry about what happened to your daughter. It wasn’t us. We didn’t do anything to—”
“And you never saw Meybach?” the man interrupted him.
“I never saw Meybach. How many more times do I have to say that?”
“And if Meybach were to come down the stairs now and claim the opposite, what would happen then?”
“Then he would be a liar.”
“Tell me his address again.”
The boy repeated it. The man nodded, he was content.
“And Karl?” he asked.
“Who’s Karl?”
The man smiled.
“You know who I mean.”
The man read in the boy’s face that he knew who Karl was. But he read more than that. Karl was no more.
The man got to his feet, turned out the light, and went upstairs. He ignored the boy’s screams and entreaties.
Karl
, he thought,
Fanni
, he thought and sat for a while in the living room and could think of nothing but his children.
Hours later the man came back. This time he didn’t sit down. “Can I believe you?”
“Why should I lie?”
“I bear the responsibility here, it wouldn’t be a good idea to lie to me.”
“Responsibility for what?”
“Responsibility for your life. For the lives of your friends. Do you know what that means? It’s a burden. I’m an old man. I can’t bear as much as I used to before. Before, none of this would have been a problem, but I have a weak heart. I’m cold and tired. Do you understand?”
The boy didn’t understand.
The man said it didn’t really matter. He put his hands on his knees and leaned forward as if talking to a five-year-old. In a quiet voice he said:
“Let’s start all over again from the beginning. Tell me why you killed my children.”
The boy started crying.
“What did you do to Karl? Where is he? What did you do to Fanni? And why? Speak to me, boy, speak to me.”
The boy closed his eyes tight and said he’d told him everything already, he repeated it again and again.
“I’ve told you everything, I swear it.”
The man just smiled.
Then the boy turned noisy.
“
WE’RE A FUCKING AGENCY, OK? WE APOLOGIZE FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVEN’T THE BALLS TO DO IT THEMSELVES, DO YOU GET THAT? IS THAT WHY I’M HERE? ARE YOU SOME KIND OF RELIGIOUS FANATIC? DID THE CHURCH SEND YOU
?”
“I’m here because of Fanni,” the man said calmly. “I’m here because of Karl. No one sent me.”
The boy’s voice turned into a whisper, the rage was gone, giving way to resignation.
“I’ve said everything there is to say. He told us it was a normal job. I walked into that apartment, and there was the woman’s corpse …”
“Fanni.”
“Yes, for fuck’s sake, Fanni! We just did what he wanted. He threatened us. All of us. And anyway she was dead.”
“I know. I was in the apartment, I saw her.”
The boy shook his head.
“There was no one there but us.”
The man smiled again.
“I’m innocent,” said the boy. “We’re all innocent.”
“No, that’s not how I see it,” said the man.
“If you were innocent, you wouldn’t be here. I am the punishment, do you understand? No? It’s quite simple. Life has a balance of its own. Ask yourself the question again: How could I have managed to bring you here if you were innocent? Equilibrium is everything. You take something, you give something. You can’t just take. Don’t you believe in equilibrium? Don’t you believe in good and evil? I’m good in this case, I know that, but I’m not sure what you are. Are you evil?”
The boy reared up. The nylon tape cut into his neck, it pulled itself tighter around his wrists. The boy didn’t let that stop him. His words were poison.
“I’M FUCKING GOOD, YOU SICK FUCK.
YOU TIED ME UP HERE,
YOU DRAGGED ME HERE AND TIED ME UP THEY
WERE ALREADY
DEAD WHEN WE FOUND THEM DON’T YOU GET THAT?
YOUR DAUGHTER AND YOUR SON WERE ALREADY DEAD
.”
The boy sank back into the chair. His face purple, his breathing heavy. The man saw that this wasn’t going to work for much longer. He told him what he thought. That was how it had always been.
“And how did that just sound? If you ask me, that didn’t sound like
good. Good
is like a song. It’s melody. That wasn’t a song, I heard no melody. Tell me, do you feel guilty?”
Quiet, meek:
“Yes, of course, of course I feel guilty.”
“Can I just let you go like that?”
“Please, I told you I was sorry.”
“I asked. I can’t let you go like that.”
The boy nodded. There was hope in his face. The man went to the workbench and picked up the pillowcase.
“That’s not necessary,” the boy said quickly and turned his face away.
“It is very necessary, I don’t want you to learn where you can find me. How stupid do you think I am?”
He pulled the pillowcase over the boy’s head. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. He told him everything would be fine. He also told him not to worry.
