TAMARA AND WOLF find a sweaty Kris, sitting in the living room wearing only his shorts, drinking mineral water from a bottle. The entire ground floor is boiling hot, even though the windows are wide open. Kris doesn’t ask what the funeral was like. He looks at them as if he’s surprised they’re back.
“Is everything all right?” says Wolf.
“Everything’s all right,” Kris asks back.
Wolf goes upstairs to change. When he has left the living room, Kris points to the door with his chin.
“Close it.”
Tamara shuts the door and leans her back against it. He knows we had sex, she thinks, he can see it in our faces, and he probably knew all along that something was going to happen between Wolf and me.
“I need your help,” says Kris, “and Wolf can’t find out about it.”
“But—”
“Tamara, please, I’ll explain as soon as we’re alone, until then you’ve got to keep your trap shut. We eat together in the evening, we behave quite normally, then the phone will ring, and it’ll be Lutger.”
“Why should your father—”
“Because I’ve asked him to call. Lutger will ask if Wolf could come by for a few hours. Wolf won’t say no, he’ll go and see Lutger.”
“And then?”
“And then we’ll both go away.”
“And I bet you won’t tell me where to?”
“And I won’t tell you where to.”
The phone rings at nine exactly, and Tamara passes the receiver to Wolf. He’s so surprised by the call that he asks his father several times if everything is really all right, before he says goodbye and drives to his place.
Five minutes later Kris and Tamara are sitting in the car as well.
“So?”
“Not yet.”
“What do you mean, not yet? Wolf’s gone, we’re alone.”
Kris doesn’t look at her, drives through the gate and stops outside.
“Will you close the gate?”
“Only when you give me an answer.”
Tamara looks at him expectantly, Kris sighs, undoes his seatbelt, and gets out of the car. After he has closed the gate he comes back to the car and fastens his belt again.
“I know why you don’t want to tell me,” says Tamara. “Because if you do I won’t come, right?”
“Right. Happy now?”
“Kris, what are you up to?”
“Trust me, you’ll understand afterwards.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
Kris drives; at the Wannsee junction he stops at the lights, looks in the rearview mirror, and then straight ahead again. Tamara doesn’t take her eyes off him for a second.
“Could you please stop staring at me?”
“I’m not staring.”
“Tamara, please.”
“I wasn’t staring,” Tamara repeats and stops staring at him.
Ten minutes later Kris asks, “How bad was it?”
“We missed you.”
Kris doesn’t react.
“Frauke would have wanted you to be there.”
“Tammi, she wanted to be cremated and scattered over the Lietzensee. That’s what she wanted. So tell me what you really want to say.”
“I’d have liked you to be there.”
“Thanks.”
They fall silent. The dusk has made way for deep black night, and the lights over Berlin look like a constant lightning flash. Tamara knows from stories that the whole of this section of highway, the Avus, was once fully lit, and that car races were held there. The lights remain, but they haven’t been turned on for over twenty years. The stands have fallen into disrepair and have the sadness of dilapidated houses. Behind the stands the Funkturm juts into the darkness, a glittering streak; its tip is surrounded by a pall of smog, and looks like the tip of a lighthouse. Tamara slides lower into her seat and feels exhausted. Ten hours ago she was standing by Frauke’s grave, then she had sex with Wolf on the shore of the Lietzensee, and now she’s in the car with Kris and doesn’t know where they’re going. Tamara wishes Wolf were here.
“How long now?” she asks.
“A quarter of an hour.”
Kris turns off the Avus onto the city highway.
Tamara shuts her eyes.
“Tammi, wake up.”
She sits up with a jolt, for a moment she is disoriented, then she narrows her eyes slightly to work out where she is.
“You should get a pair of glasses.”
“I’ve got a pair of glasses. For reading. That’s enough.”
Tamara looks behind her. A wall, trees.
“Where are we?”
They get out, and Tamara recognizes where Kris has brought her.
“You’re joking, aren’t you?”
“Let’s go upstairs.”
“Kris, I’m not budging from the spot until you’ve told me what we’re doing here.”
“Please, come upstairs with me, then—”
“Look, are you deaf or what?” Tamara breaks in, glancing at her watch. “I’ll give you two minutes, then I’m taking the tram home.”
Kris just looks at her. His expression scares Tamara. She doesn’t know what he’s thinking, or if indeed he’s thinking. She finds herself imagining a fish in an aquarium with its fixed, unapproachable expression. I’ve slept with your brother! she wants to yell at him. Kris nods once, very slightly, as if he’s made a decision, and goes to the trunk. He waits till Tamara is standing next to him. For one cruel moment she’s sure that the woman’s corpse is back in the trunk. Sorry, all that to-ing and fro-ing, Kris would say, but we’ve got to hang her back up on the wall.
In the trunk there’s a blanket, under the blanket there’s a pair of pliers, a flashlight, the dirty sleeping bag that they transported the corpse in, and the two shovels from the shed. Kris’s voice reaches her ears as if from a long way off.
“Meybach called. We’ve got a new job.”
It’s her fourth cigarette, it’s her last cigarette. Tamara lets it fall to the ground and grinds it into the concrete.
“Did you know I only smoked if Frauke offered me a cigarette?”
“Everybody knows it.”
She studies the remains of the cigarette at her feet. Ash. Tobacco. A flattened filter. She rests her bottom against the passenger door. Kris sits facing her on a doorstep.
“I loved her, did you know that?”
Kris nods, he knows that. Tamara regrets opening her mouth. We all loved her, she thinks, and wants Kris to say it. Just once. She can clearly read the traces of the last few days on his face. His cheekbones stand out starkly, and in the lamplight his short hair looks as if it’s been cropped to the scalp.
