Winter's End

Gus Van Vlyck was still in a furious temper. He was angrily pacing the corridors on the fourth floor of the high-rise building occupied by the Phalange headquarters, chin jutting out, eyes blazing. He marched into his subordinates’ offices without knocking and found a good reason to get angry at every one of them. Then he went out again, slamming doors behind him, returned to his own office, and for the tenth time made phone calls to people who kept telling him the same thing: there was no more news. As he hung up, he crashed the handset down hard enough to split it, swearing furiously.

It was not the loss of Mills that had upset him so much, still less the death of Pastor, whom he hardly knew. He had felt some slight compassion for the regional police chief on hearing of his terrible end. After all, this was the man who had obeyed his orders fifteen years ago when he’d set the dogs on Eva-Maria Bach. Many men wouldn’t have had the guts to do it, and Mills deserved respect if only for his absence of qualms. But as for mourning his death . . .

No, what infuriated Gus Van Vlyck so much was to know that Milena Bach, Eva-Maria’s daughter, was at large and that they hadn’t been able to lay hands on her. The police hadn’t been so soft a few years ago, and he was going to say so at the next Council meeting. If they gave him time to speak, that is, because some of them never missed a chance to bring up the bitter memory of his mistake, now long past but coming back to confront him full on today.

When asked, just after the execution of Eva-Maria Bach, “What do we do with the child?” he had hesitated. The mother had given them trouble enough. Why encumber themselves with the daughter and risk the possibility of her reviving the singer’s memory someday? Common sense called for the child’s death. There was a special unit for that kind of thing, efficient men who acted fast and well. You didn’t have to face the details yourself. “What do we do with the child?” All you had to do was keep your mouth shut, and the killing machines would know what that silence meant. You wouldn’t even have to feel responsible.

But his opinion had been asked, and he’d been as weak as a woman. “The girl? An orphanage, as far away from here as possible. At the other end of the country!” Even as he barked out this order, he had a presentiment that it was the wrong decision. Today he knew it, and the certainty had him seething with rage.

He left the headquarters at five in the afternoon without telling anyone. Disdaining the elevator, he ran four floors down the service staircase. Seeing him emerge at the front of the building, a driver stood up very straight, cap in hand, and opened the back door of a black limousine. Van Vlyck ignored him and marched straight on ahead, his wide shoulders taking up half the sidewalk. A tram screeched to a halt a few yards away from him, but he preferred to continue on foot.

In Opera House Square, he cast a look of dislike at the abandoned theater, its door obstructed by piles of refuse, windows boarded up with planks roughly nailed across them. He spat on the ground. Why couldn’t he rid his mind of such poisonous memories the way a rotten tooth can be taken out, or a gangrenous limb amputated? When would they get around to demolishing these walls, razing the building to the ground, and renaming the square itsel f? It was getting too much to bear! Voices came through the stones, still vibrating here after all this time. Sometimes at night he heard them echoing, joining in unison, responding to one another. Didn’t other people hear them? Were they deaf?

One voice among them all never ceased to haunt him. He could stupefy himself with beer until he couldn’t stand upright, he could bury his head in his pillows at night, but it still rang out, pure and deep, unchanged. There was nothing to be done about it: he would remember, he’d find himself back sitting in the front row in that church one late afternoon fifteen years before.

The young woman, the soloist, is sitting ten feet away. She is very young. Hardly more than twenty. To start with, he admires her blond hair and the delicacy of her forearms under the lacy sleeves of her blouse. What made him come into this church? He never sets foot inside a church! Perhaps he came in just because it would be cooler in here on an unbearably hot day. He got his ticket at a plain table outside in the porch and felt almost ashamed of buying it. Going to a concert! He, Van Vlyck!

The church was empty when he went in. He sat down in the front row and immediately felt so comfortable that he dozed off. Now that he’s woken up, the chorus and musicians have come in. The violinists are tuning their instruments. He hasn’t noticed all the seats behind him filling. He feels he is alone. He feels it’s just for him that the soloist now rises to her feet and sings.

She sings effortlessly. There’s only a tiny fold at the bridge of her nose, two little lines going up to her forehead. So close to him, at point-blank range, she crucifies him with her blue eyes and graceful bearing. For a full hour he observes her at his leisure: her fine hands, her fingers, her hair and the way it moves, caressing her shoulders. He sees the texture of her skin, the tender curve of her cheeks, the outline of her lips. And the woman’s voice pierces his dull soul. He isn’t used to such emotions, and he sheds tears. He, Van Vlyck, shedding tears! Listening to a singer and weeping!

