Raven Sisters (Franza Oberwieser Book 2) (28 page)

70

Night fell quickly. The sky was cloudy, and it looked like rain.

Franza thought about Hanna and Gertrud, whom a quirk of fate had brought together so many years ago. They were still bound by these chains, these fetters, and in the middle hung Lilli, helpless and alone. They were tugging at her, each in a different direction, and Lilli cried and screamed, not knowing where to turn, feeling the shackles of her mothers tightening around her, hanging on her like a great weight, great enough to tear her apart.

With the Danube shimmering before her, a dark, metallic expanse, Franza remembered Port’s text and realized she had not yet replied. She finally did.

He wanted her to come that weekend, but she suspected she would pass on it. She wanted him to fly in his theater heaven, his artists’ heaven, wherever it took him—and she suspected she would never be able to fly there with him.

It began to rain. Franza stood for a moment, stretching out to feel the soft, refreshing wetness enfold her.
A vacation,
she thought. She needed a vacation—now, in the autumn, when the south had grown milder, the heat had faded, the sunburns had healed, and the memories of the woman whose fateful vacation would always mean painful recollection had vanished.
A vacation,
she thought—
as soon as we’ve solved this case, if we ever solve it.

. . .
sometimes it’s all very difficult, alien one
wrote late that night, when she was unable to sleep. Lilli, the little devil, had only trusted her with half a story. Franza had clearly not succeeded in doing what was necessary—earning Lilli’s full trust, not just a part of it.

. . .
yes, alien two
wrote back,
. . .
i know
. . . As if he really did know what she was talking about.

71

Gertrud told me everything. Everything. I didn’t want to know any of it.

After Christian left, she cowered on the floor. I told her that she shouldn’t send him away; she needed him. I was not an option, not for anything she wished.

It destroyed her. She stayed on the floor. Sobbing. Unable to calm herself. I went over to her and laid my hand on her shoulder. She shook me off, angry, raging in helpless pain.

“Gertrud,” I said. “Gertrud, calm down! Let’s talk. We can sort it all out. He’ll come back. You can get your life back.”

“Sort it out,” she said, and I recoiled from the bitterness in her voice. “You really think there’s anything that can be sorted out? Are you really that stupid? What kind of a life? What kind of a life do you think this is? Talk? What do you want to talk about now? Everything’s over. Everything’s been said.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t agree. Nothing’s over.” Suddenly I thought of Lilli, my Lilli. “I wish I’d had your luck.”

She laughed at that—nasty, furious, full of hatred. She stood, turned.

“Luck,” she said. “You call it luck? I’ve been lucky? No, I haven’t been lucky. Neither have you, that’s true. But I
. . .
”

She closed her eyes briefly, her face tightening into a painful grimace. Then she took my hand and led me to the table. I don’t know why, but I felt afraid. Horribly afraid.

“Come here,” she said. “Sit down. I’ll tell you something.”

And then she told me. Mercilessly. Uncompromisingly.

She began with Greece. I’d thought there was nothing more to say about it. I thought I already knew everything. But I knew only the tiniest part, the least painful bits.

She began by saying that when all was said and done, perhaps Tonio had just been unlucky, perhaps he had just drawn the shortest fucking straw possible—by coming across us completely by chance and being crazy enough to fall in love with me.

“Yes,” she said, “with you, Hanna. If you look at the big picture, you could say that all this tragedy is your fault. As for him, he was simply unlucky.”

She laughed unhappily and fell silent for a while.

I didn’t dare ask what she meant by all that. I should have simply got up and left. Up to that moment, it could have been OK. Nothing would have gotten worse than it already was. But her eyes were relentless. She showed no mercy, no kindness, and I knew she wouldn’t let me go.

“Do you remember what he said? About the wind?”

I didn’t want to remember.
Leave it alone,
I thought,
just stop!

“The wind clears the head, he always said. He liked the wind. The wind never scared him. That was why it was so
. . .
easy.”

So easy? What was?

My heart began to thump. I felt a coldness suddenly begin to seep through me, trickling down my spine, settling into my body. With difficulty I suppressed a shudder.

“What do you mean?” I said carefully.

She stood up, found a bottle of wine, and began to drink.

“It was easy. Everything.” She laughed scornfully. “You had no idea.”

The images from that holiday came into my head. I had not seen them for so long, but suddenly they were there. Like a blinding light. Like a flash of lightning.

“Let’s go to the beach,” Tonio had called out enthusiastically morning after morning. “Let’s run around in the spray.”

We lay on the crests of the waves, faces turned to the orange sun, floating and feeling so light. Those were the early days. The wind was bearable, with only the merest hint of the coming storm.

“You remember now, don’t you?” Gertrud said. “You can see all the images again now, can’t you, Hanna? All the images of Greece, our last time together. Do you want some wine?”

