I remember the pain. The waves of mud and the cold in my bones. The world sliding into a bottomless abyss. Even now, Clara’s screams echo in my head, as does her sudden silence, which was even more frightening. The descent ended, although I don’t know how or when. We waited in silence in a niche in the rock for the monster to discover us and tear us to pieces.
It didn’t happen.
I cradled Clara. I cradled Annelise.
The rain began to ease off. The drops grew thin, a damp dust through which the first rays of the sun were refracted, creating rainbows. No more rocks from the sky.
The mud gradually stopped its descent.
Then, a thousand years later, the chirping of insects. The call of some animal or other. A partridge appeared amid the bushes, stared at us and disappeared in a flurry of wings.
The clouds grew thinner. The sun gained strength. It looked huge and very beautiful.
The gorge of the Bletterbach was no longer roaring. It had had its fill of death.
Then I started crying. Not from the pain. Not because of Annelise’s empty eyes. Not even because of Clara, who was moaning in her sleep.
I cried because I had seen it.
The Jaekelopterus Rhenaniae.
The monster with claws and eyes like black wells. The creature God had decided to sweep away, but which the Bletterbach had nursed in its entrails like a loving mother. I had seen it. I had seen what it was capable of . . .
But the post mortem report says otherwise. No claws, no monster. No Jaekelopterus Rhenaniae. Only a big branch from a fir tree that the fury of the current had turned into a harpoon. In other words, or so it seems, it was the Bletterbach that had closed the circle.
But in those terrible moments, as the Bletterbach abated, I cursed, I wept. I went crazy. And when the madness gained the upper hand, I saw the ghosts arrive. They got out of a bright red helicopter. Moses with his severe features, Ismaele with his Lampwick expression, Manny with his quiet confidence, and Christoph with his usual air of someone who can never quite take anything seriously.
Werner was with them, too.
As they gently peeled Clara from my arms and placed a blanket over Annelise’s shoulders and checked her pupils, I tried to tell them that I hadn’t wanted them to die, that if I could turn the clock back I wouldn’t go down into the crevasse and so the avalanche wouldn’t kill them.
Their reply didn’t need words.
They were there.
It’s Rule Zero.
* * *
I almost died three times while I was on the operating table. The knife had severed some nerve or other and a nasty infection had done the rest. My right leg will never be the same as it was.
When Mike saw me after the Bletterbach, he burst into tears and couldn’t stop sobbing the whole time. But Mike makes things out to be more tragic than they are. Deep down, he’s always been a big softy. I’ve become pretty nimble with the stick, you know.
You should see me: a dancer.
In the Belly of the Beast won a prize of which Mike is very proud. He says it’ll open a lot of doors for us, but he also knows there’ll never be another McMellan-Salinger production. I think, though, that constantly saying it does him good, so I don’t contradict him. As Bob Dylan used to sing, “the times they are a-changin,’” and they don’t always change for the better.
At first, the real problem was my head. And it was a big problem. Enough to make Dr. Girardi, the psychiatrist to whose care I was entrusted, fear that I would never recover my equilibrium. I put all I had into it and now I’m better. Hermann helps me to keep busy. He’s planning to open a center for recovering alcoholics. And he wants me to give him a hand. Impossible to say no to someone like him. To quote Bogart: I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Annelise, too, has had to fight.
Her arm was in pretty bad shape. Even now, when there’s a risk of rain, she takes painkillers. Three times a week, she sees a physiotherapist. She has her battles to face, like me. Nightmares, bad memories, anxiety. Often her eyes cloud over and then I know she’s thinking about Werner, whose body is still somewhere in the labyrinth of caves below the gorge. But every day she smiles a bit more.
Like me.
Our medicine has five letters: “Clara.” It’s because of her that on bad days we find the strength to get out of bed. It’s because of her that our laughter is gradually becoming genuine again. It’s because of her that we make love at night, as clumsy as a couple of teenagers.
Clara . . .
I like listening to her stories, I like playing with her. Running through the meadows of Siebenhoch with a stick that makes me look like a scarecrow. But above all, I like watching her sleep. Clara sometimes smiles in her sleep and when she does that, my heart fills with hope. Her smiles chase away fear and get me one step closer to salvation. I need Clara to smile. Because that’s how fairy tales end, those that start with a and always finish with a z we call a happy ending.
* * *
I’ve written these pages for her. Because one day Annelise and I will have to tell her the truth about the Bletterbach killings. About how it was her love that saved the lives of the final protagonists in that story.
Annelise and Salinger.
* * *
“One letter, Papà?”
“The smile at the end of the rainbow, sweetheart.”
Z.