Cold Sea Stories

Franz Carl Weber

A FEW MINUTES before reaching the main station the train slowed down. The carriage began to rock as the wheels rattled over the points and crossovers. His chance travelling companion, a woman who had boarded a few stations ago and immediately gone to sleep in the comfortable seat opposite him, now opened her eyes.

‘Are we already in Zurich?’ she asked in Italian.

He barely knew that language, but the question was so obvious that he replied: ‘Si, madame, Zurich naturlich ich glaube.’

She smiled at this Volapük, took a small mirror and a lipstick from her handbag and started correcting the contour of her lips. As he furtively watched, he confirmed that one of the alluring features of her beauty was the result of a simple procedure, not nature. It was to do with her mouth, or to be precise, her lower lip. In fact it was no more prominent than the upper one, but by applying her lipstick in the right way, she gave it a defiant quality, as if the open invitation to a kiss held contempt even for a man bold enough to plant one.

He turned his gaze on the window, but the train had just entered a tunnel, and now he caught a glimpse of her face lit from below. That particular shape of the lip made her look like Basini’s Madonna, even though the woman painted in Rome four hundred years ago as Mary was not wearing any lipstick at all. Where did this comparison lead? Nowhere. The train applied its brakes as it slowly rolled in between the platforms.

‘Do you know how to reach the Hotel Gotthard?’ This time she asked in English.

‘It’s nearby. It’s not even worth taking a taxi. Just one stop by trolleybus. Seven minutes on foot. The Hotel Saint Gotthard is at 87 Bahnhofstrasse – you can see it in the distance.’

‘You know the city,’ she said.

‘In a way,’ he replied, on the platform by now, as he fetched down her luggage from the carriage step.

She nodded, and was rapidly on her way. A buckled wheel on her suitcase squealed at every turn. A little later, when the woman had disappeared in the crowd of passengers, he walked up to a notice board displaying the timetable on the platform. He always did this when he alighted at a station in a foreign city, even if he already had a return ticket. Then he checked it once again inside the building. He proceeded no differently now, slowly sauntering towards the ticket hall where, craning his neck a little, he stood in front of the main information board. It all made sense: he had three possibilities for the return journey, not counting multiple connections of course, which he did not have to take into consideration.

If he had been one of those people who use their journeys to produce endless, unrestrained prattle, he would immediately have jotted down in his notebook that Zurich welcomed him with the smell of hot chocolate and over-ripe mandarins. He drank the chocolate standing up at one of the buffets, still in the station concourse. Whereas the extremely mouldy fruits came spilling out of a wooden box, which a Turk was shifting as he closed his stall. He unintentionally stepped on one of the mandarins, and it was a very unpleasant sensation: instead of springing out from under his shoe like a tennis ball, the fruit literally fell apart beneath it, making a boggy squelching noise. As he strolled along Bahnhofstrasse, which in this city ran slightly uphill, he could not avoid the sensation that this bitter-sweet smell was keeping him company, past the shop fronts, banks and tenement buildings. Less than ten minutes later he put down his small suitcase right beside the reception desk at the Hotel Saint Gotthard, where a man with a sad face handed him a registration card and asked: ‘What is the purpose of your stay?’

He did not know how to answer. Finally he mumbled, ‘Tourism,’ and at once added, without concealing his annoyance, ‘tourism and business, but why should I have to write that down?’

‘Not at all,’ said the receptionist, taking the card and handing him the key to room 305. ‘We are simply told to ask that question. You understand, sir,’ he smiled confidentially, ‘security.’

A further exchange of remarks was pointless. But once he had sat down on the bed in his room, taken off his shoes and wiped the remains of the mandarin mush from the sole with a handkerchief wetted for this purpose, he suddenly felt genuine irritation. What sort of terrorist declares the purpose of his mission to the hall porter? And if so, what was that question meant to be? A test? A warning? A Swiss greeting?

He switched on the television but it did not bring him the relaxation he was hoping for. He surfed the channels, only stopping for a moment longer on CNN. The ripped-apart bodies of some Shi’ite pilgrims recalled a war going on somewhere in a country full of sand. He could not remember the name of the blinded king, in chains, being beaten with sticks on a desert road. But in any case, this image, which he remembered from a religious education class at school, was going on here and now in television history. As he tapped out a laconic message on the buttons of his mobile phone – Got here, everything OK – a number of prisoners with their eyes blindfolded filed past the reporter’s camera. But that was not what riveted his attention. It was that suddenly a high-pitched female voice rang out from the room next door. After practising some scales, a beautiful, extremely resonant soprano produced a song. It was the Magnificat.

He realised that instead of a back wall, the wardrobe in which he had hung up the shirts he had unpacked from his case had a door into the next room. It was probably locked, but the fact that he was living in one half of a shared suite – not to mention the none too soundproof acoustics, of course – came as rather a nasty surprise, as if he had bought a first-class ticket for a train entirely made up of second-class carriages. Yet it didn’t matter a jot because of the music: its pure beauty compelled him to admire it, even in this strange manner, with his upper body plunged into the wardrobe and his ear pressed to a cracked wooden slat. With the Magnificat ringing out, he was about to withdraw from his uncomfortable position, when some intriguing changes took place in the next room, and the singer let forth a whole torrent of angry remarks. This was most evidently an exercise, a rehearsal, because none of her curses and expletives was met with an answer. When the stream of shouts abruptly broke off, laughter erupted in hysterical cascades, ending with somebody’s name being invoked. Louis? Luciano? He could not hear it precisely, nor could he recall a libretto like that from the operas he used to know long ago.

Finally, when it had all gone quiet, he backed out of the wardrobe. Whether it was the uncomfortable position with his head lower than his body, or the stuffy smell in there (a combination of the odour of anti-bedbug disinfectant and the residual acrid smell left in there by the vests, socks, slips, stockings, shirts and slippers of hundreds of his predecessors), suffice it to say that he was feeling rather dizzy and was seized with the desire for a breath of fresh air.

Less than five minutes later, he emerged into the small square in front of the hotel. Without a second thought he set off on the route that for some fifteen years he had taken in his dreams, and in a slightly more realistic way on a map of the city. First he passed Saint Peter’s Church, and went downhill to the river along the narrow Schlüsselgasse. At the foot of it he remembered perfectly well not to confuse Zinnengasse with Storchengasse, because if he had gone down the latter, instead of reaching the lawyer’s office he would have come to Weinplatz, from where the pleasure boats left by day. So he correctly chose Zinnengasse, and soon after, on the corner of Wühre, right on the river Limmat, he caught sight of a tenement building on which a modest plaque announced that in this house, at number 33, was the office of law firm Henri & François Rosset. For a while he stood on the pavement with his head slightly raised, gazing at the row of windows on the first floor, behind which, tomorrow morning, his life was to take on colour. The windows were dark and silent, with only the lights from the far bank of the Limmat sliding across them, as if over large, mysterious mirrors.

He went back by a slightly different route, and only now did he notice that not far from his hotel there was a two-floor department store. There wouldn’t have been anything remarkable about it, if not for the name, written out in very special lettering, as if dug up from the late 1940s: Franz Carl Weber. He slowly strolled past the illuminated window displays. As he gazed at the boxes of computer games stacked in a huge pyramid, from which the eyes of hundreds of Batmans and similar characters were looking at him, he felt an uncanny emotion. Franz Carl Weber – those three words, repeated in his mind a few times like a mantra, opened before him the invisible gates of time.

