Werner was on the second floor of Welshboden, lying on the floor, face up. Eyes empty, one hand on his chest, the other bent behind his back in an unnatural position.
Motionless.
* * *
I had found the door open and had gone in, calling his name without getting an answer. I wasn’t worried. I’d assumed he was keeping his promise to tidy the attic. So I’d gone upstairs.
Annelise had asked me to drop by to see how things were going. For the past two days, the only contact we’d had with him had been over the phone. He said he was busy clearing the attic, and that he had a bad headache. Nothing serious, but he didn’t feel like coming down to see us. If it was flu, he might pass it on to us.
The six-pack of beer I’d brought with me fell from my hands. I searched for my phone. I needed help, an ambulance, someone.
“Werner . . .”
I placed my hand on his neck.
His heart was beating. His eyes came to rest on me.
“Hurts,” he murmured.
His back.
“Dammit, Werner,” I said, finding my phone. “You need to go to the hospital.”
He shook his head. It must be giving him a lot of pain to speak.
“No ambulance,” he said. “You take me.”
“Did you fall?”
“I can make it. Just give me a hand.”
“How long have you been here?”
“A few minutes. Don’t worry.”
He tried to get up by himself. He let out a groan.
I helped him.
It was like carrying a dead weight.
We went downstairs. I made him put on a jacket, and had to lay him down on the back seat of the car because he couldn’t sit up. His face was red, the veins sticking out. I feared a heart attack.
“I’m calling Annelise.”
He raised a hand. “Later.”
I didn’t so much leave Welshboden as blast off in the direction of Bolzano. The rise in temperature had melted the ice on the roads and I went full throttle.
Reaching the emergency room, I got a few nurses to help me. Werner refused a wheelchair, but when we went in he felt faint and they forced him onto a stretcher. Then they took him away.
I sat waiting for him, while the waiting room filled up and emptied like the systolic and diastolic movement of a beating heart. In the meantime, I thought it my duty to inform Annelise. A couple of times, I was about to call her. But what could I tell her? That Werner had fallen because in spite of his back pain he had decided to sort out his damned attic? And his condition? What was his condition? I had no idea. I decided I would call her when I had more information to convey to her.
Hoping that it was good news.
* * *
“Papà?”
I had just started reading Clara her favorite fairy story (“Tom Thumb”) when she interrupted me gravely. I closed the book and put it down on the bedside table.
“Why was Mamma crying?”
“Mamma wasn’t crying. She was just a bit sad.”
“But her eyes looked bad.”
“She’s worried about Ops.”
“What’s the matter with Ops? Why did he go to the hospital?”
“Ops had a fall. His back hurts a little, that’s all.”
“And is that why Mamma’s sad?”
“Yes.”
“But did you tell her that all Ops has is a pain in the back?”
I smiled despite myself. Clara had the ability to show me the world through her eyes. A simple, uncomplicated world in which everything worked like a charm.
“Of course. And Ops told her as well.”
“But she’s still sad. Why?”
“Because Ops’s old. And old people are a bit fragile. Like children.”
“Is it horrible to become old, Papà?”
It was hard to answer that question. Especially when the person asking was a child who, however precocious, was only five years old.
“That depends on who’s around you. If you’re alone, it’s horrible, but if you have children, or lovely grandchildren like you, then it’s not so bad.”
“Are you afraid of getting old?”
That was a question that took me aback. I replied as sincerely as I could. “Yes.”
“But I’ll be with you, Papà.”
“Then I’ll be less afraid.”
“I was very afraid, you know.”
“When, sweetheart?”
“The snow,” she said, and her eyes clouded over with anxiety, as if she were reliving those moments. “It ended up on my head. It was all dark. I didn’t know what was up or what was down. And then my head hurt so much.”
I said nothing.
I had a knot in my throat. I stroked her until I thought she was asleep. But, as I was getting ready to tiptoe out of the room, Clara called to me. “Papà,” she said, opening her eyes wide. “Were you afraid, too?”
