Obabakoak (30 page)

The price of the dish made him open his eyes wide. It was ten times the price of any meal he’d eaten in his long and still very recent past.

“Fine. Bring me that,” he ordered the waiter. But he was stunned by the price and had to make a tremendous effort not to show it.

“You think like a poor man, Klaus. You’re rich and you still think like a poor man. You’ll never change,” the sharp voice said reproachfully.

“Be quiet, Alexander!” All those years together and he still didn’t understand what made his little brother tick. Sometimes he turned against him, for no reason. It was as if he enjoyed making him suffer.

“And as an
hors d’oeuvre, monsieu
r
?”

“Crêpes de roquefort,”
replied Klaus, without knowing what it was he was ordering.

“And a white wine of the region? A Rhine wine perhaps?” The waiter was still smiling but not as warmly as before. For a moment Klaus thought he caught an air of mockery in his look.

“Perfect! Just what I need! A Rhine wine!” agreed Klaus enthusiastically. But his enthusiasm rang false.

When the waiter disappeared among the columns, Klaus tried to fix his attention on the trees, still full of sun, in the Stadtpark, or on the tropical fish in the aquarium. But it was in vain that he tried to redirect his thoughts. Again and again they returned to the
savarin scandinave
that had made a fool out of him. All morning he’d been the sleeping fish he wanted to be, thinking he was being borne along on a gentle current. A dream, nothing but a dream. A slight disturbance of the waters was all it had taken for him to wake and realize that the current didn’t exist. He wasn’t in the sea, he wasn’t in a river; he was in a fish tank, just like those tropical fish in the restaurant. Except the fish tank he lived in was smaller. It suffocated him, made him sweat.

“It’s all your fault, Klaus,” said the sharp voice.

Alexander’s reproaches increased the anxiety he was feeling at that moment and he was pleased to hear the waiter’s voice at his side. He had brought him the bottle of Rhine wine.

“Would you like to taste it,
monsieu
r
?”

The wine was the color of amber. Klaus nodded.

“Do you have any paper?” he asked, after approving the quality of the wine.

“Paper,
monsieu
r
?” The waiter wore a look of incomprehension. “To write a few short notes. Can’t waste any time, you know. I’d like to, but I can’t.”

“Now you’ve got it, Klaus. Now you’re talking,” he heard inside him and Klaus smiled with satisfaction. Alexander’s voice was no longer sharp.

“Would a few postcards do?” said the waiter, going over to the sideboard beneath the aquarium. “There’s a picture of the restaurant on the front,” he went on, returning to the table and placing a few cards on the cloth.

“Fine, Marcel. Many thanks. They’ll do nicely,” said Klaus picking up the wine bottle and refilling his glass.

He addressed the first note to his company’s personnel director. He justified his absence from work—as well as his presence in an expensive restaurant—with an allusion to a sudden decision to get married. He hoped he would understand and assured him that he would be back on the van as soon as possible.

However, the tone of the note changed in the last two lines. The postscript read:

“I shouldn’t be away for much more than thirty years. And I would be most grateful if by that time you could be dead.”

Klaus heard Alexander giggling inside him and he too laughed. He knew the head of personnel very well and could imagine his hysterical cries when he finished reading the card. That’s why he wrote to him, just to sour his life a little.

“You should have killed him,” whispered Alexander.

“Be quiet, silly,” Klaus said, but affectionately, the way one says such things to children. That amber-colored wine was putting him in a good mood.

He took more trouble over the second note and was still finishing it when the
crêpes de roquefort
arrived on the table.

“Your little fish bids you farewell, forever. By the time you receive this postcard, I’ll be far away. I know you won’t understand but it doesn’t matter. You never understood about Alexander and that doesn’t matter either. I doubt that you’ll miss me. It’s better this way. I’d write more but I don’t know what to say. Have fun.”

He signed both cards, wrote the addresses and handed them to the waiter.

“Could you make sure these get posted, Marcel?”

“Of course,
monsieur.
We’ll post them tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Marcel.”

“I think you may need more wine,
monsieur,
” remarked the waiter, pointing to the almost empty bottle on the table.

