Don’t Cry For Me Aberystwyth (31 page)

‘Because it’s me you want to torment, isn’t it? This has got nothing to do with Tiresias.’

‘What if I spare the mouse? Will you talk?’

‘Don’t be stupid. I just thought—’

‘Look, you fool, all I want is to hear the story. I don’t care if I have to kill you to get it, so why should I give a damn about the mouse? OK, I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll put a little wedge under the edge of the dish so some air can get in. How does that sound?’

He thought about it and said. ‘Yes, that should do it. And please, when I’m dead, don’t let the cats get him.’

‘Is there anything else you want? You strike me as a pretty damn fussy guy.’

‘Despite everything I believe you are a fair man, a merciful man.’

‘Don’t bet on it.’

‘A Christian.’

‘Definitely not that.’

‘Ah, yes, you deny it but I’ve presided at scenes like this too often in the past to be fooled. And because I can see the goodness in your heart I want to make one final request.’

‘If it’s cigarettes I’m fresh out.’

‘No, I want a strop.’

‘A strop?’

‘You know, a piece of leather to bite on so my screams don’t upset Tiresias. Loud noises spook him.’

‘What about my shoe? You could bite on that.’

‘I am in no position to bargain. The offer of your shoe is acceptable.’

I took it off, held it over his mouth and looked with horror as he raised his head towards it. He said, ‘I’m sorry, it might scuff the polish a bit.’

‘It’s OK, there’s a shoeshine kid at the Cliff Railway Station.’

‘Make sure he doesn’t overcharge you. Farewell, Tiresias, I forgive you.’ He clenched his teeth on the shoe and closed his eyes.

I watched for a second or two, holding the struggling mouse by its tail. I put the mouse back into its cage and tore the shoe out of Caleb’s mouth. I sat down onto the floor, defeated by either his magnificent spirit or a magnificent bluff.

Caleb opened his eyes and saw my dejection. ‘Please don’t take it to heart,’ he said. ‘It isn’t easy to torture a man to death. Very few people are capable of it. I tried telling those people from Odessa, they were the same when they tortured me. I said to them, “Don’t regard my refusal to tell you what you want as a criticism of your skills. You are excellent torturers, all of you.”’

I smiled weakly and said, ‘I bet they were glad to see the back of you.’

‘They were.’

I began to wrench to nails from the floor. Once one arm was free Caleb used it to pull the other one off the nails.

‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked. ‘It is Christmas.’

I nodded dully and he brought a bottle of sherry from out of the shadows and took a swig from the bottle. He handed it to me. ‘Sorry I don’t have glasses. I never get visitors.’

I drank from the bottle. We sat on the floor and said nothing for a while. Scenes like that are hard to follow. The torturer drinking a Christmas toast with his victim – there’s no protocol to observe.

Eventually Caleb said, ‘This Hoffmann guy, he sure has caused a lot of trouble.’

‘If he exists.’

‘’Course he exists. He stole my bleeding coat, didn’t he?’

‘Then why don’t you know who he is?’

‘I do know.’

‘You know?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you let me do the “mouse tunnelling through your stomach routine” and you wouldn’t say?’

‘You didn’t ask me who Hoffmann is, you wanted to know about our secret shame. I will never tell you that.’

I looked at him once more in astonishment.

‘Oh, Lord, yes! I can remember it as if it was yesterday – I was lying wounded in the field hospital and he came and took my coat and left me to freeze to death. I told my interrogators all about that bit. I didn’t tell them that the item they were looking for was no longer in the coat, that I had taken it out.’

‘Let me guess: you can’t tell me what it was because it’s connected to your secret shame.’

‘That’s right.’

I sighed. This was turning into a very exasperating Christmas.

‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m just a bit taken aback that you were prepared to die a few seconds ago and now you’re telling me this.’

‘But there’s nothing to hide any more about Hoffmann. You can walk down to the Pier and see him.’

‘Don’t tell me he’s the laughing policeman.’

‘He’s appearing at the carol concert tonight.’

