Alphabet House (33 page)

Andrea Stich walked calmly past Kröner out into the kitchen and poured a colourless, scented shot of schnapps into a grubby glass. Her husband swallowed it in one gulp, then he sat down peacefully in a worn chair in front of his writing desk. After a few moments he rested his chin on his hands and began to think.

As Andrea went to switch off the light in the dining room, the battered man got up from the floor and followed her. He sat down at his place in the dim light without a word. In front of him was a small plate with four buttered biscuits they knew he liked.

He didn’t touch them. Instead he began rocking to and fro in his chair, supporting his wrists on the edge of the table. At first almost imperceptibly. Then more and more.

At this point Kröner adjusted his hat and left the room without a word.

It was the pain that made Gerhart rock back and forth, but it was an agonising sense of Petra’s absence that made him breathe faster and faster.

Strong words had penetrated his armour.

He sat up a bit and began counting the rose ornaments on the stucco ceiling.

After having counted them a couple of times, he stopped rocking.

And then the words came back to him. He tapped his toes under the table and began to count again. This time the words didn’t disappear. He touched his earlobe, rocked a bit more and stopped suddenly.

Glancing around, Gerhart let the room engulf him. He had been in its custody for a long time. The room enveloped him closely and intensely and had a restraining effect. The old man was almost always close by, whether he was counting rosettes, eating biscuits or tapping his toes. Petra never entered that room.

He counted the rosettes again, tapping his toes at the same time. Then he picked up a biscuit and broke off a bit into his mouth.

A fragment of an unreal world fluttered past him. Gerhart could understand the name Arno von der Leyen. The name had a length and composition one seldom encountered. And it was a good name. There was a time when he’d repeated it endlessly until it buzzed around in his head and made him dizzy. In the end his brain could no longer deal with it.

And now it was there again, disturbing his peace.

Long chains of thought were not good for him. They were Trojan horses. Words and feelings could suddenly merge inside him, bringing new thoughts with them. Notions he’d never asked for.

Therefore it was better for these thoughts to live their own lives without outside disturbance.

And now he’d been disturbed.

In this state of mental turmoil a new, disquieting element had appeared.

The name Arno von der Leyen lacked a face. It had been erased years ago. The name bore warmth, but the man behind it radiated coldness. It was a sensation he’d never had about anything else.

While any of the three men who occasionally visited him could shake him up, they didn’t make him feel uneasy or confused. The effect of their actions vanished the moment they were gone.

With this name it was different.

He began counting again. The foot tapping under the table accelerated faster than his counting and the name was there again, breaking the eternal silence. Finally he surrendered to the gathering storm within him.

He sat like that for some while.

By the time Andrea came in and gave his plate a contemptuous look, another name had begun swirling around in his head as if it had never been absent. The sound of it had a life of its own. A life that was distant and unattainable. The name Bryan Underwood Scott was the dagger thrust to his consciousness that made all feelings and memories bleed in unison and left him helpless, confused and apprehensive.

And worst of all: Pock-Face had left them to do Petra harm.

He tried to count the rosettes again and felt the hatred forcing its way up from his subconscious. Thoughts were making their chaotic return.

He had been Gerhart Peuckert as long as he could remember. Even though he was also called Erich Blumenfeld, he was still Gerhart Peuckert. The two identities didn’t infringe upon one another. But there was also something else in him. He was also someone else. Not just a man with two or three names, but a man who lived a life parallel to the one he was living now. And this man was unhappy. He had always suffered.

Therefore it was good he had been gone so long.

Gerhart took a look at the biscuits. He touched one of them absent-mindedly, the butter making his fingertips slippery.

The unhappy man within him was about to take over with all his dormant knowledge and pent-up rage. A young man with hopes that had never been fulfilled. Full of love that had never been nurtured. It was this man who was awakened upon hearing the name Bryan Underwood Scott, but it was still Gerhart Peuckert who sat in the room.

Year after year he had been living with his trivial undertakings and regular visits. At first he was afraid and regarded his visitors with vigilant suspicion. The constant fear of being killed deprived him of his night’s sleep, his positive attitude, his vigour. Then, after thousands of days of triviality, he surrendered for several years to the tempting state of relaxed passivity. That was when he began to count and do his physical training, so the days passed in an unbroken rhythm. Finally his routines made him forget where he was, why he was, and why he never said anything. He simply didn’t speak. He ate, slept, listened to the radio, children’s programmes and radio dramas, and watched television when it came into vogue. He smiled now and then or else sat quietly while the others wove wicker baskets or bound the director’s books. He could sit for hours on end with his hands folded, cleansed in mind and body. He had become Gerhart Peuckert and occasionally Erich Blumenfeld.

