‘The soup is always good here,’ Strebel said to me. ‘Everything else, very mediocre.’ I saw him pat his breast pocket, then turn to me. ‘Can you tell me what it says, the day’s specials. I’ve forgotten my glasses.’
‘Consommé,’ I began. ‘That comes with a side salad.’
‘So you read German?’
‘Strictly menus.’
‘No to the consommé.’
‘Blumenkohl? Cauliflower?’
‘Yes, cauliflower.’
‘And chicken with vegetables.’
‘What about you?’ he said.
‘The cauliflower.’
‘It’s excellent here, they add a bit of Appenzeller.’
While we waited for the soup, he said, ‘How is it for you? Sometimes people can be cruel.’
I did not meet his eyes. A cup. A chair. I hope cancer eats your face.
‘It’s fine,’ I said.
‘Even so,’ Strebel said. ‘People want to blame. They want there to be bad so they can believe in good. So they can be good.’
‘Isn’t there bad? Isn’t there good?’
‘Only degrees. But that’s my experience. I’m not a philosopher or a priest.’
He seemed to me a little of both.
The food came. It was the first meal I had eaten with another person since Tom left.
‘You’re right,’ I said of the soup.
‘I think Swiss cooking is like Scottish cooking. We praise blandness.’
‘Except for cheese.’
‘Well, cheese is not food. It’s sacrament.’
I almost smiled. He noted this struggle. He put his spoon down. ‘Why did you come today?’
The question cornered me, and he spoke in the gentlest voice, so I had to lean forward to hear. ‘What I’m asking, really, is do you have anyone to talk to?’
I looked away.
‘Miss Jones—’
‘Pilgrim, it should be Pilgrim.’
‘Well, I’m Paul, then.’
‘Paul.’
‘You’re very isolated,’ he said. ‘I’m worried for you.’
‘For me?’
‘That you should have someone to talk to.’
‘Tom suggested his girlfriend’s shrink.’
Strebel laughed out loud. ‘Really! What a sensitive guy!’ He chuckled on, and then stopped abruptly. ‘I’m sorry. I know that even if you could find it funny, there’s no room in you for laughter now. But, really, I hope you find it funny one day.’
He reached out to touch my arm. ‘You can talk to me, okay? Look, try. Ask me something. You’ll see, I’ll answer as Paul not Inspector Strebel.’
‘How do they—’ I stopped myself. Again, I felt the conundrum of honesty. Did I really want to know, or was I just asking what I thought he expected me to ask? I was so tangled in words, in what I should think versus what I did.
‘How do they get through the day?’ he finished for me.
‘Yes. How do they get through the day?’
He took a moment to realign his side plate and butter knife in front of him. ‘They brush their teeth,’ he said. ‘They do the laundry.’
I thought of the cup: the ritual of making coffee, the kettle, the cafetière, the measuring of grinds. The rigid sequence.
‘And they breathe their loss. Bitter air. And it takes a long time. But life is persistent. For you, too.’
‘And you?’
‘Me?’ he raised his eyebrows. ‘This is my work.’
‘But when you’re not a policeman, when you’re Paul.’
‘Yes, I see. Because I’m always a policeman, an investigator, aren’t I? It’s a state of being.’
‘A suit of armor?’
He tilted his head to consider me. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Because you can take that off.’
We sat for an odd moment in silence, as if too much had been revealed and we didn’t know how to return to the mundane. The waiter came with the bill. Strebel paid. ‘We should get back before the rain.’
‘You said that last time.’
‘Ah. Next time we must make sure it’s sunny.’
In the street, he hailed a taxi and told the driver my address. As the door closed, as the car pulled away, he glanced through the glass and then raised his fingers as if to doff an invisible hat.
Magulu, May 15
I sit on the bed in the room that was Martin Martins.’ I look in the empty waste-paper basket, the empty drawer, the empty cupboard. I feel ridiculous. Did I think I would find a clue? To what? Anyway, Gladness has cleaned everything with her usual thoroughness. The room reeks of bleach; though, underneath, the smell of cigarettes lingers. I think back to every instance I saw Martin. What he was doing, what he was reading. Wasn’t it an old Spiegel? He drank beer, he slept in his room, he slept with a prostitute, he watched the TV in the restaurant, he smoked Roosters. This is the behavior of a man waiting for a spare part for his broken car.
So why do I have this cold pit in my stomach? Martin’s lie about the fuel pump. His I know you.
Too many coincidences, Kessy said.
But who decides how many is too many? Who can see conspiracy in the random? I forgot to pay a phone bill. MAHNUNG! Mrs Gassner could not tie her laces. Tom brought me to Arnau because he’d met Elise by the lake. In proximity — the imposed proximity of chronology — these events clustered and swarmed, connected.
But taken separately—
Perhaps Martin lied about the fuel pump for some reason quite beyond me or Kessy or Dorothea. Perhaps he was waiting, or hiding. Perhaps Kessy is wrong and the fuel pump was broken.
Why am I so ready to believe Martin Martins intended me harm? He called me princess. He saw my coldness, my vanity: the hard, little pea of my heart. He saw what I keep from others, and so I imbue him with special power. I give credence to his story of being a mercenary.
Or have I fashioned a projection of unexamined guilt? What better tableau than a professional killer on which to display my moral dilemma — my inability to feel anything for three small, dead children. Martin Martins absorbs all light like an imploding star.
I have taken lives, like a petty god. I have importance because of that. I am no longer Tom’s wife, no longer his ex-wife. I am a looming giant in the lives of the children’s parents, Godzilla, stamping and tramping, crushing and smashing. I am Kindermörderin. I am Martin.
I note the shambling rustle of pink bougainvillea outside the window and the filament of a spider’s web. Beyond the bougainvillea lies the kitchen courtyard. I can see Gladness hanging up sheets on the line. Around her scatter ubiquitous chickens, and an emaciated kitten toys with a piece of colored wool. Gladness bends and plucks white pillowcases from the green laundry tub. I recall how she watched me when Martin told me his story. Suddenly I realize that she’s the one who slept with him, and she was worried I might fuck him for free. In the same matter-of-fact way she does everything here, she sleeps with the customers. It’s all money. Apart from Dorothea, with her commands and her talk of STDs, no women come near the place. But there are plenty of men.
I go to my room, retrieve the box from the back of the cup board. I estimate its weight at six pounds. Hate does not diminish, I’m learning. It can shift atoms, congeal into matter. It takes shape in the material world.
Magulu — Butiama, May 16
I do not say goodbye. This is force of habit: all the leavings in my life with Tom, associations with associates abandoned every two years. There were no parties, no one said goodbye. People left Dili or Lagos and the only evidence of their leaving, of their ever having been there at all, was the new people in their house. Tom taught me; leave quietly, don’t slam the door.