The Safety Net (32 page)

And there she actually was, outside the church door, old Mrs. Hermes with a pale young man who was laughed at in the
village for his excessive piety and whose name he didn’t know.

“What’s going on here, Mr. Tolm—the church locked up, no bells, no mass?”

“Father Roickler left yesterday, it was urgent. I don’t know whether the verger …”

“The verger is away on holiday, and whenever the verger’s on holiday Father Roickler rings the bells himself.…”

“I don’t know,” he said, “I wonder—perhaps you’d better go home, it’ll all be explained.…” He felt more than sorry for the old woman, it hurt him to see her standing there with her prayer book, in coat and hat, feeling cold and aggrieved.

“I think,” he said to Holzpuke, “we’d better go back to our cottage. There’ll be all kinds of misunderstandings if you go into the vicarage with me now, people will think the police are involved, rumors will be started that we’ll never be able to get rid of; they know you, don’t forget.”

More people arrived, churchgoers, others from the nearby houses, and he was glad when the gate closed behind them again.

“How’s your sister?” Holzpuke asked in a low voice; he was warming his hands at the stove, sipping his coffee.

“Fine, I think, it’s getting a little cramped here, pretty cramped—if my parents were to be the next ones to seek refuge here, maybe my brother too, we would all be united on these four hundred and fifty square feet of floor space—in Blorr there will be three thousand square feet standing empty, in Tolmshoven forty-five hundred, in Cologne a thousand—at the vicarage it’s only two thousand or twenty-five hundred—a strange state of affairs considering that the circulation of the paper is constantly growing and the sales at the Beehive even more so.…”

“You certainly have a nice little place here,” Holzpuke whispered. “I can understand anyone seeking refuge here. But now as to why I’m disturbing you so early, had no option. Something very, very strange has happened, something rather worrying, and I don’t know anyone except you who might be able to help me.…”

He glanced at the two closed bedroom doors, but Rolf shook his head reassuringly, saying: “We have another half hour, I’d say—my wife doesn’t get going till around eight, and my sister—I don’t know her sleeping habits.…”

“Well,” Holzpuke said, and sat down, stood up again, picked up the coffee mug. “Your first wife, Veronica, has been phoning again: to your sister, to your mother, to the priest in Tolmshoven, but not one of the three phones was answered. We’ve no proof, of course, that all these calls came from her—all we have on the tape is the ringing—but then a fourth call, again to your sister, again no answer. And now comes the surprise: since she knows, of course, that everything is monitored, she spoke anyway, three times she said: ‘We’re coming with the bucket—we’re coming with the bucket—we’re coming with the bucket’—a coded message, directed unmistakably at us—I just wonder why she never phones you?”

“She knows I wouldn’t be very polite to her. And she can’t stand rudeness.”

“Can’t stand rudeness.…” Holzpuke laughed softly.

“That’s right—I’d bawl her out, I really would, not only because of this lunacy she’s involved in—also because of the boy she’s been dragging all over the place for the past three years, and it’s true: she can’t stand rudeness or impoliteness—ask my mother, my sister, my father, or my brother—ask her father. And now you’d like to know what bucket means?”

“The word is used for all kinds of vehicles, it’s also used in a metaphorical sense—but here it appears to mean something quite specific.”

“We used to call our bicycles buckets of bolts, but never our cars, when we had any … so that means …”

“That Beverloh is coming on a bicycle—may already be on his way—that would correspond to your theory.…”

“It’s the result of putting myself in his place. Don’t forget, I know him. Whether or not I’d recognize him, I don’t know; I don’t mean physically—I mean the abstract turbulence of his calculations.…”

“Bicycle,” said Holzpuke. “I believe there are more than twenty-five million of them by now … I must pass that on to Dollmer, maybe even to Stabski; the area around Tolmshoven is almost as ideal for cycling as Holland, and …” He broke off. There was a stirring in Sabine’s room. Rolf put on some more wood, made a reassuring gesture: “They’ll all be going to the bathroom first, to the toilet—it’s between the bedrooms, accessible from both.” He pointed to the stove, poured more coffee for Holzpuke, who was standing by the door, shifted the saucepan of milk closer to the flames. “Warming room, coffee stall for senior police officers, sanctuary for the desperate wives of prominent, wealthy citizens—will that go into my file too?”

