Tretjak (24 page)

‘He likes dead corpses,' the nurse had said. She did not really understand, Charlotte Poland had said. ‘Well,' the nurse explained, ‘he dug up corpses in the graveyard and took them home with him. And sometimes that was too exhausting, so he got himself dead bodies in other ways. Do you understand now?' And then she had added: ‘He once told me why he likes doing that. He wants to get under their skin. Yes, that's how he put it.'

A few days later, she had seen the man walking in the park with an elderly woman. She had waited until the woman came out of House N0. 10 alone. She had asked her when she had first noticed something odd about her son. The woman said, quite early on, her son had taken dead animals to bed with him, mice, and then a dead cat. Back then, she had thought and hoped that this would pass one day.

Lars was in Room N0. 10. House N0. 10, Room N0. 10, the symmetry made it easy to remember. A double room, but he was alone, since the doctors had said that it was out of the question that he could share the room with anyone. And they had told her that they could not allow her to go into the room with her son alone. Or at least they would insist on a straitjacket if she did. Her son was dangerous. Her son could attack her.

‘My son won't hurt me, I know that,' Charlotte Poland had said.

‘You might not be able to judge that correctly,' had been the doctors' response.

‘And if he harms me, that's my business. I take complete responsibility, I'll sign anything.'

‘No, we in House No. 10 are responsible. You, at least as far as the law is concerned, have nothing more to do with your son,' the doctor had said.

Lars was usually lying on the bed, or sometimes he was sitting on a chair, somehow bent over. Blond and slim, the straitjacket made him look even thinner than he was already.

‘Hello, Mama. How nice that you have come. I am glad.' Those were his words, every time.

‘Hello, Lars. I am glad too,' she said. And then most of the time she asked: ‘How are you?'

‘Fine, Mama, not bad actually.'

During her first visits, Lars had asked his mother to talk about the future, about her plans, about trips, about food, about dreams. Lars had loved that ever since he had been a little boy. ‘Mama, tell me...'

Charlotte Poland had liked it too, even here in Room N0. 10. For a moment she could escape it all that way. But then the doctors had found out about these conversations. And had forbidden them emphatically: ‘Mrs Poland, for your son every concept of the future is absolute poison. Every time he experiences that it is like a new hit of a drug, which pulls him further into his illness. Normally imagination is something good, but with Lars it isn't. Your son, Mrs Poland, has lost any connection to reality. We all have to try to lead him back into reality.'

‘What else should I talk about with my son?'

‘Ask him what he is thinking about right now. Ask him what is on his mind right now.'

Since then, it had always been quiet in Room N0. 10 when Charlotte Poland was visiting her son.

‘Tell me about our plans, Mama.'

‘No, Lars. The doctors say that's not good for you. Why don't you tell me what you are thinking about now, how you are feeling.'

‘I don't know,' Lars said.

And then they were silent, both of them.

On the morning that she had finished her novel, the senior consultant, the head of House No. 10, asked Charlotte Poland to come to her office. It was located in the house opposite, the administrative building, which did not have a number. She hated these conversations, and the fading effect of the champagne didn't make things any better. When she got into her car and drove back in the direction of the city, she still had the voice of the senior consultant in her ears. ‘Mrs Poland, the deterioration in your son's condition is dramatic. There has been a development, a sort of feedback of various negative factors, which we so far haven't been able to stop. On the one hand, there is the psychiatric diagnosis, his inability to be aware of his own identity. In addition there was excessive drug abuse, which has led to his brain being damaged, which has furthered the symptoms of the dissolution of his sense of self.'

‘And what am I supposed to do with this information?' Charlotte Poland had asked.

‘You should prepare yourself for the fact that your son will never in his life leave the psychiatric ward. We thought you should know that.'

