The Interpreter (20 page)

I could at least go back to my hotel and retrieve the odd garment and Tibor Preda's precious passport. I sold such items as I could and left the rest, slipping out of the hotel by night without paying the bill and spending time begging at the station, where I soon made friends: two of the porters, the woman at the paper stall, the Turk who cleaned the lavatories. Thanks in part to them, I managed to scrape together enough to live on, but the problem was where to sleep, because I couldn't stay in the station overnight, and had to wander into dangerous outlying areas to take shelter in old factories or under viaducts. I went back to the clinic on numerous occasions in search of Dr Barnung, but the blinds of his consulting room were always down, and no one seemed to have heard of him. I tried in vain to get into the building which, in times gone by, I'd known like the back of my hand, and had myself manhandled by the guards for my pains; the nurses shrugged their shoulders at my questions and assumed a distant air when I approached the reception desk, giving me perfunctory or irritated answers and refusing to summon the false Frau Goldstein when I asked to speak to her. My run-down appearance was hardly in my favour: I had a long beard, my hair was dishevelled and my clothes filthy beyond belief. I walked with a limp, dragging my right foot; livid with cold, my hands shook like those of a man with palsy. But at least I no longer had to hide myself when my throat tightened and I began to caw and hiss; indeed, my convulsions were most effective in gaining me the sympathy of the passers-by, who would never have suspected me of faking such spasms. However eager they might be to catch their trains, commuters turned pale at the sight of me gibbering away on my bit of cardboard; they threw down generous handfuls of coins and moved off, looking worried. There was a faint scent of spring in the air and even the rain had a different smell, of freshly tilled earth and grass, but the nights were still cold. The police wouldn't allow me to sleep in the warm near the vents in the underground, or in an underpass, so I slept by day, in a more or less upright position on the ballast near the railway station. As soon as they saw me beginning to loll against the wall, a truncheon would be pressed into action and the policeman on duty would send me packing. At times when I knew they would be there, I would drag myself to the ticket office and on to the relevant platform to look at the trains to Geneva, peer at the busy attendants through the windows of the wagons-lit, at the inspectors with their red shoulder straps, and at the first luggage-laden passengers; scanning their quintessentially Swiss faces, I felt like hugging them, telling them that I was every bit as Swiss as they were, and that I wanted to go home. But right from the first days when I'd taken up residence in the station my eye had been caught by the Geneva dailies on the newsstand, with my photograph on the front page, and the headlines of Romanian papers translated into French. I was a wanted person even in my own land. The story of the blameless high-ranking civil servant turned assassin and bandit was everywhere. I was cornered, and sometimes I felt like giving myself up, going to die peacefully in a cell, allowing myself to be sentenced to hard labour without even bothering to explain what had happened to me. I would be taken care of, looked after; I would have company, perhaps even sympathy. But I couldn't die without knowing who had killed Stauber, what had happened to Ortega and the others, where Dr Barnung was hiding and how the interpreter was involved in this whole business.

At first they threatened violence, but they ended up by putting up with me. I didn't touch any of their things, I didn't put a foot in the basement, with its piles of sand and gravel, I didn't ever go up to the floors where they lived and slept, in gangs. I kept myself to myself in the concrete space beneath the stairs, hidden behind a wall of cardboard, together with my rags. I'd only go there when it was getting dark, and by dawn I'd be out again, to avoid meeting them. With time, though, the squatters became used to my presence, and sometimes brought me food, which they said they got for almost nothing from the markets on Friday evenings; they'd unload crates of fruit from their van, bags of bread, eggs and even meat, which they'd cook and share out among themselves in front of a bonfire in the basement. There was also a lot of beer, and by the end of these sessions someone would always be flat on their back in the sand, the worse for wear. On certain evenings other gangs would join them, and the atmosphere would gradually become heated: a threatening buzz would spread through the unfinished building, down the dark staircases, through the bare echoing rooms and empty corridors. The squatters would unearth sticks and cudgels, start wielding bottles and jerry cans, rummage around in the darkness filling rucksacks with bolts. Every now and again one would let out a bloodcurdling whoop, a sort of war cry to incite the rest. I'd peek at them through a gap in the cardboard; their heads swathed in black handkerchiefs, they'd leave the building in small groups, then vanish into the dark streets, among the glistening cars and rubbish bins, to come back at dawn, silent and exhausted. Through the smoky glow I could just make out their dim figures as they took off their disguises and hid their weapons under the piles of gravel. Then they'd disperse, as mysteriously as they had come, and when the first glimmer of dawn appeared, lighting up the bare concrete pillars, you would never have known that anyone had been there at all.

