The Book of Murder

Two

Nothing could have prepared me for the sight of her. It was her, still Luciana, I had to admit it, but for a moment I thought there must be some terrible mistake. The terrible mistake of time. The cruellest revenge upon a woman, Kloster wrote, was to let ten years pass before seeing her again.
I could say that she’d put on weight, but that was the least of it. Perhaps the most appalling thing was the way the face I had once known tried to surface in her eyes, as if seeking me from a distant past, sunk in the black well of the years. She smiled with something like desperation, testing to see if she could count on even a part of the attraction she had once exerted over me. But the equivocal smile lasted only a fraction of a second, as if she knew that in a sequence of cruel amputations she had lost all her charms. My worst predictions for her appearance had come true. Her neck, the smooth neck that had come to obsess me, had thickened, and there was now an unmistakable roll of fat beneath her chin. The eyes that used to sparkle now looked small and puffy. Her mouth was drawn down at the corners in an embittered line, and it looked as if nothing had made her smile in a long time. But the worst thing was what had happened to her hair. An entire section had disappeared from the front, as if she’d suffered from some nervous disease, or she’d torn it out in fits of despair, and over the ear, where it was more sparse than elsewhere, whitish patches of scalp showed through, like terrible scars. My horrified, disbelieving stare must have lingered a little too long on the lank strands because she raised her hand to her ear to hide them, but gave up halfway, as if she knew the damage could not be concealed.
“Something else I owe Kloster,” she said.
She sat down in the same old swivel chair and looked around, surprised, I think, that the place had changed so little.
“Amazing,” she said, as if she found it unfair but was also relieved to have discovered a refuge, a piece of the past unexpectedly intact. “Nothing’s changed here. You’ve even kept that horrible little grey rug. And you…” She looked at me almost accusingly. “You look just the same too. A few grey hairs maybe. You haven’t even put on weight. I bet if I go to the kitchen the cupboards will be empty and all I’ll find is coffee.”
It was my turn to say something pleasant, I suppose, but, unable to find the words, I let the moment pass and I think my silence pained her more than any lie.
“So,” she said with an ironic, disagreeable smile, “don’t you want to know how I am? Why don’t you ask me about my boyfriend?” She said it as if this were some kind of guessing game.
“How’s your boyfriend?” I asked mechanically.
“He’s dead,” she said, but before I could say anything she fixed her gaze on mine, holding it steadily, as if it were still her turn. “Why don’t you ask me about my parents?” I said nothing and she answered her own question with the same defiant tone: “They’re dead. Why don’t you ask me about my brother? He’s dead.” Her lower lip trembled. “Dead, dead, dead. One after the other. And nobody realises. At first even I didn’t realise.”
“Do you mean someone killed them?”
“Kloster,” she said in a terrified whisper, leaning towards me as if someone might hear. “And he hasn’t finished yet. He does it slowly, that’s the secret. He lets years go by.”
“Kloster is killing all your relatives, without anyone realising,” I said cautiously, as if humouring a mad person.
She nodded seriously, looking into my eyes, waiting for my reaction, as if she’d said the most important part and had put herself in my hands. Naturally I thought she must be suffering from some kind of mental disorder as a result of all these unfortunate deaths. Over the past few years Kloster had become almost obscenely famous: you couldn’t open the papers without seeing his name. No other writer was as sought after, as ubiquitous, as celebrated. Kloster was a fixture on literary prize panels, heading the list of signatures to open letters, a delegate at international conferences and guest of honour at embassy receptions. Over the past ten years he had been transformed from well-kept secret to public property, almost a brand. His books were sold in all formats, from pocket editions to luxurious hardback volumes for the corporate gift market. And though he now had a frequently photographed face, I had long since ceased to think of him as a man, a person of flesh and bone: he’d vanished, become a name haunting bookshops, posters, headlines. Kloster now lived the hectic, unreachable life of a celebrity: he didn’t seem to rest between book tours and all his other activities. Not to mention the hours he must have spent writing, because his novels continued to appear with calm regularity. The thought that Kloster might have something to do with real-life crimes was as outrageous as if she’d blamed the Pope.
“But Kloster?” I exclaimed involuntarily, unable to shake off my astonishment. “Surely he doesn’t have time to plan murders?”
Too late I realised this could have sounded sarcastic and offended her. But Luciana replied as if I’d just provided her with the evidence that proved her theory conclusively.
“Precisely. That’s part of his strategy—that nobody should think it possible. When I worked for you, you used to say he was a secret writer. In those days he despised anything to do with publicity. I heard him refuse interviews a hundred times. But in the past few years he’s deliberately sought fame, because he needs it now: it’s a perfect smokescreen. Or rather he would need it, if anyone bothered to look into it,” she said bitterly. “If anyone was prepared to believe me.”
“But what motive could Kloster have for—”
“I don’t know. That’s the most exasperating part. Actually, he does have a motive: I sued him when I went back to work for him. But in hindsight it was a minor thing—it didn’t even go to court. I can’t believe he’s still taking revenge: it’s out of all proportion. The more I think about it the less I can believe it’s the real reason.”
“You sued Kloster? But I thought he was the perfect boss. The last time I saw you, you seemed happy to be going back to work for him. What happened?”
