The Carnival Master

2.

It was Susanne’s deliberate cheerfulness that got to Fabel the most. He knew that she was doing her best not to let her anger with him reach boiling point again. Susanne was from Munich and culturally oriented towards the South and the Mediterranean. Fabel often envied her ability to let her emotions boil over and in doing so extinguish the flame beneath them. Fabel, on the other hand, was aware of his doubly northern mixed heritage. He kept a lid on things. Like a pressure cooker.

‘What’s that?’ Susanne asked, pointing to the leaflet on the table. Fabel explained briefly about the encounter with the Ukrainian protester on Jungfernstieg outside the Alsterhaus.

‘Oh… yes, I saw them. Didn’t know they were Ukrainians, though. You know me, I just barge on through anybody I think is trying to sell me something.’

‘It would have to be Ukrainians,’ said Fabel gloomily. ‘Why is it that so many Ukrainians have such striking eyes? You know, very pale, bright blue and green?’

‘Genetics, probably. Didn’t you tell me once that Ukrainians have a lot of Viking blood?’

‘Mmm…’ Fabel was clearly still struggling to wrap himself around jumbled, random thoughts. ‘It’s just something I’ve noticed. And of course…’ He stopped himself.

‘Vitrenko?’ said Susanne with a sigh. ‘Jan, I thought you’d laid that ghost to rest.’

‘I have. It’s just that he came to mind. You know, with meeting that Ukrainian outside.’ Sensing the potential for another argument, he dropped the subject and spoke instead of his forthcoming weekend trip to see his mother, and how it was a pity that Susanne, whom his mother had always liked, couldn’t come.

But all the time he spoke, something about the conversation he’d had with Maria nagged at him. He made a promise to himself to go and see her when he got back from his mother’s. No matter what Dr Minks had said.

After lunch they headed to Otto Jensen’s bookshop in the Arkaden, just a short walk from the Alsterhaus. Otto had invited them to come along to an afternoon book launch. Otto Jensen had been Fabel’s closest friend since university. He was tall, skinny and one of the clumsiest individuals that Fabel had ever known, yet behind the clumsiness lay a razor-sharp intellect. Otto loved books, and his bookshop was probably the most successful independent in the city. But Fabel had often thought that his friend could have achieved a great deal in some other field.

Otto greeted them cheerfully but muttered under his breath that the book that was being launched was incredibly dull.

‘Couldn’t tell you that before,’ explained Otto, ‘or you wouldn’t have come. Sorry… but I need you to pad out the crowd.’

‘What are friends for?’ said Fabel.

‘Listen, the wine’s not bad at all this time. You’re half-Scottish, half-Frisian… I thought you’d do anything for a free drink.’

Otto had arranged a small reception after the event for the author and some of the guests. People stood in clusters, sipping wine and chatting. Susanne and Otto’s wife Else had become close friends and were deep in a conversation about somebody that Fabel didn’t know when Otto took him by the elbow and steered him away.

‘There’s someone I’d like you to meet,’ Otto said.

‘Not the author, please…’ pleaded Fabel. He had found the event, and the author, as tedious as Otto had promised.

‘No. Not at all. This is someone infinitely more interesting.’

Otto guided Fabel across to a shortish man of about fifty who was dressed in a beige linen suit that looked as if it had been worn every day for a week without making the passing acquaintance of an iron.

‘This is Kurt Lessing,’ explained Otto. The man in the crumpled suit extended a hand. He had an intelligent face that hid a certain handsomeness behind too-big spectacles that needed to be wiped clean. ‘I should warn you that Kurt is quite mad. But really interesting to talk to.’

‘Thanks for the introduction,’ said Lessing. He smiled at Fabel. But his attention focused immediately on Susanne who had joined them. He gave a half-bow and raised her hand to his lips. ‘It is my pleasure,’ he said and grinned wolfishly at her. Fabel laughed at the deliberately conspicuous display of attraction. ‘You are an extraordinarily beautiful woman, Frau Doctor Eckhardt.’

‘Thank you,’ said Susanne.

‘I have to point out,’ said Otto, ‘that despite seeming to state the obvious, Susanne, it is actually an enormous honour for Kurt to say such a thing. You see, he is one of the world’s experts on female beauty.’

‘Really?’ Susanne regarded Lessing sceptically.

‘Indeed I am,’ said Lessing, with another small bow. ‘I have written the definitive work on female beauty over the centuries and across cultures. It is my speciality.’

‘You’re an author?’ asked Fabel.

‘I’m an anthropologist,’ said Lessing, without taking his eyes from Susanne. ‘And, to a lesser extent, an art critic. I have combined the two fields.’ At last he turned to Fabel. ‘I study the anthropology of art and aesthetics. I have written a book about the female form over the centuries. About how our ideal of beauty has transformed so radically over time.’

‘Has it changed so much?’ asked Susanne. ‘This is something that interests me. I am a psychologist.’

‘Beauty and intelligence. Now that has been universally attractive throughout the human experience. But to answer your question, yes, it really has undergone radical variations. What is particularly interesting is that our ideal of female beauty has changed more rapidly over the last century than at any time in human history. There is no doubt that mass media has played a key part. All you have to do is to compare the screen sirens of the forties and fifties with the stick-thin fashion models of today. What I find particularly amazing is the way that, within a given time, one will find different ideals of beauty running concurrently within the same culture.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Susanne.

‘No man finds the stick-thin catwalk model attractive. It is a woman’s definition of female beauty. This imperative to be thin is a strange tyranny exerted on women by women. It is what differentiates us as genders that make us attractive to each other. Men like curves, women like angles.’

‘But that contradicts what you said before,’ said Fabel. A joke was a joke, but he was beginning to get fed up with the small man’s preoccupation with Susanne. ‘You said that the “ideal” of feminine beauty has changed throughout the centuries.’

‘True, but within set parameters. If you look at the classical ideal of beauty as set out in Greek or Roman sculpture, it is pretty consistent with, say, the nineteen-fifties ideal. Then came a preoccupation with a large bust. However, if you look at Renaissance art, breasts were always small and firm. In those days, the big bust was associated with the wet-nurse: the lower-class woman who nursed babies for wealthier mothers determined to maintain their figures. There have been radical swings in fashion, the most extreme being the near-obese Titian model. But, generally speaking, there have been limits.’

Fabel thought about the murdered women in Cologne. About how they seemed to have fuller hips and bottoms.

‘What about bottoms?’ he asked. ‘Have there been fashions in bums?’

‘Obviously in the eighteen-hundreds there was a real fixation with them. The bustle exaggerated the bottom to an extreme and physically impossible degree. But generally the function of the hips and bottom has been to accentuate the narrowness of the waist. And that certainly was the intention with the bustle. It isn’t a single body part that is important: it is its relationship with other parts. All fat women have full bottoms but obesity is unattractive. Men who are attracted to larger bottoms tend to look for the contrast with a narrow waist. It’s part of our most primitive psychology. We assess the figure of another to judge their fitness and suitability as a sexual partner.’

After they left the event Fabel and Susanne took a taxi back to her apartment.

‘I rather think he fancied me,’ she said laughingly.

‘Mmm.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Susanne looped her arm through Fabel’s. ‘You jealous? He really wasn’t my type…’

Fabel smiled. But his mind was still elsewhere, putting together an image of a woman in his mind. He knew exactly the type. The type the Cologne cannibal would target next, unless Scholz was able to get to him first.