‘I thought that was just a wild rumour.’

‘Oh, no. That Tadpole girl has been giving out leaflets. Come and be redeemed. Hoffmann will expiate the sins of all towns-people who turn up tonight. Tickets five pound. There’s a leaflet here somewhere.’

‘I guess they’ll have sold out by now. Just my luck.’

‘You’re better off not going. There’ll be a riot when they find out who it is.’

‘So who is it?’

‘Hoffmann’s not his real name. That is just a . . . what do you call it? Acronym or something. It’s from my torture dossier. That’s quite a famous item in the world of the spooks. Those
guys who tortured me wrote everything down in German. The name comes from the letters HFM which were scribbled as an abbreviation on my dossier. From “
Horizontalischer Falte Mensch
”. Do you speak German?’

‘No.’

‘I told them, you see, about the coat. How I lay there coming round from the anaesthetic and everything was all misty and confused; I looked up and saw this blurry face. The only thing I could remember about him was the horizontal crease in his face that looked like a smile. So they called him “Horizontal Crease Man”. In German that’s “
Horizontalischer Falte Mensch
”, which becomes HFM. Or Hoffmann.’

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan

The Prom was a mixture of late-winter afternoon greys: mist and drizzle and drab, brooding cloud; a filmy luminescent quality to the light that gave the faintest whisper of snow. There was only one way to describe a light like that: plangent. Never before had I longed more deeply, or more simply, for the chaste and temporary purification that snow brings. I wandered along the Prom towards Sospan’s kiosk. Up by the kids’ paddling pool I could see the lone figure of Eeyore on his way to the Pier with a donkey for the crib at the carol concert. I could tell from the slight limp in the donkey’s step that he had chosen Abishag this year. He saw me and waved. Outside the bandstand a group of men in dark coats held silver tubes of metal and blew into them. It sounded hopeful.

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone

Sospan poured out a mug of mulled wine and handed it to me. ‘On the house,’ he said, and we chinked mugs and wished each other a better year next year.

‘I suppose you’ll be going to the concert, then?’ he asked.

‘Maybe. What about you?’

He looked sheepish. ‘Oh, I might pop my head round the door later.’

It meant that he wouldn’t.

‘Who do you reckon it is, then?’ I said, changing the subject. ‘This fat guy in the red and white coat. Is it Odin or the fourth-century Bishop Niklaus?’

‘That’s an easy one. It’s Odin.’

‘You sure he’s the man?’

‘Has to be. How would a fourth-century Christian bishop be able to deliver all the presents and put them in your pillowcase?’

I chuckled politely. ‘But he doesn’t really put the presents in the pillowcase, does he?’

‘Who doesn’t?’

‘Father Christmas.’

Sospan look puzzled. ‘Who does, then?’

Llunos pulled up in a prowl car. ‘I can’t stop,’ he said. ‘I have to go back to the hospital.’

‘How is she?’

‘She’s holding on. Maybe she can make it.’

‘The Lord will provide,’ said Sospan in clear defiance of the available evidence.

Llunos looked annoyed and pulled me over to the railings. The sea was going out, and down below the wet shingles gleamed in the streetlight. The sea returned and gently sucked. You could watch it for hours.

Snow had fallen, snow on snow

‘There’s a man crying in your office,’ he said. ‘A Jewish guy.’

‘I’m going there now.’

‘Thought you’d also like to know, we found Erw Watcyns dead an hour ago. He was stabbed, down near the harbour.’

Snow on snow

‘He won’t be mourned.’

‘We don’t think it was anyone local.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘Too merciful. Whoever did it wept for the victim. We found this next to the body.’ He handed me a small phial of artificial tears.

In the bleak midwinter, long ago
.

*     *     *

I went to Smith’s to buy some wrapping paper for the Pinkerton manual and returned to the office. Elijah was sitting in my chair. There was a suitcase next to his feet. He looked up, old eyes glistening with tears.

‘Ah! Mr Knight, my poor old heart is broken. Never will it be whole again.’

‘Really? How sad.’

