The Book of Murder

Six

What do I think?” said Kloster, reading the last of my pages. With distaste he pushed aside the small stack that had grown in front of him, as if he couldn’t bear to look at it. He leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms above his head, palms touching. Despite the cold outside, he was wearing only a short-sleeved T–shirt, and his long bare arms looked like two triangles suspended in the air. I hadn’t slept the previous night and didn’t feel up to the coming confrontation. I’d worked against the clock setting up my little sham. I’d tried to record Luciana’s story just as she had recounted it, from the moment she arrived at my apartment. I had included my own questions, and all her pauses and hesitations, even the sentences she left hanging. But I had omitted my thoughts about her and also—especially—my reaction to her appearance, and my doubts about her mental state. All that appeared on paper was the bald sequence of lines of dialogue, the to and fro of our voices, just as if they’d been transcribed. I’d worked all night with hypnotic intensity induced by endlessly rerunning the same memory: Luciana’s face in the deepening gloom of my living room and her terror as she cried out that she didn’t want to die. I’d revised and corrected, details disappearing and reappearing intermittently and ever more slowly, until at last, at dawn, I printed out about twenty pages. This was the bait with which I arrived, at six o’clock in the evening, at Kloster’s house.
I rang the bell and stood for a moment in awe before an imposing iron gate. The buzzer sounded, admitting me to the entrance hall, and I saw a great marble staircase, bronze statues, antique mirrors, with a stab of admiration close to envy. I couldn’t help wondering how many books you had to sell to pay for such a house in an area like this.
Kloster, waiting for me at the top of the stairs, held out his hand and looked at me for a moment as if making sure we had never met before. He was taller than I had imagined from his photographs, and though he must have been over fifty there was something youthful and vigorous in the upright figure, almost a flaunting of his athleticism, that made one think of the long-distance swimmer first and then the writer. But despite the still powerful body, his face was a ruin, cruelly sunken, as if the flesh had withdrawn, exposing the sharp edges of his bones, and the cold blue eyes, fixing me with uncomfortable intensity, had retreated with it. He shook my hand briskly, simultaneously motioning towards the library. There had been no hint of a smile, nor the standard exchange of trivialities, as if he wanted to make it clear from the start that I wasn’t entirely welcome. But this initial rejection of conventional courtesy actually made things easier: neither of us was under any illusions. Nevertheless, as he indicated an armchair, he offered to get me a coffee and I accepted, though I had been drinking cup after cup since morning to keep myself awake. As soon as he disappeared down one of the corridors I got up and looked around. The library was impressive, with shelves almost to the ceiling. But the effect wasn’t oppressive as two large windows provided a break from the book-lined walls. There was another armchair in a corner with a standard lamp beside it, where Kloster no doubt sat to read. I walked along the bookshelves, running my finger over some of the titles. In a gap between encyclopaedias, neither hidden nor prominently displayed, I saw the Grand Cross of the Legion d’honneur with its tricolour ribbon. I went over to the narrow glass-fronted bookcase between the windows. Here Kloster kept all the different editions of his own books, together with their translations into dozens of languages. Again I felt a dart of envy, sharper this time, the same shameful feeling which I knew, over and above Luciana, was what had made me attack Kloster in that contemptible article that could be summed up in a mute complaint: why him and not me? All I can say in my defence is that it was hard, standing before that bookcase, not to feel like a hazy dispossessed Enoch Soames. Opposite the corridor down which Kloster had disappeared there was another, narrower corridor off the library, leading perhaps to staff quarters or to his study. In the dim early evening light the corridor was in gloom but I could just see that the walls were lined with framed photographs. Irresistibly drawn, I went to look at the nearest of these: it showed a pretty little girl of about three or four with tousled hair, wearing a polka dot dress, standing on a chair and reaching up towards Kloster. The writer looked transformed—or should I say transported?—smiling expectantly, waiting for the little outstretched hand to touch his face. Part of the photo appeared to have been cut off at an angle, as if a figure had been excised from the scene. I heard steps returning from the kitchen and went back to the armchair. Kloster placed two large mugs on the glass coffee table and muttered something about there being no sugar in the house. He sat down opposite me and immediately picked up the transparent plastic folder in which I’d placed the pages. “So this is the story,” he said.