In his parents’ sitting room, the candles were burning on the Christmas tree. He and his brother were standing in the passage, not sure if they could go in there yet, but everything was ready, and as soon as they got the signal they sat down at table: their father, grandmother Maria, the two of them and their mother. During the reading of a passage from the Bible and the sharing of the holy wafer – as every Christmas Eve – they were already glancing at the boxes of wrapped-up presents. This time there were more of them than usual, and they were large in size. Over each festive dish in turn, he and his brother exchanged knowing looks.

Cautiously, to be sure not to damage anything, they laid out the complicated system of tracks under their father’s watchful eye: long straight pieces, bends, points, signals, as well as mountain tunnels, station buildings and viaducts. When they finally switched on the transformer and the goods train with the steam locomotive set off on its first run, while at the same time, from the same station, the international express marked Geneva-Ostend moved off in the other direction, their delight was boundless.

The Märklin models were made to perfection. Examined under a magnifying glass, the buffers, the little ladder, the springs, wheels or headlamps were like perfect prototypes for real train parts. They were especially thrilled by the express train’s central sleeping car. Through one little window with the curtains open, they could see an unfolded bed, a night lamp on a little table, and a lady and a gentleman drinking tea at it. They were wearing patterned dressing-gowns and evidently belonged to a different, better world.

Both trains sped up and slowed down in response to a turn of the transformer knob. On the sharp bends they had to slow down to at least second gear, otherwise the trains fell off the tracks.

‘Seven more circuits to Paris,’ said Grandmother Maria.

They believed her. Before the war, before Poland was cut off from Europe by the Iron Curtain, she had travelled a lot.

‘And what about to Ostend?’ he and his brother asked simultaneously.

‘Twice as many times, but don’t go speeding onto the beach!’

As they leaned over the little coaches and changed the points at the right moments, holding back now one, now the other train at the signal, they hardly took any notice of the adults’ conversation.

‘Now perhaps they’ll let people go abroad,’ said Grandmother Maria.

‘A three-month placement doesn’t make a spring. Of course I’m pleased,’ replied his father, ‘I couldn’t have dreamed of such a thing only a couple of years ago. The moustachioed monster had us locked in a cage.’

‘With the whole world’s consent,’ added his mother, ‘don’t forget.’

‘It was strange,’ he said, ignoring her remark, ‘as I walked along Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich, apart from trolleybuses I saw nothing but signs announcing banks. And in the canteen at Zulzer’s, where I was employed, the workers ate the same dinner as the managers. Can you imagine that here? The shipyard manager eating with a welder? Unmöglich!’[2]

‘There it’s möglich, here it’s unmöglich,’ replied Grandmother Maria.

The boys associated the moustachioed monster with Antoni Zielonka, the caretaker at their apartment house. He smelled of shag, spirits and sweat. He was always insulting them for being intelligentsia. He especially hated their father, whose bow he never deigned to return.

‘You’re only fit for the camps,’ he would occasionally shout, shaking his fist at their windows. ‘Off to Solovki with you! You should be exterminated!’

So they packed Zielonka the janitor into the refrigerator car and transported him to Siberia. Twenty-four circuits.

‘Maybe even further?’ asked his brother.

‘What do you mean?’ he replied. ‘We’ve got to get home, haven’t we?’

Their father showed them how to disconnect the tracks without damaging the joints. The coaches were put away in special slots in their boxes.

‘Look after it,’ he said, ‘an opportunity like this one might not come along a second time.’

Now as he looked at the display, almost forty years on, he remembered that very remark. It was prophetic: his father had never been given another passport after that, and had never brought back such a wonderful toy from any distant journey; the Swiss electric railway beat the East German Piko trains, the Soviet young engineer’s set, the Czech little doctor’s set and the Polish model aeroplane kits into the ground.

As he walked across the square towards the hotel, he remembered another thing too: at the time, as well as the railway set, their father had presented them with a fat tome in a soft, black shiny cover, similar in shape to a school exercise book. It was the catalogue for Franz Carl Weber’s store, the only one in the world that sold nothing but toys. On autumn and winter nights in particular, when for economic reasons or because of anti-aircraft exercises the lights were switched off all over town, he and his brother would sit at the kitchen table over a candle stump, slowly and reverently turning the thin pages.

They had no doubt that this book comprised a list of all the toys in the world. The black-and-white photographs of them, with short descriptions, filled three hundred and sixty-four pages. With great appreciation, first they examined the cranes, diggers, lorries and bulldozers, then moved on to a more interesting section: passenger limousines. Here particular emotions were stirred by the Opel Kapitän, and utter delight by the Porsche sports model. Yet the most important bit of The Book, as they pored over it in adoration by candlelight, was the world of railways.

Steam trains, electric trains, diesel locomotives, dozens of varieties of passenger coaches, special mountain rolling stock, and all possible configurations of goods trains filled their imagination, not just with the clatter of wheels, the lights of signals and the whistle of locomotives. Over this entire world of stations, timetables, signal boxes, tunnels and viaducts there floated a veil of mystery. They did not realise at the time that it was a yearning for a distant journey that would change their lives. As they pored over the mail-order catalogue from Franz Carl Weber’s toy store, they sensed that one day they would simply set off into the great wide world, and that what they were doing now, leaning over the printed pages in the flickering candlelight, was merely preparation.

When he got back to the hotel, he was greeted at the reception desk by two gentlemen who looked like twins and introduced themselves as Hugin and Munin – the former was Peter, the latter Paul, as they informed him in the bar, where the three men sat down together.

He was unable to conceal his surprise when Hugin put a photograph on the table, taken a few hours earlier at the main station, and Munin claimed in a confident tone, ‘We know you had never met her before, but she may have revealed something to you.’

‘She said nothing remarkable,’ he muttered reluctantly, as he gazed at the photograph, in which he was handing his beautiful fellow passenger her case, ‘and anyway, what is this about? Am I being accused of something?’

‘You soon may be,’ said Munin gruffly.

Before he had a chance to react to this incredible impudence, Hugin whispered almost ingratiatingly: ‘If we ask for your discreet cooperation, it is because this woman’ – he tapped a finger on the photograph – ‘is a particularly dangerous terrorist.’ Hugin gave a friendly smile, at which Munin immediately hissed: ‘There’s no joking, any detail might be important to us. Did she talk to anyone on her mobile phone? Did she send any text messages?’

He looked at Munin, then at Hugin with sincere doubt.

‘If she really is a terrorist, there can be no texts or conversations you aren’t already aware of. Why are you questioning me?’

‘She is a terrorist in a special sense of the word,’ said Munin.

‘A very special one,’ added Hugin.

‘She might have confided something,’ Munin continued, ‘which in your view is not of the least significance, but as we have known her for years, we are perfectly aware that in a conversation with a stranger she can sometimes say something about her plans.’

‘Unwittingly,’ put in Hugin.

‘Exactly,’ agreed Munin. ‘For instance that tomorrow she would be performing. Didn’t she say anything like that?’

‘No. She just asked how to get to the hotel. Can you please explain what this is about?’

‘Not just yet,’ said the plainly disappointed Munin. ‘But in any case, we would be grateful for your discretion. For understandable reasons.’

