B007P4V3G4 EBOK (63 page)

No one can see a thing here, he thinks: there are no taller
buildings in the vicinity.

He goes down, takes the tray of meat and, holding it above his head, he climbs back up. Sliding it across the shingle, he shoves the
tray a little further away from the hatch, out on to the roof.

If the dead can still feel anything, she must assume she'll share
in the Kingdom of Heaven limb by limb. Come on then lads, come
on! Just you tuck in. Here lies the manna of twenty years unhappy
married life.

Herbert moves down a step, pulls the hatch up over the edge
and, through a crack, he watches the seagulls who continue to sit
motionless on the edge of the roof in the red light of the setting
sun hanging between dark swordfish clouds above the grimy city.

Herbert is sitting on the floor in the kitchen. Round slices of bone
are lying around him on the plastic. The electric nutmeg mill whirs
beside him.

Liesbeth has no relatives any more, he thinks. Friends and
acquaintances have stayed away for years already, driven away by
the stale smell she spread. Which leaves the neighbours. When do
I actually see the neighbours? Never, surely. Liesbeth hasn't been
out in months. Even the shopkeepers no longer ask after her. It'll
take years before anyone hits on the idea of asking me how she is.
And I will have forgotten it myself by then; my mind'll be a blank.
Perhaps, should a seagull be flying over, I'll point up above. And
they will say: Oh, she's passed away in peace you mean. Yes,
passed away in peace, I'll then ice-cold peace.

He presses the button on the side of the mill and so silences it.
He removes its plastic lid and puts a disc of thigh bone inside.
Then he pulls out the drawer at the bottom, throws the bone,
ground to powder, in a pan and switches the mill back on. He
picks up the pan, fetches a spoon from the drawer and walks to the
living room. He puts a chair in front of the stove, sits down on it
with the pan clamped between his thighs and he opens the little
door of the stove. Slowly, Herbert stirs the bone meal, makes little
mounds and draws arabic characters in it. In the flickering fire light,
it's just as though there's life in it, as if it's a pan full of little,
yellow spiders. Then, a spoonful at a time, he sprinkles the meal on
to the fire.

It's a bit damp, he thinks. But I could hardly dry it first, now could 17

It emanates sulphur-like fumes, with poisonous blue flames
coursing through. He flings the little door shut. The peaceful scent
of a village smithy settles in the room.

Herbert wakes up in the morning with the smell of burnt horn in
his nostrils.

Ah yes, the bone, he thinks. I was busy till ever so late,
yesterday. But I'm rid of the lot. Air the place first in a minute, and
then take a peek what the ash looks like.

He raises his right leg so the cold air streaming in at the footend
wakes his body, and he looks at the bedside table.

'Such a liberation,' he says, yawning. 'Only one glass with
dentures.'

Then, in a single sweep, he flings the blankets aside and jumps
out of bed. He walks over to the window and draws back the
curtains. It's snowing. He stands there ill at ease in the marble
light, looks up at the snowflakes floating down like grey ash, to be
cleansed only in contrast with the houses opposite.

The meat, he suddenly thinks with a shock, the meat has been
snowed under.

He walks quickly to the hall and climbs the steps. When his
head emerges above the edge of the hatch, the light blinds him.
On top of his head, he feels the chill kisses of the snowflakes. In
front of him is the tray. Empty. There's a thin layer of snow on the
bottom, tinged pale pink by the blood that has stayed behind on
the bottom as though it had stood beneath a flowering sweetbrier. It fills him with shame, shame without remorse. When he
removes the tray, a reproachful dark square of tar and shingle
remains like a freshly dug grave in the snow.

In the kitchen, he puts the tray in the sink and rinses out the snow
and blood with hot water. A few toe nails stay behind on the grid
above the plughole. The hungry birds have left no more than that.

Let's not get sentimental now, he thinks, picking up the nails
and tossing them among the wet tea leaves in the enamel sink
tidy. Raskolnikov was a worthless character. Precisely because of
his weakness, his conscience. Or perhaps one is allowed to have a
conscience but only regarding Is a conscience not the
most covert of stimulants? The outside world, however, must
notice nothing of it.

