The Quiet Twin (34 page)

The act came to a close. Otto, shaking his head from side to side, had finally managed to knock the fly unconscious. Dizzy himself, stumbling from one end of the table to the other, he plucked the fly from his lips, then tore out each of its wings (two scraps of confetti came loose between his fingers and fluttered down into the crowd). He smiled, bent low to find a soup bowl perching in the dark, and with a magnificent little plop, dropped in his emasculated enemy before taking hold of a spoon and returning to the pleasure of his dinner. A fanfare sounded, the lights were turned on, the artist showered with thunderous applause. Soon after the audience began to disperse. Otto retired from his table, accepted the bottle of beer proffered to him, and was lost in the crowd. Beer, amused despite himself, turned away from the stage, and availed himself of the opportunity to look around, scanning the crowd for familiar faces.

Virtually the first person Beer saw was Teuben. The detective was leaning casually against the windowsill and laughing at somebody’s joke; when he caught sight of Beer he cocked an eyebrow in a lazy greeting. Turning away from him, his merriment gone, Beer lit a cigarette and pushed deeper into the room. His eyes found Zuzka, sitting near the wall opposite the impromptu stage, her hands and eyes on her lap and seemingly heedless of the bustle that surrounded her. Just now one of the guests approached her and addressed a few words to her hunched back, then shrugged and left when he was unable to draw a reaction. Speckstein himself was sitting in an armchair not far from her, looked grave and sweaty, and more than a little drunk. Unsure where else to go, Beer pushed over to their side of the room, knocking over an open bottle of schnapps that had been placed carelessly on the ground. He stooped to righten it, then, their eyes now level, caught Zuzka’s glance from a few feet away. She blanched, looked away, her legs re-crossing in front of her. Her face looked as though she had been crying, and her blouse gaped at the stomach, exposing a half-inch of skin. She was the only woman in the room.

More determined now, Beer worked his way over to her. There were people everywhere, flushed and talking, more than thirty in this room alone. The carpet was speckled with cigarette butts and ash, bits of dropped food. A man near the window had thrown it open and was yelling something at the street below. Not far from him, another had switched on the wireless and was dialling his way through the stations: static crackling and mixing with the other noises, before he settled on a rendering of Wagner, blaring tinnily from the wooden box. Beer reached the wall, shouldered past a pug-nosed drunk in a chauffeur’s uniform who was holding two shot glasses to his eyes like goggles, to the loud laughter of his friends, and arrived at Zuzka’s side. In the absence of another chair, Beer lowered himself to one of his knees and muttered a stiff, formal greeting. She pretended she hadn’t heard and he had to repeat it before she looked up and answered him curtly with the conventional response.

‘This is not quite the party I had pictured,’ he told her, trying to make light of the chaos surrounding them.

She flashed him a cold, absent look.

‘Yes,’ she answered stiffly. ‘Uncle is put out.’

‘I haven’t seen you in the past two days. I thought you would look in and check on Lieschen.’

He paused, hoping Zuzka would pick up the thread. She didn’t. Unsettled, urged by a vague sense that he owed it to her – and to Eva – to explain himself, he leaned closer to Zuzka’s ear.

‘The man you saw,’ he told her quietly. ‘He visits me sometimes. Or I visit him.’

He paused again, looked for a way to couch the nature of his predilection.

‘Two nights ago he came around. In the middle of the night. It was reckless of me to let him in, and more reckless yet to fall asleep. I have been feeling awfully reckless of late.’ He tried a smile, felt a vein twitch at his temple.

‘The thing is, you mustn’t tell anyone, Fräulein Speckstein. Zuzka. Please.’

At this, she stood up and ran off. She never even turned her head to look at him. Her hands, he had noticed, had been bunching up the cloth of her skirt above the knees, and as she ran away now it fell awkwardly, its symmetry disrupted, the hemline rumpled at the front. As she left the room, some of the men looked after her. Beer saw Teuben peel himself out of his group by the window and follow her, smoothing down his hair as he crossed the room. It might have been best to follow them himself, but the doctor did not have the strength. Depressed, exhausted, Beer raised himself far enough to sit down on the chair Zuzka had just vacated. He was welcomed by the heat left by her buttocks. It triggered a sadness in him and he sat, hunched over, head bowed, in much the same aspect she had just abandoned.

