THE FOURTH LESSON

 

5.1

Rike sleeps late. She wakes with one clear thought, an ambition: today the lesson will be outside. It doesn’t matter where, but outside, away from the apartment. She isn’t interested in hearing news about his neighbours, has no desire to know Christos’s thoughts or experiences with his wife. She does not want to hear about the Kozmatikos boy or know what kind of trouble he has brought down upon himself. No. Today they will walk through the city, and maybe have a drink at one of the terraces overlooking the bay. Today they will take in Limassol and they will discuss what they find, whatever they happen upon.

She finds Henning in the kitchen in his shorts. He walks through the apartment without a shirt, an electric razor in hand. The buzz maps his walk. Rike watches from the garden, her feet up on the small side wall. It’s like he’s checking his territory, she thinks. He’s taking stock.

‘So no more cats?’

‘I haven’t seen them today. There’s one black one left. That’s all I’ve seen.’

‘I thought the black one was dead?’ Henning leans against the door. Rike hasn’t noticed before how the kitchen and the front room are linked by a continuous line of windows which should all open up. Henning hangs about like he has something to say.

‘What?’

‘Nothing?’

‘No, what is it?’

Henning turns back to the apartment but doesn’t yet go inside. ‘Isa said you’re teaching?’

‘Yes, there’s a school in Limassol.’

‘She said you were teaching a man in his house?’

‘I go to his apartment.’

Henning frowns.

‘It’s safe. It’s all organized through the school.’

‘For how long?’

‘Seven weeks.’

‘And you like it?’

Rike takes a sip from her coffee and slowly agrees. ‘Yes, I like it enough. Why did you come back early?’

Henning rubs his hand over his cheek and chin to check his shave.

‘Everything’s done.’

‘With the man from the desert?’

‘Yes, everything is settled.’

‘You still think he isn’t Sutler?’

Henning isn’t pleased to hear the name. ‘I doubt it.’

‘But you aren’t sure?’

Henning runs his tongue inside his cheek. ‘Do you know what a sutler is? It’s a person or a company which provides for the military. This is a man, who works for a trans-national company which provides for the American military, and his name is the name of the service he provides. And because no one takes so much money from these people so easily, not without someone knowing. It doesn’t happen.’ Henning points the shaver at the cat-food bowls.

‘But someone thinks that it’s him?’

‘Someone, yes. Some people.’

Henning points again to the cat bowls and asks if Rike can pick them up. ‘We’ll have rats.’

‘She won’t listen to me.’

‘You think I’ll have more luck?’

‘You could ask for anything right now.’

‘I’d better ask then. It won’t last long.’

She thinks Henning disapproves of her teaching. The idea, one he approved, was that Rike would spend time with Isa while Henning was away. If she’s teaching, she isn’t providing company.

*   *   *

Rike walks to the school offices on the Limassol waterfront. She delivers her passport and waits while it is copied. The language teachers are all women. Rosaria, the woman who hired her, is friendly and formal in equal measure, certainly less blank than the first time they met and the times they have spoken on the phone. As she waits the door buzzer sounds intermittently. There is an expectant atmosphere, a little nervousness among the students as they gather in the common room. It wouldn’t be so bad teaching here. English, German, Italian. In the afternoons, between classes, she could swim.

Rosaria points out the library. It’s nothing more than a stacked shelf in each room of DVDs, CDs, course books, and other books – novels and poetry – which seem so random they were possibly left by students. Greek in one room. Spanish in another. Italian in another. English in two rooms. Rike is welcome to borrow the books as she pleases, and she should tell her student about the facility. Rosaria presses a brochure into Rike’s hand.

‘Make sure he knows about these. There are trips, half-day trips to the museum, to Curium, to other archaeological sites, and a meal. Then full-day trips to Paphos, which take in a stop at Aphrodite’s Beach. He’s welcome to come.’ She points out that these are extras, run in association with the school. Rike would also be welcome on these trips and her ticket would come at a reduced price.

As the bell sounds Rosaria turns to the door. She hesitates. ‘He really hasn’t told you about himself?’

It seems to Rike that this question is reflexive. Rosaria asks Rike to walk with her. ‘Has he said anything?’

‘Only that he isn’t working.’

