The Safety Net (39 page)

Oh yes, now she remembered for whom she had made the éclairs, it was Bleibl: she had asked him what his favorite pastries were, and he had answered: “At teatime, éclairs—I’m looking forward to coming.”

She held the young woman back when Blurtmehl walked to the car with the boy, and said: “Stay with us, it’s a bad day
and it’s going to get worse.”

Tolm stood at the window, probably waiting for his birds, certainly for the owl, but it wouldn’t be flying that early; it wouldn’t be deceived by the somber sky and the darkness over the park, it only flew at dusk, and that was still another hour or two away. Maybe a few crows would come, the swallows had already left. He didn’t turn to her, sounded so dry, almost morose, as, barely turning his head, he said: “I managed to get hold of him, of Dollmer—they won’t give me the letter. Nobody’s going to get it, he says it’s dynamite.”

“So no funeral, no oration, no nostalgia in the glades of Horrnauken?”

“No oration, no, no funeral in Horrnauken, but a different one in Hetzigrath … yes, Käthe.” And at last he turned, put his arms around her, laid his head on her shoulder, smiled at Miss Klensch, and said: “They got him, buying shoes in Istanbul. He is dead, they say he killed himself. Not Veronica, she’s disappeared, gone to earth, she wasn’t with him.…”

“Shoes,” she said, “that means … under the umbrella.… Tolm, I won’t say another word. I can’t even cry. Eva, please, make us some tea, a big pot of strong tea.”

“In future we’ll do what we did in the hotel in Moscow: write notes and flush them down the toilet, but they’ll invent baskets to catch the scraps of paper, pick them out of the shit, and stick them together. Just a moment, I have something to tell you.…” He pulled away from her, went to the desk, tore a strip off the newspaper, wrote something on it, and brought it to her. She read: “I love you, I’ve always loved you, the children too, even him, don’t say anything.…”

She kissed him, tore up the note, went into the bathroom, and flushed it down the toilet.

“He’s going to be buried here?”

“Yes, I’m paying for the transportation. I insisted that he be buried here—they’ve had to put his father away. Dollmer is demanding his price: silence about the letter. Don’t speak,
Käthe, don’t speak, we have to get used to writing again. By the way, the vicarage in Hubreichen is empty, maybe for good. There would be room for us all there, even Herbert and Blurtmehl—it would only need a bit of remodeling, it would be easy to protect and keep under surveillance—lovely trees.…”

“Owls in the church tower—little screech owls in the rafters of the barns, I shudder at the thought, Tolm.”

“Don’t you shudder here?”

“I do, and in Hubreichen I’ll shudder too—everywhere. I …” She took the ballpoint from his waistcoat pocket, went to the desk, tore off the top of the front page, and wrote along the edge: “Never again will I be able to buy shoes, never again. Luckily Sabine takes my size—but I won’t be needing many more shoes, not me.”

Bleibl was punctual and turned up carrying a magnificent bouquet: white lilac and red roses veiled in yellow mimosa. He brought the flowers in himself, removed the paper, and she was surprised to see how serious he looked, pensive in a way; changed, like Tolm and the boy. The day of great changes: of the frozen grandson, of a newly determined Tolm, of a pensive Bleibl, who even helped—although it was not quite “done”—to arrange the flowers in a tall vase. How surprising, those hands of his—she had never noticed them before: strong and slender, very different from that quite brutal-looking face, the knobbly, knotty nose, the totally bald head that had not exposed a well-formed cranium. He looked in frank admiration at Eva Klensch as she brought in the tea and the rose-patterned china dish with the freshly made éclairs.

“I’m actually going to have some tea,” he said, nodding to them, and, dropping his voice, added: “I’ve heard the news, I’ve heard all about it—including the change of cemetery. You know, they’ll have your head for this.…”

“Yes,” said Tolm, “I know, I’ll be glad to get rid of it—this head of mine.…”

“Stabski has asked me to have one more talk with you. But
I know it’s no use—is it?”

“It’s no use, Bleibl, you can save yourself the trouble.”

“It’s a funny thing but I was sure you would be adamant, although you’re the least adamant person I know. Today, I don’t know why, I knew you wouldn’t change your mind. I’m glad for your sake—not for ours, no, not for ours—and not because of the brief tenure. President for a day, that’s pretty embarrassing, and not even because of that—you were the right man for us, and I never intended to destroy you, never. All I wanted to do was force you to be tenacious, in fact to train you.…”

“So now you’ve succeeded.… Don’t eat too many éclairs, they’re very deceptive—watch it!—won’t you change your mind and have a whiskey?”