Rubbing his wrists together, he walks over to the refrigerator
and draws it open. He halts, rigid with fright. Liesbeth's sitting just
the way he set her down there yesterday, but her glasses no
longer cover her eyes: she's holding them in her right hand. In a
panic, he runs to the door. It's shut; it's even bolted. Then he walks
to the back room and tests the balcony doors.

I must have done it myself, he thinks. I've been sleepwalking.
But no, I surely would have known in that case. I always do, don't
I, when I've been up in the night and what I did then?

But now he remembers it was Liesbeth who always told him.

She would follow me with a wet floor cloth which she put in
front of my feet. But I would always step over it. And she'd be
picking it up and laying it down in front of me again. Just like a
king being received in state. Where's the cat: where's Peter?

Nervously he goes through the house, searches all the cupboards,
but he cannot find the creature anywhere.

Riddles at every turn in this place. Cats disappear, women
disappear, I walk the house at night, my arms stretched out in
front of me like a blind man. Dangerous, too! Tonight I'll tie
myself down to the bed bars. No, I might have an unlucky fall in
that case. Then, suddenly, a story from the Old Testament pops
into his mind. One of ash sprinkled round the altar in which they
found the footprints of the greedy priests next morning. I'll
sprinkle a thin layer of flour on the kitchen floor, he thinks. I
mustn't go imagining all kinds of things. It's too ridiculous for
words. Nobody can get in. And who would benefit by taking off
Liesbeth's glasses? Who'd want to open her eyes to what I have
inflicted on her?

Reassured, he walks to the refrigerator and places the glasses
back in front of the half abandoned eye sockets. Then he drags her
round ninety degrees and cuts off her left leg.

It's becoming -a routine job now, he thinks. The same actions as
yesterday. The two arms tomorrow, the trunk in halves, across, the
day after: only leaves the head for Saturday.

Abstracted, he begins to cut into the leg.

Just look what I'm doing, he thinks. Such elegant curves.
Yesterday, I began to cut clumsily; as time went by I was cutting
splendid, straight strips. Now I'm cutting capricious pieces. Just
like in Art. Art, too, is refractory and clumsy at first. Then you
get classical harmony, the straight strips of drab-pink flesh. I'm
going through the Baroque now. Tomorrow, perhaps, I'll be
cutting scrolls and elegant figures and I'll be the Watteau of corpse
desecration.

I was at primary school, Herbert thinks, in the fourth form. I
must have been ten at the time. I was ten years old when it
started. Or much earlier on even: who knows? How is it possible
for one to find one's vocation so late? Across from me, at her desk, sat a girl with long, dark hair and spirited, brown eyes. Bent over
my work, I turned my head sideways and looked at her profile.
Then I looked at her tummy, going up and down like thick, boiling
porridge in her tight dress. At night, in bed, I would think of her. I
would take her to a lonely house where I tied her hands behind her
back. A meat hook hung from an iron bar on the ceiling. I
suspended her from it by the roof of her mouth. She sought to
speak but I only heard her bottom teeth tap against the hook like a
woodpecker hidden in the woods. She wanted to say: you're sweet
to me even though you hurt me. I was lying on my belly. With
my lower torso I slid back and forth on the sheet. I was covered in
a gory membrane in which I threatened to suffocate. Like a child
born with a caul. Wasn't I born with a caul? Mother said that at
my birth the placenta was stuck to my skull like a Russian fur hat.

When Herbert opens the hatch the sky, mottled drab and yellow,
is stretched above the city like the soiled sheet of an incontinent
child. An army of mediaeval knights pokes its helmeted, brick face,
smoking, above the white hills of the roofs. Swans float like white
islets on the dark pond in the park. Great black-backed gulls sit
equidistant from each other on the edge of the roof. When Herbert
lets the tray of meat down into the soft snow, they approach,
hesitantly. Halting a few metres away from the tray, they stare at
Herbert, soullessly, with their fierce, yellow, artificial eyes.

