Feelings of Fear (7 page)

“For his throat,” Jan explained. “Would you care for some wine?”

We were presented with two huge steaming bowls of mussels, a heap of fresh-cut bread, and a bottle of cold Sancerre. The waiter set a plate of thin chicken broth in Martin Hoete's place; but even when I looked up and raised a querying eyebrow, he simply nodded to me, and said,
“Bon appetit, monsieur.”

“Hoete has been very hard done by,” said Jan, with mussel-juice dripping from his chin. “He came here to work – didn't you, Martin? – thinking that his wife was going to be faithful to him. But as soon as his back was turned … well, she was flirting with every man she set eyes on. And of course, that Quinten Venkeler … he's always been a ladies' man. She fucked him on the very first night she met him, at an office party, on the forwarding manager's desk, no less. You can imagine why Hoete feels so angry.”

I tried to look both sympathetic and reasonable. “Sure … but I don't think that violence is the answer, do you?”

The light from the circular window was amber. The discarded mussel-shells were the color of slate. When he spoke, Jan's mouth was a crimson gash in a face as pale as potatoes. I felt for a moment as if I had intruded into a sixteenth-century Flemish painting.

“What other answer is there? A woman takes a man's life away from him. What else can he do but take his revenge?”

I had finished my mussels and looked at the plate of chicken broth. “Hoete doesn't seem to be hungry,” I remarked.

“Well, why don't you help yourself?” Jan suggested. He glanced toward the maitre-d'. “They always get upset in here if they think that you don't like the food.”

I slid the chicken broth across the table toward me and picked up a
large silver spoon. I managed to drink almost half, and finished up by dunking my bread in it.

“Women have had it their own way for far too long,” said Jan. “What do they think we are? We work every hour that God sends us, and then they spit in our faces.”

“Have you ever had a serious relationship with a woman?” I asked him.

His plate of mussel shells were taken away and half a roast chicken was placed in front of him. He proceeded to tear off the leg and the wing, sucking his fingers to get rid of the grease. “I loved a woman just once. Really loved her, I mean. I think it happens only once in everybody's lifetime. Just like Maria and Hoete.”

I was given a veal cutlet in dark brown breadcrumbs and thin fried potatoes. A large bowl of
waterzooi
was set in Hoete's place. Either the waiters and the maitre-d' were used to Jan's imaginary lunch companion, and humored him – if he was prepared to pay for it, what did it matter? – or else there really
was
somebody there, and I couldn't see them.

Over coffee, Jan took out a small pale cigar and offered me one. We both sat and smoked for a while in silence. Then Jan said, “Hoete wants to ask you a favor.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Well, he wants to visit Maria this evening … have a chat with her. Try to make her see sense about this money thing.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“You're impartial, that's the point. Kind of a referee. If you could go along to make sure that nobody loses their temper. I know he'd appreciate it.”

I looked again at the empty chair. “I don't really think so.”

But Jan leaned across the table and took hold of my arm. He was so close that I could see his gold molars, right at the back. “There are times when you doubt your eyes, aren't there? There are times when you think that you might be going mad.”

I shook my head. “Hoete doesn't exist, Jan. You're making him up. I don't know why. But what I
do
know is that I'm not going to go along with him tonight to see his ex-wife, because if I do, I'll be going on my own.”

Jan stared at me for a long, long moment and then released my arm. “He doesn't exist? What do you mean, he doesn't exist? If he doesn't exist, then who ate his
waterzooi
?”

He pointed to the bowl in front of Hoete's empty chair. There was nothing in it but two or three chicken bones and a slice of carrot. I turned around, and even though the light was against me, and the restaurant was already clouded with cigarette-smoke, I saw a thin dark man in a snapbrim hat making his way toward the entrance.

“There was nobody here,” I told Jan.

He gave me an odd, puckered smile. “Nobody is often the most dangerous person there is. If I were you, I would go to Maria's apartment tonight, just to make sure that he doesn't get up to any mischief.”

With that, he pushed a black-and-white photograph across the table. A striking girl with high cheekbones and dark hair and a mouth that looked as if she just had finished kissing.

