The Book of Murder

Epilogue

I saw Kloster once more, at Luciana’s funeral. It was one of those cold, luminous mornings in the city at the end of August when buds on the pollarded trees and lighter, more fragrant air hint at the arrival of spring. I overcame my long-standing aversion to funerals and made myself enter the citadel of terrifying, neat graves and time-worn vaults. If I was there, forcing myself to walk through the sea of stone crosses, it wasn’t because of any debt I felt I owed Luciana, or to assuage my guilt—which the sight of her square of earth would only intensify—but because I wanted one last answer, or rather the painful confirmation of something I still couldn’t quite believe.
Yet I had seen it happening before my eyes. I had seen it in Valentina’s expression as she looked at Kloster in the lift, but I had failed to put two and two together. I’d chosen to believe that it was simply platonic admiration from reading his books, a teenage crush that Kloster wouldn’t dream of reciprocating. But afterwards, in the chaos that followed Luciana’s death, I had seen the speed and energy with which he had acted. I had watched him calm and console Valentina with what looked very much like an embrace, and organise things so that after giving my statement I had found myself heading home in a taxi, still stunned, while he took charge of everything, especially her. And I didn’t protest, didn’t raise any objections, because I could tell from Valentina’s devastated face, behind her anguished tears, that this was what she wanted: to be alone with him.
I was at the cemetery in search of the final proof and I don’t mind admitting that I hoped to find Valentina there alone. As I went over the events of that terrible night in my mind, despite all the evidence I believed there was still a remote hope that she had leaned on Kloster at that tragic moment because she was dazed and grief-stricken and he had seemed like a father figure. I kept telling myself that as soon as she had a chance to think, to reflect, she would push him away in horror.
But when, having made my way round the crematorium, I found the path to the newest graves, they were there together, she with her head bowed as if in prayer, he with a hand on her shoulder. There was no one else at the funeral. A solitary bunch of flowers lay on the patch of earth, still without a gravestone. In the silent cemetery they looked like a father and daughter now alone in the world. As I approached, Valentina looked up and something in her shrank back, as if she would have preferred not to see me. I could only think I reminded her of her sister’s warnings against the person to whom she had entrusted herself. I approached anyway and offered her my condolences, obliging Kloster to remove his hand from her shoulder. I greeted him coldly and for a long while the three of us stood in awkward silence, staring at the flowers on the dark, freshly dug earth. I felt Kloster touch my elbow and signal for me to follow him. We moved a little distance away and he stopped and turned. He didn’t show any anxiety, sorrow or remorse, merely a hint of curiosity, as if he wanted to clear up one last intriguing detail.
“There’s something I never found out,” he said. “Luciana left a note, didn’t she? A message, which you kept.”
“Which I handed to the police,” I said. But Kloster didn’t seem to register the intention behind my tone.
“So what did it say?”
“At least let her be saved,” I said.
For a moment Kloster was silent, as if he were repeating the words to himself in search of a deeper meaning and somehow approved of them.
“Though this was madness, yet there was method in it,” he said. “She tried to protect her sister to the end. Poor girl, she couldn’t have been more wrong. How could she think I’d hurt Valentina when she’s the one person for whom I’ve been able to feel anything since Pauli died. The one who’s brought me back to life. Look around,” he said, waving an arm at the fields of crosses and headstones, the rows of graves stretching into the distance. “This is the landscape I visited every day. All green shall perish. That’s easier to believe here than anywhere else. But if you come here often enough, you see that moss eventually grows on the tombstones. So you see, I thought I was dead, dead like everyone here, but in spite of everything there was hope for me too.” He turned to look at Valentina with admiration. “She’s an extraordinary little person,” he said. “Truly brave: she wouldn’t believe anything her sister said about me.”
“But she’s only seventeen,” I couldn’t help saying. “At that age, courage can be foolishness.”
“She is indeed only seventeen,” he said. “Doesn’t that make it doubly miraculous that she’s become attached to me? The age difference doesn’t seem to bother her. I hope it doesn’t bother you.” He looked at me with a gleam of defiance but immediately reverted to a more benign manner. “We’ve got something very powerful in common: she lost her father, I lost my daughter.”