‘He was on a day course with us, but he only stayed for the morning. When we were in touch with him he explained that he would be more comfortable taking the lessons at home. I met with him to discuss what he might need, and that’s when he asked for you.’

‘Did he say what the problem was?’

‘Oh yes. He was assaulted.’ Rosaria looks meaningfully at Rike – who isn’t sure about what she’s implying.

‘Assaulted?’ This word sounds different when applied to a man.

‘Hospitalized.’ Rosaria nods and adds in a low voice. ‘What I’m telling you is confidential.’

In the office Rosaria looks in the small filing cabinet and takes a moment to locate the file.

She passes a handwritten note to Rike. It simply states that he regrets that he’s unable to attend meetings or events with groups of people because of a continuing health issue, and would the school extend his apologies to the teacher.

Rosaria compresses her lips, an air about her: there is more information she cannot possibly share.

‘How do you know what happened?’

‘I spoke with him for a long time. He had a family,’ she says. ‘He was attacked at work. The injuries were serious. I’m telling you so you won’t be surprised. It’s probably best to let him raise the subject.’

Rike can’t imagine a situation in which Tomas would offer such information. She just can’t see it.

5.2

Immediately before the session Rike takes her lunch at the café opposite Tomas’s apartment.

The café is smaller and busier than she imagined, and a queue gathers at the back where a man serves from a counter of cooked meats and vegetables. The café is little more than a corridor with two high tables, six stools, and a banquette which reaches across the width of the café. Stacked beside a door stand crates of soft drinks. No more than six or eight people could eat at one time. Most, she’s happy to see, take their food out in paper-wrapped packages. Rike chooses white fish and capers and sits facing the wall and a poster of the Last Supper with local politicians and film stars replacing the disciples. Beside her two men share a plate of bread and olives.

One man stoops over the bowl and complains as he eats. His companion tears bread and shakes his head in agreement as if they are considering something of great weight, something hard to comprehend. The first man continues and gestures with the bread. For one moment Rike catches the man’s eye, but his thoughts are elsewhere and he looks through her.

Tomas is remote, she has to admit, and when he smiles it’s generally in response, as if he’s copying something he’s unable to freely volunteer. He had a family. Had. It isn’t hard to understand everything about Tomas Berens in the light of a catastrophic incident: he doesn’t socialize, and he’s distant, uninvolved. The man is remote, unmoored. The apartment shows almost no evidence of habitation yet he lives there and rarely leaves it. The kitchen, what she has seen of it, is almost bare – he can’t eat there, he almost certainly doesn’t cook. Tomas Berens has a story. She stops herself from imagining fires, car accidents, devastating incidents, domestic in nature. She can’t picture him being assaulted, or see how this has led to the loss of his family. A family means more than a wife. One child or two. Easy to imagine, Tomas with wife and child, a house somewhere, a home, a life with work, associations, club memberships, schools, habits she can only imagine. She furnishes him with such a life, which makes his current situation an intolerable void.

*   *   *

Up on the fourth floor Rike is hopeful that they can take the lesson outside. She doesn’t want Tomas Berens to become a collection of facts: a man managing the consequences of a serious assault, a man who has lost his family, a man adrift. As she comes up the final flight she struggles to set these thoughts aside.

Two folding chairs face each other. Beside Tomas’s chair are set out his notebook, a dictionary, and a small tin of biscuits. The balcony doors are open, and the sun reflects off the opposite building to throw a general light into the room.

Tomas holds a ticket. ‘It’s a ticket for the Cultural Centre.’

The museum is close. She knows it, of course?

He turns the ticket over and reads both sides.

‘It’s still valid.’ He offers it to her. ‘It’s a pass so it’s valid for two days.’

Rike asks what is currently showing. ‘Paintings of churches and beaches?’

‘Some. They aren’t so bad. But it’s worth going. There’s another show upstairs.’ The artists are French, he thinks, with a German name. He isn’t clear on the details. In any case it’s a group, he can’t remember the name, and you can participate in the piece, if you like, you can take part in it. He turns the ticket over again. No, the name isn’t on it.

She doesn’t go to galleries much – a small confession – in fact she isn’t much interested in art.

‘I liked it,’ he smiles. ‘Probably for the wrong reasons.’

Rike asks for an example.

Tomas insists. ‘Take the ticket. They have a booth, and you can record what you want, and they add it to the piece. I know it sounds strange. Go and see it. Tell me what you think.’