Chapter 6

Frau Vesalius was standing in front of the kitchen window, taking a break. She had not had a moment to herself since early that morning and was enjoying a cigarette. The party had exhausted her. All evening she had been bringing out more food only to watch it disappear within minutes. Things got even worse when the lout from across the yard showed up with the Chinaman in tow: the fat Oriental had come straight into the kitchen and scoffed everything in sight, all the while complimenting her profusely on her culinary skill. All by himself he had eaten the better part of one of the strudels, and much of the second pot of tripe soup. It was only with the start of the performance that she had managed to get rid of him and some peace returned to her kitchen. Frau Vesalius felt that her cigarette was well deserved.

Behind her, in the corridor outside the kitchen, some guests were loudly discussing the course of the war. The English were massing in France, and the Finns and the Soviets were fast sliding towards war. There was an urgent note of bravado in their drunken discussion, as of men who needed to impress upon themselves their heedless courage in the face of a future enemy. She had heard this type of talk before. It had been a little over twenty years ago that her son had had his legs shot off on the eastern front, three weeks before the peace of Brest-Litovsk.

Vesalius looked down into the yard. There were more guests there, officers by the look of them, standing near the tree and engaged in a game in which two of them were exchanging blows to the stomach while the others took bets on who would vomit first. Another man had taken off both his jacket and his shirt and was using the iron frame of the carpet-beating rack to perform gymnastic feats: presently he catapulted himself into the air, attempted a somersault, hit some tree branches and fell hard on to the ground. His friends’ laughter was soon joined by his own high giggle as he stood up beside them and wiped the blood from his face.

Frau Vesalius cast a glance at the kitchen clock. It was gone ten o’clock. The way everyone was drinking, the party would be over pretty soon; the Professor would run out of booze and those who were still standing would push off to find some girls. The men’s boisterousness did not disgust her. After all, they were young. The only thing she resented was that she would be asked to clean up their mess, and put up with Speckstein’s grumpy complaints.

A movement caught Vesalius’s attention, and she turned around to see Zuzka come running into the kitchen. She was moving too fast for the clutter of the room, her head bowed low, the features hidden behind the flow of her hair, and before she had taken three steps she crashed into the little table and chair. The noise startled the girl. She looked up and was evidently surprised that she had ended up there; turned to leave again, then stopped, her body racked by a sob. Vesalius watched her, mockery mingling with compassion. Zuzka noticed her look: she held it for a breath or two, and found enough warmth in it to join her by the window.

‘Here,’ the housekeeper offered. ‘Have one.’ She held out the packet.

Zuzka shook her head, took one anyway.

‘I don’t smoke,’ she said.

She watched Vesalius take a drag, then picked up the box of matches from the windowsill and lit her own, took a careful little puff. It seemed to calm her. There were no tears now in her eyes.

‘You should go,’ the old woman said.

Zuzka nodded, embarrassed, looked to one side in the vague direction of her room.

‘In a moment.’

‘I mean home. To your family.’

Zuzka did not protest. They stood quietly for some minutes, blew smoke at the window, the girl working her way through her cigarette with rapid, shallow drags. She managed not to cough.

‘I was writing to my sister earlier,’ she muttered in a tender, quiet voice, then coloured when she saw derision in Vesalius’s face.

‘I know myself it’s stupid. Writing to the dead.’

She tried to smile but it froze on her face. Unhappiness did not become her. There were women, Vesalius thought, who looked fetching after they had cried: purified. Not Zuzka.

‘You were twins?’ she asked, breaking the silence. ‘The Professor mentioned it.’

‘Yes,’ Zuzka nodded. ‘Two peas in a pod. When we were small, father used to say that it was she who’d become the doctor. And I would settle down and marry rich.’