“We all loved her,” he says. “But it has nothing to do with this business here, Tammi.”
“Why won’t you talk about Frauke?”
“What is there to say? She’s dead, and there’s nothing to be done about that. Of course I’m sad, of course I could cry, but our problem up there …”
He points to the apartment building.
“… is more important. We can talk about Frauke later, but I want to get through this quickly without starting any new ethical discussions about where and how the corpse is buried. That’s why you’re here and Wolf isn’t. And anyway I’m not sure how Wolf would react to a second corpse.”
“You don’t know how I’m going to react either.”
“You’re stronger than Wolf, you’re better equipped to deal with it.”
Tamara laughs.
“That’s a compliment.”
“You’re welcome.”
Kris stands up and knocks the dust off his backside. He walks around the car, gets the sleeping bag out of the trunk, puts the pliers in his jacket pocket, and shuts the trunk again.
“Whatever you decide,” he says. “I’m going upstairs now.”
Tamara puts out her hand and Kris gives her the sleeping bag. They cross the street side by side and walk into the building.
The door to the apartment is open, and the smell of cleaning stuff still hangs in the air. They glance into the kitchen and the bathroom before stepping into the living room. There is a man hanging on the wall. His feet float inches above the floor. His face has been beaten bloody.
“Relax,” says Kris.
“I am relaxed.”
“You’re not relaxed, Tammi, you’re breaking my arm.”
Tamara looks down; her hand is gripping his forearm. She lets go and shakes her fingers as if they’ve gone to sleep.
Please, Kris, don’t say anything now.
Kris walks over to the corpse and takes a piece of paper out of the dead man’s jacket pocket. He looks him in the face. The blood isn’t just coming from the wound in his forehead. The man’s nose has been smashed in, and his lower lip has burst. Kris unfolds the piece of paper; the words are the same as they were on the one found on the woman.
“That mural again,” Tamara says and touches the wall, which is still damp.
“Let’s get started,” says Kris. “We’ll take the corpse down and …”
He stops and glances at the dead man.
“What is it?” asks Tamara.
“Don’t you think it’s strange that his eyes are open? The woman’s eyes were, too, do you remember?”
Tamara remembers how weird she found it that the woman’s eyes were closed later, when they came back from the hardware store. She also remembers what she thought: Perhaps she got tired waiting for us to come back.
Kris goes and stands right in front of the corpse, with his head on one side as if he was trying to find the right angle of vision.
“If someone hammered a nail through my forehead, I’d close my eyes tight, believe me.”
Kris leans closer to the dead man’s face.
“Look at this.”
“Kris, I—”
“Please, Tamara, look at this.”
Tamara comes and stands beside him. She sees the dried blood, which has followed the folds and wrinkles in the skin and is flaking off in places, she sees the dust on the dead man’s eyelashes, the little veins in the open eyes, and the look that disappears into nothingness.
“When I spoke to Meybach the first time, he asked me if we’d taken a good look at the corpse. He said we could look all over anywhere, but the answer would still be in the eyes.”
“You mean something along the lines of the eyes are the windows of the soul?”
“Something like that.”
Tamara shrinks back. “Sorry. I don’t see anything.”
“Because there’s nothing to see, we’re dealing with a dead person here. Wherever his soul has gone, his eyes aren’t going to help us much …”
Kris stops talking and turns around as if someone had tapped him on the shoulder. He stares at the opposite wall as if he’d never seen a wall before. Now Tamara sees it too. A little photo is pinned to the wallpaper at eye level. It shows two boys on a street; they’re balancing on one bicycle without their feet touching the ground.
Kris crosses the room and pulls the pin out of the wall. He holds the photo with outstretched fingers as if he didn’t want to dirty it. Tamara goes over to join him.
“How could we not have noticed that?” she says.
“We had other things on our plate.”
Kris points at the dead man’s head.
“Look at the height. It’s a line. Meybach wanted his victim to see the photograph even in death.”
Kris holds the photograph at a distance, as if he could recognize the boys in it better that way. He turns it over. The other side is blank. He looks back at the two boys and says, “Who are you? And what are you doing here?”
After Kris has put the photograph in his wallet, he takes the pliers out of his jacket. Tamara turns away.
“I’ll wait outside.”
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“I said, I—”
“Tammi, you can’t go, I won’t be able to do this on my own. If I could do it on my own I wouldn’t have brought you along. Someone has to hold him up so that the weight …”
He taps the pliers against his forehead.
“… is taken off the nail.”
Tamara can hear that her voice sounds shrill.
“As far as I’m concerned you can pull the nails out as well if you feel like it.”
“Kris, stop it.”
“Come on, Tammi, it won’t take long. It’s just two nails. Please, don’t leave me hanging here.”
“Kris, that’s not funny.”
“It wasn’t meant to be. Please grab his hips and lift him up, I’ll do the rest.”
Tamara walks over to the dead man. She puts her hands on his hips, feels his belly and grips harder. The man’s fat shifts and there’s a gurgling sound.
“Don’t let go,” says Kris.
Tamara feels as if she’s going to throw up.
“Just don’t lose it on me.”
She can see him closing the dead man’s eyes.
“Can you get it a bit higher?”
She supports the corpse with her shoulder as well.
“That’s fine.”
Kris tries to use the pliers and swears. The nail is deep in the forehead. He can’t find the head of the nail, he pushes the pliers further into the flesh and is relieved that no blood comes out. The pliers hit something hard and grip the head of the nail.
“OK, I’ve got it.”