One night, there must have been about fifty of them sitting outside my cardboard den, but this time they weren't preparing for an expedition; they didn't have any weapons, they weren't distributing bottles and bolts. They were just smoking, in silence, the tips of their cigarettes weaving in the dark. Someone threw a handful of gravel against my cardboard, asking me whether I wanted a smoke; the others laughed and called out more or less in unison:

‘Hey, Swissman! Come on out, there's some really good stuff tonight!'

Afraid of offending them, I got up and went out hesitantly to join them – I didn't really know any of them at all, for me they were just nameless faces in a tight-knit pack. But I did know some of their voices: the one who had called me had always seemed well disposed towards me, right from the start he had made sure the others left me alone. I'd listened in horror from behind my cardboard as he'd managed to dissuade his companions from setting it on fire. So I followed his voice and went to sit next to him; he passed me a cigarette I'd no desire to smoke, but I took a puff anyway and handed it back to him. At that same moment, two yellow lights appeared in the space outside the building and lit up the squatters' faces; then a large car appeared and stopped just in front of the concrete pillars, its headlights pointing at the ceiling. The back window was rolled down and a pale face peered out for a moment, only to be hurriedly withdrawn. The squatters extinguished their cigarettes and put them into their pockets; they got up from the heaps of gravel and went to stand in a line next to the car. One by one, they filed past the car window, from which a white hand passed them something, though I couldn't make out what. Then they came back towards the building and went silently back up the stairs, or off along the street in small groups. I was now the only person left in the semi-basement; seated on my heap of gravel, I stared at the car headlights, shielding my eyes with my hands. After a few moments the door opened and I saw a tall, smartly dressed man coming slowly towards me, picking his way among the puddles, his hands in his pockets.

‘I see you're not one of them, then,' he said, looking at me curiously; he sat down on the low concrete wall outside the semi-basement and carried on staring at me appraisingly.

‘I come here at night, to shelter,' I told him, somewhat mortified.

‘And may I ask you what brings you to this godforsaken spot?' There was something kindly about his tone; I stood up, made awkward by his gentle manner – for too long now I'd had dealings only with riff-raff.

‘Needs must…I sleep in there,' I said, pointing my chin in the direction of my cardboard abode.

‘If I'm not mistaken, you're not from round here. French, perhaps?'

‘Not really. Swiss,' I gently corrected him.

‘Swiss?' he repeated in some amusement. ‘You must be the only Swiss vagrant on the face of the earth. Don't tell me you used to be a banker!'

I shook my head and lowered my eyes from the dazzling headlights at which I'd been staring so fixedly. The man gestured to his chauffeur, who turned both the lights and the engine off; now the dim parking lights were the only source of illumination amidst so much darkness. All that could be heard were the usual night noises; the squatters' footsteps were receding, together with the clang of their boots as they hit the odd metal bin.

‘They come and eat out of my hand!' said the man, turning his head towards the road and getting up from the wall.

‘That's my contribution to saving the world!' he added, laughing. He took a few steps backward, turned away from me and looked up at the sky.

‘Have you been with them for long?' he asked, raising his voice so that I could hear him.

‘A week or so,' I answered vaguely.

He turned back towards me, sinking his feet in the gravel, which crunched beneath his soles.

‘Well…can I offer you a drink?'

‘Thank you. But I don't know whether…'

‘Oh, don't worry, we'll soon get that sorted out!' he said cheerfully as the chauffeur switched on the engine.

I emerged from the semi-basement, shaking off the worst of the filth from my clothing, and sat down nervously on the edge of the soft leather seat.

V

Klaus Burke was one of the richest men in Munich; he owned various businesses making a wide range of products, from taps to engine filters, windscreens and plumbing equipment.