“She lost her whole family,” I said, shaking with indignation, but Kloster hardly seemed to notice, as if what I’d said was trivial.
“We’ve both lost far too much,” he said. “That’s why I want to protect her more than anything. So that she can start a new life. When all this is over she’s coming to live with me.”
“I hope it’ll be a while before it’s all over: there’s going to be an investigation.”
“There’s going to be an investigation?” echoed Kloster, as if he didn’t really believe it, his tone almost mocking. “Because of that obscure message, which seems to be one more sign of madness? It’s quite clear what happened; I don’t think there’s any more to it. All three of us saw and heard the same. She wasn’t pushed.”
“You knew, didn’t you? When you pretended to let me convince you to see her. When you agreed to come with me. You knew she wouldn’t be able to cope with seeing you.”
“You’re giving me too much credit. How could I have known something like that? I had a feeling it would make things worse, and I said so. Maybe I should have been firmer. But by then I’d lost all will. I let myself be led. I realised it wasn’t me writing the story, but someone ahead of me.”
“That’s enough! I didn’t believe you, not even the first time. It was you. You. Every time.”
My voice had grown louder and louder and I was now jabbing my finger into his chest. I was shaking with impotent rage. Realising that Valentina had turned to look, I lowered my finger slowly.
“Be careful, young man,” said Kloster coldly. “You’re starting to sound like Luciana. I’ll tell you one last time.”
When I met his eyes, I saw that he was strangely serene, impassive.
“I’m not trying to get you to believe something I myself found so hard to believe, indeed that I only believe sometimes. But at least believe this: the only thing I’ve done, all these years, is set words down on paper.”
“You knew she’d reached the end of the line,” I insisted. “You knew she was desperate and wouldn’t be able to cope with seeing you face to face.”
“It was you who made me come with you, with your stupid idea of reconciliation,” said Kloster harshly, running out of patience.
We stared at each other in silence.
“Even if there’s no investigation,” I said slowly, “I’m going to make sure I write about it all. Every one of the deaths. Everything Luciana told me. Someone has to hear it.”
“I’m all in favour of novelists writing novels,” said Kloster. “I could almost say I’m interested to see how the champion of randomness manages to turn me into the Great Demiurge—he who drowns swimmers without touching them and spreads poisonous spores in the woods and frees murderers from prison and sets fire to cities. And can even make people commit suicide with his telepathic powers! You’ll turn me into a superman rather than a murderer. Come now, you know very well you won’t be able to write about this without making a fool of yourself.”
“Maybe. But I’m still going to write about it and get it published. I owe it to Luciana. And maybe it will help protect her,” I said, glancing in Valentina’s direction. Kloster followed my eyes.
“She doesn’t need protecting,” he said. “She might look very much like Luciana, but thankfully there are differences.”
The air was growing warmer in the morning sun and Valentina took off her coat. As Kloster spoke, my eyes fell instinctively on the small but pronounced curve of her breasts, taut and firm beneath a tight sweater. Could this be what Kloster was referring to? It did indeed look as if nature had taken this second chance, adding the missing brushstroke in the crucial place. I turned to see if I could tell from Kloster’s face whether this was what he meant. But his expression was of another kind, and he might just as easily have been a proud father looking at his beautiful daughter, or a man in thrall to his new love. At any rate, at that moment, when he dropped his guard, the only thing I could tell for certain was that Kloster really did seem to love the girl. Not wanting to fall into this new trap, I reminded myself that all the monsters in history have kept a place and person for their tender feelings. Still, without even trying, he’d done it again: he’d made me doubt.
“I suppose I can’t stop you writing what you want. But in that case maybe I’ll finish my own manuscript, my version of the story. I’m only sorry that everyone will think it’s inspired by events. That the events took place first. Cause and effect. Only you and I will know that it was the other way round.”
He looked up, as if already picturing it completed, at the tall trees bordering the cemetery, the translucent cloudless sky, and back to the girl waiting for him by the grave.
“It’ll be unlike anything I’ve ever written before. I don’t know about your novel,” he said, “but mine will have a happy ending.”
EOF