There’s a sucking sound, then a jerk, and the corpse slips down a bit. Panicking, Tamara wraps her arms around the dead man’s hips and feels that his trousers are wet. Kris supports the corpse with his free hand.
“He’s just slipped a bit,” he says. “Now I’m going to get—”
“Please, stop blabbering and get this over with.”
Kris drops the nail on the floor and stands on tiptoe to reach the hands, which are positioned one on top of the other. Tamara stares at a spot in the photomural and disappears into it. The good old bourgeois dream Germany of the 1960s. Forest with stag, lake with mountains all around it. Why this ugly photomural? What’s going on in this lunatic’s head? And how long is Kris going to spend fumbling around up there? Please, let it be over soon, please.
Tamara stands by the kitchen window, greedily breathing in the night air. The corpse is in the sleeping bag, the sleeping bag is in the corridor. Tamara can hear Kris’s voice from the living room. She has an image in front of her eyes that she has never seen and never will see: Kris leaning forward, with the digital recorder to his lips, apologizing to the dead man. Tamara is surprised at how calm she is now. Kris was right, she’s strong. This time once again she had no problem pulling the zipper of the sleeping bag right up to the top.
I’m getting apathetic, I’m burning on both sides, I—
Kris joins Tamara at the window. They both look into the dark courtyard. Lights are on in only two apartments.
“Are you cold?”
“A bit.”
Kris puts his arm around her shoulders. It doesn’t warm her, but it’s pleasant.
“Will you get the car?”
It’s like a week ago. Tamara goes down the steps, opens both halves of the gate, gets into the car, and reverses into the courtyard. It’s exactly like a week ago. Except that Wolf isn’t here and Frauke isn’t alive and I’m no longer the person I once was. She gets out of the car and looks up at the façade of the building. Kris’s face appears as a pale patch in the darkness. They look at one another across a vertical distance of four stories. A man and a woman dealing with a dead man.
They aren’t stupid, they go to find the same spot in the forest. One side of the grave has caved in, and the ground is waterlogged in places. It takes them half an hour to get six feet down.
The corpse slides into the hole with a soft rustle, a dull thump, then silence. Kris and Tamara look at one another for a moment, then start filling in the grave. They don’t say a word, and both hope they will never see that sleeping bag again. When they leave the clearing, it looks as if they’d never been there.
THE HOUSE WELCOMES him like an old friend. Every visit is a journey into the past. As soon as the door opens, Wolf is enveloped in an aroma of wood and apples, even though no one has stored apples in the larder for more than a decade. Along with the smell there are the noises, and the way they sound in the various rooms. The creaking of the floorboards, the clanking of the radiators or the echoing silence as soon as the doors are closed and peace settles again. Smells, light, space, and all the traces that people leave over the years in a place where they’ve grown up. Every time he visits, Wolf deliberately looks for these traces. He calls it nostalgia, Kris calls it frustration. In his opinion Wolf has never gotten over their mother’s disappearance.
“Be honest. You’re waiting for her to come back to the house one day and call you down to breakfast.”
Wolf knows his brother is right, but he would never admit it. Especially not in front of Lutger. Since their mother left them, their father insists that his sons call him by his first name, explaining that Father was too formal for him.
Kris and Wolf heard from their mother for the last time after the divorce was final. She said goodbye in a marvelously colorful postcard, and wished them all the best for their lives. The card had also been signed by someone called Eddie. When the brothers wanted to know who this Eddie was, Lutger changed the subject.
That was sixteen years ago, and since then they haven’t spoken about their mother. But although Wolf never mentions her, she still lives like a ghost in the house. Whenever he visits his father, he thinks he hears her movements, her quiet humming in the bathroom, the whisper of the curtains closing as she passes from room to room on the ground floor at night, or the gentle drumming of her fingertips as she waits impatiently for the coffee to percolate. Her constant presence is another reason why he likes going back to his childhood home.
“Man, am I glad you’re here.”
Lutger behaves as if he hasn’t seen Wolf for ages, though this morning they were standing six feet apart at Frauke’s funeral. Wolf knows what his father means. As if Frauke’s death had separated us and brought us back together again. They hug and hold each other tight. The smell of fresh-baked bread and chili comes from the kitchen.
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?”
They go into the kitchen, and Lutger points at the stove. Wolf leans forward and sees two loaves of bread.
“I couldn’t help it. I was just making chili when I had the idea of making some bread dough, and in the end I suddenly fancied some noodles. Fresh homemade noodles, you remember how delicious they are? So, what’ll you have?”
“Chili it is, then.”
Wolf sets the table as Lutger puts the dishes on mats, talking constantly as he does so. It’s always been like this. As if he had to fill their mother’s place with words. Wolf wonders, not for the first time, what it would be like if Lutger had left the house rather than their mother.
Where would I be now? Who would I be?
After dinner he goes upstairs to his old room to look for photographs. Tamara had asked him to. In the mid-nineties Wolf went through a phase of recording every day. He developed the films himself, and they fill countless albums that Lutger keeps in one of the cupboards.
Nothing in the room reminds Wolf of the fact that he grew up here. The posters have disappeared from the walls, even the stickers have been scratched from the inside of the door. Not a single piece of furniture is left from those days, and even the color of the walls is different. The room could be anyone’s.
In one of the cupboards there are stacks of cardboard boxes containing his old belongings. Books, comics, cassette tapes. The bottom row is devoted to the photograph albums, and on top of the albums there’s a box filled to the brim with film canisters. Wolf’s photographic phase lasted two years, and afterwards he sold his darkroom and never picked up a camera again. More than thirty undeveloped films are left over from those times. Wolf doesn’t know how durable films like that are. He should have thrown the box away a long time ago.
