The Safety Net (13 page)

Fear was already known to him in the years before that, on his occasional sorties from libraries and archives, from improvised schoolrooms, in search of a girl perhaps, or a woman. He recalled the baronial archives, the episcopal librarians, the “dreamers” in clerical institutions who had been the nicest; recalled the compassion shown him by young schoolteachers and waitresses, and by him to them, no doubt; recalled the wistful longing in the eyes of many a baroness that had filled him with fear, though he had engaged in “let’s take pity on each other” with a countess; after all, though, Gerlind hadn’t been married. He had never been subjected to any direct political pressure, and he still had no idea whether and to what extent he would have succumbed to such pressure, hadn’t known even
when he took over the paper; he found his political impeccability uncanny, and the British found it incomprehensible, they simply had to accept it. Sometimes—briefly—he speculated on those potential careers as museum director, or minister of state, resident in Eickelhof, and surely they would have had enough to live on that way too, and many things might, might have turned out differently, Rolf might not have gone to prison, Sabine would never have met that fellow Fischer, and Herbert might have become a little more realistic; perhaps even Veronica and Heinrich might—oh well, perhaps they had all gone a bit too far laughing at his “little paper,” he, Käthe, the children, and his friends—head of a museum, that would have been the right thing, minister less so, that would have landed him right in all that Party crap.

It suddenly occurred to him that Veronica always phoned Käthe, never him, and that made him laugh: could it be that he was jealous because she never phoned him, only Sabine and Käthe, not even Rolf, of whom she was probably afraid? And of course not—even for kicks—that fellow Fischer, he had only phoned him once himself, in dire necessity, begging him somehow, please somehow, to arrange for Rolf to earn a little money at the Beehive, even if only as a packer or a sweeper. No, Fischer had categorically refused because they had named their little boy Holger even
after
it had happened, and Fischer made it very clear that he had no intention of allowing his workers “to be contaminated by a person like that.” But, come to think of it, there had been a Holger Danske, there was also a minister-president by that name and, last but not least, Holger Count Tolm, who, somewhere between Málaga and Cádiz, was trying (usually in vain, so he had been told) to seduce female tourists, preferably English and Swedish but in a pinch German too. Well, perhaps it
was
a needless defiance to call another son Holger when one already had a son by that name.

Why did Veronica never phone him? He had never done anything to hurt her, she had always been nice to him, and he to her, although he had never done what Käthe and Herbert
probably had: given her money. Käthe was surprisingly open-handed when it came to spending money, was more generous than he, and that could hardly be due to environment. His father had on principle spent half his meager salary on land, on poor soil, in his insatiable greed for acreage. Käthe’s father had also been no more than a permanently bankrupt nurseryman, her mother had secretly worked nights cleaning in stores, secretly because the neighbors mustn’t be allowed to know what everyone knew: that she worked as a cleaning woman. That had all been very modest, even more modest than their own lives, yet she was quite without inhibitions or complexes, felt neither shame nor triumph when she sometimes spent considerable sums at the dressmaker’s or took a taxi to Café Getzloser.

He was sure Sabine hadn’t given Veronica any money, Fischer would see to that, he kept her pretty short. He’d only do something, give something, if it improved his image: horses and clothes for pictures of Sabine, sometimes with, sometimes without Kit, that dear little granddaughter of his whom he so seldom saw. Fischer had coolly arranged for her to be voted “most charming child of the month,” in May, in a riding habit, barely four years old. The “most charming child of the month” was Fischer’s invention: the pictures were published in illustrated weeklies, in Sunday supplements, even his own paper was not exempt, those adorable little creatures popped up on all sides, always displaying Beehive fashions, and Beehive, as almost everyone knew, stood for: Fischer. Sometimes nostalgic, recalling a Renoir or a Rubens, sometimes provocative, as if already in training for striptease, leather-clad and languid, then again exotic, Sicilian, Andalusian—now even Russian in anticipation of the Olympics. The most charming child of the month always wore Beehive, and from among the twelve would be chosen the most charming child of the year; and it had to be Bleibl who had seen it in the paper, told him that Sabine was pregnant again, an item in connection with some equestrian event! Amplanger had sent up the clipping: “Sabine Fischer, one of our greatest hopes, has unfortunately had to withdraw
as she is expecting.” That was how he discovered that a new baby was on the way, and he could imagine how Rolf, on reading it, would feel like “throwing up” yet grind his teeth with glee at the unmasking of the system, “the inexorably mounting prostitutional elements of the system.”