In the car, Charlotte Poland searched for a radio channel which played only music. She couldn't tolerate any more voices or talking. She found something classical. She sensed her rage. About her husband, her soon-to-be ex-husband, who had asked after Lars maybe three times since they had separated, a maximum of three times. Rage about the doctors, who had never helped one bit, but who never gave the impression that they felt they had failed in any way.

Rage about Paul Tretjak. She had really believed this man, that he wanted to do good. A dreamer, a sensitive visionary. When they met by chance at the Lago Maggiore, she had thought that a man with his kind of history could turn around her son's life. She now realised what kind of man she had been dealing with. A human being who was rotten to the core, who was obsessed with his own self-pity. How could she have been so wrong about this man?

And the other Tretjak? The son Gabriel, who had been called a monster by his own father? The pretty boy, who considered himself to be a latter-day James Bond? Who supposedly could fix anything, if he only wanted to. Fixer! What a name for a man who had no idea about the abyss in his own family history.

Charlotte Poland parked the car in the hotel lot. By now it was midday. The air was muggy; there would be a thunderstorm soon for sure. That would be good. She went to the front desk and got her room key. Her favourite receptionist, Helmut Gruber, was on duty. Gruber handed her the key and said: ‘Mr Tretjak was here. He left the message that he was going to be in the English Garden. The man said you knew where.'

‘Thank you, Helmut,' Charlotte Poland said. ‘Yes, I know where.'

 

Late on Monday morning, Gabriel Tretjak went to a branch of his bank and arranged a transfer of funds. How much is the life of a human being worth? he asked himself. And immediately tried to forget the question. 50,000 euros. Transferred to Carolina Lanner. Maybe she would find the transfer of money insulting. Especially coming from him. But in Tretjak's experience, on the whole, money calmed nerves, whatever life threw at you, especially a lot of money. He was sure she was going to keep the money. Tomorrow he was going to send her a text message, but not before tomorrow, when the money would have reached her account. He had already drafted the message:
Nothing can bring back your beloved mother. But she would surely be happy if this money supported your café a little. Gabriel Tretjak.

He left the bank on Sendlinger Street and sensed in himself some little bit of vitality. He had finally done something again. He had transferred some money, had had a few letters typed into a bank computer, at least that was something. In the morning he had called the estate agent, yes, he was going to take the flat, immediately. Only one big room, with a doorman downstairs in the building, not far from the Isar River, only a short distance from the zoo. He had made a decision, placed a telephone call, at least that was something.

Tretjak had not returned to his flat at the St-Anna-Platz after the murder of Rosa Lanner. Even the thought of turning the keys in the lock induced physical pain. He had known immediately that this location didn't exist anymore for him. Because of her murder there, only the past could now exist in those rooms. And the past was not a category in his life. There could be no other choice but to get rid of the flat as quickly as possible.

When the police let him go after a night in the cells, he had stayed in the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, one of the best addresses in town. Then he had changed his hotel every two days, partly because that had structured the days, checking out, checking in, so that at least he was doing something. He felt best when he was with Fiona, when he stayed with her overnight. When he woke up in the middle of the night and felt her beside him. When the fear came and he heard her breathe. He felt calmer when Fiona was there.

In fact, it helped him if anybody was there. Tretjak sat in crowded restaurants and tried to start a conversation with the punters there. He got into a taxi and told the driver to show him Munich, that he was a tourist with only a little time to spare, just passing through. Those trips could last a couple of hours. Tretjak asked lots of questions, questions about Munich, the answers to which he already knew. Whoever is still talking is not dead, that's what he had once read in some poem.

Gabriel Tretjak could no longer stand to be alone. And this had to happen to him, the very one who had considered himself the master of being alone, who had always thought that being by yourself was the only true elixir of life. Tretjak knew what was behind his not being able to be alone anymore: he couldn't stand himself any longer. But he didn't know anything more than that. A centrifugal force had taken hold of him. He felt like he was going to disintegrate into his component parts if he sat still or stood there, concentrating only on himself. Only movement protected him, movement just for its own sake, without concept, without plan. Or when Fiona casually kissed him.

