In Matto's Realm: A Sergeant Studer Mystery (13 page)

"I've got two children. Pieterlen hadn't wanted a
child. He said it loud and clear. He told the district
prosecutor; he told me. `Wilfully and with malice
aforethought'. A splendid ring to it, don't you agree?

"Nineteen hundred and twenty-three. Five years
after the war. How many people died in the war? Do
you know? Ten or twelve million, something like that?
So Pieterlen didn't want to bring a child into the
world. Not for ideological reasons, though Pieterlen
had read all sorts of books ... Reading can make you
arrogant, and Pieterlen was arrogant. His workmates
said that, and so did his superiors. If they read at all,
his workmates read the tabloids, not even detective
stories, and they played jass. But Pieterlen read
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and thought about
things, about the world and mankind. He did drawings
in his free time ... He was learning English, French he
spoke well already; his father originally came from
Biel, though he later became a dairyman in the Oberland. He never knew his mother, she died when he was
born.

"Pieterlen didn't want to bring a child into the
world, because as a labourer he earned too little. He'd
rented a room-plus-kitchen in Wulflingen because
accommodation was cheaper out in the village than in the town. As a labourer he earned a good deal less than
one franc an hour ...

"You'll object that there are any number of labourers who don't earn any more than that and still have a
wife and children. You'll object that things are even
worse in the other countries around us. We've got welfare bureaux and poor-relief officers and marriageguidance counsellors and rehabilitation centres for
alcoholics and homes for the physically and mentally
handicapped and hostels and clinics and workhouses
and orphanages. We're very humane. We have trial by
jury and a supreme court, even the League of Nations
meets here ... We're an enlightened country, Studer -
so why did a labourer called Pieterlen not want to have
a child?

"The simple answer is: because he wasn't normal.
It's easy to say. In my report I wrote that. . ."

Laduner picked up a sheet of paper and read from
it.

"His action springs from a psychological abnormality. For months he has been labouring under a strong
emotion, which, at the crucial point, provided the final
impetus for his crime. It would be entirely wrong to
call him a criminal type. Rather he is a person with a
definite, congenital psychological abnormality,
namely a schizoid psychopathy. It would not be in the
least surprising if at some later date it turned into a
full-blown mental illness, namely schizophrenia."

"Schizophrenia . . ." Studer muttered. "Tell me
about it." The words were muffled because he had his
chin resting on his hands and his fingers over his
mouth.

"Etymologically it means split, being split," said
Laduner. "Look at it in geological terms. You have a
mountain, it seems calm, solid, it rises up from the plain, it breathes out clouds and brews storms, it's
covered in grass and trees in leaf. Then there comes an
earthquake. A tremor goes through your mountain,
there's a yawning gap, it's split in two, it doesn't look
calm and solid any more, it looks terrible, you can see
inside it, yes, its insides are suddenly on the outside.
Imagine a disaster like that happening in someone's
mind. And just as the geologist talks about the causes
of the rift in the mountain, so we can talk about the
psychological mechanisms that can cause a mind to
split. But we are cautious, Studer, and when I say `we' I
mean the few people in our profession who don't
think you can solve the mystery of the human mind
with a few bastardized Graeco-Latin compounds.

"The mountain, Studer, remember the mountain, its
insides suddenly becoming visible. I'll take you round
O Ward tomorrow and some things will become clear
to you. Among others, the strange embarrassment
many people, even the healthiest, feel when confronted with the mentally ill.

"Someone once said the reason for that is that we
are literally visiting the subconscious. The subconscious - now you'll be asking me to explain the
subconscious to you. All the things we don't allow to
come to the surface, the things we push to one side as
quickly as possible the moment they attempt to show
the slightest sign of life, that's the subconscious. You
show me one single person who has never at some time
in their life, either as a child or as a grown-up, committed murder in thought, who has never killed someone
in their dreams. You won't find a single one. Do you
think that otherwise it would be so incredibly easy to
get people to go to war? Bring me the kindest of
fathers, the most caring of mothers and they would
both have to admit, if they were honest, that they had said to themselves, `How much easier life would be
without children.' And not just once, no, many times.
But once a child is there, how can you get rid of it
without killing it? You have a child, Studer, now come
on, tell me true, didn't you often feel it was a burden, a
restriction on your liberty? Well?"

