When Kramer left after the inquest he told me he was going to Paris to re-join Erica and make a film on De Chirico for French TV. Apparently unperturbed he had continued to sleep in the guest bedroom, but it was several days before I could bring myself to go in and clean it out. In the waste-paper basket I found several magazines, a map of Paris, a crumpled napkin from the Bar Cercle with the message, “Monday, Rue Christine” scrawled on it and, to my alarm and intense consternation, a semi-transparent credit card receipt slip from a filling station on the M4 at a place no more than an hour’s drive from the house. This unsettled me. As far as I knew, Kramer had no car. And, what was more disturbing, the date on the receipt slip was the same as the night Joan died.
***
Erica is distinctly on edge. She says she has arranged to meet Kramer here tonight, as she has something to tell him. She picks at her lower lip distractedly.
“But anyway,” she says with vague annoyance, “what do you want him for?”
I shrug my shoulders. “I have to see him as well,” I say. “There’s something I have to clear up.”
“What is it?”
I almost tell her. I almost say, I want the truth. I want to know if he killed his wife. If he hired a car, drove to the house, found her alone and insensibly drunk, typed the note, put the pistol in her lolling mouth and blew the top of her head off.
But I don’t. I say it’s just a personal matter.
There is a pause in our conversation. I say to Erica, who nervously lights a cigarette, “Look, I think I should talk to him first.”
“No!” she replies instantly. “I must speak to him.” Speak to him about what? I wonder. It irritates me. Is Kramer to be hounded perpetually by these neurotic harpies? What has the man done to deserve this?
We see Kramer at the same time as he sees us. He strides over to our table. He stares angrily at me.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he demands in tones of real astonishment.
“I’m sorry,” I say, nervousness making my voice tremble. “But I have to speak to you.” It’s like being back at school.
Erica crushes out her cigarette and jumps to her feet. I can see she is blinking back tears.
“I have news for you,” she says, fighting to keep her voice strong. “Important news.”
Kramer grips her by the elbows. “Come back,” he says softly, pleadingly.
I am impatient with whatever lovelorn drama it is that they are enacting, and also obscurely angered by this demeaning display of reliance. Raising my voice I flourish the credit card receipt. “Kramer,” I say. “I want to know about this.”
He ignores me. He does not take his eyes from Erica. “Erica, please,” he entreats.
She lowers her head and looks down at her shaking hands.
“No,” she says desperately. “I can’t. I’m marrying Jean-Louis. I said I would tell you tonight. Please let me go.” She shakes herself free of his arms and brushes past him, out into the night. I am glad to see her go.
I have never seen a man look so abject. Kramer stands with his head bowed in defeat, his jaw muscles bulging, his eyes fixed — as if he’s just witnessed some dreadful atrocity. I despise him like this, so impoverished and vulnerable, nothing like the Kramer I knew.
I lean forward. “Kramer,” I say softly, confidingly. “You can tell me now. You did it, didn’t you? You came back that night while I was away.” I spread the slip of transparent paper on the table. “You see I have the facts here.” I keep my voice low. “But don’t worry, it’s between you and me. I just need to know the truth.”
Kramer sits down unsteadily. He examines the receipt. Then he looks up at me as if I’m quite mad.
“Of course I came back,” he whispers bitterly. “I drove back that night to tell Joan I was leaving her, that I wanted Erica.” He shakes his head in grim irony. “Instead I saw everything. From the garden. I saw you sitting in your study. You had a kind of bandage round your head. It covered one eye.” He points to my right eye. “You were typing with one hand. Your left hand. You only used one hand. All the time. I saw you take the gun from the drawer with your left hand.” He paused. “I knew what you were going to do. I didn’t want to stop you.” He stands up. “You are a sick man,” he says, “with your sick worries. You can delude yourself perhaps, but nobody else.” He looks at me as if he can taste vomit in his mouth. “I stood there and listened for the shot. I went along with the game. I share the guilt. But it was you who did it.” He turns and walks out of the café.
KRAMER IS LYING. It is a lie. The sort of mad impossible fantastic lie a desperate man would dream up. I know he is lying because I know the truth. It’s locked in my brain. It is inviolate. I have my body’s authority for it.
Still, there is a problem now with this lie he’s set loose. Mendacity is a tenacious beast. If it’s not nipped in the bud it’s soon indistinguishable from the truth. I told him he didn’t need to worry. But now …
He is bound to return to this melancholy bar before long. I know the banal nostalgia of such disappointed men — haunting the sites of their defeats — and the powerful impulses of unrequited love. I will have to see Kramer again; sort things out once and for all.
I signal the waiter for my bill. As I close my book a sentence at the bottom of the page catches my eye:
Many logicians and philosophers are deeply unhappy about bizarre situations.
A curse on them all, I say.
Gifts
We land in Nice. Pan Am. I go through customs without much trouble and stand around the arrivals hall wondering what to do next — if there’s a bus into town; whether I should get a taxi. I see a man — black hair, white face, blue suit — looking curiously at me. I decide to ignore him.
He comes over, though.
“Tupperware?” he asks unctuously. He pronounces it tooperwère.
“Sorry?” I say.
“Ah, English,” he says with some satisfaction, as if he’s done something clever. “Mr. Simpson.” He picks up my suitcase. It’s heavier than he expects. He has tinted spectacles and his black hair is getting thin at the front. He looks about forty.
“No,” I say. I tell him my name.
He puts my suitcase down. He looks around the arrivals hall at the few remaining passengers. I am the only one not being met.
“Merde,” he swears softly. He shrugs his shoulders. “Do you want a ride into town?”
We go outside to his car. It’s a big Citroën. The back is filled with plastic beakers, freezer boxes, salad crispers and such like. He puts my case in the boot. He shovels stacks of pamphlets off the front seat before he lets me into his car. He explains that he has been sent to meet his English opposite number from Tupperware UK. He says he assumed I was English from my clothes. In fact, he goes on to claim that he can guess any European’s nationality from the kind of clothes he or she is wearing. I ask him if he can distinguish Norwegians from Danes and for some reason he seems to find this very funny.
We drive off smartly, following the signs for Nice centre ville. I can’t think of anything to say, as my French isn’t good enough and somehow I don’t like the idea of talking to this man in English. He sits very close to the steering-wheel and whistles softly through his teeth, occasionally raising one hand in rebuke at any car that cuts in too abruptly on him. He asks me, in French, how old I am and I tell him I’m eighteen. He says I look older than that.
After a while he reaches into the glove compartment and takes out some photographs. He passes them over to me.