‘You saw my sister on a train. In no way whatsoever were you acquainted with her. Yet you speak as if you knew her well.’
Again I paused before responding. Then I told him about the meeting in the supermarket, the jars of mustard that had fallen when Madeleine reached for the herbs, the first cup of coffee she’d had with Otmar. I watched his face as I spoke; I watched his eyes, and was prepared to repeat what I was saying if they momentarily closed.
‘There is nothing left of Otmar now. No will, no zest. Otmar’s done for. That’s why he will remain here.’
‘I must ask you to leave me now.’
‘The old man’s done for too.’
‘Mrs Delahunty, I know you’ve been through a traumatic ordeal –’
‘It’s unkind to call me Mrs Delahunty, Tom. It’s not even my name.’
The dark brows closed in on one another. The forehead wrinkled in a frown. His tongue damped his lips, preparatory to speech, I thought. But he did not speak.
‘Is there not a chance you would take, Tom? That a woman such as I can have a vision?’
‘The fact that my sister’s child spent some time in your house after the tragedy does not entitle you to harass me. I am grateful. My wife is grateful. The child is grateful. May I pass that message on to you, Mrs Delahunty? And may I be permitted to go back to sleep now?’
I rose from the shadows and stood above him, my replenished glass in my hand. I spoke slowly and with emphatic clarity. I said I was unable to believe that he, a man of order and precision, an ambitious man, stubborn in his search for intellectual truth where insects were concerned, refused to accept the truth that had gathered all around him.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mrs Delahunty.’
‘It frightens you, as it frightens me. For weeks the German boy was like a blob of jelly. The General would willingly have put a bullet through his head. The child went into hiding. More had occurred than a visit to a dentist, you know.’
‘Why are you pestering me in this way?’
‘Because you’re dishonest,’ I snapped at him. I hadn’t meant to, and as soon as I’d spoken I apologized. But his tetchiness continued.
‘You’ve pestered me since I arrived here. You talk to me in a way I simply fail to comprehend. I have said so, yet you persist.’
‘One day the child will know about that quarrel and what was said. One day she’ll reach up and scratch Francine’s eyes out.’
He made some kind of protest. I bent down, closer to him, and emphasized that this wasn’t a change of subject, though it might possibly appear so. I described the scene in Otmar’s boyhood: the fat congealing on the Schweinsbrust, the bronze horsemen on the mantelpiece. I told him how Otmar’s father was led away, and how Otmar and his mother had listened to the dull ticking of the clock. I described the children of the fathers locked, years later, in another turn of the wheel, and Otmar choosing the shortest matchstick.
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
What I’d said had caused him to sit up. His hair was slightly tousled. I told him not to be silly, to take a little grappa because he might feel the need of it. But he didn’t heed me. ‘What is this?’ he persisted.
‘I’m talking about what happened,’ I said. ‘I’m talking about people getting on to a train, and what happened next, and Quinty taking in three victims of a tragedy because they were conveniently there, because Quinty on all occasions is greedy for profit.’
‘You are insinuating about the German.’
I poured myself another drink. I lit a cigarette. Before I could reply he spoke again.
‘Are you suggesting the German had something to do with what occurred on the train? Has he made some kind of confession to you? Are you saying that?’
‘How can we know, Tom, the heart and mind of a murderer when he wakes up among his victims? How can we know if fear or remorse is the greater when he lies helpless among the helpless? If my house is a sanctuary for Otmar it is his rack as well. Any day, any hour, the carabinieri may walk from their car, dropping their cigarettes carelessly on to the gravel. Any day, any hour, they may seek him in my garden. Does he choose this torment, Tom? We may never know that either.’
He was listening to me now. For the first time since he’d arrived in my house he had begun to listen to me. When I paused he said:
‘What exactly are you saying?’
‘I’d love it if you’d take a little grappa, Tom.’
‘I don’t want any grappa. Why do you keep pressing drink on me? At all hours of the day and night you seem to think I need drink. You make appalling accusations –’
‘I’m only saying this might be so. Tom, no one can be certain about anything except the perpetrators – we both know that. No one but they can tell us if we’re right when we guess it was a crime turned into an accident.’
‘Have you or have you not grounds for making these statements about the German?’
I paused. I wanted him to be calm. I said:
‘I had a dream, and when next I looked into those moist eyes behind the discs of his spectacles all of it was there. He lost his nerve. Or at the very last moment – perhaps at Orvieto railway station – he fell in love with her. In relief and happiness he stroked her arm in Carrozza 219, perhaps even whispering to himself a prayer of thanksgiving. Then came the irony: the accident occurred.’
‘A dream?’
I explained that there was evidence, all around us, of what each and every one of us is capable of. There was the purchase of a female infant so that a man could later satisfy his base desires. A man who lavished affection on a pet could lay his vicious plans while an infant still suckled a bottle. Quinty scarred a young girl’s life. In the Cafée Rose my flesh felt rotten with my loathing of it.
‘The old man longed for unhappiness in his daughter’s marriage. You rejected your young sister in favour of a predatory woman. If Otmar is guilty there is redemption in a child’s forgiveness, and for Aimée a way back to herself in offering it. If Otmar is guilty the miracle may be as marvellous as the soldier giving away his food.’ Ages ago it had struck me that there was something odd about Madeleine’s journey. ‘Flights from Rome full,’ he would have lied.
‘You’re drunk, Mrs Delahunty. All the time I’ve been in your house you’ve been drunk. You wake me up at three o’clock in the morning with your garbled rigmaroles about executions and vengeance, expecting me to return to Pennsylvania without my niece just because you’ve had a dream. It’s monstrous to suggest that my niece should continue to grow fond of a boy you claim might be the murderer of her family. It’s preposterous to invent all this just in order to make a fantasy of the facts.’
In that same manner he went on speaking. He said it was inconceivable that an innocent girl had been stalked in the manner I described. It was inconceivable that a total stranger had caused her to fall so profoundly in love that a relationship had been formed which on his side was wholly deceitful. An incendiary device could not have been packed into her luggage without her knowledge. Such a device could not pass undetected through Linata Airport. No terrorist attack could possibly have been planned with such ineptitude. And terrorists did not go in for changes of heart.
‘Please let me sleep,’ he said.
Angrily I shouted at him then, all gentleness gone, not caring if I woke the household. I could feel the warmth of a flush beginning in my neck, and creeping slowly into my face.
‘You’re a man who always sleeps,’ I snapped at him. ‘You’ll sleep your way to the grave, Mr Riversmith.’
I gulped at what remained of my drink and poured some more. His glass was still where he had placed it on the bedside table. I picked it up and forced it into his hand. A little of the liquid spilt on to his pyjama front. I didn’t care.