The dates on the albums were written with a silver marker. Pictures of the clique, pictures from school, and even a handful of nude shots of a girl who went to America shortly afterwards and didn’t want him to forget her.
Wolf piles up the albums chronologically, then he hesitates and puts them back in the cupboard. He doesn’t know what he’s doing there. He only knows that right now he doesn’t want to look back.
Lutger finds him lying on the bed in the spare room, his face buried in a pillow. Lutger sits down on the edge of the bed and waits a minute before he says, “Take your head out of the pillow, or you won’t be able to breathe and you’ll suffocate. And where will that leave me?”
Wolf laughs involuntarily. He lifts his head and sees his father’s face as a pale patch in the darkness.
“You’re a good father,” he says.
“I know.”
Wolf turns onto his back. He wishes he could cry. Since Erin’s death he has shed no more tears. He would so love to weep for Frauke, but there’s nothing.
“I slept with Tamara after the funeral,” he says, “and I don’t regret a second of it.”
Lutger says nothing for a moment, then says, “I’m glad. After all those years you’re almost like brother and sister, but they say love between brother and sister has its charms as well.”
“Lutger, that’s not funny. I’ve known Tamara for more than ten years, and I never thought it would come to anything. And suddenly Frauke dies, and Tamara and I … Does that make any kind of sense? I can’t see it. But it’s good, it’s right. So I don’t need to see any sense in it.”
“Wolf, it’s fine.”
“Of course it’s fine.”
Wolf falls silent and a few seconds later he adds, “It really is fine, isn’t it?”
“What are you really worried about?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on, what is it?”
How does he know? He can’t even see my face in the dark, am I that transparent? Wolf imagines giving his father a brief summary of the nightmare that invaded their lives just a week ago. By the way, the killer took a picture of you, Lutger, what do you have to say about that?
“I feel like everybody’s disappearing,” he says instead, and even as he says it he realizes that he’s more concerned about that disappearance than he is about a lunatic who gave them the job of getting rid of a corpse.
“They all disappear, and I’m left behind,” he says.
Lutger shrugs.
“I stayed behind when your mother left us. Kris did the same. You’re exaggerating a little. And besides, Frauke and Erin didn’t just disappear. No one did that to you.”
Wolf stares at the ceiling and is glad they’re sitting in the dark. Of course no one did it to him, but it still feels as if there’s an invisible weight lying on him. Loss, and more loss, time and again. Wolf doesn’t want to say it, he guesses that it’s going to sound like the ravings of an idiot, and yet he says it anyway.
“It seems not to matter so much to all of you. You’re strong, you keep going the way you were, but take a look at me.”
“You’re whining.”
“Yes, I’m whining.”
“And we don’t just keep going the way we did before, we’re just good at bluffing, believe me.”
Lutger stands up.
“Come on, let’s the two of us go downstairs now, and I’ll open the expensive wine that you and your brother gave me last year. Let’s raise a glass to Frauke. To Frauke and Tamara.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. And because I’m glad you’re here. Kris was right. It was time for us to talk to one another again. The house missed you too, I could tell. If you must, you can stay the night here—”
“What do you mean, Kris was right?” Wolf breaks in.
“You know what he’s like. He asked me to invite you to dinner so that we can spend a bit more time together.”
Wolf reaches for the bedside light and turns it on. Dazzled, father and son screw up their eyes.
“When did he ask you?” Wolf demands.
“It was right after the funeral. He called and said you could use a break and … Hey, where are you going?”
“I’ve got to go.”
“But …”
“We’ll catch up later.”
Lutger is left alone in the room. He hears the front door closing and wonders what has just happened.
Two hours and fifty-six minutes after he left the villa, Wolf turns back into the drive and is surprised that only his car is missing from the parking area. He’s even more surprised by the picture that presents itself to him in the kitchen. It’s past midnight. Tamara and Kris are sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea. They’ve put out a mug for him.
“What’s going on here?” asks Wolf.
“Sit down,” says Kris.
“Why did you ask Lutger to invite me?”
“Wolf, please, sit down.”
Wolf sits down at the table. When Tamara is about to pour him some tea, he holds his hand over the mug.
“We’ve got to talk,” says Tamara, “so take your stupid hand away and have some tea with us.”
Wolf withdraws his hand, Tamara pours the tea, the brothers look at each other.
“We had to get rid of you,” Kris starts to say.
“I worked that one out for myself, but an explanation would be nice.”
And so Wolf learns of Meybach’s final job and hears what Kris and Tamara have done.
“You’d have been in our way,” Kris explains.
Wolf digests the news, then he says, “Does that mean it’s over now?”
Wolf and Tamara look at Kris at the same time, as if he were the one to decide when it was over.
“It’s over,” Kris says resolutely. “I sent Meybach the file. We will never hear from him again. I promise you that.”
Tamara nods. Wolf tilts his head slightly to one side as if to see Kris from a different angle. It’s a short, bitter moment in which he understands with perfect clarity that his brother has just lied to them.
“What is it?” Kris asks.
“Nothing,” Wolf replies. “I’m just glad it’s over, that’s all.”
TEN MINUTES, fifteen minutes. Tamara sits on the bed, and nothing happens. Frauke’s room stays as it was before Tamara came in. Deserted and empty. Tamara doesn’t know what she expected. She goes into the cellar and fetches cardboard boxes. She empties the shelves and starts packing Frauke’s books in the boxes.
“What are you doing there?”
Wolf stands in the doorway.
