The Interpreter (21 page)

So saying, Klaus Burke shook himself, as though a shiver had run down his spine; his expression suddenly distant and cold, he continued sitting there stock-still, almost as though he'd lost consciousness, then began to breathe heavily. Beads of sweat pearled on his forehead and he started blinking rapidly. Then he regained his composure, beckoned the waiter with a flick of his wrist and ordered a cognac; only after he'd taken a few sips did his breathing return to normal.

‘I am seeking a death that is worthy of me, Mr Bellamy. I can't resign myself to dying in my bed, eaten up by cancer or old age. Nor do I want to yield to the lure of some elaborately planned suicide. I want to die with a curse upon my lips, to re-experience the horror of that summer's night. Only that way will I have paid my dues; only that way will I be free. Such is my mission!'

He balanced his cigar on the edge of the ashtray, straightened up in his armchair, placed his hands around his glass and leaned towards me:

‘And you, dear friend – what form of destruction are you after?'

I told him my story; puffing on his cigar as he heard me out, Klaus Burke seemed both incredulous and amused. I showed him the Romanian newspaper cuttings about the robberies, the interpreter's list, and Stauber's too, with the four mysterious handwritten names; I showed him Tibor Preda's passport with my photograph. I described the therapies used in Dr Barnung's clinic and my chilling discovery of the whistling men in Odessa. When at last I fell silent, my host sighed deeply and looked at me with new respect.

‘Mr Bellamy, I'm full of admiration! If there were a museum of incredible destinies, yours would be worthy of a place of honour; and, may I say, I cannot imagine any other man confronting such adversities with anything like your courage and tenacity!'

I felt flattered. I had received many compliments during the course of my life – on my commitment to study, on my capacity for hard work – but never before had I been praised for my sheer ill-fortune. Thinking over Klaus Burke's words, I realised that I had indeed become a museum piece, or rather perhaps a fairground curiosity, a freak to be exhibited as a warning to those who do not believe in the wayward power of fate.

‘But you must take me to this clinic, Mr Bellamy! I'll have myself admitted – I too would like to be subjected to his diabolical experiments!' Burke said excitedly.

‘I don't think there's anything left of Dr Barnung here in Munich; I've been to look for him in his clinic on several occasions. There's no longer any sign of the patients who were there with me; they must all have become whistling men, locked up in some godforsaken madhouse!'

My host looked disappointed; he flicked at his cigar and sat there in silence, watching the wreath of smoke as it spiralled upwards through the air.

Over the days that followed, Burke entertained me royally at his villa on the Ammersee, showed me his paintings and the valuable antiquarian books he had in his library. We visited the stud farm where he bred racing horses, and went hunting on the large estate he owned on the lake's edge. The woods, the green meadows, the view of distant blue mountains, the quiet, familiar waters of the lake – all were a balm to my troubled spirit. As if by a miracle, the sky cleared and a weak sun emerged to warm the cold, damp earth. The delicate colours of the countryside, the long periods of sleep in which I could now indulge, the unfamiliar landscape, all gave me the impression that I was observing the world from a safe and peaceful haven. The tender light of spring returned, lingering to the west on the bark of trees now tinged with green, on the stone walls of distant farms. In the morning I would look out of the window to see the dawn light merging with the lake, reflected rose-pink in the network of canals, and I would imagine that I could see the white ferryboat plying the waters of another lake, I could even hear its hooter, and the muffled sound of summer music. I would stare fixedly at that tranquil scene until the sun, rising behind the trees, dispelled the fleeting mirage with the dazzle of its rays.

One afternoon, coming in after a walk, I found Burke in the living room, sitting in front of an open fire.

‘My dear Bellamy, did you see that sunset? And the sky full of birds, too, and the beeches positively bursting into leaf. It's incredible how nature is so set on coming to life again!' he exclaimed, walking over to the bay window overlooking the park. ‘And how are you feeling today? I see you've been out for a walk.'

‘I felt a bit dizzy this morning, but I'm fine now, thank you. Now, though, if you don't mind, I need to take the weight off my feet,' I said, collapsing heavily onto the divan.