‘If she were to accost you in the corridor, let’s say, or at breakfast in the restaurant,’ said Munin, handing him a business card on which there was nothing but a phone number, ‘if she were to say anything at all, please call, alright?’

‘But you are not from the police,’ he stated confidently, ‘are you? What strange machinations. Perhaps I should actually call the police? I am a foreigner here and I came on business. I don’t want any trouble.’

After saying this, he stood up and headed for the lift without looking behind him. On the third floor, as he was walking down the corridor to his room, he saw the stranger. She was walking towards him, dressed in a blue coat and a lovely, old-fashioned pillbox hat.

‘Excuse me,’ he said almost in a whisper. ‘Please be careful. I was stopped downstairs by two fellows, I think they’re detectives. They questioned me. At the station, as I was handing you your case, they took our picture.’

‘Really?’ She did not look surprised. ‘And what did you tell them?’

‘Nothing. I told them to get off my back. After all, I don’t know you in the least.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘it’s very kind of you. Please don’t let it bother you. They probably said I’m a terrorist.’

‘Yes, how did you guess?’

‘Because I know them. Luigi hired them. I wonder how they introduced themselves?’

‘Hugin and Munin, Peter and Paul, or maybe vice versa.’

She giggled. As she walked off to the lift, she waved to him and loudly added: ‘You can sleep in peace. I don’t plant bombs!’

Standing behind the open drapes he saw the stranger through the window, getting into a taxi in the hotel forecourt. Moments later, Herr Hugin and Herr Munin were piling into the next one. Only now did he notice that he could see the neon sign for Franz Carl Weber’s toy store from this window. He decided that tomorrow, on his way back from the Rossets’ office, he would drop in there and inspect the model trains. He wouldn’t buy anything – his son was already over twenty – but he would certainly ask for a catalogue.

It would be an extraordinary thing, he thought, if at one of the counters I were to find an express train set, just the same as the one my brother and I drove so many times from Geneva to Ostend, though it was rather unlikely: since that era, long ago, everything had undergone radical changes, including the outside appearance of passenger and sleeping cars.

He was the sort of person on whom travel fatigue and new impressions do not have a soporific effect, but quite the opposite, and now, in a state of extreme tension, he could not get to sleep. After a shower, as he lay on his back in the comfortable bed, idiotic thoughts kept coming into his head. For instance, if Sebastian Rosset were to throw up his hands tomorrow and say that unfortunately he wasn’t going to pay him the money because some scrap of paper was missing, would he stay here a couple more days, or leave Zurich and Switzerland at once? Or if Herr Hugin and Herr Munin were to force their way into his room right now and subject him to elaborate tortures in the bathroom, for how long would he protect the stranger from the other side of the wall by concocting some ad hoc fibs?

Her scent was strong, but also had something very subtle about it, which reminded him of Grandmother Maria’s garden in the south of Poland. On August days, intense with light and heat, the odour of some plants, especially the flowers, hung around the solid block of the house like an invisible cloud, and towards evening, when its sun-warmed stonework began to return the warmth to its surroundings, those invisible waves of strong fragrance would float into the sitting room through the open windows, the large doors onto the veranda and the glass walls of the conservatory almost fully unfolded. That was why, as he now realised, his fellow passenger had instantly seemed close to him. However, although he very much wanted to, he couldn’t remember the actual name and species of flowers whose scent was the main ingredient of her perfume. Phlox? Wild rose? Carnation? Definitely not lily-of-the-valley, because those flowers bloom in spring, and he was only ever at the house in the south in summer, during the school holidays.

Briefly, under his closed eyelids he saw her figure amid a broad strip of irises. She had a sari flung about her. Just then in the garden an oriole began to sing, and turning towards the bird, the stranger let the floaty white fabric fall to the lawn.

He lit a cigarette and extracted a small bottle of claret from the mini-bar. If her naked body looked like that in reality, he thought, as he went back to bed with a glass of wine, she is quite simply beautiful. Extremely beautiful.

But he did not want to surrender his imagination to the mercy of unrealistic sexual desires. He tried to think about anything else. It wasn’t easy. For a while longer her face, reflected in the train carriage window, continued to tempt him with the shape of her brightly painted lips. Only a little later did he manage to summon up a different image from his memory: he and his brother were sitting on the floor of their small bedroom, amid railway tracks, stations and junctions. His brother opened the world atlas on his knees and announced: ‘Chile, highest railway line in the world. Thirty-six tunnels, fifty-three viaducts. Let’s go across the Andes! All aboooard, we’re off!’

With the aid of a compass and ruler they calculated the length of the route, and then painstakingly divided it into the number of circuits. They already had Africa under their belts, numerous journeys to Istanbul, the Trans-Siberian line from tsarist times, the route from London to Edinburgh, and also a long journey across the prairies on the United Pacific line.

They would ask each other questions on their knowledge of the routes: Next city? Regional capital? The river we’re just about to cross? Name of the lake? Highest peak in the mountain range?

For hours on end they were utterly absorbed. Sometimes their father would quietly enter the room and watch their journeys for ages without being noticed. Then he would gently say: ‘Time for bed, you can travel onwards tomorrow.’

Sometimes they awoke at night, and in silent agreement, without a word they would lay out the tracks, to ride across the Asian jungle or the African savannah by the light of a few well-positioned candles. Wild animals would come up to the tracks, and the brilliance of the speeding express would be reflected in their eyes. The boys were happy, though they only understood that years later.

When several men in long overcoats took their father from the flat late one evening, the moon was shining over the woods and above the roof of their house at the edge of the suburbs.

Their mother left them on their own. She had to go to the neighbour’s house, where there was a phone. They did not set out the tracks, but lay in their beds, paralysed by fear, until sleep came. Awoken in the middle of the night, he heard his brother’s regular breathing and saw the pale light of the moon breaking through the thin curtain. Quietly he went into the hall and put on his shoes, sweater and jacket. A light was still on in the janitor’s flat on the ground floor, and through the exposed window he caught sight of that guardian of the proletariat, leaning over a newspaper. He was dozing with his elbows propped on the kitchen table, when his wife came in from the living room. The ugly, wrinkled woman flicked a dishcloth at the janitor’s egg-shaped, bald head to punish him for some offence or other. He shooed her away like a fly, then finally got up, straightened his string vest, seized his wife by the throat and picked her up like a rag doll before disappearing into the depths of the flat. Perhaps he would have remained at their window a little longer, amazed at the sight of these people tormented by hatred, but the whistle of a locomotive summoned him away from the courtyard, a sound he had never heard here before.

Their house stood not far from a defunct railway line. The bridges blown up by the Germans, which he and his brother used to climb as if they were rocks, the sleepers overgrown with moss and the tracks gone rusty amid the ferns had always attracted him with hypnotic force, and yet now, as he clambered up the steep slope of the embankment, he felt genuine fear. He wasn’t dreaming, though what he was seeing was totally unreal. Coupled onto a locomotive, which was puffing out steam, was a single carriage with a row of doors along its entire length.

‘Are you getting on board?’ said a low-pitched voice right beside him. ‘We’re off in a minute.’

At the sight of the uniformed conductor, holding a torch in one hand and a block of tickets in the other, he mustered his courage.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

‘Wherever you like. This is your train.’

‘But how will I get home?’

‘On a circuit you always end up at home again.’