“Cleaning up.”
They look at each other.
“It’s all fine,” Tamara reassures him, “really.”
Wolf nods, he doesn’t come any closer, she can see that he wants to come closer. It’s time for us to tell Kris, she thinks and says, “Why don’t all three of us go out for dinner tomorrow night. We should get away from the villa for a few hours and …”
Words fail her, she doesn’t know what’s waiting for her out there.
“… celebrate Frauke,” Wolf finishes her sentence.
“Exactly,” says Tamara and smiles. “Celebrate Frauke.”
And talk to Kris, she thinks and can’t say it. What am I scared of? They’re brothers, not rivals. But we’ve known each other so long. We’re like a constellation, and no one alters a constellation without producing chaos.
Wolf wishes her good night and shuts the door behind him. Tamara regrets not asking him in. Suddenly she’s alone again, with the emptiness that Frauke left behind.
She starts with the desk, clears up the papers, unplugs the computer and wraps up the cable. She takes the pictures and posters off the walls. She is very careful. She doesn’t know which of her things Frauke’s father will want to keep, and if she’s quite honest she doesn’t really care. This is her farewell.
She puts the cardboard boxes by one wall, the clothes by another. It takes her three hours and everything’s cleared away. The only thing she’s left untouched is the bed.
Tamara slumps back exhausted and there, between the sheet and the blanket, she finds Frauke and inhales her smell with relief. She buries her face in the pillows and cries herself to sleep as if she were a child with the weight of the whole world on her shoulders.
Tamara wakes up with no sense of where she is. It’s seven o’clock in the morning. She opens the windows and feels as if by doing so she is freeing Frauke’s smell. She looks around the room and is content. Afterwards she will ask the brothers to help her carry the boxes into the cellar. She’ll think of a good restaurant tonight. She decides to stop grieving before midnight.
Tamara balances her breakfast on a tray and sets it down on the table in the conservatory. She steps out into the garden. The Belzens’ house still looks abandoned. Tamara wonders where they could have gone.
Maybe there was a family emergency, or else they’ve gone off somewhere.
Yes, but why didn’t they let us know?
And as she stands there, the rising sun bathes the house in light, and Tamara notices a movement behind the terrace window. She walks across the still damp lawn to the shore. The dew is cool under her bare feet. She stops by the low quay wall and now she can see that there is a man asleep in an armchair in the Belzens’ living room. As she watches him, the man wakes up and looks at her. Motionless, as if he had only been pretending to be asleep. No surprise, nothing.
That isn’t Joachim.
Tamara doesn’t know how she’s supposed to react. She tries to smile and raises her hand. The man gets to his feet and disappears for a moment from Tamara’s field of vision, then the terrace door slides open and he steps out of the house and into the garden. He stops by the quay wall and calls over to her:
“Wonderful morning. You’re from the villa, aren’t you?”
“You got it,” says Tamara.
“Helena and Joachim have told me about you.”
The man puts a hand to his chest.
“I’m Samuel.”
“Tamara.”
Samuel points behind him with his thumb.
“I’m looking after the house while the two lovebirds are on the Baltic coast.”
“I wondered where they were,” Tamara says with relief.
Samuel sticks his hands in his trouser pockets and points to the water with his foot.
“I’m surprised they haven’t built a bridge here yet. You’re so close that you could almost touch.”
Tamara doesn’t think fifty yards is so close that you could almost touch, but she nods anyway and looks at the water as if she too is surprised that no one has thought of building a bridge.
“OK, back to it.”
Samuel waves goodbye, disappears into the house, and closes the terrace door behind him. Tamara turns around, and is about to get back to her breakfast when she sees Wolf in the conservatory doorway. The sight of him reminds her of him standing in Frauke’s room yesterday. He’s still there, he’s concerned. Wolf is dressed only in shorts, and is holding Tamara’s coffee cup.
“Old man Belzen’s changed,” he says.
“You should do something about your morning erection.”
Wolf looks down.
“That’s not an erection,” he says. “I always look like that.”
“Dream on.”
“His name is Samuel,” says Tamara. “He’s looking after the house while the Belzens paint the Baltic red.”
Wolf grins.
“Since yesterday I’ve only seen you grinning,” says Tamara. “What’s that all about?”
She kisses him before he can reply. Then she pushes her way past him and sits down at the table. Wolf stops in the doorway and looks down at himself.
“Now that’s a morning erection,” he says.
“Who’s interested?” asks Tamara as she cuts open a bread roll.
NOT TRUE.
Kris shuts his eyes tight, opens them again.
True.
He finds it hard to believe that the name appears just like that on the doorbell nameplate. He was sure the address was wrong.
Here I am in the middle of Charlottenburg, a few houses away there’s an organic shop, there’s a playground on the corner, and Meybach’s damned name is right there on the nameplate. It’s absurd.
The front door is open, three bikes lean against each other in the hall. Meybach lives in the front part of the building. Third floor. There is a sisal carpet on the stairs, and his footsteps barely make a sound. His finger settles on the doorbell. He doesn’t know what he’s going to say, but he’ll know as soon as he sees Meybach, he’ll know whether he finds himself facing the murderer or not. His face will give him away.
The gun lies heavy in his jacket. Kris has the feeling that everyone knows what he’s hiding there. He saw himself in a shop window. He’s so inconspicuous that it’s almost embarrassing. A tall, scrawny guy with his hands dug into his jacket pockets. Nothing more.
He rings the bell again, and now there’s a hint of relief. Why should he be there? Kris imagines Meybach on the other side, pressing his ear to the door and listening. Why am I here? Kris sees himself going down the stairs and driving off. No one needs to find out. Kris has made himself a hero unasked, and he could creep off unasked just as easily.
