My right lower eyelid twitches. I can’t stop it.
“Difficult,” is all I say.
“Frau Conrads,” says Lenzen, “I hope you’re not under the impression that I don’t like your book because that’s not the case. The protagonist, Sophie, for instance, is a character I could wholeheartedly sympathize with for long stretches of the novel. There are, however, a few things that strike me as anomalous, so that I am, of course, thrilled to be able to take this unique opportunity to ask the author why she depicted things one way rather than another.”
“Oh yes?” I say. It takes me a moment to get my nausea under control; I have to gain time. “What strikes you as anomalous, apart from the murder victim?”
“Well, the murderer, for example.”
“Really?”
Now it’s getting interesting.
“Yes. The killer is portrayed as a soulless monster — a typical psychopath. Then the gimmick that he must leave something at the scene of the crime — from a writer of the caliber of Linda Conrads, I’d have expected a more subtly drawn character.”
“There are sociopaths,” I say.
I’m sitting right opposite one. I don’t say that.
“Of course, sure. But they’re extremely rare, even if ninety percent of all detective stories and thrillers seem to revolve around criminals of that kind. Why did you decide on such a one-dimensional character?”
“I believe that evil, like goodness, really exists. I tried to convey that.”
“Evil? Really? Isn’t there evil in all of us?”
“Maybe,” I say. “In some measure.”
“What is it that fascinates you about criminals like the one in your book?” Lenzen asks.
“Nothing at all,” I say.
I almost spit the words.
“Nothing at all. A cold, sick soul like the murderer in my book holds no fascination for me whatsoever. Only the possibility of making sure that he ends up behind bars for the rest of his life.”
“In literature, at least, you can make sure of it,” Lenzen smirks.
I say nothing.
You wait and see, I think.
See what? another part of me thinks. How?
“Wouldn’t a more complex psychological motive have been more interesting?” Lenzen continues.
It’s been clear to me for some time that he’s no longer talking about my book but about himself — that he’s maybe even trying to justify himself. I know that, he knows that, and each of us knows that the other one knows. Maybe I should speak out, at last. Sweep all the metaphors and circumlocutions off the table.
“Such as?” I ask instead.
Lenzen’s eyes change; he’s seen through my crude ploy. We both know that I’m asking him for his own motive.
He shrugs. Slippery as an eel.
“I’m really no writer,” he says ingeniously. “But tell me, why didn’t you kill your main character off at the end? It would have been realistic. And dramatic at the same time.”
Lenzen stares at me. I stare back.
He asks another question. I don’t hear it.
Love, love, love.
Oh no.
Love, love, love. Please, no. Love, love, love.
Please, no, I can’t take any more.
I whimper. Grip the edge of the table. Look about the room in panic, searching for the source of the music. Nothing. Just a large spider crawling over the parquet; I can hear the sound its legs make on the wood. Plick-plick-plick-plick.
Suddenly Lenzen’s face is very close to mine; I can see the little veins in the very white whites of his eyes. The monster from my dreams is right in front of me. I can feel his breath on my face.
“Are you afraid of death?” asks Victor Lenzen.
My fear is a deep well that I have fallen into. I’m suspended vertically in the water. I try to touch the bottom with my toes, but there’s nothing there, only blackness.
I shake myself, try to keep above water, stay conscious.
“What did you just say?” I ask. Lenzen frowns at me.
“I didn’t say anything. Are you all right?”
I gasp. God knows how, but I manage to get a grip on myself.
“You know,” Lenzen continues, unmoved, “it was the ending that surprised me the most. The fact is that I was convinced all the way through that the killer didn’t actually exist and that the devastated sister would turn out to be the murderer.”
The ground is disappearing from under my feet. There’s only darkness below me — the Mariana Trench — eleven thousand meters of blackness. Anna’s face laughing, mocking. My fingers round the knife. Cold fury. I plunge it in.
Do I plunge it in? Me? No, no. Not that, no. It lasts only a brief, awful moment. No, it wasn’t like that! It’s the music! The monster’s presence. It’s my tense nerves! Maybe he’s even given me something! I’m not with it. I wasn’t with it! For a brief, awful moment I wondered whether my massive sense of guilt stemmed not from the fact that I was unable to save Anna, but from the fact that I…That I…You know. Perhaps there was no fleeing man, after all. Just Anna and me. Perhaps the fleeing man was a story — a lovely story such as only an author’s brain could come up with.
Not a bad story. The fleeing man, no more real than the fawn in the clearing. Linda and her stories.
No. This is not like the fawn story. I’m not a liar and I’m not mad. I am not a murderer. I shake off the black thought and focus my attention on Lenzen again. I nearly let him manipulate me.
I look at him. He exudes…cheerfulness. I shudder. That cold, almost imperceptible smile in his pale eyes. I don’t know what’s going on in Lenzen’s head, but I no longer doubt that he has come here to kill me. I was wrong: he isn’t a wolf. He doesn’t kill swiftly and surely. He enjoys this part — he enjoys the game.
His voice echoes in my head: “Are you afraid of death?”
Victor Lenzen is going to kill me. His hand slips inside his jacket. The knife. My God.
I have no choice.
I take the gun that I’ve taped to the underside of the table, ripping it loose. I point it at Victor Lenzen and pull the trigger.
22
SOPHIE
Sophie’s thoughts often returned to that night. She was still tormenting herself with the question of what had seemed so odd about Britta’s flat. There had been something. She had seen it at the crime scene and she saw it in her nightmares, but it kept eluding her.
She was sure this detail held the key. Her brain was simply too full of other things for her to think straight. Yesterday alone so much had happened. First the police officer had come around and reprimanded her. Then her father had been taken to the hospital with a suspected heart attack, and her mother, of course, was a nervous wreck, even though it had turned out to be a false alarm.
Sophie, on the other hand, was still keyed up. No question of sleep. And the night was so silent. No Paul beside her anymore, filling the bedroom with his steady breathing. Sophie was glad he had gone, really; she was too exhausted to be in a relationship, thinking of marriage and children as Paul would have liked. She was too angry — at herself, at the world. It’s a sign of grieving, her therapist said. Perfectly normal. But Sophie didn’t feel normal. At the moment she felt ill-disposed toward everybody. Except, perhaps, for that young police officer who had the disconcerting knack of always saying the right thing.
Sophie felt agitated. She had once heard that many people who have suffered a great loss either break down or freeze up, only dimly aware of the outside world. Over the past weeks she had witnessed both: her father’s numbness, and her mother’s breakdown — although her mother was now so sedated she no longer felt much either. Sophie, however, felt everything.