“Stay calm,” said the man, and injected the Isoflurane into the boy’s upper arm.
Less than two minutes have passed since the girl and the brother ran out of the villa. The man feels as if he can control time. Every time he holds his breath, everything outside freezes, and only starts moving again when he breathes out.
The brother kneels on the earth and digs without interruption. When the girl comes out of the shed with no spades, he ignores her and goes on digging. The man knows what the girl is saying. He can read it on her lips.
The spades are gone
. He could call out to her where she would find the spades. The man has made sure it won’t be easy for them. He wants them to go back to the source. He wants to see them kneeling on the ground and fighting against fate. He wants them to suffer the greatest doubts. And as he sees them digging there, he thinks:
It isn’t the guilt that you’re living with, it’s your failure that makes you kneel in the dirt
. The man is pleased with this thought. Everything comes to a close. He lifts his hand and puts it to the windowpane as if waving to them. He notices the dirt under his fingernails and brings his hand back down. He shuts his eyes and wonders what it would be like to connect their pain with his. It would be the purest form of all emotions. It would be love.
T
AMARA CAN’T BELIEVE THE
spades have disappeared. She remembers exactly which wall they were leaning against. She rages through the shed, she overturns the wheelbarrow and is in such a panic that the room seems to quiver in front of her eyes. She looks in the corners, she looks behind the bicycles, she runs back outside.
“The spades are gone!”
Kris doesn’t react, his hands shovel the soil aside. Sweat runs into his eyes, the breath leaves his mouth with a hiss. Tamara can see that he didn’t even notice she had gone. She crouches down beside him. They go on digging.
With every movement her arms get heavier and heavier. Tamara can’t go on. Her fingers are bleeding, her knees hurt. Kris, on the other hand, digs like a machine. He shovels the soil backward, rams his fingers into the dirt again, squats tirelessly in the excavated trench. And as Tamara watches him for a moment she understands what’s wrong with this situation, and feels laughter rising up in her. Pure hysteria.
“He isn’t here,” she says.
Kris carries on. Tamara grabs him by the arm.
“Kris, he isn’t here,” she repeats emphatically. “It’s a bad joke.”
Kris looks at her.
At last
, Tamara thinks, wishing at the same time that he would go on digging. Something in his eyes. Blank, hard, strange.
“Let go of me.”
“Wolf isn’t here, Meybach’s playing with us. It’s nonsense, just think about it, why should he—”
“Tamara, let go of me, or I’ll break your arm!”
She flinches and lets go of him. Kris goes on digging. He is no longer looking at her. His next words hurt.
“Go into the house if you can’t keep at it.”
Tamara hesitates. She wants to believe it’s just a bad joke, she doesn’t want Kris to take this hope away from her. Wolf walking through the gate and asking what they’re doing.
Please
. Wolf, calling out from one of the windows to ask what they’re up to.
Please, come
. In that case it would all be nothing but the black humor of a lunatic, who has made them bury two corpses over the past week.
Nothing more than that.
Tamara gouges her fingers into the earth again and goes on digging.
• • •
“Kris?”
“What?”
“Kris, I …”
The skin is like rubber. The skin is cold and not of this world. Tamara has found the right arm. It’s the hand with the bandage. The hand feels alien and wrong. As if all its bones were broken. No resistance. The wrist looks as if cords have cut into the flesh. Tamara immediately wants to tend to the wound, she wants to wash it and put a bandage on it. Kris reaches for the hand. Tamara starts frantically shoving the soil away from around it. She doesn’t want to but she looks up. Kris has pressed the hand to his face. Soil, dirt, two fingers covering his mouth. Tamara wants to scream, she chokes on the air and coughs, she stares down and keeps digging. A shoulder, she reveals a naked shoulder. She looks for his face, while Kris whimpers beside her, no words, just quiet whimpering.
There’s a pillowcase around Wolf’s head. The fabric is damp from the soil, a washed-out green with an embroidered lily. Kris tries to pull the fabric off Wolf’s head and can’t do it. Tamara leans forward and bites a hole in it with her teeth. She tastes detergent and soil. Kris enlarges the hole, the fabric rips and there is Wolf’s face, and Wolf looks as if he’s sleeping. Not a crumb of soil sullies his face, he is pale, his skin almost transparent.
As if he weren’t there
, thinks Tamara, and turns away and weeps into her dirty hands and sinks sideways and lies doubled-up in the trench and hears Kris uttering noises that she’s never heard before. Like a wounded animal forced to watch its young being murdered.