The coffee pot on the hob started to hiss. I went to the kitchen, and returned with two cups of coffee. I waited for her to help herself to sugar. She stirred her coffee endlessly, as if she were trying to order her thoughts. Or maybe she was wondering how much to tell me.
“What happened? I’ve spent years asking myself every day what happened exactly. It’s been a nightmare. I could recount each thing separately and it would just seem like a string of misfortunes. It all began when I went back to work for him, when he got back from his retreat. The first day he was in a good mood. During a break, while I was making coffee, he asked what I’d done during the month he was away. I told him, without a second thought, that I’d worked for you. At first he seemed simply intrigued. He asked who you were, and what the novel you were writing was about. I think he knew a little about you, or he pretended to. I told him you’d broken your wrist. It was just a casual conversation but there was something in his voice and his insistent questions that made me think he was jealous—he seemed to assume something had happened between you and me. A couple of times I think he was on the point of asking. And in the days that followed, every so often he’d somehow bring up my free month. He even read one of your books and made fun of it. I’d say nothing but that seemed to annoy him even more. A week later he changed tack. He became unusually silent. He hardly spoke to me and I thought he was going to fire me.”
“So I was right,” I said. “He was in love with you.”
“Those days were the most difficult. He didn’t dictate anything at all, just paced the room, as if he were trying to come to a decision that had nothing to do with his novel. Something about me. And suddenly, one morning, he started dictating again normally, as if nothing had happened. Actually, not quite normally: he seemed to be inspired. Until then he’d dictated at the most one or two paragraphs a day, going over them obsessively, line by line. But that day he dictated a long and rather horrifying scene in one go: a series of murders, throat-slittings by the religious assassins. He seemed transformed. He’d never dictated so fast—I had trouble keeping up. But I thought everything was OK again. I really needed that job so I was terribly worried about him firing me. He continued dictating at that pace for almost two hours and as we went on his mood seemed to get better and better. When I stopped to go and get more coffee, he even made a couple of jokes. I stood up and suddenly realised how stiff my neck was. I had a problem with it in those days,” she said, as if she were trying to prove her innocence with this belated explanation.
“Yes, I remember very well,” I said drily. “Though I was always a bit suspicious of those neck aches of yours.”
“But I really did have a bad neck,” she said. It seemed vital to her that I believe it. There was a silence. She looked out of the window, lost in thought, as if she could still picture the scene, frozen in time. “I had my back to him. I clicked my neck and suddenly felt him put his arm round me. I turned round and he…he tried to kiss me. I struggled to free myself but he was holding me firmly and didn’t seem to notice, as if he just couldn’t understand that I was resisting. So I screamed. Not too loudly: I just wanted him to let go. Actually I was more surprised than shocked. As I told you when you asked: I thought of him as a father. He froze. I think it was only then that he realised what he’d done and what could happen. His wife was upstairs and might have heard.
“There was a knock on the door and he went to open it. He was very pale. It was Pauli, his little girl. She’d heard me scream and asked, looking at me, what had happened. He told her not to worry—I’d seen a cockroach—and to go back to her room and play. We were alone again. As I gathered up my things, I said I’d never set foot in his house again. I was beside myself. I couldn’t help crying and that made me even more furious. He asked if we could just forget the whole thing. He said it had all been a terrible mistake, but that it really hadn’t been all his fault because I’d been sending out signals. And he said something even more insulting: he assumed I’d slept with you. I was incensed. I realised then, with absolute clarity, what had been going through his head. Before his trip he was crazy about me. He’d let me know in that unspoken way men have, but I don’t think it had occurred to him to touch me. Since he’d got back, though, he’d thought of me as no more than a slut, with whom he too could try his luck. I screamed again and this time I didn’t care if his wife heard. He moved closer as if to make me shut up and I said if he touched me again I’d sue him. He apologised and tried to calm me down. He opened the door and offered to pay me for the days I’d worked so far that month. I just wanted to get out of there as soon as I could. Outside I burst into tears again. It was my first job and I’d trusted him completely. I was home early and my mother saw immediately that I’d been crying. I had to tell her what had happened.”
She raised the cup of coffee with a trembling hand and took a sip. She appeared lost in the memory for a moment, staring into the cup.
“And what was her reaction?” I asked.
“She asked if I’d done anything to lead him on. She’d just been fired herself—that’s why I went to work for Kloster—and now we’d both lost our jobs. She’d won some compensation so she thought we should go and see her solicitor. We agreed not to say anything to my father until it was all over. We went to see the solicitor that day. She was a terrifying woman—she scared me. Huge and fat, with tiny eyes, sitting bulging behind her desk. She looked like a union thug. She hated men, she told us; she was on a personal crusade against them and nothing pleased her more than crushing them. She called me ‘dear’. She asked me to tell her the whole story. She said it was a pity he hadn’t been a bit more insistent and that it had only happened that one time. She asked if I had any marks or bruises from the struggle. I had to tell her that there hadn’t really been any physical violence. She said we wouldn’t be able to sue him for sexual harassment but that she’d work something out, and slip the words in at the beginning just to make him nervous. The case, she explained, would ultimately be a claim for the social security and pension contributions he hadn’t paid me. What had happened between us had taken place in a closed room, with no witnesses. It would be his word against mine so we wouldn’t get far down that path. She asked if he was married and when I said yes she was delighted. She said the married ones were the easiest to scare: we could just name a figure and we’d get it out of him. On her calculator she added up the amount he’d have to pay me by law and then added an amount for compensation. It seemed like a fabulous sum, more than I’d ever earned in a whole year. She dictated the text of a letter for me to write. I asked if we couldn’t change the accusation of sexual harassment in the heading to something less serious. She said that from now on I should get used to the idea that he was my enemy, and that he’d deny everything anyway.