Blurtmehl let out some bath water—added more hot, asked him to exercise his legs: true enough, this was easy in the water, they became light and would probably have stayed light had his paper not weighed like lead in his limbs—a light-footed museum director and a light-footed—no, not minister, but perhaps state secretary. Those birds against the gray sky with the deceptively white clouds, those idyllic formations for which they had to thank the power stations: the clouds moving along as if created by God’s own hand, white, calm, richly varied, yet they came from Hetzigrath, must have been brought forth by the coal that had lain below Eickelhof, also created by God’s hand that it might bring forth divine clouds, almost a fine afternoon, already poetically darkened by the dusk. Even swallows flew into his field of vision; among all the swifts, the swallows were his favorites, especially the house martins, nimble, beautiful birds, skillful and intelligent. But his special favorites were the soarers: buzzards, falcons, hawks. He loved the falcons that were still nesting in the tower: where would they fly to when Kortschede’s prediction came true? Soaring and sailing through the sky with scarcely a wingbeat. And over and over again the thought of the owl taking off from the tower when dusk began to fall and flying toward the edge of the forest, soundlessly, with a round wingbeat. Sometimes, too, he saw pigeons from Kommertz’s dovecote—how strange: he didn’t like pigeons, didn’t like their cooing and clucking as they nested in wall crannies, didn’t like their flight, and wondered why he preferred the birds of prey: watching them in the gray, white-streaked square of sky from his bathtub while Blurtmehl felt his pulse at intervals, and nodded, which meant: no need to worry.

All he really wanted was to spend the rest of his life observing birds in flight, drinking tea, watching Käthe knit,
listening to her play Beethoven in her wonderfully amateurish way, “richly” as she called it; and now he had not only the one enormous, senseless office at his paper but also a second enormous, senselessly large one, was required to fill both “with his personality,” and hadn’t even known that his daughter was expecting a baby, had to be told by Bleibl of all people, who had seen it in the sports section of all places; new blood, although it wasn’t a young Tolm, only a Fischer.

One thing was certain, anyway: there was a young Tolm called Holger, and he prompted frequent speculations on strange problems of inheritance: if they killed off Rolf as a renegade, and himself as newly elected president, a nice chunk would be left for this seven-year-old boy as Rolf’s direct heir, for this grandson whom he hadn’t seen for three years, with whom, when the boy was still a toddler, he had fed ducks in the park, as he had with Kit. Had, had, had—not even this was considered advisable now, since that day not long ago when one duck had veered off, in a completely unnatural way, from the flock that was so charmingly patterning the dark water; it swam toward the shore, and out of the bushes rushed Hendler, the young security guard, shouting “Take cover! Down!” and thrusting Kit and himself down onto the grass, flinging himself beside them, while the duck, which later turned out to be made of wood, ended its unnatural course at a projecting piece of turf and began to spin even more unnaturally. Hendler had taken it for a floating bomb, camouflaged as a duck or hidden inside the duck. Fortunately he was mistaken, but the upshot was a detailed investigation leading to a kitchen maid’s tearful confession. She had discovered the wooden duck in the basement, cleaned it, and set it adrift, “for fun,” as she put it. He had great difficulty in preventing the dismissal of the maid and a report in the press, partly due to the fact of its being an idea, a notion, that someone might pick up. Ever since then he had been suspicious of the ducks, he even began to distrust the birds he had so long enjoyed observing. Presumably it was possible to develop remote-control mechanical birds which, filled with
high explosives, would suddenly switch to horizontal flight and fly through an open window bearing havoc in their artificial breasts, in their artificial bellies. With the exception, he supposed, of swallows, sparrows, crows. But pigeons, perhaps, starlings, storks, and wild geese—whole flights, all mechanical, all bearing havoc, and he found himself saying, to Bleibl of all people: “Even the birds of the air aren’t to be trusted anymore.” Whereupon Bleibl answered: “Nor the cake delivered to your house by the baker.” Yes, ever since the affair of Pliefger’s birthday cake they had all their baking done at home, if not exactly under supervision, at least with considerable precautions.

That affair of the birthday cake had been a perfect example of the meticulous precision of the planning: someone must have known the baker, must have made exact notes of the delivery van’s route, known the moment at which the railway barrier was lowered. The baker’s van had been forced by a blue Ford to slow down so that it had to stop just as the barrier was lowered; the blue Ford had repeatedly squeezed in front of the bakery van, at places where the van couldn’t pass, and at the barrier the genuine cake had been exchanged for the “hot” one—the genuine one being found subsequently in a garbage can near the barrier. And if somebody hadn’t phoned and warned Pliefger—he always hoped it might have been Veronica, who loved to phone: unthinkable. Only Beverloh could have been behind this, he was always said to be “figuring, figuring, figuring.” They had copied the cake exactly, TO OUR WONDERFUL BOSS, ON HIS SIXTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY—and nothing, nothing, the interrogation of the baker, of his family, of the apprentices and staff, of the neighborhood, the examination of the phone lines—nothing had brought any suspect to light. The ladies in Pliefger’s office, who had ordered the cake, thought up the text and the decoration (forget-me-nots on white icing), had sobbed hysterically. Everything about the cake had been just right, even the weight; and if Pliefger had cut it, as anticipated, he would have been torn to shreds—Pliefger, his predecessor, “And you can’t even trust
the bread on your table anymore, nor the packet of cigarettes you tear open.…” Since the Plotteti affair.