'I'll withdraw, lads,' he says, 'so you can dine in peace.'

He pulls the hatch shut over his head and fixes the catches.

Mind I don't forget to lock everything properly and sprinkle
flour in the kitchen before I go to bed. I must have an early night:
these are tiring times.

Above his head he hears the frightful shrieking and gorging of
the hungry birds.

In the depths of night, Herbert wakes from the cold. He is lying on
top of the blankets. He sticks his feet up in the air and looks at the
soles of his feet.

'Gotcha,' he says loudly. 'I've caught myself out. Just as if I've
got perspiring feet and they've been rubbed with talc.'

He brushes them. The flour sticks to his fingers like dough.
Startled, he jumps out of bed.

My feet must have been wet before I stepped in the flour, he
thinks.

Quickly, he walks to the kitchen. There are his footprints. His
eyes crowd with fear against the top of their sockets. Among his
prints he sees a damp square, and another, and the floor cloth in
front of the fridge. The cat's prints run alongside his. Hurriedly he
goes over to the refrigerator. The meat tray's up against the wall,
opposite Liesbeth. He looks at the hallway door. He sees by his
prints that he has been back and forth through the door. He sees
the cat's tracks too, but just one way. He walks over to the
hallway door and opens it. Freezing cold envelops his body.
Herbert goes to the hatch; the steps are underneath. When he
looks up, he sees the stars in the carbon black sky. He clambers up
and sticks his head into the East wind. Right in front of his eyes, in
the snow,.he sees the tracks of the cat.

He's been right behind me, Herbert thinks. He knows everything.
He's been spying on me from an untraceable hiding place. But he's
up on the roof now. By the tracks I can see he hasn't turned back.

He fills his hands with snow and rubs his face with it.

I must keep a cool head, bring things to a close quickly. But let's
tackle the genever bottle first.

He retreats a few steps and closes the hatch.

Warily, Herbert crosses the square, looks up at the windows of his
apartment.

It looks uninhabited, he thinks. The lace curtains are yellow with
brown rings. Is that something moving there, behind the curtains?
He shakes his head and pats his cheeks with his fingers. I mustn't
turn into a shying horse. I can see from here the window's ajar.
The wind'll be stirring the curtains. How long has it been open?
Bad for the plants. I'll shut it before I leave. Liesbeth's head's been
standing on the roof for eight hours already. If it's not completely
stripped by now I'll leave it there till tomorrow morning; then I'll
wrap it in plastic and put it in my suitcase. I'll set it down among
the cobbles along the Dordogne.

He feels in his pockets for the key and looks up. The chests of
the seagulls protrude over the edge of the roof as though they are
part of the building's trimmings.

'You'll miss me,' he mutters. 'Tighten your belts: that's all I can
recommend.'

Right by his feet, on the pavement, lies a dirty-white sphere.
Herbert bends down and picks it up.

Don't look round, he thinks, I'm just picking something up; everyone does that from time to time. And I've even read that
they peck the eyes out of babies lying unguarded on the beach,
and devour them.

He puts his key in the lock and enters the dark stairwell.

It feels like the devil's egg of a stinkhorn, he thinks. I'm still able
to walk up the stairs, but I've got to take my time over it.

The front door opens behind him. A neighbour comes in; she
halts at the letter box.

'Such a long time I haven't seen your wife,' she says. 'Has she
got to stay in again?'

'I took her to the train last week; she wasn't feeling too well;
she's gone South.'

'Taken the Sun Express to the deep blue sea?' the woman asks.

'Quite, quite,' Herbert replies. 'To the deep blue sea. I'll be
following her tomorrow:

Carefully, he slips off into the dark stairwell.

That eye was as hard as a billiard ball this morning, he thinks,
clenching his fingers. Now it's soft and squishy. There's a thaw on:
Spring has sprung.