“I went to the post office alone. I stood in the queue and felt a foreboding that I was about to set in motion something that would have irreparable consequences, that the letter had a hidden destructive power. I’d never felt like this before, as if I was about to fire a gun. I knew that one way or another I’d be doing him harm, and not just financially. I nearly turned round and came home. I think if I’d waited a day I’d never have sent the letter. But I’d come that far and I still felt humiliated. It seemed unfair that I’d lost my job, when I’d always behaved impeccably with him. In a way it seemed right that he should pay.”
“So you posted the letter.”
“Yes.”
She stared blankly into space again. After the first sip of coffee she’d put the cup down. She asked if she could smoke. I brought an ashtray from the kitchen and waited for her to go on, but the cigarette only seemed to take her further inside herself, to an obscure corner of her memory.
“You sent the letter…then what happened?”
“He didn’t answer that first letter. I received a receipt: he’d got the letter, he’d read it, but he hadn’t replied. After almost a month my mother phoned the solicitor. “Much better for us,” the woman said. “Either he hasn’t taken us seriously, or he’s been very poorly advised.” Again, I had a sense of foreboding. I’d worked for him for almost a year. You asked me once what he was like. At the time I thought he was the most intelligent man I had ever met—would ever meet. But there was also something just below the surface, something sinister, implacable—he was the last person I’d want to have as an enemy. I feared he’d take my letter as a declaration of war and that I’d have to face the worst of him. I was frightened and started having thoughts that were…paranoid. After all, he had my address, my phone number. We’d become quite friendly; he knew a lot about me. I thought maybe he hadn’t answered the letter because he was planning another kind of response, his own personal revenge. But the solicitor assured me that, as he was married, if he really was an intelligent man he’d do the only thing he could do: pay up. And the longer he took to reply, the higher the sum would get. She dictated a second letter, identical to the first, but demanding an even higher amount, because we were also claiming the wages for the month without a reply. It seemed to have an immediate effect. We received his first response, obviously also written by a solicitor. He rejected everything. It was a list of denials. He denied that I’d ever worked for him and even that he knew me. The solicitor told me not to worry. It was a stock legal reply and simply meant Kloster had realised we were serious and had got himself a lawyer. We now had to wait for the first conciliation meeting and think about how much lower a sum we would accept. I was reassured. In the end it all seemed impersonal, an administrative formality.”
“So you went to the conciliation meeting.”
Luciana nodded. “I asked my mother to come with me because I was scared of facing Kloster again. Ten minutes after the agreed time there was still no sign of him. The solicitor whispered, as if it was just a little bit of mischief, that he was probably busy with another bigger case: his divorce. She said a colleague who was a friend of hers was acting for Kloster’s wife. Apparently his wife had read my letter, with the accusation of sexual harassment, and decided to file for divorce immediately. She’d asked for a settlement running into millions. And her friend was ruthless, the solicitor said: Kloster would be out on the street. I listened, horrified. It had never even occurred to me this might happen.
“Another five minutes passed and at last Kloster’s solicitor appeared. He seemed like a calm, courteous man. He said he had instructions to offer us two months’ pay as compensation. My solicitor rejected this outright, without even consulting me, and the second conciliation meeting was set for a month later. This would give everyone, the mediator said, time to reflect and come closer to an agreement. Outside I asked my mother if we shouldn’t just drop the whole thing. I’d never wanted things to go that far; I never imagined I’d end up destroying his marriage. My mother got annoyed with me: she didn’t understand how I could feel sorry for him. His marriage must have been long over for him to try something with me. So I didn’t say any more. Actually, I felt afraid, rather than sorry. My worst fears were being realised. After all, he’d only tried to kiss me. The consequences seemed excessive, out of control.
“As the days passed I grew more and more anxious. I just wanted to get to the next meeting and for it all to end. I was prepared to stand up to my mother and my own solicitor so that we accepted whatever the other side offered. A day before the date set the mediator telephoned: the meeting was being postponed for a week. I was put out, and asked why. She said it was at the request of the other party. I asked if they were allowed to change the date just like that. She said yes, in extreme circumstances, and lowered her voice: Kloster’s little girl had died. I couldn’t believe it, but at the same time, strangely, I did believe it and accepted it, in all its awfulness, as if it were the logical, ultimate consequence of what my letter had started. I don’t think I said anything for a moment but eventually I managed to ask what had happened. The mediator only knew what Kloster’s solicitor had told her: apparently it was a domestic accident.
“After I hung up I went to my desk, to find the drawings Pauli had given me. She’d drawn her daddy looking huge and me on a tiny chair. The computer was a little square, and at the bottom she’d written her name, which she’d just learned to do. In the second picture, there was an open door, with the daddy in the distance, looking tiny, and she and I were holding hands, almost the same height, as if we were sisters. They were happy, carefree pictures. And now she was dead. I cried all afternoon. I think I was crying for myself too. Although I didn’t yet know when or how, I sensed that it wouldn’t stop there and that something terrible was going to happen to me.”
