Dead Man's Tale (6 page)

The Vltava was now rushing stormily across the orchestra stage through the St. Johns Rapids, assisted by the elements. A real thunderstorm was in the air. The garden roof rolled shut overhead. Heinz softened the storm onstage with fluid movements of his big hands as he put the Vltava, in its wide and serene phase, through its paces in Prague.

Trudy finished her third Pony Hell and looked around. Now that the customers beyond the range of the sliding weather roof had scurried under it, the Kursaal garden was crowded. Trudy stared boldly at the men seated at the tables listening to the Vltava run its course.

They were so easy to figure out, most of them. Take that German burgher there. Obviously a businessman, his pockets stuffed with marks from the rebuilding of Köln or Koblenz or wherever.

Or that one. Dark and small and very French. Very suave, very sure of himself, very boring.

Or the young man talking anxiously to the maître d' and then making his way self-consciously across the garden. That one, surely, was an American student. He had no mystery, no surprises, absolutely none.

He was good-looking in a sapling sort of way. He had studied a guide-book on Lucerne and could name all the mountains in the vast rising ranges across the water. He would ascend Mt. Pilatus on the cograilway, spend a morning hiking along the cliff trails, stop for lunch and wine at Pilatus Kulm and go home saying he had climbed an Álp.…

Trudy yawned. And suddenly sat up straight.
That
was a surprise, at least. The American student seemed to be heading for her table. Now he had stopped, looking down at her. A slightly lopsided smile touched his mouth. He was actually going to speak to her.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “Miss Ohlendorf? Miss Gertrude Ohlendorf? Do you speak English?
Parlez-vous FranÇais? Oder, sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

“I can speak whichever you prefer,” Trudy said in English. “But I'm afraid you have an advantage over me.”

“The name's Andrew Longacre. Most people call me Andy after one drink. May I buy you a drink?”

“Yes,” Trudy heard herself answering. “Why, yes, Andy, I believe you can.”

Andy sat down and signalled a waitress. The buxom Swiss girl obliged promptly. This surprised Trudy. Foreign students, she had noticed, were notoriously inept at summoning waiters or waitresses. Could she have been wrong about him?

He ordered two brandies. Neither of them spoke until the drinks had come, but the young American did not appear self-conscious now. He seemed quite composed.

“
Pros't,”
he said, raising his drink.

“Cheers.”

They drank.

“This probably won't take long,” he said.

Trudy found herself thinking that that was regrettable. He was really not unattractive.

“Yes, Andy?” she smiled.

“I found you in the phone book and the concierge at your apartment building said you'd probably be here. The maître d' identified you for me.” He grinned. “End of mystery.”

End of mystery, nothing! Trudy thought. It was only the beginning.

Thunder boomed and crashed outdoors as the orchestra finished its Moldau. Heinz Kemka bowed, saw that Trudy was occupied, and went with a few of the musicians to a table reserved for them during intermissions.

Wasn't he even slightly annoyed that Trudy was with another man? He didn't look it. Now, after almost a year, he took her for granted. Well, if he wasn't annoyed,
she
was.

“What is it you want of me, Andy?” she asked softly.

“Like another drink?”

“Very much, I think.”

He ordered two more brandies.

“I came here from Holland looking for you,” he said.

“Then you are a detective?” He could have been a thousand things besides a detective, but the idea of a detective looking like a student fascinated her.

“No.” He did not amplify.

“Well?”

“The people at CARE in The Hague told me you'd gone home to Lucerne.”

“Then you are with CARE?”

“No, I'm not.” Again he didn't amplify. Trudy sipped her brandy. He was young, very young. Twenty-one? Twenty-three? Young enough to be Heinz Kemka's son. But if he wasn't a detective, and wasn't with CARE, then who was he?

“In Oosterdijk, Holland, I was told a Czech named Milo Hacha was dead. Then—”

“Did you say Milo Hacha?” Trudy almost dropped her glass.

“Yes, that's right. Hacha.”

“Go on. Please, go on.” What could this boy have to do with Milo?

