The Safety Net (14 page)

Well, Blurtmehl had been willing, had entered his service in 1971, and did turn out to be irreplaceable because of his skills as chauffeur, manservant, masseur, and because of his character—he
was the very soul of discretion, this slight, pleasant, quiet man who looked more like a monk manqué than a servant (or was there no contradiction there?), who looked as if he had no private life yet did: a mother whom he supported and a sister whom he visited periodically. They had kept their Polish-sounding name and lived near Würzburg, and not the slightest suspicion attached to either of those innocuous people; his brother-in-law was even with the police. Moreover—and this was the real surprise since actually he had always thought of Blurtmehl as a platonic homosexual, or even asexual—Blurtmehl had a girlfriend, thirty-two-year-old Eva Klensch, with whom he openly spent his free days and nights, went to restaurants, movies, the theater; for the last ten years, going back to his time with the bishop, his steady girlfriend.

Eva Klensch, who ran a boutique in Frankfurt: Israeli, Turkish, Arab-Palestinian knickknacks, caftans, and the like, made frequent trips—in the opinion of a number of security experts, according to Holzpuke, a little too frequent—to the Near East, had even set up a whole cottage-industry network in Palestinian refugee camps. Eva Klensch was by no means suspect, but neither could she be classified as “completely above suspicion,” and it was solely on her account that Blurtmehl had not been unreservedly accorded that rating. One never knew, did one, what was being whispered, what was being swapped, when she went shopping in the back alleys of Beirut and its surroundings, and near Nablus, not far from Damascus or Amman. And although she could be watched and searched via the customs—for mightn’t hashish or heroin be involved, if not politics?—even strict and lawful customs checks had never been able to turn up anything suspicious about Eva Klensch: a pretty, self-confident, businesslike young woman who made skillful and quite legal use of the fluctuating dollar exchange; nor did a perfectly normal and lawful tax audit turn up anything suspicious, apart from a few questionable expense vouchers such as could be found in any tax audit. Her hobby was archery, and here too she was successful, was district or regional champion
and always carried bow, target, and arrows with her in the car. Needless to say, her past history had also been investigated: at the age of thirteen, shortly before the Berlin Wall went up, she had come to the West with her father, an electro-welder, her mother, an armature winder, and her ten-year-old brother, by now a professional soldier with the Bundeswehr. An ambitious and successful student, she had graduated from middle school in Dortmund, had become first a saleswoman, then a buyer, in a department store; at twenty-one she had already opened her own boutique, with what was for her rather bold financing, and had since then even opened a branch, somewhere near Offenbach. Two years ago this attractive Eva Klensch had—a detail that, while not of itself disquieting, had surprised the investigators—converted to Catholicism, quite obviously under the influence of Blurtmehl, who—another surprise—had met her ten years earlier at a Socialist Party function.

These two details—Socialist Party and Catholicism—made him uneasy. Not that he would have had any objection to either one—apart from the Nuppertz traumata—no, he merely felt the lack of a certain consistency, and he was surprised, too, that Blurtmehl hadn’t married the girl long ago: there was something there that didn’t fit, or maybe
he
—that might be more to the point—didn’t fit anymore. Still: bow and arrow were silent weapons.

While Blurtmehl was massaging his neck, moving slowly to the shoulders, where he suspected “extensive rheumatism,” Tolm abstained from making an imaginative leap to Blurtmehl’s and Eva’s potential caresses. No doubt about it: Blurtmehl was known to be an open Socialist Party sympathizer, ever since his days with the bishop, and presumably Eva was too. After he, Tolm, had caught himself itching for months, out of sheer curiosity, to see a photo of this girl Eva (he could hardly expect Holzpuke to show him one!), Blurtmehl had voluntarily produced one, with the gentle remark: “That’s her, that’s my friend Eva!” and the words “That’s her” had confirmed him in his suspicion that Blurtmehl was indeed a mindreader. The
picture showed Eva as an extremely attractive, rather small, dark-haired woman with a pleasant bosom, merry eyes, and an intelligent mouth, booted, self-assured. Meanwhile he had learned that she was—something he had long ceased to be—a churchgoer, sometimes with Blurtmehl, usually without, when he would stay home and make breakfast. So this former bishop’s masseur, near-graduate of a Catholic boarding school, avid motorcyclist, had brought this young woman from a highly secular background into the bosom of the Church.