‘To tell the truth, I don't even know how many I've got, or where they are; some of them I've never even seen. I don't know anything about what I produce; I just move money around on the stock exchange, or rather, my managing director does that for me,' he admitted in the grand restaurant he'd brought me to. First, though, we'd gone to his elegant apartment in the city centre, where I'd been able to have a hot bath and change my clothes. Taking off my rags and sinking into the scented foam, I'd had my first sight of my body for quite some time. With a sense of deep relief I massaged my roughened, parchment-yellow skin, leaving my hands to soak in the hot water to alleviate the cramp in my fingers. Scarcely able to believe my luck, I buttoned up the warm woollen jacket and ran my hands luxuriously over my stubble-free cheeks. Almost dizzy with pleasure, I gloried in the warmth of the radiators and the softness of the armchair when I finally rejoined Klaus Burke in the drawing room.

‘I use this apartment for business meetings with my clients and directors, but I don't live here; I prefer to be in my villa on the Ammersee, among my horses and my woods,' my host informed me as he showed me around.

The windows had a view of the cathedral spires, soaring above the city lights. Running his hands through his thick white hair in front of the mirror, Burke straightened his black tie and added:

‘You can be my guest there if you like. The Ammersee is lovely at this time of year – the storks will soon be back, and everything is white with hawthorn.'

At the restaurant I'd sipped slowly at the
bisque de homard
, allowing its warmth to penetrate my every fibre, almost weeping as I savoured the fine French wine. I was no longer used to eating, and couldn't manage very much. My life, I realised, had been reduced to a minimum, but a tiny flame still flickered within me and now it was being kindled anew. My appetite was slowly coming back, my blood was flowing more strongly through my veins; my body was shuffling off its listlessness and, as it did so, I could feel my mad desire to track down the interpreter regaining strength. In fact, it had never entirely left me; it was a physical need, a call which was reasserting itself and demanding to be obeyed.

Klaus Burke drew deeply on his Havana cigar and looked at me through the smoke.

‘You may wonder why a man like me should bother spending his time giving money to those down-and-outs.' I nodded distractedly, my body tensing in sudden fear of an imminent convulsion. My host paused for a moment, lost in thought, then carried on:

‘You see, most men get through their lives as best they can, and no one expects anything more of them. But then there are people like us; some inscrutable higher power has decreed that we have a mission on this earth!'

I jumped, feeling he'd read my thoughts, but my host continued imperturbably:

‘Ever since I first set foot in a factory, aged eleven, everything I've touched has turned to gold. The wealth just piles up – I'm the living embodiment of the German economic miracle. Every enterprise I've embarked on has flourished, each brand I've invested in has multiplied ten, a hundred, a thousand-fold. I've discovered markets no one had dreamed of, invented others which seemed to have no raison d'etre, created absurd desires and satisfied them with my factories. Success is my default setting. Yet I myself was born of ruination: I am a child of wretchedness, of a death so harrowing it knows no solace. I carried my mother's charred body through the streets during the bombing of Hamburg. My father has been dead for sixty years, and yet I see him still: at Hamburg University, in a jar of formalin in the faculty of natural sciences. His right eye is still open, and under the three day's growth of beard you can still see the bluish mark I made when I embraced him with inky fingers, as the English planes began to bomb the city.'

He tapped the ash off his cigar and paused for a few moments, looking at me with a solemn, thoughtful expression. I sensed that he was weighing up the words he was about to speak.

‘I wanted to escape the rubble of the Hamburg streets, where the charred remains of men and animals and buildings lay mingled in a single clammy mush; I wanted to put the unquenchable flames of those fearful nights out of my mind. I wanted to redeem myself, to win, to build – in a word, I wanted to forget. But destruction seeks me out, stirs up a mocking yearning for the death I have escaped. For sixty years I've been repaying fate for the price of my survival, but nothing will suffice to rid me of my guilt, and I'm too base to go back alone to the pit out of which I've climbed. So I assuage my remorse by paying those desperadoes to shatter the windscreens I produce, to set fire to my supermarkets; that way at least some portion of me will be destroyed. Let them hammer away, break bones, smash windows, wreck the city! I gain reassurance from their empty futures, their desperation, the death they carry with them. They leave open the door for me – for my return.'