“But why did you think that? If it was an accident, why would he hold you responsible?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know exactly why. But that was what I felt right from the start and, most of all, I think it was what he felt too. It’s the only explanation I can find for everything that happened afterwards.”
She paused and lit another cigarette with trembling hands.
“So you went to the second conciliation meeting,” I said.
She nodded. “Like before, my mother and I arrived first and we were shown into the mediation room. We waited a few minutes with our solicitor. I thought Kloster would send his lawyer again. But when the door opened it was Kloster who entered. He was alone. His face was shockingly changed, as if he had died with his daughter. He’d lost a huge amount of weight and looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. His eyes were red and his cheeks sunken. He was incredibly pale, as if all the blood had been drawn from his body. But even so, he looked composed and resolute, as if he had a task to accomplish and no time to lose. He was carrying a book that I recognised immediately: it was my father’s annotated Bible which I’d lent him. He crossed the room, straight towards me. My mother made a move as if to protect me. I don’t think he even noticed. He was only looking at me, with a terrible stare that I still see every night. He blamed me, without a doubt. He stopped and held out the Bible without a word. I put it quickly in my bag. He turned to the mediator and asked how much we were claiming in compensation. He listened to the figure and took a chequebook from his pocket, opening it out on the desk. The mediator started to say that he could of course make a counter-offer, but he held up his hand to stop her, as if he didn’t want to hear another word about the matter. He wrote out three cheques: one to me for the total amount we’d claimed, and another two for the mediator’s and my lawyer’s fees. I signed a document stating that the claim was settled. He picked up his copy, turned round without looking at anyone and left. The whole thing took under ten minutes. The mediator could hardly believe it; it was the first time a case had ever ended like this.”
“Then what happened?”
“Then…I went home, took the Bible from my bag and put it on the shelf above my desk, with my university course books. It was a Bible my father no longer used and it was months since I’d lent it to Kloster: I’d forgotten all about it. In fact, when I thought about the meeting again, it occurred to me that it had been an excuse to come up close and stare at me in that way. I couldn’t get that out of my head and I had nightmares for days afterwards. I dreamed that Kloster’s little girl was taking my hand, wanting me to come and play with her, and saying, just as she had when she was alive, that she didn’t want to be on her own in the room next door any more.
“I opened a bank account and paid in the cheque, but the days passed and I couldn’t bring myself to touch the money. For a time I thought of donating it to charity, but I had a superstitious fear of doing anything with it, even to give it away, as if like that I’d be able to keep things from moving on. I thought that as soon as I withdrew even a tiny amount it would trigger reprisals. I became obsessed with the idea that Kloster was planning something terrible against me and that was why he’d agreed to pay the money without argument. I told my boyfriend some of this but I never mentioned that Kloster had tried to kiss me. All I said was that I’d brought a claim for unfair dismissal against him, that he’d lost a lot of money, and I was afraid he was going to take revenge somehow. At that time Kloster had a novel published. Not the one he’d been dictating to me but another one that he’d completed before I started working for him. The one he’d edited on his retreat in Italy.”
“The Day of the Dead. I remember it well. It came out at the same time as the one I dictated to you. It was his first big hit.”
“It soon became a bestseller. It topped all the lists, was in all the shop windows. You could even find it in supermarkets. Every time I passed a bookshop I’d see his name and shiver. My boyfriend tried to reassure me, saying it must have earned Kloster much more than what he’d paid me and he had probably forgotten all about it. But I started noticing something.”
“What?”
“What we mentioned before. Until then, as you said, Kloster was a writer who hated public appearances. But suddenly he became famous. As if he wanted to be everywhere, all the time.”
“Maybe it was because he was alone—it was a way of filling time.”
“Yes, at first I thought something like that as well, that he was looking for comfort in celebrity, or trying to keep his mind busy so as to forget his daughter’s death. Even so, it went totally against his nature. It made me suspect it was part of his plan. But my boyfriend convinced me that Kloster was too busy promoting his book to think of me. That year Ramiro had finished his course in physical education and found a job as a lifeguard on one of the beaches in Villa Gesell. But he wanted to spend time in Mexico before starting. He’d been planning the trip for some time and asked me to go with him, to forget all about the Kloster business. It seemed like a good idea and I used part of the compensation money for it. We spent almost a month longer than we’d intended travelling around, visiting little Mexican villages, and we got back at the beginning of December, in time for him to start work. I stayed in Buenos Aires to sit my finals, but my parents and Valentina and Bruno were already in Gesell so as soon as I finished my exams I took the overnight bus there. I wanted to surprise Ramiro and went straight from the bus station to the beach, so we could have breakfast together. We sat at a little bar on the beach. It was early, and there weren’t many people about. I looked around and saw a man in swimming trunks and goggles at a neighbouring table. He was tanned, as if he’d already been there a few days. I almost cried out when I recognised him: it was Kloster. He was having a coffee and reading the paper, pretending not to see me, though he was only a few feet away.”