Tomas sets the ticket on her knee.

‘Practise asking me questions.’

Tomas looks down at his hands, folds them together. There are specks of white paint on the backs of his hands and forearms. ‘What is the news from your brother-in-law?’

‘He’s home.’ Rike nods and smiles.

‘So the man in the hospital no longer needs him?’

‘I think he’s stable. They are keeping him in a coma to help him recover.’

‘Is it true that he walked across the desert?’

Rike isn’t sure. It doesn’t sound feasible. ‘I don’t know. They found him in the desert. A team from Tübingen. Archaeologists from the university. He is very sick and dehydrated and he has sunburn.’ She strokes her face, her arms, gestures at her throat. ‘Serious sunburn. It doesn’t look good. His health. It’s very bad. They want to move him, but they don’t know if he will recover.’

‘So they are waiting?’

‘So they’re waiting. And trying to find out who he really is.’

‘This is your brother-in-law’s work?’

‘Yes, this is what Henning has to find out.’ She changes the subject. ‘You have paint on your hands.’

‘I was helping Christos in the basement.’

Rike is pleased to hear this. ‘Have you decided to come to Cyprus?’

‘Not exactly. But I’m here, and doing nothing. I might as well help. If I do decide, then I will need space for storage. I haven’t thought this through properly.’

Rike doesn’t understand, and Tomas admits it isn’t exactly logical. ‘It’s something to do. And it might be useful. If I make up my mind it will make everything easier.’

Rike admits that this makes sense. ‘And perhaps this is one way to make the decision?’

Perhaps, he agrees, perhaps. ‘I haven’t told you the story about the basement.’

Rike opens her hands in invitation.

‘It isn’t pleasant.’ Tomas wipes the side of his nose. ‘Christos told me. There are rooms in the basement for storage. Sometimes they rent them out. Some are used by the residents. Four years ago two men rented one of them, and when they left they found evidence of a crime.’

‘Evidence?’

‘It’s hard to explain. But the room was lined with plastic, and sorry, it’s a little disgusting,’ he looks apologetically to Rike, ‘but the room was full of blood, and other things. Clothes, I think. But they didn’t find a body.’

Rike does not know what to say. ‘When was this?’

‘I’m not sure. It can’t have been so long ago because Christos was living here, also the doctor.’

‘And the two men?’

‘Disappeared. They have no idea who did it, or who they killed. They think that these men picked up someone from the port, but they don’t know. No one was ever reported missing.’

‘But it was a murder? How do they know?’

‘It isn’t pleasant. There was blood in the room. A lot of blood, and a tongue found outside, in a plastic bag with clothes.’

Rike sits forward with her elbows on her knees. The chairs are a little small and there is no other way to sit. He’s right, she says, the story, it isn’t so pleasant. She doesn’t know what else to say.

5.3

Sandro waits in the hotel lobby, legs crossed, he sits crooked in the seat with one arm across the shoulder. A studied look. Practised and conscious.

Gibson wants Sandro to invite him home, to extract him from the misery of shower caps, hand soaps, white towels, suitcases with wheels, double beds and hotel rooms which cannot be filled. He wants to meet the man’s wife. See how he behaves with his children. Their house will be an apartment in a palazzo, dark, chaotic, intimate, overloaded, with scents of home cooking, washing. A place noisy with neighbours, cats, dogs, children: both a pleasure and an irritation. He wants to be absorbed. He wants a stranger to be uncommonly friendly.

Sandro, unshaven, wears a suit, and again has a sloping, apologetic smile. He was in court this morning at the Centro Direzionale, close by the prison. ‘Another world.’ On some other occasion Gibson might like to visit? It is like an office and a church, he says. He asks about the man in Laura’s photograph. Gibson has seen this, yes?

‘I assume you checked the hotels?’

‘We have.’

‘And nothing?’

‘And nothing.’ The man runs his finger under his mouth, pinches his chin as if in thought. ‘If you have the time, you might try Hotel Sette on via Toledo.’ Sandro sits back, assumes his original position, one leg hitched across another, an arm stretched across the chair-back. ‘Sometimes people aren’t so willing to talk with the police. It’s nothing personal, but there are habits, ways in which things are done.’

‘They won’t talk to me.’