But not after the second job, everything was possible before, but now …
Since the second job Kris no longer believes that Meybach will stop murdering. The lunatic has tasted blood, and if I don’t stop him, what will he do next?
“Hello, anyone there?” he calls, keeping his finger on the doorbell. Then an idea comes to him, and he takes out his new cell phone. It takes him only a second to make a connection, and the cell phone in the apartment answers.
I knew it!
Kris knocks on the door. The ringing from the apartment comes like a shrill retort. Here I am, what are you waiting for, come and get me. It rings and rings, and Kris starts hammering on the door and gives a start when a voice downstairs says, “He isn’t there.”
Kris disconnects and leans over the banister. From the open apartment door a floor below, a man looks up at him.
“Hello,” says Kris.
“Hello,” says the man. “You’re looking for Lars, right?”
“Right.”
“He isn’t there.”
The man tilts his head on one side.
“Do we know each other?”
Kris shakes his head. He knows he has to explain himself now.
“It’s complicated,” he says. “Lars Meybach gave my agency a job, and there are some problems with it. I urgently need to speak to him.”
“Have you tried his cell phone?”
Kris holds up his phone. The man laughs and says, “What kind of agency?”
“Dating.”
“Typical Lars,” says the man, and now Kris laughs too, although he doesn’t know what he’s laughing about.
“Any idea when he’ll be back?”
“He’s at work. If you leave him a message on his phone he’ll … What is it?”
Kris points over his shoulder with his thumb at Meybach’s door.
“His phone’s ringing in the apartment.”
“Oh,” says the man. “Just wait a moment.”
He disappears from the landing, and a moment later he comes upstairs.
“Lars isn’t the type to leave his phone at home,” he says, holding his hand out to Kris. “Jonas Kronauer.”
Kronauer has a spare key. He says Meybach won’t mind if he just looks in.
“Lars?” Kronauer stops in the doorway and just sticks his head inside.
“Hey, Lars, are you there?”
They listen, then look at each other, and Kronauer says, “Shall we?”
“OK,” says Kris, and they step inside the apartment.
He doesn’t know what he expected. The apartment is normal, just normal and tidy. It smells of aftershave, there’s a sweater over a chair; in the kitchen Kris sees an open newspaper next to a cup half full of milky coffee.
“Why are the mirrors covered?” he asks.
Kronauer lifts the cloth at one corner.
“No idea. In the Jewish faith you hang cloth over the mirrors in a house when someone’s died.”
“Has someone died?”
Kronauer shakes his head.
“Not that I know of. As far as I know, Lars isn’t even Jewish.”
They find the cell phone on the shelf in the bathroom. The mirror over the basin is covered with a cloth.
“He must have forgotten his phone,” says Kronauer.
“Do you know where he works?”
“I’ll write it down for you.”
It’s an advertising agency on Alexanderplatz. Kris says thanks and leaves the apartment with Kronauer. A floor below they part with a handshake. Kris can’t believe how lucky he is.
When he comes out of the building, Wolf is leaning against the passenger side of his car, his arms folded in front of his chest. There goes my luck, Kris thinks, and tries not to show any signs of panic as he crosses the street and walks up to Wolf. His head is working, trying to find excuses.
“Are you shitting me or what?”
“What do you mean?”
“You think I don’t know you? It’s me, Wolf, your brother.”
A couple turn to look at them.
“Keep walking,” says Wolf to them.
“You followed me,” says Kris, trying to change the subject.
“Of course I followed you. Just because Tamara fell for your act doesn’t mean I’m going to do the same.”
“What act? I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”
“Where have you just been?”
“Visiting a client.”
Wolf laughs.
“So one of our clients lives here?”
“That’s right.”
Wolf points to the building that Kris has just left.
“Over there? Don’t you think it’s a bit of a coincidence that Meybach’s name is on the nameplate too?”
Kris blushes.
“Maybe Meybach and this client are one and the same person.”
“Oh, shit,” says Kris.
“Right,” says Wolf. “Oh, shit.”
They sit around the corner in the Leonhardt. The atmosphere is awful. Wolf wants to know what Kris thought he was doing, trying to go solo like that.
“Who are you? Dirty Kris or something?”
“I said I’d deal with it.”
“This is what you call dealing with it? Going to the guy’s house? Are you completely crazy? Isn’t Frauke’s drowning enough for you?”
Kris says nothing.
“How on earth did you get hold of his address?”
Kris tells him he found out why Frauke crept secretly into the villa the night before her death.
“Meybach’s number was stored in my phone. Frauke phoned him twice. On Saturday night and then Sunday morning just before she drowned. I asked my former boss to use one of his contacts, and that’s how I got hold of Meybach’s address.”
“And what was your plan?”
“I wanted to talk to him.”
“Alone? You wanted to visit a guy who nails people to the wall? Are you completely insane? The guy’s a murderer!”
Kris looks round, no one is listening to them.
“Do you think I don’t know?” he says quietly, and unconsciously touches the gun in his jacket.
Wolf looks at him dubiously. Nothing that his brother is saying sounds properly thought through. And Wolf knows Kris would never do anything that wasn’t thought through.
“So?”
“So what?”
“Was Meybach at home or not?”
“He’s at work.”
Wolf tilts his head.
“And before you ask me whether this Meybach is our Meybach: he is.”
Kris tells him about the cell phone in the apartment.
“You were in his apartment?” Wolf laughs. “You’re shitting me. So if the address is right and if this guy is our murderer, then he’s a complete idiot.”