“No, later, I’d like to be sober when I talk to you both.…”

His eyes followed Eva Klensch with unconcealed desire after she had brought in the milk, lemon, and sugar. “My God,” he said, “who is that woman?”

“Forget it, she’s spoken for, she’s Blurtmehl’s girlfriend.”

“I’d marry her on the spot.”

“You’ve …” Käthe poured the tea and blushed.

“Married too often on the spot—that’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it?”

“More or less—not exactly—but please, not her, Bleibl … please.…”

“I’ve never yet taken somebody else’s wife away, never—I hope you realize that. Someone took mine—that goddamn leftist aesthete, that Botticelli-worshipper—and that’s a fact.”

“Do you still hanker after Margret?”

“No, not the least little bit. It’s just that: you may laugh but I’ve always respected commitments, so never fear: your masseur’s in no danger of losing that exquisite flower.” It was strangely alarming to see him cry, suddenly burst into tears, the brutal-looking face dissolve, under the heavy upper lip, the unexpectedly narrow lower lip, the face twitching with emotion. “Oh, my God, Kortschede,” he muttered, “and now that goddamn boy—if you only knew what I have in the vault, I’ve
got something down there in the vault.” No, there was nothing humorous about the way he nodded through his tears when Tolm held out the whiskey bottle. “Goddammit, do you know how that terrible boy, that mathematical genius, killed himself—no? They don’t tell you that kind of secret, do they? Dollmer has already given the thing a name: the hands-up-spring-gun-machine. You don’t understand, do you? That boy built himself a kind of waistcoat that went off when he put his hands up! One half inward, the other—the left—outward: a kind of mini-rocket-launcher to be worn over the chest like a flat life jacket. They’re still taking the thing apart. Killed a Turkish policeman, severely wounded a German, and as for himself—well, you can imagine what he looks like—madness—in any event Dollmer is now scared to death of anyone putting his hands up. And now this letter of Kortschede’s, which must be terrible.…”

“Have you seen it?”

“No, no one has, apart from Dollmer, Stabski, Holzpuke, and the two officers who found Kortschede. Total blackout. Incidentally, Zummerling hasn’t seen it either.”

“And it was written to me?”

“Yes, I believe it starts with ‘My dear Fritz’—and then I’m sure come some grim prophecies—about the environment, nuclear energy and growth and banks and industry—they’re bound to be grim—it was written to you, and you have the right to receive it. See to it that you get your rights, and make sure, both of you, that no one—no one, do you hear?—finds out about the funeral in Hetzigrath. I suppose I’ll have to give the oration in Horrnauken. You won’t object if we say you’re ill, seriously ill? I suppose he doesn’t have any relatives left? You know they had to actually put his father into a straitjacket.”

“He has an aunt still living, she should …”

“She should nothing.…” He spoke very softly, had tears in his eyes again. “Keep her out of it, don’t take anyone with you! Don’t say anything to your children either … please, please, no crowds, no scenes—I wouldn’t put it past Sabine …” He poured himself some tea, took another éclair.

“You’re right,” said Tolm. “I wouldn’t put it past Sabine to come along.”

“Fischer’s coming back because of Kortschede, cutting his trip short. So she’s not likely to go to Horrnauken. He’s going to make trouble for you, even more after the funeral, and with more valid arguments … that uncle, that uncle’s girlfriend—and now these grandparents! Oh, it’s a shame that Sabine’s left Fischer! Good God, what an idiot, a woman like that—and he leaves her, leaves her alone! I would never have left a woman like that alone, I never left Hilde alone either, there was only that vault I couldn’t take her into—I was alone down there, lonely, and no one noticed, scared to death, and no one noticed. Funny, when I was talking to Dollmer just now, and later when Stabski phoned me, when I heard all about it, how that terrible boy, surrounded by shoeboxes, set off his hands-up device—and they were all ladies’ shoes size thirty-eight which he had had sent up to the hotel to choose from—I don’t know, but suddenly I was able to get out of that vault—I had to cry, I cried all morning, and I was glad that the girl—your Veronica—wasn’t in the room … was glad against my own convictions, I hope she’ll turn up alive, hope it against my own convictions, against all my principles. You two are going to be very lonely after this funeral, very lonely—you know that?”

