‘Just a minute,’ he said, as if professionally distracted. ‘Just a second.’ What was she talking about? He looked about the office, knowing he wouldn’t find the answer. There was no Post-it stuck to his computer. Ingrid sighed in his ear.
‘It’s Beatrice’s birthday party.’
‘Yes, I know. I know. Yes, I’ll see you there. I’m in a meeting right now.’ He hung up. He realized he had no idea when he was supposed to be there.
He called Caroline, hoping she wouldn’t mention it to Ingrid. ‘Oh, Papa,’ she said, just like her mother. ‘Five o’clock.’
She had tied colored balloons to the gatepost. As he neared the house, even through the closed door, Strebel could hear the sound of children screeching like monkeys. Inside, he almost clamped his hands over his ears: the high, intent girly ‘eeeeee’ threaded through a harder boy ‘wwrrrrrrr,’ providing bass.
A boy wearing a wolf mask ran past him, growling. The wolf chased a group of girls, the cupcake pink of their dresses, their constant incautious movement, whirling, kicking, spinning, and the boys amongst them, growling back at the wolf, daring him to come closer. Strebel glimpsed Beatrice, her mouth open with sound, her tongue stained with red juice. She was screaming, and he began to move toward her, to save her or comfort her — the screaming, the red mouth, she was wounded, a beetle on its back— and then he realized in the next beat of his heart that she was screaming with excitement.
‘Papa,’ Caroline said, ambushing him from the side, her arm around his waist. ‘The bike is a brilliant idea. You and Mum are so clever.’
‘Good,’ he nodded and kissed her just above the ear. Her hair seemed blonder than he remembered. Did she dye it? What was wrong with her natural color? She’d been a sweet child, he could never remember any fuss. He’d read her stories and carried her on his shoulders on the way to picnics. She’d broken her arm at school and he’d run like a madman through the emergency room to find her. Now she dyed her hair. Now she was married to a sporadically employed truck driver — a total dunderhead. She’d wanted to be a nurse but she’d failed the exams.
Suddenly he’s six, suddenly he’s thirty. Simone Emptmann’s voice was in his head again. ‘We were running late, we’re always running late. I lose my temper because we’re late for school and the train, for everything, and he’s lost his shoes or needs a pee. We were late that morning. I shouted at him. “Don’t you understand, Mattias? We’re late!” It’s so important to be on time. Because time runs out, you miss the train. Suddenly, you’re standing on the platform, a minute late and the train is gone. Suddenly, he’s six, not a baby, and you get afraid because you know you’ll look again and he’ll be thirty. You never think — never, never, never — that he just won’t be there. At all.’
The noise of the children was like a hive of bees in his head. He smiled anyway at Ingrid who took this as an invitation to come and stand beside him. ‘Do you remember Caroline’s sixth?’
‘Absolutely,’ Strebel said.
‘That dreadful clown who couldn’t do magic tricks. He couldn’t even make balloon animals,’ she said. ‘You almost had a fight with him about his fee. And then it turned out he was filling in for his brother who’d just died of leukemia.’
He had no recollection of the troubled clown. ‘You made a chocolate cake,’ he offered hopefully.
She looked at him. ‘I doubt it. Caroline’s allergic to chocolate.’
Of course. The rashes, the vomiting, the specialist in Bern, and how they’d tried carob as an alternative but it always tasted like clay.
‘Cake time!’ Caroline shouted and the children swarmed into the kitchen, hooting, screaming, growling, surrounding a strawberry pink cake with the focus of cannibals. Caroline reached over and lit the candles. Everyone sang. Strebel heard his own voice droning. Beatrice leaned in and blew. She wore a jeweled clip in her hair that was coming loose from too much play. He noticed for the first time that she was a plain child and she would be a plain woman. He felt sorry for her, for the day she’d understand her lack of beauty; a wild surge of pain seemed to flush from his chest up his neck to his face and he suddenly found it difficult to breathe.
‘I have to go,’ he whispered to Ingrid. He ignored the way she grabbed at his shirt with her fingertips. It was as if he’d snagged it on a branch. He almost ran out into the cold and gathering dark. He got in his car. He drove mindlessly, up valleys and on dark, narrow roads. He hit the lake road, and drove south almost all the way to Interlaken. He thought of continuing on, all the way around. But then he pulled into the parking lot of a Café du Thé overlooking the lake, turned around, and drove the several miles back. Here he took the turn-off uphill, to Arnau. He was there in twenty minutes. He hit the intercom.
‘It is Paul Strebel.’
The next time he saw Pilgrim was at the inquest. She wore dark gray and he wished she hadn’t because it suited her. He should have told her to wear the most unflattering things she could find, but even then, she couldn’t undo her beauty. It was a kind of mask, all that people saw. In the same moment, he was startled to remember that he’d slept with her. He’d slept with someone so beautiful, and he had found her beautiful the whole time.
The parents did not look at her, but Strebel knew they were attentive. They wanted to see her stripped and raw: at the very least altered. Disfigured. Two rows behind her sat Alicia Berger, and there was no mistaking her dejection.
The inquest began. Simone Emptmann composed herself, but Strebel saw the bitten nubs of her fingernails. Her husband, Michael, wore a white rose in his lapel. His eyes were red buttons, and he sat without touching his wife. Strebel judged their marriage would last another six months. Blame lay between them, a tar pit into which the past and future slipped. Every recrimination, every disagreement, every hope slid fluttering and squawking into the slurry. Why did you forget the phone? You’re always on that thing.
Vidia and Bobby Scheffer wore black and held hands. Mattias had been their only child, and Vidia was perhaps now past childbearing. Strebel knew they had erected a wooden bench in the field in front of their apartment where Mattias had liked to play. A half-dozen family members surrounded them.
Ernst Koppler was quite alone. He did not take off his coat, and this was smeared and dirty. He had shaved, but not well; there were little nicks of blood all over his cheeks and chin and dried shaving cream on his ear lobes. His thin hair was greasy, carelessly combed. Strebel knew, Mr Koppler knew: no one would love him and he would love no one ever again.
The presiding judge spoke reverently of the great tragedy. He reviewed the evidence. The forensics and eyewitness statements all tallied, all aligned. Vidia Scheffer wept softly. It was exactly as Strebel expected it to be and had worked for it to be: humane and compassionate, detailed and thorough, a finding of no-fault. But it was a whisper in response to the screams locked within the parents.
Later, Pilgrim was waiting outside his office. ‘Come in,’ he said. After they sat down, he smiled delicately. ‘How are you?’
She nodded that she was okay.
‘What will you do now?’
‘Go. Away.’
‘Where?’ And for a wild moment, he wondered if he could go with her. Cairo or Sydney or San Francisco.
‘I have no idea.’
‘America? Home?’ he offered, and she made a little motion with her hand, a kind of question mark.
‘I thought maybe London,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know how…’ and her voice trailed off.