Raven Sisters (Franza Oberwieser Book 2) (23 page)

53

It had been close. Very close. He’d been on the john. Thank goodness he had his cell phone in his pocket, so Kristin had been able to reach him. She had gone out to fetch something to eat; the cupboards were all bare, everything eaten. Then things started happening fast.

He had added coffee and water to his grandfather’s coffee machine, one of the few things he hadn’t gotten rid of, and switched it on.

Then a few quiet moments in the john, then the sudden phone call. He had cursed, knowing that it was Kristin—no one else had the number of the prepaid SIM he’d bought when he disappeared from his old life.

He swore. “Can’t a guy even get a moment’s peace in the john?”

He briefly wondered whether to pick up, but did.

“Police,” she said, sounding only a little nervous. “They’re looking for you. There’s one here with a composite of you.”

“Shit,” he said.

“Don’t lose your nerve. Stay calm. He’s talking to a woman from the building who seems to know you. He’s going to go in, I’m sure of it. Try and get past him. Get out somehow. If he takes the stairs, you get in the elevator. Do it somehow. Don’t lose your nerve. We’ll figure this out.”

Her voice sounded like a metallic staccato in his ears, and he nodded ceaselessly, without thinking that she couldn’t see him.

“Are you still there?” she cried. “Say something!”

“Yes.” His voice was barely audible, as his heart was racing and there was a lump in his throat. “Wait for me by your car.”

“Hurry up!” she said. “Move!”

Then she was gone, and for a brief moment he felt more alone than he ever had in his life. Worse than when he left home, and when he left his hometown, and even when Gertrud Rabinsky was suddenly lying dead on her kitchen floor.

He could feel himself trembling and commanded himself to stop. It worked, amazingly, and he crept to the apartment door, carefully opened it, and listened for sounds from the stairwell. The elevator was not moving. Voices drifted up from downstairs. The voice of a man he didn’t know, the voice of a woman he did know—old Frau Steigermann from the apartment below. Then he heard a door, and the voices grew fainter until they could no longer be heard, swallowed up in the apartment.

He threw a quick glance along the corridor, felt a moment of regret as he suspected he was unlikely ever to return, stepped out into the stairwell, and silently closed the front door. No time to take anything with him, no time for sentimental good-byes. The elevator was there, no time wasted. He traveled down to the ground floor, cautiously pressed the button to open the door, saw no one; the way was clear. He slipped out, ran to the main door; it swung open, and he felt free—infinitely free.

Kristin was waiting in the car behind the building. He got in and she started it up.

“Everything will be fine,” she said and drove off.

He thought of the girl. “Lilli,” he said.

Kristin waved him off. “Doesn’t matter. No time to worry about her now.”

54

Tonio’s death.

So sudden and unexpected. Not a natural death.

To think of it again, to experience it again, even in my mind, is hard. Still. Some memories weigh heavy. But I’m finally up to it.

Gathering the scenes together, looking for lost jigsaw puzzle pieces. Early autumn. Tonio’s death.

A house in Greece, white with blue doors and window frames, near the beach, but not too close. Just near enough to the village.

All of us in that house, by that sea. Blurring of time.

The landscape no longer surrounded us with the glaring colors of summer. The mildness of fall was in the air, the sun red gold, no longer sharp and scorching. The sea was still warm, and it felt good, with a thousand shades of blue and green.

How beautiful the first few days were! The waves rolled gently in, spraying sea water onto the black sand, where the droplets gleamed like sparkling gemstones. Sometimes large ships steamed by in the distance, and the waves were lashed into wild breakers, spitting out bizarrely shaped stones.

“These stones are like messengers from another age,” we would joke. “These stones are the dead, the drunks, the ancient Greeks whom the sea is spitting out again. Odysseus, maybe, and Helen and Menelaus and Cassandra the seer.”

Perhaps that was too much. Perhaps we tempted fate and the gods wanted their sacrificial offering.