“Then we learned, my brother and I, that Hacha wasn't dead. We knew he was receiving CARE packages about ten years ago, and found out that you had tried to trace him for CARE. That's right, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

“Have any luck?”

Trudy didn't answer immediately. She'd had luck, as he put it. Oh yes, she'd had luck. But Milo Hacha wasn't in Lucerne now.

She would never get over Milo Hacha. She automatically compared all the men in her life with Milo Hacha, and all suffered. That was inevitable, Hacha being Hacha. But if she told this interesting young American what she knew, he might go away.

“Well, yes and no,” Trudy said.

Andy grinned ruefully. “That's a help.”

Trudy found the look captivating. “But my dear Andy,” she said, reaching across the little table and touching his hand, “assuming I
did
find Milo Hacha, and was supposed to report that fact and didn't—”

“Why didn't you?”

Trudy looked into his eyes. They were greyish-green and flecked with yellow. “Do you perhaps like cheese fondue?”

“To tell the truth, I've never tasted it.”

“And do you perhaps like walking in the rain? Because I know where we can get the best cheese fondue in Switzerland.”

Instead of answering, Andy beckoned the waitress. “Our check, please. This is on me,” he said. “We detectives have expense accounts that would choke a horse.”

Trudy squeezed his hand. He squeezed back. He made her feel very young. While Andy paid the check she thought of the walk in the rain, the Wilden Mann and afterward.…

Heinz Kemka mounted the podium and the first violinist scratched out a tone for the other musicians. The lights in the Kursaal garden dimmed and a flash of lightning across the lake momentarily showed the brooding crag of Mt. Pilatus.

“And now,” Trudy said, rising as he held her chair for her, “no more talk of Milo Hacha for a while. Fair enough?”

“It suits me fine,” Andy said.

As they stepped out from under the protection of the Kursaal garden's roof into the rain, Trudy noticed that Heinz Kemka was watching them. Perhaps, this was the best way of telling him good-bye, after all.

The soft rain was like a caress.

8

The apartment had two rooms and was furnished in severe Danish modern. “You like it?” Trudy asked.

“Very nice.”

“I hate cluttered rooms.”

Trudy seated herself on a sofa that resembled an open sandwich, a slab of polished birch supporting a slab of foam rubber. She spread her wide skirt out and smiled up at Andy. “What are you thinking?”

Instead of answering, he smiled back. What he was thinking was that she was a beautiful woman and that he wanted to make love to her, here, on this sandwich-of-a-sofa, immediately.

“What
are
you thinking?”

She really didn't want an answer. What he was thinking was that a course ought to be given somewhere in the flirting mores of European women. How did you keep from making a fool of yourself?

“Let's go to the Wilden Mann every night,” she said. “Because the Kursaal was nothing. We really met there, at the Wilden Mann.”

They had a great deal of fondue, Andy remembered, dipping it up with thick chunks of bread and washing it down with so much white wine that he had a pleasant buzz on. She had obviously enjoyed the cheese, the wine, his company, the walk in the rain. And most of all she had enjoyed his enjoyment of them. She had seemed pleased at their lack of conversation, as if she disliked people who talked too much. Then, coming here to her apartment on Alpenstrasse, when the rain had really pelted them, she had laughed like a child at the way he held her hand.

“I'm glad you don't want to tell me,” she said.

“Tell you what?”

“What you're thinking of course. There is brandy in the bar.”

It was Martell V.S.O.P. He found two large, tinted snifters and poured a liberal shot in each. He watched her swirl the brandy and sip it. He did the same with his, standing over her. Suddenly she set the snifter on the floor and stretched like a cat. “Tired?”

He shook his head.

“You are not very talkative, either.”

“I'm sorry,” he said, watching her.

She laughed. “Who wants to talk?”

She swung her legs up on the slab of foam rubber and kicked off her shoes. She lay back, clasping her hands behind her head, watching him watch her breasts, her eyelids fluttering, closing. “Don't shut off the light.”

Just before he kissed her on the mouth her eyes opened. They remained open as she flung her arms around his neck.

He carried her into the bedroom.

