Splinter

20

Before Marc’s father died of liver failure at the age of fifty-seven he had been a business consultant, an artistes’ manager, the owner of several hotel and casino complexes in South Africa, the father of two illegitimate children, an alcoholic, a composer, a cartoonist, a bodybuilder – even an international-bestseller writer under various pseudonyms. All this in addition to his activities as an incompetent lawyer. And all in his imagination alone.

Frank Lucas had naturally told no one in the family of his experiences in this illusory world, any more than he had informed Marc, Benny or his wife that the small law office for which he daily set off with an empty briefcase had long been in the red because of his repeated legal blunders. In spite of his schizoid disorders, however, he had succeeded in keeping his head above water for another two and a half years, thanks to a few gullible clients. Even Anita, his secretary, had continued to work half-days for almost no pay until, shortly before his death, she realized that she would never benefit financially from his forthcoming construction project in Brazil because that, too, existed only in her debt-ridden employer’s imagination.

None of these things – Frank’s schizoid disorders and the family’s disastrous financial position – had come to light until the day the police rang the doorbell and asked to interview Marc’s sister about the rape she’d undergone. The family’s reaction took them aback, for there was no sister and no rape. For the first time in his life, Frank had lied to the wrong people.

They’d all had their suspicions, of course. Neither his wife nor his children had failed to notice his mood swings, insomnia, recurrent bouts of sweating and penchant for self-dramatization. On the other hand, didn’t they love him partly because he didn’t take the truth too seriously? Because of the fanciful, incredible, picaresque stories with which he’d won his wife’s heart and held Marc and Benny spellbound in their bunk beds? Besides, didn’t a good lawyer have to lie occasionally in order to get his clients off the hook?

For fear of the truth, the whole family shrank from questioning Frank’s Sunday-lunch accounts of the week’s events. His wife sneaked off to the bottle bank with the empties more and more often to prevent the children and her neighbours from catching on, but she never believed her husband had a drink problem, and Marc himself was now no longer so convinced of it.

Although the doctors subsequently stated that Frank’s delusions were the result of recurrent alcoholic binges, Marc thought the converse more likely. His father had never drunk himself into a world of illusion; having always lived in one, he’d resorted to the bottle only in his lucid moments, when the agonies of self-recognition became too much to bear. Marc had often wondered if anything could be more terrible than the moment when the veil of illusion is drawn aside to reveal the cruel actuality behind it; the moment when your dearest wish is a swift return to your accustomed world. Even when it doesn’t exist.

Did you go through this too, Dad?

Marc breathed deeply, clinging to the construction site’s wire-mesh fence like an exhausted long-distance runner. He had seldom felt as close to his father as he did now. Perhaps the doctors had been wrong to say that Frank’s disorder wasn’t hereditary. Perhaps he, Marc Lucas, wasn’t the person he thought. Perhaps he had never been married, never fathered a baby and never visited this Bleibtreu Clinic. Perhaps the voice behind him existed only in his head…

‘Excuse me?’

The woman sounded diffident, like a beggar who has been rebuffed too often to hope for even a modest handout. Turning his head, Marc saw at a glance that there was something wrong with the overweight creature. She was licking her upper lip and plucking nervously at her scabby fingers.

‘What is it?’ Marc said brusquely. He was in no mood to help out some vagrant.

She retreated a step, clinging to the wire-mesh fence like him. The dim light made it hard to tell how much of a down-and-out she was. Her dark, shoulder-length hair might have been greasy or simply wet with rain. The same applied to the white quilted jacket that made her corpulent figure look like a Michelin mascot.

‘May I ask you a question?’ she asked softly, as if she dreaded the answer. She stepped forwards into the glare of one of the lights mounted on the fence at two-metre intervals to warn of the abyss beyond it. The sight of her puffy face and scratched hands banished any doubts Marc might have had about her mental state. The woman with the double chin and the cheap glasses with sand-coloured frames was either heavily medicated or suffering from withdrawal symptoms.

‘I’d rather you didn’t.’ Ostentatiously, Marc looked up as though interested in the crane overhead. A light was still on in the deserted cab. If he hadn’t already been feeling dizzy, just gazing up at it would have made him feel queasy.

‘Are you in the programme too?’ asked the timid voice beside him.

What?

He didn’t turn to face her until she repeated the question. She removed her glasses and rather clumsily wiped the misted lenses with her bare fingers.

‘The programme,’ she said again, looking straight at him for the first time. Her dark, beady little eyes lent her face a doll-like appearance. She might have been younger than him, although she looked older. Marc knew only too well what life on the streets could do to a person. He peered around suspiciously. The pavement was deserted. The shops and offices had been closed for hours.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The trial. The experiment.’

Although his early warning system had been defective since the accident – it had failed him several times in the past few hours – what little remained of it was sufficient to put him on his guard. It was disconcerting enough to be accosted by a down-and-out while staring into a deserted construction site on a rainy night, but the subject she had just raised rendered the situation thoroughly unreal.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘Emma.’ Her arm shot out like that of a child whose parents have told her to shake hands nicely with a guest. ‘My name is Emma Ludwig, and…’ Her good-natured expression reminded him of his mother. She used to give him the same kindly, rather wistful look in the kitchen at the end of a long, tiring day. He was about to shake hands when the rest of her sentence made him instinctively recoil. ‘…and I’ve been waiting for you for days.’

A car went speeding through a puddle behind her.

‘For me?’

He swallowed hard. A plump raindrop landed on his bare scalp. He brushed it off before it could make its icy way down his neck. He couldn’t remember when he’d last shaved his head, and the feel of the stubble beneath his fingertips made him even sadder. Sandra had liked it when his ‘haircut’ matched his three-day beard.

‘You must be mistaking me for someone else,’ he said at length, letting go of the wire-mesh fence. His jeans had become completely sodden in the short time he’d been standing there.

‘No, wait,’ she said. ‘Why did you come here? To this hole in the ground, I mean?’

Marc retreated a step. His perception of some invisible threat intensified with every word this strange woman uttered.

‘What’s it to you?’

‘I think I can help you.’

‘Why should you think I’m in need of help?’ he said dismissively.

Her reply took his breath away. ‘Because I’m a patient too.’

Too? Why too?

‘I was in the Bleibtreu programme just like you.’

Wrong. I didn’t even sign the application form.

‘But then I got out. Since then I’ve spent every spare minute here.’ She indicated the construction site and put her glasses on again. ‘Here beside this hole, on the lookout for people who can’t understand where No. 211 has got to.’

Marc turned to go. He was itching to get away from her even though he had no idea where he could go in the middle of the night, with no car, no money or medication.

‘People like you.’

He wanted to go to Constantin or his old friend Thomas – even, perhaps, to Roswitha, whom he had never met outside office hours but who at least was a familiar face. In the end, however, he went nowhere. He stayed where he was, but not because the woman who called herself Emma Ludwig had offered to help him, nor because she wanted to show him a file that would, she claimed, be of interest to him.

‘Please come with me, Dr Lucas. It’s too dangerous for us to be seen together here.’

He stayed because this woman, if she really existed, knew his name and shared his belief that there used to be a clinic here. That meant there was an outside chance he hadn’t lost his mind. Then at least he wouldn’t be the only one.