There’s no point in waiting to fall in love; one can’t resist surrendering to one’s own great mechanical pleasure, which may be the very thing that blocks falling in love.
Annick surprised him with her very fragile professional passion, though her manners were rather crude, like her voice and physique. In the brightly lit hall with its floor-to-ceiling tiles, she gave no sign of her passion. She may have swayed her head, pensively, raised her eyebrows a little, but even that she did cautiously. She must have captivated him with her professional objectivity, which in no way clashed with humility or devotion. As if he were saying to himself about the woman that he’d never seen anything so beautiful even though he could see she was not so beautiful. Just as one’s distance from and proximity to an object meet on the object, without which the object might perhaps not exist.
Conclusion, asked Kienast, impatient to know her findings.
We’d better wait a little more.
Kienast suggested they leave the corpse, go to his office, have coffee in the canteen or go anywhere, but out of here.
No, they’d better stay.
Just because they are staying Annick doesn’t have to look at the corpse, and out of politeness, he held her eyes.
Then he said that the scent had been properly applied, but it might also have been smeared on.
They could not have said what they were looking at with each other, but they remained like that for a long time.
Eventually they spoke of Annick’s exceptional vocation, which made it easier to remain in the mute and neutral realm and to keep the corpse from slipping back into their consciousness.
They did not sit down.
Two days later Kienast would not remember what they had talked about.
But they did not grow tired.
Then, just as Döhring had indicated, the barrier became visible, the small border station. Kienast stopped the car but did not turn off the engine, only lowered his high beams so as not to blind the border guard sauntering in their direction.
Kienast asked Döhring if he had his papers with him.
Döhring answered that he really hadn’t expected to cross the border.
He laughed irritatingly — literally neighed.
Well, then, tonight you’ll do that too, Kienast answered and showed his official badge.
They were on their way within minutes, but that irritating laugh hovered in the air between them for some time. A short distance from the border, near Venlo, they found an open restaurant overlooking the dark river, the Maas. At the far end of the hall, around a long table festively decorated with clusters of candlesticks, sat an all-male group, loud and jovial. The candle flames seen between their faces showed the direction of the draft.
Kienast and Döhring sat down at a table by the window where it was cooler, almost offputtingly so, but they stayed far away from the men at the big table.
The choices tonight aren’t much, said the waiter.
Tell us what you have.
Cream of asparagus soup.
They both laughed, which the waiter did not understand; he looked at them suspiciously.
No, thank you, we won’t want that.
Fish in aspic, and the waiter indicated the long table, what the friends there are eating.
What d’you say.
Made with river fish — bream, perch, tench, the waiter said, and he pointed toward the Maas.
They ordered the fish in aspic, some wine to go with it, and then looked out at the river, of which they could see only as much as the restaurant’s large window faintly illuminated, as though a motionless slightly cambered metallic mass were lying out there.
Annick returned to the corpse two more times. But even before that Kienast had asked her if it was possible to take samples.
Theoretically, yes, but for that it has to warm up more. And I’d need some blotting paper.
And if you can take a sample, can the sample be preserved.
Theoretically.
How.
We put it into a phial, seal it, wax it, and analyze it.
And would she give her expert opinion on it.
Why would she not.
An hour later they returned to the corpse for the third time. She was almost certain, and seemed to be excited about this, that it was a very expensive and rarely used scent, prepared by special request at the Paris perfumery of Eugène d’Estissac.
What’s it called.
L’Épice du Bonheur.
Standing at the feet and head of the corpse, they burst out laughing.
Perhaps they acknowledged that this might be the only spice of happiness.
It contains a few unrecognizable ingredients, which is only natural, probably some animal gland or secretion, then leather, bark, pepper, and coriander, which give the scent its male character, cedar, probably some hesperidins — lemon or orange, I think both — and hay and even some tonka beans, which dissolve and lighten the masculine elements, and then patchouli and vanilla, which give it a feminine tone.
But how can you know this so precisely.
Coffee, he added.
For me, this would be too many good things to choose from.
You can’t always tell who the murderer is, either.
Not always.
But sometimes you can.
In Full Swing
In the spring storm, the city remained deserted at night; not a soul anywhere, but this did not dishearten either of them.
They were preoccupied with themselves, with their own little past and their own little future.
On Queen Vilma Road, Kristóf excitedly showed her the restaurant garden, which had been empty and closed for years, where a long time ago Hedda Hiller used to sing at the sunny afternoon teas. Their eyes searched through the bare, nervously swaying branches of the horse chestnut trees to find the terrace from which he had watched the heavenly chanteuse and fainted in his fright.
It was as if he were giving away a guarded family secret.
As Klára leaned forward the better to see the terrace, the smooth mink coat opened on her body.
Not that way, look over here, it’s the third one from the left.
Amid the busy pointing, their faces touched, perhaps accidentally, and there was her scent, her shoulders and her breasts. The contact was so light and accidental, their bodies taut as bows, that they both burst into laughter and then laughed in each other’s face. In which act there was enough death-defying courage to make them recoil. Their future became heavy and their past threatening; they said nothing.
Later, at a slow pace, they turned on to Aréna Road so Kristóf could show her the building facing City Park that his great-grandfather had built in defiance of the prevailing notions of his era. Klára was interested, curious about everything, or at least she gave the impression that she wanted to know everything about him and all at once. In the distance, somewhere around Heroes’ Square, they saw police assault cars again, parked with their searchlights aimed at each other above the darkly glittering pavement, but the two of them ignored the cars and searchlights since they were going in the opposite direction.
The squalls were strong, yet occasionally there was a sweet, spring lightness in the air.
The pigs set up a veritable light barrier on the streets, Kristóf said, but no one in those days would have said anything about it out loud or even thought it. Bright light from the assault cars came though the rear window of the car and turned their faces eerily pale. Even if one didn’t have a guilty conscience, this light made one feel that one’s unguarded thoughts might be exposed at any moment and one would be caught doing something unawares; one cannot deny all one’s unguarded thoughts. Kristóf preferred not to look at Klára. He wanted to show her the many abandoned locales of his life, and he also wanted to initiate the ignorant country girl into the stormy events of the city’s living history and into the stories of its compulsive destructions and compulsive reconstructions. To flaunt his knowledge, his familiarity with world affairs, which of course was mainly familiarity with styles and languages. He could only barely hold forth on matters concerning which Klára was presumably very curious. To share the city’s jealously guarded topographical secrets. He chose to head in this direction, lead her this way; this would be a less dangerous route. After all, this is where in glimmering darkness his mother had met the older communist woman for the first time, in the dark crowd thronging under the swaying lamps at a block party. At that time the streetcar line was still running here, and he told her what direction the number 11 streetcar came from and where it went to, how it rang its bell for the dancers to let it pass.