‘I wasn’t a petty little clerk.’
S. Berg
It was clearly a breast. Berg was surprised he had not noticed it before: the lamp, streaked by rain, looked like a breast glistening. He stared for a time from the window and turned only when the man’s voice broke the silence of the room. Even then he did not immediately understand what was being said to him. He could only think of the absurdity of this situation. Certainly, it would be cleared up in a matter of minutes—just as soon as he explained that he had had nothing to do with Monika’s assault. But just the same it was almost comical: like a comic nightmare, where no matter how terrifying the apparitions there is still something intrinsically funny in their appearance.
The man, seated at the table and turning the damp brim of his hat between his fingers, repeated himself.
‘My name is Sbodin. I am a district investigator.’
A district investigator? Berg wondered. Was there more than one? He walked from the window and sat on the bed. The room was cold; dark and cold, rain still falling against the window. Outside the sky was a depressing grey. He shivered and searched amongst the folds of the blankets for his cigarettes.
‘Perhaps you fail to appreciate the seriousness of your position, Berg. You have been accused of rape. I don’t have to tell you that an offence like that carries a stiff penalty.’
Berg could not prevent himself from giggling. The sound rose up in his throat and seemed to rattle against the dry walls of his mouth. What was there in this situation that struck him as being so absurd? Sbodin’s heavy solemnity? Monika’s undignified rape? He shrugged his shoulders and continued to look for his cigarettes.
‘I’m surprised you find it so funny,’ Sbodin said. He was sweeping his damp hat across the surface of the table, creating a haphazard pattern of damp streaks. His hand moved back and forth, pushing the hat from one side of the table to the other as though the pattern he was making had a special significance. ‘If I was in your position I wouldn’t be laughing. I’d be thinking how I could get out of it.’
Berg stopped his search for his cigarettes. ‘I didn’t rape her. I’ve already said that. I don’t see what else there is to discuss.’
‘Oh, there’s plenty to discuss,’ Sbodin said. ‘I’m not in any hurry, and there are several questions that you’ll have to answer.’
Berg looked at his clock. ‘You’d better ask them quickly. I don’t want to be late for the office——’
Sbodin lit a cigarette and was silent for a time. ‘You don’t have to worry about going to the office. Someone will explain the situation to Mr Lazlow. He’ll understand why you’re being detained.’
‘Detained?’ The word somehow horrified Berg; it implied restricted movement, the inability to decide and choose for himself. But even more alarming was the thought that Lazlow would know why he was being detained. He would know that an employee of his had been accused of rape and even when Berg was finally acquitted something of the accusation would still stick to his name. Monika, that stupid bitch, had placed his whole career in jeopardy. By her one foolish utterance she had led him into a situation fraught with difficulties. How would Lazlow react to the news? Could he be relied upon to give his support? Would he perhaps offer a character reference, demonstrating beyond all possible doubt that Berg was not the sort of man to rape a woman?
‘You are not, of course, detained in the official sense,’ Sbodin said. ‘But until this whole business is cleared up … well, I wouldn’t want you to try to leave town.’
Berg began his frantic search for his cigarettes again. Where were they? Only ten minutes ago he had seen the packet on the bed. He was certain of it. He tugged the blanket back and searched amongst the sheets. More than anything else, he wanted to smoke. He wanted to take smoke into his lungs and feel his whole body relax as he exhaled. He watched Sbodin draw on his cigarette and saw the smoke curl upwards around his nostrils and then rise against the ceiling and disperse. But he would not ask Sbodin for a cigarette. He didn’t want that sort of favour.
‘Perhaps we might get down to some serious talk,’ Sbodin said. He got up from the table and went to the window. It was still surprisingly dark outside and Berg wondered if perhaps his clock was fast. Was it ten to seven and not ten to eight? How could the morning be so dark? He picked up the clock and shook it.
Sbodin, still gazing out through the window, asked, ‘Why do you deny that you raped the woman?’
‘That’s a stupid question,’ Berg said. ‘I deny it because I didn’t do it. Anyway, are you certain that she was raped? Has she been medically examined? Has a doctor looked at her?’
‘You ask too many questions. I’m satisfied beyond any doubt that she was raped. Whether you’re satisfied or not is beside the point. What I’m interested in is why she should accuse you and why you should deny it.’
‘You said she was hysterical. How could you trust anything that an hysterical person told you? She would simply say the first thing that came into her mind. She wasn’t being rational. She wasn’t in her right mind.’
