Peter Temple - In the Evil Day

Anselm felt the dangerous light-headedness coming over him, the sense of trembling inside, knew he should end this encounter. He drained his glass, went to the kitchen and half filled it, no water, came back and sat down. The light from the table lamp lit one side of her face, emphasised her nose, the fullness of her lips.

‘Life history? That’s what you’re interested in?’

‘Yes.’

‘And personality?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve got those. Both. Two out of three. Missing only the disorder.’

Silence.

‘Would you like to see my scrapbook? Stories from foreign wars?

Pictures of dead people? Mutilated bodies?’

‘If you’d like to show it to me,’ she said.

‘The shrink answer. If you’d like to. What would you like, Frau Koenig? It that Frau? Frau Doctor Koenig?’

‘Alex is fine.’

‘Alex is too informal for me, Doctor.’ He felt himself speeding up. ‘I think we need to keep a professional German distance here. Are you German? You don’t look German. Some kind of Auslander , perhaps? A member of a lesser race? That’s not quite an Aryan nose, not that I mind it, of course.’

‘My father is Austrian.’

Anselm drank, a swig. ‘Austrian? Of course. A psychiatrist, where else would your father be? The land of Freud, Jung and Adler. Adler never quite made it did he? A lesser light. I can’t quite remember where Adler went wrong. You’d know, wouldn’t you? Sorry, that might offend. Not an Adlerian are you, Doctor?’

‘No.’

‘Right. What about Jung? A Jungian. He was a big prick, wasn’t he? Saw this huge one as a child as I remember it. This massive phallus. In a dream. Is that right, Doctor Professor?’

‘I’m not a Jungian.’

Anselm couldn’t stop himself. He leaned forward. ‘Dream about massive phalluses too, do you? Monsters? Huge pricks with men attached?’

‘I’m not an analyst.’ Her smile was tight.

‘No? You’d be into drugs then. Terrific. I’m with you. The best approach is drugs. Just give the crazies drugs. For fuck’s sake, they’re deranged, shoot them full of drugs, that’ll keep the nuts quiet.’

Alex Koenig hadn’t taken her eyes off him.

‘Unfortunately I didn’t keep a scrapbook,’ said Anselm. ‘And I don’t remember much about my illustrious career. That’s got nothing to do with post-traumatic stress. That’s the result of being struck on the head with a rifle butt. But I do remember that trouble spots are all the same. Only the colours of the people change. Outside. Inside they’re all the same colours. Red and pink and white. The intestines, they’re a sort of blue, purply blue, the colour of baby birds, seen baby birds? Only they’re wet and slimy, like big worms. Big earthworms or the worms in swordfish. People worms.’

He sat back and smiled at her. ‘Well, so much for my life history. That leaves personality, doesn’t it? Is that in the ordinary meaning? Or is it persona we’re talking about? The mask, the actor’s mask? Your Jung was keen on that, wasn’t he? Stupid phallic fart that he was.’

He waited. The way she was looking at him, her silence, her neutrality, brought back the American military psychiatrist. ‘What kind of shrink are you?’ he said. ‘Are you a couch-type? Plenty of couches in this house. We could talk on a couch, how’s that? Both on it. Prone and supine. Which would you be?’

There was a long silence. Then Alex Koenig stood up, eyes on his, glass held in both hands, licked her lower lip, a slither of pink tongue. ‘I like both,’ she said. ‘I like to alternate. I like to fuck and be fucked. But you wouldn’t be much good either way, Herr Anselm. Your prick’s useless. Even if you wanted to fuck me, you couldn’t. You’re not a performer. You’re impotent.’

He sat in the armchair and heard the heavy front door close behind her. He stayed there, head back, massaging the fingers that wouldn’t work, and after a time he fell asleep, waking beyond midnight, stumbling to his cold unmade bed in the room where his grandfather had died.

…HAMBURG…

Anselm always woke early, no matter how much he’d drunk, got up immediately, couldn’t bear the thoughts that lying awake in bed brought. Showered, dressed, some toast eaten, he wandered the house, watched television for a few minutes at a time, too early to go to work. There was always something to look at. Anselms had lived in the house since before World War One. It had been built by his great-grandfather, Gustav. Bits of family history were everywhere-paintings, photographs, books with inscriptions, letters stuck in them to mark pages, three volumes of handwritten recipes, an ivory-handled walking stick, diaries in High German, collections of invitation cards, wooden jigsaws, mechanical toys, there was no end to the Anselm relics. In the empty, cobwebbed wine cellar, he had found a single bottle stuck too deep into a rack, 1937 Lafite. He’d opened it: corked, undrinkable.

Today, he took the tape recorder to the kitchen, sat at the table. In the damp hole in Beirut, Anselm’s thoughts had often turned to his great-aunt Pauline. His first memories of her were when he was eight or nine. She was always very old in his mind, thin, wiry, always in grey, a shade of grey, high collars, strong grey hair, straight hair, severely cut. She smoked cigarillos in a holder. He had no memory of making the recordings. They had come from San Francisco, four tapes in a box with other tapes.

He pressed the Play button. Hissing, then the voice of great-aunt Pauline.

Of course this house has seem terrible arguments.

Then his young voice.

What about?

Oh, business, how to run the business. Times were difficult before the war. And about the Nazis, Hitler.

Who argued about Hitler?

Your grandfather and your great-grandfather. With Moritz.

I don’t know anything about Moritz.

There was a long silence before Pauline spoke again.

Moritz was so foolish. But he looked like an angel, lovely hair, so blond, he had the face of Count Haubold von Einsiedel, you know the portrait?

No, I don’t know it.

The von Rayski portrait? Of course you do, everyone does. I remember one particularly awful evening. We were having a sherry before dinner, we always did, I was fourteen when I was included, just a thimbleful of an old manzanilla fino. Hold it to the light, my father said. See pleasure in a glass. I did. I went to that window, it was summer. They seemed to last much longer then, summers, we had better summers. Much better, much longer.

Another silence.

When was that?

When?

The awful evening.

Oh, I suppose it would have been in ’35 or ’36. Soon after Stuart’s death. Stuart never wanted to be in commerce but he had no choice. Eldest sons were expected to go into the firm. I don’t know what he wanted to do. Except paint and ski. But his family, well, they were like ours. Two weeks in Garmisch, they thought that was quite enough relaxation for a year. Anselms had dealt with Armitages for many years, more than a hundred, I suppose. Many, many years. My father used to say we were married to the Armitages long before I married Stuart. He was at Oxford with Stuart’s father. They all did law. That was what you did. Of course, the families had almost been joined before. My aunt Cecile was engaged to an Armitage, I forget his name, Henry, yes. Henry, he was killed in the Great War.

The awful evening.

What?

The evening of the terrible argument.

What did I say about that?

Nothing.