I visited him on August 8, a rainy Saturday. He seemed to know me, because when I walked in, he said: Sermon? – Yes, tomorrow! I said. – Be very careful, he whispered, the lambs! – Yes, Konrad, I said, moved.
Then we were quiet for a long time.
How are you feeling? I finally asked.
He said haltingly: The claws won’t grow.
Give them time, I said, don’t let it get you down!
Please, he said, abdicate, better now than in snowy drifts.
We have our lives to live, dear Konrad, I said, we can talk about abdicating in a few decades’ time!
He asked: And what about the grief thistles?
They grow in gardens everywhere, I said.
And the wolves?
They’re all God’s creatures!
Amen! he exclaimed.
I creased my brow.
He said: Let them go to the bottom, fill them with stones and drop them at the bottom of the ocean, in Marianna’s trench.
Erm, I said after a while, I have some bad news for you, Magda won’t be able to visit you in the next few days. She was in excruciating pain last night, and was taken to hospital this morning. Acute appendicitis. They’ve already done the operation, and she sends her love. She’s doing fine. Would you like me to take her a message?
Konrad sat there as though he had heard nothing. Finally he said: Don’t believe it!
Don’t believe what? I asked.
He said nothing, and seemed oblivious of my presence. His features looked delicate, almost translucent, like those of a dead man.
I left him to his reverie, and went away.
On Sunday morning, the head of the school visited him.
Take your time over getting better! he said to Zündel.
Replaced? asked Zündel.
Yes, answered the head, we’ve found a substitute teacher for you.
Tight, said Zündel, tight ship!
Oh, it’s not so bad, said the head. Appearances deceive.
Rarely, said Zündel. And what’s on the piece of paper?
What piece of paper?
The notice board, what does that say, what does that say about me?
It says “Absent until further notice,” answered the head.
I see! cried Zündel, and his eyes lit up.
On Monday, his mother, Johanna, came to visit.
When she walked in, Konrad said: Lilith, begone!
Oh, my poor boy, wailed Johanna.
Zündel fled into a corner of the room, and whispered: False Madonna, you just lie under that atrabilious scoundrel, and I am the comeuppance, and I am the comeuppance, slap bang in the middle of January I am expelled from her belly.
Konrad, Konrad! exclaimed Johanna, but he turned quite pale, and would not say another word.
On Tuesday he didn’t come down to supper.
His room was empty.
They couldn’t find him in any of the day-rooms.
Fellow patients said they had seen him sitting on a park bench for hours, he had been wearing – in spite of the heat – a red and blue striped woolly hat. The duty doctor was censured by his superior, first informally, and two days later in writing.
The hospital porter likewise.
Magda was informed. From her hospital bed, she sent instructions that Zündel was not to be sought by the police or on the wireless. Was there any spot where she thought her husband might have gone?
There was a possibility that he might have gone to a weekend cottage near Hinwil. It belonged to his colleague Oswald Scholl who years ago had given Konrad a spare key.
Would she allow them to look for her husband there?
They could try, but she begged them to be gentle, he was not on any account to be forced to return.
Early on Wednesday morning, two burly auxiliary nurses – in the company of Scholl – set off to catch Zündel. They left their car in a field, and covered the last six or seven hundred yards on foot.
The shutters of the little wooden hut were thrown open. A ground floor window was open.
He was singing.
He was singing: Marble, stone and iron break, but not our love. Marble, stone and iron break, but not our love . . . Before Oswald could do anything to prevent it, one of the nurses banged on the door and yelled: Open up, police!
Are you mad? hissed Scholl.
A shot rang out.
The blundering nurse gave a jump.
The other dropped to the ground.
Zündel was standing in the window. His face was contorted, in his violently shaking hand he held a pistol.
Clear off, clear off! I have orders to shoot! he said gruffly.
Konrad, be sensible, we only want what’s good for you, jabbered Oswald, as the two nurses scrambled for cover. Zündel said: Sensible my ass, go away, go away I tell you!
The three visitors hesitated, then Zündel raised his pistol and fired another shot. The bullet struck a tree. Fragments of bark were sprinkled over the heads of the intruders.
The nurses ran for it.
Oswald turned once more to give Konrad an uncertain and disbelieving look, and said: Forgive our appalling intervention, I’m going as well now, bye, look after yourself!
Sure, said Zündel, and closed the window.
(The provenance of the pistol, a 9 mm Smith & Wesson Parabellum, remains as much a mystery today as that of the woolly cap.)
Magda stuck to her guns: no violence! – The senior doctor understood her point of view, but had difficulty in defending it to the police. They had been notified by Mosimann, the aggressive auxiliary nurse, who consulted no one, and it was fortunate that they in turn, before they did anything, got in touch with the head doctor at the clinic.
