Parallel Stories: A Novel (2 page)

No wonder the young man refused the offer of a lift home.

Unnoticed, this man had done something to him, appraised him and categorized him, which meant there was no way of knowing what he might do next. He was looking at a clear forehead and curly dark hair that somehow held his gaze, and wide, full, soft lips. He must be on his guard. He declined the offer with a single gesture, in fact quite rudely, while thinking, I must get away from here, though with his voice he was able to control his mood.

He said that if they needed him again—of course not during the holidays but right afterward—he’d be glad to be at their disposal.

This did not interest the detective at all, however, though he would have preferred to hear the young man accept the lift. They had his personal data, along with the deposition, they had recorded his voice as well, but he had no documents to corroborate his identity. In the absence of direct suspicion, they could not even demand them.

Tomorrow he must travel home, the young man added in his confusion.

His ears registered the tiny noises made by his teeth as they knocked together with every word he uttered.

So you live in Berlin, the detective noted, but your home is elsewhere.

He did not understand how one’s own body could abandon and humiliate one.

The detective may have understood something of this; he thanked the student for his comprehensive if circumspect help, and then they mutually nodded to each other.

Berlin is my temporary home, the student added, minding his teeth, as if to express his gratitude for so much understanding.

They seemed unable to part from each other.

My parents live in Pfeilen, that’s where I was born. Well, a little ways from the town.

What is the name of the place, the policeman asked, and for a while they looked at each other suspiciously.

North of it, of Pfeilen, he said, pointing with his finger, Niederrhein.

Never heard of it, which of course is my fault.

We’ve had a farm there for a long time now, but my parents live in town. It’s a very insignificant place, no reason you should know it.

The young man wanted to smile politely, but the smile turned into something closer to a snarl.

It was impossible to know whose hand was extended first. In any case, they shook hands; the handshake threw them both into embarrassed confusion.

The policeman, in the meantime, introduced himself: I’m Dr. Kienast, he said.

The doctoral title was what remained in the air between the two of them. In the contact of their bare hands, in the mutually felt humps and knobs there was something too physical. The doctoral degree had more to do with healing. As if making a promise to that effect. And mentioning it also had to do with the fact that he, the young man, does exist, after all, in the boundless mass of humans of which they are both insignificant parts. But at this degree of personal closeness, the young man froze up completely and did not reciprocate the bashfully hesitant, promising introduction.

And then, convinced that without further ado he could continue his interrupted run, the young man started off. If the other man really wanted to know anything, let him look up the personal data in the notes just taken by his uniformed colleague.

In the end, nothing happened.

After a few steps, he had to realize that again he had failed to gauge the situation and his abilities correctly; again he had presumed more of himself than he could deliver. Because something fatal had happened, something that would be very difficult to put behind him. If indeed he could get away with it at all.

With his stupid loquaciousness he had given himself away; why did he have to blurt out where he was going to, why did he go on and on with his explanations. He slowed down and then, changing pace, applied more force to getting away; but his thighs trembled and his knees shook, his breath could not find its proper rhythm, and most of all he felt in his back the challenging gaze of that damned cop.

Indeed, the policeman’s eyes followed the young man for a long time, and then he instructed his technicians to record the footsteps left behind. In the muscles of his palm, he felt the imprint of the other man’s grip; the other hand’s heat clung to his skin and worked its way into the fibers of his muscles, which was more than pleasant, though the evaluation of the contact belonged strictly to the investigation. Kienast, who had written his doctoral thesis on evidentiary processes in the magical, mythic, and rational periods of history, was considered a great fantast among his colleagues, who followed scientific rationales and adhered to strict professional regulations. They would have scorned him for his method were it not for his all-encompassing attention span and thorough practical knowledge.

Slowly it was growing lighter, though falling snowflakes were still visible in the beams of distant streetlights. As if in the young man’s grip he had felt both a terrific strength and an insane trembling that the hand’s owner could not reconcile. He had to think that the young man might be a drug addict, his periodically recurring need accounting for why his facial features were so nervously, prematurely old and used up.

He could still see the thin figure in the snowfall among the trees.