‘How did she die?’

‘Polio. When we were twelve. A long time ago.’

‘You should go home.’

Again the girl nodded, screwed the cigarette into the window’s glass, then started when she noticed a man standing in the kitchen just a few steps away. It was impossible to say how long he had been there. Vesalius, too, had not noticed him enter and stared sour-faced at the intruder. He was tall, fat in the hips, held himself remarkably still. A smell of mints and of some type of musky cologne streamed from his awkward figure; the dark, sunken eyes were flat like a doll’s. But what struck her most, and most unfavourably, was the shape and colour of his lips. They looked painted on with a two-groschen brush, thin and fraying at the edges. Zuzka saw him, winced, and immediately ran to the door, keeping as much distance between herself and the man as possible. Vesalius looked after her, then back to the man. He was holding a brandy glass, was taking steady, quiet sips. After a few moments he turned and left without a word. In the doorway he nearly crashed into the fat Chinaman who had come to forage for more food. The two men tried to squeeze through the doorway at the same moment, their bellies touching at its centre. Vesalius barked out a laugh, turned back to the window, and lit another cigarette.

Chapter 7

He followed her. Like a good hunting dog he sniffed out her room even though she’d closed the door behind herself when he was still out of sight. Perhaps there was no trick to it; perhaps he’d simply opened all the doors until he found her. He was a police detective after all. Who was to tell him that it wasn’t allowed?

He stepped in as naturally as though it were the cloakroom; closed the door again with the softest of touches. She’d switched on the light when she’d come in, two minutes earlier, had sat down on the bed. Teuben stood under the tasselled lampshade as though it were a shower head. His dense mop of hair seemed to absorb its light: a deep and inky black. It had to be a wig. He was still holding his brandy glass, a sliver of liquor was left at its bottom. Zuzka wondered whether he was drunk.

She made a movement to get up from the bed, but a gesture from his hairy hand bid her to remain seated. He moved calmly, without haste.

‘You were there the other night. When I met Eva. Hiding in the doctor’s flat. You heard us talk.’

He drained the dregs of his glass.

‘How much did you hear?’

‘Nothing.’

Teuben smiled. He looked around, stepped over to where the chair stood near the window, wrapped his hand around its backrest, but did not sit down.

‘Nothing. Or everything. What does it matter? A funny man, this Dr Beer. Difficult to figure out. You were talking to him just now. Looked like you were running away from him. Did he say something you didn’t like?’

The detective gave her a chance to respond, but she merely shook her head and drew her knees up in front of her body, hiding her chest. The heels of her shoes made dimples on her coverlet.

‘A strange man, this Beer,’ Teuben repeated, his dark eyes following her movement. ‘I thought for a while he fucked her himself. But I suppose he’s fucking you.’

‘I will scream for my uncle.’

‘Don’t bother,’ he said, turning away from her and opening the window. ‘I’m only here to take in the view.’ He pushed his face out into the night.

Almost immediately he broke into a laugh.

‘Now will you look at that,’ he said, grinning, and waved her over to the window.

She obeyed despite herself, keeping her distance, and squinted cautiously to where his hand was pointing into the darkness. When she said she could not see, Teuben withdrew from the window and watched her take his place. Above them, a floor and a half up, and at a steep angle to their right, two men in uniform had heaved the big stairwell window from its hinges and stood jostling, shoulder to shoulder, balancing within its frame, their trousers open, and pissing into the darkness of the yard. All she could make out with full clarity was the tips of their boots, jutting out from the window frame, and the twin cascades of urine raining down into the yard. Down there, on the muddy ground, emerged the Oriental, Yuu; he stopped, looked up, then carried on towards the door of the back wing. Teuben stood next to her, quietly laughing.

‘Like children at a birthday party. And tomorrow they’ll be sent off to war. For the greater glory of the Reich. It all seems a little silly, doesn’t it?’ He burped, drew a watch from his trouser pocket, checked the time.