He let himself be persuaded. Once he was sitting on a hard, wooden bench, he saw the conductor jumping onto the carriage steps: he gave a signal with the torch and put to his lips the whistle that was hanging round his neck. They moved off with a slight jerk, but the carriage rolled along smoothly for the next few metres, picking up speed. He didn’t even notice when they drove into a tunnel. On the other side it was already day. The flood of bright light made him squint, but once his eyes had got used to it and finally took in their surroundings, he almost cried out in delight. They were travelling along a sandy riverbank, across meadows and scattered copses. Here and there sheep, horses and cows were grazing. Over the water, on the other side, rose a chain of majestic mountains. There were eye-catching villages and towns lying in the valleys, with stone churchtowers, a patchwork of red roofs, and avenues of trees. The vineyards and orchards were full of lively activity as people with baskets on their backs busied themselves among the greenery like hard-working beetles. Cargo ships were sailing up and down the river. A little girl waved to them from the deck. Far away, on some of the peaks, fortified castles lurked below the snow line. He had once seen a similar landscape on an old postcard.

‘Is that the Rhine?’ he asked the conductor.

‘No,’ he replied, looking up from the book he was browsing, ‘it’s the river of all rivers.’

‘I don’t understand that. Please can you explain?’

‘One day you will. Today I’ll just tell you this: each thing in this world has its prototype. Take my whistle, for example: there are millions of whistles – ones for scouts, for sportsmen, policemen, or ones like mine, for conductors. You see?’

He nodded.

‘They’re similar to each other, yet different. But all of them without exception must have had their original model. This is one of them. It contains the features of all the others.’

‘Do you mean a blueprint?’

‘More or less.’

‘So this river…?’

‘Is the model for all the other rivers in existence.’

‘But on our river there are no mountains or vineyards!’

‘That’s right, but look at the riverbank. Sand and meadows. Even some willow trees. Doesn’t that remind you of something?’

Indeed it did. But it was a difficult conversation, and he didn’t ask any more questions, for fear of hearing some even more difficult answers. He pressed his face to the window, beyond which, on the other side of the water, there were no more mountains, just a vast wilderness as far as the eye could see. Here and there he could make out riverside clearings where, amid log cabins, people were moving about by campfires. He also saw canoes dug out of tree trunks, with men dressed in skins catching fish from them. After an indeterminate time the landscape had changed beyond all recognition. Now they were travelling along the vast flood basin of a boundless plain, flat as a table. At the mouth of the river where it entered the sea, the train turned a corner and glided right along the beach, passing widespread dunes. Then they drove into a tunnel, after which the locomotive began to brake.

‘You see?’ said the conductor. ‘We’re back at our starting point. Run off home.’

‘Will you take me on another journey one day, sir?’

‘It’s impossible to predict,’ he replied, opening the door for him, ‘but be prepared.’

When he got back to the flat, there was a light on in his parents’ room. His mother was not asleep. He could hear her anxious footsteps as she paced a short distance to and fro. As he nodded off, there, before his eyes, he could still see far-reaching views of the river, which made him feel thrilled and threatened all at once. And now, lying in his hotel bed, he would have fallen asleep under the spell of that memory, if not for a loud noise from the other side of the wall.

The stranger had returned to her room and was talking to someone non-stop, in a very strident voice. A chair scraped as it was shifted. He could not resist the temptation, and as before, he put his ear to the back door inside the wardrobe. He found it astonishing that the someone – whoever it was – never responded at all, while the room’s occupant let loose more and more words by the minute. Until finally he heard an answer: a male baritone made a short, abrupt remark in Italian, at which the woman burst into laughter, and then shouted – now he could hear it clearly – ‘Stupido Luigi! Stupido Luigi!’

As he pressed against the door even harder, he lost his balance and grabbed an old brass doorknob. Although he didn’t turn it a millimetre left or right, the door gave way and he fell headlong onto the floor of the other people’s room. He lay there for a few seconds, weighing up the seriousness of his position: he was in pyjamas, his bare feet were still stuck in the wardrobe by the tips of his toes, and his head was all but touching his neighbour’s feet, clad in court shoes.

‘I’m extremely sorry,’ he said, getting up, ‘I was just hanging my suit in the wardrobe, I leaned against the wall, and it’s a door! And it’s not locked either! How embarrassing! I really am extremely sorry.’

As he said this, he approached the door, and as proof of his veracity, extracted from behind it his jacket, which was hanging on the rail.

‘Here it is!’

There was no man in her room.

She eyed him closely, and then finally replied, in the same baritone he had heard a little earlier: ‘Please put that in its place! Do you always step inside the wardrobe to hang up your suit?’

And then, in her own voice, she added: ‘Really, what are the hotels in this city coming to?’

And laughed out loud.

He bowed, said ‘I’m sorry’ once again, and was about to go back into his room through the wardrobe when she said: ‘How about a glass of champagne? My name is Teresa. What’s yours?’

‘Piotr.’

‘That’s not very original either.’

While she went to fetch some glasses, he returned to his room, pulled on his trousers, put shoes on his bare feet and threw a jacket over his pyjama top. He took a small bottle of sparkling wine from the mini-bar.

‘It’s all because of Luigi,’ she said as they clinked glasses and sat down. ‘What a bastard he is. He ruined my life and he’s still setting detectives and the police on me! Can you imagine? The police! In Mainz I spent three days in custody. they wouldn;t even let me go to church!'

Her English was much better than his, though occasionally she dropped a complete Italian word into her sentence.

‘I’ll be after him as soon as he emerges from his lair! What about you? You probably haven’t come here for the skiing. Are you a Czech?’

‘No, a Pole.’

‘My God, like the Pope.’

‘There’s not much I can do about it.’

This time they both burst out laughing.

‘I’m here to collect something that belonged to my father.’

‘Was he an émigré?’

‘He was on a work placement. Long ago.’

‘You must think I’m a madwoman. Were you eavesdropping?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I wanted to hear you singing again.’

‘Did you like it?’

‘Very much.’

‘Do you know what it was?’

‘The Magnificat.’

‘For Luigi. I am a madwoman. I don’t love him anymore, but I still pursue him. Bishop Luigi. Do you see?’

‘Not entirely. Is he a Catholic bishop?’

‘The youngest one at the Vatican. He was promoted thanks to his uncle who is a cardinal. The old Roman family of the princes of Conti. I’m a Roman too, but so what? He dropped me like an old shirt. Can you imagine it? Purely because I fell pregnant he ran away in terror to the seminary. It was just after high-school graduation. I thought it would pass, he’d get bored, but no – he stuck it out and became a priest. And straight after that a bishop! Men are such monsters! I’m thinking of Italian men, but in your country, in Poland, you’re probably just the same, right?’

‘Even worse.’

She wasn’t sure if he was joking. But when she saw his smiling face, she immediately added: ‘No men are worse than the Italians.’

And straight after that confession, as if urged on by some inner compulsion, she quickly began to tell her story.

‘I promised myself I would never let him get away with it. Even if he becomes a cardinal. At every church he enters for his apostolic visitations he must reckon with danger! In Milan – that was the first time – he almost fainted when he saw me in a side alcove by the altar. I always disguise myself as a statue. Baroque, Renaissance, Gothic – it’s all everyday fare for me. He recognised my face and went pale. Perhaps he thought he was seeing things? He was so horrified he furtively looked up from the pages of the Bible a few times, as if trying to break my spell. But there I stood, stock still – a Madonna carrying a child wrapped in cloth. When Vanessa started crying,’ she rambled, ‘I put her down at my feet and began to sing the Magnificat for Luigi. I threw off my robes as I did so, until they dragged me out of there. You get the idea?’