“Yes, bring me another bottle, please. I always need to be in a good mood before I can write,” smiled Klaus. The waiter returned his smile and served him what remained of the first bottle.

Neither the wine nor the meal agreed with him. He grew hotter and hotter and when—as he was trying to do justice to the
savarin
—he took off his jacket, he saw with disgust that the sweat from his armpits had darkened the blue of his shirt. The stains were even visible in the distorted image one of the golden columns gave back.

“The bill, please!” he shouted suddenly and all the remaining customers in the restaurant turned around to look at him. He had decided to abandon that disgusting
savarin
and leave as soon as possible. He needed air, he was suffocating. “Marcel, the bill!” he cried again.

The waiter ran over to him, taking short steps to disguise his haste.

“You’re leaving,
monsieur
? You don’t want anything else?” His face bore an expression of alarm.

“Yes, I want to leave!” Klaus’s right hand grasped one of the corners of the tablecloth.

“Please, be patient. I’ll bring you your bill right away. I’m so sorry,
monsieur.
”

“No, no, I’m sorry, it’s just that I have to go home,” said Klaus, excusing himself and lowering his voice. After all the shouting he felt empty and drained. His head felt heavy.

“I’ll be back in a minute,
monsieur.
”

His head not only felt heavy now, it was spinning too and he had difficulty getting up from the table. Afterward, when he had already bumped into the aquarium twice, he decided to lean against one of the columns and wait there for them to bring him the bill.

“Lovely fish, Marcel, really lovely,” he remarked when the waiter returned. He paid for the meal with two one-hundred-mark notes. “Keep the change,” he added. The change was forty marks.

“How generous you’ve become, Klaus! You can tell you’re drunk.”

Alexander’s voice contained an obvious note of mockery.

“Thank you very much,
monsieur,
” the waiter said, almost bowing.

“Don’t forget the postcards, please. They’re most important to me. I’m serious, Marcel. Affairs of the heart. You know what I mean.”

He found it difficult to enunciate, his tongue got entangled with the words.

“Don’t worry,
monsieur.
I won’t forget.” The waiter was gradually, gently, hustling him toward the door.

“Anyway,” Klaus began, stopping and turning around, “the fish on the island of turtles are much prettier. I mean it. Much much prettier. You get some really incredible fish there.”

“Of course,
monsieur.
Would you like me to call you a taxi? I’ll call you a taxi if you want me to. It’s no bother.”

“I may not have appreciated that
savarin
as I should have, Marcel. I’m sorry. If you only knew…,” said Klaus, with a look of genuine desolation. The fact that he had been unable to finish that dish began to take on great significance for him. It symbolized all the other failures in his life.

“Another day,
monsieur.
Come back another day. You’ll really enjoy it then, you’ll see. We all have our off days,” the waiter said consolingly, sighing.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to come back, Marcel. Seriously. Really. In a few hours…”

“Shut up, Klaus. You’re a fool. You always have been,” he heard a voice say inside him.

Klaus was almost on the point of revealing his travel plans to the waiter, despite Alexander. But one glance at the aquarium stopped him. The tropical fish were all gathered in one corner of the tank, observing him gravely. They didn’t think much of his attitude either. Why was he talking so much? Didn’t he know when to shut up? His brain was unworthy of a fish. He couldn’t see the warning signs.

Klaus put a finger to his lips.

“Shut up!” he said to himself.

“Would you like me to call you a taxi,
monsieu
r
?” repeated the waiter.

“
Merci beaucoup,
Marcel. You’re very kind. I am actually feeling a little unwell.” The waiter rushed off to the telephone.

“So you’re unwell, are you? Don’t make me laugh, Klaus,” said the harsh voice.

“You’re very cruel sometimes, Alexander. I know I’ve drunk a bit too much. After all, it is my birthday,” replied Klaus, a complaining note creeping into his voice.

The tropical fish were swimming back and forth in the tank again. Klaus gave them a knowing wink.

“I’m a thinker too, my friends!” he told them.

“The taxi won’t be long,
monsieur.
It will wait for you at the gate to the park,” the waiter announced.