“Couldn’t it simply have been a coincidence? Lots of writers used to spend the summer in Gesell. Maybe he was renting a house there.”
“Of all the resorts on the coast he chose Gesell? Of all the bars, he went to the very one near my boyfriend’s job? No. It was odd enough that he’d picked Gesell. He knew I spent every summer there. I pointed him out discreetly to Ramiro and he said it could be a coincidence as well. I asked if it was the first time he’d seen him. He said he’d been there every morning, sitting at the same table, for about a week. After reading the paper he’d wade into the sea and swim out very far. Actually I think Ramiro was a bit surprised, and a bit jealous, that this was the writer I’d worked for. I’d told him very little about Kloster and I suppose he’d pictured him much older, more bookish. Sitting there in his trunks Kloster looked like an athlete. He’d regained some of the weight he’d lost, and the sun and sea air had obviously done him good.
“While Ramiro and I were talking about him, he went to the water’s edge and swam out with long, relaxed strokes until he was beyond the breaker. He went further and further out. At first you could still see his arms rising out of the water, but once he got beyond the last line of buoys he was just a dot that became harder and harder to make out in the waves. At one stage I lost sight of him completely. Ramiro passed me his binoculars. I could see him still swimming with the same placid strokes, as if he’d only just set off. I asked Ramiro what would happen if he suddenly got cramp so far out. He admitted that most probably he wouldn’t get there in time to save him. So how could he let him swim out so far? I asked. He seemed embarrassed and said that it was a sort of code: Kloster was a grown-up and obviously knew what he was doing.
“I looked through the binoculars again and said I was amazed he could still be swimming at the same pace. I regretted saying it immediately. Ramiro seemed piqued and said that he swam out just as far every morning, as part of his training for the job. We said nothing more until Kloster reappeared, swimming on his back. He turned round at the last moment, before being dragged in by the breakers, shook his streaming hair from his face, and strode out of the water. He didn’t look in the least bit tired. Still dripping with water, he walked right past without glancing at us, picked up his things from the table, settled the bill, and left. I asked Ramiro if he ever came back in the afternoon and he said no. Nor had he ever seen him in town in the evening.
“We had a bit of an argument then. I begged him not to have breakfast there any more and to go to the bar next door. He was annoyed and asked why he should. I couldn’t tell him the true reason. I wasn’t really sure myself what I was afraid of. I said I wanted to have breakfast there with him every morning but it made me uncomfortable having Kloster so near. He said he couldn’t leave his post, and didn’t see why he should have to move. Kloster should be the one to find himself another bar. His anger made me feel there was something he wasn’t telling me.”
She stopped suddenly and leaned forward to stub out her cigarette, twisting and turning it in the ashtray, as if there were one particular memory she found humiliating that made it difficult to go on. She lit another cigarette and as she expelled the first cloud she waved her hand, but I couldn’t tell whether it was simply to disperse the smoke or in unconscious recognition that none of it mattered now. She took another drag on her cigarette and seemed to find the strength to continue.
“In fact I don’t think he liked me having breakfast with him. There was a waitress there who was really pretty and sexy. She always wore tiny miniskirts and bikini tops. As soon as I saw her I thought there were too many giggles and glances between them. When I said this, he got even angrier and denied it, of course. But I really believed he was in danger and I wasn’t prepared to go away and leave him alone just because of a jealous scene. So I went back the following morning. I got there a little earlier. Kloster arrived soon afterwards, before we’d ordered. But instead of sitting at one of the tables outside, he went in and sat at the bar. At first I took this as a good sign, an admission that he’d seen me but didn’t want to face me. I wondered for a moment if perhaps, as Ramiro had said, it really was a coincidence that Kloster was there. I didn’t want to look in his direction and when the waitress had brought our coffee I tried to chat to Ramiro as if Kloster didn’t exist—and the waitress as well. I think Ramiro was even more pleased than I was that Kloster had gone inside and things could stay as they were. He was in a good mood and as soon as he finished breakfast he ran down to the sea, leapt over the breakers and swam out. I suppose he wanted to impress me. I watched as he grew more and more distant, beyond the buoys. He’d left the binoculars on the table and I followed him for a while. His strokes were more energetic than Kloster’s and he was splashing a lot as he kicked his feet, but he didn’t seem to be gliding through the water as smoothly as Kloster had. And he looked as if he was getting tired: he was twisting awkwardly when he lifted his head from the water to take a breath, he was losing his rhythm and his strokes were becoming jerky. He stopped and floated on his back for a while, resting. I thought he seemed agitated…exhausted. I don’t think he was half as far out as Kloster had been the day before. Even without the binoculars I could still make out his head and shoulders in the water. He swam back more slowly and when he was close to the shore, to show off or something, he did the butterfly for the last few yards. I think it was intended for the waitress rather than me. When he got out, breathing hard, I suddenly realised what Kloster’s plan was.”
“Swim out really far and pretend to get cramp, making the lifeguard swim out further than he can manage and become exhausted. Drown the lifeguard.”
“Yes, something like that. I assumed he was waiting for a day when the sea was rough. Then when Ramiro had exhausted himself, swimming out, Kloster would duck him under and drown him. If they were far out enough, at that time of day no one would see.”
“Perhaps only you, with the binoculars.”