“Or he’s fearless.”
Wolf stops laughing.
“Maybe he really is fearless,” Kris goes on. “But maybe he also wants us to find him. Have you thought of that?”
From the way Wolf looks, he hasn’t thought of that. Kris drinks from his coffee, which has grown cold. He wants the words to take effect. As he looks at Wolf, Kris wonders how he’s going to get rid of him now. I’m the big brother, protecting the little brother. That’s how it’s always been.
“Don’t think of getting rid of me,” Wolf warns him.
“No one wants to get rid of you.”
“Then trust me. Don’t exclude me.”
Kris hesitates, then he takes the piece of paper out of his trouser pocket and says, “If Meybach wants us to find him, let’s do him the favor.”
“What’s that?” Wolf asks.
Kris sets the address down on the table and pushes it toward Wolf.
“Let’s visit Meybach at work.”
“Sorry,” says the woman at reception, without taking her eyes off her monitor, “Meybach isn’t with us any more. He resigned three months ago. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“Are you quite sure?” asks Kris.
“Sure as I can be. His mother fell ill and Lars wanted to look after her. Only for a month at first, then he pulled out completely.”
She looks up for the first time and smiles suddenly. It’s the fakest smile that Kris has seen for ages. Pure business.
“What did you want to see him about?”
Kris doesn’t know what to say. Wolf shoves him aside and takes over.
“We’re old school friends. We’re back in Berlin for the first time in years and we wanted to surprise him. Since he wasn’t at home, we thought we’d come and meet him here. Any idea where we go from here?”
Bull’s-eye. The woman has been challenged, they need her help. There are such people—people without a particular task to perform, who are almost lifeless in their dormant state, but full of energy as soon as you need them.
“Have you tried his cell phone?”
“He’s not answering.”
“Hm, let’s take a look.”
She bites her bottom lip between her teeth and leans forward on her chair. She no longer looks like a receptionist in her mid-twenties, now she’s more of a teenager faced with a mystery.
“You could try his parents.”
She slides back over to the keyboard, types and finds out that his parents live in Dahlem. She writes the address down and underlines the street twice as if Kris and Wolf were stupid. Her phone rings as she hands them the piece of paper. She picks up the receiver, her eyes drift across the room and past them. The brothers no longer exist for her.
“They probably breed women like that in a lab,” Wolf says on the way outside.
“At least she’s helped us.”
Wolf looks at the piece of paper.
“What exactly do you expect to get from the parents?”
“Something,” says Kris. “I’m happy with the crumbs from the table.”
“How poetic.”
No one answers when they ring the bell, but they can hear music from inside the house. Wolf walks to one of the windows and screens his eyes. After a few seconds he knocks against the pane. When he is standing next to Kris again the music falls silent and the front door opens. The woman is in her mid-fifties. She is holding a pair of scissors and a comb.
“How can I help you?”
“Mrs. Meybach?” asks Kris. “Lars Meybach’s mother?”
Her mouth tightens and she nods. Wolf tells her the same story that he told in the advertising agency. The search for the missing friend continues. Meybach’s mother asks them in. In the living room a poodle is sitting on a chair. There are hair clippings on the floor. When the poodle sees the brothers come in, it is about to jump off the chair, but its mistress snaps at it.
“Sit!”
The dog cowers and sits where it is.
“He hates it when I clip his hair,” she explains and points to the sofa.
They sit down, and the poodle doesn’t take its eyes off them. Mrs. Meybach scratches his head. She doesn’t say anything, she just looks at the brothers, then clears her throat as if she had only just noticed that no one was speaking. She starts talking. She says she’s sorry that they have to find out like this, but her son died three months ago, and it’s a burden that the family still carries with it.
The brothers are back in the street. They don’t understand a thing now. They sit in the car as if anesthetized and don’t understand a thing. Wolf tries to introduce some kind of logic into the story. All that comes out is nonsense.
“You spoke to him on the phone. You found out his address, and you were in his apartment. I mean, his neighbor must know if the guy’s dead or not.”
“Maybe he’s a different Lars Meybach,” says Kris.
“Come on, Kris, that’s just crap. It’s his phone, ringing in his apartment. You saw the thing yourself.”
It’s four o’clock in the afternoon, the rush-hour traffic swells like a metallic tumor. They decide to drive back to Meybach’s place and talk to the neighbors. Wolf says Kris should avoid the autobahn. Kris says the autobahn will be quicker. They spend the next half hour stuck in traffic, get off the autobahn, and onto the Kurfürstendamm, and five minutes later a series of side streets has delivered them to the Stuttgarter Platz. Jonas Kronauer is no longer at home, of course. They ring Meybach’s bell again, and Wolf suggests breaking the door down. Kris has no idea what good that would do, and suggests going back to the advertising agency.
According to his mother, Lars Meybach had taken an overdose of sleeping pills and drowned in the bath. His neighbor and best friend Jonas was supposed to have found him. Mrs. Meybach had whispered the details in such a way that Kris and Wolf had had to sit leaning forward on the edge of the sofa to hear every word. She had said that her son was a depressive, so his suicide didn’t surprise anyone.
“We didn’t tell anyone outside the family that he’s dead. We couldn’t have stood the humiliation. You know how people talk. Lars was a source of shame to us all. His death was a relief. Please, don’t talk to my husband about it. We have to go on living.”
The woman at reception doesn’t believe a word of it.
“Lars isn’t dead, that’s nonsense,” she says, laughing a pearly laugh like sweet sparkling wine. “We’re in regular contact with him, his last e-mail …”
She flips through her mailbox.
