Hanna returned with the car more quickly than I had expected. I slid into the passenger seat with a feeling of déjà vu. The last time I was in Herr Landberg’s car, I had been on my way to curse Achim Zimmer, my mind a maelstrom of disgust and anger and dread, my only coherent thought the desire to stop Achim. The remembrance made me sick at heart. How many times had I been up to the ruined house in the woods impelled by reasons that had seemed incontrovertible, impulses that had felt irresistible, swearing each time that this would be the last? Give me this one last thing and I’ll never ask for anything again … But I had kept on asking and my wishes had been fulfilled. I leaned my head against the car window and tried to blot out the memory of Julius’s face the night before in the bakery, the way he had tried to telegraph some unspoken message to me, his features sharp and intense. How was it possible that he had done all this and for me? I shuddered at the idea.
The streets of Bad Münstereifel were deserted at this early hour of Sunday morning and we made rapid progress. Within a couple of minutes we had passed through the gate in the medieval wall and were heading towards the Eschweiler Tal. I had travelled this same route with Kai von Jülich, in that gleaming red car of his, which it was commonly supposed had carried him to some more exotic location than Bad Münstereifel. I supposed that Julius must know where Kai was. If my plan worked and Julius really did leave the town, Frau von Jülich might never know the answer to her questions. I wondered whether the truth was something she would really want to know. I could not think of any benevolent means by which Julius, who was so badly off that he went about on a rattletrap bike, could influence someone as rich and self-assured as Kai von Jülich to desert his comfortable life and take off somewhere without telling anyone.
How did he get Kai to ask you out, then? came the uncomfortable reply. The more I thought about it, the more questions began to arise, nibbling at the edges of my certainty like a shoal of sharp-toothed fish. I realized with despair that there were no answers to any of them. Unless I was prepared to confront Julius, I would probably never know the truth. He confessed, I reminded myself. That was the fact of the matter. Julius had confessed and there had to be an end to it, here and now.
I kept that thought in my mind as we parked the car and made our way up the hillside, forcing our way through brambles and ferns under the shadows of the trees. The last time ever, I promised myself, as the grey bulk of Gertrud’s house came indistinctly into view, its crumbling walls merging into the dank vegetation around it. I tried to think of the task as a necessary evil, something to be carried out as dispassionately as a surgical procedure, and yet still as I stepped through the doorway into the shell of the house I felt like putting my hands over my eyes to blot out the sight of the scrawled messages on the walls, each one of them a silent scream.
Hanna stood beside me, scanning the mutilated walls. She said nothing, but simply waited while I retrieved the carved box from the floor. It lay on its side, propped against a chunk of masonry. It looked as though it had been kicked there, which I supposed it had, when I had struggled with the others. I saw that the catch had burst. The scraps of paper which had been inside were scattered on the ground. There seemed no point in checking whether the one wishing for my father’s recovery had gone or not. I didn’t think Julius could have any influence over that.
I dug the folded paper from my pocket and put it into the box. The lid wouldn’t shut properly any more, I noticed; the hinges were bent too. Probably Max or Jochen had actually trodden on it. I put the box on the ground and placed a stone on top of it to keep the lid down. Then I turned and, picking my way over the broken stones which lay everywhere, left the ruined house.
It was only once I got outside that I realized Hanna wasn’t with me. I waited for a moment and then I went back, but she came out to meet me.
‘Let’s go,’ she said, and we set off down the hill.