“I’m not worried about what goes into our files but about what
their
files may contain on you. Since you finished serving your sentence, nothing detrimental about you has come to official notice. However, now you’re getting a suspicious number of visits from senior members of the fuzz, offering them coffee, and supplying them with information. D’you suppose your friend Heinrich Schmergen is going to like that? And your other friends?”

“Heinrich is learning Spanish, and I am teaching him the basics of political economy, particularly of finance … and as to my other friends: don’t worry, I’ll even tell them this bucket story, they won’t object.”

“I must ask you to treat that confidentially, not to mention it even to your wife.…”

“I can’t promise that, I can’t have secrets of this kind from my friends or from my wife.…” He sighed, and the last vestige of affability faded from his face as he half whispered: “I have something important to tell you about the bucket, something very important, but first let me say this: we are, if not actually persecuted, ostracized—my friends are, at least—we have nothing to hide, not even our thoughts. We don’t even
think
of violence in any shape or form, we have even ceased to think of violence toward objects, anyone is free to know whom I meet, whom they meet. We are a large group, we don’t even know everyone belonging to it. We are merely determined not to
betray the conclusions we have come to, we feel no hatred, not even disgust, only contempt for those who can’t stop regurgitating that old garbage—contempt for those who deliver us up to the stupid jabber of our fellow citizens by the use of informers, snoopers, job restrictions—what’s dangerous is our pride, our arrogance. And if I help you a bit, my dear, or should I say highly respected Mr. Holzpuke, then it’s only because I see a very slight chance of protecting lives, even if it be the life of our distinguished Mr. Bleibl—as well as the intactness—I mean the physical, not the moral intactness—of the far from immaculate breasts of Mrs. Bleibl Number Four, which I would be at liberty to admire in every third magazine if I considered them worthy of admiration—but I suppose I may leave the protection of those breasts to the machine pistols of your officers. It’s time to go, my wife is moving about, the children are awake. There is a back entrance to the vicarage, between the vestry and the church. I would prefer not to walk through the excited throng that has been abandoned by its priest. Some more coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

“Then I’ll take you now to the bishop’s room.…”

He threw his parka over his shoulders, opened the door, and walked ahead of Holzpuke to the back door of the vicarage, past the guard, who hesitated a moment, seemed about to block his path, but then, presumably at a sign from Holzpuke, stepped aside.

It was cool in the passageways, apparently quiet on the street outside the vicarage, and as they started toward the stairs the telephone rang in the study. Rolf stopped, Holzpuke walked past him into the room, muttering: “It might be …,” lifted the receiver, said: “Yes,” listened for a minute and then said: “Father Roickler will be away for some time, I suggest you phone the vicarage in the next village. My name? Never mind that,” and replaced the receiver. “Extreme Unction,” he said, just before following Rolf upstairs.

The bishop’s room was simply and very pleasantly furnished: white furniture, honey-colored carpet, a Chagall print on the wall, a small, valuable Madonna in a niche with a little
oil lamp in front of it; a comfortable corner with two rattan armchairs and a round rattan table; a telephone, no ashtray. Holzpuke sat down with a sigh: “You’re giving me some long speeches, Mr. Tolm, very long.”

“It would be a good idea for you to pass them along, verbatim if possible, to Mr. Dollmer and, if the occasion arises, to Mr. Stabski. I am prepared to repeat them personally to those gentlemen, to explain how many thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, are being excluded in this connection, deliberately no doubt, to provide a reserve that can be sacrificed to the Zummerling press—and the banks. But let’s take the dynamite first: it comes under the same heading as bucket. I recall that Beverloh, years ago when we were still friends and were planning demonstrations together, and actions too, came up with the idea of the ‘hot’ bicycle—that’s to say, he calculated how much explosive could be inserted into the framework of a bicycle, where the fuses would have to be hidden, and so on and so on. The idea was to place a charge of this kind in fifty, if possible a hundred bicycles—it was all theoretical at the time—and simply park them wherever devastation was to be caused. We were all against it, every single one of us—it remained nothing but a theory. But he might by this time have turned the theory into practice. In other words, the bucket of bolts he’s coming on may contain explosives. It might even be—another theory that was considered—easily dismantled and turned into some kind of a firearm, or a catapult. If Veronica was so keen on informing you about the bucket—I don’t know”—he looked at the end wall—“whether this place is being monitored.…”

“No,” said Holzpuke wearily, “the telephone of course, but that’s all.…”

“You see, I’d like to ask you not to record this information as coming from me.”

