The Gloaming (22 page)

Stupidly, he handed her his handkerchief, the clean, pressed one Ingrid gave him every day, though he asked her not to. He was fine with paper tissues.

He should leave. Immediately. He should concoct an emergency. But instead, he asked her to walk with him to the incident scene. Oh, certainly, part of him was saying this request was legitimate—she might remember after all, he might gain a new perspective; but the greater part simply wanted to be beside her. Wanted the smell of her, to observe her excruciating loveliness.

As they walked, Strebel wondered if he could ever leave Ingrid. He'd like to think it would be simple, a matter of a suitcase and a polite goodbye. But they were bound by filaments. Not just magazine subscriptions, not just the burden of bureaucracy—health insurance, life insurance, house insurance, bank accounts, wills, pensions; but connections of habit. There would be inconveniences, petty losses. He'd have to buy a washing machine and do his own laundry. She'd have to ask their useless son-in-law to fix the toilet. But at least Strebel would be able to wear his own gloves. He was annoyed by the endless, small acts of dishonesty.

‘Do you want me to remember? Is that why we're here?' Mrs Lankester asked, and her voice reached him, though at first he couldn't understand. He'd been thinking so intensely in his native tongue, and had to make the switch to English.

He noticed she was clenching and unclenching her hands. She was terrified. ‘You think I'm trying to trick you somehow. I'm sorry for that. But even if you could remember, I'm not sure I would want to hear. Memory is so messy.'

Ingrid would no doubt prescribe therapy of some sort. Psychotherapy, aromatherapy, candles and chanting, perhaps a cleanse or colonic. Strebel imagined the scurrying shamans who prayed on grief and uncertainty, plucking visions from the air and placing them like ripe fruit at the feet of their acolytes. Paying acolytes. How could you trust anyone you paid for a service? A prostitute gave you what you wanted. A therapist gave you what you wanted. What a mistake to believe in the sanctity of memory or dreams. A man might as well believe the romantic murmurings of a call girl.

He stared at the new bus stand. Should he be awed at his countrymen's ability to reinstall a bus stand within days of its destruction? Or should he fear the haste to paper over tragedy? Then he glanced at Mrs Lankester, sitting next to him, her dark hair and neat form. In a pique, he tore off his gloves, then wondered if this was because he wanted to touch her.

She said something about her husband not liking the gloves she bought him, and Strebel remembered he'd admitted this to her only moments ago. Why had he felt it appropriate to leak some matter of his personal life?

‘Tell me their names,' she said. The names of the children.

Names? He could name them all, every single one. Even the first child, the little baby who'd gone through the windshield. The rainy night. Rain, but of course. Thirty years ago, his first week on the job. He'd thought it was a doll. ‘Restrain her,' his captain had said, and it had taken him a minute to realize the order concerned a woman. Restrain the woman who was running and screaming like a wounded animal in the rain toward the broken doll that had been her child.

Strebel looked over again at Mrs Lankester. He could not help himself. Her eyes met his. She was lost, and he would find her.

Distract me, he pleaded silently. From all this.

All this
dying
.

 

Midmorning and Ingrid was already on line four, wanting to know, ‘Shall I pick you up on the way or do you want to come in your own car?'

‘Just a minute,' he said, as if professionally distracted. ‘Just a second.' What was she talking about? He looked about the office, knowing he wouldn't find the answer. There was no Post-it stuck to his computer. Ingrid sighed in his ear.

‘It's Beatrice's birthday party.'

‘Yes, I know. I know. Yes, I'll see you there. I'm in a meeting right now.' He hung up. He realized he had no idea when he was supposed to be there.

He called Caroline, hoping she wouldn't mention it to Ingrid. ‘Oh, Papa,' she said, just like her mother. ‘Five o'clock.'

She had tied colored balloons to the gatepost. As he neared the house, even through the closed door, Strebel could hear the sound of children screeching like monkeys. Inside, he almost clamped his hands over his ears: the high, intent girly ‘eeeeee' threaded through a harder boy ‘wwrrrrrrr,' providing bass.