“That’s what I found most chilling: he wanted to kill Ramiro in front of me. And afterwards it would be his word against mine. It seemed so incredible, so unreal, I couldn’t tell anyone. At that very moment there were people nearby on sun loungers reading Kloster’s latest novel. And while I was imagining all this Kloster was inside, at the bar, quietly having coffee and reading the paper, apparently not even aware of us. A little later he went for a swim, going out as far as the day before. Then he left, without even glancing in our direction.”
“And then?”
“Then…There were two or three more mornings that went the same. Kloster would sit at the bar and read the paper. He only passed by us when he went for a swim. When he was in the sea I was trembling inside and I had to keep watching him until he came back and left. I realised that he was going out a little further each time. I think Ramiro had noticed too, and, as if it were some sort of competition—macho nonsense—he tried to swim just as far. Then we had the row about the cup of coffee.”
“The cup of coffee?”
“Yes. I asked again if we could switch to a different bar. Another one had opened, nearer his post. That left him no excuse. He got annoyed and asked why we should move when it didn’t look as if Kloster had any intention of bothering us. Or had something else happened between him and me? I knew he was only pretending to be jealous—he just didn’t want to have to stop ogling the waitress’s tits. I said I was fed up with the little tart bringing me my coffee cold. It was true: she seemed to do it deliberately. He hadn’t even noticed because he quite liked his coffee lukewarm. We started arguing and he told me not to bother having breakfast with him any more if I was just doing it to keep an eye on him. He said I could go and find another bar myself and leave him alone. I went home in tears. My mother and Valentina were about to go out mushroom gathering so I went with them. It was my parents’ anniversary the next day and my mother always made a mushroom pie, which only she and my father liked. Actually, I don’t think Daddy really did, but he’d never dared tell her because it was the first thing she’d ever cooked for him and she was very proud of her recipe. We always went to the same place to pick the mushrooms, a little wood behind the house where very few people ever went. My mother considered it to be almost an extension of our garden.
“When Valentina was out of earshot I told my mother about the row. She was surprised and a little alarmed to hear that Kloster was there. She asked why I hadn’t told her about it immediately. She wanted to know if he’d tried to talk to me and I said that since he’d seen me he’d had his coffee inside the bar and had never come near me. This seemed to reassure her. I almost told her what I was really afraid of, but my mother thought I’d become a little obsessed with the death of Kloster’s daughter. At the time she even suggested I see a therapist. I couldn’t see how to tell her that I thought Kloster was planning a murder without its sounding crazy. I ended up telling her about the waitress and my row with Ramiro. She laughed and said I should go back the next day and have breakfast with him as if nothing had happened and it would all work out. My mother was terribly fond of Ramiro and she couldn’t believe the quarrel was serious.”
“And you listened to her?”
“Yes, unfortunately, I did. When I arrived Ramiro had already got his food; he hadn’t even waited for me. Kloster was already there, in his usual place, at the bar. It was a cool, blowy morning and the sea was rough. The water was murky, with a big swell and spray flying in the wind. I ordered coffee with milk and when the girl finally deigned to bring it to me it was, of course, cold, but I didn’t say anything. Actually, neither of us said much. The silence was horribly tense. When Ramiro finished his coffee he took off his tracksuit to go for a swim. I asked if it wasn’t dangerous with the sea so rough. He said he’d rather go in the water than stay there with me. And then he said something even more hurtful that still makes me cry when I think of it. I watched him dive into the first big breaker and emerge on the other side. He had to swim through quite a few big waves until he got beyond the end of the breakwater, where it was a bit calmer. But he still seemed to be having trouble. Because the sea was so rough I’d lose sight of him every so often, but he’d reappear, a tiny dot in the waves. At one stage I couldn’t see him at all and when his head reappeared it looked as if he was waving to me desperately. I was frightened and I grabbed his binoculars, and when I spotted him again he was going under. I jumped up, terrified. The beach was empty and immediately I thought of Kloster. Not caring about anything, I ran inside the bar to beg him for help. But when I opened the door I saw that Kloster was no longer there. Can you believe it? He was the only one who could have saved him, but when I went into the bar he’d left. He’d left!”
“So what did you do?”
“I ran to the next breakwater to get the lifeguards, and the owner of the bar called the lifeboat. It took them almost an hour to retrieve the body. By the time the boat got back to shore a crowd had gathered, as if to witness the landing of a huge fish. Children were shouting with excitement and running to tell their parents: “A drowned man! A drowned man!” The lifeguards had laid a blanket over him but his hands were uncovered. They were blue, with a tracery of white veins. They carried him on a stretcher to the promenade where an ambulance was waiting. A woman police officer came over and asked me for his parents’ phone number. It all seemed like a bad dream. My legs gave way. Then, as if from somewhere very far away, I heard people shouting at me and felt them patting my face. I opened my eyes for a moment and saw a crowd of strangers around me and the face of the policewoman peering at me. I wanted to grab her arm and scream, “Kloster! Kloster!” but I fainted again.