He nodded understandingly and poured more champagne.

‘Do you often do that?’

‘Every time Luigi is on a visitation. Padua, Verona, Pesaro, Einsiedeln, Freiburg, Munich, Regensburg. I can’t even remember all the places anymore. I’ve had three sentences already. I served two of them. They wanted to give me money. I declared that I shall only stop when my love dies out.’

‘Just now you said it had.’

‘Yes, but I can’t get out of the habit. When I see that same horror and astonishment in his eyes at the fact that I have succeeded once again, I feel as if I’ve grown wings. Luigi stupido! I always shout that as they cart me off to the police car.’

‘And tomorrow?’

‘Tomorrow Luigi is to say mass at the Liebfrauenkirche. I’ll be disguised as an old woman. And underneath I’ll have my Madonna’s robes. Before they arrest me I’ll have time to sing the opening bars of the Magnificat and throw off my clothes.’

‘Do you bare yourself completely?’

‘Yes. Only then do my performances have meaning.’

‘May I come along tomorrow?’

‘Of course,’ she laughed loud, ‘the performance is free, especially for Poles!’

They heard a noise coming from the hotel corridor. Several drunken voices were shouting over each other in Russian. Luggage banged against the door of the room.

‘You’re very patient,’ she said, putting down her glass. ‘You didn’t interrupt me once. And you don’t talk about yourself. But men love to do that. When we were together, Luigi used to spend hours expatiating on the sufferings of his soul. I don’t know anything about you.’

‘I have spent my life in a different world,’ he said slowly, as if having trouble finding the right words, ‘and it wasn’t at all interesting.’

‘There is always a story to be told,’ she said, looking him straight in the eyes, ‘even if a person spends his whole life sitting in one room staring out of the same window all the time.’

‘We thought we were fighting for something,’ he replied after a pause. ‘But in fact we were totally dependent on our jailers. Even when they were gone we could talk about nothing else. Can you understand that?’

‘Perfectly.’

But when a little later he said: ‘Thank you very much,’ and disappeared into the wall, closing the cupboard door carefully behind him, he wasn’t at all sure if she had really understood him. Some fifteen years after the regime collapsed, people in his country were still very keen to talk about who had informed on whom and who was, or was not, a secret agent for the political police.

A few months after his arrest, their father had suddenly appeared in the courtyard. He was walking at a slow, lumbering pace, bowing his head as if afraid of being hit. Zielonka had blocked his way and screamed: ‘Well, how was it there, Mr Engineer? Did they teach you some respect?’

Their father went past him and entered the staircase in complete silence, which later on, in the flat, once he had taken a shower and eaten supper, weighed upon the entire family. Immersed in his own thoughts as if in a labyrinth, he refused to answer any of their mother’s questions.

At the time he was sure his father did not want to talk in front of him and his brother, and was keeping silent – as had often happened in the past – just because of the children. But once they were lying in their beds, listening to every sound from their parents’ room, the only thing they could hear was their mother, calling louder and louder: ‘Why won’t you tell me anything? Say something, for goodness sake! Talk to me!’ Then they heard his loud snoring, which seemed funny to them, as he had never suffered from that affliction before. Meanwhile their mother got up several times and clattered about in the kitchen, looking for pills and pouring herself water. Their father’s silence went on for several weeks, during which he took his meals apathetically and lay on the sofa bed, staring at the ceiling. He didn’t read any newspapers or books, and didn’t even listen to the radio. Finally he got up, drank a cup of raspberry tea and left the flat in nothing but a jacket – the very one he had brought back from Zurich. Its woollen, slightly too baggy tails flapped in the wind beneath the spreading crown of that great oak at the foot of the defunct railway line embankment, from which their father hanged himself.

Grandmother Maria discreetly sent them money, their mother found an office job at the municipal sewage company, and the silence in their flat seemed to linger on, like an invisible tent pitched above them.

He no longer enjoyed playing games with his brother. The Märklin electric railway set reminded them too much of their father. Whereas at night, once everyone was asleep, he would slip out of the house and down to the old railway embankment, where the Great Conductor would be waiting for him with his block of tickets and a shiny puncher for making holes in them. In his hands he held a thick, bulky book. It was the universal timetable for all possible railway lines. He admired the Great Conductor’s subtle, almost alchemic art of finding connections, transfers and return concession fares: under his finger and his gaze the dumb list of figures and symbols suddenly came to life, like the promise of a great journey which was actually fulfilled as soon as – after a short discussion – they had boarded the rather antiquated carriage smelling of soot, steam and the old plush covers of the first-class seats. He would come home before dawn, quickly get into bed and fall asleep almost immediately, then dream of the memorised landscapes, deserts, mountains, cities, river bends and waterfalls.

What could he tell her about all this? Could he say that his father, accused of spying, had broken down under interrogation and signed a piece of paper? Or on the contrary, that he hadn’t signed anything? That his nocturnal expeditions with the Great Conductor came to an end one autumn night? They stood beside each other at an abandoned signal, watching the goods trains roll past one after another. People were poking their hands out of the barred windows, and occasionally a face flashed by.

‘They’re going to their death,’ said the Great Conductor in a whisper.

‘Can’t we do anything?’ he asked.

‘We have no influence on the timetable. For the time being all the connections are cancelled.’

After that night the railway line never came to life again, and neither the elegant old carriage coupled to the panting locomotive, nor the Great Conductor, had ever appeared again among the rampant weeds and rusted points. He had never revealed that secret to anyone. In the dark hotel room he now realised that the only person he could tell it to was his neighbour from behind the wall, or rather from behind the wardrobe.

‘I’ll go to that church tomorrow,’ he decided, as he fell asleep.

The next morning he was received with extremely subtle courtesy by both Herr Rossets. Once his identity had been confirmed with the aid of his passport – which was a pure formality – it was necessary to state that he was his father’s only heir. His mother and brother were no longer alive, as shown by the relevant documents, long since forwarded to the office. He signed an additional declaration.

As the younger lawyer, Sebastian Rosset, began to read out the document, he gazed through the large office window at a pleasure boat gliding up the Limmat. On the other side of the river, above the city, stretched the purple range of the Alps. He was expecting in the best case about thirty thousand francs. Even increased by capitalised interest, the total amount should not be greater. But what he heard was staggering.

‘Could you say that again?’ he interrupted the lawyer, ‘I can’t have understood.’

‘Yes, of course. The total sum, minus the annual costs of tax, service expenses and our commission, now comes to one million nine hundred and ninety-six thousand seven hundred and fifty-four euros.’

‘Is that possible?’

‘Absolutely. The sum your father won on the lottery was enormous for those days – over two hundred thousand dollars. In accordance with his wishes, we invested the money in three ways: in trust funds, real estate and shares. As you can see, our firm achieves superb results. If the prize money had lain in a bank, even at the best rate of interest, you would not have even half that sum today. More than thirty years have gone by.’