I made an effort to keep a calm tone of voice. “It’s natural to be afraid, sweetheart. Everybody feels afraid sometimes.”
“Yes, but when you had your accident. Were you afraid?”
“Yes. Very afraid.”
“Were you afraid of dying?”
“I was afraid of losing all of you,” I said, kissing her on the forehead. “I was afraid I would never see you again.”
“Were you angry?”
“Who with?” I asked, surprised by the question.
“I was angry.”
“With me?”
“With you, too. But especially with Ops.”
“Ops Werner? Why?”
Clara’s hand automatically rose to look for her hair. She rolled a strand of it around her index finger and started twisting it gently. “Do you think I should apologize, too? Now that he’s ill, maybe I should.”
“How can I tell you that if I don’t know what happened?”
“I wanted to play with the doll in the heart-shaped box. It was beautiful.”
“The heart-shaped box?”
Clara’s little head went up and then down. Twice. “There was a doll in it. In the attic.”
“And Ops got angry?”
It was as if I had said nothing.
“The box was this big.” She mimed the dimensions with her hands. “And it was full of old things. Horrible photographs and the doll. But the doll was beautiful.”
Horrible photographs.
“What kind of photographs?”
“Pictures from films. Halloween films,” she said solemnly, faced with my puzzled expression. “Pictures from zombie films. Except that the zombies were on the ground. Maybe they were broken zombies, what do you think, Papà?”
“Of course,” I said, while my brain tried to translate what Clara was trying to tell me. “Broken zombies.”
Broken zombies.
A doll.
The heart-shaped box.
Zombies.
Broken zombies.
“Ops said I could hurt myself and I told him it wasn’t right for him to keep the doll. He’s not a child, I am. And then I was angry because everyone treats me like a little child. I’m not a little child.”
“So as soon as he was distracted, you took the sled.”
Clara’s eyes filled with tears. “I knew you’d forbidden me, but I wanted to show that . . .”
“That you’re a big girl.”
“Do you think I should apologize to him? For getting angry?”
“I think . . .” I said in a hoarse voice, “I think there’s no need to apologize.” I smiled. “I’m sure Ops has already forgiven you.”
* * *
Why hadn’t Werner told me? Why hadn’t he told me he had yelled at Clara just before she went and crashed her sled? Maybe in the excitement following the accident, he had forgotten. Or maybe he felt guilty and was keeping it to himself. Werner was good at keeping secrets, I thought.
All the same . . .
A heart-shaped box?
A doll?
What most upset me and stopped me from getting to sleep that night were the photographs of broken zombies. What else could they be if not corpses? Why did Werner have photographs of corpses in his house? And who did they belong to? I was afraid of finding out.
There was worse. Not a fear, though.
A certainty.
Werner was hiding something from me.
* * *
That evening, I reopened the file.
I updated it.
Then I went to bed.
The hunt was on again.
* * *
I waited for the right moment. I was patient. The opportunity presented itself a couple of days later.
Werner would be going down to Bolzano for a check-up on his back. We were having lunch together when he announced it. Annelise offered to go with him. I offered to go with him.
Werner rejected both offers, he could perfectly well drive himself. We said we were upset and annoyed.
Only Annelise really was.
I calculated the timing to the split second. From one of the drawers in the kitchen, I took the spare keys that Werner had given us. I waited for Clara to go to bed for her afternoon nap and told Annelise that I was going out for a quick walk.
I sneaked into Werner’s house at three in the afternoon.
At six minutes past three, I was on the second floor, slightly out of breath.
At seven minutes past three, I climbed the narrow staircase that led to the trap door to the attic. A few seconds later, I felt the typical smell of a place that has been closed for too long.
At ten past three, I lit the small lamp that hung from a beam. I started searching. Even though I knew there was nobody about and that even if I started dancing nobody would hear a thing, I did everything in absolute silence.
Twenty minutes later, I found the heart-shaped box. I held it up to the light.
There were recent prints in the dust.
I opened it.