“Yes,” she said, “we always have been, really, we just weren’t aware of it, didn’t want to know it.” She poured him some whiskey, but he not only shook his head, he shook himself, and without embarrassment wiped the tears from his eyes with his handkerchief, lifted the teacup, put it down again without drinking, looked toward the door through which Eva had disappeared. My God, how much sadness there must be in him, and what in the world was that vault where he had sat all alone and had come out of? And whyever had he had to marry them all right away—he’d had no children from any of them except Hilde, his Number One, who had been the nicest, nicer even than Number Three, whose peasant-girl arrogance had sometimes been too much for her, that austere beauty really
had despised everything except herself, and had sold herself at a high enough price.

Tolm remained distrustful, almost cold, Bleibl’s tears obviously embarrassed him; he gave an impression that was entirely new: he seemed determined. “All right then,” he said quietly, “you can say I am ill—I leave the details to you. And we’ll keep his aunt out of it. Just the two of us—and the gravediggers.”

“No priest?”

“No, he wouldn’t have wanted it, and I’d like to respect that. Besides, the Hetzigrath priest at Beverloh’s grave?” He laughed. “No, he’d die on us from fear. No, Käthe can say a prayer, he wouldn’t have minded that. Perhaps Veronica will turn up—or phone. I am sure Kortschede would have understood.”

Thirty-three years, she thought, and they had never exchanged a sensible word, not one; never anything but that joshing and mild flirting, and finding some common ground: now the dollar was falling again, and gold rising, because somewhere there had been a putsch, she didn’t even know by whom against whom, had merely glanced at the financial section of the paper; and the dollar would rise again, and gold would fall because somewhere else someone else had started a putsch, never mind against whom.

“You can stay for supper,” she said, “if you like, and of course you can sleep here too, your apartment is free now. Kulgreve has had it all fixed up again.”

“No, no,” said Bleibl, “thanks, but no. You two have no idea what you have set in motion with this funeral, what utter confusion you have caused, it’s going to deprive at least a hundred police officers of their leave or day off, and Stabski and Dollmer their sleep, and Holzpuke will be cursing: he has enough on his hands in Horrnauken. It’s madness, Tolm, what you have in mind, sheer madness—I can’t talk you out of it—or you, Käthe, or you him?”

“No, you can’t. Is that why you came, or because you—because you’ve managed to get out of your vault?”

“I came to see you both, to talk to you, that was all arranged before—you know that. It’s simply that Stabski and Dollmer urged me to grasp the opportunity—you can’t imagine … it’s madness, Tolm. Even if the cemetery authorities keep mum, and the gravediggers too—a hundred police officers won’t keep mum.…”

“You misunderstand me—I’m neither asking for it to be kept secret, nor do I want it to become known. I’m simply going to a funeral. I want that boy Heinrich to be returned to the earth from which he was made—from which I too am made—that’s all. I’m not trying to prove anything, one way or another, and I know that Kortschede wrote me that letter so that I would get it, read it, and perhaps make use of it. I am honoring his memory and his intention by
not
going to Horrnauken. After all, we knew Heinrich as a child, as a boy—no, you won’t talk me out of it—how about you, Käthe?”

“No, if it were possible I would say: even less so. Even without you I would have gone to this funeral. But of course I’d rather go with you.”

“That’ll be totally misinterpreted, totally, both consciously and unconsciously—three days after your election.… Would you change your mind if you were to get the letter after all?”

“Don’t tell me you have it in your pocket?”

“Don’t be so unkind! No, I haven’t, I haven’t even seen it. I’m just thinking of alternatives. You in Horrnauken, Käthe in Hetzigrath—for your own sakes, believe me, for your own sakes. I care no more than you do for these pompous funerals.”

“It’s too late, Bleibl, too late, the letter is mine anyway, and even if I were to get it—I’ve made up my mind.…”

“You must admit the Horrnauken funeral is one of your official duties.…”

“Which I am neglecting, and for which, as you say, I am risking my head.… Forget it, Bleibl, stay for supper, have a drink with us—let’s celebrate the vault we’ve emerged from, you and I. I know: they’ll say I’ve become senile. Never mind—I’ll make it easy for you to get rid of me, let Amplanger finally
have his turn. I’m glad you came, stay awhile, we might have a game of cards? I’d enjoy that.”

“No, thanks, I have to leave. I still have to have a word with Hilde—I have a favor to ask. Would you put in a good word for me in that quarter, Käthe?”