Incapable of living?
I must put a stop to it, he thought. I must get a grip. It’s Erich who’s dead, and me who’s still alive. All lives come to an end, some too soon, others too late. Nothing can change that eternal truth. And I don’t want to lose Ulrike.
Reinhart turned up at half past nine, half an hour late.
‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘Joanna has earache. Terribly painful, it seems. Did they have that in your day as well?’
Van Veeteren nodded. Reinhart noticed his half-empty glass, and signalled for two new ones.
‘How’s it going?’ Van Veeteren asked when the goods had been delivered, and each had taken a swig. Reinhart lit his pipe, and scratched his short, greying hair.
‘So-so.’
‘So-so?’ said Van Veeteren. ‘What the devil does that mean? Have you been stricken by aphasia?’
‘We haven’t made all that much progress,’ said Reinhart. ‘What do you expect? Do you want me to spell out every bloody detail?’
Van Veeteren tapped a cigarette against the table top, then lit it.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Every bloody detail. Please.’
It took quite a while, and when Reinhart had finished the music had started on the stage. Only a pianist and a dark-skinned lady singing in quite a low voice, so it wasn’t difficult to make oneself heard. Van Veeteren established that his earlier prejudices had been wide of the mark: the woman had a pleasantly low voice that reminded him of simmering velvet (in so far as velvet could possibly simmer, and produce sounds…), and while Reinhart was speaking the singing produced an attractive distancing effect. It seemed to swathe Erich’s death and all the associated circumstances in a sort of soft, almost sensuous shroud. It occurred to him that Erich would have liked that.
Grief and suffering, he thought. We can’t avoid that. All we can do is welcome it with open arms and treat it in the right way. Swathe it in art or rituals or whatever else we have at our disposal. But for goodness’ sake don’t just leave it lying in a corner like a ball of dust.
‘Anyway, that’s more or less it,’ said Reinhart. ‘We’ve got the killer surrounded — that character in the bar. It’s got to be him, everything suggests it’s him; but we don’t have any plausible hypotheses regarding what Erich was doing out there. Or was intending to do. You could speculate about various possibilities, of course: but I’d be misleading you if I claimed there was anything more to it than that.’
‘I understand,’ said Van Veeteren.
‘You’re still pretty keen on our nailing him, I take it.’
Van Veeteren glanced at the singer before answering. She was saying thank you for the sporadic applause, and announcing that there would be a brief interval.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Keener for every day that passes. I didn’t understand it properly at first, but it seems to be more or less rooted in one’s genes… You have to find your son’s murderer.’
‘Rooted in our culture, in any case,’ said Reinhart. ‘And in our mythology.’
‘Bollocks to whether it’s mythology or not,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I want you to catch him. Are you going to do that?’
‘I’ve already promised you I’ll do that,’ said Reinhart.
Van Veeteren thought for a moment.
‘Are you annoyed because I’m interfering?’ he asked. ‘For Christ’s sake say so if you are.’
Reinhart raised his glass.
‘I’d think it was damned odd if you didn’t. Cheers.’
‘Cheers,’ said Van Veeteren, and drained his glass. ‘Anyway, go home now and look after your daughter. I think I’ll sit here a bit longer and listen to that singer.’
‘Good for you,’ said Reinhart, getting to his feet.
17
After work on Friday he went to visit his father. It was over two months since he’d last been, and it was a way of passing the time. The Oesterle Care Home was in Bredenbuijk, just outside Loewingen: he took the route via Borsens in order to avoid the worst of the traffic, and arrived just after the evening meal had finished.
As usual, his father was sitting in his bed, gazing at his hands. It often took some time to get him to look up, but on this occasion he did so more or less immediately. He had barely managed to move the chair to the side of the bed and sit down before his father slowly raised his head and looked at him with those bloodshot, watery eyes of his. Just for a second there was a sign of recognition, but perhaps that was wishful thinking.
Why should he recognize him today when he hadn’t done so for the last six years?
After half a minute his father’s chin sank gradually down towards his chest, and he returned to studying his hands, which were lying on top of the blue blanket and slowly rotating around each other.
He sat there for ten minutes. He couldn’t stand it any longer than that. He couldn’t see a nurse or care assistant he recognized, and didn’t bother to ask about his father’s condition.
How is he? Is he all right?
Such questions were pointless. Had been pointless for several years; it felt better not to ask them. He had often wondered what the point was of keeping him alive, but nobody at the care home had so much as whispered the word euthanasia, and he didn’t want to be the first to do so. Besides, his sister in America would be against it, he knew that without needing to ask.
So his father just sat there. Never spoke to anybody, never read a book or a newspaper. Never watched television or listened to the radio. Didn’t even get up nowadays to go to the toilet. The only sign he gave of being in some sort of a conscious state was that he opened his mouth when a spoonful of food was approaching.
My father, he thought. One of these days I shall be like you are now. Nice to see you.
And he made up his mind that he would make the most of life while he still could.
That Friday night became very difficult. Bearing in mind that Vera would be coming the next day, he gave the whisky a miss. He didn’t want it to become a habit. And he didn’t want to overdo the Sobran tablets either. He took a weak sleeping tablet instead, but it only made him feel sluggish and slightly sick.
His decision to wait for Monday’s letter before deciding what to do next was of course the right one — the only conceivable one: but in no way did it mean that he could stop thinking about it.
Those persistent gloomy thoughts and images of what would happen to him. Speculations about what kind of scenario ‘a friend’ would propose for handing over the money this time. And about what he would be forced to do. Again.
Whether there was going to be any possibility of doing it.
Killing him.
Killing one last time and drawing a line once and for all under his former life. Without needing to sum it all up or look back at all. Simply waking up to a new, blank day.
He wished he were already at that point.
Wished it were all over. So he could make the most of his life while he still could?
The last time he looked at the clock it was ten minutes to six.
It was raining when he woke up a few hours later. Persistent rain, and a strong wind hurling it at the windows. He stayed in bed for a while, listening to it. Then he got up and had a shower.
He spent the morning and the early afternoon preparing the evening meal. Did some vacuuming and tidying up, and opened some bottles of wine to breathe. Sorted out the laundry as well. Shortly after two he had a call from Smaage, reminding him that the next meeting of the Fraternity was due to take place the coming Friday; they chatted for a while, and afterwards he was surprised at how easy he had found it. How uninhibited he’d been. After all, it had been immediately after the previous meeting that it had all begun. After that damned meeting of the ‘brothers’ his old, secure life had been brought to a halt, and everything had shot off in different directions. He promised Smaage that he would be there, provided nothing unforeseen cropped up — and it was when he said ‘unforeseen’ that he suddenly felt a flash of dizziness. Smaage wished him a pleasant weekend, and hung up.