No doubt they had enough money, perhaps even from Käthe, to hatch such birds, also enough imagination, certainly Veronica did; might have a flock of thirty wild geese (sweeping through the night!) rigged up. Aimed at the manor, they could have the effect of an ultramodern rocket launcher. Why not? With the highly intelligent, minute electronic brains now available, with which, among other things, Bleibl made his money, and of course he hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, not even to Käthe, let alone Bleibl, who could have commissioned one of his highly qualified physicists or engineers to take up this idea, if only to produce a new armaments hit, or merely “to enliven the ballistic discussion.”

And then, of course, Holzpuke might have been inspired to stretch steel nets across the sky above and around the manor: no more birds, no more clouds, even if they did consist only of Hetzigrath steam. He wanted to go on enjoying his view of the park, the sky, wanted to go on smoking his cigarette with his own hand, blow out the match with his own lips, go on feeding the ducks with Kit, from the terrace—from there one could throw the bread crumbs farther, guide the flocks, produce patterns—at night the owl, the little screech owls, the bats, whose flight habits he didn’t know. In his dreams eagles came, vultures, with enormous wingspan, flying straight and hard at him, exploding breast to breast against him, in fire and smoke, with a roar that still sounded in his ears long after he had awoken and grasped Käthe’s hand, seeking comfort in her warmth, her pulsebeat. Or he would quietly get up, ring for Blurtmehl, and have him rub his icy feet with ointment. And there had been moments during the day, too, when he flinched at the sight of a pigeon or a swallow flying toward the manor, sometimes just a sparrow, and he had to hold on to himself not to scream the way Kortschede had done.

Blurtmehl cautioned: “Not too long, sir,” and he allowed
himself to be helped out of the tub, onto the table to be rubbed down with aromatic oils, wrapped in the big bath towel, rubbed and patted dry by Blurtmehl, who discreetly covered his genitals and told him to make treading movements, “treading air,” he called that.… It wasn’t easy, mind you, to find a mechanical solution to the difference between a flying object and a bird, one realistic enough to prevent detection: could the nuances in a bird’s movements be imitated to that degree, considering that the explosive hidden in the flying object required its own mechanism that had to be inserted and hidden and still function? Come to think of it, mechanical birds were nothing new, and he recalled a conversation with Veronica on the terrace in Eickelhof, when Veronica had maintained that artificial birds flew “more naturally” than real ones, just as wound-up toy birds “walk more naturally than real ones.…”

With his gentle hands, Blurtmehl stopped the “air treading” and began to massage the soles of his feet, asking him to report any pain, even the slightest, soon declared himself satisfied, noting a surprising relaxation, probably due to the disappearance of his fear in exchange for curiosity and fantasy. The oil felt good, as did Blurtmehl’s hands; and now, his head slightly raised, he could even look out on the terrace and into the moat, and he wondered: Might it be Blurtmehl after all? Weren’t there those mysterious, tiny bolts that could be catapulted into a person’s brain? And after all, why shouldn’t it come from Blurtmehl himself, perhaps something was hatching in him, at a hidden level, that might suddenly provoke the stranglehold? And without question he was sufficiently versed in anatomy (he was forever taking refresher courses!) to disguise the consequences of a stranglehold as an accident in the tub. Blurtmehl with his long, rather bony hands, with those gentle, sad eyes that masseurs and priests sometimes have in common. How much did “documented data” mean, after all? Born 1940 in Katowice, original name Blutwitzki or something like that; after dropping out of a Catholic boarding school, “disillusioned by postwar developments in Poland,” he had renounced his Polish
citizenship and taken the strange name of Blurtmehl, the etymology of which no one, not even Blurtmehl himself, had yet been able to explain to him. In the West he had not even tried to graduate from high school, had refused any and all assistance, became a male nurse and, although talented enough in the opinion of all who knew him, never did finish school in order to study medicine. He stayed with the nuns down south somewhere in the Allgäu, bought himself a surprisingly powerful and expensive motorcycle, tore around on it in his free time, at random through the countryside (whether seemingly or actually at random could never be established with complete certainty), from Munich to Hamburg and to Berlin (where no Eastern contacts could be detected), finally becoming manservant, masseur, and chauffeur to a bishop, whom he served for ten years, until that same bishop recommended him to Tolm. The bishop virtually made a present of him: “He’s irreplaceable, simply irreplaceable, but I’ll let you have him, provided he’s willing—you need him more than I do, in your position!” (He knew the bishop from his tutoring days, as well as from his art studies; the bishop had written his thesis on Hieronymus Bosch and had later crossed his path somewhere as a sergeant in the artillery—but otherwise it was always embarrassing when the bishops occasionally turned up in their organized solidarity, paid social calls, so to speak, because they wanted to “maintain contact with all social groups”—it was always a bit embarrassing because it inevitably led to some degree of servility, a bit of backslapping—those “We’re all in the same boat” gestures—and what did that mean, “in the same boat”? What boat? Weren’t they in the same boat as those poor prostitutes? No, this bishop was really a nice man, had the very ordinary first name of Hans and an even more common surname, was still interested in Hieronymus Bosch, and had genuinely meant to do him a favor.)