And for about forty minutes that was all. He took the pages from the folder and set them in a little stack on the desk. He picked them up one by one to read them, forming a second pile as he set them face down. I was expecting him to object, become angry, even throw them aside or tear them up, but he read on in silence, looking increasingly gloomy, as if, as he read, he were returning to an unbearable past that was now again clutching at him with long ghostly fingers. Once or twice he shook his head incredulously and when he was finished he stared into space for a long time, still not speaking, as if he’d forgotten I was there. He didn’t even look at me when I asked what he thought, but simply echoed my question, as if it had come not from another person but from inside himself.
“What do I think? An astonishing clinical account. Like those Oliver Sacks records about his patients. The extraction of the stone of madness. I suppose I should be grateful you’ve changed my name in the text. But the one you’ve chosen,” and he pronounced the name contemptuously, “how on earth did you settle on it?”
“I wanted a name that evoked something closed, like a monastery,” I attempted to explain. I never would have dreamed that, after all the accusations he’d just read, this was what might bother him.
“Something closed, I see. So who would you be? The open Overt?”
I found this doubly surprising. I would never have imagined that Kloster had read Henry James, much less that he would fling the name of one of his characters at me out of the blue, like a taunt. It could only mean one thing: Kloster had read my series of articles on James. And if he’d read those, he must have seen my attack on him, which had appeared in the same journal, and he was now playing cat and mouse with me. I said only the first part—that I would never have suspected he might be interested in Henry James. He seemed offended by this.
“Why not? Because in my novels there are never fewer than ten deaths and in James’s the most that ever happens is that someone doesn’t get married? As a writer yourself, you shouldn’t be confused by trivia such as murders and marriages. What is it that counts in a crime novel? Definitely not the facts, or the succession of dead bodies. It’s what you should read behind them, the conjectures, the possible explanations. And isn’t James’s central theme precisely that: what each character conjectures? The possible reach of every action, the abyss of consequences and bifurcations. “Man is no more than the series of his actions,” Hegel once wrote. Yet James constructed his entire oeuvre in the interstices between actions, between lines of dialogue, in characters’ second and third intentions, in the agony of hesitations and calculations and strategies that precedes every action.”
“You might also say that in James’s novels marriage is a form of murder,” I ventured.
“Of course: a kidnapping followed by death,” he agreed, as if he’d never thought of it like that and was surprised that I had uttered an entire sentence with which he agreed. “Strange that we should be talking about James,” he said, and his tone, for the first time, was slightly less hostile, “because it was a book of his that began everything: the Notebooks.” He pointed to one of the uppermost shelves. “If you’ve ever had a look at them, you’ll remember the preface by Leon Edel. I’d never read a biography of James. As a rule I’m wary of writers’ biographies, but in that introduction I found something very interesting: at a certain point James stopped writing by hand and started dictating his novels to typists and stenographers. I was having a similar problem at the time. Not exactly tendonitis—that would hardly be likely in my case. But I’ve always found it easier to think on my feet and I could never sit at my desk for long. I’d pace the room, then sit down to write a few lines, but if I wanted to continue I had to get up again almost immediately. It made progress painfully slow. When I read the preface to the Notebooks I suddenly found the solution. That’s how I came to hire Luciana.”
“How did you find her?” I asked. I had always wondered.
“I put an ad in the paper. It was an easy choice: she was the only applicant who could spell. Of course I was struck immediately by how pretty she was, but I didn’t think it would be a problem—she wasn’t my type. To put it bluntly, she had no tits. But I’m sure you know that better than I do,” he shot at me. “Anyway, it seemed ideal: as I said, I wanted to get more work done, not less.”
“So none of what she said about her relationship with you actually happened?” I asked. At this he looked annoyed again.