‘Please, of course, make yourself at home! Would you like a drink? A cup of tea, perhaps?'

I nodded in thanks and my host nodded to the butler, who left the room and returned shortly afterwards with a tea tray, which he placed before me; Burke, on the other hand, was presented with a small glass containing a colourless liquid.

‘I myself am having something stronger,' he said apologetically, holding the little glass bubble up in front of the flickering flames; he rose to his feet and went to lean against the chimneybreast, loosening his silk scarf as he did so. He stood there in silence for some minutes, staring at the pattern in the carpet at his feet.

‘Mr Bellamy, I'd like to tell you in all sincerity that you can be my guest here for as long as you like – your presence takes my mind off certain dark thoughts, and your unexpected company lightens my dull existence. I can see that this rest on the Ammersee is doing you good – you're regaining your physical strength, and you seem more inwardly peaceful, too. But if you want to set off on your quest again – to continue with your pursuit – well, I'd be only too happy to give you such help as I can,' said Burke, striking a more serious note. He sipped his drink and put his glass down on the marble slab.

‘I'm very grateful to you for all your hospitality and kindness. After all that I've been through, here at last I've been able to find a bit of peace of mind. But I think that the best thing for me now is to go back to Geneva. I'm tired, I'm not well and I no longer have the strength to carry on with my mission. All in all, ending my days in a Swiss prison wouldn't be so bad. Don't worry about me, Mr Burke, somehow or other I'll get by. But I'm afraid I'll have to ask you for a bit of money for the journey,' I said, lowering my eyes in embarrassment. My host was walking to and fro in front of the fire, hand on hip. Now he stooped to pick up his glass.

‘Mr Bellamy, I have a proposal to put to you, and I beg you not to be shocked at my brutality. By now you will have realised that I regard charitable impulses as unnatural. If there is a God, I'm certain he has not put me in this world to do good, but rather to foster the memory of the evil which lies at the root of my being, even if, in fact, I myself could not be said to have suffered as a consequence of it. These are my childhood memories, and what is more sacred than a childhood memory? Now, despite the fact that I'm no believer in good works, I'll gladly give you the money you need to get back to Switzerland; furthermore, should you want me to, I can find you the best lawyers, and with a bit of luck I'm sure that they'll be able to keep you out of prison. But I must confess that what particularly interests me is your mission, your pursuit of the whistling interpreter and the mysterious language clinic. Behind this story I sense the fires of destruction lurking, the destruction of which I was born. All in all, I too would be sorry if you gave up the chase right now, after having embarked on it with such doggedness. So I am proposing that we make a deal: I am prepared to finance your quest for as long as it may take – provided you let me come with you, that you afford me the privilege of being there when you catch up with your interpreter, when we discover the consequences of Dr Barnung's dastardly experiments, and the madhouse with the whistling men!' He was fixing me with a positively diabolical expression as he spoke; he picked up his glass and threw the contents into the hearth; the fire sputtered and spat out blue flames.

That same evening, while I was getting ready for bed, I was seized by one of the most devastating convulsions I'd experienced so far, one which included phenomena I'd never previously noted. Now my arms were trembling, as well as my legs; my fingers splayed and held close to my chest, I found that I was banging my elbows against my sides, emitting long whistles from deep in my throat. These in their turn were interspersed by rapid gurgling sounds, which gradually subsided, only to dissolve into uninterrupted blethering the moment I could relax my jaws and loosen my tongue. Now for the first time it was clear to me that the gestures my body was trapped into making were reminiscent of the animal-like movements of the whistling men I'd seen in the convent in Odessa. So now there was no getting round it: I too was on the point of becoming one of those monsters. The attack ended with confused jabberings not unlike those that can be heard on an old gramophone record played at the wrong speed. Oddly enough, it seemed to me that those mysterious, fragmentary words had meaning, belonged to some language. They weren't Romanian, though they resembled it; strangulated, thrust back into my throat by a series of violent cramps, they struck familiar notes, ones which my lips seemed somehow accustomed to uttering. Hearing my ravings, Burke had come running into my room, but was at a loss as to what to do; he went to get me a glass of water, tried to help me up from the floor, but after a bit all he could do was look on helplessly, waiting to see what would happen. When the spasm passed, he helped me to sit up.