“… is dated 16th February. He wished André a happy birthday. André’s our boss. He still hopes that Lars will come back and work here again one day. Who told you he was dead?”
“We went to see his mother,” says Kris.
“Ah, mothers,” says the woman and smiles ruefully.
The brothers stand on the Alexanderplatz, still confused.
“Why would his mother lie to us?” asks Wolf. “Did she seem crazy to you?”
“Did Frauke’s mother seem crazy to you?” Kris asks back.
Before Wolf can answer, his cell phone rings. He takes the call, listens for a moment, and passes it to Kris.
“It’s Meybach. He wants to know what the fuck we think we’re doing.”
YOU AREN’T REALLY surprised that they found the apartment. You expected that, it was what you wanted. But you didn’t expect they’d actually turn up on your doorstep. You’re glad it was Kris Marrer. He still remains a mystery to you. What he thinks, what he feels. You regret not having more time for him. His visit makes your life more real. Kris Marrer was in your apartment. Kris Marrer walked through your rooms, and Kris Marrer knows you’re alive. He knows. Even if you’re pleased, you shouldn’t let him know on the phone. You’re not an idiot. Let him have both barrels.
“What the fuck are you up to?” you ask again, after Wolf Marrer has passed the phone to his brother. “I thought we had a business agreement, and then I hear you’ve shown up at my house.”
For a few seconds there isn’t a sound at the other end, then Kris Marrer says, “It doesn’t say in our agreement that we aren’t allowed to visit clients to discuss problems with them.”
You laugh.
“Very funny, Marrer, really funny. What sort of problems have we got?”
“There’s this rumor going around that you took an overdose of sleeping pills and drowned in your bathtub.”
The fun’s over.
How could he …
You have no idea how that could have happened.
How dare he …
For a long, stubborn moment there’s a red curtain in front of your eyes. The room disappears, the building dissolves, and the boundaries of reality blur as if it were all just an illusion. Your life, this world. You blink, the curtain dissolves again, and you ask quietly, “Do I sound dead to you?”
“No,” Kris Marrer answers, “but—”
“DO I SOUND LIKE A DAMNED CORPSE?” you suddenly roar at him.
Silence, then out of the silence, cautiously:
“I said no.”
“Thanks,” you reply with self-control, trying to slow your breathing. You’re alive.
Yes.
It’s all OK.
I know.
Repeat it.
I’m alive. It’s all OK.
Better?
Better.
“Why does your mother think you’re dead?” asks Kris Marrer.
You sink back. It’s getting worse and worse. You feel the sweat on the palms of your hands. As if someone had opened all the pores. Wet. Your voice is a hiss.
“You went to my mother’s place?”
“The advertising agency gave us—”
“YOU WENT TO MY MOTHER’S PLACE? ARE YOU COMPLETELY INSANE?”
You can no longer sit still. You’re aware of the irony of the fact that Frauke accused you of the same thing. How could you be so stupid? The brothers should never have gone to the advertising agency. You felt so secure. What an idiot you are! For a moment you’re glad, the next moment you’re crapping yourself.
Pull yourself together.
You get up and shut the door to your office.
You don’t know what to do next.
You don’t know.
“How could you go to my mother’s place?” you ask again quietly.
Kris Marrer doesn’t reply, there’s a rustling sound, then the younger brother is back on the line.
“Listen, you sick fuck. Who do you think you’re dealing with here?” he asks. “Be glad that we didn’t find you, because if we do—”
“Wolf,” Kris says, “give me the phone.”
“I want to know what he did to Frauke.”
“Wolf, give me the fucking phone!”
Rustling, cursing, then Kris Marrer is back on the line.
“Meybach? Are you still there? I’m sorry, we’ve all been a bit shattered since Frauke’s death.”
“It’s over,” you say. “Haven’t you worked that out?”
“Yeah, but we—”
“You don’t believe me. You think I’m just a sicko, wandering around the place killing people. That’s your problem, not mine. You think what you like. I’m going to disappear now, and you’re going to disappear. You won’t think about Lars Meybach again. We no longer exist for one another.”
Silence.
“Simple as that?”
“Simple as that. You’ve worked for me, I’ve paid you for it. There are no more jobs. That’s why we’re now parting in peace. If you so much as think about going on looking for me, if I see one of you anywhere near my parents, your families will pay for it. I mean it. What I’ve done so far had nothing to do with you. You don’t want it to have anything to do with you. Say it.”
“We don’t want it to have anything to do with us.”
“Now give me your brother.”
Rustling, a deep intake of breath.
“What is it?”
“I want to tell you what I told your brother yesterday. I had nothing to do with your friend’s death. It was an accident.”
“And why should I believe a madman?”
“If I were a madman, none of you would be alive now. I’m one of the good guys. Bear that in mind. And tell your brother I’m still waiting for the file.”
You hang up and are very pleased with your last words. I’m one of the good guys. You still can’t get your head around what these two brothers have done. How on earth could that have happened?
There’s a knock at your door. One of your colleagues sticks his head in.
“Everything OK?” he asks.
“Everything’s OK,” you say and raise your thumb although there’s sweat on your forehead and you’re breathing far too fast.
The file comes by e-mail the same evening. You delete it without listening to it. It’s over for good. You also delete the mail account before closing the notebook and looking around. The apartment has changed, as if it’s leading a life of its own. The mirrors are unveiled, the darkness has made way for light. You walk through the rooms like a free man. Tomorrow you will close down the flat and sever all connections. You’ve paid your tribute; even if the brothers almost destroyed everything, you have stayed true to yourself and now it’s over. You can’t ask for more than that.