During the first years at the sanatorium in Freiburg it was tiny fragments of a story, a film, a play or a book that made life worth living. But every time the stories really got going, they stopped. He lost the thread, could come no further. More and more things confused him and merged in a foggy world. Figures and people became blurred, names disappeared and were replaced by others, actions became meaningless. And then he stopped. Out of all these unfinished and fragmented stories only a single question remained irrationally for some years, tormenting him daily: What was the name of David Copperfield’s second wife?

Then one day even that question rolled into the mists of the past, into insignificance and oblivion.

Finally, only a single spark of life remained in his extinguished personality. It was a feeling of security that went hand in hand with happiness. And Petra, who was always nearby – this sweet girl, gradually becoming a woman, who always stroked him tenderly on the cheek – was the only one able to ignite this spark. She was all that remained of his dreams and happiness.

This diminutive woman always spoke about things as if he were a part of her life. She told him about the world outside and about her joys and sorrows. So many things he didn’t understand. She spoke about countries he’d never heard of and about people, actors, presidents and painters whose existence he couldn’t imagine.

She left him on rare occasions to travel to other countries. She would come home with impressions strange as fairy tales. Blissful and delicious. But the only thing that mattered was that she came back. Gentle, attentive and optimistic, with a tender pat on his cheek.

He had grown accustomed to the men who visited him. Their threatening attitude subsided over the years. They no longer clasped his arm and whispered threats into his ear when they were alone. They just became part of everyday life. And each one of them was very different.

The pock-faced one became his friend. Not because the man was always friendly when he visited him or because he always placed some tasty morsel in front of him when they visited his beautiful home. But chiefly because neither the old man nor the man with the broad face ever hit him in Pock-Face’s presence.

That’s how it had been until now.

Lankau was the worst. Even though the old man could plague him for a whole day, he had his redeeming qualities. And he had Andrea.

It was the old man who made the decisions, but Lankau who carried them out. During the first years he looked sinister with
his empty eye socket gaping widely during the raging moments he was administering punishment. Whatever the cause or intensity of the beatings, the end result was that Gerhart Peuckert stopped reacting to anything they did to him. And during the course of time they had more or less stopped. The blows had become softer.

Until today.

Gerhart counted the stucco roses again and tried to keep the words at a distance. In the next room the old man was no longer clearing his throat. From time to time his breathing sounded heavy and regular, as if he were sleeping.

By now it was only rarely that all three men gathered around Gerhart. Occasionally they sang a popular ditty, slapped him on the back and offered him a small cigar or a schnapps from Lankau’s hollowed-out walking stick or from the small hip flask that was always sloshing around inside his Alpine jacket. On such occasions they sometimes took him out for a little drive through town or for a short trip to Kröner’s house, to the old man, or all the way out to Lankau’s country house. During these excursions the three men talked business with great enthusiasm. This wrestling with an endless series of unknowns made Gerhart start counting and long to be back in the sanatorium. It usually ended with his making for the car. Then they’d take him gently by the arm and quieten him with a pill or two.

Gerhart Peuckert, alias Erich Blumenfeld, had always been given pills. In the sanatoriums, on trips and in people’s homes. No matter where he found himself, he’d always been given pills. By nurses, orderlies, and by the three men and their families.

Each place had its small cupboard with its pills.

Only once had they taken him somewhere where there were strangers. Petra had come to meet them and had given him a hug. It had been to an airshow with thousands of spectators. The shouts and din and the enormous crowd had been terrifying, but the show had fascinated him. For several hours he’d neither pointed nor moved his head, but his eyes shone with
wonderment. The spectacle had touched something deep. It was on this occasion, as he followed the fighters that cut across the sky with a tremendous roar, that he’d said something for the first time in nearly fifteen years. All day until bedtime he repeated his sentence incessantly.

‘
So schnell
,’ were his words.

It had been a strange day for Laureen. The vague feeling that she was about to stir something up that had been lying dormant in her and Bryan’s life took greater and greater hold of her. She became convinced that her fate was linked to that small woman Bryan had been talking to in the Stadtpark.

Who was she? How could it be that a not particularly young woman in a remote German town could interest her husband so much? Where did they know each other from? And how well? Laureen had a mind to find out. Here and now.

Thus it was the woman, not the man, whom Laureen followed for the next few hours.

There were numerous stops. Twice the woman’s black patent leather coat was swallowed up by a telephone box. From time to time she disappeared up a flight of stairs, leaving Laureen behind in the busy street, confused and with aching feet. The woman had numerous errands. By the time she had finally entered the wine bar on Münsterplatz and had been staring blankly out the window for some time, Laureen sat down at a table in the corner and removed her new shoes with almost audible relief. Not until now did had she had time to study her target closely.