‘Yes, truly.’

‘They sure teach you how to cry well at Mossad spook school.’

‘My tears are real. You can taste them if you wish.’

I slumped into the client’s chair and began to wrap the book. ‘No, thanks.’

‘My brothers, my two lovely brothers, Mr Knight. Lost. Both of them lost. One dead, one worse than dead. Lost in Aberystwyth.
Oy vey
!’

‘I’ll mention it to the mayor. What do you want?’

‘I have come to apologise once more for that ignoble scene involving the gun and your daughter.’

‘How about the ignoble scene where the same gun gets planted, covered in my prints, in the room of a dead Pieman? You going to apologise for that?’

He wiped his eyes and looked at me in puzzlement, genuine or feigned, who could tell? He’d probably lost track himself. ‘But I wiped the gun. You think I would frame you for the murder of the Pieman? What would it benefit me?’

‘You admit you killed him, then?’

‘Yes, I killed him. You left me with little choice after the danger you put me in with your ingenious counter-surveillance technique.’

‘What was that?’

‘You said you would put my name on your incident board. Yes, I killed him; who shall cry over that? He was a man who had killed many people in his life, and I at least killed him with
more compunction than he would have killed you or me. And now I must say goodbye.’

‘Aren’t you going to hang around for the concert tonight? Apparently Hoffmann’s on the bill.’

‘I care nothing for that
Schlemiel
Hoffmann.’

I raised my eyebrows.

‘You look surprised.’

‘I thought the fact that you cared about Hoffmann was the one piece of solid ground in this quicksand of a case.’

‘I despise Hoffmann, whoever he is. He is a
Momzer
, a
chiam Yankel
, a . . . a . . . a
Putznasher
. I throw pepper in his nose! I spurn the quest; it has cost too much blood. Whoever he is, he cannot be worth a single drop of Ham’s blood. The only solid ground amid this metaphysical quicksand is the promise I made to my dying mother that I would find the sons she lost to the fiend Hoffmann.’

‘So it was Absalom who cared about Hoffmann?’

‘Absalom cared about Ham, my sweetest, youngest brother.’

‘Now I’m lost.’

‘It all started, you see, many years ago, when I became captivated by the gaudy chimera that is Hoffmann. And to my everlasting regret I infected my dear brother Ham with my obsession. We lost him at Checkpoint Charlie in January 1968, the year of the Prague Spring. Ham made contact with a Russian émigré who had information about the original dossier relating to the interrogation of Caleb Penpegws. This Russian introduced him to a Czechoslovakian dancer who had been the mistress of the Soviet military attaché in Ljubljana who had connections to a KGB agent by the name of Alekhin who once served in North Africa and drank Ricard at a bar in Algiers with a Foreign Legionnaire who had been incarcerated in a military prison in Marseilles with a man who flew covert missions for the CIA in Laos; his co-pilot was a man who once forged papers for a fugitive Nazi who told him about the perplexing reference in the
Hoffmann dossier to the horizontal crease in his face that denoted a smile. What did it mean? They assumed it must have been some sort of code. The same CIA pilot introduced Ham to a secret procedure being developed by his organisation, called forensic physiognomy. Ham became obsessed by this new technique and his obsession took him to all four corners of the earth on the trail of the perplexing smile motif. We never saw him again; we just received postcards in which he described, in handwriting shaking with excitement, the various leads and discoveries that, he felt, were taking him ever closer to his goal. He claimed to have found glimpses and subtle allusions to the mystery in the tales our grandmothers used to tell us of the bogeyman of Jewish folk tradition, the Golem; and in the various troll traditions of northern European myth – the so-called ‘eat me when I’m fatter’ tales embodied in the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. As the years passed he receded more and more; became ever more remote from us; the postcards ever rarer, the writing on the cards ever more shaky, the language and idiom ever more crazy as he followed a trail of hints glittering like lost pennies in the dark forest of the world’s folk literature. Our beloved young brother turned slowly insane and relayed the symptoms of his sickness to us through the medium of the international postal service.’