Would it be Eva’s hands, as slender as they doubtless were firm, from which Blurtmehl would receive “it,” transmitted via unfathomably complex Palestinian conspiracies, handed over or whispered in gloomy camps, discreetly passed along in Beirut, transmitted in code, decoded, implanted in Blurtmehl’s brain, where it fed and festered? And in the end, in the bathtub or during a massage, a gentle throttling, a pressing of the head under water! After all, Grebnitzer himself was skeptical about all those baths, so an accident in the tub was not unlikely; and the Palestinians had their own secret service, by this time his own grandson might very well be speaking their language. They weren’t short of money (money that, as Rolf had once again calmly remarked, “is your own money, energy money that flows dangerously back to you via Libya, Syria, or the Saudis—just so you know what money is capable of”).

There remained only one question, to which the answer contained some consolation: what good would it do them to kill him off without at least profiting by the publicity? No bombs, no machine pistols, no “hot” birthday cakes—just an accident in the bathtub—what would they get out of that? What good would it do them to prove their power without being able to demonstrate that power publicly?

Capitalist has accident in the bathtub! So what? What Käthe had sometimes offered him as consolation—his manifest, vouched-for humanity—might be his very undoing. After him it would be Amplanger’s turn, one of the “new men”: ruthlessly
dynamic, jovial, robust—his smile was enough to scare a person, and perhaps they needed him quickly to kill him off spectacularly, and could therefore get himself—Tolm—quietly out of the way. Amplanger stood for stock exchange, Olympic shooting team, tennis, Zummerling, and teeth-grinding ruthlessness. Perhaps they wanted to speed up Amplanger’s election—he, Tolm, radiated too many humanistic thoughts, self-doubts, too much capitalist melancholy. And damn it all, why didn’t they go for Bleibl, the most ruthless of the ruthless, who never felt a second’s pain, never an instant’s regret, when a few hundred more people perished somewhere in Bolivia or Rhodesia, while in himself there dwelled this sadness, this elemental sadness, fed by Rolf’s “front-line communiqués,” by Katharina’s analyses and reports; and no doubt it was precisely this authentic sadness whose television value Bleibl had recognized and craftily exploited to catapult him into his present position. Yet surely they knew that he might be bad in his weakness but not the worst, and perhaps that was his grim fate—not to be the worst; and what was the meaning of Veronica’s whisper over the telephone: “Don’t ever have tea at the Bleibls’ ”?

“Blurtmehl,” he said suddenly, from the depths of his musings, “do you believe in God, in this—in Jesus Christ?”

“Yes, of course, sir—do you?”

In terms of protocol, this riposte was an impertinence, completely at odds with the manservant tradition, it must be a Socialist Party element, and it really did go a little too far; also it was a shock because it was so unprecedented in Blurtmehl, yet he replied: “I do, Blurtmehl, I do too, even if I’m not quite sure who He is and where—but let me ask you one more question, forgive me if I seem too personal—what surprises you most about this strange world?”

“What surprises me most,” said Blurtmehl, as if he hadn’t had to think about it at all, had kept the reply to such a surprising question always up his sleeve, so to speak, “what surprises me most is the patience of the poor.”

That went deep, made him fall silent, was a truly surprising
answer that couldn’t have anything to do with the Socialist Party after all. The answer was older, went deeper, must have dwelled within Blurtmehl, and it hadn’t even been uttered in sadness: “the patience of the poor”—true, penetrating words from the lips of a masseur. And he was tempted to ask, but he refrained, it would have been too crude, too abominably stupid, this question: “Do you count yourself among the poor?” Besides, he was afraid to put the question, because the answer, which surely could only be no, might not be so certain after all. What if Blurtmehl had said yes—what a philosophical debate on poverty would have ensued, and he would have had to haul out his youthful struggle with poverty—which he hated doing, had never done even with his children, nor with Käthe incidentally: the constant hunger in his student days, and when he came home for the weekends no more milk soup, only potatoes, in every shape and form, mostly—because that was cheapest—in the form of potato salad, whereas if they were boiled some sort of sauce was needed and if they were fried at least a few scraps of margarine; because his father was going crazier all the time, diverting more and more of his salary to his wretched land purchases, stinting on heat and light—oh, those fifteen-watt bulbs in kitchen and basement, twenty-five-watt, at most, in the living room.