Studer grunted. It was an angry grunt. He didn't like
being forced into a corner. Of course he'd harboured
thoughts like that when his daughter was still little and
he'd not been able to sleep at night because the child
was crying. Perhaps he'd even said out loud the
damned kid could go to hell for all he cared. But from
saying something like that to killing a child ...
Although ...

"They can't arrest us for our thoughts - fortunately,"
said Laduner, and his smile was sad. "As long as they
remain thoughts, wishes we don't give way to, then
everything's fine and society is happy.

"A man can write in his books that `property is theft',
and nothing much will happen to him, at least not
nowadays. But you just live by that principle and you'd
have to arrest yourself, wouldn't you? Try writing in all
the newspapers: `It's madness to bring a child into the
world today' and then acting on it. You don't even
have to kill a child, just perform an abortion. You'll
find yourself with a few years in Thorberg Prison to
reflect on what it means to break a law. Pieterlen didn't
have the law in mind at all. He just spent months pondering over the fact that a child was coming into the
world and he wouldn't be able to bring it up properly
on his pay of eighty rappen per hour. He proposed to
his wife that they should go to Geneva and ... but she
didn't want to do that. Then one night he comes home
- it's after midnight, he's been working overtime - and
sees the light on in his apartment ...

"During the case I went to Wulflingen; it's a tiny
village, hills all round, and the house Pieterlen lived in
was a little way out of the village. I had to see the room,
and I had to see his wife. Of course, I could have got
the wife to come to me, but I wanted to see her in the
environment where she had lived for four weeks with
Pieterlen. I wanted to see the lamp, the lamp that. . ."

Laduner scrabbled among the papers until he found
the one he was looking for. Holding it by the lower
edge, he tapped it twice, briefly, and read out: "Fran
Pieterlen could not see into the basket, there was
paper wrapped around the light, which had been
pulled down to the floor, so it was very dark in the
room. Afterwards he took a shovel and buried the
child in the woods. To make sure he was not burying it
alive, he tied a cord round its neck. His wife knew
nothing of all this ..."

Silence.

Studer stared at the lampshade. He was grasping the
arms of his chair tightly with both hands. He felt the
same as he had the time he had flown over the Alps:
the plane went into a dive, unstoppable, and he got a
funny feeling in his stomach, nothing was firm any
more, everything was shaky. During that experience,
too, he had clung on desperately with both hands,
even though he knew it would make no difference.
And now ...

Letters typed on white paper ... Words, words, sentences ... A man reading out the words and sentences
until the room appeared, and the woman in bed, and
the lamp with the long flex, and Pierre Pieterlen, who
had murdered a child, "wilfully and with malice
aforethought".

"His wife was in his power," Laduner read on in a
monotonous voice, yet with such strange emphasis it made Studer wonder. "He had such a strong influence
over her that she never tried to oppose him. She
agreed not to call in a midwife or an obstetrician. . ."

Laduner cleared his throat. Studer was distracted
and a few sentences passed unheeded before he heard
the doctor say, " ... to suffocate it. It only made a little
sound and he did not think it could have been heard
by his wife, because it was muffled by the towel ... He
showed her the child without her being able to see
whether it was a boy or a girl. In fact, it was a girl, born
live ..."

Laduner put the document back in the file, stood it
on end and tapped it on the table to arrange the
papers, then carefully replaced it on the table, adjusting it until the edge of the file ran parallel to the edge
of the table. Putting his hand over his eyes, he
continued.

