The Inspector and Silence

28

The bar was called Plato’s Cave, and as he sat there among the shadows he devoted his thoughts mainly to the topic that had cropped up during his latest conversation with Andrej Przebuda.

The premise that assaulting children – subjecting them to some kind of abuse, and in one way or another robbing them of their childhood – was in fact the only crime, the only deed, that could never be forgiven.

With the possible exception of accusing somebody – wrongly – of having done so.

What a balance, he thought. What an incredibly delicate balance! In one pan of the scales all the children that had been the victims of incest without the culprit being punished.

And in the other all those who had been punished, despite the fact that they were innocent.

For there certainly had been witch-hunts. Lots of them.

It was not a new problem, but the lopsided paradox that kept nagging inside him, and also haunted this case, seemed to him more and more repulsive with nearly every hour that passed.

With every hour and every pointless interrogation.

It would be nice to be a mere shadow, he thought as he looked around at the walls.

Or sitting under a plane tree in Spili.

During the afternoon he talked to two more people who had seen the light. A man and a woman, in that order. Both were aged about thirty-five, both were single, and they had been members of the church for five and six years respectively. The man – a certain Alexander Fitze – gave the impression of having remained in childhood, slow-cooking, until he was well turned twenty, Van Veeteren thought. He picked his words extremely carefully, as if the letters were made of bone china, but even so managed to give the impression of being strained and nervous. He reminded the chief inspector of an old language teacher he’d had as a young teenager: he had behaved in roughly the same way for a few months before he broke down and hanged himself in the attic.

The woman’s name was Marlene Kochel and she was more phlegmatic, built like a seal and with a lisping, laid-back tone of voice. But as far as their evidence was concerned, what the chief inspector was obliged to listen to that increasingly hot afternoon was strikingly similar.

The same almost clinical lack of solid information when it came to the actual teachings and beliefs behind the Pure Life.

The same putative phrases about light, purity and the sublime life.

The same devoted outpourings with regard to Oscar Yellinek, his divine gifts and his unadulterated nobility.

The same pious drivel. Time after time Van Veeteren found himself thinking about something else while the tirades followed one after the other before biting their own tail. Or sitting and observing – studying – his interviewees from an entirely different point of view from that usual in such circumstances. Or what ought to be usual.

A distrait and exhausted listener who, instead of listening to and trying to form an opinion about what was being said (and assessing its credibility), devoted himself mainly to wondering what kind of a strange creature was sitting in the chair opposite, babbling (or lisping) away. Churning out these pointless harangues without the slightest basis in either the real world or any kind of logical structure. Words, words, words. In a language he didn’t understand.

Almost a different species. Something fundamentally incomprehensible.

But then again – a thought that was never far away from his mind – he could be the caged animal. The object of study. Lonely and abandoned, staring out through the bars at a whole world of… yes, that was the point: incomprehensibility. Folie a deux, he thought. There is no such thing as objective reality.

‘What are your views on the theodicy problem?’ he asked at one point.

‘What did you say his name was?’ asked Mr Fitze with a nervous smile.

In matters of a more tangible nature – nudity, exorcism, confirmation classes and suchlike – the conversations did manage to throw light on a few places, but by no means all. Of course there were gatherings in the nude. One of Yellinek’s central ideas was evidently meeting your God in the same unencumbered and unconstrained state as when you came into the world. And as for driving out sins, or even devils, it was naturally a big advantage if the sinner was wearing as few clothes as possible. It made the process more effective – surely even a secularized detective chief inspector could see that?

Declared Marlene Kochel with a sly smile.

Another fact that was embraced without hesitation as a matter of course was that angels and God the Father Himself were in the habit of striding naked through heavenly pastures – so why not start getting used to it on this side of the border, especially if you happened to be one of the chosen few? Children and adults alike.

Yes, why not?

But carnality? No. Eroticism and licentious behaviour and uncontrolled screwing (the chief inspector’s term, which he kept to himself)? Certainly not. This was denied firmly and with such promptitude and lisping frenzy that he realized he wasn’t going to get any further along this track – but on the other hand it made him suspect that things were not as above board as was being maintained.

Neither Alexander Fitze nor Marlene Kochel had any comment to make on the prophet and his stable of fancy women at the camp. It seemed to be a matter way beyond the comprehension of a detective chief inspector; a spiritual state of such significance that one could only feel giddy at the very thought. Feel giddy and shut your trap.

To put it in plain English.

And so, on the whole, Van Veeteren did not feel much wiser when he finally emerged into the bustling street after the last of the conversations. But then, not much more stupid either; and what needed to be done first was to place the whole afternoon in parenthesis and add it to the case notes. One of several.

Especially as he had received no help regarding Ewa Siguera on this occasion either.

Ah well, the chief inspector thought with the insight that experience brings. I’ve grown a bit older again with a degree of dignity intact.

Then he realized that it was almost six o’clock and he hadn’t much more than an hour to spare, if he was going to be able to listen to what his body was telling him about an evening meal.

The meeting with Uri Zander was arranged for half past seven, and as he understood it, the address was somewhere in the suburbs.

So, food! And no shilly-shallying over the menu.

It took him less than five minutes to find a seat and order a substantial portion of meat in one of the restaurants opposite the railway station.

That’s enough of ethereal exploration and ecstatic experience to be going on with, he thought, selecting a toothpick while he was waiting to be served. My spiritual needs have been satisfied for the next two years.

Despite all the good intentions, his second evening in Stamberg turned out rather differently.

Nothing wrong with the beef steak, but it joined forces with the dark red wine and his own feelings of inertia with the result that instead of venturing out into the unfamiliar suburbs, he called Mr Zander from the telephone in the entrance and postponed the meeting until the following day. Then he stayed put for another hour with a cheese board and a couple of scandal-mongering evening papers before returning to his hotel as dusk fell.

Two beers, the ten o’clock news on the television (this evening with the events at Sorbinowo crammed into a mere minute and a half) plus four chapters of Klimke’s Observations took him past midnight, and he fell asleep with a vague but very familiar guilty conscience, without having brushed his teeth.

A sign of decadence, no doubt about that, and during the whole day he had barely devoted a thought to Ulrike Fremdli or Krantze’s antiquarian bookshop. However, as soon as he entered the land of dreams, it was these two major matters that demanded his attention. But perhaps, as a tiny pulse of emotion that still hadn’t dozed off suggested, that was precisely what everything boiled down to.

Dreams.