“When I came to I was in hospital. I’d been given a tranquilliser and had been out for twenty-four hours. My mother told me it was all over. A routine postmortem had shown asphyxia by immersion, probably caused by hypothermia and cramp—the water that day had been very cold. Ramiro’s parents had arrived from Buenos Aires and returned immediately with the body so as to hold the wake there. Then I told my mother about what had happened that morning, as I remembered it: my despair when I saw Ramiro go under and how I’d run to get Kloster and found that he wasn’t in the bar. The only day he’d left early, without going for a swim. My mother didn’t find this odd: it had been obvious that the sea was dangerous that morning. The hazard flag had been up on all the beaches since first light and probably Kloster had decided, quite rightly, to go home and leave his swim for another day. When I insisted that I found it suspicious, my mother looked worried. “It was an accident,” she said. “God’s will.” I think she was afraid I was going to start obsessing about Kloster again. She refused to discuss it any more, at least not till I was out of hospital.”
“You think Kloster saw that your boyfriend was drowning and went home, leaving him to die?”
“No. From where he was sitting he could hardly see the sea. It wasn’t that. Or at least it wasn’t just that. I didn’t know exactly how but he’d achieved what he’d set out to do: to have Ramiro die before my eyes.”
“Did you go back to the beach during that time? Did you see Kloster again?”
“I did, but not immediately. I stayed in my room, crying. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way Ramiro had looked annoyed and left to go for his swim. And the insulting thing he said. It was my last memory of him. I couldn’t bring myself to go back to that beach for two or three days. I was truly afraid of Kloster now and felt too weak to confront him. Then I did go back very early one morning. There was a new lifeguard and, with the usual throng of people in January, everything seemed different. I looked inside the bar: Kloster wasn’t there. I went in and talked for a while with the owner. She said that the writer, as they called him, had left the day after Ramiro drowned. He said he had to get back to Buenos Aires to start on a new novel. I sat at the bar, at the place where Kloster always sat, and looked out at the table on the beach where Ramiro and I used to sit for breakfast. I wanted to see through his eyes. You could just see those few tables and the lifeguard’s chair. At low tide you couldn’t even see the line of the breakers. I stayed there a long time, until another couple sat down at what had been our table and I felt like crying. I realised I didn’t want to spend another day in Gesell so that evening I came back to Buenos Aires.”
“So was that all? You didn’t speak to Ramiro’s parents?”
“I did. I went to see them as soon as I got back. But I’d gone over and over it in my mind and had gradually accepted that it couldn’t be anything other than a terrible accident. What could I have said to them? That out of a desire for revenge, for having been sued for a few thousand pesos, Kloster had somehow engineered Ramiro’s death? I mean, I hadn’t seen anything more than an accident, and when I spoke to them they were already resigned to it, and even a little embarrassed that Ramiro had been so reckless. His mother had always been very religious: she was a member of the same church as my father. She spoke of the peace that follows grief, when you finally accept someone’s death. As I left their house I too experienced a strange sense of calm, for the first time in ages. I felt that whatever Kloster had wanted he’d undoubtedly achieved it, and that our respective tragedies had made us quits. That with Ramiro’s death, however sinister it might seem, some sort of balance had been restored. One death each. I tried to forget the whole business and for a few months my life almost went back to normal. I think I would even have forgotten about Kloster had it not been for the fact that his name was in the papers more and more often and his books seemed to be in all the shop windows.
“A year passed. December came and I felt I didn’t want to spend the holidays in Gesell as usual. I thought the sea and the beach would bring back too many bad memories, so I stayed in Buenos Aires. The rest of the family left just after Christmas and I spent the time preparing for another exam. So I wouldn’t forget, I put a note in my diary to phone my parents on their anniversary. I think I would have remembered anyway: it was the day before the date of Ramiro’s death. I waited till the evening to phone. I assumed they’d spent the day at the beach and I wanted to be sure to find them at home.”
She fell silent, as if a hidden cog in her memory had come to a halt. She stared at the cup she’d placed to one side and, as she bowed her head, the tears fell silently, as if she’d only just held them back till then. When she looked up again, teardrops still clung to her lashes. Embarrassed, she wiped them away quickly with the back of her hand.
“I rang at ten. My mother answered the phone. She sounded happy, in a good mood. She’d made her mushroom pie, and she and my father had had dinner alone. My brother Bruno had gone out with his girlfriend and Valentina was staying the night at a friend’s house. She said they missed me and that it wasn’t the same without me. I said the wine had made her sentimental. She laughed and said yes, they had had some wine to celebrate. Then I spoke to my father for a minute or two. We joked about the mushroom pie. He said he’d eaten it all, like a good husband. He too sounded slightly emotional and he made me promise I’d go and see them one weekend. Before hanging up, he blessed me, the way he used to when we were small. I was very tired that night and fell asleep in front of the TV. I was woken at five by the telephone: it was Bruno, my brother. He was calling from the hospital in Villa Gesell: my parents had been rushed there with violent stomach cramps. Initial tests showed traces of a fungus called Amanita phalloides. It’s terribly poisonous but can easily be mistaken for edible species. Bruno had finished his medical studies by then so he had been able to have a frank talk with the doctors. He said we had to prepare for the worst: the toxins had spread through their digestive systems and could fatally damage their livers in a few hours. He’d requested they be transferred here to Buenos Aires, to the Hospital de Clinicas, where he was a junior doctor. He thought they might have a chance if they could get liver transplants. He said he’d go with them in the ambulance. I went to wait for him at the hospital. As soon as I saw his face, I knew they’d died on the way there.”