When it’s over, he stands up and claps until his hands are red. As the singers take their bows, he could swear that she is looking at him, singling him out, smiling more for him than for the rest of the audience.

Back in the street, he knows that nothing will ever be the same again; another life is beginning. My name is Van Vlyck, he reminds himself. I’m not just anybody. No one has ever resisted me yet. So why would this woman resist me?

Some weeks later he finds out that she sings at the Opera House, and he goes to a whole week’s worth of performances before venturing to approach her at the end of the evening with a bunch of red roses. That’s what you take singers, isn’t it? He casts anxious glances around him. Suppose someone happens to see him here! At last she comes out with two other women. He goes up to her, clumsy and awkward, feeling embarrassed about his flowers. He doesn’t know how to just give them to her. “Good evening. Do you remember . . . in that church the other day . . . I . . . you . . . well, we saw each other.” She doesn’t remember it at all.

All the same, he gets her to agree to meet him in a café next day. As she drinks a cup of chocolate, she tries to explain. “No, really, I was looking at you in just the same way as I looked at everyone else. I’m happy when the audience applauds and I smile at them, that’s all. You were right in front of me; I couldn’t ignore you. This is a misunderstanding, you know.” He doesn’t believe it. The poison has entered his veins and is streaming along them. He pesters her. He follows her to the building where she lives. He rings her doorbell. She refuses to see him. “You frighten me! I wish you wouldn’t come to see me at the Opera House anymore. Please. I don’t want you to go on giving my little girl so many presents. You frighten me. You really do. Can you understand that? You frighten me!” No, he can’t understand it. All he wants is to marry her and live with her. Besides, he’s already left his wife and abandoned his children to be free for her. She can’t let him down now! She has to be brought to understand! If only she had a little common sense!

One evening he makes his way to her dressing room in spite of her orders not to let him in. He tries to kiss her. She resists. He threatens her. He seizes her arm, pressing it too hard. She slaps his face. She slaps him, Van Vlyck! He strides away along the theater corridors with his reddened cheek, under the mocking gaze of the musicians and singers. His cheek bears the mark of his shame and dishonor.

From then on he isn’t the same man anymore. After two weeks he decides to take the plunge. He’s been thinking about it for a long time. Now the time has come: he joins the Phalange and takes the oath of loyalty to the movement.

That evening he and two other new recruits visit prostitutes in the slums and spend the night drinking. He goes home dead drunk and exhausted in the small hours. Passing the windows of the Opera House, he howls like a wild beast. From now on that’s what he’ll be, a wild beast. And he has found his pack. No one will ever laugh at him again.

When the Phalange seizes power in a bloody coup a year later, he has made headway: he gets a responsible position with the state police. He is among those who set off in pursuit of Eva-Maria Bach. “I have an account to settle,” is all he explains.

His colleagues understand. “Don’t worry, Gus. When we catch up with her, you can be in charge of the operation. Do whatever you like with her.” They spend months tracking her down. She really gives them the runaround.

But one evening they catch her at last, in a little provincial concert hall in the north of the country. On that day he’s been drinking too much again. He’s not well. He doesn’t enter the hall with the others; he leans against the wall outside. He hears it all: the yells, the sound of the piano breaking up.

As she comes out of the hall, astonished to be going free, Eva-Maria Bach sees him lurking in the shadows. Their eyes meet. She thinks he has just saved her. She thinks he gave the order to let her go. How remorseful she feels for her cruelty to him! How generous he is to forgive her! She takes a step toward him, but he stops her from coming any closer with a gesture. She understands: he doesn’t want to compromise himself in front of his colleagues. So she simply says, from a distance, “Thank you.” She finds the strength to smile at him in spite of her terror, in spite of Dora, who is still in the hall, a prisoner, her hand nothing but a mass of crushed flesh. She repeats it, “Thank you.” She is thanking him for herself, but above all for her little daughter. She can be reunited with the child tomorrow and hold her in her arms. “Thank you,” she says.

They push her out into the road, telling her to get out for good. Van Vlyck can’t control the spasms of his stomach anymore. Resting his hands on the dingy wall of the little town hall, he throws up copiously. His vomit soils his boots and pants.

A few hours later, in the car driving through the night toward the capital, he is informed that they have picked up the little girl at her nursemaid’s, and they ask, “What do we do with the child?” He feels his stomach heaving again. By now, no doubt, the dogs will have done their work. He wishes everyone would leave him alone. Would let him sleep. “What do we do with the child?” his colleague persists.

