2008 - The Book of Murder Page 3

  “Yes, I remember very well,” I said drily. “Though I was always a bit suspicious of those neck aches of yours.”

  “But I really did have a bad neck,” she said. It seemed vital to her that I believe it. There was a silence. She looked out of the window, lost in thought, as if she could still picture the scene, frozen in time. “I had my back to him. I clicked my neck and suddenly felt him put his arm round me. I turned round and he…he tried to kiss me. I struggled to free myself but he was holding me firmly and didn’t seem to notice, as if he just couldn’t understand that I was resisting. So I screamed. Not too loudly: I just wanted him to let go. Actually I was more surprised than shocked. As I told you when you asked: I thought of him as a father. He froze. I think it was only then that he realised what he’d done and what could happen. His wife was upstairs and might have heard.

  “There was a knock on the door and he went to open it. He was very pale. It was Pauli, his little girl. She’d heard me scream and asked, looking at me, what had happened. He told her not to worry—I’d seen a cockroach—and to go back to her room and play. We were alone again. As I gathered up my things, I said I’d never set foot in his house again. I was beside myself. I couldn’t help crying and that made me even more furious. He asked if we could just forget the whole thing. He said it had all been a terrible mistake, but that it really hadn’t been all his fault because I’d been sending out signals. And he said something even more insulting: he assumed I’d slept with you. I was incensed. I realised then, with absolute clarity, what had been going through his head. Before his trip he was crazy about me. He’d let me know in that unspoken way men have, but I don’t think it had occurred to him to touch me. Since he’d got back, though, he’d thought of me as no more than a slut, with whom he too could try his luck. I screamed again and this time I didn’t care if his wife heard. He moved closer as if to make me shut up and I said if he touched me again I’d sue him. He apologised and tried to calm me down. He opened the door and offered to pay me for the days I’d worked so far that month. I just wanted to get out of there as soon as I could. Outside I burst into tears again. It was my first job and I’d trusted him completely. I was home early and my mother saw immediately that I’d been crying. I had to tell her what had happened.”

  She raised the cup of coffee with a trembling hand and took a sip. She appeared lost in the memory for a moment, staring into the cup.

  “And what was her reaction?” I asked.

  “She asked if I’d done anything to lead him on. She’d just been fired herself—that’s why I went to work for Kloster—and now we’d both lost our jobs. She’d won some compensation so she thought we should go and see her solicitor. We agreed not to say anything to my father until it was all over. We went to see the solicitor that day. She was a terrifying woman—she scared me. Huge and fat, with tiny eyes, sitting bulging behind her desk. She looked like a union thug. She hated men, she told us; she was on a personal crusade against them and nothing pleased her more than crushing them. She called me ‘dear’. She asked me to tell her the whole story. She said it was a pity he hadn’t been a bit more insistent and that it had only happened that one time. She asked if I had any marks or bruises from the struggle. I had to tell her that there hadn’t really been any physical violence. She said we wouldn’t be able to sue him for sexual harassment but that she’d work something out, and slip the words in at the beginning just to make him nervous. The case, she explained, would ultimately be a claim for the social security and pension contributions he hadn’t paid me. What had happened between us had taken place in a closed room, with no witnesses. It would be his word against mine so we wouldn’t get far down that path. She asked if he was married and when I said yes she was delighted. She said the married ones were the easiest to scare: we could just name a figure and we’d get it out of him. On her calculator she added up the amount he’d have to pay me by law and then added an amount for compensation. It seemed like a fabulous sum, more than I’d ever earned in a whole year. She dictated the text of a letter for me to write. I asked if we couldn’t change the accusation of sexual harassment in the heading to something less serious. She said that from now on I should get used to the idea that he was my enemy, and that he’d deny everything anyway.

  “I went to the post office alone. I stood in the queue and felt a foreboding that I was about to set in motion something that would have irreparable consequences, that the letter had a hidden destructive power. I’d never felt like this before, as if I was about to fire a gun. I knew that one way or another I’d be doing him harm, and not just financially. I nearly turned round and came home. I think if I’d waited a day I’d never have sent the letter. But I’d come that far and I still felt humiliated. It seemed unfair that I’d lost my job, when I’d always behaved impeccably with him. In a way it seemed right that he should pay.”

  “So you posted the letter.”

  “Yes.”

  She stared blankly into space again. After the first sip of coffee she’d put the cup down. She asked if she could smoke. I brought an ashtray from the kitchen and waited for her to go on, but the cigarette only seemed to take her further inside herself, to an obscure corner of her memory.

  “You sent the letter…then what happened?”