‘What we’re talking about,’ the older, François Rosset now continued, ‘is of course the money which, after disposing of the securities, we deposited in three different banks, in keeping with your suggestion. But there is also the real estate.’

‘Indeed,’ said the younger lawyer, handing him a file of documents, ‘here is a list of the properties, with valuations and all communication with the administrators. If you should so wish, our firm is willing to continue to manage them. We have prepared a contract. Of course you can sell, but not immediately.’

In total silence he looked through the list.

‘Fiorenzuola?’ he asked bashfully, pointing at one of the items.

‘A beautiful property. Last month the lease expired and Mr O’Brien and his entire family went back to the States, as far as we know. We haven’t looked for a new tenant, as you mentioned in your letter that once matters were settled here you would like to take a holiday in Italy,’ explained Herr Sebastian. ‘The administrator, Signor Corelli, lives on site.’

‘Are you feeling unwell?’ The older lawyer summoned the assistant. ‘Please bring some water!’

He really was feeling odd, and gladly took the glass. He thought it was all a sort of game, which he had accidentally got mixed up in without the involvement of his own free will, a game for which he would have to pay through the nose eventually.

‘The accounts I mentioned,’ said Herr François, ‘are already active. You only have to make your way to any of the banks and submit examples of your signature. We thought of that – here are the phone numbers. They are expecting you.’

‘As you wanted a small sum in cash,’ added Herr Sebastian, handing him an envelope, ‘here is that too. Please count it.’

He was surprised to find that once he had counted out twenty thousand francs in new notes and put the envelope into his jacket pocket, no receipt was demanded of him.

When after two hours he finally left the offices of Henri & François Rosset’s legal firm, having entrusted it with the continued management of his real estate, he felt he should go straight back to the hotel to change his shirt – it was wet with perspiration.

However, he stopped at the first little café on the Limmat. He ordered mineral water and a sandwich. He took out his mobile phone and wrote: We really are rich, then selected his wife’s number. He failed to press the send button, because at almost the exact same second, a couple of tables along, he spotted Herr Hugin (though it could just as well have been Herr Munin) pointing the lens of a small camera in his direction. He got up, went over to the detective, and as loud as he could, said: ‘Please call the police! This man is stalking me for no reason!’

Several people looked up at them.

‘Are you sure?’ said a passing waiter, stopping in mid-stride. ‘What’s this about?’

But Herr Munin (though it could just as well have been Herr Hugin) immediately walked off, disappearing among a group of Japanese tourists, who had just alighted from an pleasure boat.

He returned to his table, deleted the unsent text message, swallowed his sandwich, paid and set off along Wühre and up to the old town. It was noon, and the bells began to ring from several churches. He had no trouble reaching the small square where, on the façade of the two-storey toy shop, he could see the familiar sign saying Franz Carl Weber, with the company logo – a rocking horse, and the date of its foundation – 1881. On the ground floor there were lots of departments which did not arouse his interest. Hundreds of computer games, and squeezed in among them here and there, Barbie dolls or their relatives – that was really all. He roamed about in this labyrinth, unsure what to do next. Finally he came upon a sales assistant. His white shirt, black trousers and waistcoat betrayed a hesitant kinship with the elegance of former years.

‘Excuse me, please, ’ he asked. ‘Are there any electric railway sets here?’

‘What’s that?’ The young man hadn’t heard properly, or hadn’t understood his German.

‘Model trains. Locomotives, carriages, signals, stations.’

The assistant was surprised.

‘Do you mean a computer game? A railway one? We haven’t anything like that. There’s only Murder on the Orient Express. Interested?’

‘No, that’s not it. An electric railway set, dear sir. Models. Miniature, perfect replicas. Made by Märklin, for example. They travel on tracks like real ones. Have you got any like that?’

‘Yes,’ replied the young man after some thought. ‘Please go upstairs and ask the manager. I’ve only been working here for a month,’ he said, smiling disarmingly.

A moving staircase silently carried him upwards. But even here, among pyramids of Lego bricks, space stations from the Star Wars era and all possible mutants and cousins of the Matrix, he couldn’t find a single railway set. He also spent a long time looking for anyone who might be able to provide information. Finally, from behind a stack of colourful boxes, a young girl emerged, dressed the same way as the assistant on the ground floor.

‘May I help you?’ she asked.

‘I’m looking for trains, Märklin models. The kind powered by electricity. Have you got anything like that?’

‘Please go to the far end of the floor. There should be something on the left hand side, by the window.’

But it wasn’t quite so obvious at all. For a few minutes he searched for the right department, until finally, behind yet another pyramid of remote-controlled racing cars, he found a dusty display case, in which there was a short track laid out in a figure of eight. On it stood a locomotive with three little carriages. For some time he inspected the exotic train. The model locomotive represented a type of steam engine from the late 1950s, still manufactured in those days in Germany. Each of the carriages belonged to a completely different decade. Here a flatcar from the 1920s kept company with an entirely modern refrigerator car and an old-fashioned passenger coach with a long row of little doors down both sides.

‘Would you like to buy it?’ he heard the sales assistant say behind him.

‘Are there any other models?’ he asked in a hopeful tone.

‘That’s the last one. Trains aren’t fashionable these days.’

‘No. I was thinking of the Geneva to Biarritz express or something like it.’

‘In that case you should look on the internet. There are collectors who have their own special sites. Do you want an address?’

‘No thank you,’ he replied. ‘Maybe next time.’

As he was leaving Franz Carl Weber’s toy store, he didn’t even look behind him to say goodbye to the rather old-fashioned letters on the shop sign, which had, after all, brought a few moments of real happiness into his childhood on the cold sea coast. Suddenly he started thinking about his father: had he made the purchase after winning on the lottery, or had the present been the fruit of profound and numerous sacrifices on his part? As far as he still remembered anything, his father’s character would be more indicative of the second possibility. If he could imagine it, the decision to buy a ticket had probably occurred to him earlier, in the first few days of his stay, as he read an advertisement for the lottery in the window of one of the tobacco shops, but with an extremely modest sum of money at his disposal, with every last penny accounted for, he must have thought he might take a gamble shortly before leaving, and then only if he turned out to have a little change left. It must have been just like that: he had counted every franc so that he would have enough for the Märklin carriages, both locomotives, a good supply of track, and also the points and signals. If he had bought a lottery ticket earlier, this purchase would have been improbable, or in any case much more modest. After all, he couldn’t possibly have assumed he would win anything, and only then buy them this unusual present.

As he waited a dreadfully long time for the sluggish waiter at the hotel restaurant, he tried to imagine his father’s tall, slightly stooping figure entering Franz Carl Weber’s toy store, only about forty metres away from here. First he must have taken in the sight of dozens of trains speeding around several enormous model landscapes that filled the greater part of the ground floor. Then, after lengthy observations and calculations, with the catalogue in hand, he must have eventually chosen suitable models and asked for them to be shown to him properly, until finally there came the packing stage and a visit to the cash register – which in those days was still mechanical, with a crank handle, making that part of the store look like a shop out of Dickens.

His father is very pleased, even though sleet has been falling on Bahnhofstrasse for several minutes and a bitterly cold wind is blowing. He presses his hat more firmly onto his head, turns up the collar of his old raincoat, carefully knots his scarf and sets off in the direction of the station with two enormous packages under his left and right arms. But moments later, literally after only fifteen metres, he turns around and goes back past the liveried doorman and into the toy shop again. ‘What’s the matter?’ asks the senior sales assistant. ‘Is there something wrong?’