Hopeless, he said to himself, though he couldn’t have said to whom or what he was referring.

As if his fate had been to have this hopelessness added to another hopeless case. For this he could thank the coincidence that he had not been relieved on his shift. And as if the approaching Christmas holiday served only as a means to deepen the complications. Yet in fact, in this new case, Kienast needed only to deal with two primitive matters: to determine the unknown person’s identity, and to exclude the possibility that the death was a suicide. He could see that the case would be simple, yet that he wouldn’t be able to solve it to his own satisfaction. This boy would somehow mess him up. His other hopeless case was more exciting; he had been at it for more than two months—a patricide in which the wife took the blame for the child who had been regularly having intercourse with the father.

After his night shifts, Kienast often felt dejection followed by a justified anxiety. His natural laziness sought this sort of excuse or explanation. He was like a large canine that loves softness, warmth, and comfort.

It took a long time to identify the corpse, especially since no one came looking for it, not even after the holidays.

Before it was put on ice, it went through only the first, most necessary coroner’s examination. The forensic technicians searched through the corpse’s belongings. They found nothing on the body or in the clothing to indicate violence. Most likely a heart attack had finished him off on that park bench.

Kienast noted, however, that no article of the corpse’s clothes had labels. In cases where personal identification is difficult, these labels can be very helpful. One should look for them almost automatically. Overcoats and jackets are to be turned inside out; the labels are there, sewn into the lining. In shirts and sweaters, they are on the collars, in pants on the inside of the belt band. In socks and underwear they may be embroidered or woven; in cheaper merchandise they are printed in bright colors. Often these labels are of more use than the so-called
bertillonage
, those eleven items of physical measurement and characteristics that must be recorded to make a positive identification but that are useless for anything else and find themselves at the bottom of desk drawers or in unused databases. This dead man did not wear cheap clothing. Dr. Kienast, examining the third or fourth item, with gloved hands lifted them carefully out of their marked plastic bags. When he found no trace of any labels, in his surprise he hissed involuntarily.

He was alone in the large room; his lonely hissing echoed within the empty tiled walls.

Well, all right, it’s possible that a person finds these labels offensively colorful, or they irritate the skin, or one simply does not feel like being labeled and one removes them. It’s also acceptable to get rid of them on one’s shirt and pullover because, let’s say, they irritate one’s neck; but why in hell would anyone peel them off the inside of the pants’ waistband, where they can’t be seen or felt. A mania; but what could be the sense or significance of such a mania. As if he were angry at the living person whose corpse was lying before him.

What maniac would get rid of every possible mark on his clothing that might be used for identification. Other people do not even notice labels, or they like them because they are proud of the brands they wear. His mind automatically supplied the answer: persecution mania, compulsive self-concealment, justified or unjustified anxiety, a desire to leave no traces behind. He gazed at the corpse, he gazed at its belongings.

At the shockingly small underpants, made of translucent, shiny, almost glittering material, where he found a large stain of sperm. Whatever else, he had been a man who liked the color blue; everything he wore was blue—light blue or dark blue.

A man who only in the blue of his shirt allowed some white stripes.

There was too much blue here, much too much.

Must have been a boring man.

He must have been a man who used this boring stylishness as a disguise but in fact was some kind of compulsive or a maniac. That’s characteristic of a fastidious man: while his passions rage within him, he maintains his self-respecting exterior; must have been an unbearable person. He found no labels on the diaphanous dark blue woolen socks either. The label had been cut off at the seam of the glittering silvery blue underpants, but a tiny sliver of it, frayed by frequent laundering, remained. The underpants: an exceptional piece. Hardcore fetishistic gentlemen wear such items. He glanced at the corpse and then with his naked eye measured the place of the substantial sperm stain on the unusual underpants. The result of prolonged erection, prolonged seepage or a minor emission. There will be something to look for on the pants too. He could almost see the sharp leather-cutting scissors with which the small label had been removed with a single snip.

This man must have behaved most mysteriously and was probably prepared for the end at any hour.