“It did, but quite differently from the way she describes it. That’s why I wanted to tell you a couple of things. At first everything went well. Incredibly well. Luciana passed my ex-wife’s initial inspection. Mercedes had a practised eye for spotting a potential threat in any woman who came near me. I think she discounted Luciana because she looked so young. Or maybe because she had that thin teenager’s body and the look of a conscientious schoolgirl. At that first interview, I didn’t get any sexual vibe from her either. Anyway, she soon let me know she had a boyfriend and it was all as clear and distinct as in Descartes’s Discourse. My daughter adored her right from the start. She drew her a picture every day. And she rushed to hug her when she arrived in the morning. At least that part is true: Pauli fantasised that they were sisters. Luciana was very good with her. She’d give her one of her hairslides, and stickers from her file. She listened patiently to Pauli’s little stories and let her drag her off to her playroom for a while after she’d finished work. But I was the one who benefited the most: after hiring her I got on with my novel better than ever before. I thought I’d found the perfect system. She was intelligent and alert, I never had to repeat a sentence, and she kept up without making mistakes however fast I dictated. True, I never dictated long chunks in one go—I’m not exactly fluent—but now I could pace up and down my study, almost talking to myself, and not have to worry. I also trusted her to point out if there needed to be a comma somewhere or if I’d repeated a word. I was delighted with her work, and I became truly fond of her. At the time, I was working on a novel about a sect of Cainite assassins, and for the first time in my life as a writer I was completing a page a day. And of course, as an unexpected bonus, she was pleasing to look at. I had paced my study for years, alone, eyes on the floor, but now I could look up every so often and be comforted simply by seeing her there, sitting up straight in my chair, ready for the next sentence. Yes, she was very pleasing to look at, but I was too happy with our arrangement to jeopardise it. I was only concerned with getting on with my work so I made sure I didn’t get too close to her, or touch her even by mistake. The only physical contact was a kiss on the cheek when she arrived and another when she left.”
“So how did it all happen?”
“Yes, I’ve often wondered myself about the progression. As you can imagine, it wasn’t just one thing. At first I simply noticed that she wanted to please me but I didn’t give it much thought. It seemed normal: it was her first job and she wanted to do well. A couple of times I almost told her she was doing fine and didn’t have to try so hard. I thought I conveyed this in various ways, but perhaps I seemed too serious, or distant. Perhaps she was a little afraid of me. Anyway, she took pains over the slightest detail, and it was almost as if she could read my mind. She often guessed what I wanted her to do even before I asked. This did intrigue me—the way she’d got to know me in such a short time. I mentioned it to her once and she said that maybe it was because I was a little like her father. One day I complained that the Bible I was consulting for my novel wasn’t annotated and the following morning she brought that great big Scofield Bible you’ve seen yourself. That’s when I found out that, alongside his day job, her father had a parallel life as a minister in a movement known as dispensationalism. I didn’t even know such a group existed. They’re fundamentalists: they interpret the Bible literally. Her father was quite high up in the hierarchy: Luciana said he officiated at baptisms. She must have had a very strict religious upbringing, though she never talked about it. I can see from your face that you had no idea.”
“No. I never would have guessed she came from a particularly religious family.”
“She was probably trying to get away from it. Maybe that was one of the reasons she got a job. It was the only time she mentioned her father. She joked about it, as if his religion was something she no longer really believed in—a harmless activity that she was slightly ashamed of. She said her mother didn’t really share her father’s views. And she herself definitely tried to make sure it didn’t show. But something remained—the rather earnest, virtuous look, the need to do everything perfectly. Yes, there was still something churchy about her. Parents leave their mark. Though by the time she started working for me I think she’d already discovered she could kneel down to do more than pray.”
He’d said this last sentence without seeking a look of complicity from me, as if simply stating something he’d worked out himself. This did, I reflected, chime with my first image of Luciana: a determined young woman who’d mastered the basic arts of sexual attraction and was keen to extend her repertoire.