The lady sitting a couple of tables away didn’t look particularly desirable.

When Bryan finally came and sat down at her table he seemed very tense. That he appeared didn’t surprise Laureen, but their intimacy tormented her. The woman spoke softly, looking down at the table. Then she put her hand on Bryan’s arm and stroked it gently. Five minutes after he arrived, he left the wine bar again, looking grimmer than Laureen had ever seen him. Through the blur of the window she watched him disappear, his movements abrupt and uncoordinated, as though he was drunk.

Laureen’s dilemma about who to follow the rest of the afternoon had thus resolved itself. The woman remained sitting
beside the door for a while, staring emptily in front of her. She seemed confused and undecided. Laureen lit a cigarette and turned to face the middle of the room. For the time being she would remain tucked away in her corner. When the woman finally got up to go, she would too.

Petra was in a quandary. On her rounds in town several of her patients had asked her whether she was ill. ‘How pale you are, Sister Wagner,’ they said.

And the truth was that she didn’t feel well.

She’d seen the three malingerers from the SS hospital play-acting for decades. Even though they were very different individuals, Petra knew for sure that all three would be ruthless if anyone stood in their way.

It had taken Petra a long time to realise this. Without her friend Gisela Devers, whom she still bitterly regretted having introduced to Kröner, she’d probably never have seen things in the proper perspective.

And she was utterly convinced she would never have become involved with these three fiends if Gerhart Peuckert hadn’t existed.

Because she herself only existed for Gerhart.

She’d been in love with this handsome man since the first day she saw him. An impossible undertaking that had made her a target for derision and gradually isolated her from a normal social life. For years she’d clung to the hope that his traumas would fade and finally disappear. She had lived with the dream of a normal life together with him.

At times she’d felt this possibility breathtakingly close. Brief, happy moments, until the realisation came: Gerhart Peuckert’s fate was at the mercy of these three men.

This she’d always known. It revolted her.

And it was because of this knowledge and her eternal hopes for Gerhart that she’d betrayed another person today.

It had been a great shock to meet one of the patients from those days. It was the first time this had happened since the three men had reappeared in her life ages ago.

The face was that of Arno von der Leyen, yet he’d seemed a stranger. His language and appearance had scared her. The fear
that welled up in her when he questioned her about Gerhart Peuckert was understandable enough, considering her situation.

No one really knew what was going on inside Peuckert. For a long time the doctors had been of the opinion that his mind could best be described as ‘incubating’, that his consciousness lay dormant in the grip of his subconscious. Gisela Devers had confided in Petra that Kröner felt convinced that one day Gerhart Peuckert would rise, quite normal, from his sickbed, and he’d also intimated that Peuckert would immediately turn on the three of them. Words like this could provoke a quarrel between husband and wife. Gisela would admonish Kröner, saying, ‘Leave him in peace.’ But the brotherhood couldn’t afford to lose its grip on Peuckert because he knew far too much. Things were all right as long as they could control him.

Only because Gerhart was so ill and the condition of his mind so stable did the three men choose to let him exist in peace. This, according to Gisela, was the term they’d used. They let him ‘exist’.

Petra felt uneasy. Preferably this was how things were to continue, but now a stranger had arrived. He had connected his past with theirs and asked questions about the one thing on earth she felt the need to protect with her life. It had been a threat that had caused her to react promptly. Petra sighed and rolled up her blood pressure kit. She nodded to the patient who lay staring up at her and looked out of the window.

Schlossberg had been bathed in sunshine all day. It was as if this insignificant hill wanted to confirm its importance. What would happen to Arno von der Leyen up there, she didn’t know. But she could guess. She would hate to be the one to have a score to settle with Hermann Müller when he revealed his true nature as Peter Stich. Anyone who wanted to meet Gerhart Peuckert risked conjuring up Stich’s innermost self.

Right now, the very thought of it made her sick. The possible consequence of her action had made her not much different from the three men.

It was her friend, little Dot Vanderleen, who had drawn Petra’s attention to the lanky woman across the street. ‘Look,’ she’d said, pointing out the window. The woman was standing on one leg, massaging the other foot. ‘Poor thing,’ she’d added, empathetically. ‘She must be wearing new shoes.’

Although Petra Wagner was a small woman, the featherweight
Frau
Vanderleen reached only to her armpits. Totally fascinated, she’d stood on tiptoes, regarding the woman through the leaves of the pot plants. ‘New shoes are a curse,’ she’d said simply, leaving Petra to finish treating her ankle sores. ‘It’s a good thing one doesn’t have to put up with new shoes any more,’ she’d concluded.

