The following weekend Irma was at home when Dieter Nimitz arrived from Brussels, and to his relief she seemed to be in a good mood. He went upstairs and showered and changed; when he came down, he found her in the kitchen preparing supper. She had never liked cooking and saw food as fuel rather than a source of pleasure. But though he was quite a good cook and ate well during the week in his Brussels flat, Irma didn’t welcome him in the kitchen except for Saturday night, and so yet again they sat down to a bland supper of sausage, sautéed potatoes and green beans.
‘How was your week?’ he asked dutifully.
‘Good enough,’ she said, which as always discouraged further questions. He had learned not to press her – not if he didn’t want to have his head bitten off. But all week he had been wondering about the letter he’d seen from the orphanage, asking about the young man who had gone on a Freitang school trip abroad and not returned. He couldn’t have said exactly why he was so interested in the matter. Perhaps it was the rarity of learning anything about her work, since Irma was uncommunicative, and scrupulous about storing all her documents in a locked filing cabinet.
She said, ‘Did you see the Commissioner this week?’ She often asked this, as if his future depended on the Commissioner’s favour, whereas it was Van der Vaart who would determine Dieter’s future, and Van der Vaart who had made it crystal clear that Dieter’s career was staying right where it was.
‘No. He was visiting Austria – the refugee camp.’
‘Any news from there?’
He shook his head. In fact, he and his colleague Matilda had been copied in on the Commissioner’s email from Carinthia, reporting on what he had found. The situation was even grimmer than previously thought. The Austrian authorities seemed to be expending most of their energy on preventing more refugees from entering the country, rather than on looking after those who had already arrived.
But he didn’t want to discuss this with Irma; she would have endless questions, and he was tired. What he most wanted at home was a complete break from the depressing rigours of his job, so he said nothing now about the Commissioner’s report.
They had planned to go into Hamburg the next day to see a sculpture exhibit, but in the morning Irma cried off, saying she had some unexpected work from school to deal with. She insisted that he go on his own, however, and he left the house at about eleven o’clock. He walked to the train, stopping only to buy a newspaper, but at the station he found a group of people gathered outside. Two policemen stood blocking the entrance to the ticket hall.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked a woman.
‘There’s been an incident,’ she said. ‘Someone jumped in front of a train. They’ve closed the station while they remove the body.’ She looked at him, hesitating for a moment, then seemed to decide it was safe to add, ‘It was a foreigner.’
He stood wondering what to do; it seemed unsympathetic to ask the policeman how long it would take to bring out the corpse. He supposed he could take a taxi into town instead, but it would be very expensive and Irma would complain. In any case, no cabs were waiting on the rank. He could take a bus, but that involved a bit of a walk, and he would have to change at least once on his way into Hamburg.
What a nuisance, he thought, then felt slightly guilty, remembering the poor soul who had caused this disruption to his plans. There was nothing for it, he supposed, but to go back home, where Irma would be working in her study, and he could make lunch for them both. The prospect was unenticing; no doubt she would want to ask more questions about how he’d spent his week, and when he was likely next to see the Commissioner.
He decided to have lunch out instead, and he found a café across the road, where he ate a bowl of pork and bean Eintopf and drank a small beer. Then he walked slowly home, wondering if Irma would allow him a brief nap that afternoon. As he turned on to his road he saw a car approach from the far end, near his house. It was a silver Mercedes saloon, travelling rather too fast for this quiet suburban street. As the car passed, Dieter stared at the man behind the wheel. He wore a jacket over a shirt and striped tie, and had a square, rugged-looking face, with an old-fashioned moustache that followed the curving contours of his upper lip. Intent on driving, he didn’t even glance at Dieter.
At home as he opened the front door, Irma emerged from the back of the house. ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, as she came towards him.
He was taken aback by her tone. ‘There was an accident. On the track. They cancelled the trains.’
‘You might have told me,’ she said, her voice rising.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said mildly. ‘I didn’t think it would make any difference. Is something wrong?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m busy in the kitchen,’ she said, and retreated down the corridor.
He went upstairs, but decided not to take a nap. He looked for the book he was reading, a novel by Günter Grass, but it wasn’t by the bed and he couldn’t find it in his little study. He went downstairs and called out to Irma in the kitchen. ‘Have you seen my book? You know, the one by Günter Grass?’
‘No. Isn’t it upstairs?’
‘I can’t find it. Never mind, I’ll look in the drawing room,’ he said, and opened the door.
‘No,’ she cried out from the kitchen, but he was already in the room. It was rarely used except when they had visitors and was formally furnished, with Dresden china on a side table, two heavy armchairs with chintz covers and a deep sofa that might have dated from the days of the Kaiser. Irma had traditional taste, and this room was really hers and hers alone.
There was no sign of his book, but the room felt slightly different from usual. What was it? He sniffed – and smelled the faintest hint of cigarettes. Odd – Irma hated smoking and forbade it in the house.
He sniffed again just as she came in behind him. ‘I think you will find your book upstairs,’ she said sharply, and motioned him to leave the room.
He held up a hand. ‘Don’t I smell tobacco?’ he asked.
‘Not unless you have been sneaking a cigarette yourself.’
He sniffed again. The aroma was unmistakable.
She sighed. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It was the workmen when they painted the windows. The swine – I expressly told them to do their smoking outside.’
‘Ah,’ he said, nodding, though he thought – the workmen left six weeks ago. But he said nothing.
Later, after supper, as he swept the leftovers from their plates into the pedal bin, he saw something glinting. He reached down and found himself holding the stub of a dark brown cigarette with a gold filter tip. A special cigarette – a Sobranie, in fact, the sort he remembered the man in the Homburg hat smoking so many years before, one after another. For a brief second, he wondered if that man had been in his house, but he realised that was impossible – that man would have died years ago. But who had smoked it then, and what had they been doing here? And why had Irma lied to him?
He was the one used to hiding behind countless untruths: how many glasses of wine he’d had at lunch, who his friends were in Brussels – he made sure to mention Matilda only rarely – even the occasions when he had taken a taxi rather than public transport, and of course the big untruth, the secret he had told nobody, the secret of his real identity.
The nature of his relationship with Irma meant that he was the one who hid things, half out of fear of his wife’s tongue, half from a need for some fragment of independence. The very concept of Irma lying to him was entirely novel. He felt he had lurched on to disturbing new ground and he did not know what it might mean.