“As I said, at first, that’s all it was: small attentions. Little things. She was always solicitous, attentive. But then I realised that Luciana was seeking more than gratitude: she wanted me to notice her. She started keeping her hand on my shoulder a little longer when we kissed goodbye, she dressed differently, she sought my gaze more often. I found it amusing and didn’t attach much importance to it. I thought it was simply teenage vanity, the arrogance of pretty women who want all men to look at them. At the time I was dictating an erotic section of the book to her. Actually, now that I knew about her background I was worried that she’d run away, terrified. In the novel, the two women seducing the central character had large breasts and I’d described them at some length. I suppose it might have wounded her pride and made her want to prove to herself that in spite of her disadvantage she could nevertheless attract me.
“In the next chapter I mentioned that one of the women had a mark on her arm from a viper’s bite—the wound had festered, leaving a deep scar, the size of a small coin. It was early spring and Luciana was wearing a fine long-sleeved T–shirt. She said she had a similar scar from a vaccination, and she pulled the T–shirt off her shoulder to show me. I was standing beside her and saw her bare shoulder, the bra strap she’d moved, the slight dip’between her breasts, and her arm, innocently held up for inspection. For a moment, I stood frozen at the sight of the scar: it was deep and round, like a cigarette burn. Above all, I realised she wanted me to touch it. I placed my thumb there, and made a gentle circling movement. I think she sensed my agitation. When I looked up and met her eyes I saw the briefest flash of triumph before she hitched up her bra strap and T–shirt again casually. For a time, nothing else happened. That small victory seemed to be enough for her. She’d wanted to attract my attention and she’d succeeded. I realised, reluctantly, that I was now watching her every morning, waiting for another signal or glance. Then, one day, she began this little pantomime with her neck: she’d tilt her head from side to side, making the bones crack, or lean it back every so often, as if she was in pain.”
“Yes, that’s right,” I broke in, unable to believe it. “The thing with her neck. She did it with me too.”
But Kloster didn’t seem to hear and went on, absorbed in his account.
“I asked what the matter was, of course, and she gave me an explanation I only half believed, about posture, and tension in the arms and neck when typing. Apparently, anti-inflammatories didn’t relieve the pain so she’d been advised to take up yoga and get massages. I asked where exactly it hurt. She leaned forward slightly, sweeping her hair out of the way with her hand. It was a trusting, spontaneous movement. I could see her long bare neck, proffered to me, and the precise outline of the vertebrae. She pointed to a spot somewhere in the middle. I placed my hands on her shoulders and slid my thumbs up and down her neck. She sat rigid, motionless…expectant. I think she was as agitated as I was. But she didn’t say a word and gradually I felt her give herself up to the movement of my hands. A wave of heat rose into them from her shoulders. I could feel her neck and everything in her yielding, melting beneath the pressure of my fingers. But then I think she suddenly sensed the danger, uneasy at having lost herself for a moment. She sat up, pushed her hair back, and thanked me, as if I’d really helped the pain, saying she felt much better. Her face was flushed but we both pretended it had been something unimportant, not worth mentioning. I asked her to make coffee and she got up without looking at me. When she came back, I went on dictating as if nothing had happened. I’d say that was the second move in the sequence.
“I thought it would all end there, that she wouldn’t want to take it any further. But still, every day, I waited for the next move. I was starting to find it hard to concentrate on my novel, always watching for any tiny signal she might give. I had arranged a trip to a writers’ retreat in Italy, for a whole month, and now I regretted it. Since I’d started dictating my work to Luciana, I couldn’t imagine sitting in front of the computer, working alone again. But of course I couldn’t take her with me. I think I was afraid that the growing unspoken closeness between us would be interrupted. She didn’t mention her neck again, but the day before I left, she cracked it, as if the pain had never gone away. I slid my hand under her hair and pressed. I asked if it was still painful and she nodded, without looking up. I started massaging the area with one hand and she leaned her head forward slightly as my fingers moved upwards. I placed my other hand on the side of her neck, to support her head. She was wearing a loose blouse, with the top button undone, and when I slid my hands round her neck I shifted the fabric and another button came undone. She didn’t do it up. We were both rigid, as if hypnotised, the only movement my hands on her neck. At one point I slid them down to her shoulders and realised she wasn’t wearing a bra. I leaned forward slightly and glimpsed the small points of her breasts, like those of a little girl, barely covered by the blouse. For some reason this sudden unexpected nudity made me stop. This time it was I who drew back, feeling I was one step from the abyss. I moved away, while she gathered her hair in her hands, twisting it nervously. Still not looking at me, she asked if I’d like her to make coffee. I suppose this was the decisive moment in the sequence. But I let it pass.