“An orphanage. At the other end of the country. As far away from here as possible,” he replies.

And he knows he has just made a mistake.

The sports hall at the Phalange headquarters was empty at this hour. Van Vlyck unlocked the door and strode along the echoing corridors. The entire locker room was full of the sharp odor of sweating bodies: the air, the leather, and wood all smelled of it. A jacket and pants hung from a hook. With satisfaction, he recognized them as the property of Two-and-a-Half. You always knew where to find him, and it wasn’t in the library.

He changed quickly and crossed the bodybuilding room in an old T-shirt and a well-worn pair of shorts. A regular creaking sound guided him to the opposite window, where a man with an undershot jaw and eyes deeply embedded in their sockets was doing weight-training exercises on a mat. The floorboards beneath the mat were groaning under him. Van Vlyck glanced at the number of disks on each side of the bar and couldn’t hide his astonishment. “You can lift that amount ten times running?”

“Fifteen times,” said the man impassively when he had put the barbell down.

Two-and-a-Half wasn’t as thickset as Van Vlyck and was probably forty-five pounds lighter, but no one could equal him for sheer strength. He said no more than ten words a day, and he didn’t understand jokes. His body was tough and his mind even tougher. His nickname derived from the way he never reached “three” when he threatened someone. “I’ll count up to three,” he would warn, but he had hardly uttered the word “two” before the subject of his threat was dead, killed by a bullet, a knife, or his bare hands. If asked why he did it, why he didn’t at least give the person he was interrogating a chance, he would say, “Dunno. Guess I got no patience.”

Van Vlyck got on the machine next to him and began his own exercises. They carried on together for an hour or more without talking. The two men were different in every way. Van Vlyck grunted and groaned with effort. He seemed to hate the bars or dumbbells he was lifting. He swore at them. Sweat ran down his white skin, seeping into the red hair on his broad chest and massive forearms. He often stopped to drink water and rub himself down with a towel. Two-and-a-Half, on the other hand, worked coldly on. His body stayed dry. He didn’t drink anything. You could hardly hear him breathing, but the enormous weights were raised as regularly as if an indefatigable piston were lifting them.

Afterward they met in the deserted bar of the sports hall.

“A beer?” suggested Van Vlyck.

Two-and-a-Half blinked by way of assent. Van Vlyck went around behind the counter and took the tops off the two bottles himself. They began drinking in silence. Two-and-a-Half examined the contents of his glass with the same vague expression that he directed at other people. Van Vlyck wondered what he was thinking about. He felt uneasy. Was Two-and-a-Half even thinking about anything at all?

“I might have a job for you.”

Two-and-a-Half didn’t move a muscle.

“Information to be pried out of someone who doesn’t like talking. The pay will be good.”

Two-and-a-Half nodded slightly to show that he would take the job.

The wind was sweeping over the dark riverbanks. A few pedestrians, out late, were hurrying home, avoiding the puddles of water. Down on the river itself, gusts of wind turned the rain to hail as it fell, as if throwing handfuls of gravel at it. Night was falling. Two-and-a-Half followed the paved path beside the river like someone out for a stroll. He knew he might be about to kill a man, but that didn’t bother him. Raindrops beat down hard on his umbrella. He crumpled the banknotes in his right-hand jacket pocket. Van Vlyck had given them to him as an advance: half the sum, the rest to be paid when he had extracted the information. It was as good as his already. He passed four bridges without crossing any of them, and stopped at the fifth.

A quick glance was enough to show him that the man he was after wasn’t there. No motorbike chained to the guardrail meant no Mitten. That bike was really the common property of everyone who lived under the Wooden Bridge, but only Mitten was able to ride it. Never mind; he’d wait.

As he waited, he started over the bridge and walked along the wet sidewalk, keeping a tight hold on the umbrella, which threatened to blow away. He hadn’t gone fifty yards before the noisy motorbike, still without lights, appeared at the far end. From a distance its rider, wearing a woolen balaclava, with his shoulders hunched, looked like a large, lumbering insect. He was revving the engine, but the result was pitiful: it didn’t respond. Two-and-a-Half watched him coming closer, delighted. He couldn’t have hoped for better working conditions: darkness, no witnesses, the bridge . . .

He waited for Mitten to draw level with him and then gave him a vicious shove. Sent flying, the tramp cried out. The motorbike fell to the ground, went into a skid on the wet pavement, crossed the road, and crashed into the opposite curb. The hot exhaust pipe broke off, skidded on the pavement, and spat out vapor.