  “He didn’t answer that first letter. I received a receipt: he’d got the letter, he’d read it, but he hadn’t replied. After almost a month my mother phoned the solicitor. “Much better for us,” the woman said. “Either he hasn’t taken us seriously, or he’s been very poorly advised.” Again, I had a sense of foreboding. I’d worked for him for almost a year. You asked me once what he was like. At the time I thought he was the most intelligent man I had ever met—would ever meet. But there was also something just below the surface, something sinister, implacable—he was the last person I’d want to have as an enemy. I feared he’d take my letter as a declaration of war and that I’d have to face the worst of him. I was frightened and started having thoughts that were…paranoid. After all, he had my address, my phone number. We’d become quite friendly; he knew a lot about me. I thought maybe he hadn’t answered the letter because he was planning another kind of response, his own personal revenge. But the solicitor assured me that, as he was married, if he really was an intelligent man he’d do the only thing he could do: pay up. And the longer he took to reply, the higher the sum would get. She dictated a second letter, identical to the first, but demanding an even higher amount, because we were also claiming the wages for the month without a reply. It seemed to have an immediate effect. We received his first response, obviously also written by a solicitor. He rejected everything. It was a list of denials. He denied that I’d ever worked for him and even that he knew me. The solicitor told me not to worry. It was a stock legal reply and simply meant Kloster had realised we were serious and had got himself a lawyer. We now had to wait for the first conciliation meeting and think about how much lower a sum we would accept. I was reassured. In the end it all seemed impersonal, an administrative formality.”

  “So you went to the conciliation meeting.”

  Luciana nodded. “I asked my mother to come with me because I was scared of facing Kloster again. Ten minutes after the agreed time there was still no sign of him. The solicitor whispered, as if it was just a little bit of mischief, that he was probably busy with another bigger case: his divorce. She said a colleague who was a friend of hers was acting for Kloster’s wife. Apparently his wife had read my letter, with the accusation of sexual harassment, and decided to file for divorce immediately. She’d asked for a settlement running into millions. And her friend was ruthless, the solicitor said: Kloster would be out on the street. I listened, horrified. It had never even occurred to me this might happen.

  “Another five minutes passed and at last Kloster’s solicitor appeared. He seemed like a calm, courteous man. He said he had instructions to offer us two months’ pay as compensation. My solicitor rejected this outright, without even consulting me, and the se
cond conciliation meeting was set for a month later. This would give everyone, the mediator said, time to reflect and come closer to an agreement. Outside I asked my mother if we shouldn’t just drop the whole thing. I’d never wanted things to go that far; I never imagined I’d end up destroying his marriage. My mother got annoyed with me: she didn’t understand how I could feel sorry for him. His marriage must have been long over for him to try something with me. So I didn’t say any more. Actually, I felt afraid, rather than sorry. My worst fears were being realised. After all, he’d only tried to kiss me. The consequences seemed excessive, out of control.

  “As the days passed I grew more and more anxious. I just wanted to get to the next meeting and for it all to end. I was prepared to stand up to my mother and my own solicitor so that we accepted whatever the other side offered. A day before the date set the mediator telephoned: the meeting was being postponed for a week. I was put out, and asked why. She said it was at the request of the other party. I asked if they were allowed to change the date just like that. She said yes, in extreme circumstances, and lowered her voice: Kloster’s little girl had died. I couldn’t believe it, but at the same time, strangely, I did believe it and accepted it, in all its awfulness, as if it were the logical, ultimate consequence of what my letter had started. I don’t think I said anything for a moment but eventually I managed to ask what had happened. The mediator only knew what Kloster’s solicitor had told her: apparently it was a domestic accident.

  “After I hung up I went to my desk, to find the drawings Pauli had given me. She’d drawn her daddy looking huge and me on a tiny chair. The computer was a little square, and at the bottom she’d written her name, which she’d just learned to do. In the second picture, there was an open door, with the daddy in the distance, looking tiny, and she and I were holding hands, almost the same height, as if we were sisters. They were happy, carefree pictures. And now she was dead. I cried all afternoon. I think I was crying for myself too. Although I didn’t yet know when or how, I sensed that it wouldn’t stop there and that something terrible was going to happen to me.”

  “But why did you think that? If it was an accident, why would he hold you responsible?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know exactly why. But that was what I felt right from the start and, most of all, I think it was what he felt too. It’s the only explanation I can find for everything that happened afterwards.”

  She paused and lit another cigarette with trembling hands.

  “So you went to the second conciliation meeting,” I said.

  She nodded. “Like before, my mother and I arrived first and we were shown into the mediation room. We waited a few minutes with our solicitor. I thought Kloster would send his lawyer again. But when the door opened it was Kloster who entered. He was alone. His face was shockingly changed, as if he had died with his daughter. He’d lost a huge amount of weight and looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. His eyes were red and his cheeks sunken. He was incredibly pale, as if all the blood had been drawn from his body. But even so, he looked composed and resolute, as if he had a task to accomplish and no time to lose. He was carrying a book that I recognised immediately: it was my father’s annotated Bible which I’d lent him. He crossed the room, straight towards me. My mother made a move as if to protect me. I don’t think he even noticed. He was only looking at me, with a terrible stare that I still see every night. He blamed me, without a doubt. He stopped and held out the Bible without a word. I put it quickly in my bag. He turned to the mediator and asked how much we were claiming in compensation. He listened to the figure and took a chequebook from his pocket, opening it out on the desk. The mediator started to say that he could of course make a counter-offer, but he held up his hand to stop her, as if he didn’t want to hear another word about the matter. He wrote out three cheques: one to me for the total amount we’d claimed, and another two for the mediator’s and my lawyer’s fees. I signed a document stating that the claim was settled. He picked up his copy, turned round without looking at anyone and left. The whole thing took under ten minutes. The mediator could hardly believe it; it was the first time a case had ever ended like this.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Then…I went home, took the Bible from my bag and put it on the shelf above my desk, with my university course books. It was a Bible my father no longer used and it was months since I’d lent it to Kloster: I’d forgotten all about it. In fact, when I thought about the meeting again, it occurred to me that it had been an excuse to come up close and stare at me in that way. I couldn’t get that out of my head and I had nightmares for days afterwards. I dreamed that Kloster’s little girl was taking my hand, wanting me to come and play with her, and saying, just as she had when she was alive, that she didn’t want to be on her own in the room next door any more.