“Many thanks, Marcel. I mean that,” said Klaus, slapping him on the back. Then he stumbled out of the restaurant and walked over to the taxi.

An hour later he was opening the door to his flat. He had made the journey with the taxi windows down and he no longer felt quite so dazed. But he was still glad that he had everything prepared. The most important part of his luggage was already at the airport. The rest—an overnight bag—waited in a corner of the living room. All that remained was for him to rest a little and then say good-bye to that cheap flat. He didn’t like it but, nonetheless, he had lived there for forty-seven years.

Before sitting down on the sofa, he brought the three alarm clocks into the room and took out the old hunting rifle from the cupboard where he had put it the night before. Klaus kissed the rifle and laughed.

“You’re drunk, Klaus,” said the harsh voice.

“Thanks very much,” he said to the rifle. He had bought it from a fellow worker two years earlier and had only used it once.

“Yesterday morning,” thought Klaus, surprised. It seemed much longer than that since he had used it to hold the bank manager’s family hostage. But the impression was entirely false, only twenty-four hours had passed since then. “I’m calling from your home. I have your wife and two daughters with me. I presume that you do at least love your daughters. I need two hundred thousand marks. It’s up to you if you bring them to me or not, but it would be best if you did so without a word to anyone else, since I forgot to mention that I have a rifle in my hand with six bullets in it. Bring the money and no one will get hurt.”

However, later—Klaus recalled with sadness—he had had to kill them all, not because he wanted to, but because of Alexander, because Alexander, being only a child, didn’t understand how horrible death was. Generally, he took no notice of him and refused to follow his orders to kill. He only obeyed when he was upset.

“And, unfortunately, yesterday I was very upset,” thought Klaus, yawning.

“You’ve drunk too much wine, Klaus. You’re talking nonsense,” said the harsh voice.

“I’m sleepy, Alexander,” he replied. His eyes were closing.

“Get up at once, Klaus. You can sleep all you want to on the island of turtles!” shouted Alexander. “You’re here now and you haven’t even looked at yourself in the mirror. You should take a bit more care over your new appearance,” he added afterward in a gentler voice.

“All right, Alexander, all right,” said Klaus obediently. Sometimes his little brother bored him. Why make him get up at a moment when even his white suit weighed heavy on him? He didn’t understand how he could be so capricious.

“Klaus Hanhn?” he asked, having planted himself in the middle of the room.

The figure in the mirror nodded, just as it had that morning, but not as enthusiastically as he had hoped. The white suit looked good, as did the rifle inclined against his chest, but everything else was wrong. Especially his face. The sweat had ruined the work of all those skin creams. The red blotches had appeared again.

“The greasy skin and the blotches,” the doctor had said, “are congenital in nature.”

He remembered that he still had one bullet in the rifle chamber and he leveled the weapon at his own image, at the red blotches on his face. He took his aim of the target—sure, unmoving—opening and closing one eye. From the other side, in ironic symmetry, the other marksman reflected back.

“I’d be sure to win,” shouted Klaus, laughing out loud and throwing the rifle to the floor. The figure in the mirror laughed just like him and he too withdrew from the duel. Both of them were decidedly drunk.

He was just about to pick up the rifle again when the telephone rang. Startled by the ringing, Klaus wheeled around and fell onto the sofa.

“I don’t want to talk to you!” he shouted. “I’ve explained it all on the postcard!” The telephone kept ringing. Its sheer persistence irritated him. “I’ve celebrated my birthday already! I dined on
savarin
!”

Remembering that dish brought on another fit of laughter.

The laughter and the ringing ended at the same time and Klaus took advantage of the quiet to see what time it was by the three alarm clocks. It was just a few minutes before five o’clock.

“Four hours before I get the plane,” he thought with a grimace of boredom. They would seem like an eternity. Even longer with the headache he could feel coming on.

“So much time!” He sighed, rubbing his eyes. He could go to the airport now, but it wouldn’t be wise. Anyway, he didn’t feel like moving.

“Get up this minute, Klaus!” ordered Alexander, seeing him leaning back against one of the arms of the sofa. “Don’t go to sleep without setting the alarm clocks!” he warned.