‘Not at all, everything’s fine,’ replies his father, putting his parcels down on a counter top. ‘I just wanted to ask for your mail-order catalogue, because you see, it occurred to me that I might order something else, from home, from Poland.’

‘Of course,’ says the senior sales assistant, handing him a fat book in soft, shiny covers, similar in shape to a school exercise book. ‘It costs fifty francs,’ he says, and watches the customer open his coin purse and count out the requested sum in twenty and ten centime coins; he is exactly five centimes short, so the senior sales assistant waits calmly. Meanwhile a train ticket falls out of the purse, the receipt for the toys bought a little earlier, a dry cleaning ticket for a jacket, but not the missing five centimes – because his father simply hasn’t got it. The banknote lying at the bottom of his wallet is absolutely not to be touched: it must last him for the final two days.

‘What kind of a salesman am I?’ says the senior sales assistant, picking up the company receipt from the floor and handing it to his father. ‘Anyone who makes a purchase worth more than fifty francs receives the catalogue for free. Here you are, sir,’ he says, handing him the book, ‘you spent several times that sum,’ and helps him to pick up his parcels from the counter. ‘Happy Christmas!’

‘Happy Christmas,’ replies his father, and heads towards the station at a faster pace than before, because the train to Winterthur is leaving from platform two in just under fifteen minutes – Happy Christmas – he repeats to himself now, under his breath, in Polish, as he buys a lottery ticket at the station tobacco shop, splitting that final banknote in the process, which he should only have split the next day – Happy Christmas.

As the Alps pass by outside the carriage windows, invisible in the darkness, he feels quiet satisfaction. By denying himself every third lunch and every fourth supper, as well as small treats like hot chocolate or a trip to the cinema, from his modest allowance he set aside enough for two magnificent trains and ten complete tracks. Exactly enough for the boys to be able to encompass their entire bedroom with them, including a route under the old wardrobe and behind the chest-of-drawers. The next day, when he picks up a newspaper at the hotel reception and reads the number of the lucky winning ticket, he cannot believe his own eyes. He has just enough cash to buy a one-way ticket to Zurich and reach the legal firm, which – as he has read in the very same newspaper – provides services for ‘foreign clients and complicated financial matters’. Henri Rosset confers with him at length in his office, until finally, after signing several agreements and letters of authorisation, he pays him 100 francs – on account, a sum guaranteed by the lottery win.

‘Perhaps you need more?’ he asks at the end.

‘Absolutely not,’ replies his father. ‘In my country that means serious trouble.’

The solitary dinner dragged on for an unbearably long time. Over coffee he looked at his watch: it was already almost half past three, and mass at the Liebfrauenkirche was due to begin at six. In his room he pored over a map of the city. The church was situated at number 9 Zehnderweg, and thus not so far from the hotel and even nearer to the station – on the other side of the river. Only now, as the emotions fell away from him, did he feel how very tired he was; for that precise reason he did not take a short nap, but after a quick shower and a change of shirt, set off past the luxury shop-window displays of Bahnhofstrasse. But the jeweller’s baubles, the most expensive watches in the world and the fur coats imported from Siberia did not interest him at all. He went into an antiquarian bookshop and briefly looked through some old, seventeenth-century maps. On one of them, by Jean Bleu, he saw his home city, the bay, and the long, sandy peninsula which the sailors had called ‘Hell’ since mediaeval times.

‘I don’t have to go home tomorrow,’ he thought. ‘I don’t really have to do anything.’

He didn’t buy the map, though at the start, when he first examined it, that had been his intention. On the bridge he remembered the visit he and his mother had paid to the parish office before his father’s funeral.

‘Please, please, Father, I beg you,’ his mother had almost burst into tears, ‘if only for the children’s sakes!’

The curate was young and clearly sympathised with them, but he had his orders.

‘There’s nothing I can do for you. Canonical law is quite clear about these situations. We do not refuse to say mass for the unfortunate soul, but a funeral service conducted by a priest is out of the question. Please understand us. After all, it was suicide,’ he lowered his voice, ‘plainly, without any doubt.’

Only many years later had he found out from his mother that the older, retired priest, whom no one knew in their parish, and who had appeared at the cemetery at the very last moment, driving up to the gate on an extremely dilapidated moped, had been his father’s commander in the underground youth resistance movement during the war. He himself had never mentioned his wartime activities. As he was nearing the church, on Zehnderweg already, he saw himself in that cramped, cluttered flat, examining and sorting his parents’ papers. His brother hadn’t come back from America for their mother’s funeral. He had had to take care of everything on his own, but the worst thing was all that tidying, which took him several weeks to deal with. What tired him the most were the photographs of people he could never know anything about anymore. In one of the boxes he found a large, grey envelope. It was lying at the very bottom, stuck down and unidentified. It contained documents issued by the legal firm in Zurich. There was nothing in them to say how much money his father had deposited, and he could only confirm that Henri & François Rosset will make every effort to increase the values entrusted to them, and that these may only be acquired upon the application of the interested party in person, those authorised by him or his legally defined heirs. For several years he had corresponded with his brother on this topic – gently and cautiously. His brother had promised to take care of it, and even to fly to Zurich, but in fact he had never intended to lift a finger to deal with the matter, which he regarded as some obsolete whim not worth the expense. When they finally opened the borders, his brother was no longer alive. For the next few years, as he set up his own company and threw himself into a whirl of rather bad business ventures, the envelope lay in his desk among his school certificates and his diploma from the polytechnic. He found the legal firm’s email address on the internet, and after one short message, to his astonishment, he got the answer that on the matter in question he must appear in person, equipped with the relevant documents. There followed a list.

He was expecting trouble, legal loopholes, expressions of doubt, and for the whole process to be strung out into infinity, but now here he was, entering the Liebfrauenkirche edifice as someone who had inherited an extraordinarily large fortune. It was a strange feeling: in the city from which Lenin had left for Saint Petersburg in a sealed carriage, the city where the Dadaists had proclaimed their manifesto, and much earlier Zwingli had issued his, here in this city he had received a win on the lottery, which his father had once happened to play.

The mass was preceded by an announcement read out by the priest from a sheet of paper: the bishop they had been expecting, Luigi Conti, had not come, laid low by sudden and severe flu. He sent the congregation his blessing, which – along with a specially composed pastoral prayer – would be read out after the Eucharist. He walked along a side nave to the altar, and then went back towards the choir, casting discreet glances in search of Teresa. But he could not see her anywhere, nor anyone whom she could be cunningly impersonating.

‘What could be sadder than a cancelled performance in a foreign city?’ he thought as he left the church.

If his neighbour had gone back to the hotel, he might call her from the reception and invite her to supper. But at once he imagined Herr Hugin or Herr Munin disguised as the receptionist. Ultimately, considering the unusual friendship they had formed, he could also press ahead and knock at her door as he came down the corridor, and then suggest an outing to the city. Unless she had decided to leave at once, as the performance had not come off. Convinced that was probably what she had done, he stopped a taxi and told the driver to take him to Spiegelgasse, to the restaurant which was once home to the famous Cabaret Voltaire. Once there, he ordered a salad and some wine, but he did not enjoy the meal: surrounded by a raucous crowd of people, he spent the entire time gazing at the couple opposite – the young man was wearing a pointed Bolshevik cap with a red star and a collarless brown Russian shirt draped over his trousers, and his girlfriend was dressed in the leather jacket of a People’s Commissar. For a while he even wondered whether to address them in Russian, but he dropped the idea and left the noisy place with relief.

