‘Makes no difference. They’ll be outside your door again first thing in the morning.’
‘In that case, I’ll go to my house in the country.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. You’ve been away too long. You need people around you.’
I asked her to show me the bathroom.
By the time I got back to the living room after my shower, Claudia had changed, replacing her tailored suit with flannel trousers and a sweater. She had also put on make-up and let her hair down.
‘Let me buy you dinner,’ she said. ‘I know a nice quiet restaurant not far from here.’
‘I don’t really want to go out.’
‘I don’t have anything in the fridge.’ She looked at her watch, thought for a moment, and decided to go out and bring us back something to eat.
It was the first time I had been in Claudia’s apartment. The furniture was old, but well maintained. Everything was in exactly the right place, with no unnecessary extras. The living room was small and somewhat austere. There were no pictures on the walls, just a row of photographs on a chest of drawers, a faded rug on the floor and an old leather sofa in the middle. The window, framed by flimsy curtains, looked out on a sad little square with a giant tree in abundant leaf. Cars were parked on either side, but there was nobody about. No children played, not a sound betrayed a living soul. I sat down on the sofa and switched on the television. It seemed to have been years since I had last handled a remote control. It was the fact that Jessica had so often come home late that had made me a TV addict. Her absence would prevent me from concentrating on a book or on DIY, so I preferred to wait for my wife to return, pleasantly slouched in my armchair, a can of beer in my hand, and, sip after sip, I would count off the minutes like a priest his beads.
The TV news came on. The camera cut away from the newsreader and propelled me onto the tarmac, where I saw myself getting off the plane. I noticed how big my suit looked on me, and that I had stumbled on the last step of the stairs. Hans’s coffin was taken from the hold and carried to the catafalque around which the Makkenroth family were waiting to recover the body. A young woman was crying on a relative’s shoulder. Hans’s two sons held themselves in a dignified manner, their black-clad wives by their sides. One can only gather one’s thoughts in silence …
I dozed off, or perhaps I fainted. It was probably just as well.
Five days after I got back, the funeral service took place in the Katharinenkirche, a Protestant church on the Hauptwache. The place was full to bursting. In the front rows, beside the Makkenroths, were the Chancellor and members of her government. People had come from the four corners of the world to pay their last respects to Hans. As well as the officials and national celebrities, there were people in turbans, Amazonian tribal chiefs, emirs in their ceremonial robes, ambassadors and nabobs. Hans had been not only a major industrialist, but above all a great man and a revered humanist. Outside, the street was packed with mourners. Thousands of anonymous people had been determined to celebrate the memory of this generous man who had devoted his time and fortune to the wretched of the earth. The ceremony was a very solemn one. After a speech by the Chancellor, who emphasised the dead man’s courage and selflessness, Bertram read a poem by Goethe, of whom his father had been an assiduous reader, and reminded us of his father’s principles and beliefs. By the time he rejoined his family, his face was drained of blood. Applause broke out when the coffin left the church. The cortege set off for the crematorium. I had not been invited to this final farewell, which was strictly reserved for family members. My friend’s ashes would be entrusted to the sea … The sea he had loved so much, the sea that was his deliverance and his inner world.
I thanked Claudia for her hospitality and asked her to drive me home. The reporters had realised that I didn’t want to speak to them and had gone back to their offices. Claudia offered to let me stay, just long enough for me to recover my strength. By that, I understood ‘my spirits’, and I deduced that I probably didn’t look very good. I asked her if I had changed; she began by stammering some excuses before regaining her composure and asserting that I needed to have people around me, to get some distance from the events. Hadn’t she asked for time off in order to take care of me? It was true that she had been looking after my every need, but her attention was starting to stifle me and I had to leave. I had been afraid to go out, afraid of being recognised in the street. All my life I had been discreet. Becoming an object of other people’s curiosity overnight terrified me. But shutting myself up in Claudia’s apartment was worse. I had been confined there for a week and it had worn me out. The nightmares that had undermined my sleep in Gerima’s jail were again starting to keep me awake.
I had let my beard grow in the hope I wouldn’t be recognised and I thought that if on top of that I wore sunglasses I’d be able to avoid curious glances.
I insisted on going home.
It was three in the afternoon when we parked outside my house. Fortunately, apart from a plumber putting his equipment back in his van, the street was deserted. I didn’t dare get out of the car. I had been impatient to get back to my own world, but now that I was outside my house, I became confused. An icy hand clutched my heart, and I felt intense pain when I tried to swallow. Claudia sensed that I was panicking and, wanting to show her empathy, did absolutely the wrong thing: she grabbed me by the wrist. I recoiled violently, opened the door and set foot outside. I didn’t dare go any further. I stood there on the pavement, staring at that beautiful white house I had built with my own hands as a monument to everlasting love and life. Claudia realised I wouldn’t move without an escort. She joined me, then walked ahead of me. I followed her. She took the keys from me. I felt as if there were a layer of ice on my back. I could hear my heart pounding in my head. I took a deep breath before venturing into the hallway. Claudia ran to pull back the curtains and open the windows. A blinding light flooded the living room. The cleaner had gone over the smallest nook and cranny with a fine-tooth comb. There were bright flowers in the vase. I saw my furniture, traces of my old habits, but the chasm left by Jessica was irrevocable.
Claudia kept me company for another quarter of an hour during which I remained indecisive, frozen, in a daze.
‘Would you like me to make you some coffee?’
‘No,’ I said in a feverish whisper.
‘I don’t have much to do this afternoon.’
‘Thank you, but I need to be alone.’
‘Shall we have dinner together this evening?’
‘If you like.’
‘Good, I’ll come and pick you up about seven.’
‘All right.’
She left. It was as if she had vanished into the wild.
Once she had gone, I sat on the sofa and stared down at the tips of my shoes, a leaden weight on the back of my neck. I deliberately turned my back on the things that had been mine and which now seemed elusive, even a matter of dispute.
Claudia came back to find the living room plunged in darkness and me lying prostrate on the sofa. Evening had fallen and I hadn’t even noticed.
I spent a restless night. Entangled in the sheets. Sweating profusely. Suffocating. I had to struggle against every thought to keep it at bay. When morning came I had to drag myself out of bed. Not daring to take a shower in the bathroom for fear of finding Jessica’s body, I washed my face in the kitchen sink.
The telephone rang several times, but I didn’t pick it up.
I called Emma and asked her to wait for me at the surgery after the last patient and Dr Regina Hölm, my replacement, had gone. At 7.15, Emma greeted me in the doorway. She was wearing a lovely blue tailored suit and was freshly powdered. I had an unpleasant sensation when she invited me to come in. My surgery felt cold. The walls were still painted in cream gloss, the same low table stood in the middle of the waiting room, with the same magazines piled up on top of it, and the same upholstered chairs, but I didn’t have the impression that I was seeing a familiar place. This strange feeling twisted my insides. My surgery was so melancholy! The photograph of Jessica posing on a rock beset by milky waves still occupied the same frame but not the same memory. I opened the cabinet where my patients’ files were stored, took one out at random, skimmed through it with a sense that I was desecrating other people’s painful secrets. Emma informed me that Frau Biribauer had been unable to overcome her depression and had taken her own life a month earlier. And whose file should I have in my hands but hers; I immediately put it away with a gesture as lacking in courage as a desertion.