  “I opened a bank account and paid in the cheque, but the days passed and I couldn’t bring myself to touch the money. For a time I thought of donating it to charity, but I had a superstitious fear of doing anything with it, even to give it away, as if like that I’d be able to keep things from moving on. I thought that as soon as I withdrew even a tiny amount it would trigger reprisals. I became obsessed with the idea that Kloster was planning something terrible against me and that was why he’d agreed to pay the money without argument. I told my boyfriend some of this but I never mentioned that Kloster had tried to kiss me. All I said was that I’d brought a claim for unfair dismissal against him, that he’d lost a lot of money, and I was afraid he was going to take revenge somehow. At that time Kloster had a novel published. Not the one he’d been dictating to me but another one that he’d completed before I started working for him. The one he’d edited on his retreat in Italy.”

  “The Day of the Dead. I remember it well. It came out at the same time as the one I dictated to you. It was his first big hit.”

  “It soon became a bestseller. It topped all the lists, was in all the shop windows. You could even find it in supermarkets. Every time I passed a bookshop I’d see his name and shiver. My boyfriend tried to reassure me, saying it must have earned Kloster much more than what he’d paid me and he had probably forgotten all about it. But I started noticing something.”

  “What?”

  “What we mentioned before. Until then, as you said, Kloster was a writer who hated public appearances. But suddenly he became famous. As if he wanted to be everywhere, all the time.”

  “Maybe it was because he was alone—it was a way of filling time.”

  “Yes, at first I thought something like that as well, that he was looking for comfort in celebrity, or trying to keep his mind busy so as to forget his daughter’s death. Even so, it went totally against his nature. It made me suspect it was part of his plan. But my boyfriend convinced me that Kloster was too busy promoting his book to think of me. That year Ramiro had finished his course in physical education and found a job as a lifeguard on one of the beaches in Villa Gesell. But he wanted to spend time in Mexico before starting. He’d been planning the trip for some time and asked me to go with him, to forget all about the Kloster business. It seemed like a good idea and I used part of the compensation money for it. We spent almost a month longer than we’d intended travelling around, visiting little Mexican villages, and we got back at the beginning of December, in time for him to start work. I stayed in Buenos Aires to sit my finals, but my parents and Valentina and Bruno were already in Gesell so as soon as I finished my exams I took the overnight bus there. I wanted to surprise Ramiro and went straight from the bus station to the beach, so we could have breakfast together. We sat at a little bar on the beach. It was early, and there weren’t many people about. I looked around and saw a man in swimming trunks and goggles at a neighbouring table. He was tanned, as if he’d already been there a few days. I almost cried out when I recognised him: it was Kloster. He was having a coffee and reading the paper, pretending not to see me, though he was only a few feet away.”

  “Couldn’t it simply have been
a coincidence? Lots of writers used to spend the summer in Gesell. Maybe he was renting a house there.”

  “Of all the resorts on the coast he chose Gesell? Of all the bars, he went to the very one near my boyfriend’s job? No. It was odd enough that he’d picked Gesell. He knew I spent every summer there. I pointed him out discreetly to Ramiro and he said it could be a coincidence as well. I asked if it was the first time he’d seen him. He said he’d been there every morning, sitting at the same table, for about a week. After reading the paper he’d wade into the sea and swim out very far. Actually I think Ramiro was a bit surprised, and a bit jealous, that this was the writer I’d worked for. I’d told him very little about Kloster and I suppose he’d pictured him much older, more bookish. Sitting there in his trunks Kloster looked like an athlete. He’d regained some of the weight he’d lost, and the sun and sea air had obviously done him good.

  “While Ramiro and I were talking about him, he went to the water’s edge and swam out with long, relaxed strokes until he was beyond the breaker. He went further and further out. At first you could still see his arms rising out of the water, but once he got beyond the last line of buoys he was just a dot that became harder and harder to make out in the waves. At one stage I lost sight of him completely. Ramiro passed me his binoculars. I could see him still swimming with the same placid strokes, as if he’d only just set off. I asked Ramiro what would happen if he suddenly got cramp so far out. He admitted that most probably he wouldn’t get there in time to save him. So how could he let him swim out so far? I asked. He seemed embarrassed and said that it was a sort of code: Kloster was a grown-up and obviously knew what he was doing.