Tretjak (9 page)

It had been just before Christmas, about six months ago, when they had talked about their respective sons. Charlotte had only then learnt that Lars had just been indicted again for GBH. She told Paul about it and poured out her heart with her complete tale of woes. Up to this point, she had not even known that Paul also had a son. Paul, whose last name was Tretjak, said: ‘Lars is still a child. He is no monster and will not become one.' He knew all about monsters. For many years he had had no contact with his son Gabriel. But one thing was certain: he deserved the attribute monster. And as Paul Tretjak had said back then, he was well aware that it was partly his fault that his son had become a monster.

She rummaged around in her bag for her mobile phone and dialled the number for Paul Tretjak. It rang three times before he answered.

‘Hello, Charlotte.'

She liked to hear his voice, liked how he pronounced her first name with the emphasis on
Charlotte
. They had not switched to the informal way of addressing each other that long ago. ‘Hello, Paul. Where are you?'

‘Where I always am. Above the clouds, you know?'

Above the clouds
, that meant in his little house high above the Lago Maggiore, above the village of Maccagno. The hut had three rooms, over two floors. Big windows with a direct view of the lake and the adjacent mountains. It was in the centre of a huge plot of land with palms and fruit trees and even a bit of forest on the steep slope. There was only one drawback: it could not be reached by car. One had to climb a very steep path to reach it, which took about 20 minutes from the village.

She had a mental image of Tretjak, with his mobile pressed to his ear, walking up and down in the living room, in front of the fireplace, then outside on the terrace. He was big and sturdy, and nobody would have guessed that he would turn 70 this year. She briefly pondered whether there were any similarities between father and son, the man above the clouds and the other that she had observed in the Italian restaurant in Munich. Describing people's appearances was not her strong point. One thing was sure: they were both quite good looking.

‘What's the situation? What's up?' Tretjak asked.

‘Lars made a run for it. With my money. The same old story again.'

‘Where did he run to?'

‘I only know that he took a taxi to the station.'

‘Do you think he is now in Munich?' Tretjak asked.

‘I have no idea. I don't know.' Both were silent for a while, then she asked: ‘Anything new on your side?'

‘Yes,' he answered, ‘you can try again with my son. Again in the restaurant Osteria, the day after tomorrow, from 8pm onwards.'

‘May I ask you a question, Paul?'

‘Sure, what?'

‘You have had no contact with your son for years. How do you know where and when he dines out?'

Instead of answering, Paul Tretjak said in conclusion of their conversation: ‘Charlotte, I'll get into my car tomorrow morning and will be with you in Kochel by midday.'

 

Sintra, Portugal, 5pm

The dark green Rover, which had been made available for her, went well with the colour of the hedges. Coincidence or planning? Everything in this hotel was very tasteful: the colour of the carpets in the reception area, the covers of the antique furniture, the precious wallpaper. Melanie Schwarz admired how everything came together in a harmonic way, as if it had grown organically over centuries. The hotel Palacio de Seteais had been the ancestral home of the family of the Marquês de Marialva. An alley of perfectly clipped eucalyptus trees lined the drive. The view from the windows and from the terraces stretched down over the city of Sintra to the Atlantic.

It was late afternoon. Melanie Schwarz parked the Range Rover near the hotel entrance under one of the trees there and thought of her house in Potsdam. Peter Schwarz was a generous man, and they had put a lot of effort into the decoration and had had the help of an interior designer, who was a friend. But if she was honest, her house had never really radiated any warmth, any character.

How might Peter be? When she thought of him, her stomach contracted into a tight knot. She had now been here, on the Portuguese coast, for five days, for five days and five nights, and the hours had curiously merged into each other. She could not tell any more when she had sat in the magnificent dining hall, whether she had eaten at all or whether she had only picked at her food, how many times she had gone down to the pool only to get up from the sun lounger again after a short time, and how many hours she had paced up and down the stone terrace of her room at night. Since her departure from Germany she had spoken to no one. Only once had she received a message, from Gabriel Tretjak, that everything was proceeding according to the agreed plan.