Sbodin returned to the table and sat down. He crossed his hands one over the other. They were heavy hands; they were implements that had been used more for digging than caressing. Whenever he moved he appeared to do so with a certain caution as if afraid of his own clumsiness, to minimise the possibilities of colliding with a fragile object. When he looked at Berg he had a trick of lowering the lids of his eyes, perhaps to suggest that he wasn’t entirely concentrating on what he was doing, that his mind was elsewhere. Sometimes he reached out and nervously touched his hat, but he didn’t give the impression of being a nervous man. In this sense he was acting, his gestures were false—his whole appearance and manner was a trap designed to catch and ensnare anyone who told a lie or said something inconsistent with an earlier statement. Looking at him, Berg felt acutely nervous; he had the strong impression that the man carried in himself immense reserves of strength and cunning. He was powerful, he had the right to ask questions but never to answer any unless it suited his strategy.
Berg rose from the bed. A sensation of great weariness had come over him. He wanted to get this matter cleared up. He rubbed his arms as though to rub life back into himself. How could Monika have landed him in this mess? What had made her say that he—of all people—had raped her? He thought back to the first time he had seen her, that first afternoon when he had awoken to find her standing by the bed. Now he could no longer remember if she had been standing by the bottom of the bed or at the top. And then he remembered the train journey that had brought him to this place, that racketing journey through senseless passages of light and darkness. And before that, he remembered his mother. Why had he left, her in the first place? None of this would ever have happened if he had stayed with her. He would still be attending to her in the middle of the night, carrying tablets and glasses of water and listening to the whine of her voice. But that was more than he could bear to even think about. He had had to leave her.
Sbodin undid the buttons of his coat. ‘Because she was hysterical, it doesn’t mean that she wasn’t telling the truth. You must agree with that.’
‘Yes,’ Berg shivered at the window. Below, he saw Monika being led into a car. Mrs Jacobitz supported her by her left elbow; on the other side was a man in a green raincoat. All three went into the car. As Monika was being helped into her seat, Berg caught a glimpse of her face. Pale, bloodless, heavily marked—or was it shadow? She did not look up at the window. For a moment he felt almost sorry for her. Yet how could he be sympathetic? He had a sudden urge to throw open the window and shout to her to come back and tell the truth, to get him out of this ludicrous predicament, but even as he was considering this the car began to move forward.
‘Where is she being taken?’ he asked.
‘Does that matter?’
Berg did not answer.
He listened to the sound of the car fade and then moved across the room to the bed. There was a long moment of silence, intensified by the noise the engine had just made.
‘Why do you take her word against mine?’ Berg asked.
Sbodin smiled: a slow smile that contained an element of cynicism, as if he had been a witness to everything life could conceivably demonstrate and nothing could any longer hold a surprise for him.
He said, ‘I don’t take anybody’s word, Berg. I gather together a mass of contradictory statements and try, bit by bit, to discover where the truth lies. I do a little digging. I probe a little. Perhaps I use a little force, whenever I think it’s essential.’
Force? For a second Berg experienced a sensation of fear.
What did force mean? He could not stand the thought of physical violence. The very idea of pain made him ill. He looked at Sbodin, seeking some sort of clue to the meaning of his statement but the man had turned his face away and was lighting another cigarette.
‘Then you don’t disbelieve me when I tell you that I didn’t rape her?’ Berg asked.
‘I only believe one thing, Berg. That she was raped. At this point in time, I don’t believe anything else.’
Berg restlessly got up from the bed. It was only then that he remembered he hadn’t eaten breakfast. His stomach felt tight and intolerably empty. He walked to the window. Outside, rain still fell against the streetlamp but was invisible in the dark areas where the light did not penetrate.
Sbodin said, ‘Why don’t you confess, Berg? In the long run, it would make things much easier all round. I can promise you that the magistrate is likely to be lenient if you confess now. In fact, I have here a document that you might seriously consider signing.’ He drew from his jacket a single sheet of flimsy paper and dropped it on the table. Berg glanced at it. He didn’t pick it up, nor did he read it; it was sufficient to see it there, threateningly, on the surface of the table.
‘How can I confess to something I didn’t do?’ he asked.
‘We all have to compromise sometimes,’ Sbodin said.
Compromise? It was more than that, Berg thought; it was a downright lie. He could not consider putting his signature to a false confession.
‘Nothing would make me sign that document,’ he said. ‘You can do whatever you like, but I won’t sign.’
Sbodin lifted his hand to his mouth and covered a yawn.