“This is her? This is Maria?”

Jan nodded. “She's something, isn't she?”

I turned the photograph over. On the back was scrawled
6 Ster Straat, De Keyserlei, 2100.
I took it and read it but I still wasn't happy.

“So where do
you
fit into all of this?” I asked him.

“Haven't you guessed?” he said, still smiling.

I didn't go back to the bank that afternoon. I called to say I was down with the grippe, and then I went back to my room at the Novotel on Luithagensteenweg. I emptied two miniature Johnnie Walkers into one glass and sat on the bed watching Asterix cartoons with the sound turned down, trying to get my mind straight.

I kept thinking of Maria's face and the more I thought about it the more it haunted me. She wasn't anything to do with me; so why was I so worried? Martin Hoete didn't exist, so she wasn't in any danger. But what if Jan believed that he was Martin Hoete? What if Jan were schizophrenic and “Martin Hoete” was his vengeful
alter ego.
Maybe that was why Jan had taken me to lunch and asked me to make sure that Maria wasn't alone at nine o'clock tonight. Maybe the good side of his personality was making plans to protect Maria from the bad side of his personality.

I tipped back the last of the Scotch. It was a quarter to nine, and it was dark and foggy outside, with the mournful hooting of steamers being towed up the Schelde to the docks. I went downstairs in the elevator and in the mirror I thought I looked pale and stressed. I guess I must have been working too hard lately. Too many late nights at the bank. Too much computer-time. I didn't have any real friends in Antwerp, only business friends, and most of my sightseeing I had done alone – standing in the gloom of Ruben's house or walking around the gloomy precincts of the zoo, while Polar bears paced relentlessly up and down.

In the hotel pharmacy I bought a copy of
Time
magazine and (as a second thought) an old-fashioned straight razor. Martin Hoete didn't exist but Jan was real enough, and if there was trouble between him and Maria it was just as well to go prepared. Not that I would ever
use
a razor on anybody, but it was something to wave around in case things turned ugly.

Then I took a taxi to De Keyserlei – the broad avenue that led to Antwerp Station – and asked to be dropped off at the end of Ster Straat.

Ster Straat was narrow and cobbled and lined with lime trees, a street of heavy gray apartment buildings that had somehow survived the war. Number 6 had a wide archway, with black metal gates, and a courtyard with a mosaic floor. I tried the gates and they swung open with a low, weary groan. I hesitated for a moment and then I stepped inside. There was a sharp smell of disinfectant and that ever-present pungency of Belgian drains. I walked across the mosaic with my footsteps echoing against the archway. A moped suddenly buzzed down the street behind me and startled me.

My heart was beating hard and I didn't really know why. Jan was eccentric, but he didn't frighten me. Hoete disturbed me, with all his threats of cutting throats, but then Hoete wasn't real, was he?

I reached the black-painted door that led up to the apartments. Beside it was a row of bell-push buttons marked in neat italic handwriting:
T & V Hovenier. D van Cauwelaert. M Paulus.
That “M” must have stood for Maria, because it was the only one. Apartment number 5.

I was tempted to push the bell and introduce myself, but then it
suddenly occurred to me how ridiculous it would appear if I said that I was here to protect her from somebody who didn't exist. Instead, I decided to wait outside for a while, to see if anybody
did
show up.

The night grew damper and colder. I was beginning to think that I must be seriously mad to be pacing up and down this courtyard like one of the Polar bears in the zoo. Eleven o'clock passed, and then I heard the chimes ring out eleven fifteen and I thought that enough was enough. I would go back to my hotel and have a hot, deep bath and finish off the rest of the whiskey from my minibar.

I was about to leave when the gates groaned open, and a thin man in a dark coat came into the courtyard, clanging the gates shut behind him. He crossed to the door, taking out a bunch of keys as he did so.

“Bonsoir”
he said, as he opened up the door.

