Rovena had come up against him when she was only twenty-three, and he could not fail to kill her.
They racked their brains to understand why he had virtually turned her into a prostitute. They thought they had found the reason, and pretended as much, but they hadn’t. Gangsters and pimps who whored out their fiancées for dollars were easier to understand than Besfort. Lulu herself had produced some very complicated rationalisations. What if it was very simple, and turning her into a call girl was merely a prelude to murder? After all, in this world, when women are killed, prostitution is the first thing you think of.
She did not want to expand it any further. She was not going to analyse the famous dream with the plaster mausoleum, which was quite obviously a typical murderer’s dream.
If the researcher, for his own or professional reasons, was averse to psychological subtleties, he could forget everything she had said so far and listen only to one thing, the basic explanation which she had given long ago, that Besfort Y. murdered his girlfriend because she had found out his secret depths…
4
The pianist drew a deep breath. She knew that moment at concerts when, after a long silence, the listeners simultaneously breathe again.
These secrets were spine-chilling, she continued. They involved NATO, and internal rifts that could have divided the entire West. If the investigators were scared, what about herself, a defenceless musician?
She talked about this fear, but her interrogator interrupted her gently. Miss Blumb, he said, you have mentioned two quite distinct motives for murder. You called the first psychotic, and this one might be considered political. May I ask you, which one do you believe yourself?
The pianist carefully considered her reply: she believed both of them, but the psychotic motive was probably decisive. The second was a pretext found by Besfort to justify the murder to himself.
Liza lowered her voice, but he kept listening. He had to steer his mind away from the trap into which all the other investigators had fallen. If Rovena St. was no longer alive on the morning of 17 May, another woman must have been beside Besfort in the taxi going to the airport.
You said that the murder took place earlier, he whispered. But what about the body? Why wasn’t it found?
According to her, it was up to the police to find the body. They themselves were talking about a quite different matter. It was vital that he should believe her. She pleaded with him. He must believe that she had been murdered. She almost fell to her knees. Don’t insult her memory by refusing to believe this… She had been murdered, for sure, but she could not say exactly where…
He could barely follow her. Finally, he grasped the thread of her argument, but it was so thin and frail. If he did not believe in the murder, it meant he did not believe in their love. Because, as they now knew, their love and the murder were testimonies to each other, and if there was proof of their love there were no grounds to doubt the murder.
The interrogator’s incredulous smile was enough to make Lulu Blumb lose her way.
Breaking a final silence, the longest of all, she admitted that it was natural for a researcher like himself to misinterpret her insistence that Rovena St. and Besfort Y. had not been together on that fatal taxi ride on the morning of 17 May. He might see it as a final attempt on the part of the pianist, who had tried to separate them in life, to divide them in death. He had every right to think this way, but she would be honest with him to the end. To convince him that there had been a murder, she would tell him her greatest secret, something that she had never confessed to anybody and had been sure she would carry with her to the grave. She too, Liza Blumberg, had plotted to murder Rovena…
Her terrible plan involved the remote chapel by the Ionian Sea. She knew of the atrocities that took place there, the women thrown into the sea while the insane boatmen howled with laughter. But she had not been afraid. Until the very end, she had dreamed of a journey from which neither she nor Rovena would ever return. If the boatmen did not throw her into the sea, she herself would have thrown her arms around her lover’s neck and dragged her down into the deep… But apparently what should have happened at sea was fated to happen on land, in a taxi. As always, Lulu Blumb was too late. After this confession, she was sure that her interrogator would understand that her anger at Besfort Y., like any anger against a fellow murderer, could only be of the feeblest sort. She hoped that when the time came for her soul to seek rest, she would pray for him with the same tenderness as for herself.
5
The researcher was sure that Lulu Blumb would never talk to him again after her shocking confession. There had been something conclusive about her story, like the closing of a door, that dashed any hopes of a sequel.
The researcher was stabbed by remorse at not having delved deeper into certain dark episodes in her story. He had noticed that whenever Lulu Blumb said that she would not elaborate on certain aspects of her tale, it was precisely these points that were most important, and to which his mind kept reverting.
For instance, he had not properly asked about the second dream. He kicked himself for this, and in self-punishment he mentally replayed this dream again and again, just as he had heard it from the Albanian woman in Switzerland.
She had described Besfort Y. walking across the wasteland towards the funereal building. He stands in front of the mausoleum that is also a motel, with doors that are at the same time not doors. He knows why he is there, and he also doesn’t know. A cold light emanates from the plaster and the marble. He calls out the name of a woman, but without even hearing what name his lips utter. This woman is evidently within the marble, because he calls to her again, but his voice emerges so feebly that he can hardly hear it. A gleam of light that he had not noticed until then comes from inside and he knocks on the painted glass. He hears a slight sound as a door opens, where he thought there was none. The night porter of the motel, or the temple guard, appears. “There’s no such woman here,” he says, and closes the door again.
Meanwhile, a woman indeed appears, descending the winding external stairway which leads perhaps from a terrace. Her tight skirt makes her appear taller. Her face is unfamiliar. Stepping off the final stair, she comes up to him and throws her arm round his neck. He feels an infinite tenderness and sweetness, but he cannot catch her name, which she utters in the faintest of voices. She says something else. Perhaps it is about her long wait inside, or how much she has missed him. But he cannot understand anything of what she says. He realises only that something is missing.
The woman lowers her head to tell him her name, or just to kiss him, but still something is missing and he wakes up.
Over time, this dream expanded in his mind, as if leavened by memory.
It was easy to interpret this as a murderer’s dream. The dreamer comes to a place in which he has been happy, and so the building resembles a motel. But it also resembles a tomb, which shows that at the place where he was happy, he has also killed.
Lulu Blumb insisted on this explanation. The researcher did not dare contradict her, but still looked for another one. Besfort Y. goes to that tract of wasteland looking for whoever is inside the building, frozen or immured. He calls out, summoning her, to thaw her. But it is not easy for her either.
But that’s almost the same, Lulu Blumb would say. There’s no doubt that it is Rovena inside, under all that plaster or marble. Buried, in every sense of the word.
The researcher continued his imaginary dialogue with Lulu Blumb, with a premonition that they would meet again.
Which they did. Her phone call gave him a boyish thrill.
They tried to postpone the subject as long as they could, but the conversation soon came round to their common obsession. Clearly Lulu too had been mentally rehearsing her questions, answers and objections. Try as they might to keep their heads clear, the moment came when each of them confused the other, although they knew very well that they shouldn’t allow themselves to be ensnared by the dream of a third person, reported by a fourth, if not a fifth.