‘Well, we have to do everything the hard way.’
‘What do you mean—the hard way?’
Sbodin smiled, rose from the table and walked to the far side of the room where he leaned against the wall. ‘Look, Berg, we are both men of the world. I understand the situation perfectly. You live in the same house as an attractive young woman. She eats at the same table. She sleeps in the room next to yours. Perhaps you see her one day coming out of the bathroom and she’s wearing next to nothing. An attractive woman like that, it’s bound to make you think. Perhaps at night you hear her bed creak through the wall and you imagine her lying there all alone. Then you become friendly with her. You talk, go for walks, you might even hold her hand. Who knows? Suddenly, you realise you desire her. That’s when you discover that she’s not willing to go as far as you’d like. She stops short of bed. Right? You get a bit frustrated, you begin to get pent-up. I understand that. I’ve been in the same sort of position myself. Then one day you just can’t stand it any longer. Something inside you cracks. Bang. It’s not unusual. It happens all the time. Isn’t that how it happened? Cigarette?’
Berg took the cigarette that Sbodin offered and inhaled the smoke so deeply that he had a fit of coughing.
‘It wasn’t like that at all,’ he said. ‘The simple truth is—I didn’t have to rape her. She offered herself to me. She asked me to become her lover. She begged me. I didn’t have to rape her. It was all there if I wanted it.’
Sbodin laughed briefly. ‘Come on, Berg. Why should an attractive woman like Monika Jahn offer herself to you? You’re no oil painting.’
‘How should I know why she wanted me to be her lover?’
‘You refused her though? Now why did you do that?’
Berg shrugged. Something in the tone of Sbodin’s question suggested that he believed what Berg was telling him. For a split second Berg felt a surge of hope. If only Sbodin did believe him the whole thing could be cleared up in a matter of seconds.
‘Why did you refuse her?’ Sbodin again asked.
‘She didn’t appeal to me.’
‘Why? Are you homosexual?’
‘She simply didn’t appeal to me, that’s all.’
Sbodin laughed again. ‘It sounds like a pack of lies to me, Berg. First you ask me to believe that she begged you to become her lover. An attractive woman like that begging someone like you. Then you expect me to believe that you refused her. I find the whole thing hard to swallow.’
Berg sat on the bed and smoked the cigarette. ‘Believe what you like,’ he said. ‘I don’t care. When you find the person responsible I expect a full apology from you.’
Sbodin ran his hand over his face and yawned. ‘I’m tired. You work all hours in this job; you don’t get enough sleep; you get ulcers and too much abuse from people. Why do I do it? Why do you think I do it, Berg? Why don’t I get myself a nice, safe clerical post like the one you have, eh?’
Berg was silent. He refused to be enticed by the questions.
He ignored Sbodin’s plea for sympathy, which he didn’t think a genuine one in any case. Instead he sat silent and morose, thinking about the ache in his stomach.
‘Why have you been watching me?’ he asked.
‘I’m not watching you at all,’ Sbodin said, examining the tips of his fingers.
‘I saw you in the street, watching me from behind a newspaper. I want to know why. I have a right to know why.’
Sbodin smiled. ‘I think you’re mistaken, Berg. You may have seen me in the street, I wouldn’t deny that, but I hadn’t clapped eyes on you until this morning. In fact, I saw you for the first time about—what was it?—about thirty minutes ago. Anyway, why should I spend my valuable time observing you?’
Berg spread his hands and sighed. What was the point? Sbodin had only to deny it and it was almost as if it hadn’t taken place at all. The movement of the newspaper, the brief glance, the quick turn of face. And there was that other incident when he had been in the field with Monika, the dry, fearful feeling that he was being closely observed by someone unseen. Sbodin could have been there, too. He could have seen him lying with Monika under the tree. Of course it had all been perfecty innocent, but in the present situation Sbodin would put an interpretation on it that would twist it beyond recognition. Berg dropped his cigarette on the floor and stepped on it.
‘I’m hungry,’ he said. ‘Am I allowed to have something to eat?’
‘That sounds like a good idea,’ Sbodin said. ‘We’ll go down to the kitchen. You can make me a cup of coffee.’
Berg led the way downstairs. The whole house felt intensely cold, as though it had lain uninhabited for years; unheated and uninhabited, to the extent that when he pushed open the kitchen door he expected to see dust everywhere and hear ancient ashes shift in the fireplace. Instead he saw, to his surprise and embarrassment, Lazlow sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of water.