‘I’ll switch places with you right now.’ Ismaïl Adrià meant it.
‘Fine. But we can’t. We are condemned to envy each other.’
‘What must that lady in front of us be thinking?’
Kemal watched her as she obstinately contemplated the landscape that was now urban but equally grey and rainy. Kemal was relieved to give up his brooding since, although he was quite offended, it was a lot of work to maintain. Like someone distilling a great thought: ‘I don’t know. But I’m convinced her name is Ursula.’
Ursula looked at him. She opened and closed her purse, perhaps to cover up her discomfiture, thought Kemal.
‘And she has a son our age,’ added Ismaïl.
As it headed uphill, the cart began to moan and the cart driver cracked the whip hard against the horses’ backs. The slope was too steep to take with twenty men on board, but a bet was a bet.
‘You can start digging in your pockets, sergeant!’ said the cart driver.
‘We’re not at the top yet.’
The soldiers, who wanted to taste the pleasure of seeing the sergeant lose a bet, held their breath as if that could help the poor beasts make it up the slope to where the houses of Vet began. It was a slow, agonising ascent, and when they finally reached the top, the driver laughed and said Allah is great, and so am I! And my mules too! What do you think, sergeant?
The sergeant handed the cart driver a coin and Kemal and Ismaïl stifled a smile. To shake off the humiliation, the subordinate shouted orders: ‘Everyone down. Have the Armenian assassins get ready!’
The cart driver lit a small cigar, satisfied, as he watched the soldiers, armed to the teeth, get down off the cart and head to the first house in Vet, ready for anything.
‘Adrià?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Huh?’
Adrià looked forward. Ursula was adjusting her jacket and looked out on the landscape again, apparently uninterested in the young Turks and their concerns.
‘Maybe her name is Barbara.’
‘Huh?’ He made an effort to return to the bus. ‘Yes. Or Ulrike.’
‘If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come to see you.’
‘If you’d known what?’
‘That you wouldn’t like my story.’
‘Rewrite it. But put yourself inside Amadeu.’
‘Elisa is the protagonist.’
‘Are you sure?’
Silence from the young Turks. After a short while: ‘Well, have a look at that. You tell it from Amadeu’s point of view and …’
‘All right, all right, all right. I’ll rewrite it. Happy?’
On the platform, Bernat and Adrià hugged each other and Frau Ursula thought goodness, these Turks, here, in the light of day, and she continued towards the B sector of the platform, which was considerably further on.
Bernat, still with his arms around me, said thank you, son of a bitch, I really mean it.
‘You really mean the son of a bitch or the thank you?
‘Really what you said about dissatisfaction.’
‘Come back whenever you want, Bernat.’
They had to run along the platform because they didn’t realise they were supposed to be waiting at sector C. Frau Ursula was already seated when she saw them pass by and she thought Holy Mother of God, how scandalous.
Bernat, panting, got into the train car. After almost a minute I saw that he was still standing, talking to someone, gesturing, adjusting his rucksack and showing his ticket. Now I don’t know if I should get on and help him or let him figure it out for himself so he doesn’t get cross with me. Bernat leaned over to look through the window and I flashed him a smile. He sat with a weary gesture and looked at him again. When you say goodbye to a dear friend at the station, you have to leave when he’s got into the train carriage. But Adrià was lingering. He smiled back at him. They had to look away. They both looked at their watches at the same time. Three minutes. I screwed up my courage and waved goodbye; he barely shifted in his seat, and I left without looking back. Right there in the station I bought the Frankfurter Allgemeine and, as I waited for the bus to take me back, I paged through it, wanting to focus on something that wasn’t Bernat’s bittersweet lightning-fast visit to Tübingen. On page 12, a headline on a single column of a brief article. ‘Psychiatrist murdered in Bamberg.’ Bamberg? Baviara. My God, why would anyone want to kill a psychiatrist?
‘Herr Aribert Voigt?’
‘Yes, that’s me.’
‘I don’t have an appointment. I’m very sorry.’
‘That’s fine, come in.’
Doctor Voigt politely let death in. The newcomer sat in the sober chair in the waiting room and the doctor went into his examining room saying I will see you shortly. From the waiting room the rustle of papers and file cabinets being opened and closed could be heard. Finally, the doctor poked his head out into the waiting room and asked death to come in. The newcomer sat where the doctor had indicated, while Voigt sat in his own chair.
‘How can I help you?’
‘I’ve come to kill you.’
Before Doctor Voigt had time to do anything, the newcomer had stood up and was pointing a Star at his temple. The doctor lowered his head with the pressure of the pistol’s barrel.
‘There’s nothing you can do, Doctor. You know death comes when it comes. Without an appointment.’
‘What are you, a poet?’ without moving his head that was inches away from the desk, starting to sweat.
‘Signor Falegnami, Herr Zimmermann, Doctor Voigt … I am killing you in the name of the victims of your inhuman experiments at Auschwitz.’
‘And what if I tell you that you’ve got the wrong person?’
‘I’d laugh my head off. Better not to try it.’
‘I’ll pay you double.’
‘I’m not killing you for money.’
Silence, the doctor’s sweat is already dripping off the tip of his nose, as if he were in the sauna with Brigitte. Death felt he had to clarify: ‘I kill for money. But not you. Voigt, Budden and Höss. We were too late for Höss. Your own victims are killing you and Budden.’
‘Forgive me.’
‘Now that’s hilarious.’
‘I can give you information on Budden.’
‘Oh, we’ve got a traitor. Give it to me.’
‘In exchange for my life.’
‘In exchange for nothing.’
Doctor Voigt stifled a sob. He struggled to pull himself together but was unable. He closed his eyes and began to cry with rage against his will.
‘Come on! Do it already!’ he shouted.
‘Are you in a hurry? Because I’m not.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Let’s do an experiment. Like one of the ones you did on your mice. Or your children.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’
‘Who’s there?’ he wanted to lift his head, but the pistol didn’t allow him to.
‘Friends, don’t worry.’ Clicking his tongue impatiently, ‘Come on, let’s have that information on Budden.’
‘I don’t have any.’
‘Oy! You want to save him?’
‘I don’t give a shit about Budden. I regret what I’ve done.’
‘Lift your head,’ said death, grabbing his chin and roughly forcing his head up. ‘What do you remember?’
Before him, dark, silent shadows, like in an exhibit in a parish centre, held up a panel with photos: men with their eyes destroyed, a weepy boy with his knees opened like pomegranates, a woman they performed a caesarean section on without anaesthesia. And a couple more he didn’t recognise.
Doctor Voigt started crying again and shouting help and save me. He didn’t stop until the shot sounded out.
‘Psychiatrist murdered in Bamberg’. ‘Doctor Aribert Voigt was killed with a shot to the head in his office in the Bavarian city of Bamberg’. I had been in Tübingen for a couple of years. Nineteen seventy-two or seventy-three, I’m not sure. What I do know is that during those long frozen months I suffered over Kornelia. I couldn’t have known anything about Voigt yet because I hadn’t read the letter in Aramaic and I didn’t know as many things as I know now, nor did I want to write you any letters. I had exams in a couple of weeks. And every day I met another of Kornelia’s secrets. Perhaps I didn’t read that, Sara. But it was in that period when someone killed a psychiatrist in Bamberg and I was unable to imagine that he was more closely linked to my life than Kornelia and her secrets were. Life is so strange, Sara.