“That’s a promise,” said Holzpuke, “an important tip—a valuable, horrifying one—we’ll have to check not only the cyclists but also the bicycles, around Tolmshoven, around Horrnauken, around Trollscheid, around Breterheiden.…”

“Around Hubreichen, if my sister’s going to stay here for a while …”

“Is she going to? Has she said anything?”

“Not yet, she likes it here. And of course she can stay as long as she wants—and as long as we can stay here. I have the impression that her life will change considerably. Now that Father Roickler has gone for good, we don’t know what the church authorities are going to do about us. Did you know, by the way, that Roickler …?”

“Yes, we know about his—about his relationship with that Mrs. Plauck, we also know—and we also knew that yesterday—he, well, cleared out … an honorable man, incidentally.”

“So you have informers in the village?”

“Of course. That shouldn’t surprise you. And now if I might ask you to get me an ashtray—bishops appear to be nonsmokers.”

In the adjoining bathroom Rolf found a china soap dish that could be pried out of its holder; he placed it on the table, accepted a cigarette from Holzpuke, and a light, remained standing.

“The thing’s a bit wobbly, but it’ll have to do for now. I wouldn’t like to go into the other rooms—I only know my way around downstairs. Do you want to speak to my sister too?”

“No, but I have a few more questions for you—about your friends. What you were saying just now—that pride, that stubbornness, that being excluded—or sense of being excluded—those conclusions—those ideas—how big do you suppose it is, the group you have defined in this way?”

“You could figure that out very easily from your own files and those of other authorities working with you: we are all listed, aren’t we—it’s not that
we
have a list of ourselves—we don’t know how many we are, but you should know, just take a look at this army, this phantom army—review it—let those hundreds of thousands of young women and men and their children parade before you, if only in your mind’s eye, and ask yourself whether all their education, their potential intelligence,
their strength and glory, exist merely to be kept under surveillance. Casual laborers of the nation, nut gatherers, apple pickers … Well, if you have no more questions—I don’t feel comfortable here, but at least the bishop’s room has for once in its existence been of real service. So now that whole security business is going to be transferred from Blorr to here?”

“Your sister’s sudden decision has put me in a quandary: Blorr is surrounded by an outer, an inner, and what you might call an innermost security cordon, that’s to say, the officers who are visible—we were not prepared for this move or for impetuous decisions of this kind, they might even be called breakouts.… Well, I must confess that at the moment I’m improvising and relying on the walls of the vicarage garden. If your sister …”

“May she at least go for the milk?”

“Better not. If you could prevent it—no walks either, or anything like that. Unfortunately the press already knows about it, there are rumors of marital troubles … anyway.…”

“So I’m supposed to keep my own sister more or less a prisoner.”

“If you want to call it that—and the little girl, too, of course.… I keep thinking about this bicycle business, although according to your theory he wouldn’t harm your sister.…”

“Don’t be so sure.…”

“One more question, if I may: how do you imagine he would be dressed?”

“Neatly, not exactly like a young bank executive, yet not like a hippie—neatly, the way nice ordinary folk dress for a bike ride.”

Rolf returned the soap dish to the bathroom, wiped it clean, pressed it into its holder. He straightened the chairs, smoothed the tablecloth, and followed Holzpuke down the stairs. It was still raining, the guard’s nod looked more like a grumpy shake of the head. Fruit was lying on the ground, was dropping from the trees, the clock struck eight as they entered the warm living room. An idyllic scene: the warm stove, the children with cocoa
rings around their mouths, empty eggshells, the two women with their cigarettes laughing over their coffee cups. “Today we’ll have to stay indoors,” said Katharina. “Sabine wants to come along and help me, she sings so nicely—and can draw too,” she said. “We can make a start on the decorations for Saint Martin’s Day.”