2666 (137 page)

Sometimes
Leube uncorked a bottle of brandy and stayed up late talking to Ingeborg and
Archimboldi, asking them about the big city (for him this meant any city with
more than thirty thousand inhabitants) and furrowing his brow at the answers,
often ill intentioned, that Ingeborg gave. At the end of these evenings, Leube
would recork the bottle and clear the table, and before he went to bed he would
say there was nothing like life in the country. In those days Ingeborg and
Archimboldi made love constantly, as if they had some foreboding. They did it
in the dark room they rented from Leube and they did it in the front room, in
front of the hearth, when Leube had gone to work. The few days they were in
Kempten
they essentially
spent fucking. In the village, one night, they did it in the stable, among the
cows, while Leube and the villagers slept. In the mornings, when they got up,
they looked as if they'd been in a fight. Both had bruises in different places
and enormous circles under their eyes that Leube said were typical of city folk
who led unhealthy lives.

To recover they ate black bread
with butter and drank big bowls of hot milk. One night, after coughing for a
long time, Ingeborg asked Leube how his wife had died. Of sorrow, answered
Leube, as he always did. "It's strange," said Ingeborg, "in town
I've heard it said you killed her."

Leube,
aware of the gossip, didn't seem surprised.

"If I had killed her I'd be locked up by now," he said.
"All killers, even those who kill for a good reason, go to prison sooner
or later."

"I
don't think so," said Ingeborg, "there are many people who kill,
especially men who kill their wives, who never end up in prison."

Leube laughed.

"That
only happens in novels," he said.

"I
didn't know you read novels," answered Ingeborg.

"I did when I was younger," said Leube. "I had time
to waste then, because my parents were alive. So how am I supposed to have
killed my wife?" he asked after a long silence in which the only sound was
the crackle of the fire.

"They
say you pushed her into a ravine," said Ingeborg.

"Which ravine?" asked Leube, who was finding the
conversation more and more amusing.

"I
don't know," said Ingeborg.

"There are lots of ravines around here, ma'am," said
Leube, "there's the Lost Sheep ravine and the Flower ravine, the Shadow
ravine (so-called because it's always deep in shadow) and the Children of
Kreuze ravine, there's the Devil's ravine and the Virgin's ravine, Saint
Bernard's ravine and the Slabs ravine, from here to the border post there are
more than one hundred ravines."

"I don't
know," said Ingeborg, "any of them."

"No, not just any of them, it has to be one in particular,
because if I killed my wife by pushing her into any old ravine it's as if I
didn't kill her. It has to be a specific one, not any of them," repeated
Leube. "Especially," he said after another long silence,
"because there are ravines that turn into riverbeds during the spring thaw
and everything that's been tossed there or has fallen or anything one tries to
hide washes down to the valley. Dogs gone over the edge, lost calves, scraps of
wood," said Leube almost inaudibly. "What else do my neighbors
say?" he asked after a while.

"That's
all," said Ingeborg, looking him in the eye.

"They're
lying," said Leube, "they're lying and holding their tongues, there
are many other things they could say, but they're lying and holding their
tongues. They're like animals, don't you think?"

"No,
I hadn't got that impression," said Ingeborg, who in fact had hardly
spoken to the few villagers, all too busy at their tasks to bother with
strangers.

"And
yet," said Leube, "they've had time to inform you about my
life."

"Very
superficially," said Ingeborg, and then she gave a loud and bitter laugh
that made her cough once more.

As he listened to
her cough Leube closed his eyes.

When
she took the handkerchief away from her mouth the stain of blood was like a
giant rose in full bloom.

That
night, after they had made love, Ingeborg left the village and set out along
the mountain road. The snow seemed to refract the light of the full moon. There
was no wind and the cold was bearable, but Ingeborg wore her heaviest sweater
and a jacket and boots and a wool cap. At the first bend the village
disappeared from sight and all she could see was a row of pines and the
mountains multiplying in the night, all white, like nuns with no worldly
ambitions.

Ten
minutes later Archimboldi woke with a start and realized that Ingeborg wasn't
in bed. He got dressed, looked for her in the bathroom, the kitchen, and the
front room, and then went to wake Leube. The man was sleeping like the dead and
Archimboldi had to shake him several times, until Leube opened one eye and gave
him a terrified look.

"It's
me," said Archimboldi, "my wife has disappeared."

"Go
find her," said Leube.

The tug Archimboldi
gave him almost tore his nightshirt.

"I don't know
where to start," said Archimboldi.

Then
he went back up to his room and put on his boots and jacket, and when he came
downstairs he found Leube, unkempt but dressed to go out. When they reached the
center of the village, Leube gave him a flashlight and told him it would be
best if they separated. Archimboldi took the mountain road and Leube started
down toward the valley.

When
he got to the bend in the road Archimboldi thought he heard a shout. He
stopped. The shout came again, it seemed to rise from deep in a gorge, but
Archimboldi understood that it was Leube, who was shouting Ingeborg's name as he
walked toward the valley. I'll never see her again, thought Archimboldi,
shivering with cold. In his hurry, he had forgotten to put on gloves and a
scarf and as he climbed in the direction of the border post his hands and face
froze so stiff he couldn't feel them anymore, and every so often, he stopped
and breathed into his hands or rubbed them together, and pinched his face to no
avail.