“What’s the big idea?” yelled Mitten. “I’ve smashed my kneecap!”

Two-and-a-Half didn’t even close his umbrella. He took the tramp by the front of his jacket with one hand, stood him on his feet, and held him close in a violent grip.

“I’ve smashed my kneecap!” wailed Mitten. “I’m in agony!”

Under the soaked balaclava, his emaciated, bearded face was twisting in pain.

“Let me go! What do you want?”

“Information. About a blond girl. Milena Bach.”

“Never heard of her. Buzz off!”

Two-and-a-Half was not the man to waste time in pointless chat. Most new arrivals in the city came down the river, and they stopped at the Wooden Bridge. Everyone knew that. He picked Mitten up and sat him on the metal parapet of the bridge.

“Know who I am?”

Their faces were almost touching. For the first time Mitten looked his assailant in the eye, and the pain in his knee instantly went away. He realized whose hard fingers were holding him there. If he refused to talk, he would have only a few seconds to live — just as long as it took him to fall. He would hit the icy water of the river flat on his back. His fellow down-and-outs under the bridge might hear the muted sound of his thin body as it went in. He was terrified.

“I . . . I can’t swim,” he stammered stupidly.

“Know who I am?” the other man repeated.

“Yeah.” Mitten wept, clutching his adversary’s cuffs.

“Then I’m going to count to three. One . . .”

“What was her name again?”

“Milena Bach. Two . . .”

It would be no use lying. He might gain a little time that way, but the result would be the same in the end, or even worse.

“At Jahn’s . . . She’s at Jahn’s Restaurant. . . .”

His heart was beating hard enough to break his ribs. He guessed that Two-and-a-Half was longing to throw him into the void even after getting the information he wanted. Several seconds passed, seeming like an eternity, and then he felt the killer putting him down on the sidewalk again. The next moment, he saw the man walking calmly away. All this time he hadn’t even folded his umbrella.

Mitten tried to stand the motorbike up in vain. All he did was make the pain in his knee worse. The rain was falling harder than ever. He picked up the steaming exhaust pipe and stuck it under his arm. Then he limped over to the steps and clambered down them with difficulty, holding tight to the rail.

Two-and-a-Half made three mistakes that evening. The first was not to throw Mitten into the river. It was extraordinarily tempting to do it, to watch the tramp gesticulating as he fell through the air, to hear his terrified cries and the sound of his body hitting the dark water. A little push in the chest would have done it. All that stopped him was the thought that the man might come in useful again.

Two-and-a-Half’s second mistake was not to go straight home. He told himself there was no hurry, since he wasn’t to meet Van Vlyck until tomorrow afternoon in the sports hall. And he liked hearing the gentle patter of the raindrops on his umbrella. He thought he would prolong that pleasure. Instead of going straight to the Upper Town, where he lived, he followed the river, and even went down the first flight of steps he came to and walked along the bank. He didn’t see the three shadows going the same way, crouching low and keeping their distance. A wooden bench screwed to the paving stones offered him its half-rotten seat. He sat down, not bothering about getting his pants wet, and stayed there without moving, listening to the sound of the rain.

At that minute he didn’t have long left to live, but he was not aware of that.

He waited for the rain to die down, and it soon did. The machine-gun patter of the drops above his head gradually faded, leaving only an increasingly faint rustling. Finally there was only the muted rushing of the river and the murmur of the wind. Then Two-and-a-Half made his third mistake. He lowered his umbrella to close it.

The sky exploded. Flashes of dazzling lightning blinded him, and he collapsed on the bench.

“Hit him again!” a voice breathed. “He’s a tough nut to crack, he is!”

The sky exploded for the second time. He felt himself falling into a black abyss and lost consciousness.

Standing behind the bench, Mitten was brandishing his exhaust pipe.

“Do I go on, lads?”

“Not worth it,” one of his companions said. “He’s had it. We better get a move on now. If we get spotted from up there, we’re done for. Give me a hand.”

They went around to the front of the bench and dragged Two-and-a-Half to the edge of the water by his feet.

“You do the honors, Mitten!”

Mitten didn’t have the strength to lift the killer. He knelt down beside him and pushed with both hands. As the man’s body was about to go into the water, he hesitated. Then he thought of Milena, of Helen, of all the others taking refuge at Jahn’s Restaurant who must be protected.

“One, two . . . and three,” he muttered. “Bound to happen to you too someday, right?”

And he rolled Two-and-a-Half over into the indifferent and icy waters of the great river.