Melanie Raabe - The Trap

His words seep into my consciousness.

“The main suspect?” I say flatly. Lenzen looks at me in surprise.

“I was never under suspicion.”

“Hm,” says Lenzen. “Well, I suppose that whoever finds the corpse is automatically one of the main suspects to begin with, and that it doesn’t have anything to do with you as such.”

I swallow. “What do you know?” I ask.

Lenzen squirms. “I don’t think I…”

“What do you know? Who have you spoken to?” I yell. “I have a right to know! Please,” I add softly.

“All right then,” he says. “I spoke to the policeman who led the investigation. And you were indeed the main suspect for a long time. Didn’t you know?”

“Which policeman?” I ask.

“I don’t know whether I can tell you,” Lenzen replies. “Is it really that important?”

I see a face before me — one eye green and the other brown. No, it’s not possible!

“No,” I say, “not that important.”

I’m hot; the air is electrically charged. I long for rain, but there’s no rain coming. The storm has simply passed us by; it will break elsewhere. Only the wind can still be heard, whistling around the house.

“In any case, it’s clear that you’re innocent,” says Lenzen.

“They were never able to prove anything against you. You didn’t have the hint of a motive.”

I can’t believe we’re talking about whether I’m guilty or innocent.

“And, of course, it’s really not your fault that you can’t leave the house,” Lenzen adds.

“What?”

Again, I feel a jolt of fear.

“What’s that got to do with any of this?”

“Nothing, of course,” Lenzen hastens to assure me.

“But?”

“It was only a casual remark.”

“You’re not the kind to make casual remarks,” I reply.

“Well, some of the people investigating your sister’s murder case back then interpreted your…retreat as, well, how can I put it…as an admission of guilt.”

“My retreat?” My voice cracks with anger and despair; I can’t help it. “I didn’t retreat! I’m ill!”

“What I’m telling you isn’t my opinion. But there are people out there who don’t believe in this obscure illness; they see a murderer who has fled from society. There are those who think you live in a kind of self-imposed solitary confinement here.”

I feel dizzy.

“I shouldn’t have told you,” Lenzen says. “I thought you’d heard it all long ago. It’s a good story, that’s all.”

“Yes,” I say.

I’ve run out of words.

“The worst is the doubt. A vestige of doubt always remains,” Lenzen says. “That’s the awful thing. Doubt is like a thorn you can’t get ahold on. It’s terrible when a thing like that destroys families.”

I blink.

“Are you trying to tell me that my family — my parents — think I’m a murderer?”

“What? No! God…I would never…” He doesn’t finish the sentence.

I ask myself when I last spoke to my parents — really spoke to them, not just the I’m-fine-how-are-you? farce. I can’t remember. Lenzen is right. My parents have distanced themselves from me.

And there are people out there who have told Victor Lenzen they think I killed my sister.

I remember how nervous Lenzen seemed when he arrived, and I understand why. He wasn’t unsure of himself because he felt guilty, but because he was wondering how mad, how dangerous, the woman he was about to interview was.

Victor Lenzen didn’t come to my house to interview a world-famous, best-selling author. He came to find out whether said author is not only eccentric but also a murderer.

We were both after a confession.

A painful burning sensation spreads through my abdomen, rises up to my throat and breaks out of my mouth in a hollow and utterly humorless laugh. It hurts, but I can’t stop; I laugh and laugh until the laughter segues into sobs. I am overcome by the fear of being stark raving mad.

My fear is a deep well that I have fallen into. I’m suspended vertically in the water. I try to touch the bottom with my toes, but there’s nothing there, only blackness.

Lenzen watches me, waiting until the fits of laughter subside. Only the pain remains. I suppress a whimper.

“Why don’t you hate me?” I ask when I can talk again.

Lenzen sighs. “I’ve seen wars, Linda. Fighting, the aftermath of fighting. I’ve seen what it looks like when nothing will ever be right again, prisoners of war, children with their limbs blown off. I know what it looks like when someone is deeply traumatized. Something in you has broken, Linda; I can see it in your eyes. We’re not so different, you and me.”

He is silent for a moment, appearing to deliberate.

“Linda, do you promise me you’ll leave me in peace?”

I can hardly speak for shame. “Of course,” I say. “Of course.”

“If you promise me that you’ll leave me and my family in peace, and if you’ll promise me to seek psychiatric treatment”—he seems to hesitate before making up his mind—“if you can promise me those two things, then no one need know about what’s happened today.”

I look at him in disbelief.

“But…what will you tell your editor?” I ask stupidly.

“That you didn’t feel well. That we had to break off the interview. And that there won’t be a repeat.”

My brain can no longer keep pace.

“Why?” I say. “Why are you doing this? I deserve to be punished.”

“I think you’ve been punished enough.” I look at him. He looks at me.

“Can you promise me those two things?” Lenzen asks. I nod.

“I hope you can make peace with yourself,” he says.

Then he turns and leaves. I hear him take his coat from the hook in the hall and go into the dining room to fetch his jacket and his bag.

I know he’ll be out of my reach as soon as he crosses the threshold. I know I’ll never see him again and that there will be nothing more I can do.

And what were you thinking of doing?

I hear Victor Lenzen’s footsteps in the hall, hear him open the front door. I stand in the kitchen and know I’m not going to stop him. The door falls shut behind him. Silence spreads through the house like floodwater. It is over.

The rain has come after all. Again and again, the wind flings it at the kitchen window as though it were trying to break the glass. But it tires, and eventually ceases altogether, and soon the storm is no more than a memory, a mute flash of summer lightning in the distance.

I stand there, propped up at the kitchen table, trying to remember how to breathe. My body has stopped doing it for me automatically, so I have to focus all my attention on it. I don’t have the strength for anything else; I think of nothing. I stand like that for a long time.

But then a thought does reach me, and it gets me moving, and while I’m wondering at the fact that my arms and legs and everything else function the same as ever, I’m walking through rooms and climbing stairs and pushing open doors. Then I find him. He’s asleep, but wakes up when I sit down beside him. First his nose, then his tail, then the rest of his body. Bukowski’s tired, but he’s pleased to see me.

Sorry to wake you, mate. I don’t want to be on my own tonight.

I curl up in a ball beside him on the floor, half on his blanket. I snuggle up to him, trying to get some of his warmth, but he wriggles free; he doesn’t like it, needs his space. He isn’t a pussycat after all; he wants freedom, room to move. Soon he is asleep again, dreaming his doggy dreams.

I lie there alone for a moment longer, trying to keep thinking of nothing, but an animal impulse stirs in my chest and I remember Lenzen’s embrace — the firmness, the warmth — and I have a feeling in my stomach as if I were in free fall, and again I try to think of nothing, but still I think of Lenzen’s embrace and the beast in my chest and its terrible name: desire. I know how pathetic I am, but I don’t care.