“What’s the matter?” I asked, taken aback. I held out my hand, but something in her seemed to shrink from me and I froze.
“What’s the matter?” She smiled nervously as she rearranged her hair. “I’ve got a boyfriend, that’s what’s the matter.”
“But you had him ten seconds ago too,” I said, bewildered.
“Ten seconds ago…I forgot myself for a moment.”
“And now?”
“I remembered.”
“So what was it? A bout of amnesia?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and she looked up, as if trying to make the whole thing seem trivial. “You seemed to want it so much.”
“Ah,” I said, offended. “Only I wanted it.”
“No,” she said, looking confused. “I felt…curious. And you seemed so jealous of Kloster.”
“What’s Kloster got to do with it?” I asked, exasperated. Competing against two other men seemed a bit much.
She seemed sorry she’d said it. She looked at me alarmed, I suppose because it was the first time she’d heard me raise my voice. “No, no, nothing,” she said, as if she could take it back. “I think I just wanted something to happen so you’d remember me.”
So she’d already learned that sort of trick, I thought bitterly. She was staring at me sadly, eyes open very wide, and she seemed to be both lying and telling the truth.
“Don’t worry, I’ll remember you,” I said, humiliated, but hoping to salvage some of my wounded pride. “That’s the first time anyone’s kissed me out of pity.”
“Could we finish, please?” she said and cautiously edged the chair back in, as if fearing some kind of reprisal.
“Yes, of course, let’s finish,” I said.
I dictated the last two pages. As she picked up her bag before leaving I handed her that week’s pay without a word. For the first time she put it away without looking at it, as if she wanted to get away as quickly as possible.
That was the last time I saw Luciana, ten years ago, when she was just another very pretty girl, confident, carefree, trying her first games of seduction, far from matters of life and death.
The entry phone rang-it was five to four. As I went down in the lift, I stared at my now gaunt face in the mirror and couldn’t help wondering what I would see when I opened the door.
Two
Nothing could have prepared me for the sight of her. It was her, still Luciana, I had to admit it, but for a moment I thought there must be some terrible mistake. The terrible mistake of time. The cruellest revenge upon a woman, Kloster wrote, was to let ten years pass before seeing her again.
I could say that she’d put on weight, but that was the least of it. Perhaps the most appalling thing was the way the face I had once known tried to surface in her eyes, as if seeking me from a distant past, sunk in the black well of the years. She smiled with something like desperation, testing to see if she could count on even a part of the attraction she had once exerted over me. But the equivocal smile lasted only a fraction of a second, as if she knew that in a sequence of cruel amputations she had lost all her charms. My worst predictions for her appearance had come true. Her neck, the smooth neck that had come to obsess me, had thickened, and there was now an unmistakable roll of fat beneath her chin. The eyes that used to sparkle now looked small and puffy. Her mouth was drawn down at the corners in an embittered line, and it looked as if nothing had made her smile in a long time. But the worst thing was what had happened to her hair. An entire section had disappeared from the front, as if she’d suffered from some nervous disease, or she’d torn it out in fits of despair, and over the ear, where it was more sparse than elsewhere, whitish patches of scalp showed through, like terrible scars. My horrified, disbelieving stare must have lingered a little too long on the lank strands because she raised her hand to her ear to hide them, but gave up halfway, as if she knew the damage could not be concealed.
“Something else I owe Kloster,” she said.
She sat down in the same old swivel chair and looked around, surprised, I think, that the place had changed so little.
“Amazing,” she said, as if she found it unfair but was also relieved to have discovered a refuge, a piece of the past unexpectedly intact. “Nothing’s changed here. You’ve even kept that horrible little grey rug. And you…” She looked at me almost accusingly. “You look just the same too. A few grey hairs maybe. You haven’t even put on weight. I bet if I go to the kitchen the cupboards will be empty and all I’ll find is coffee.”
It was my turn to say something pleasant, I suppose, but, unable to find the words, I let the moment pass and I think my silence pained her more than any lie.
“So,” she said with an ironic, disagreeable smile, “don’t you want to know how I am? Why don’t you ask me about my boyfriend?” She said it as if this were some kind of guessing game.
“How’s your boyfriend?” I asked mechanically.
“He’s dead,” she said, but before I could say anything she fixed her gaze on mine, holding it steadily, as if it were still her turn. “Why don’t you ask me about my parents?” I said nothing and she answered her own question with the same defiant tone: “They’re dead. Why don’t you ask me about my brother? He’s dead.” Her lower lip trembled. “Dead, dead, dead. One after the other. And nobody realises. At first even I didn’t realise.”
“Do you mean someone killed them?”
“Kloster,” she said in a terrified whisper, leaning towards me as if someone might hear. “And he hasn’t finished yet. He does it slowly, that’s the secret. He lets years go by.”
“Kloster is killing all your relatives, without anyone realising,” I said cautiously, as if humouring a mad person.
She nodded seriously, looking into my eyes, waiting for my reaction, as if she’d said the most important part and had put herself in my hands. Naturally I thought she must be suffering from some kind of mental disorder as a result of all these unfortunate deaths. Over the past few years Kloster had become almost obscenely famous: you couldn’t open the papers without seeing his name. No other writer was as sought after, as ubiquitous, as celebrated. Kloster was a fixture on literary prize panels, heading the list of signatures to open letters, a delegate at international conferences and guest of honour at embassy receptions. Over the past ten years he had been transformed from well-kept secret to public property, almost a brand. His books were sold in all formats, from pocket editions to luxurious hardback volumes for the corporate gift market. And though he now had a frequently photographed face, I had long since ceased to think of him as a man, a person of flesh and bone: he’d vanished, become a name haunting bookshops, posters, headlines. Kloster now lived the hectic, unreachable life of a celebrity: he didn’t seem to rest between book tours and all his other activities. Not to mention the hours he must have spent writing, because his novels continued to appear with calm regularity. The thought that Kloster might have something to do with real-life crimes was as outrageous as if she’d blamed the Pope.