“When she returned from the kitchen she’d done up her blouse, and it was as if nothing had happened between us. We agreed that I’d ring her when I got back from my trip and I paid her for the whole month I’d be away, hoping she wouldn’t take another job. We said goodbye as if it was any other day. I bought her a present in Italy, though I never got to give it to her. The month passed and I called her as soon as I got back. I thought it would all be as before and we’d continue where we’d left off, with that subterranean, almost imperceptible, current between us, moving us in only one direction. But something—everything—had changed. When I asked what she’d done while I was away she mentioned you. From her tone of voice, the way her eyes shone, I thought I understood everything.”
“Everything?” I interrupted, unable to stop myself. “But it was nothing. She only let me kiss her once.”
Now, Kloster looked at me closely. He sipped his coffee, peering at me again over his cup, as if unsure whether he could trust me.
“It didn’t seem like that from what she said. Or rather, from what she implied. Of course I couldn’t ask her directly, but from something she said the message was clear, and somewhat humiliating. She gave me to understand that you’d moved quickly during that month. Anyway, I couldn’t dictate a single line. I was furious, and obsessed with the thought that I’d lost her. She seemed like a stranger, sitting there in her chair, someone I really knew nothing about. I couldn’t focus on my work at all. I realised bitterly that using typists and stenographers had worked for Henry James because he was indifferent to the charms of women. The great Disrupter is not Evil—nor the infinite as our Poet believed—but sex. Like my wife, I had underestimated Luciana. And now I was abject, in thrall to her, like a sex-obsessed teenager. I despised myself. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me again at my age. Several days passed like this: I grew increasingly tense; I couldn’t dictate at all. It was as if the silent barrier she’d erected had also blocked the flow of my novel. I couldn’t move forward with her but I was afraid now that I couldn’t move forward without her either. What I’d once considered the perfect system had become a nightmare. My most ambitious novel, the work I’d spent years nurturing in silence, to which all my previous novels had been precursors, was now halted, interrupted, as I waited for a vibration, a note, from her motionless, closed-off body.
“At last one morning I managed to pull myself together and recover my momentum, my self-respect. I began dictating one of the most cruel scenes of the novel—the first methodical slaughter by the Cainite assassins—and I found myself being carried along by my words. They seemed to be dictated by another voice inside me, a free, savage, powerful voice. I, who had so often mocked myths of inspiration, the romantic posing of writers who boasted that their characters dictated orders to them. I, who had always written just one sentence at a time, wavering, regretting my choice of words, making minute corrections, was now swept along by a wave of vociferous primitive violence that left no time or room for doubt, that spoke for me in a fierce but welcome outpouring. I dictated at unprecedented speed, the sentences rushing, tumbling out one after another, but Luciana kept up and never interrupted. She seemed to be possessed by the same facility, as if she were a virtuoso pianist only now allowed to show off her skill. It lasted maybe a couple of hours, though it seemed time no longer existed and I was in a trance beyond human measure. I glanced over Luciana’s shoulder and saw that we’d advanced by ten pages—more than I usually wrote in a week. I was overcome by good humour and saw her differently for the first time in days. Maybe I’d exaggerated and jumped to conclusions. Maybe she just wanted to wound me, and mentioning you was an adolescent tactic to make me jealous. I made a couple of jokes and she laughed in the same relaxed way as before. In my enthusiasm, my sudden euphoria, I misread the signs. I asked her to make coffee. She straightened in the chair, arched her back, and then rubbed her neck and made that cracking sound I’d waited for for so long. I was standing very close to her and thought it was her way of sending me a sign, of checking that her secret signal still worked. A second chance. I placed my hands on her shoulders and drew her towards me so as to kiss her. I’d made a fatal mistake. She struggled and pushed me away. I let go of her immediately but she screamed, as if she really thought I was going to attack her. We stood for a moment in silence. She was shaking and looked distraught. I couldn’t understand what had happened. I hadn’t even touched her lips.