In other words, exactly those things which had never helped him in the past helped him now. His life had been turned upside down and he had no logical explanation for why this had come to pass. And he had no idea how his life was supposed to continue. It drove him crazy that he had no answers to the question: what was happening to him here?

Tretjak had stopped taking Tavor two days ago. In the end, he had been popping pills like cough drops. But he had hardly noticed any relief anymore. The very last time he had taken it, he had even thought that the stuff was causing a completely new kind of fear in him.

It is said that such crises are the hours of true friends, those you can call in the middle of the night and say: I need you. I need your help. Can you come over? The problem was that Gabriel Tretjak's friends were of a different nature. They knew other sorts of telephone calls from Tretjak: you have to immediately do this and that for me. Don't ask why, just do it. And it worked the other way around as well. They contacted Tretjak saying: can you do me a favour? They knew they could depend on one another. They were friends, but they had their own unique code. A code which should not be violated.

But still Tretjak had done just that, in his way. He had sent an email to Stefan Treysa over the weekend:
I'm not feeling well. I would like to ask you for advice. I have a proposal: you are a therapist, aren't you? Or you were a therapist once upon a time. I would like to make an appointment with you, as a patient. Just one hour. I fear I won't make it any other way.

Only a few minutes later Treysa answered:
Of course. Monday at 12.30, at my office on Buttermelcher Street?

Tretjak looked at his watch, he still had an hour. He walked down Sendlinger Street, turned left in the direction of Mueller Street, straight and then right onto Hans-Sachs Street. He came to the Hierlmaier Antiquarian Bookshop. He entered the shop, and the ring of the door's bell summoned a very large man from the back of the shop, whose belly was so big that his blue work apron hardly closed around it.

‘
Servus
, Mr Tretjak,' Max Hierlmaier said, using the traditionally more intimate Bavarian version of ‘Hello'.

‘
Servus
, Mr Hierlmaier. I have a job for you. A flat in Munich. Everything that is in the study has to be transported into another flat. Everything else in the flat should be cleared out, sold or otherwise disposed of.'

Max Hierlmaier knew about this kind of removal. He had organised them a dozen times at Tretjak's behest. Little to take along, lots to throw away, that was the rule. Tretjak had once explained it to him: ‘People don't want to carry too much ballast into their new life.'

Hierlmaier asked for the name of the flat's owner. ‘It's in my name. It's about me this time. It is a private move, you might say.'

‘I see,' Hierlmaier said, ‘I'll take care of it personally, if that's the case. I'm interested to find out what your home looks like. I believe that you can read a lot about people when you see their flats.'

‘You won't find a lot to read in my home, I'm afraid.'

‘Mr Tretjak, I tell you: nothing is a lot as well.'

Tretjak finally told him that he shouldn't be surprised to still find traces that the police had been in the flat. The police had combed the flat for evidence for days, and then cleaned it afterwards.

‘OK,' Hierlmaier said, ‘not a problem.'

 

Tretjak left the shop and, walking in the direction of Buttermelcher Street, thought of the only enquiry he had responded to in the past few weeks. Apart from that one, he had completely gone to ground. No matter what method people had used to try to contact him, the sender had received the same reply: Gabriel Tretjak was not reachable for the foreseeable future, he would neither read nor listen to any enquiry. On that point Rainer Gritz had been mistaken, there were by no means fewer enquiries than before. But he had sent a response to one person. She had recounted her life in just a few lines: she was an affluent lady, without any family, and had been the mistress of a very famous Munich celebrity, a fact which nobody had been allowed to know. Now the man had died. And with him had gone her life, her past. She wanted to change this retrospectively, wanted as many people to find out about the truth as possible, about the fact that she had existed and that she still did. She wanted her life back, at least to be able to talk about it and remember it.
That's all I want to achieve
, the woman had written,
really. I cannot organise this myself. Can you?