Guillermo Martinez - The Book of Murder

I shook my head.

“Sometimes the game reaches a point at which players are condemned to repeating the same moves indefinitely-the Ko position. Neither player can break the stalemate because if they make any other kind of move they lose the game immediately. That is what my days with Mercedes were like. We’d reached an equilibrium. A Ko position on which Pauli’s life depended. It was a question of time, until Pauli was grown. But Luciana’s letter destroyed everything.”

“You said that you imagined a punishment for her. What was it?”

“I just wanted her to remember. To remember, as I did, every day, first thing in the morning and last thing at night, that though she was alive my daughter was dead. I wanted her life to be stopped, as mine was, at that memory. It’s why I went to Villa Gesell that first summer. I knew she’d be there. I couldn’t bear the thought of her spending days in the sun while Pauli was for ever buried in the ground, in that little box where I’d had to leave her. I wanted Luciana to see me, day after day. This was my only plan for revenge. I never dreamed her boyfriend would be so stupid as to go for a swim that morning. I saw him disappear, from the promenade as I was leaving, but I just thought he’d swum out too far. I only found out he’d drowned when I went to have coffee as usual the next morning. I must say I was shocked by his death, but for a different reason. I’d always been an atheist, but I couldn’t help seeing symmetry, a sign from on high, in the coincidence: my daughter had drowned in the bath and that boy had also drowned, even though he was a lifeguard, as if a finger had pushed him under. And wasn’t the sea like a god’s bathtub? In an accidental but magical way-in the old sense of sympathetic magic-the primitive law of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth had been observed. As she said to you, we now had one death each. But was this enough? Was the balance truly even? Suddenly the question I’d pondered in an abstract way a few months earlier was before me in real life. I decided to return to Buenos Aires to start a novel-the one I mentioned to you. I’ve been writing it very slowly, with breaks, alongside all the others, for the past ten years. How would one mete out punishment if one were God? We are not gods, but in his own pages every writer is a god. I’ve devoted myself to writing this secret novel at night. Page by page, it’s my way of praying. But that’s all I’ve done, all I’ve ever really done these past years. I haven’t seen Luciana again.”

“But she said she saw you at the cemetery the day of her parents’ funeral. Was it a coincidence that you were there that morning?”

“I’m there every morning. She’d have seen me any other day: I visit my daughter’s grave on my daily walk. And Luciana was the one who saw me. I didn’t find out about her parents’ death until later, when I received that letter, the letter in which she asked me to forgive her. She begged and pleaded, as if I were behind all her misfortunes. Or had the power to prevent them. From the construction of her sentences, I realised that she was already slightly disturbed. Even so, when her brother was murdered, she managed to get the police to believe her. She wanted to blame his murder on me as well. That policeman, Ramoneda, came to see me. He was very apologetic but said he had to follow up every lead, as the case had acquired great importance because of the scandal of the convicts’ being let out to commit robberies. He wanted to know if I’d corresponded with any of the inmates. I explained that, because my novels generally dealt with death and murder, people often thought of them as crime fiction and they were popular with prisoners. I said that over the years I’d received letters from inmates of various prisons, sometimes pointing out mistakes in my books and suggesting their own stories as subjects for future novels. He asked to see the letters so I gave him those I’d kept. He talked about Truman Capote while he was looking at them. He was proud to have read In Cold Blood and be discussing it with me. He showed me the rather bizarre anonymous letters. They read like something written by a scorned mistress. He asked if, as a writer, I could infer anything about the author, male or female. I never dreamed he might be setting a trap, or suspected me of having written them. Up until that moment I thought he simply wanted to know about my correspondence with inmates of that prison. I told him the little I could tell about the person who’d written the letter and that’s when he mentioned Luciana. He’d already made inquiries at her psychiatric clinic and apologised for bringing up something so personal from the distant past. I showed him her letter. He compared the handwriting to that of the anonymous letters. She seemed to be more of a suspect than me. He said he was used to receiving confessions in the most unexpected and strange ways. He mentioned The Tell-Tale Heart by Poe. I think he wanted to show me that he too had read a few books. We chatted for a while about crime writers and he looked around my library. I realised he was hoping I’d give him one of my books, so I did and finally he left. It was the last I heard about both the investigation and Luciana, and I assumed that was the end of it. Until I got your call.”

He went to the desk, where I’d left the magazine, and replaced it in the drawer. He lowered the window blind and motioned for me to follow him. We returned to his study in silence. The little stack of papers was still on the table, but I didn’t move to pick them up.

“So is there anything else you’d like to ask?”

I had lots more questions but I knew he’d be reluctant to answer any of them. I decided to try anyway.

“She says here that you loathed anything to do with public exposure. I remember myself how you were almost invisible for years. But then suddenly all that changed.”

Kloster nodded, as if he too had found it surprising.

“After Pauli died I thought I was going to lose my mind. And I would have if I’d stayed shut up in this house. Interviews, conferences, invitations, they all forced me to shave, get dressed, go out, remember who I once was; to think and act like a normal person. They were my only link with the world out there, where life went on. I did it all because I knew that as soon as I got back here I’d be alone again with just one thought. They were my outings to normality, my way of keeping sane. I was playing a part, of course, but when you’ve lost all will to exist, to persist, playing a part can be the only defence against madness.”

He indicated for me to follow him. “Come with me,” he said. “There’s something else I’d like to show you.”

We made our way to the corridor where I’d seen the first photograph in the gloom. He flicked the switch and the corridor was lit up. The walls were lined with photos of all sizes, hung very close together, like a ghastly collage, showing the daughter’s image repeated in a multitude of poses. As we walked down the corridor Kloster said simply: “I loved taking photos of her. These are the only ones I managed to save.”

He opened a door and we entered a small room. The walls were bare and the only furniture was a chair in one corner and a metal filing cabinet with a small oblong machine on top. When Kloster turned off the light in the corridor I realised it was a projector. The wall facing us was lit up, there was a click and Kloster’s daughter appeared, miraculously returned to life. She was crouching in the distance in what looked like a park or garden. She stood up and ran towards the camera, holding a little bunch of flowers. She headed towards us, happy and excited, and as she held out the flowers her childish voice rang out: “These are for you, Daddy.” Someone stretched out a hand to take the flowers and she ran back into the garden. The writer had somehow arranged it so that the scene was on a loop and the child ran towards and away from us endlessly, with the same bunch of flowers, the words sounding more eerie and sinister every time: These are for you,Daddy. I looked round and saw Kloster’s face, partially illuminated by the glare from the wall. He stood rigid, rapt as he watched, eyes fixed and stony like those of a dead man, with only a finger moving mechanically to press the button on the projector.