Magda’s suggestion was that, as Konrad’s friend, I be sent to negotiate with him.
He accepts you, Magda said to me on the telephone, he won’t hurt you, please look after him, I’m still too weak myself.
Since Oswald, whom I knew slightly through Konrad, wasn’t free that Wednesday afternoon, his wife agreed to take me up to Hinwil and show me the hut, whose position she described to me in detail. She would wait down by the car.
Reverend, she said, Konrad always spooked me, I’m sure he was a nice fellow, but he was a bit prickly, you couldn’t talk to him, please be careful, my husband thinks he’s – right now anyway – unpredictable.
Yes, Frau Scholl, I replied, but he won’t hurt me, we’ve known each other for almost twenty years now, I’m sure he’ll feel my affection for him.
Oswald said something about a personality disorder, Frau Scholl replied shyly.
I can’t really believe that, I said. But we’ll see.
I too could hear him singing from a ways off, and was astonished by his clear, strong voice.
He was singing: Sing praise to the lord in the highest, for his compassion and truth . . . After “truth” he broke off, and began again. I stood beside the window. After a while he stopped singing. He said aloud: The old mutton pizzle is becoming churchy in his old days!
I stepped in front of the open window and spoke into the dark room: That would make me very happy, Konrad.
Only now, as he leapt up from the corner bench where he had been lying, did I see him. He was wearing his striped woolen cap and a knee-length cardigan.
Get back! he screamed, and grabbed the pistol on the table.
It’s me, I said as calmly as I could. It’s me, you remember, your friend Viktor.
Aggressively he said: I don’t know anyone here, get away, I have orders to shoot.
The weapon was pointing straight at me.
I was afraid. His eyes were those of a stranger.
I said: Those orders might apply to your enemies, you’ll surely not want to chase me away like a mangy dog.
Thereupon Konrad screamed at a terrifying volume: Leave me alone! Get lost.
Then he turned away, set the pistol down on the table, and stood there hunched and trembling.
Are you cold? I asked.
Of course, what do you think, he replied.
Come on then, let’s have a drink, I said, I have a nice pinot from the Valais, you remember?
I took the bottle out of my briefcase and set it down on the windowsill.
Are they very badly hurt? he asked.
Who?
The policemen who were trying to capture me.
Not a bit of it, I said, they were a couple of orderlies from the clinic, they’re both fine.
He said: Those goddamned loonies.
I went in, and sat down on a stool. – Konrad, I said, and I mean this: people really want the best for you.
In the pub, he said, in the pub I heard someone speaking at the next door table, a man of sixty-odd, with cigar and braces and a big square Swiss skull. And his friends looked like he did, and they agreed with him.
And what was he saying? I asked after a long pause.
He said he still felt gratitude to his late father for beating his bare behind three times a week with a cow’s tail.
I see, I said.
That’s right, he said, the perverts are in the pub, and people want to shut me in.
People want to look after you.
Ho ho, he said.
What about a glass, then? I asked him.
You should go now, he said, I’m not allowed to talk.
What do you have in mind, Konrad?
Desert or jungle or sea or sky, he replied.
Those were the last words I heard out of his mouth.
I said: All right, I’ll go now, and I’ll make sure no one comes and bothers you, neither the police nor the clinic.
No reply.
Magda sends her love, she’ll come and see you as soon as she can, maybe as soon as tomorrow.
No reply.
Or do you want to come and stay with me for a couple of days? You could come and go as you please, and you know Vroni’s always happy to see you!
A shake of the head.
I pointed to the pistol and asked: Do you mind if I take that?
He didn’t react.
Slowly I reached for the weapon, and put it in my briefcase.
He watched, without putting up any fight.
All right, I said, bye bye, Konrad, don’t give up, we love you and we need you. And remember: turn up any time of day or night, Vroni and I will always be happy to see you. – He looked at me. I squeezed his shoulder and went.
When Magda approached the hut the next evening (Thursday, August 13) on shaking legs – Oswald would have escorted her, but she made him stay in the car – Konrad was not singing. The door and window were ajar, Magda’s calls found no echo.
She could sense right away that he wasn’t there.
In the kitchen she found the woolly hat, and on a scrap of paper the words: Gone until further notice.
After four days of waiting, Magda conceded that it was pointless to stand in the way of the usual procedures: on August 18, the radio broadcast a missing person alert, and on the 19 Interpol were alerted.
In the middle of September, Hans Fischer wrote to Johanna Zündel from Vancouver, to say that Konrad had sent him a “large package” from Genoa, dated August 15. It contained a “trapezoidal lump of plaster of Paris” and “written materials” that made reference to “sundry difficulties and tendencies of his frail son.”
Nothing more was heard of him.