Had she made a mistake? Should she not have spoken to her husband and daughter herself? What was her new life worth, if it had been built by another, a stranger? What was her old life worth, if it was destroyed by a kind of demolition firm? This Tretjak fellow had been nice enough, and when he had been sitting across from her and had talked to her in that clear, calm way, she had been so sure that it was the right thing she was doing. One accepted the help of others so often in one's life, the help of professionals, whenever one got stuck oneself, when one's own capabilities were not enough any more, to fix a dripping faucet, to sort out the children's problems with their school work, or to clear a skin rash... and she had got stuck.

But now, when Tretjak was no longer there and in her head had slowly morphed from a real person into an almost imaginary idea, he appeared to her increasingly scary. Last night she had almost got up and gone, packed her bags, left the hotel, and driven to the airport at Lisbon to check in for the next available flight to Germany. She could have begged Peter's forgiveness, she could have made it all go away... However, there were also the other emotions mixed into the cocktail which had kept her hovering for days between exhaustion, fatigue and delirious nervousness. Feelings of wild happiness, for instance, which suddenly and unexpectedly took hold of her, brought on by totally banal impressions, the smell of clean laundry, the sight of an old woman sitting outside a café. Wild happiness, looking forward to a new life, a taste of everyday life.

In most hotels known to Melanie Schwarz the reception desk dominated the entrance hall, broad, heavy and ugly. Not so in the Palacio de Seteais. Here you could almost entirely miss it, the way it hid in a tiny niche, shy, as if it did not want to disturb the harmony of the beautiful room. The package, which the receptionist handed her, was about 40 centimetres long, 20 centimetres wide and 10 centimetres high, was wrapped in brown paper, and had only a name as the sender: Gabriel Tretjak. The man at the desk was called Senhor João, and he looked like the actor Omar Sharif, whom Melanie's mother had adored. He explained to her that the package had been delivered by courier directly from the airport in Lisbon.

‘Thank you,' Melanie Schwarz said, but she was not sure that the words had actually left her mouth or if they had been suffocated by the beating of her heart. She took the package and went to her room. She carefully closed the door behind her, stepped out onto her terrace, and put the package on the big, round, stone table. Then she went back into the room and poured herself a glass of the Japanese whisky standing on on the chest of drawers. Somebody had made sure there had been a bottle of the stuff in her room when she arrived. Peter had brought this whisky back from a business trip to Japan and had claimed that real connoisseurs considered it the best in the world. Melanie did not really drink whisky, but in the following weeks it had grown on her, as she put it. It had become her companion, not just on social occasions, but also during long, lonely nights in her Potsdam home, when it made her put on her old records, made her drown in self-pity or egged on her aggressive determination, although most of the time, by the next morning, the only remnants of that determination had been discarded, like scrunched up drafts of letters.

Melanie Schwarz stepped in front of the wardrobe in her room and opened the doors. She would not have been able to say why, but she took a minidress from one of the hangers and placed it on the bed. It was light blue and the fancy tailored back revealed a delicate white lace ornament. She had bought it in a Berlin boutique; only a woman ten years younger can get away with wearing this, she had told the sales assistant. Girls that young can't afford this dress, the assistant retorted. Melanie Schwarz took off her jeans and tee-shirt and after a brief hesitation even her underwear. Then she slipped into the dress, for the first time since she had tried it on in the boutique. She climbed into white high heels, grabbed the glass of whisky she had poured herself, stepped out onto the terrace, and sat down at the stone table in front Gabriel Tretjak's package.

The brown wrapping paper revealed a box, grey carton, the lid held in place by a grey ribbon. Melanie Schwarz untied the ribbon and took off the lid. The box contained a pile of papers. On top lay a cover note on Tretjak's letterhead.
Dear Melanie Schwarz
, it read, written by hand with pen and ink.
You can rejoice, the waiting has come to an end.