“Bonsoir”
I replied. He didn't look like Hoete – at least, he didn't look like the Hoete that I had imagined, when Jan had described him to me. A sharp nose, metal-rimmed glasses that glittered in the darkness. He went inside, but before he could shut the door I called out, “
S'il vous plaît, monsieur! J'ai oublié mon clef
!”

He held the door open for me and I followed him into the vestibule. There was a small table with a vase of dried flowers on it, and a reproduction of Rubens'
Toilet of Venus
– a big fleshy Venus with her back turned, watching me knowingly in a mirror held up by Cupid. The man opened the sliding door to a tiny elevator and we both crowded into it, shoulder to shoulder.

“Quel étage?
” he asked me. He smelled of cigar tobacco and faded lavender cologne.

“Deuxième.”

We both got out at the second floor. He went straight across the corridor and opened up the door to Apartment 7. I gave him a jerky little wave goodnight, and then I walked further along to Apartment 5. I was only halfway there when the timing-switch clicked and I was plunged into darkness. There was a window at the end of the corridor but it was covered by heavy velvet drapes. Fortunately, there was a thin chink of light shining under the door of Number 5, so I was able to grope the rest of the way.

I stood outside, holding my breath. I could hear the television news in English and the sound of water-pipes rattling. Maybe Maria was
taking a shower. Always a fatal thing to do when a murderer's after you, I thought wryly. Look at
Psycho,
and dozens of other stabbings-in-the-shower. I waited until I heard the chimes ring out eleven thirty. Then I thought: I've come so far, I might as well make myself known to her, even if my reason for being here
is
totally crazy.

I had my fist poised to knock when I heard the elevator whining. I stepped back, concealing myself behind the thick velvet drapes. They were choking, and they smelled of decades of dust, but I managed to hold my breath.

The corridor light clicked on and I saw a tall man step out of the elevator and walk immediately toward me. He was wearing a black coat and a wide-brimmed hat that concealed his face in shadow. He approached me with complete determination, almost as if he already knew that I was here. I slid my razor out of my copy of
Time
and opened the blade. If he tried to attack me, then he was going to be marked for the rest of his life.

He had almost reached the drapes when he stopped at the door of Number 5 and knocked. He waited for a while with his head bowed, and then he knocked again. After a moment the door was opened on a security chain, and I heard a woman's voice say,
“Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?”

Without hesitation the man took hold of the door frame and kicked the door as hard as he could. The security chain was torn away and the door juddered wide open. I heard the woman gasp and then I heard a table toppled over and the sound of a lamp smashing.

I dragged myself out of the drapes and rushed into the apartment. The man had pushed the girl back on to a gold-upholstered sofa and he was trying to wrench away the bath towel around her waist. She wasn't screaming, but wrestling with him and letting out a concentrated whimper, as if she were mortally afraid of what he was going to do to her.

“Hoete!”
I shouted at him, and slashed at his sleeve with my razor. But he twisted himself around and gripped my wrist so tightly that I couldn't break free, and then he pulled me sideways and got an armlock around my neck. I never knew a man so strong, and I used to be high-school boxing champion. He had me totally paralyzed,
half-throttling me with his left arm and gripping my right hand so hard that I couldn't even drop the razor.

He shoved me forward, toward the sofa, and forced my right hand from side to side in wide sweeping motions, so that Maria couldn't get up without being slashed.

“Hoete!” I choked. “Hoete, let go of me!”

But Hoete said nothing. He made me lunge my hand forward so that the razor drew a thin line of blood down Maria's left cheek. Then he cut her again, right across the bridge of the nose, so that her bone was laid bare. She moaned and tried to lift her arms in self-defense, but Hoete pulled my hand from side to side, slicing her forearms, slicing her fingers, cutting her shoulders through to the fat. The razor blade quilted the flesh on her face. It turned her lips into bloody ribbons and split open one eye.

I struggled widly, but Hoete had me in his grip like a marionette. He made me slice her breasts and cut into her stomach. He scored her thighs like joints of white pork. There was blood spraying everywhere, a maelstrom of blood, and it was dripping from both of our faces, as if we were out in the rain somewhere, dancing some intimate and terrible waltz.