A boy wearing a wolf mask ran past him, growling. The wolf chased a group of girls, the cupcake pink of their dresses, their constant incautious movement, whirling, kicking, spinning, and the boys amongst them, growling back at the wolf, daring him to come closer. Strebel glimpsed Beatrice, her mouth open with sound, her tongue stained with red juice. She was screaming, and he began to move toward her, to save her or comfort her—the screaming, the red mouth, she was wounded,
a beetle on its back—
and then he realized in the next beat of his heart that she was screaming with excitement.

‘Papa,' Caroline said, ambushing him from the side, her arm around his waist. ‘The bike is a brilliant idea. You and Mum are so clever.'

‘Good,' he nodded and kissed her just above the ear. Her hair seemed blonder than he remembered. Did she dye it? What was wrong with her natural color? She'd been a sweet child, he could never remember any fuss. He'd read her stories and carried her on his shoulders on the way to picnics. She'd broken her arm at school and he'd run like a madman through the emergency room to find her. Now she dyed her hair. Now she was married to a sporadically employed truck driver—a total dunderhead. She'd wanted to be a nurse but she'd failed the exams.

Suddenly he's six, suddenly he's thirty
. Simone Emptmann's voice was in his head again. ‘We were running late, we're always running late. I lose my temper because we're late for school and the train, for everything, and he's lost his shoes or needs a pee. We were late that morning. I shouted at him. “Don't you understand, Mattias? We're late!” It's so important to be on time. Because time runs out, you miss the train. Suddenly, you're standing on the platform, a minute late and the train is gone. Suddenly, he's six, not a baby, and you get afraid because you know you'll look again and he'll be thirty. You never think—never, never, never—that he just won't be there. At all.'

The noise of the children was like a hive of bees in his head. He smiled anyway at Ingrid who took this as an invitation to come and stand beside him. ‘Do you remember Caroline's sixth?'

‘Absolutely,' Strebel said.

‘That dreadful clown who couldn't do magic tricks. He couldn't even make balloon animals,' she said. ‘You almost had a fight with him about his fee. And then it turned out he was filling in for his brother who'd just died of leukemia.'

He had no recollection of the troubled clown. ‘You made a chocolate cake,' he offered hopefully.

She looked at him. ‘I doubt it. Caroline's allergic to chocolate.'

Of course. The rashes, the vomiting, the specialist in Bern, and how they'd tried carob as an alternative but it always tasted like clay.

‘Cake time!' Caroline shouted and the children swarmed into the kitchen, hooting, screaming, growling, surrounding a strawberry pink cake with the focus of cannibals. Caroline reached over and lit the candles. Everyone sang. Strebel heard his own voice droning. Beatrice leaned in and blew. She wore a jeweled clip in her hair that was coming loose from too much play. He noticed for the first time that she was a plain child and she would be a plain woman. He felt sorry for her, for the day she'd understand her lack of beauty; a wild surge of pain seemed to flush from his chest up his neck to his face and he suddenly found it difficult to breathe.

‘I have to go,' he whispered to Ingrid. He ignored the way she grabbed at his shirt with her fingertips. It was as if he'd snagged it on a branch. He almost ran out into the cold and gathering dark. He got in his car. He drove mindlessly, up valleys and on dark, narrow roads. He hit the lake road, and drove south almost all the way to Interlaken. He thought of continuing on, all the way around. But then he pulled into the parking lot of a Café du Thé overlooking the lake, turned around, and drove the several miles back. Here he took the turn-off uphill, to Arnau. He was there in twenty minutes. He hit the intercom.

‘It is Paul Strebel.'

 

The next time he saw Pilgrim was at the inquest. She wore dark gray and he wished she hadn't because it suited her. He should have told her to wear the most unflattering things she could find, but even then, she couldn't undo her beauty. It was a kind of mask, all that people saw. In the same moment, he was startled to remember that he'd slept with her. He'd slept with someone so beautiful, and he had found her beautiful the whole time.

The parents did not look at her, but Strebel knew they were attentive. They wanted to see her stripped and raw: at the very least
altered
. Disfigured. Two rows behind her sat Alicia Berger, and there was no mistaking her dejection.