“My daughter came to the door. I suddenly realised that my wife might also have heard the scream. I managed to reassure Pauli and when she closed the door Luciana and I were alone again. She went to pick up her bag and looked at me with horror and disgust, as if I’d committed an unforgivable crime. With barely contained fury she said she’d never set foot in my house again. I found her tone of moral outrage infuriating, but I managed to control myself. I simply said that she’d given me all the signals. This made her even angrier. She kept saying, “What signals? What signals?” getting louder and louder. She stumbled over her words and seemed on the verge of tears. I was completely taken aback—her reaction seemed so sudden and excessive, but in the confusion of accusations I heard her say she’d sue me and slowly it all seemed to acquire a different meaning. A sordid, repellent meaning. I remembered that a few days earlier she’d seen me sign several contracts for translation rights. She could easily have seen the sums involved. And in emails I’d sometimes discussed my earnings. I’d always been particularly generous to her. It was my way of showing I was pleased with her work. She saw me taking trips and accepting invitations from different countries. She must have thought I was a millionaire.”
“She told me that at the time she wasn’t really thinking of suing you, it was just an empty threat. It was her mother who persuaded her. Surely you don’t believe it was all part of a plan? That she could have been so calculating?”
“I’ve just read the fairy tale she told you,” he said coldly. “Don’t you find it odd that she left out so much? You can ask her about everything I’ve just said. Or do you believe that I would jump on a woman out of the blue? Nothing like that had ever happened to me: I couldn’t understand it. I don’t mean the rejection, but her extreme reaction. The only thing that made sense of it was her threat to sue me. I couldn’t believe it at first. After she’d left I wondered endlessly if I had really done something so bad. I’d only tried to kiss her. Once. I dismissed it as an empty threat, but then the solicitor’s letter arrived. No doubt about it, two days later there it was. I was alone in my study when I opened it. I saw her handwriting and the absurd sum she was suing me for and still thought it was something she’d done in the heat of the moment after she left that day. The first line, with the accusation of sexual harassment, made me boil with indignation. But it seemed so crazy that I didn’t even consider replying. I simply tore it up so that my wife couldn’t read it. I’d told Mercedes that Luciana would no longer be coming because she’d got a full-time job. She was surprised Luciana hadn’t said goodbye to Pauli but left it at that. Pauli, on the other hand, wouldn’t stop asking for her.
“A month passed and nothing more happened so I thought things must have blown over. But then the postman rang the bell again one morning. I was in my study and, not wanting to disturb me, my wife went down to sign for me. By the time she knocked at the door to hand me the letter, she’d read the name of the sender. She placed it on my desk and stood behind me, arms crossed, waiting for me to open it. I think she read the first line at the same time as I did. It was a repeat of the first letter, demanding more money. My wife saw those two words, the despicable accusation, and tore it from my hands. By the time she’d finished reading it, Mercedes was shaking with hatred and joy. It was the opportunity she’d been waiting for for a long time—the chance to leave and take Pauli away from me for ever. She screamed insults, waving the letter, saying she was going to keep it, so that when Pauli grew up she’d know what kind of person her beloved daddy really was. Of course she wouldn’t let me explain. She wouldn’t listen to anything I said and I don’t think I would have had the strength to explain at the time anyway. I’d lied to her the day Luciana left and in her eyes this could only mean I was guilty. I was stunned, reduced to silence. I felt a disastrous sequence of events had been set in motion and all I could do was wait for the consequences. In fact our marriage had been over for a long time. But before I tell you about Mercedes, to be fair to her there’s something I must show you,” he said suddenly, and stood up. “If I can find it. Or better still, come with me.”
I got to my feet, and he indicated an archway leading to another part of the house.