She was a big woman, but she felt weightless in his arms. He put her down on the bed. “Turn on the light,” she said.

He turned the light on. She was undressing.

They made love and slept in each other's arms and made love again before Heinz Kemka's key turned in the lock of the apartment on Alpenstrasse.

Heinz Kemka was jealous.

He had never dreamed their affair would be permanent, of course. He knew Trudy's history too well for that. She had seemed compelled, over the months they were together, to tell him about her past lovers. It had amused him, until tonight.

Now he wondered what she would tell the earnest-looking boy about
him
. Trudy had often said that if you couldn't bare your heart to a lover, you should not bare your body.

One of her lovers had been a French existentialist poet who turned out to be a masochist. Another had been a retired British colonial officer who talked constantly about Clive and Kitchener. He made love as if he were fighting the battle of Omdurman. A third had been a Spanish Republican exile who produced passionate motion pictures in Brussels, and conducted himself in bed as if he were directing one of them.

The fourth had been Milo Hacha.

Actually, Hacha had been the first. Trudy had been a virgin of twenty-one when she met him in the Netherlands while employed by CARE. Heinz Kemka, also a Czech, had heard of Hacha—or rather, of Hacha's father.

Rudolf Hacha had been a prominent Socialist politician in Czechoslovakia when the Nazis took over. A Democrat, he had been arrested but had managed to survive the concentration camp. Then, after the war, he had been one of the Social Democrats who refused to knuckle under to the Communists. The same morning that Masaryk's body was found in a courtyard Rudolf Hacha had been arrested again, and this time he was held in solitary confinement until the new government was ready to put him on trial for “treason” several months later.

Fearing for his life, Kemka assumed, the younger Hacha had remained in the Netherlands until he became involved in trouble of some sort. Then he had fled with Trudy.

There was a difference in Trudy's tone whenever she spoke of Milo Hacha. He was the only one she never made fun of. She had even admitted, in a weak moment, that while she had broken off with the other three, Hacha had broken with her.

Hacha, she said, had educated her. Hacha had exposed her to life and love. She even said she would have married him—had he asked her. He had been a riddle she could not solve.

Looking back, now, on the nights she had spoken of Hacha, Kemka realized that the seeds of his jealousy had already been planted. For Hacha, as Trudy remembered Hacha, made Kemka feel less than a complete man. Still, on those nights her love-making was memorable.

And which part of the Hacha myth am I? Heinz Kemka had asked her more than once. But that is easy, Heinz, she would say, you are a Czech, he was a Czech.… It had not endeared Hacha to him.

At the conclusion of the programme at the Kursaal, Heinz Kemka had taken a taxi to Zum Wilden Mann. The maître d'hôtel told him that Fräulein Ohlendorf had been in earlier. Kemka drank three double Scotches (it had been the British colonial officer's favourite drink, he even remembered that) and walked slowly back to Alpenstrasse.

It was his apartment. He paid the rent and he had furnished it. Was it possible Trudy would dare to entertain a new lover there?

He saw light in the living-room window. He went through the small lobby to the courtyard. There was light also in the bedroom window.

Heinz Kemka went upstairs.

He stood outside the door, breathing hard. There was no sound from the apartment.

He unlocked the door savagely. He slammed it so hard it made a sound like a rifle shot. He felt suddenly foolish.

The unknown young man, his face heavy with love, came out of the bedroom. He was wearing one of Kemka's robes. Trudy, also in a robe, one that Kemka had purchased for her birthday, was right behind him.

Heinz Kemka bellowed, lunged across the room and swung wildly at the young man.

9

From Andy Longacre's diary:

… beginning to feel like a character in a Durrell novel.

It hardly seems we've already been in Lucerne a week. Seven days, and about the only time I've seen Steve is at breakfast. If he hadn't been too tired to go out that first night I met T—maybe all this would have worked out differently. Not that I'm complaining. Hell, I'm beginning to feel like a man of the world—whatever that means. A mistress and everything.

But who is keeping whom?

After that first gaudy night it settled down to merely (
merely!
) the seven most memorable days of my life. Not to mention (stop leering, Longacre) the nights.