The inquest began. Simone Emptmann composed herself, but Strebel saw the bitten nubs of her fingernails. Her husband, Michael, wore a white rose in his lapel. His eyes were red buttons, and he sat without touching his wife. Strebel judged their marriage would last another six months. Blame lay between them, a tar pit into which the past and future slipped. Every recrimination, every disagreement, every hope slid fluttering and squawking into the slurry.
Why did you forget the phone? You're always on that thing
.

Vidia and Bobby Scheffer wore black and held hands. Mattias had been their only child, and Vidia was perhaps now past childbearing. Strebel knew they had erected a wooden bench in the field in front of their apartment where Mattias had liked to play. A half-dozen family members surrounded them.

Ernst Koppler was quite alone. He did not take off his coat, and this was smeared and dirty. He had shaved, but not well; there were little nicks of blood all over his cheeks and chin and dried shaving cream on his ear lobes. His thin hair was greasy, carelessly combed. Strebel knew, Mr Koppler knew: no one would love him and he would love no one ever again.

The presiding judge spoke reverently of the great tragedy. He reviewed the evidence. The forensics and eyewitness statements all tallied, all aligned. Vidia Scheffer wept softly. It was exactly as Strebel expected it to be and had worked for it to be: humane and compassionate, detailed and thorough, a finding of no-fault. But it was a whisper in response to the screams locked within the parents.

Later, Pilgrim was waiting outside his office. ‘Come in,' he said. After they sat down, he smiled delicately. ‘How are you?'

She nodded that she was okay.

‘What will you do now?'

‘Go. Away.'

‘Where?' And for a wild moment, he wondered if he could go with her. Cairo or Sydney or San Francisco.

‘I have no idea.'

‘America? Home?' he offered, and she made a little motion with her hand, a kind of question mark.

‘I thought maybe London,' she said. ‘But I don't know how…' and her voice trailed off.

She gathered her handbag and started to stand, and then startled him by sitting again and saying, ‘Would it be possible to see the photographs. From the accident.'

‘No. And even if I could permit—'

She looked at him directly: ‘Paul, please.'

He felt her then, when she had been warm against him, her back curving under his hands, the dizzying scent of her. He felt hot with embarrassment and lust. He longed for her, for hours, days of her. Instead, he got up and left the room. He paused in the corridor. How could it be that he would never kiss her again?

Ten minutes later he came back with a plastic evidence bag. He shut the door behind him. ‘This is completely irregular,' he said, and felt immediately churlish. He wanted her, he could not have her.

For a long moment she held the bag. ‘Can I open it?'

‘Yes,' he said and watched her long, delicate fingers press open the seams of the bag. She'd touched him with those fingers, she'd caressed him.

She took out a red dress with white and yellow flowers on it. ‘This was Sophie's?'

Strebel nodded.

‘Will it be returned to her father?'

‘Now that the inquest is over, yes.'

‘Will it help him?'

‘I doubt it.'

Pilgrim put the dress back in the bag. He took the bag. And then he reached out for her, surprising himself. His hand on her shoulder, along her collarbone. She didn't look at him but he felt her, the warmth of her through the gray sweater.

There was a crack in the possibility of things. An opening.

But he said, ‘Take care of yourself.'

* * *

A few weeks later he checked up on her. She'd gone. Of course. The system told him she'd left for Tanzania, a flight out of Zurich. He wondered, why Tanzania? And then he leaned back in his chair and covered his face with his hands. Not because he was crying. He felt he might find her somehow. In the dark curtain of his hands some residue of her might remain.

 

May's green organza draped the fields and the air hummed with bees. Boats were out on the lake.

Sergeant Caspary knocked on his door, ‘I thought you would want to know, sir. The neighbors reported a bad smell and uncollected mail in the letter box at Ernst Koppler's residence.'

She drove with him to Arnau. The smell, it turned out, was just rubbish. But Mr Koppler was missing.

‘The neighbors?'

‘The woman next door—Elizabeth Schmidt—she phoned it in; she says she can't remember when she last saw him. Maybe not for a week?'

Strebel and Caspary walked next door.

‘I feel so bad,' Mrs Schmidt said, welcoming them in. ‘I should have been looking out for him. Bringing him meals, I don't know. And now—'