Letters on paper have a different effect on people's brains than spoken words. The brain can quite easily reinterpret spoken words, can misunderstand what is meant, can adjust it to the individual's reality in a way that makes it bearable. Words on paper are
the
reality, merciless, without any feelings. The obituary in the newspaper, the good-bye note on the kitchen table, the job dismissal, the report card, the medical test results.

 

She was not patient enough to read the rest of Tretjak's letter and pushed it aside to investigate the rest of the papers. A ticket in her name for a flight, Lisbon-Frankfurt, tomorrow morning at 11.15am. The details of a flat in Heidelberg, Regenstrasse 3, fourth floor, three rooms and a small roof terrace. An information pack about a shop in the centre of Heidelberg, at the moment still occupied by a shop for outdoor clothing, but with a sign in the window announcing a closing-down sale. Rental agreements in her name. Melanie emptied the whisky glass in quick gulps. Her fingers trembled while she was leafing through the papers. The letter from a stable in the Taunus...
we are delighted to provide a good home for your animals
... The legal papers regarding the settlement of her divorce, including the scheduled hearing date in Berlin. The purchase agreement of a car, Mini Cooper convertible (dealer demonstration model), colour: black, owner: Melanie Schwarz. Registration: Heidelberg... The confirmation from a removal firm. The forms necessary for voter registration, for mail redirection. She took only fleeting notice of the papers and dispersed them on the table. What she was finally holding in her hands was an envelope, on it was only her first name, written in Peter's hand, the writing she knew so well from the way he had written love letters back then, a time which now felt very close again. She took only the letter, leaving everything else behind on the table, went back inside and lay down on the bed. She ripped open the envelope and read the first and the last sentences.
I am writing these lines calmly and with great understanding. You don't have to be afraid and you don't have to worry.
That was how it started. And the letter ended with the sentences:
Mr Tretjak wanted to pick you up from the airport in Frankfurt. But I thought it would be better if I did that. If somebody should deposit you in your new life, it should be an old friend, don't you think? Yours, Peter.

Melanie Schwarz began to cry. She kept her eyes fixed on the ceiling. The whole cocktail of despair and relief, embarrassment, joy and sadness flowed right and left over her cheeks on to the silk pillow cases.

 

Only later, when she appeared in the bar, where the high, open windows revealed an always spectacular sunset over the ocean, did she read the entire contents of the box. Even Tretjak's letter, and even the one paragraph in which he wrote that he thought it right that in the near future she should take care that her soul could handle this rather rapid change. He had taken the liberty and arranged a few appointments for her. The man who she was meant to consult on this matter was an expert; his name was Norbert Kufner, Professor Dr Norbert Kufner from Vienna.

Senhor João, who because of his black eyes and his grey, parted hair, was always asked about a certain resemblance to a famous actor, and who at this hour of the day was looking after the guests in the bar, noticed two things about Melanie Schwarz. She was a changed woman since he had handed her the package – she almost appeared intoxicated. And he noticed that she was wearing no underwear beneath her light blue dress. The hotel management had, of course, forbidden members of staff to start personal relationships with any of the guests. But Senhor João was the director of the Palacio de Seteais, a fact unknown to most of the guests, and he decided to continue to watch Melanie Schwarz and, if need be, ignore his own rules.

16 May

Munich, Buttermelcher Street, 10am

The editorial offices of the magazine Psychology Journal were located only a stone's throw away from Munich's famous Viktualienmarkt. Great location, Inspector August Maler thought, when he entered the office block and took the lift to the third floor. The building had three floors and housed several lawyers' practices and doctors' clinics, and one editorial office. Maler was a little surprised when the editor himself opened the door. The short, young man shook his hand. ‘Stefan Treysa, how do you do. Please come in, Inspector.'

The editorial offices had two rooms, both filled with heaps of paper and journals. Treysa led him into one of them and sat down at a desk; Maler took the place opposite him. The walls, the desk, the chairs, everything was white.

‘In case you were wondering,' Treysa said, ‘there is nobody else here except me. We have a few people working for the magazine, but they are all freelancers.' He closed his laptop, equally white, and asked whether the inspector wanted something to drink. Water? Coffee?