The storm came and nothing felt right anymore. There was no hanging around on the beach, no bathing. It was too cold, too windy. We were restless, and there was a bad atmosphere in the house. Tonio kept opening the windows, letting the wind in so you could hear the roaring sea and the storm around the house. The curtains billowed and the windows rattled in their frames.

The dishes piled up in the kitchen: plates with the remains of meals that attracted the flies, open wine bottles containing stale dregs, hardened bread.

I don’t know why we didn’t manage to keep the place in order. Maybe it was this outward chaos that got us all mixed up, too.

Tonio and I spent hours in bed, night and day, without a care for Gertrud, who took care of herself.

“Why doesn’t she go to the village?” Tonio said in annoyance whenever I expressed concern that we shouldn’t leave her alone for so long. “There’s a whole crowd of single guys there. Why doesn’t she just enjoy herself?”

I said nothing. I didn’t tell him I could see in her eyes what she felt for me, could feel it whenever she was near. But Tonio probably knew it anyway. He became aggressive toward her, angry, surly. He refused to leave me alone with her, watched us continually.

Maybe Gertrud had also heard us in our room, in our bed. We were never quiet. We laughed, moaned, sighed. Tonio said, “That’s what fucking’s all about.” And so it was. But maybe she heard us and it stirred up resentment, sadness in her.

And then it was that night. I know little about what happened. Nothing, really. I was asleep. And when I awoke in the morning, everything had changed. When I awoke, Gertrud was sitting on the other side of the bed. I saw her back, saw she was trembling.

You trembled, Gertrud, you didn’t turn when I spoke to you, you didn’t react. I sat up, turned to you. You cried, quietly, soundlessly, but in a way that shook your whole body.

I asked nothing, merely looked out of the window. I noticed right away that the storm had abated. I thought, good, we can swim again, perhaps not today, but tomorrow. Then everything will get back to normal, everything will be good again between the three of us.

But then
. . .

. . .
then I noticed the activity on the beach, over where we had always gone swimming, where the waves washed around us, lapped at our feet and gently splashed our legs.

There was activity on the beach. There were people there, lots of people, crowding around a single point. I got up and started walking, feeling nothing—slowly at first. But then
. . .

I don’t know why I began to run those last few steps up to the wall of people. I don’t know why, Gertrud.

Then I saw him lying there, where they had laid him out. He was so still, so silent, already so stiff.

55

Dr. Borger, the coroner, enjoyed an excellent dinner and treated himself to a cigar, with an espresso and a cognac. It was then that he made a very interesting discovery.

56

“I hear myself cry out,” I said in Gertrud’s kitchen. “In my dreams some nights, I hear myself cry his name.”

But no one hears me, least of all Tonio. I see him running. It all happens at breakneck speed. He runs and runs, out into the water, into the raging surf; he doesn’t stop. He is alone. He is happy. He wants to feel the water on his skin. Feel the wind that has long since whipped up into a storm. How awesome it is to feel the water like oil on your skin, the wind like velvet—how often he said that.

His face glows brightly through the darkness. I feel his warmth from hours ago when I’d held him in my arms for the last time.

He’ll die. I don’t know it yet. I’m lying in our bed, sleeping. That’s why he’ll die. Because I didn’t look out for him. Because I wasn’t there. Because I was asleep. I didn’t protect him from his own high spirits, from his own recklessness.

It’s strange, but in my dreams everything always happens in slow motion. In my dreams Gertrud isn’t there at all. I see Tonio die. I see the way the waves dash him down, the storm buffets him—all in slow motion, which makes it worse, because it lasts twice as long, because we feel the pain for twice as long—both he and I.

Everything is so much louder in the night. Every noise—the storm, the waves. The footsteps on the stones. His cry as he sinks into the water. Into death. Black air, black water. An ocean of distance.

He was a good swimmer, had been all his life—even in death. I see how he wrestles with the forces all around him, how he begins to feel surprise as he realizes that there is no use.

Eventually he is gone, the sea suddenly still, an oily black mass, the storm dwindled to a light wind. Everything empty, still.

As am I. When he disappears and stops fighting, I become as still as never before. When his heart ceases to beat; when his heart stops still. He disappears—his body, his warmth. And eventually
. . .
the memory of it, too.