‘You underestimate yourself. Information is more available to you as an ordinary man. Go see what they say. Give them a story so they are involved.’

*   *   *

He finds Hotel Sette on the third floor on via Toledo opposite the Café Roma. He buys coffee after coffee, short espressos, which have no effect and taste charred. He watches the hotel doorway, the shops beneath: a clothing store with a single a white window, brightly lit, a manikin with purple earmuffs dressed in yellow hot pants (isn’t that what they’re called?). To the right a patisserie, dark and old-fashioned, wood and glass. Customers leave with wrapped packages.

Gibson isn’t sure what day this is, he thinks to ask the barista, but doesn’t want to appear foolish. There is no movement in the hotel. The windows, three floors of them, all open with blinds pulled up, but nothing to see, except ceilings, the top corners of rooms. Small, he guesses, and plain.

He has no idea who he’s looking for. Less idea about what to do with the information. He thinks to order another coffee, his fourth, but notices that his hand is shaking. He finds the photo on his phone. It takes a while to remember the sequence (unlock, swipe to the third screen, select the camera …). With the image on view, he props the phone upright on the counter, turns it to the barista, and attempts to explain.

‘This man. He was here perhaps? Did he come to the café? He was staying in the hotel opposite.’

The man leans in to the phone and squints, then shakes his head.

‘I’m looking for my daughter.’

The barista, now attentive, picks up the phone and shows it to the woman behind the counter who gives a long, considered nod.

‘Sure,’ he says. ‘He was here. I remember him. Not so long ago.’ He speaks in Italian to the woman and they appear to disagree. He points to Gibson, to the hotel, to the entrance. ‘This is where he was staying. He was in that room. One, two, three windows.’ He points to the third floor, the window immediately above the clothes shop. He knows the room he says, because the man would watch the street all day.

Gibson isn’t sure who to contact first: Sandro or Geezler.

5.4

The museum isn’t on her way, and Rike arrives with half a mind not to go inside, but the building is dressed with bright banners, and there’s no reason not to now she has walked there and has a free ticket. Besides, any kind of art, pictures of beaches even, pretty domed churches, would be a pleasant change of subject after stories of blood and stories of severed tongues.

She passes quickly through the lobby, seeking the room on the upper floor, but has to ask directions.

The guard points to a poster, right in front of her, with the letters MFP and underneath Mannfunktionprojekt: ‘I want / I wish: One Year of Trouble’. The letters, in a smart unadorned script, promise some style.

The exhibit, on the top floor, is very simple. The grey walls have a brick-red script printed with I want I wish I want I wish I want I wish I want I wish in a solid block, so insistent that ‘I’ looks only to be a separation between ‘want’ and ‘wish’. So emphatic that the words become a simple command.

Centred above the text a smart neon sign announces: One Year of Trouble. Headphones hang by their cords, upside down in a grid, in eight rows of eight. Voices pipe gently into the space announcing dates, a different voice for each day. The days slur one into another. November the twenty-first. November twenty-second, November twenty-third, nineteen eighty-one. Men’s voices, women’s voices, most speaking in English. Not all of the headphones play in sync, on one set, in the centre, other voices are superimposed, giving dates and explanations: June seven, nineteen ninety-four, my father passed away. June eighth is the anniversary of my divorce. June ninth, I failed my final exams. June tenth, two thousand and nine, I had an unsuccessful operation on my lower spine. She listens on, November, December, January, the days run chronologically through random years, and on February twelfth she recognizes his voice. Tomas Berens. Short, but distinctive. A date with no explanation.

Surprised to hear Tomas’s voice, Rike instinctively turns about, checks the entrance, checks the corners, not expecting him to be in the room, but out of self-consciousness, as if she has been caught prying. She waits, listens to the year count back to February twelfth, many of the dates are missing, the cycle is incomplete. His voice repeats. She’s less certain the second time.

In the corner of the room is a small booth. In a statement the artists ask that you record a date, and if you like, a short reason.

She stands on tiptoe when she records her message. Most of the days record deaths, which makes her reluctant to add another. October twenty-fifth, two thousand and seven. To the memory of Tobias Georg Bastian. One ear to the headphone, the other poised at the microphone.