I shook my head, stood. “I should go. I’ve got to get in touch with Jonas; he’ll be worried.”

“No,” she said, and jumped up, too. “You’re not going now. You wanted us to talk. And that’s what we’re doing. Now it’s all out in the open. Now it’s all got to come out.”

I tried to resist her. “Whatever you still want to say to me, Gertrud, I don’t want to hear it. Leave me alone!”

She laughed angrily and swept her arm feverishly across the table, knocking over two jelly jars that crashed to the floor and smashed on the tiles. Jelly, still warm, splashed around, mixed with glass splinters. She ignored it, grabbed my arm, and forced me down onto the chair.

“It doesn’t matter what you want,” she hissed. “What’s important now is what I want.”

I closed my eyes.
OK,
I thought.
Out with it. I’m prepared. Whatever’s about to happen won’t touch me. I’m finally going to see Lilli tomorrow, so nothing can touch me.

How I deceived myself.

She took a deep breath, trying to calm down. She began to whisper, murmuring words. “.
 . .
blue-black the water permeates your dying, smashes your heart to pieces
. . .
”

I held my breath.

Silence.

“I couldn’t stop thinking those words,” she said, “like an endless loop, as I was sitting on the bed next to you, waiting for you to wake. You know. When he was already dead.”

She picked up the bottle again, took a mouthful.

“And I still have them in my head. They won’t go away. They’ll never go away.”

She smiled, stood again, went to the window. I drew my jacket tight around myself. It was no use; I was freezing from the inside.

She spoke the words again in a monotonous voice. Spoke them out the window. Spoke them into the depths of my being.

. . .
blue-black the water permeates your dying, smashes your heart to pieces . . .

She spoke them into the depths of my being, those words, and there they would stay, I knew it. There they will stay, I know it, just as they stayed with her.

She turned. “He was lying with you in the bed. You were asleep. The red wine went to your head. It always made you sleepy. He was also asleep, but I went to him, woke him. He looked at me as though I were a ghost. I had to laugh. ‘Shh,’ he said, ‘Be quiet! Don’t laugh so loudly, Hanna’s asleep. Don’t wake her up.’”

She was silent for a moment, listening to her own thoughts—the echoes of her words. Then she repeated, “Hanna’s asleep. Don’t wake her up.”

“Maybe,” she said, “maybe that’s what it was, I don’t know. Maybe I just wanted a bit of peace, for it not to always be about you. I don’t know.”

She turned and stood in the twilight, in the half-light by the window, where the ceiling light didn’t reach. I couldn’t see her face, but I could hear in her voice that she was crying.

“I said, ‘Come on, Tonio, let’s have a little drink. I’m thirsty. I don’t want to be alone.’ He thought about it for a moment, and I was thinking he wouldn’t come, he’d go back to sleep by your side until morning. Then I said, ‘The wind’s dropped a little. We could go to the beach for a little night swimming.’ He tapped his temple and said, ‘You’re out of your mind!’ But he got up, pulled on his shorts and a T-shirt. We crept out and he shut the door quietly behind him. The wind hadn’t dropped. On the contrary it was roaring around the house, enough to scare you out of your wits. We took the bottles with us—schnapps and red wine, he liked to mix them up a little. I don’t know what exactly I was planning. Whether I was actually planning anything. I don’t think so. Things just have a way of happening.”

She stopped speaking. I sat on my chair, unable to move, as if under a spell, as if tied to it. What was she trying to tell me? What was going to come now? She continued.

“‘Awesome!’ he said as we reached the beach. ‘What awesome waves.’

“‘Do you love her?’ I asked him.

“He turned to me and asked, ‘Love? Do I love the waves, perhaps? These huge, crazy waves?’ And he began to laugh, split his sides laughing over that attempt at a joke.

“‘Ha ha ha,’ I said, ‘Very funny. You could win a prize with that, for sure!’

“Then he grew serious and asked, ‘You do, too, don’t you? You do, too.’”

She stopped talking. A fly buzzed around the room, its humming clear. Gertrud only paused for a moment before whispering, “I hated him at that moment. And I knew I could kill him.”

No,
I thought, and felt a dreadful stabbing pain.
No, Gertrud, don’t say that. Not that.
But she did. She said it.

“He was an asshole,” she continued mercilessly. “A fucking, son-of-a-bitch asshole, but he was a good-looking asshole, and that’s what you fell for, Hanna. It was a farce, that vacation as a threesome—that whole life we led as a threesome. Stupidity, a complete mess. For that alone he
. . .
he needed punishing.”

Punishing
. . 
. ?

Punishing . . .
I thought, and for the first time this year I felt the oncoming autumn, how it ate into my bones with its dampness. So he needed punishing, did he? Really? With death?