After that, Petra had seen this same woman several more times on her rounds. A quick glance out of the window and there she would be, massaging her feet on the opposite side of the street, regular as clockwork.

Under normal circumstances Petra would have interrupted her Saturday duties for a couple of hours in order to visit Gerhart. It was on these late Saturday afternoons that they seemed closest to each other. For a few seconds every Saturday they loved with their eyes, so to speak. She lived for those few seconds.

At three o’clock Petra visited
Herr
Franck, an elderly wholesaler with bedsores. According to her schedule he would be the last patient before her break.

But instead of taking the tram down to the sanatorium as usual, she crossed Kartoffelmarkt in the opposite direction, increasing her pace as she approached a street performance that had attracted a small group of onlookers. As she hurried past the crowd she accidentally bumped into one of the performers, making him stumble.

‘Goodness gracious,’ he exclaimed, adjusting his turquoise leotard. But Petra had given her pursuer the slip.

Petra climbed into an empty taxi opposite the spot where Wasserstrasse and Weberstrasse converge. ‘He’ll only be a jiffy,’
said the driver in the cab behind. ‘Fritz is just taking a leak. He’ll be right back.’

The lanky woman came rushing along Wasserstrasse. She looked harassed. Petra leaned slightly backwards to get out of her line of vision. It was clear that the woman didn’t know what to do next. She took a few steps, looked down Weberstrasse and then turned around again. Her untidy hair no longer suited the rest of her elegant appearance. Then she leaned against the wall of a house and bent over, clutching her knees.

Petra recognised that feeling and urge, but knew it wouldn’t help tender feet.

The woman was following her all right, but seemed an amateur. She glanced around several times before finally putting her large plastic bag down on the ground beside her, whereupon she sighed so visibly that Petra could almost hear her.

‘He’s coming now,’ shouted the other driver, tapping on the taxi’s side window. At that moment the woman caught sight of Petra. Her eyes moved from Petra’s face to the taxi she was sitting in, then to the taxi behind her and back again. She was clearly aware she’d been discovered.

‘Well, missus, you’ve found a seat, I see. Where shall we go, then?’ The chubby man laid his arm on the back of the seat beside him, straining to steal a glance of the woman behind him. Petra had scarcely noticed his arrival. She opened her medical bag and took hold of the scalpel that always lay in the middle pocket of the flap. It had just been furnished with a new blade and could be a deadly weapon. With this in her hand, she was ready to delve further into the day’s unfolding mystery.

The woman looked sad as Petra got out of the cab and strode over towards her. ‘Isn’t a person allowed to piss?’ the driver shouted from the taxi she’d just vacated. ‘Just two minutes! You could have waited, couldn’t you?’

The woman appeared to be completely dumbfounded when Petra let her see the scalpel blade gleam under her arm. She stared at it for a long time, unable to flee.

Then Petra lowered her weapon.

It was the second time that day she had confronted a pursuer, and it was the second time she was being addressed in English. Arno von der Leyen and this woman had something in common besides language, she was sure of it.

‘What have I done?’ was all the woman said.

‘How long have you been following me?’

‘Since this morning. Since you met my husband in the park.’

‘Your husband? What do you mean?’

‘You’ve met him twice today, you can’t deny it. First in Stadtgarten and then in Hotel Rappen’s wine bar.’

‘Are you married to Arno von der Leyen?’ Petra studied the tall woman. She surprised herself with the question.

The woman seemed to be trying to pull herself together. ‘Arno von der Leyen? Is that what he calls himself?’

‘That’s the name I’ve known him by for nearly thirty years. I’ve never known him by any other name.’

For a second the lanky women seemed completely disoriented. ‘That’s a German name, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘Yes, naturally,’ said Petra.

‘Well, I don’t know how natural it is, considering he’s my husband, he’s English and his name’s got nothing to do with “Arno”. It’s “Bryan Underwood Scott”. That’s the name he’s always had. It’s written in his birth certificate and it’s the name his mother called him until she died. Why do you call him Arno von der Leyen? Are you out to make a fool of me or will you settle for stabbing me with that thing you’re waving around?’

The woman’s frantic outburst was fascinating. Petra only understood half of the torrent of words that had gushed forth. No amount of pricey pancake foundation could hide this woman’s red-faced indignation. It seemed more than genuine.

‘Try turning around,’ said Petra. ‘What do you see?’

‘Nothing,’ said Laureen. ‘An empty street. Is that what you mean?’

‘You can see a big “C” on the facade over there, can’t you? That’s Hotel Garni’s café. If you promise to accompany me there without making trouble, here and now, I won’t need this.’ Petra swung the scalpel and stuck it under her arm again. ‘I think the two of us better have a talk.’