The Danube. Here, now.

How beautiful it is. Smooth surface, the occasional shimmer as if the river is scraping along the sky. The sun is dazzling—the twin suns: the one in the sky and the one on the water. People walking in the distance move into the golden sunlight on the river, become black shadows, dissolve into dazzling shimmers. Gold light from behind the clouds, too. Two dogs, black and white, Pablo and Maja. The shrill cries of young girls float upward like white seagulls in the air.

I close my eyes and turn my thoughts back to Gertrud’s kitchen. We drank wine; perhaps we were a little tipsy, which gave us the courage to ask the right questions, give the right answers.

“I ran to him,” I said. “The next morning, after they retrieved him. They let me go to him. As soon as they saw me the circle silently opened up. I touched him and felt a momentary stillness inside, the stillness which came from his heart. I touched him again and again, stroked his body, felt the stillness, felt that his heart was no longer beating, felt that he was no longer warm, felt that he had already vanished, vanished into a faint shimmering, a dark beam of light.

“Wetness had pooled around him, the wetness of the sea, the wetness from the depths. I felt it on my hands and then the pain came, and it began to overwhelm me.

“I knew right then that it would hurt like nothing had ever hurt before. I knew it would take me to the edge, to a place where it’s easy to fall over the precipice.”

I halted, looked at Gertrud. She held her wine glass in her hands, looking into it so I couldn’t see her eyes. I felt the faint scar inside me, the old pain.

“Yes,” I said, without taking my eyes away from Gertrud until she turned her face to me, her eyes impenetrable.

“I knelt down, by Tonio’s body,” I continued, “and felt inside me that stillness which came from his heart, and which I didn’t want to let go of for a long, long time. It was a protection, a shield. I took it with me out into the world. It accompanied me, made it possible for me to go, to begin my journey.

“At last they pulled me away from him, they spoke to me. There was a woman who held me in her arms, murmuring soft words, probably words of comfort, but I didn’t hear them. I didn’t understand her. I heard nothing. Only that his heart was no longer beating.”

“Stop it, Hanna,” Gertrud said. “I know it all already.”

But I couldn’t stop. I talked and talked. A light wind had arisen, murmuring in the trees. We could hear it through the open window.

“It was the last time I saw him, and apart from that
. . .
” I shook my head, listening inside myself. “I remember nothing.”

Only that I set off then. I packed my backpack and disappeared. Away from the island. Away from Greece. Away from the black sand.

Gertrud nodded, and I looked at her cautiously. Her eyes were dark, her mouth a hard line. She looked like an animal about to take flight.

She looks old,
I thought.
Suddenly, she looks old.
I granted us a break and put some fresh coffee on to brew. Milk, cups, sugar pot. With the coffee bubbling through the filter, I sat down again.

“Why didn’t you come to find me, Gertrud?” I asked finally. “Why didn’t you?”

Silence, only the bubbling of the coffee machine, a fly buzzing through the room.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. Her voice was a whisper, a breath, dying away. “I don’t know. Stop asking. It’s all so long ago. Leave the past alone. Let it go. Otherwise you can’t live.”

“Have you let it go, then?” I asked.

Silence again, then, “No.”

I leaned forward, took a strand of her hair and wound it around my finger. She turned away, and the lock of hair slipped from my finger, pulling at her scalp a little.

“Where were you?” she asked. “After Tonio’s death. All those long months?”

I shrugged. “Everywhere. Nowhere. No idea. Sugar?”

“Where did you live? How did you get money?”

I finally thought back.

To icy streets in cold lands, to smoke rising from chimneys, threads rising upward and cutting the sky in two, darkness falling rapidly. I thought of the rich green leaves of primeval forests, mangrove forests, sun, sea, oceans, foreign smells, foreign touches, and the ever-recurring cold, freezing until it was hardly possible to freeze anymore—all of it like a dream, but not mine.

At night, whenever I could, I slept with the door open, afraid of closed rooms.