On his thin bony wrist, there was no visible sign to indicate he wore a watch; neither did he wear a ring. Still, the detective thought he’d been married. If unmarried, he would have been more daring in his passion and probably would have worn not this sort of brief but rather a jock strap of red or white satin under his conservatively tailored clothes. In his soft, black wallet they found a surprisingly large amount of money but no trace of personal identification. This also showed he was after quickly purchasable intercourse and that he managed to get it cheaper than expected. Finally, his black-laced low quarter shoes were items that revealed something if not of their owner then of themselves: Italian shoes of a most reliable brand. Such sturdy Italian shoes one can purchase only in London. And there was something else Dr. Kienast did not know what to do with: the bare body’s pungent smell. It was not an unpleasant odor, in fact rather pleasant. Something like an enticing female fragrance that somewhere, not so long ago, the detective had encountered close up or even enjoyed.

Or he had been exposed to a waft of it and found it not repellent.

Perhaps it reminded him of another fragrance, and that is why he thought it was familiar though he could not recall the original. He thought it must be a feminine fragrance because he found it sweeter and somewhat heavier than the deodorants, colognes, or aftershaves used by men, and it emanated not only from the corpse’s clothes and other belongings but also from his body.

The body had at least another half hour before cooling off completely; its scent would live that long. Dr. Kienast felt a strong urge to sniff the entire body as a police dog would. Although he did not dare do it, in his professional eagerness he could not fend off the attraction of the dead body. He sniffed the air, he sensed the bitter smell of stale tobacco piercing the affected fragrance of the body. As if he were wary of such a perfume. In fact, he was amused by his temporary cowardice.

No doubt about it, yellowish brown spots of discoloration were there on the corpse’s fingers, testifying to the habit of an inveterate smoker.

Still, no cigarettes, lighter, or matches were found on the body. Under the bench, in a black leather case, they had found a bunch of keys.

The body itself was clean and untouched.
Untouched
, that was the first word that came to mind when, still outside, they had first undressed the body for him and he in the beam of searchlights began to examine the carefully removed articles of clothing. This also made the body’s odor so surprising. The body laid out before him was that of a man who had probably been reluctant to touch anyone or anything. Not a rare thing among fetishists. They bow only to their strongest compulsions or most powerful attractions. They establish contact not with each other, not with the other person, but with symbolic objects touching the other’s body. In this sense, they truly and wholly deviate from ordinary urban egoists who, even in the presence of the other, pay attention exclusively to themselves.

As he looked at the almost hairless, smooth, and well-proportioned corpse, it occurred to Kienast that this was a dry man. He had first come across concepts of bodily dryness or moistness when he had studied ancient investigating techniques for his dissertation, reading original texts on Greek healing methods. This manner of death was not appropriate to dry persons. According to Galen, death by heart attack is most characteristic of damp or moist people.

Nor could he dismiss the notion that this odor was not the man’s own, was not caused by a scent he had used, but was an odor that he had received during his last hours from another body and that clung to him.

After a misstep, one always takes home a strange, unfit fragrance. Shower, soap, or thorough scrubbing notwithstanding, these strange fragrances, be they repulsive or sweet, are incredibly loyal.

Sometimes, on the morrow, one feels that such a fragrance is as pervasive as if it had settled in the fine hairs of one’s nostrils, and one cannot but yield to the guilty attraction and return to the source of it. Dr. Kienast had married when very young and was divorced soon afterward because of his continued missteps. While in the presence of the corpse and aided by undoubtedly pleasant memories, he was daydreaming of the sweet occasions of making up, he was recalling the hoarse, intelligent woman whom no one suspected was conducting a clandestine, insane, passionate, and desperate struggle against her ugliness, who on her wide bathroom shelves, which she could lock, had amassed an unprecedented arsenal of perfumes, creams, facial ointments, bubble baths, lipsticks, and powders, even though by profession she was an evaluator of fragrances and should have been wise about using cosmetics moderately, should have known that she could not achieve much with their help. That woman could probably have told, she could probably have identified the heavy scent with its deep-seated acrid undertone, he thought, and from his pressing thoughts it followed that he should lift the dead man’s dark blue woolen pullover to his nose. Perhaps he could recognize the smell by himself.