Kienast made himself comfortable in the flower-patterned armchair abandoned by the cat, almost voluptuously stretching his limbs, like a person who, because he believes in the total homogeneity of the material and spiritual world, also believes he can feel at home in a strange place.
Kienast impudently reciprocated the young man’s disdain for mutuality, his defiance wrapped in apathy.
Does anyone smoke here, he asked after a few moments, when the flames were humming and hissing in the fireplace, which helped both men become used to the presence of the other.
Döhring said no but Kienast could light up anyway. He’d find an ashtray by the fireplace, and he pointed at it with the poker. He wanted the detective to be closer, let him come close to him and the fire; he loved the fire. Cigarette smoke didn’t bother him. He liked to light fires, play with fire, stare into fires. He found it hard to tear himself away from this one. Maybe his twin sister would grumble, but he liked that too, it actually made him feel good. It’s easy to get her mad and then it shows more clearly what sort of person each of them is.
He giggled a little at this, though the giggle turned into a rough and grating laugh, not a pleasant one.
He didn’t know Döhring had a twin sister, Kienast remarked, sounds like you don’t like her very much.
So what if he hates her.
They probably look alike.
Why wouldn’t they.
Unfortunately he’d left his cigarettes in the car, Kienast replied, and could Döhring help him out.
He asked for a cigarette mainly because he wanted to know what brand of cigarettes he’d find in the house. When he’d traveled seven hundred kilometers he wanted a fast return, if a small one. In the coat pocket of the dead man they’d found enough scraps of tobacco to determine the cigarette or brand of cigarettes he smoked, et cetera. During his illegal visit to the victim’s apartment in Fasanen Street the day before, Kienast had pocketed a suspiciously crumpled cigarette pack while the concierge helpfully looked the other way.
Experience told him that in such a much-crumpled pack he might find either grass or hash.
Presumably Döhring is lying in this and in other matters, but everything’s going along on its steady way. By now the lab technician has probably identified the tobacco.
Unfortunately there’s not a cigarette in the house, the unsuspecting Döhring answered. Unfortunately he can’t help. Even though he knows what this lack means to a smoker. Moreover, he added, for once he wouldn’t mind having a smoke himself. Because it’s a real shock for him that Dr. Kienast took his telephone calls seriously and really came all the way here.
He is not a heavy smoker either, Kienast remarked, very satisfied with Döhring’s response, but he’d driven seven hundred kilometers in one go and had even made a little detour into Düsseldorf.
It would be good to keep up the tone of this slow-to-start chat, and so he quickly continued, if he smoked four a day that would be too many for him.
Maybe one, unless I’m in company, Döhring responded willingly, though he did not answer like this because it was the truth.
Döhring indeed lied continuously, now to himself, now to others, which in itself caused no great problem for people. But he could not always neatly separate the two levels of his lies; he was too young for this, and his schizoid attacks further hindered him. Of course he kept no company of any sort and did not go anywhere, yet that’s how other people usually learned how to say things, and he thought he could say anything that others had said. And why would he share something about his private life, on any level, with a stranger, especially with such a miserable common man.
In that case, if I may trouble you, please let me have a nice glass of cold water, if you’d be kind enough, said the policeman after a silence and in a surprisingly quiet voice, as if he was testing him. Where are the limits to his self-contempt. He already had the impression in the Tiergarten that this young man had no one in the world, never had had and never would either, not a woman and not a man, or if he ever did he wouldn’t feel them on his skin.
Then the awful voice turned into a buzzing in his ears, perhaps his ears began to ring, which slowly roused his snoozing hypochondria.
Almost frightened, he repeated that he would not mind a nice glass of cold water.
But despite his deliberate intention he failed to surprise the young man with his request.
I can offer you some apple wine.
Apple wine, Kienast repeated hesitantly, as if this unusual suggestion, or perhaps the circumstance that this time he had found his match in deception and simulation, had somewhat startled him and made him think things over.
Maybe I should be a little apologetic, the apple wine is our own and frankly not of very high quality, he said with the same unpleasant laugh as before, but there’s not a single additive in it, I can assure you of that. Which by the way gives everyone headaches.
I have the feeling I’m dizzy from dehydration, so I’d be glad to have some apple wine or water, anything.
That’s the kind of thing people around here drink.
Since I left Berlin I’ve had nothing to drink.
He lied now to make the image he had given of his thirst sound spectacular. He wanted to draw the other man’s attention to himself, but this quickly became a fiasco.
Drink apple wine, make children, grow asparagus, and dry plums, that’s what people do in this region. The asparagus, which they also eat, they poison carefully and with due forethought.
Forgive me for burdening you with my request, said Kienast, who was not quite certain whether the young man was listening to him.
Mothers’ milk is poisoned with heavy metals. Other people’s apple wine is either stronger than ours, in which case they’ve mixed in a separate cancer-causing apple aroma, or weaker than ours, in which case it keeps its natural aroma, fortunately. These people’s obsession is that they must constantly choose between two bad things, and don’t forget these are my relatives, this is my extended family.
You’re probably expecting guests, perhaps your sister, and here I am bothering you with a weak spell.
Wholesale or retail, everyone deals in asparagus here — growing it, storing it, or selling it. My parents — which is to say our father and stepmother, because this woman is not our real mother, I’m telling you this so you understand everything — grow asparagus.
Perhaps I’m not being too forward, after all, by asking for a glass of water.
Or maybe I’ve already mentioned this.
No, you haven’t. I don’t remember your mentioning it.
I’m saying it because it doesn’t go in any other way except with effective plant-protective sprays. Don’t ever eat asparagus.
It’s very awkward if I’ve disturbed you with my visit.
Who said you’ve disturbed me in anything. I’m not doing anything, how could you have disturbed me.
I didn’t know that asparagus was so dangerous.
They’ve got this weak apple wine, they don’t really have anything else. They have money, though, but not under their pillows, they keep it under their skin. If you take just two steps over to Holland, you’ll see how much more modestly people live there. Yet we were the people who lost the last war. In the spring the trees get a little rinsing spray, nothing more.
Both of them stared wearily into the fire when they reached the end of what they had to say.
The detective had no response to Döhring’s last remark, the young man’s rigid isolation and deaf attitude having truly nonplussed him. Whether from the reflection of the flames or his sudden loquaciousness, his face seemed to be all heated up. The sight of his sick face and sick body strengthened Kienast’s aversion, touched with disgust; it gained shape. Which he himself could not accept. Their profession often exposes detectives to experiences they would prefer not to see or live through. He saw the young man in an agitated state that theoretically he should not have seen, even though it was the young man who had called him and even though he now had no way of avoiding the effect the young man’s agitation had on him. Which meant that this young man had another face, one that he himself may not have known, and if the detective wanted to extract his secrets he had to witness the bodily manifestations that went with that other face.