She fell silent again, as if her thoughts were once more far away.
“Could your mother have made a mistake when she picked the mushrooms?”
She shook her head hopelessly. “That was what I found hardest to believe. She always went to the same spot to pick them and there had never been any poisonous species there. She had a mushroom guide and she’d shown us the pictures and taught us to recognise the different kinds, but never, in all the summers we spent there, did we see a single poisonous specimen. That’s why she even let Valentina accompany her. There was an investigation immediately, which said that it was an accident, regrettable, but not unprecedented. Woods without toxic species can easily become contaminated from one season to the next. Each fungus has thousands of spores and a gust of wind is all that’s needed to spread them quite a distance. And this species of Amanita is particularly difficult to distinguish from edible species, even for people who are quite experienced. The only visible difference is the volva, a white swollen sac at the base of the stem. But the mushroom can often come away from the base, or else the volva can be buried, or concealed by leaf litter. After my parents’ death, some were actually found in the wood. They were almost hidden, and an inexperienced mushroomer could have been fooled. According to the report it had been silly to allow a child of Valentina’s age to go mushroom picking. They thought that it was probably Valentina who gathered the poisonous fungi without noticing the volva and that my mother didn’t recognise them once they’d been detached from the base.”
“But what was your hypothesis?”
“Kloster. It was him again. He’d reappeared, when I thought it was all over. I knew it as soon as I got Bruno’s call. When he mentioned the name of the fungus, I felt that if I opened my mouth I would just start screaming. Because it was me who had given Kloster the idea.”
“You gave him the idea? What do you mean?”
“From time to time, during the year I worked for him, he had me cut out and keep police reports from the newspaper that interested him for one reason or another. Once he made me cut out an article about a grandmother who’d accidentally cooked poisonous fungi for herself and her granddaughter. They both died in agony a few hours later. What attracted his attention was that the grandmother considered herself an authority on wild mushrooms. He said that experts were often also the most careless, and when devising murders for his novels he was always interested in this—the mistakes made by such experts. In the article it mentioned in passing that the poisonous fungi were of that very same variety, Amanita phalloides. I explained to him why it was so easy to mistake them for edible mushrooms. I even drew him a picture, with the cap, the stem, the ring and the volva. I told him about other less well-known but dangerous types. I was proud to display my knowledge. He was surprised and asked me how I knew all this, so I told him…I told him everything: how my mother had taught all three of us, showing us the pictures from her book. The little wood behind the house at Villa Gesell. The mushroom pie on their wedding anniversary. The joke with my father about his sacrifice once a year.”
“But he didn’t know the actual date of their anniversary, did he?”
“Yes. He knew, and I don’t think he forgot it. The twenty-eighth of December. When I mentioned it to him he asked if my parents had chosen the date for any particular reason. He’d read in one of his books on religion that after the massacre of the Holy Innocents many Christian couples chose that date for their wedding day as a symbol of the will to overcome death, the beginning of a new cycle. And there was another thing: I hadn’t seen him since Ramiro’s death. But on the day of my parents’ funeral, as we were leaving the cemetery, he was there.”
“You mean he went to your parents’ funeral?” I asked doubtfully.
“No. I saw him in the distance, in a side avenue, by one of the graves—his daughter’s, I suppose. He was kneeling, with his hand on the gravestone, and he seemed to be talking to it. At least, I could see his lips moving. But I think he went there deliberately that day, so that I’d see him.”
“Couldn’t it have been a coincidence? Maybe it was his daughter’s birthday. Or the day of the week he always visited the grave.”
“No, her birthday was in August. I think he was only there for one reason: he wanted me to see him, so that I’d know that these deaths were part of his revenge as well. That we weren’t quits, as I’d thought. In fact he warned me about it at the beginning. He spelled it out quite clearly. I just didn’t understand.”
“What did he spell out?”
“What was going to happen to me. But you won’t believe me if I tell you. My own brother didn’t believe me. You have to see for yourself.” She leaned forward, as if she’d decided to reveal part of it. “It has to do with the Bible he returned at the conciliation meeting.” Her voice grew quieter and quieter as she said this until she stopped, her eyes fixed on me, as if she’d told me her most jealously guarded secret and wasn’t sure if I was worthy of the revelation.
“Have you brought it with you?” I asked.
“No, I couldn’t bring myself to. I don’t dare take it out of the house because it’s my only proof against him. I wanted to ask you to come with me now, so that I can show it to you.”
“Now?” I said, unable to stop myself glancing at my watch. It was getting dark and I realised I’d been listening to her for over three hours. But Luciana didn’t seem ready to release me.
“Yes, we could go now. It’s only a short journey on the subway; it won’t take long. Actually I was going to ask if you’d see me home anyway. Lately I’ve been terrified of going home alone after dark.”
Why did I say yes when everything inside me said no? Why didn’t I fob her off with some excuse and put as much distance between us as I could? There are times in life—not many—when you can see, with dizzying clarity, the fatal fork in the road represented by one small act, the catastrophe that lurks behind a trivial decision. That evening I knew, above all else, that I shouldn’t listen to her any more. But, overcome by the inertia of compassion, or politeness, I stood up and followed her out.