He went back to the hotel on foot, only once checking the route on his city map. At the reception, as he paid his bill, he noticed that the key to room 304 was not in its pigeonhole. Back in his room, he put his ear to the door inside the wardrobe and heard her footsteps. She was pacing to and fro, clearly upset. Should he knock on her door to tell her he had been at the church? He didn’t really have anything else to communicate: he was leaving the next day at about noon.

He stepped back out of the wardrobe and switched on the television. As he watched the CNN news from Iraq, he remembered the name of the king who was exiled from Jerusalem: it was Zedekiah. The victors had first made him witness the execution of his own sons, then they had blinded him, put him in chains and driven him into captivity. This had no direct connection with the news, so he was all the more curious to know why on earth he had been thinking yesterday about the religious education lesson at which, many years ago, he had been read the story of the last king of Judah. Maybe he associated the blinding of the ruler with the sight of the prisoners whose eyes had been blindfolded?

He was already on his way to the bathroom when he heard a noise coming from the corridor. Someone knocked at his neighbour’s door. Once and again.

‘Please open up!’ he heard a man’s voice. ‘We’ve got a warrant!’

Without hesitation he went into the wardrobe, opened the back door and beckoned to her to come into his room. She managed to grab her handbag and her coat. As he closed the wooden door panel, the key in her lock turned with a dull rattle and several men entered the next-door room – probably policemen – with the help of the hotel staff. While they were searching her luggage, she sat beside him on the sofa. He gently took hold of her hand, which she did not withdraw.

‘So what now?’ he whispered.

‘They’ll arrest me, as usual.’

‘But nothing happened. You haven’t done anything.’

‘That’s just how it looks. You know what it’s called? An attempt. In Italy I would lie my way out of it and only get a few days. In Switzerland I might get more. They’ll find a picture of Luigi in my case. The old woman’s costume and the saint’s robes. Newspaper cuttings. That’s enough. Three years ago I was arrested in Einsiedeln, so I’ve already had a sentence here. Suspended.’

‘We can run away if you like,’ he said.

‘Of course I do, but how? They’re sure to post someone at reception for the whole night. But I’ve no reason to go back in there now,’ she said, pointing at the wall with the wardrobe.

‘First let’s wait a bit,’ he said, turning up the television, ‘then I’ll go and reconnoitre.’

After an hour, during which they sat huddled together shyly like a pair of school children, he went down to the hotel bar, slowly passing the reception. There were two men sitting in armchairs in the lobby, clearly on duty. He drank a small whisky and went back to the lift. There was no one in the corridor on the third floor, and there were no sounds coming from behind the door of her room.

‘Put on my coat, trousers, shoes, scarf and also… my glasses. It’s a pity I haven’t got a hat. But you can smoke my pipe. Yes, like that. Keep your hands in the pockets. Here’s a rain hat, I brought it just in case. Wait, a man’s shirt under the coat, with the collar done up, and a tie – you must have a tie, so it shows under the scarf. Just walk through at a calm pace and get in a taxi, as if you were off for a late supper. But wash off your make-up. We’ll pin your hair up under the cap – like that, look. You can hang my bag over your shoulder. I’ll put your handbag in my suitcase.’

‘All right, but then what?’

‘You’ll take a taxi to the station. The night train from Geneva to Rome departs from platform three at half-past midnight. Let’s meet at the platform entrance. Stand facing the timetable board and don’t look round. I’ll be there ten minutes after you.’

‘We haven’t got much time.’

‘If you’re not on the platform, I’ll go back to the hotel.’

‘If they detain me, they’ll ask who helped me.’

‘So tell them.’

‘I won’t.’

‘You will, but only after noon. I’ll be far away.’

‘And will we ever meet again?’

‘You’ll send me a letter from prison.’

‘To what address? I don’t even know your surname!’

‘Here’s my card.’

‘No, because if they catch me…’

‘They won’t catch you. Take it. But let’s hurry.’

When she went out into the corridor with the bag slung over her shoulder, in his raincoat with the collar slightly turned up and with his cap on her head, adjusting the glasses and puffing on the pipe, he thought the shoes might give her away more than anything: they were too big, and despite her efforts, every second or third step she distinctly shuffled them in a funny way. But there was no time for practice. He packed at lightning speed, highly amused by the situation. In just his suit, and with his small case, he appeared at the reception desk to hand in his key.

‘Are you leaving?’ asked the young man.

‘My bill is paid,’ he said in a confident tone. The two gentlemen in the armchairs cast him furtive glances, but neither of them so much as raised a finger.

‘Yes, of course,’ confirmed the receptionist. ‘Bon voyage.’

He gave him a nod, and just outside the hotel he got in a taxi. He glanced at his watch: the night express was leaving in fifteen minutes. He still had enough time to stop at the ticket office and buy two first-class tickets for the sleeping car. Teresa was standing in front of the platform timetable; one of her rolled-up trouser legs had come undone, hiding her shoe. The train was just pulling in. They were walking alongside each other, when suddenly one of the wheels on his case began to squeak.

‘I don’t have a large flat in Rome,’ she said, once they were in the compartment. ‘I don’t know if you’ll like it.’

‘But I don’t want to go to Rome at all, and I’m not planning to stay at your flat.’

‘So what are your plans?’

‘To stop in Venice.’

‘For how long?’

‘A week or two.’

She went behind the screen to wet her face and neck in the sink.

‘But can you stay a day with me?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘You’ll meet my daughter. She isn’t mad like me. Luckily I did manage to pay for the hotel,’ – she changed the subject – ‘but for this luxury here I will be in your debt. Until next month, if that’s all right. Why don’t you say something? Perhaps you just want to sleep with me? Are you expecting something?’

‘I’d like to have a cup of tea.’

‘Hand me my blouse. Tea at this time of day? That’s a Russian habit. I’m sorry, perhaps I’ve offended you. So did you take care of your business in Zurich?’

‘Yes. I won’t be going back there again.’

They sat facing each other and drank the tea served by the steward. Outside the lights of passing stations flashed by. Finally they lay down, each in their own bed.

‘Do you know of a boarding house in Venice?’ she asked in the darkness.

‘No. I’m staying at the Hotel Danieli.’

‘Do you know how much that costs? A fortune!’

‘Tough. Unless you come with me and help me find something cheaper.’

‘I’d have to bring my daughter.’

‘So bring her.’

‘Are you serious? Or are you just…’

‘I’m serious.’

Once again they were silent, until finally he said: ‘I’d like to kiss you. When I first saw you in the train to Zurich I dreamed of kissing you.’

‘And I asked if we were already in Zurich, as if I didn’t know where we were. I wanted you to embrace me. I want you to now, too.’

He climbed the ladder and kissed Teresa on the cheek, then on the lips. She held his head in her arm so that he had to lie down beside her. Both of them were shy, gentle, longing for love. Teresa fell asleep first, with her cheek against his neck. He stroked her hair softly, and as the night finally engulfed him, he realised he was starting a journey without end or beginning, beyond the curse of time.