“One day!” I would whisper then. “One day
. . .
”

I was always wishing for the future, and when the wishing grew too much, it drove me onward. Then I would stand on a station platform and choose from all the directions and destinations, blindly, without a plan, and send myself on my way, the main thing to be on the move.

The impermanence of velvet moments made life good. I liked to see the light reflected in a glass of red wine, to be enveloped by clouds of tobacco smoke making the light diffuse and gray.

Then I would smile myself and strangers into seventh heaven; I hung on to life or to whatever I considered to be life. I was not afraid of feeling a man’s hand on my knee; on the contrary, I would grasp it, smoke my cigarette to the end, catch hold of the stranger’s fingers, and guide them further.

It was as though I were standing next to myself and watching myself smile, laugh
. . .
and then cry. Because I suddenly recalled what warmth was. Because I suddenly recalled what
. . .

I was moved by bodies that were good and wiry and tender. I smiled through tears when they immersed me in their language, of which I often didn’t understand a single word, a single syllable—even when they scattered the incomprehensible sounds of their language over my body and continued to slurp them out, slurp them in
. . .

I was always afraid of neglecting myself, no longer finding myself in the arms of happiness. I wanted to hold on to it, the happiness, hold it deep in my heart, but when morning broke on the diffuse fog of my intoxication and the traces of the night, the night itself could no longer be concealed, and I fled from the suffocation of my own alcohol-soaked breath.

Lipstick on the pillow and my face in the mirror of a wrecked bathroom, dirt-smeared and wrecked like the mirror itself, my hair straggly, my hands sweaty—my cold, thin, lost fingers.

In the bed sometimes there would be someone sprawled, a naked stranger, harsh as the morning, and I
. . .
I would take off again.

“He’s dead,” I would whisper into the mirror, and I finally knew it but kept forgetting it over and over again. “Dead and gone. No shirt will ever look good on him again—white, blue, or yellow.”

And I took off. Again and again. Back to the sea. Another sea. Never back to that one. Stiff breezes. Squalls. Sand on the feet. Foaming white, mountainous waves. The line between sky and ocean lost in the twilight.

In all the images was a great stillness, deep cracks, and always the cold wet of Tonio’s body on my hand. It had worked its way into all the pores of my skin—I would never be free of it.

I was on the edge,
I thought, sitting in Gertrud’s kitchen in the face of Gertrud’s silence.
I was at the precipice, and the images I still have are those that led me back onto firm ground, like fine pins stuck in a map that is spread invisibly through my body.

Another flash of light and more images, and the nearer I brought myself to home, the thicker and faster the memories came.

Finally, I lay on busy beaches in the Aegean summer. The days shimmered back into the sun as if they had never happened. At midday the seagulls were as if painted on glass, the sun shining through them, translucent around the edges, and the white feathery clouds seemed so close they were almost within reach.

It was there that I began to fall silent, that I crept into the stillness, wanting to unlearn all languages on the way to myself, to the wetness on my hand.

I dreamed of the days we’d had. They had been beautiful, beautiful. Splendid gems. If you could have tasted them, they would have melted on your tongue. Slowly. Solemnly.

I dreamed of the time that had dripped from the clock—invisible, intangible—time that had not been enough.

And then
. . .
I began
. . .
eventually
. . .
suddenly
. . .
to feel something foreign inside me, something that did not belong there—not inside me, not in my body. It made me afraid, a hazy terror. I wanted happiness once more, I thought, one more refill before I die.

I thought about Dorothee for the first time during all those months. Of Dorothee, who was my mother of sorts. I turned for home.

It was May, everything smelled of spring, of summer almost, but I was nauseated by all scents, unable to bear them. I descended from the train, shouldered my backpack, and walked along the platform into the concourse. All my desires seemed to be satisfied. For the sea, the wide expanses, the beaches. Again and again trains had spat me out, now here, now there, with cold monotony, cold regularity. Until nothing remained, only the amazement that I had not been drawn into their rattling, that the indeterminate remained indeterminate and the uncertain remained uncertain.

Tonio’s death had come between everyone and everything. It was forever, I finally knew, like a death always is. But it also came between us, the living.