Leube's
shouts came at longer and longer intervals until they couldn't be heard
anymore. Sometimes Archimboldi got confused and thought he saw Ingeborg sitting
by the side of the road, gazing into the chasms that yawned to either side, but
when he came closer he discovered that what he had seen was just a rock or a
small pine blown down in a gale. Halfway up his flashlight died and he put it
in one of his pockets, although he would happily have tossed it onto the
snow-covered slopes. Anyway, the road was bathed in moonlight and a flashlight
wasn't necessary. Thoughts of suicide and accidents passed through his mind. He
stepped off the road and tested the firmness of the snow. In some spots he sank
almost up to his knees. In others, closest to the cliffs, he sank nearly to his
waist. He imagined Ingeborg walking with a vacant gaze. He imagined her coming
close to one of the ravines. Stumbling. Falling. He too went up to the edge of
a ravine. But the moonlight illuminated only the road: the bottom of the gorge
was still black, a formless black, in which one could glimpse indistinct shapes
and outlines.

He
returned to the road and kept climbing. At a certain point he realized he was
sweating. Perspiration came hot out of his pores and immediately turned into a
cold film that in turn was eliminated by more hot perspiration ... In any case
he was no longer cold. When he had almost reached the border post he saw
Ingeborg, standing by a tree, looking up at the sky. Ingeborg's neck, her chin,
her cheeks, shone as if touched by a white madness. He ran up to her and threw
his arms around her.

"What are you
doing here?" asked Ingeborg.

"I was
afraid," said Archimboldi.

Ingeborg's
face was as cold as ice. He kissed her cheeks until she slipped from his
embrace.

"Look at the
stars, Hans," she said.

Archimboldi
obeyed. The sky was full of stars, many more than could be seen at night in
Kempten
, and many, many more than it was possible to see
on the clearest night in
Cologne
.
It's a very pretty sky, darling, said Archimboldi, and then he tried to take
her hand and drag her back to the village, but Ingeborg clung to a tree branch,
as if they were playing, and wouldn't go.

"Do
you realize where we are, Hans?" she asked, laughing with a laugh that
sounded to Archimboldi like a cascade of ice.

"On
the mountain, darling," he said, still grasping her hand and trying vainly
to embrace her again.

"On
the mountain," said Ingeborg, "but we're also in a place surrounded
by the past. All these stars," she said, "can you possibly not
understand, clever as you are?"

"What is there
to understand?" asked Archimboldi.

"Look
at the stars," said Ingeborg.

He
lifted his gaze: it was true, there were many stars, then he turned to look at
Ingeborg again and shrugged.

"You know I'm
not as clever as all that," he said.

"All
this light is dead," said Ingeborg. "All this light was emitted
thousands and millions of years ago. It's the past, do you see? When these
stars cast their light, we didn't exist, life on Earth didn't exist, even Earth
didn't exist. This light was cast a long time ago. It's the past, we're
surrounded by the past, everything that no longer exists or exists only in
memory or guesswork is there now, above us, shining on the mountains and the
snow and we can't do anything to stop it."

"An
old book is the past, too," said Archimboldi, "a book written and
published in 1789 is the past, its author no longer exists, neither does its
printer or the ones who read it first or the time when it was written, but the
book, the first edition of that book, is still here. Like the pyramids of the
Aztecs," said Archimboldi.

"I
hate first editions and pyramids and I hate those bloodthirsty Aztecs,"
said Ingeborg. "But the light of the stars makes me dizzy. It makes me
want to cry," said Ingeborg, her eyes damp with madness.

Then,
waving Archimboldi off, she turned toward the border post, which was a small
two-story wooden cabin. A slender plume of black smoke rose from the chimney
and dissolved in the night sky, and a sign hung from a pole announcing the
border.

Next
to the cabin there was a shed without walls where a small truck was parked.
There was no light, except for the faint shine of a candle coming through a
shutter left ajar on the second floor.

"Let's
see whether they have anything hot to give us," said Archimboldi, and he
knocked at the door.

No one answered. He knocked again, harder this time. The border
post seemed deserted. Ingeborg, who was waiting for him a few steps from the
porch, had crossed her arms on her chest and her face had grown pale until it
was the same shade as the snow. Archimboldi walked around the cabin. In the
back, next to the woodpile, he came upon a good-sized doghouse, but he didn't
see any dog. When he returned to the front porch Ingeborg was still standing
looking up at the stars.

"I think the
border guards are gone," said Archimboldi.

"There's a light," answered Ingeborg without looking at
him, and Archimboldi didn't know whether she was talking about the starlight or
the light visible on the second floor.

"I'm going to
break a window," he said.

He looked around on the ground for something solid and couldn't
find anything, so after he had pulled away the wooden shutter, he broke one of
the panes with his elbow. Then, with his hands, he carefully removed the shards
of glass and opened the window.

A thick, heavy smell struck him in the face as he slid inside. In
the cabin everything was dark, except for a dim glow from the fireplace. Next
to it, in an armchair, he saw a border guard with his jacket undone and his
eyes closed, as if he were asleep, but he wasn't asleep, he was dead. In a
bedroom on the ground floor, lying on a bunk, he found another person, a man
with white hair in a white undershirt and long underwear.

On the second floor, in the room with the candle visible from the
road, there was no one. It was just a room, with a bed, a table, a chair, and a
small bookshelf holding several books, most of them Westerns. Moving quickly
but cautiously, Archimboldi found a broom and newspaper and then swept up the
glass he had broken before, tipping it through the hole in the window, as if
one of the two dead men—from inside the cabin, not outside—had caused the
damage. Then he went out without touching anything and put his arm around
Ingeborg, and like that, with their arms around each other, they returned to
the village while the whole past of the universe fell on their heads.

The
next day Ingeborg couldn't get out of bed. She had a temperature of 104 degrees
and by evening she was delirious. At midday, while she was asleep, Archimboldi
watched from the window of his room as an ambulance drove by toward the border
post. Shortly afterward a police car passed and three hours later the ambulance
came by on its way down to
Kempten
with its load of bodies, but the police car didn't return until six, when it
was already dark, and when it reached the village it stopped and the police
talked to some of the villagers.