"The room ... A double bed. The plaster grubby,
crumbling in places. Three chairs; a table and a lurid
green cloth with fringes ... The woman looked weary.
Of course, she'd been arrested as well, but then she'd
been released since her husband had taken everything
on himself. A simple woman, disturbed. She didn't
look me in the eye even once. Among other things, she
said that her husband had only really been happy with
her, mostly he kept himself to himself, he hadn't had
any friends. `Such an educated man,' she said. When I
left, I knew that the woman had been in agreement
with the murder. She made that pretty clear - to me. In
court she denied everything. She said, `My husband
had me in his power... '

"What would you have done, Studer? Put it in the
report? Made another person unhappy? I know that
my eminent colleague, for example - the one who
looks like Albert Bassermann when he played the mys terious doctor in that film - is always ready to support
the judicial authorities, to say what they want to hear.
Doctor and judge rolled into one. Fine, if you can
double up like that. I can't. I'm a modest man, Studer
- though if I tell you I'm modest then it's a sign that
I'm not really. But I still believe a cobbler should stick
to his last. I'm a doctor, a head doctor as people sometimes call us with a somewhat mocking smile, they
think we're a bit funny with all our long words. But
that's beside the point. . ."

All of a sudden Laduner got up. He wasn't wearing a
jacket, so as he faced Studer, arms akimbo, his hands
stood out dark and brown against the white of his shirt.

"Before I go on, let me point out that we have three
cases of chronic alcoholism in the clinic. One, a man
in his forties now, lost his job because of his drinking.
He's fathered seven children, all of them living; the
state has to provide for his wife and children, the state
has to pay to keep the man here. Second case: a
labourer earning the aforementioned eighty rappen
per hour. Since he wanted his share of what we nowadays call life - a place to call home, a wife who was
part of it - he got married. You can't do much on
eighty rappen an hour, but he led an orderly life at
first, his wife too. Three children. Not enough money.
The man went out drinking, the woman took in washing. Two more children. Rotgut schnapps is cheapest,
twenty rappen a glass - you can't expect a man like that
to drink blanc de Vaud at five francs a bottle, can you?
The man had a home, but the burden became too
great, he wanted to forget. Can you force people to
face up to their misery all the time? I don't know. The
gentlemen from the welfare services are convinced you
can, but then that's what they're paid for. As for myself,
I'm not so sure. But cheap schnapps is not a healthy drink, it can produce a splendid delirium tremens,
and that's what it did. The result? The man's in here,
the woman gets a small allowance from the local council, the children are placed with foster parents. And
the third case is even more tragic ... We'll not go into
that, however, it would just be a repeat of the other
two. Suffice to say it involves three children. The council - the taxpayer - looks after them. Tot them all up,
Studer: seven children in the first case, five in the second, three in the third. That makes fifteen children,
all of whom have to be provided for. Plus six adults ...

"And Pierre Pieterlen was sentenced to ten years
hard labour because `he did, wilfully and with malice
aforethought, unlawfully kill his child that had been
born live to his spouse, Klara Pieterlen, by placing a
towel over its face, pressing it down with his hand and
strangling it with his hands, thereby causing it to die of
asphyxiation ... "'

Laduner smoothed his hair with his hand, pressing
the recalcitrant strand down on the back of his head,
but it just sprang up into a heron's crest once more.

"I know, I know, Studer," he said, after a while,
"they're just idle thoughts, we're not going to change
the administration of justice, we're not going to
change people, but perhaps we can make some
adjustments to circumstances. With schizoid personalities in particular - and I include Pieterlen in that
group, although I have to admit that the term is an
equivocation, a mental convenience - with schizoid
personalities there is the possibility that the illness will
never fully develop. Imponderables. . . "

Studer smiled. That is, factors you can't precisely
gauge, he thought to himself.

" ... play a significant part in that. What I call
imponderables most people usually call fate. If the man had been in reasonable circumstances, if he'd
had a decent income, no one might have noticed anything odd about him. He might perhaps have become
pedantic, a bit of an eccentric who collected postage
stamps or ideologies, it's impossible to say for sure.
What we do know for sure is that he got married, or, to
put it in more cautious terms, he found a woman to
help him escape from his loneliness. His wife did say,
you'll remember, that he kept himself very much to
himself, except when he was with her ... Loneliness,
Studer, loneliness!"