“It was simple. So easy,” she whispered. “We were standing at the waterline, right at the edge, the waves lapping at our feet. I could see the white surf even though it was dark. He drank. I didn’t. He laughed and talked about his life, about you, about what a sexpot you were, what awesome orgasms he had with you, and how I shouldn’t waste my time on something that would never be. I’d be better off looking for another lover, as I wasn’t bad-looking at all.”

She fell silent and slowly came over to me. I looked into her face and saw how sad she was, how lonely. She stroked my hair with her hand. I didn’t move. I felt her so close to me and had a dreadful sense of foreboding.

“You can take everything I tell you and do what you want with it,” she said tonelessly. “I don’t care. I can’t bear it anymore. Not a moment longer. It’s been eating me away, tearing me apart.”

I pushed her away, unable to bear her presence any longer. She backed off toward the window, into the darkness. Then she continued talking.

“‘You won’t do it,’ I said. ‘I’m right, aren’t I? You wouldn’t dare.’

“He looked at me, at first unable to work out what I meant. But then
. . .
‘You want to get rid of me,’ he said, surprised, astonished. ‘You little bitch, you want to get rid of me!’ He laughed again, the alcohol already fogging his brain.

“I said, ‘Yes, I want rid of you, but you’re too much of a coward, you won’t dare go into the water. You’re a coward, and one day Hanna will see through you. She’ll see you’re all front and she’ll press against you with her finger, only a little, and then you’ll fall and melt away like butter.’ I was so angry, but he merely laughed at me.

“‘Like butter,’ he laughed. ‘Like butter! Gertrud, you’re a real joker. I never realized!’ Then he grew calm again, drank from the schnapps bottle, warbled some lines from a song, and sat down in the sand. ‘Ugh! Cold, damn cold,’ he said as the waves soaked him. ‘So,’ he said, ‘You want me to go in right now, swim around a little. What am I supposed to prove to you? That I’m the biggest, the best? Don’t we know that anyway? You don’t seriously believe that I’m afraid of this, these little waves, these meager gusts of wind? Absurd!’ He turned to me. I felt his eyes on me.

“‘You’ve got nothing to prove to me,’ I said. ‘Nothing at all. Forget it. I knew you wouldn’t dare.’

“But I knew he was a gambler, a risk taker; he couldn’t walk away from a bet.

“‘Both of us,’ he said. ‘Come on, go for it, no need to be scared. Nothing’s gonna happen. This mild breeze, we can outsmart it. You’re right. It’s truly awesome weather for swimming.’ He jumped up, undressed, threw his shorts and T-shirt in the sand and grabbed my hand.

“‘OK,’ I said, ‘OK, give me a moment.’ I slipped out of my shoes, out of my jeans. We set off, into the water, up to our ankles, up to our knees. You could feel the force of the wind, the force of the waves. He was already way ahead. I could hardly see him as the darkness gradually swallowed him up. And I
. . .
I stopped. Just stopped. He didn’t notice. Or he didn’t care. He yelled, shouted for joy, sang—all the time going farther and farther out into the water.

“
What an idiot,
I thought.
How did Hanna fall for someone like you?

“He was really far out by then, at the point when the ocean bed falls away sharply, where you lose the floor from beneath your feet. He began to swim. Into infinity.”

She laughed bitterly. “I could still hear him, his breathless shouting. I was still standing in the same spot, the water whipping up against me up to my hips, each time the waves broke, spraying me in the face. I knew he was already lost. In the sea, the wind, the darkness. Eventually I could no longer hear him. I heard the crashing of the waves, I heard the storm, but Tonio
. . .
I could no longer hear him. I don’t know whether he struggled, whether it was difficult or easy. I only know that at some point I could no longer hear him.”

Silence. She didn’t turn, merely stood rigid, leaning against the windowsill, the blackness in front of the window like the blackness at sea had been back then.

I’m freezing from Gertrud’s words,
I thought.
I’m freezing right here and now.

But you don’t freeze that quickly, you hear the words and take them in, lock them into a part of your brain, where they rumble and rumble around until they explode and flood you with their truth. And then there’s no escape.

“If it makes you feel any better, Hanna,” Gertrud said eventually, “if it makes you feel any better, I lost my footing too. The same moment he did. And it was all so simple. So easy. And I backed away, slowly, slowly, step by step, out of the water and onto the sand. I stood there then. For a long time.

“‘Big Sea,’ I whispered. ‘Big Sea, you’re my friend, my accomplice, my partner.’ I raised my hand in greeting, behind his back, behind Tonio.”

Another silence and an intake of breath. The words penetrated my consciousness, her words—the ones she spoke at the beginning of her story, at the beginning of this dreadful truth.

Blue-black,
I thought, my Tonio,
blue-black the water permeated your dying,
and I saw it, I saw the images, Tonio, your fight as the storm tore into you, threw you back and forth, as the waves broke over you and drew you down into the depths. I saw how amazed you were when you realized your strength would not be enough, that it would be the end, that it was the end.