“Poor,” Blurtmehl volunteered, “is what I would call someone who owns no part of this earth, and”—he smiled almost condescendingly—“I do own half the property occupied by my girlfriend’s store.” He went rapidly through the finishing movements, passed his hands once more over him, then gave a pat to bottom and shoulders, and said, this time genuinely distressed: “I would have continued with the treatment, but I sense some resistance to me, perhaps a lack of trust.”

“No, no,” he said, while Blurtmehl handed him his underwear and shirt. “No, neither resistance nor distrust. I am merely speculating on who will get me, who and how, so I am going through everyone in my mind—even my sons, my wife, my
daughters-in-law—all my friends, my enemies—and you too, of course—maybe you happened to catch me at this thought.”

“But who would want to kill you? There’s no earthly reason.”

“Just because there is no reason—or can you see any reason or motive linked to certain people? Mr. Pliefger is the nicest boss and family man you can imagine—it’s not directed at individuals—in their way they are technocrats, separating business from emotions—I’m sure they still have emotions, maybe they are as nice as we are.”

The trousers he could manage, but not his socks and shoes, these he let Blurtmehl put on and lace up. Kneeling before him, Blurtmehl glanced up and said: “Yes, there’s no such thing as security—and yet there has to be a security system. By the way, this weekend I’ll take the liberty of introducing my friend Miss Klensch to you, if you have no objection. Your wife has kindly offered to put her up.”

“Oh, I’m glad to hear that, I hope she’s staying in the manor?”

“Your wife and Mr. Kulgreve were kind enough to place the guest apartment at her disposal.”

After Blurtmehl had brought in the tray with tea, toast, butter, lemon, and caviar, Käthe came into the room, looking tired, pale, a rare thing with her. He had seldom seen her pale, the last time had been at the news of Rolf’s arrest, then again when it became certain that Veronica had gone underground. And she had hardly ever looked so tired, almost old; he kissed her, was about to ask: “Anything wrong?” but she caressed his shoulder and said: “Don’t take it too hard, I realize you’ve never been able to say no—and they won’t harm you, not you … you’re so humane, and they know it.…”

“That’s one very good reason to harm me—just that, believe me.”

They had been advised not to use the terrace—it had been found to “jut out too far,” to be too “open,” too plainly visible from the edge of the forest, the tall trees, “like a rifle range”
Holzpuke had said (and Tolm had just recently had heating and automatic windows installed because he loved to sit there, particularly in fall and winter, and wait for the owl)—and Tolm hadn’t wanted to close off the forest and the park, free access being an ancient right (not even the stingiest and stupidest of the Tolm counts had ever denied the people that), and of course it was impossible to check up on each individual going for a walk there, there were so many, even from nearby villages, especially at weekends—so they had to stay indoors, to sit side by side over their tea, both looking out onto the park and toward the edge of the forest: “Just like at the movies or the theater!” Käthe had said.

She poured the tea, spread butter and caviar on toast for him. It still tasted good to him, it always did, and he couldn’t help looking into her eyes, deep and long, and there he discovered fear. She had seldom known fear, seldom in war or peace; fear of the low-flying planes, yes, and of the “Nazis and Protestants” in Dresden. Anger and rage: yes, over the loss of Eickelhof, sadness at the obliteration of Iffenhoven, where for six generations her ancestors had been buried. Fear rarely, not even when Rolf behaved so stupidly. Some people thought her cool and a bit apathetic, and no doubt that’s how she seemed when she had to take part in official functions. She didn’t do that very often, and only for his sake, she found it boring and time-consuming—on such occasions she was indeed cool but not apathetic, he would have called it imperturbable; she would say little, was quite the lady, wasn’t particularly impressed by ministers, presidents, or heads of staff, found the Shah “so dull as to be almost interesting,” and Banzer “more trite than God should ever permit,” those bloodhounds. She showed warmth only toward waiters and chefs, sought them out, praised the food, asked for recipes and how to prepare them, laughed with the cloakroom girl, chatted with the washroom attendants; and a shade of contempt came into her expression when she had to listen to dinner speeches or toasts to herself. Of course she was never rude, yet her manner toward dignitaries—and there was plenty of “top
brass” around, as she expressed it—was always a trifle patronizing, almost contemptuous, in any case cool and imperturbable.