‘Mr Bellamy, this is a godsend! I realise now that I would never have understood anything about your problem had I not been present at this chilling demonstration of it. You may find my interest morbid and cruel, but you must concede that all this is quite fascinating. I have witnessed your brain rebelling against its normal function and shaking around in your cranium in search of a different way of being, as though it were contracting, trying to regain a shape it had lost, but not forgotten! I imagine you've never been able to see yourself in such a state, but I was watching you carefully just now, and frightening thoughts came to my mind. Because, you see, the changes that came over you, your grimaces, the way your shoulders twisted and your hands spread out, all gave me the feeling that your organism was not fighting the whiplash of disease, but rather answering some compelling summons, some powerful yearning to assume a different bodily form. Your eyes were like those of a lizard, your neck was twitching like that of a bird and you were flapping your arms like wings, thrusting out your chest and floundering around on the floor with your feet together. Your first whistle was very faint, almost imperceptible; it swelled to an eagle's cry, then sank to a monkey's syncopated chatter, finally to become a jumble of apparently intelligible sounds linked to each other in unintelligible ways. What I was seeing, Mr Bellamy, was nothing less than a synthesis of evolution.'

Still breathless and exhausted by my spasms, I gave my host a weary glance, too worn out even to express my irritation at his words; I closed my eyes, wiping the sweat from my face with my shirtsleeve. With a mute wave of my still trembling hand, I asked for water; Burke proffered me the glass, then went to get a towel and bent down to wipe my forehead.

‘Forgive me, Mr Bellamy,' he murmured without looking at me.

We left Munich one morning in late May. The chauffeur was waiting for us with the engine running; Burke had him load a large suitcase into the car, and I wondered what on earth could be in it. We boarded a plane for Berlin, then carried on to Vilnius, where we spent the night. The next morning we hired a car and drove on towards Klaipeda; the road ran through gentle wooded hills, and we had a sky full of motionless white clouds above us throughout the journey.

Klaipeda is a white city which rises sharply out of the sand, opening up at the sea's edge into a mesh of straight roads, with a narrow spit of land in front of it which then broadens out to the south, trapping a branch of the sea; and that imprisoned sea looks somehow solidified there among the sands; it has a dead gleam to it, revealing its nakedness, the scaly skin of its depths, the strips of tiny shells which run across it like the exhausted veins of some former seam of precious metal. Two of the best rooms in the most luxurious hotel in town awaited us; the vast expanse of open sea visible through the light-filled windows gave me a sense of weariness. I glanced at my rucksack on the bed, at the new clothes Burke had bought for me, and felt myself doubly a prisoner. My benefactor, on the other hand, was clearly ever more exhilarated by the prospect of the chase; that night at dinner he ordered champagne to celebrate our undertaking.

‘So where shall we begin, Mr. Bellamy? It's you who must now take over the reins!' he said excitedly, raising his foaming glass.

We signed up for an intensive course in Lithuanian, put on in Klaipeda by the University of Vilnius. My heart was beating hard as we entered the lecture hall on the ground floor of a small building by the sea; an usher was arranging the seats and laying green folders on the desks. The first row was occupied by a group of silent Africans, all wearing tracksuits and peering around with a bewildered air. Burke and I took our places at the back of the hall, both of us with our eyes on the main door.

‘Have you ever attended a course in a foreign language before, Mr Burke?' I asked him as I leafed through the folder.

‘Only a bit of business English. Languages have never been my forte. I feel a bit of a clown when I try to speak English; I fear that no one is going to take me seriously. It reminds me of when I was a child and would put on my mother's clothes as a joke, and look at myself in the mirror and shudder.'

‘You'll see – you're bound to learn something even without trying!' I told him kindly, feeling myself to be something of an authority on the subject.