As soon as she is finished she feels her voice recede, become indistinct, one among many messages, and then she worries that her sister might hear this, or Henning. But the idea no longer belongs to her, and she feels a detachment, as if, in some small way, she has somehow shed the date and its associations. The machine beeps once, and Rike is offered the choice to save or delete the message.

She chooses delete. This is not her information to tell.

*   *   *

Rike returns to the apartment clear about her decision not to save the message, but still feels part of the piece. Neither Isa nor Henning would want to hear the message, and she is not sure that she would care to share the information with Tomas. There is too much of an imbalance. Tomas knows basic facts about her – opinions and trivia – the bones of the past five years, but Rike knows little about Tomas.

*   *   *

Isa wants to know if Rike has gone through any of Henning’s papers. At first it’s a clear question, without blame. The papers were on the table. Did she look at them? Rike says she didn’t, of course she didn’t. She asks what papers Isa is talking about, there was nothing on the table this morning, nor last night, as far as she can remember, except his briefcase.

‘That’s what I’m talking about. The papers were in his briefcase.’

Now Rike is alarmed. Isa should know she wouldn’t go through Henning’s papers, and she would certainly never search through his briefcase.

Isa folds her arms. It doesn’t make sense then. ‘He has information about Parson. He was sent some photographs.’

Rike doesn’t quite see what she’s being asked. ‘And are they missing?’

‘No. But they were in two envelopes. Separate. Now they are together. Someone has been looking through his papers, because they are in a completely different order. Photos of the train. Photos of the body. They were in sealed envelopes. They were opened and mixed together.’

Although this has nothing to do with her, Rike still feels responsible.

5.5

At the Banco di Napoli Gibson draws out the maximum three hundred euro from his personal account. He tries his other cards, debit and credit, struggles to remember the numbers, and is pleased to be able to draw out, in total, a further nine hundred euro. He tries his business cards, but has to go into the bank as these cards are refused. Here they tell him that the sum he wishes to withdraw would take ten days to transfer.

Twelve hundred euro is as much as he can muster.

He stuffs the money into his inside jacket pocket, then returns to the entrance to Hotel Sette.

The passageway leads to a courtyard, then a larger staircase and a caged elevator. The steps are long and sloped, easy to ascend. At the third floor the signs for the hotel with arrows indicating the front of the building are hand-printed and curl from the walls.

The woman behind the counter wears large glasses and appears startled. She doesn’t speak English, and when Gibson talks to her she blinks.

‘There is a man,’ he says, ‘who stayed here. In this room.’ Gibson points to the room beside reception. ‘This one. At the front.’

The woman blinks at him.

‘English?’ he asks. ‘Inglese? Parla Inglese? Trova un persona che parla Inglese?’

This doesn’t help. It isn’t even schoolboy Italian. ‘I need to speak with someone. It is important.’

A man comes out from an office. A simple beaded curtain divides the rooms. A beaded curtain. A man in a string vest with thick slicked-back hair. So familiar it’s a little laughable.

The man politely asks if he can help.

‘I need information about one of your guests.’

The man folds his arms. ‘What is the name?’

‘The man was staying in this room. I think he was staying in this room. I know that it was this hotel.’

The man says he can’t help unless Gibson has a name and tells him what he needs.

Gibson gives the woman a cautious glance and lowers his voice. ‘It’s a little delicate.’ And here he takes out the money. ‘I need to give him this. I need an address.’

The man, now confused, looks hard at the money.

Gibson leans forward and lowers voice a little more. ‘I have a daughter. You understand. A daughter who is interested in this man.’

The man looks from the money to Gibson with equal incredulity. ‘I wish to give him something so that he will leave my daughter alone. You understand?’ Gibson allows his finger to divide the money in half. ‘I need some information, I need his name and I need an address. I want to make sure he isn’t coming back.’ He begins to wish he’d kept with the original idea, that his daughter had disappeared.

The man shakes his head. There wasn’t anyone here, not in this room, within the last month, and not with any woman.

‘My daughter is fifteen years old.’ Gibson sets half of the money on the counter. He keeps his voice flat and cold. ‘Fifteen. Do you see the problem? She is fifteen. I need a name and an address. I know you keep these details. He left eight days ago.’

The man steps back behind the counter and speaks quickly to the woman as he searches through a drawer. She looks up, swipes the man’s hands away then searches through the drawer herself and brings out a register. She places the register on the counter, over the money.